Sparrow House and Peter and the Wolf Take Flight

Written by Emily Strong

On a night in November, I paid a special visit to Beerland, a small but well-known and much-loved local dive here in Austin. As I stepped into the cave-like interior, I instantly recognized half of the faces through the dimness. This was the Tonewheel Collective's last hurrah, and the crowd was a veritable Who's Who of local musicians coming to pay homage.

The Tonewheel Collective is a group of musicians who play to, for, and with each other, helping and encouraging each other to create, record, and perform music. This collaboration - which includes members of SOUND Team, Voxtrot, Peter and the Wolf, and Weird Weeds, among others - nurtured and fostered these many young talents in their beginnings and helped them to grow into themselves, as both individual performers and cohesive units. Now that these bands have garnered national and even international attention, they have outgrown the safety and confines of the Tonewheel cocoon, and are branching out, taking their careers to the next level. It is apt, then, that the last song of the last Tonewheel performance was a cover of Bob Dylan's ""I Shall Be Released.""

After the show, I sat down with two of Tonewheel's greatest talents, Peter and the Wolf mastermind Red Hunter - whose latest album, Lightness, was released back in October - and Jared Van Fleet of Voxtrot, who has recently released his gorgeous debut solo EP, Falls, under the moniker Sparrow House. Since both have a bit of a reputation for media coyness, and since they are also good friends, I asked them to interview each other and discuss their past with Tonewheel and their future plans with their respective projects.

[JVF]: So, state your name and your occupation.

[RH]: Ok. My name is Brian Redding Hunter, and my occupation is musician. Your turn.      Jared Van Fleet

[JVF]: That was revealing! Wow! I don't even know where to go now! My name is Jared Chase Van Fleet, and my occupation is tourist.
(both laugh)

[RH]: I'm a window painter. I want to change mine.

[JVF]: You can't change it. There's no going back on your occupation.

[RH]: But you get to be a tourist!

[JVF]: I'm sorry. You are what you are . . . But you're more of a tourist than I am recently! I'm glad you're back home! What'd you do on this last tour?

[RH]: I traveled way too many miles. Ten thousand miles. Which is too many miles. I didn't need to go all the way to Tucson to get started. I could've started here. I did a whole extra part of the country. What about you?

[JVF]: I just got back from a tour with Voxtrot . . . We were supposed to go record right now, but we're going to go record in December instead.

[RH]: Oh, that was when you were planning to go to London?

[JVF]: Yeah, well, we don't have a record out, so we were just going to play major cities, because no one else would really want to go see us in, like, Lawrence, Kansas that hasn't already seen us . . .

[RH]: Alright, let's get down to the meat and potatoes here. Today was the last day of Tonewheel, but it was the first day of you releasing your EP.

[JVF]: Sort of

SOUNDCHECK: What do you mean it's the last of Tonewheel? Forever, or for the year, or what?

[JVF]: Sort of ever.

[RH]: But we say that all the time.

SOUNDCHECK: Are you guys like Cher? You have a million farewell tours?

[JVF]: It's sort of like an annual going out of business sale.

[RH]: It's just an excuse to cry a lot.

[JVF]: If we do come back . . . if we do it again, it'll be drastically different. We've been doing it every couple of weeks. But if we do it again, like next year, it will only be every few months. We talked about doing that. But, you know, Ramesh [Srivastava, of Voxtrot] just sang the final song here.

[RH]: It's a big deal.

[JVF]: “I Shall Be Released.” It's like the last waltz.

[RH]: (sarcastically) It's a big scene that was here tonight.

[JVF]: I think the scene was here. Um, but we did have a CD release party today at Big Orange. Bill Baird [of SOUND Team] put out a couple of CDs. And I did this CD. I'm actually getting it remastered. It's still pretty bedroom-sounding, because I recorded it mostly in a bedroom, and in a closet at Big Orange. That's where they stick me.

[RH]: You're closeted?

[JVF]: Yeah, I'm a plebeian in the Big Orange social caste.

[RH]: So, you recorded in the closet today.
(both laugh)

[JVF]: Yeah, and I produced it in there too. But these are really old songs. You know, you've been telling me to release them since I met you a year and a half ago, and I kept telling you to shut up. I've been writing other songs, but I decided to go ahead and release these old songs anyway. And I am still writing new songs. In fact, I don't even really play these old songs live very much anymore.

