breathe owl breathe q&a

To keep with this week’s theme of “eMusic Selects: The Director’s Cut”: last Thursday I called up Breathe Owl Breathe while they were working in a studio in Northern Michigan to talk with them a bit about how they started making music, how they met and to ask about some of their more memorable touring experiences. I’d already fallen in love with their EP — it was so marvelously unaffected, so wide-eyed and warming — like nursery rhymes come to life. The chorus of “Playing Dead”: “Love, I got you, didn’t I?” is as sweet and hopeful and unassuming as a grade-school Valentine, and the way the vibraphone and piano comes twinkling down around those words is straight magic.

So imagine my delight when Micah and Andréa turned out to be just as charming and pretense-free in real life. Micah talks slowly, choosing his words carefully, often leaving long spaces between each word. Andréa is the opposite: giddy and excited and wonderfully easy to laugh. Beyond that, both of them just sounded so thrilled to be making music — and to be making music with each other — it was enough to light up a kind of hope and optimism in even the most calcified heart. By the time the interview was over, I wanted nothing more than to hug them both.

A side anecdote that I hope they don’t mind me sharing: I’d called Micah a few weeks prior to the interview to set up a date and time and to talk about some other Selects-related items, and I casually mentioned something about submitting the EP for a review in Pitchfork. Micah & I wrapped up our conversation, but not more than ten minutes later, the phone rang again. It was Micah. “Um, I just had one question that I kinda wanted to get cleared up,” he said, sounding sheepish. “Sure,” I said, “go for it.” “Uh,” he replied, “what’s Pitchfork?”

Here’s the full text of my interview with Micah and Andréa. The “theatrical cut” is here.

MICAH MIDDAUGH

eMusic: Hey, how’s it going up there?

Micah: Alright. We got this big snowstorm last night, so I drove down, taking it really slow, but it’s a lot better now.

eMusic: You must be used to it by now, I’ll bet. So, just to get things started, can you tell me a little bit about where you grew up?

Micah: I live on a dead-end road up in Northern Michigan, there’s a great canoein’ river nearby. It’s a hike to the bus stop. My dad’s a carpenter, my mom’s a nurse. I didn’t learn how to talk until I was four. I kinda felt like everything around me was — I felt like I was taken care of. In those four years, it was a lot of touch and smell and taste — I was just taking it in. I grew up running through the woods to my best friend’s place that was on the other side. My dad plays the concertina and made his own banjo and things, so I definitely have memories of wakin’ up and hearin’ music underneath the floor. Then, I’d just start makin’ up things. In the early days, it was all animals, you know? I’d pick up my dad’s instruments and I’d have these poems about turtles and things, and I’d try to make it all work out.

eMusic: Turtles?

Micah: Yeah, it was this story I’d made up about this turtle who was raised by frogs. So I’d pick up my dad’s guitar and I was really fascinated by this little tape machine that he had, so I’d try to record, “I’m the last turtle in the pond/ I’ve got no dad and I’ve got no mom/ I was raised by the frogs/ I croak at night, I croak at night, I croak with the frogs/ I lay out on the logs…” So who knows — maybe I had imaginary animal friends.

eMusic: So, wait, you taught yourself how to play guitar?

Micah: Well, my dad taught me some chords. I had all these poems — I was really excited about putting it all together. I was like 12 at the time. I’ve never really gotten over the child-play.

eMusic: Yeah, it’s funny that you bring this up, because I feel like you’ve just hit on the two main themes of the EP — these recurring images of animals — “Sabertooth Tiger,” for example — coupled with this kind of childlike approach to the world.

Micah: Yeah. With “Sabertooth Tiger,” that one is just that feeling of being out on the playground and having a sabertooth tiger following you around. [laughs]. I get this picture of this kid out on the playground, and his imaginary friend is Sabertooth Tiger. “Playing Dead” also has that kind of childlike view. It’s kinda like being asleep; not being a part of something else, just having your own space. When I was younger, people would be playing kickball out on the playground, but I’d be laying down over by the monkey bars, seeing if anybody noticed. Maybe they’d kick the ball over to me.

eMusic: But it gets a little sneaky at the end of the first verse, because this little girl comes over to you, and the two of you disappear into the forest together.

Micah: [laughs] I mean, it’s the playground, but it can be wherever you are, whenever you are. If somebody notices and reaches you… Things are moving around real fast, and the girl is kinda like, “OK, come on.” All these songs have different characters, and they bring out different things in me that I’m excited to bring out. Sometimes I don’t really feel like I have control over where the songs are going. I might just get an image in my mind. With one of our new songs, “Baseball Diamond,” I was mowing the lawn and I started thinking this guy who had just mowed a diamond, and he just laid down in the middle of it. Then I start to think about where he might’ve come from.

eMusic: I read somewhere you mentioned Shel Silverstein was a big influence.

