A TROUBADOUR IN A HEIGHTENED STATE.Byline: Sandra Barrera Staff Writer Sufjan Stevens Sufjan Stevens (IPA pronunciation: /'suːfjɑ:n/) (born July 1, 1975) is an American singer-songwriter and musician from Petosky, Michigan. Sufjan's music is lyrically focused and instrumentally rich. likes a good challenge. Like, when producers for NPR's ``All Things Considered'' asked the 30-year-old eclectic folk singer to write a song about the ivory-bill woodpecker woodpecker, common name for members of the Picidae, a large family of climbing birds found in most parts of the world. Woodpeckers typically have sharp, chisellike bills for pecking holes in tree trunks, and long, barbed, extensible tongues with which they impale - the bird thought to be extinct for the last 50 years until it was recently spotted in an Arkansas swamp - he jumped at the chance, handing over ``The Lord God Bird Lord God Bird is a term used to describe two similar-looking woodpeckers:
The folk epic took him all of a month to research, ponder and write. ``Writing the song was a nice release for me because I like working within guidelines, obviously,'' says Stevens, who's best-known for loftier goals like setting out to write an album about every state in the union. So far, he's completed two. His latest is ``Illinoise,'' which Stevens is supporting with a string of club dates, including the El Rey El Rey, which means "The King" in the Spanish language, may refer to:
``The 50 states thing was a proposition, a marketing ploy, but it had a lot to do with the fact that I had spent two or three years writing, working and not really doing any kind of music,'' Stevens says. ``When I came back to the guitar, a lot of the songs I was writing were based on my memories from Michigan.'' Stevens comes from Michigan, where he was coerced into playing oboe oboe (ō`bō, ō`boi) [Ital., from Fr. hautbois] or hautboy (ō`boi, hō`–), woodwind instrument of conical bore, its mouthpiece having a double reed. (instead of trumpet) for the junior-high marching band Noun 1. marching band - a band that marches (as in a parade) and plays music at the same time band - instrumentalists not including string players and went on to study literature at a small liberal-arts college. ``Studying music seemed too restrictive, and it seemed it would be impossible for me to be successful as an oboist because I wasn't good enough,'' he says. ``But in my second year of college, a friend loaned me a guitar - and that was the end of the oboe.'' Stevens hooked up with a number of short-lived bands with names like Fever Twig, Good Country People and Con Los Dudes. ``That was kind of like our drunk, fraternity college band,'' he says of Con Los Dudes. ``Good Country People was like a quiet poetry-writing, Bible-reading band; and then Fever Twig was pan-ethnic, Irish, folk rock. So, yeah, I was promiscuous with style.'' In 2000, Stevens issued his solo debut, ``A Sun Came.'' The album was like a summary of his college bands, mixing trip-hop and mellow electric guitars with ethnic flutes. He followed it a year later with the all-instrumental ``Enjoy Your Rabbit,'' which marked his first concept album because it was based on the Chinese zodiac. By the time of its release, Stevens was living in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of and putting the finishing touches on 2003's ``Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State'' - what would be the first of his 50-states albums. Among the collection of his Michigan-centric songs was ``Flint (For the Unemployed and Underpaid),'' an homage to one of the centers of the automotive industry expressed through such heartbreaking lyrics as ``lost my job/and lost my room.'' If ``Michigan'' was all memory, ``Illinoise'' was all research. The New York Times calls it ``psychohistory psy·cho·his·to·ry n. pl. psy·cho·his·to·ries A psychological or psychoanalytic interpretation or study of historical events or persons: the psychohistory of the Nazi era. via Americana in songs that metamorphose from wistful to grand, from historical character study to private reminiscence rem·i·nis·cence n. 1. The act or process of recollecting past experiences or events. 2. An experience or event recollected: "Her mind seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety" , from banjo banjo, stringed musical instrument, with a body resembling a tambourine. The banjo consists of a hoop over which a skin membrane is stretched; it has a long, often fretted neck and four to nine strings, which are plucked with a pick or the fingers. to orchestra, from minimalism minimalism, schools of contemporary art and music, with their origins in the 1960s, that have emphasized simplicity and objectivity. Minimalism in the Visual Arts to fuzz-toned rock.'' The album about Illinois, one of a few states that inspired him at the time, was built around free association. He says one topic would lead him to a historical figure and then to an event. ``I found I was creating this sort of litany of related songs that were rendered through one over-arching vision,'' he says. As it turns out, ``Illinoise'' is his most ambitious set to date, featuring 22 songs like the Superman-inspired ``Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts'' to the story of serial murder ``John Wayne Gacy John Wayne Gacy (b. March 17 1942, Chicago, Illinois - d. May 10 1994, Crest Hill, Illinois), also known as The Killer Clown, was an American serial killer. He was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men, 29 of whom he buried in a , Jr.'' ``I wrote about whatever interested me,'' he says. ``I wasn't interested in the White Sox, so I didn't write a song about them. I wasn't interested in Al Capone, so I didn't write a song about him. It was more about what inspired me in my reading, and I did a lot of research.'' ``Illinoise'' was released July 5 but then pulled off shelves to avoid copyright infringement because the album cover features the Superman image. Asthmatic Kitty, Stevens' record label, plans to reprint the same cover without Superman and reissue it some time in August. As for ``The Lord God Bird'' song, he says it's only available at npr.org. For now. ``Maybe I'll write songs about Arkansas and put it on that record,'' he says. Sandra Barrera, (818) 713-3728 sandra.barrera(at)dailynews.com SUFJAN STEVENS Where: El Rey Theatre, 5515 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles. When: 8:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets: $14. Call (213) 480-3232 or www.ticketmaster.com. |
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