Getting To Know: Austin Crane
Austin Crane just wanted to have fun - it appears success was also on their plate.
Ever heard of the small town band that made it out? Four guys who used to play in coffee shops are now getting reviewed on major sites and headlining mid-sized tours throughout the country. They’re even planning to hit up a seven-show stint in Europe before the year is out. Ever heard this story?
Of course you have, and so have Austin Crane (the band, not just the front man). Let’s just bask in our ignorance for a moment and assume that bands want to be outstandingly successful throughout their tenure together. They want to say they’ve “arrived” as their online sales soar, or when they can quit their day jobs and indulge solely in the music, or when they aren’t sleeping on friends’ couches and apartment floors while on tour (even if the tour is only one show). But what if none of that stuff takes the cake? I recently had the chance to sit down with Austin Crane before they played a show in Macon, Georgia, and find out how it all started and how it might end.
The quartet is comprised of Caleb Weathersby, Austin Crane, James Gibson, and Nathan Poole, all hailing from their respective cities in South Carolina. What makes them most beguiling is the intensity with which their music is able to overwhelm listeners. Their sophomore album, Place At The Table, which was released last fall, boasts rousing and arcane rhythms joined with the drawl of Southern-flavored folk and swoon-inducing melodies that beseech you to hit repeat. But what everyone, including the band, will tell you is the most infectious part of the music is its lyrical value.
All four band mates are currently in tenure at the University of South Carolina, at Columbia. Like many other bands, their courses of study have not been the building blocks for their music. Gibson (bass) is the only one studying music, while Crane (acoustic and lead vocals) is studying Economics and Russian, Poole (electric guitar and vocals) is studying creative writing, and Weathersby (drums) is in nursing school. But unlike those who pursue degrees just to have them in their back pockets as they run full speed ahead with their band, the guys of Austin Crane have created avenues to lives that may very well outlast the music.
Perhaps this is most evident in the pressing of Place At The Table. Rather than take a term off to tour and gain recognition on a national scale, the band makes time for shows around their school schedule. “We don’t really play that much during school. Maybe once or twice a month,” says Weathersby. Crane adds, “And I think we probably also have things we enjoy most about playing music in general, like the community that surrounds it. We don’t have the luxury of going out and playing for a week. So, we’re really just trying to focus on those two or three shows we play a month, making them good and playing them with local friends of ours.”
And the same approach is taken towards things like their practice time or the pursuance of a label deal. Gibson admits that there is no weekly practice schedule, and adds that the band practices when they can or when they have to. Like a growing number of bands, Austin Crane shares the tendency to shy away from signing to either indie and major labels due to the often-times harrowing shift that can take place when abandoning self-management. “I think it helps that we’ve had a lot of friends of ours that got record deals, or they kind of made it you know, but in like the proverbial sense, and watching how it’s sort of disenchanting—it’s really a dramatic change in their lifestyle. And I think what makes this band fun is that we’re not needing it to pay the bills, we’re not needing it to save our souls. It’s not like we need this band to dig us out of something,” says Poole.
So what is the music for? I found myself wondering during the interview if maybe I was just talking to four guys who happen to play really good music but aren’t very serious about it. Would the future of Austin Crane just be found on iTunes, as one of the members suggested I could always go there to hear them? To understand my impending disappointment, you have to know about their music.
Austin Crane began as just Austin, a member of the one-man acoustic breed of singer/songwriters. Crane began playing in a band in middle school, and evolved his sound into a solo stint throughout high school and early into college. The clear uniting force for the band was USC. He and Gibson were in the same dorm and he met Poole within his first few weeks on campus. Originally, they had a different drummer, but when he left, Weathersby had just moved back to go to nursing school. And thus, the college provided a serendipitous environment for Austin Crane, the band, to find their sound and their hometown glory.
When the band came together in 2006 to record I Know My Hands, it was not a collaborative effort. In fact, it was all Crane in the foreground as the uncontested creator of the lyrics and vision for the instrumentation. The other three players were, in essence, just comping. “The first record, literally, the tracking was done in like 8 or 9 hours, over the course of a couple days,” says Poole. Gibson adds, “I think I came in once and did all my electric bass stuff. And I came in one day and did two songs on my upright double bass and I don’t think I heard any of the stuff until we were going in to listen to the final cuts.” But what some fail to realize is that their presence, though seemingly construed as an afterthought, was necessary for Crane to metamorphose from just himself.
