A Conversation with The Avett Brothers’ Seth Avett – HuffPost 10.2.12
Mike Ragogna: Seth Avett, we’ve got some Legendary Giveback to talk about, but first, howdy!
Seth Avett: Hey hey hey Mike, how are you doing?
MR: Doing okay, hope you’re doing well, too.
SA: I’m doing great.
MR: Will you go into the Cheerwine arrangement with The Avett Brothers and this Legendary Giveback?
SA: Yeah. We’re sort of joining forces for a concert in Charlottesville, Virginia. The proceeds from the ticket sales are going to three different places: One is the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital, another is Operation Homefront, which helps out soldiers’ families, and also the Big Brother/Big Sister mentors for children. So the ticket sales are going towards that and then also, there’s an opportunity online to view the concert by volunteering your time in your community for whatever falls in your own choice.
MR: For those who can’t attend there will be live streaming, how will they be able to access the concert?
SA: I think there’s a link through our website as well as through the Cheerwine website. It shouldn’t be difficult to find between the two of them. There’s a really obvious little spot where you can just fill out a little form and it’s just on the honor system but you donate your time. You just say, “Hey, I’m going to donate my time to this community charity and I’m going to donate this many hours to it and we’ll just take your word for it, and if you do that, then you’ll get a code and you can watch the concert online.
MR: Can you identify with some of the causes that this is going to be benefitting, for instance, Big Brothers/Big Sisters?
SA: Yeah, it’s the leading mentoring program in the country. It gives the opportunity for young folks that may not have a really obvious choice for a role model in their lives someone who can pick up some of the slack if it’s a single-parent situation or they don’t always have a parent or an older sibling to be around or be a good influence on them. That program is set in place for folks to volunteer and step up and to be an active role model in a young person’s life.
MR: There’s Operation Homefront, which is devoted to helping military service members and their families.
SA: Yeah, that’s correct. A lot of those families are dealing with not seeing a parent or a spouse for months on end or more, and that can cause quite a bit of strain mentally and financially. That organization is set up to help those families out and to help get through some of those tougher spots.
MR: When you were growing up, did you drink Cheerwine?
SA: Oh yes. quite a bit, and I still do when I get a chance. It’s always been a regional favorite. I even have a really cool old school gas station out in the country that one of my best friends from high school and I like to get together sometimes and ride out and get a Cheerwine in a glass bottle. I pretty much never drink it in any other form–always out of the glass bottle. But yeah, I certainly grew up drinking Cheerwine and still enjoy it occasionally.
MR: How did you guys hook up with Cheerwine regarding this event and the charities?
SA: You know, I’m not sure of the exact specifics, but I know the folks at Cheerwine contacted us at some point. My brother Scott did a little bit of voiceover work for them and their campaign. That whole campaign, they did these different stories about Cheerwine, and they got my brother to do a voiceover telling the story about a World War II connection to Cheerwine and how there were four World War Two soldiers that drank Cheerwine during a battle. I guess that was kind of the initial connection between us and Cheerwine, and then, as they started thinking more and more about doing this Legendary Giveback concert, I guess we made sense as a band that could contribute and work with.
MR: Can we do a little history lesson on the Avett Brothers?
SA: Well just the quick Avett 101 would be that we’re in our eleventh year. We started as a band in 2001 and took our first tour in 2002. We’ve been probably the very definition of grassroots, word-of-mouth, do-it-yourself kind of mentality. It started with just me and Scott, then me and Scott and Bob our bass player, and us three or us four in a pickup truck with a camper on the back staying in campgrounds because they were only twelve dollars and hotels were more than that. We started out very rough and tumble and very connected to the road. I still stay very connected to the road but we started off like that and just built our organization on the road and built our relationship with our fans on the road and did that for eight years, pretty much basically on our own, building everything one-by-one as far as our team. We signed with a major label eight years in. In 2009, we made a record with Rick Rubin, saw an increase in popularity and major stuff for us as far as having our name out there and being recognized and all that. Since then, we’ve made another record with Rick and just released it. It’s our sixth full-length studio record. Depending on who you talk to, there are eleven or twelve records including live records and EPs. There’s a lot of stories in between but that’s basically our past.