Micah: Oh, yeah, definitely. Every night my parents would say, “Open up the book wherever and we’ll read the poems on those pages and then you gotta go to bed.” So I’d do that every night. I was just blown away by how easy they were to enter and what they brought out of people — and that he actually drew those pictures, too. I was like, “Wow, this is what I want to do!” The next year I made a little book of drawings and poems called Choking on Crackers. They were just straight-up poems, man — “My grandma got struck by lightning and she’s never been the same.” I just had a blast. When I was younger, I’d always call my friends up who had video cameras and I’d be like, “hey, we should make a movie today!” So they’d come over and make Apollo 14.

eMusic: What happened in that one?

Micah: Oh, man! We’d put the camera in front of the dryer, so the dryer became the door to the spacecraft. We were small enough that my friend would get inside and he’d explain everything that was inside. We had this little keyboard, so we had all these effects that we’d play. I went to art school, I was studying print making. The day [percussionist] Trevor [Hobbs] and I met, we went to a party that night and [eMusic's] Patrick had a video camera and we made a movie about zombies.

eMusic: At the party?

Micah: Yeah! Everyone at the party played along. We were like, “We’re gonna make a video: Zombies With Good Intentions.

eMusic: Wait, it was called Zombies with Good Intentions?

Micah: [laughs] Yeah, it was a movie of Zombies with Good Intentions.

eMusic: So how did you meet Andréa?

Micah: I was at my house at the end of the dead-end road, and she was on a little tour with a friend. I pretty much stay at the end of this little dead end road, just kinda doing my thing, but then all of a sudden out of the blue I met Andréa. That night we played the card game “Spoons.” You know that game? So we’re playing Spoons and we’re grabbing for spoons and things, and I just said, “Man, we should make an album.”

eMusic: Wow, just like that?

Micah: Well, we’d been sitting around earlier in the day under a tree, playing some songs.

eMusic: Wow, so you guys spent the whole day together the first day that you met?

Micah: Yeah, it was amazing. We were just playing outside and we were like, “Wow, this is sounding really good.” It just was amazing how it came together. I just feel so amazed to be with Andréa and Trevor.

eMusic: So how does the songwriting break down?

Micah: Well, I come up with the framework, and Andréa opens it up. She’s done some instrumental albums and has written some beautiful instrumental pieces.

eMusic: The more I listen to the EP, the more I start to pick up on the folk music influence. Is that something you listen to a lot of?

Micah: I’m totally taken by folk music. Like any music, some of those old folk songwriters, you hear their voice and you relate to that voice. With music, there are so many musicians who are like scholars. You hear them and you’re like, “Wow, they’re not trying to sound like anyone else. This is their voice.” Dave Van Ronk, he’s taken in jazz and blues and folk and is doing his own thing with it. I love him to death. Being a scholar is such an amazing thing, and you can tell he just totally studied. I love Jeff Tweedy and Howe Gelb. You get the feeling that they’re really having fun in their sandbox.

eMusic: I noticed on YouTube that when you do “Playing Dead” live, you manage to convince people to lie down on the floor.

Micah: The first time we played it, we played it in this bar. I was saying, “This song has got a dance move: all you do is lie down.” Everyone in the bar was kinda talking, not really paying much attention. But as we played it, there were people lying down on this barroom floor that was just not clean at all. We’ve had amazing moments on tour. We opened for a bunch of punk bands — it was really great. They had this whole new intensity of listening. When I brought the banjo out, they started jumping up and down.

eMusic: Thanks so much for talking with me, Micah. I hope you guys get to take a break from recording tonight and enjoy the snow a little bit.

Micah: Definitely. I just picked up this old tobaggon. It’s this old rickety toboggan I found at a yard sale. I had a toboggan when I was younger that we just used for hauling wood. This one is in really good shape compared to that. It’s got a long rope, and it could probably fit about five friends. I love it. It just looks like it can go forever.

ANDRÉA MOREANO-BEALS

Andréa:I was born in the capital city of Colombia, Bogota. I lived there until I was about 7 years old and then I moved to the United States with my mom. My dad is Colombian and he came up to the University of Michigan to get his Masters in Engineering and they met, got married and moved back down to South America, had three kids and then got divorced, and I moved to the US with my mom and my two little brothers.

eMusic: What are some of your memories of Colombia?

Andréa: You know, it almost feels like it was a different life. It was a different language, different culture, it was right on the equator and my birthday is in January, so moving to Michigan and having this crazy white cold stuff on my birthday, I was like, “What?! I can’t go swimming on my birthday?! What is wrong with this place?” The memories I have are almost like memories you could have of movies. It’s mostly just images and moods. My grandparents had a chunk of land out in the country, and I remember sitting on my dad’s shoulders and picking bananas, climbing into guava trees and fig trees and hanging out there all day. I loved it!

eMusic: Was moving to America a huge adjustment?

Andréa: Actually, aside from the weather it was remarkably smooth. I think as a kid you just kinda go with the flow of what’s around you. I was just like, “OK, this is what we’re doing now!” I didn’t have a lot of ideas about what it was going to be like, but my mom had spoken English to us while we were little kids, so coming here it wasn’t like the language totally shocked us. I’m told that at first I had an accent.

eMusic: How did you first start making music? What was the first instrument you learned to play?

