Austin – Many Journalists can’t help but use quilt puns when speaking about QUILT. I don’t blame them; it’s hard to get around the fact that their music is layered, piece-by-piece, like a quilt. Though they hail from Boston, they bring a warm sound, full of reaching harmonies that will elate your soul. It’s no surprise, vocalist/guitarist, Shane Butler, has the same outlook on life. In speaking about spirituality, Butler noted that everything is spiritual if you take the time to look at it. As I watched the video he sent me of the sunset out their van window as they drove through Louisiana, I felt a little bit of that spirit in me and appreciated watching my own sunny Texas skies above. Slated to play Psych Fest this Friday, Butler also spoke about the all-inclusive scene the ever present Reverberation Appreciation Society is creating and he broad scene Butler and his band mates have come to be a part of in Boston.
Ilyse Kaplan: Where are you headed to now?
Shane Butler: We’re in the van headed on our little route that we’re doing but no shows today, we have a day off so we’re staying in Baton Rouge tonight. Tomorrow, Houston, and then the next day Psych Fest.
IK: What are you most looking forward to in playing Psych Fest?
SB: Well I’ve heard a lot of good things about the stage we’re playing. We played Psych Fest a few years ago and it kind of took place at a giant mini mall type thing so it’s a much different experience to what happened a few years before. I’m really looking forward to playing in a different space. I also heard that the river stage, which is the one we’re playing on, is really beautiful.
IK: What other bands are you excited to see?
SB: I’m really psyched because a bunch of our friends are playing the same day and the same stage so it’s us, and Woods, and The Fresh & Onlys. I’m also looking forward to seeing Moon Duo; I’m a huge fan of Moon Duo. Actually, two years ago when we played they played earlier on in the day and we saw them before we played the set. They blow me away; I’m a big fan of Wooden Shjips and them. Then there’s a lot of bands that are playing that we’re actually not gonna get to see which is kind of a bummer because we’re coming in and then leaving, heading off to Dallas the next day. We’ll only get to see a handful of bands the day of.
IK: In Austin, our music scene is very much driven by the folks who put on Psych Fest and the events that surround it, how do you see your band fitting in to the modern day Psych and Folk scene?
SB: Well, I feel very honored and psyched that we get to partake in it on any level. I think its something that is very much forming in the moment. I feel like especially, in the last few years, there’s been a huge Psych influx around the country, if not around the world. A lot of bands seem to be congregating over psych music. I also think that within that, it’s a very broad term. There’s a lot of bands that can cross over in to psych. I think that what Reverberation Appreciation is doing is creating a specific scene within a much larger Psych context. I think that our band, we really love being a part of that scene and others as well. I feel honored to be a part of it—to be a part of the festival and play shows with bands that I really love and bring that to the other communities we’re a part of as well. Us fitting in to it, I think we do a little bit of flow where we come in and go out.
IK: I grew up in Boston, when I was growing up I would have loved to have a band like QUILT but there wasn’t much of a music scene, how would you describe the current state of the Boston music scene?
SB: Well, I moved to Boston when I was 18, for college, so I had that kind of thing. I think it also fluctuates a lot. It’s changing all the time. When I first went to Boston, I was 17 when I first visited; I got introduced to a music scene there that was run out of lofts in China Town. It was a lot of experimental, psychedelic, and folk music so from the get-go, I saw this experimental side of Boston that I was really attracted to. Over the years, there’s been so many different kinds of bands that have come through the city and come out of the city. I think it’s hard to lock down what the scene is, but there is a very strong DIY, house and loft show based scene in Boston that we became part of. That means the bands are very eclectic. There’s not a specific Boston sound, there’s a lot of bands that come together and share with each other. I think our band came out of an eclectic group of people making music with influences from all over the place. The whole psych thing, I don’t know how that came out, but that’s how our music ended up sounding and forming. I think it always changes, and I think that’s the main thing. Also, Boston is heavily influenced by the Providence music scene and the Western Mass music scene and anything in New England. It’s the biggest city in New England so those bands are all going to play in Boston. People from Maine and Vermont, they all come through Boston. I think the larger New England scene is very influential.
