Labels Are Tricky

The Avett Brothers' music continues to evade definition and stasis

There are numerous distinctions between Bob Crawford, upright bassist for The Avett Brothers, and his fellow band members Scott and Seth Avett. First, Crawford is not from North Carolina. Second, he went to school to study music. Third, he never played in pre-Avett Brothers group Nemo. Last, he’s not actually an Avett brother.

Despite those differences and the lack of familial blood, Crawford says he has always felt right at home in the band.

“At this point, we’re eight years into it,” he says. “Maybe there were times when it was a little strange, but I’ve always been treated really well. The Avett family is very special — they’ve always made me feel I was part of the family.”

Crawford met Scott through fortuitous circumstances. In 2001, Crawford was majoring in jazz guitar at South Carolina’s Winthrop University when a mutual friend told him Scott Avett was seeking an upright bass player for a side project to his main project, Nemo. Crawford had recently purchased an upright bass “sort of on a whim” and auditioned with Scott and Seth. A month and a half later he heard back from them and Nemo Back Porch Project was born. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to The Avett Brothers. “It rolls off the tongue a little better,” says Crawford. “This was just an attempt by [Scott and Seth] to branch out a little bit. It had always appealed to them to do something like what we ultimately did.”

Since 2001, the three have toured almost constantly (they did 200 shows in 2006 and 2007 and have 180 planned for 2008), and have steadily earned a rather large, and extraordinarily mixed following — it’s not unusual to see a young child, a hip twenty-something and an elderly person all at the same show. None of the band members have day jobs anymore, though Scott still paints and Seth has Darling, a solo side project. Crawford says he never really imagined they would gain the following they have, even after a successful nationwide tour in 2002.

“I asked the guys if I booked a tour, if they would be willing to take a few weeks and travel across the country. It was something I’d always wanted to do and they felt the same way… I couldn’t have foreseen what the ultimate outcome was going to be,” Crawford says. “What we came away with after first tour was, ‘We can do this.’ We didn’t know how far we could take it, but we hadn’t reached our potential, we knew that.”

As they’ve earned fans, both by touring and by releasing nine studio recordings (including a few EPs) and two live albums, the Avetts have gained the attention of music critics. While most critics adore the band, no one has exactly defined what kind of music they play. The Avetts’ sound has been called everything from “folk-rock” to “grungegrass” to “alt-country” to “punk-bluegrass” to “jam-grass.” How does the threesome feel about all those labels, especially the range of descriptions?

“People are all right,” Crawford says. “Every label that’s been put on us, there’s nothing wrong with any of them. Some are very colorful labels, sometimes the label is maybe more complicated than what it’s describing, but that’s OK.”

Crawford’s own classification is pretty straightforward:

“When I talk to a family member or friend and they ask me what we’re doing, what kind of music we’re playing, I tell them it’s rock n’ roll. I don’t know how to define what we do. We went through a phase that you could have called it alt-bluegrass or alt-country, but I think we’ve moved through those things. It was never a conscious decision to change anything, but I think if you’re fortunate in life and what you do, you’ll always be evolving and maturing. What you do is always going to be in a constant state of flux and hopefully indefinable. You’re hopefully moving somewhere, almost arriving there and then moving somewhere else. That’s the best-case scenario.”

Two of the band’s most recent releases, 2006’s Emotionalism and this year’s EP The Second Gleam, demonstrate that progression. Emotionalism is almost rowdy, with electric guitars in a few tracks and a generally upbeat quality. By contrast, The Second Gleam is incredibly stripped down, acoustic and intimate. (When speaking of The Second Gleam, Crawford makes an insightful poetic statement: “The space that surrounds the emptiness takes on its own meaning.”)

The band is working on their next full-length album, tentatively due for release in spring 2009. What will that album sound like? Where will their evolution take them next?

“It’s not up to us to call it what it is. It’s up for us to do it and then let other people call it things. Music is such a hybrid of styles, three different people can listen to something and they all would define it in a different way,” Crawford says. “Labels are tricky.”