MR: Your Grammy performance with of “Maggie’s Farm” was one of the show’s great moments. How did it hit you?
SA: It was just as surreal as you might expect. Getting the opportunity, really, to just get together with Dylan to talk over parts of a song is a story for the grandkids and a story for the ages. That’s something we’ll always really treasure. In that way, the rehearsals were more impactful than the actual performance. The performance happened so quickly. We were in Los Angeles for like six days preparing for it and it all happened in about six minutes, so that was a snap of the fingers. But being able to play “Maggie’s Farm” with Dylan was a highlight to say the least.
MR: By the way, when you look at The Carpenter album and the album you did before that with Rick Rubin, that’s a major leap for the band, at least as far as psychologically, even if musically, it’s sort of continuing the thread. Do you think that was due to Rick Rubin’s involvement?
SA: Sure, sure, yeah. Mike, it should be mentioned again, we did put eight years in leading up to that, so by the time we got to a place where we were comfortable taking that step, we were ready for it. We stepped into the business aspect of it with a lot of experience of our own in business, and we stepped into it artistically with a lot of experience of our own artistically. So it wasn’t a situation where we were twenty-year-old kids and we had stars in our eyes about signing and getting big. That kind of wasn’t really part of our mentality anymore. By then, we were almost a decade into our own journey. It worked out great and if it didn’t, we felt like that would be okay too. Our relationship with Rick has a lot of mutual respect, a lot of props. Not to downplay it, there certainly was an adjustment period with stepping up to working with a world-renowned producer and knowing that this way, it would be heard by more folk. Yeah, it was a great step for us, but one that we felt comfortable making and again, even if it didn’t go like we wanted it to, we felt like it was going to be a learning experience. And it was. We took a lot from that experience. I’m glad that what you hear in it is focused. I feel the same way, and I feel like The Carpenter is kind of a good example of a unified approach that we were sort of introduced to with the “I” and “Love” and “You” experience.
MR: What advice do you have for new artists?
SA: Mike, advice I would have for a new artist would be to keep the career aspect in its place. Don’t ignore it, because if you want to make a living playing music, you have to be legitimate. You have to pay taxes and you have to figure out how to write things off and you have to learn how to campaign and how to sell yourself in certain regards. But I would say keep that to a minimum, keep it in its place, and when it comes to making art, keep that pure and keep that in a place that’s unaffected by the career aspect of it. I’d also say don’t look to someone else to make your career for you. Go out there and connect with people. Play in coffee shops, play in bars, play in restaurants. Don’t try to jump up the staircase in one jump. Just take one step at a time and, for God’s sake, enjoy it.
MR: [laughs] Beautiful! “For God’s sake, enjoy it!” That’s the best line. All right, we’ve got to get one last thing in on The Carpenter album because, normally, I interview people about their projects. How’s it been with this record? It came out in September, right?
SA: Yeah, it just came out about two weeks ago.
MR: How’s it been going so far?
SA: All I hear is positives. That’s either because it is positive or because people don’t want to hurt my feelings. I don’t know. As far as public response and charts and stuff, all that is in higher positions than we’ve ever been. We’re seeing folks singing the words with us, and that’s about as far as I’ll take it. I try really hard to stay away from the big internet discussions because I’ll get on there and I will find something really rotten that was said and it’ll poison me. I try to stay away from all that. But I hear good things and I hope folks are enjoying it. I know a lot of copies are going out to folks, so all I can say is I hope it’s good.
MR: Seth, I appreciate your time, I love your music, and I love the fact that the band’s career is really taking off now.
SA: Thanks so much, and we’ll see you out there soon, brother.
Transcribed by Galen Hawthorne