Chords for Sufjan Stevens - KCRW Interview

Studio with friends this morning.
It's a few and Stevens playing some songs from the new album
It's called, Illinois first time.
We've actually had a chance to meet so again welcome.
Thanks for coming in and doing our program
Thanks for having us
Let's maybe get a little bit of background info before we talk about this album and talk about
You and where you're from you from Michigan originally, right?
And you did an album called Michigan which we'll talk to in about in a moment
But what where did you grow up?
Well, I was born in Detroit and I lived there till I was about nine and then we moved up north
And I spent most of my life in northern Michigan in the countryside
Describe that to us because for people who have never been there
It's it's quite a unique place and and perhaps not what you would expect at Michigan, right?
Well, Michigan, you know in the country is the kind of the land of rivers and lakes, you know
it's surrounded by the Great Lakes and you you just walk a few miles and you're probably gonna run into some sort of
River or lake or pond or stream or something?
So we did a lot of fishing and hiking when I was a kid
Did you play any music as a kid a little bit?
Yeah, I learned the recorder at the Waldorf school and first grade and then in like elementary school
I was kind of coaxed into playing the oboe.
So I joined the band the school [Eb] band and played the oboe
Now what's what sort of music would you play on the oboe in the school band?
Oh, man, we did like these renditions of
Like wham covers and like really bad bad like John Phillips Susan marches
But yeah, I remember doing some like Louie Louie as well
Interesting stuff now, where did you end up going to took to college because I think
Based on our conversation before we went on the air things sort of started to shift for you a little bit once you went to
College. Yeah well
I went I went and studied writing and eventually went to the graduate school at the new school for social research
In New York City, and that's when I kind of got interested in writing and fiction writing
Now is that something that you wanted to do originally did you did you see yourself as a published writer?
Well, that was kind of my goal when I moved to New York
I wanted to publish a book
So I took all these classes and I even taught a few after I graduated and worked on a manuscript
But never got anywhere and eventually music became have a the main kind of element in my life
But it was it was more of a sort of sideways
Move for you, wasn't it?
Really?
I guess so.
Yeah
I mean I thought I would be at this point I would be
Published and I would be teaching at a university and I would be kind of an old man an old professor somewhere
At a university in the Midwest could still happen.
Yeah
You're still a young guy.
I guess so.
Yeah, I just have to get a pipe in a beer a library
It's all about the library.
I think yeah
So obviously sort of then shifting and moving
Across to music, but you've taken this literary approach to to your music, haven't you?
I guess I sort of had I guess a lot of the
Stuff that I learned in workshops and setting literature's has informed my writing and I do read a lot when I'm writing songs
So for the for a lot of times I'm using I'm making allusions to other books and other stories anyway
Now you've done a number of albums over the years.
I think it's almost won a year at this point, right?
I guess so.
Yeah, when did you decide that you wanted to do the States?
Michigan I guess was the first one you did an album about your home state in
2003 tell us first of all about that one and how that decision came about
Well, I guess what I had moved to New York as I said, and I was not thinking at all
about music
but when I started writing again, I was thinking back to my childhood and the songs just naturally became kind of a an assemblage of
stories and songs that were recollections from memory from places that I had grown up in and
And I thought well wouldn't this be an interesting
Endeavor, you know in research and surveying kind of the whole landscape and seeing how
You know each each state in each town each County, you know can tell its own story
That's quite an undertaking though to decide that and you're you're you're on to the second one with Illinois
Why obviously a home state we got that one out of the way why Illinois?
It's next door.
I guess I guess yeah, because they're neighbors.
Yeah, it's in a different time zone, but
It's still the Midwest.
I guess we sort of were envious of Illinois growing up because
Illinois had Chicago, which was like a healthy vibrant city and
Michigan had Detroit which is kind of a failed industrial city
So maybe that's why I chose Illinois next because I was kind of had some awe and wonder
For Chicago, and I was I was interested in maybe
You know using that for songs.
What were you reading at the at the time that you were working on this album?
I read some books on frontier life and immigration in Illinois
I read Saul Bellow and I read the poems of Carl Sandburg
So how would you describe this album?
I mean as you as I look at the sleeve notes this album and the titles of the songs again.
It's a very literary
rendition of the of the songs
When you finished it and you look at it now and you say okay this this all ties into Illinois
But how would you describe it?
Well?
I think this it's a big celebration
there's a lot of pageantry and a lot of flourishes and it seems like a
Celebration of civilization and of man and what it means to be American and these things
But it's you know, it's also a deeper survey into like what it means to be human being, you know
There's a lot of like there's a lot of trauma on the record, too
There's a lot of you know, terror and horror and things like that.
And I guess it's just kind of a
Geographical tone poem, you know put to music
What's next?
What state I don't know yet I'm working on a few at the same time on Oregon, Rhode Island and
New Jersey the musical _ _
New Jersey is gonna be all about the exits on the turnpike
There's a lot of them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
Listen, we'll throw it back to you for our last set
I know you're gonna play some more songs from
From the new album and something from from the last one as well, but we'll throw it back to you.
We'll come back
We'll give away some tickets to the show that you're doing up in LA at this weekend
There's also a show at the belly up in San Diego tomorrow night, which kicks off this tour
We'll come back and we'll wrap up our conversation and set with suffean Stevens after the next couple of songs here on morning becomes eclectic _
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