Andréa: I remember my mom wanted me to play piano. I remember having a piano teacher in Colombia — Micah actually wrote a song about this — this piano teacher is a really old woman, really bony, really scary hands. She freaked me out! I was five years old and not into it at all. I remember having two lessons with this woman, and then whenever my mom would tell me that she was coming over, I would hide. I got really good at hiding so that they couldn’t find me, and pretty soon my mom got the idea. She didn’t want to keep paying the piano teacher to come over and play hide and seek. Then, at my school, they make all the students pick an instrument. So I decided that I wanted to play flute in 5th grade. So they got me a flute teacher and I went to my first lesson, and I was trying to hard to get any noise out of that thing that I hyperventilated and passed out. That pretty much freaked me out, and I was like “this is not my instrument.” I was the only kid in 5th grade who went more than half the year without picking an instrument. The orchestra teacher happened to be a cellist, so she said, “why don’t you play cello?” And that just clicked — it was really fun and felt natural and I really liked it.

eMusic: I’m amazed you kept going. From scary piano teachers to hyperventilating, I think most people would have given up.

Andréa: Totally! So I was totally classically trained. I learned really standard pieces in the classical cello repertoire. I went pretty far with that, really enjoyed it. So when I got to senior year in high school, everybody was expecting me to audition to lots of different music schools — like to Julliard — and I just wasn’t really into it. I applied to some and got great scholarships, but I made this big decision like, “No, I don’t want to be a classical cellist and just play in symphonies my whole life. I don’t want to do just that with my life.” I really felt like, for the first time in my life, I was making a Big Decision. I was turning away from music. And then two weeks later I met Micah.

eMusic: Yeah, tell me a little bit about that story.

Andréa: I was making music with someone who is a mutual friend of me & Micah. It was the first time I’d ever played music with someone that wasn’t classical music. And it was fun, but it was frustrating. But then I met Micah, and he showed us some songs that he’d written, and when I went to play along, it was crazy how natural it was. It was like magic. He would be playing a song I’d never heard before, and I’d just know when to change to the next chord. There was just something about it that felt really mysterious — I just couldn’t not explore it more.

I basically feel like I’ve had a college education through this music I’ve made with Micah. He’s just blown my mind with all this crazy music that he showed me. Especially in the beginning — it was rough; like, I didn’t know if I was going to make it through. I’d be thinking, “Why is he so into this?” And then I’d realize he’s just an artist who’s into the cutting edge of what is being done right now. I’m starting to find that intrigue in myself, too.

eMusic: So, wait, what were the logistics of your actual first meeting with Micah?

Andréa: Our mutual friend was this homeschooled girl I’d met in Ann Arbor. She was the first one I was like, “I want to try to play music with this person, and it’s not going to be classical.” She was like, “Let’s do a tour!” We called it a tour, but it was like two shows. She was like, “I have the phone number of this really cool songwriter up in Northern Michigan. Why don’t I give him a call and see if he wants to share some of his songs, and we can share with him some of ours.” So we followed the directions wayyy out to the boonies, and we were driving along this dead end road, hoping we were going in the right direction, and we come upon this amazing piece of land. Both his mom and dad are working in this garden, growing all this beautiful food. And then, there he is, playing his guitar. I felt like I was in a dream.

So she would play a song and I’d play along with her, and then he would play a song and I’d listen. And eventually I started wanting to play along with his songs. His music just moved me so much, and it brought out cello parts that I’d never think to write. It was so envigorating.

eMusic: Micah mentioned you guys had the good fortune of opening up for a punk band…?

Andréa: Oh man. That was so crazy — we didn’t even know that it was a punk show before we arrived. A friend of ours booked that whole tour. She was really confident like: “Oh, yeah, I can book you on a tour.” It ended up being a lot harder than she thought it would, and she ended up having to take whatever came her way. I don’t know what her understanding of how that show was going to be, but we certainly didn’t know it was going to be five punk bands and us. Micah and I are both visual artists and we really love playing in art galleries, and the venue was called The Art Space. So we were like, “Sweet, it’ll probably be some quirky little art gallery!” It turned out to be the teenage hangout, and all these punk bands are playing.

We got there and I was like, “Micah, I want to leave! I don’t want to play, I just want to go away!” But Micah was like, “No, we’re playing! And: we’re playing acoustic.” And I was like, “Oh my God, are you insane? These people are going to think we’re totally stupid! They’re used to music that’s super loud.” I mean, these kids were going insane. They were jumping up and down and yelling and mosh pitting, and it was just crazy.

So we set up, and they were definitely intrigued. We started playing this song about a cocaine dealer, and the whole chorus is just “cocaine, cocaine, cocaine” over and over. So the first time we hit the chorus, they were really into it and think it’s funny, and that we’re singing it because we’re into cocaine. But then, as the story unfolds and Micah is singing from the perspective of this man who’s a father and got into drug dealing and how that scene ended up being really bad, it really spoke to them. And then they started getting into it from a totally different angle. They were just really intrigued. We sold so much merch! The bought a ton of CDs — it was pretty wild!