IK: It’s easy for bands to play in New York too.
SB: Right, and I’m from New York so I’ve always had a very strong connection to New York and our band started playing in New York pretty early on—after however many months or a year, we started playing New York quite a bit. I feel like it kind of always felt like a second hometown for our band.
IK: I’ve read in interviews and can gather from listening to the band that you draw on spiritual experiences. What are some of the most spiritual experiences that have influenced the music?
SB: You can’t avoid it. I think it’s more of an outlook than a specific experience. We all have had different experiences with different spiritual communities and stuff like that if you want to get direct about it. I also think anything in life is a “spiritual experience” depending on your outlook. We got in a crazy car accident a few months ago, that’s one of the most spiritual things we’ve ever experienced as a group, when you’re flipping and confronting death. When you’re flying down the highway and your van topples over and you get out of the car and realize you’re all still alive, it kind of shakes up what it means to be a human and what it means to be conscious. Every night when you’re playing music and getting in to that presence, it’s a really spiritual experience, or eat a really good burrito. All of us do different spiritual readings but reading a good novel is a good spiritual experience as well.
IK: Is writing music a spiritual experience for you as well?
SB: Oh definitely, it’s a channeling. Sounds that just come out of my body, or from the whole group, that just came out, or when I’m home alone, or anything like that, they’re all kind of songs that just channel really naturally. The ones that seem to kind of flow through you, end up being the ones that stick for a while. That’s definitely how I feel about some of the songs that are closest to me, I don’t know how I wrote them, they just flow right through me. I think that’s a pretty big thing—be it spiritual or not. I always attribute spirituality to paying attention to life, being grateful, having a lot of gratitude for life and the things that come in it. Knowing that you’re human body isn’t it; there might be something bigger to pay attention to. Whether that’s nature, or asphalt, or garbage.
IK: What does a QUILT writing session usually look like?
SB: It looks totally different, when you’re writing different music, it can’t just be one thing. Sometimes one of us will write a song at home and bring it in, and It’s one of those things where we go, ‘oh, that’s a great song we’d love to play that.’ A lot of the time, its us sitting in our practice space, when we do have one, and writing together, playing together for a while and it just comes out. Whenever we sound check, we’ve been on tour for a while so we’re in the position where we haven’t had a practice space for a while. When we get extra time at sound checks, we’ve just been jamming and coming up with new riffs for songs we might write soon that we’re really excited about. Sitting with an acoustic guitar in some weird country. I think as artists or musicians, you kind of have to have creating on the mind. Whatever situation allows you to create can make you create. Staying open to that and not locking yourself down is what it means to write a song.
IK: I can tell from your Instagram, you’ve seen some incredible places while on tour. What have been some of the most magical experiences you’ve had on tour?
SB: There’s so many. We like being active in the tour experience. All of us really love traveling and seeing as much as we can. We try to wake up early in the morning to check things out or go out of our way when we’re driving to see as much as we can. There’s so many places that have been unbelievable. It was our first time in Europe; we woke up one morning in Cologne, Germany. We went to check out this gigantic Cathedral. It’s a famous Cathedral that I think a lot of people who are traveling through Germany check out. For me, I had never seen a building that was that high. It had such intricate design and you could see it from anywhere in the city. It was so big it looked like a cloud in the distance. As you walk closer, it’s constantly changing and shifting and it was gigantic. It grabbed my gut in a way I’ve never experienced. Nowadays you have skyscraper buildings that look like they’re built by machines. This one looks as though it was built by humans with tiny hands and so many tiny little hands went in to building this monumental piece of art. It was unbelievable. The other thing about it is it took 500 years to build this cathedral and humans don’t have the patience to sit like that as much as they did. There’s been buildings that have taken a long time, there’s active artists who are trying to work on art projects that last longer than human life like the Long Now Foundation. It’s a Foundation that Brian Eno and others are involved in. It’s dedicated to retaining art for long periods of time.
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Ilyse Kaplan
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