Truthfully, if you are not well acquainted with their music, at first pass you could assume the same level of involvement and band input to ring true on their sophomore album. There are no grand gestures of instrumentation on Place At The Table—no sick guitar solos or spotlight drumming that occupies 30 seconds of track. Oddly enough, during a time when it seems paramount to stand out and make your mark in a group, these four guys have no problem with their arrangement. In fact, the intent of their music is so specific, they wouldn’t be satisfied if it was any other way. “I think if we had parts that were really trying to show off like ‘I’m the bass player of this band, look at me go,’ I think it would ultimately subtract from what we’re trying to do,” states Gibson.
The construction and input on the second album was a clear deviation in the right direction towards solidifying the band. The result was that rather than adding parts, each member exercised his talent in the humble and definitive pursuit of making the music what it was destined to be. The drumming on the first track, “The First Shall Be” is a perfect example of their ethos put into practice. “I didn’t know what it was going to sound like when we started, but I had in my brain what I thought would make the melody sound the best, percussion wise. And it ended up being right, like it worked,” Weathersby says. A true marriage of talents occurred the second time through the studio, wherein Crane would still bring the framework for the songs, but, “there was a lot more deliberation over certain songs that were built over like months,” says Gibson. He adds, “I could come in and add my own take on the song and Nate would come in and add what he’s hearing on the song.”
Crane’s lyrical framework is something of a work of art. Opting not to make straightforward lyrics that can only wear one set of emotions, he is able to create what Gibson calls a “universal aspect.” People are able to find themselves and a common point of relation in the songs, even if they and Crane are thinking about two different things. He says, “One of the things I appreciate most about music and really like, is that specific albums for me have meant different things at different times.” And rather than just make statements that are emphatic, there is a wondering and an earnestness in his words that leads us to believe we can find what we’re looking for too. Poole says, “I think that’s what makes it so exciting, you’re saying ‘what does it have to do with me?’ You definitely feel a sense of sojourn in the way he asks questions, how he’s posing his thoughts. So it’s not like his songs are these Tabula Rasa, blank slates, that you can add meaning onto. You’re really wondering what he’s saying.”
Weathersby adds, “You can take an approach like Wilco, where they all have a very specific musical direction that they want to accomplish and that’s the goal for each of them, and the actual content of the lyrics is almost nonsense, but it’s the sounds and the images the words elicit that are supposed to accentuate the music. If you were to flip that around, that’s probably more what we do. Like we have a very specific lyrical intention, and everything is meant to aid in that experience.”
If you can dissect the songs on the album, past a first listen—which will undoubtedly leave you singing the lyrics, not humming the melodies—you’ll realize that the lyrics are thoughts, and the instrumentation the voice behind them. The sound is all parts ethereal and magnetic. And so the winsomeness of the music is not a product of their willingness to play second best to the lyrics, but rather to make it impossible to ignore the myriad of imagery, depth, and mystery woven by the words.
“I just hope that what we’re doing here isn’t something someone could just listen to and be like ‘oh, it’s all right.’ I would hope it would be something that like, elicits a strong reaction either way. They’re either like ‘yes, this is great’ or ‘I don’t understand this but I want to hear some more of it.’ Or ‘like, no I don’t like that at all,’” says Crane.
Something this good can’t be forgotten, and it certainly must be encouraged to grow and reproduce. But for their lack of wanderlust, you can’t be mad. Austin Crane has been very clear from the beginning that they are bound to their roots and the strong community that has supported them. From their early days, burning their first record onto CD’s in the computer labs around campus and using Poole’s letterpress to create the artwork, to producing a stellar sophomore album and garnering a budding following in the Southeast, they credit their friendships for all of this.
The chance that you won’t ever see Austin Crane play live, whether this year or in two years, is probably higher than Georgia getting a snowstorm in April this year (and that has nothing to do with global warming).
While the idea has always been that making this music was just about four guys having fun and hanging out as friends, occasionally playing a show for some of the locals, it’s impossible to say what happens next for them. “I know when we got [Place At The Table] back, I was on cloud nine right then ‘cause we put out this record that we felt strongly about. And I felt successful right then ‘cause we wrote this whole record from the ground up. In the meantime, why should we just sit around and wait when we’re good at other things? When we’re good and interested in other things,” says Gibson.
Could it be that Austin Crane actually has this all figured out? That in addition to making great music and getting to play together they also have alternate careers on deck, a loving fan base, no restrictions or commitments to a label, and they’re having… fun. They’re enjoying their success, so maybe we should too.
Posted by Beth Yeckley on Jun 01, 2010 @ 11:11 am
