Everyone is afraid of something. Whether it’s rational or ridiculous, the trigger that shoots paralyzing terror into our guts can be as little as a mouse in the apartment at night or as big as nuclear fallout. Fears can be justified by experience - I always get a cold shiver on the street in Fishtown where I was once mugged - and they can come from nowhere more tangible than our own imaginations like the monster in a child’s closet. Almost anyone who has a career fears failure and would think that the opposite would be a fear of the irrational variety, but for musicians entering into the industry, hoping to make it is like opening up that childhood closet and asking the monster to help release their debut album; success could be something to fear.
Illinois’ quiet, friendly lead singer, Chris Archibald, is afraid of heights. He confesses his vertigo as we’re leaning over the balcony at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas trying to soak in the blazing afternoon sunlight and escape the cell phone orgy that is the Sony industry party happening in the lobby behind us.
The street below us is crowded with mohawked musicians and their suit jacket and jeans wearing managers, all rushing to get to the next party and meet the next slew of label execs and booking agents. They look terrified, absolutely panicked that they won’t ink that huge deal and their slog to the festival will have been for nothing. Archibald, along with the other three members of Illinois, besides being slightly disturbed by our third-story perch, seems completely serene. Although Illinois drove the 2,000 miles to South by Southwest for the same reason that all those scurriers on the street made the journey, the Bucks County musicians are less than ruffled about all the wheeling and dealing that’s going down on their behalf.
The laid-back vibe, despite an uncertain future, within Illinois is vastly contrasted to the buzz that surrounds them. If you believed the rumors, then you’d think the four-piece had already put pen to paper with a major label in a deal that would make them millionaires. In reality, as of March, although interest in their unique brand of hillbilly Indie rock was extremely high and they’d taken meetings with several people in expensive suits, no commitments had been made. Archibald and his telephone microphone were still free agents.
The boys of Illinois, unlike many of their Indie colleagues, aren’t intimidated by every single trapping of a major label recording deal. When I ask them if they are apprehensive about the idea of working with a producer, bassist Martin Hoeger shakes his head ardently. “A producer could be cool. Just to make it sound more professional,” he says. “My music speaks for itself,” adds Chris, “I’m not nervous.”
They are, however, wary of the money. Big offers from big companies are expected to be paid back by the artist when the albums start to sell, and that could eat up any profit the musicians would have made, many times tragically putting them back at zero. For formerly starving-artist-type band members a million dollar paycheck/loan would be a thrilling curse. When we run into a friend of Illinois’ from another band, Chris congratulates him on recently signing a deal with Capitol. Martin turns to us to retort, “I just booked a ticket on the Titanic! Congratulations.”
As the afternoon wears on and the free beer continues to flow, the balcony starts to fill up with even more fast-talking lawyers grappling for business connections and dragging bewildered looking guitarists around like rag dolls. Illinois friendly but taciturn drummer, J.P. joins Martin and Chris in wicker rocking chairs with a few more bottles of Lone Star (The National Beer of Texas according to the label). As soon as he sits, he breaks into his signature full-face grin and points to a chair in the middle of the room where Dru Lee is asleep with his feet up. “Sometimes I look over onstage and I go, ‘Where’s Dru?’” laughs Archibald, “’Oh, he’s asleep.’”
The next morning for Illinois could be a career-maker. They’re playing their only set at the festival, a Filter Magazine party. When I arrive in the ivy-lined courtyard where instead of the barbeque grills and hot, dingy bar I’m met with wraught-iron umbrella covered cafe tables, mimosas in plastic flutes, and aluminum foil pans filled with catered food. Just like I was at the Sony party the day before, I’m almost instantly uncomfortable floating through the crowd of West Coast record execs in the giant sunglasses. I remember J.P. saying he’s afraid of water, mostly because of sharks, and I know how he feels. Being a writer at this party is like being a surfer off the coast of South Africa, riding the surface of the most shark infested waters in the world. Illinois are like the bait as they take the stage, and their predatory spectators smell blood.
On the upbeat tracks when Illinois is jokingly playing with synthed beats and sweet, appealing, danceable melodies every member of the entire music industry seems to be nudging the person next to them and winking a big fat ,”Told you so!” By the middle of the set every person at the party is swaying and shuffling a little Illinois two-step, mentally preparing his story of how HE was the one that discovered the Bucks County phenomenon.
But something beyond Chris Archibald’s songs’ grassroots-pop sensibilities and Illinois’ fun-loving party attitudes exists that complicates the music and cements it to the ground, keeping it from floating off into the dead outer space of once-loved then forgotton pop music. An element of small town, suburban, pragmatism burrows deep into Archibald’s lyrics separating them from the hopelessly melodramatic prose of flash-in-the-pan Emo and its overproduced teen diva MTV bedfellows. Illinois push into that gritty world of the Springsteen-esque bleak veracity with their working class anthems; they maintain their undeniable marketability and fit snugly into wide-ranging American culture.
An earnest “We Were Wrong” causes a ripple of discomfort amongst the crowd whose ears are well trained to sift out the marketable from a quixotic mess, but whose hearts have been turned off to the genuine meaning of art. “I’m done jumping through hoops, I will not try to impress you,” moans Archibald with initial bitterness and at the same time realistic idealism in his true to life breakup story touchingly lacking in dramatics, set to upbeat glockenspiel and banjo.
Archibald is protective of his telephone microphone - a vocal effects invention that took him years to perfect. After the Filter show, still hazy from the night before, he tells a story about a guy asking him how to hook up the telephone receiver and use it as a recording device. Archibald remembers suggesting the guy spend hours getting it wrong and trying stuff to figure it out himself which illustrates the most tangible and prescient musician’s fear -being unoriginal and misunderstood.
Having your ideas stolen is far scarier than being physically robbed. As if knowing that his story might have made him look selfish Chris Archibald finishes his thought, explaining why he does so much to protect his phone, and his quirky music, from falling into the wrong hands. “That’s what you do it for,” he says as he sneaks backstage to hide from the mob in the courtyard. “Beyond the industry pressure there’s the instinctual love of the art and passion to have fun and enjoy making the music.”
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