[RH]: I like “Foxes.”

[JVF]: Thank you.

[RH]: “Foxes” is one of my favorite songs on your new EP.

[JVF]: I like “Grey Overcoat.”

[RH]: Well, ok.

[JVF]: That's one of your songs on your new album [Lightness], your critically-acclaimed—

[RH]: Tell me about “Foxes” and I'll tell you about “Grey Overcoat.” That seems like a fair trade. I tried to do that with [a friend] one time and he was very cryptic. Try to be less cryptic than [he was]. OK?

[JVF]: Ok, about “Foxes”: It goes G minor to F, there's a B flat, then it hangs on to 5/4, scale degree 5—

[RH]: Ok, but “Foxes” – what's it about? What makes a guy decide to say, “We are foxes”?

[JVF]: Oh. Well, alright. See, you try to take past experiences and you try to use them, to learn from them, but invariably, as you're doing with current relationships, you're romanticizing your mistakes just as much as you're romanticizing the good times. You make your mistakes more noble than they were, or to have more of a point than they did. Essentially, you fuck up, and it fucks up other people, and there's no nobility in it, and there was no point to it; it's just what happens. Most of this EP is about that. But [“Foxes”] is specifically about one relationship I was in, about the end of it, and also it's about the period that came after that, which was kind of a hibernation. I don't think foxes hibernate, but they run from dogs.

[RH]: They don't hibernate?

[JVF]: I don't think they hibernate.

[RH]: But they have dens.

[JVF]: They have dens, yeah. Maybe the song is actually a sarcastic attempt to romanticize a specific moment after I tried to get back together with a girlfriend that I thought was going to be “it,” and about running away from the obvious. That's mostly it. Now, “Grey Overcoat”: Who is this Mary you're talking about?

[RH]: Yeah, that's an actual thing that happened. We actually were in this cathedral, this girl and I, when I met her. Well, not when I met her, but the first time we hung out. It's was this famous cathedral in France, and we were sitting under the statue of the Virgin Mary. It was just a big, white statue.

[JVF]: I love the way you end that song.

[RH]: Yeah, thanks. But I probably need to leave soon.

[JVF]: No, hold on. I know you have to leave, but I want to hear more about this song. So, did you just go home that night and write the music?

[RH]: No, actually, that happened years ago.

[JVF]: Do you still talk to her?

[RH]: No. She wrote me a letter, but I haven't responded yet.

[JVF]: Is she going to hear the song?

[RH]: No. She wouldn't get it anyway. She doesn't speak English.
(both laugh)

[JVF]: I can't help but think that “Safe Travels” — I think everyone in our group thinks that you wrote it about them, even though you probably wrote it about your brother or something.

[RH]: Ah, yeah. Hey, that's cool.

[JVF]: Because everybody's been traveling this year.

[RH]: Yeah, I know, everybody has been. And that has been part of [“Safe Travels”].

[JVF]: It's good that everybody's getting their music out there, but it's a weird situation because I feel like my best friends are all based here, and now, I don't know —

SOUNDCHECK: Everyone's being scattered to the wind?

[JVF]: Yeah, it's a great diaspora. But I mean, everybody's very centralized at the same time. I don't think anybody has any qualms about saying that this is —

[RH]: Their hometown? Home turf?

[JVF]: Yeah. It's just an interesting period. When this whole Tonewheel thing started, not everybody was out touring. But people are finally putting out CDs. And maybe, someday, people reading this magazine will actually know who we are. Probably not upon the release of this issue! (laughs) . . . (to Red) Well, it's good to know about you now.

[RH]: Yeah, you better stick around.

[JVF]: You told me that a long time ago. Oh, but . . . (laughs) Oh, I gotta bring this up! When Red was on the island, he said he was leaving and never coming back!

[RH]: Yeah, I did say that.

[JVF]: You said that like fourteen times.

[RH]: Yeah, I say that about every week. Every Sunday.

[JVF]: I know. I like that, though. You're leaving tomorrow, though, aren't you? You're going to write another record?

[RH]: Yeah.

[JVF]: Well, I look forward to hearing it.

SOUNDCHECK: So do I.