The Avett Brothers: all in the family

(Credit: Columbia Records)

The morning after opening for Dave Matthews Band at a stadium in Charlotte, N.C., Avett Brothers co-frontman Scott Avett is feeling a tad groggy. It’s understandable, given that the show was in front of Avett’s hometown audience and he was surely up late for some post-performance partying, right? Not at all. “It was a fairly normal night apart from playing,” Avett says. “I just went back home and did my thing. I did wake up early and feed my daughter, who’s a six-month-old,” he adds, laughing. “So, 4 a.m. up to feed her usually puts a little kink in my sleeping.”

This from a guy whose band (which he fronts with brother Seth) has been enjoying increasingly arena-sized success thanks to its amped-up take on neo-Americana, roots and folk (think Fleet Foxes meets energy drinks). The quartet throws down an appealing patchwork of vocal harmonies and alt-country/folk/bluegrass instrumentation, with a touch of modern Southern rock sensibility.

Still a bit sleepy, and half hung-over on allergy meds, Avett soldiered on to tell Metromix about, among other things, playing without a set list, growing a summer beard and issuing a mission statement on the complications of love.

Last night with DMB, did you go no set list?
Yep, we went no set list last night. We just named off the first four we were gonna do before we started and kinda went with it.

What happens when you get done with song four, the next song is not known, and you’re in front of thousands of people—how is it decided?
Usually we wait ‘til the end of the fourth song to kinda feel what’s gonna be natural in the sequence. Sometimes, if that doesn’t happen, we’ll look around at each other like, “Whatcha feelin’? Whatcha feelin’?” or “What’s that song? What is it?” Sometimes one of us will just hit the note or just crank into it. We have so many songs in our arsenal at this point that we can always drag something out.

How many of you have beards currently?
[Laughs.] Just me right now! Well, [cellist] Joe Kwon had a little something, but just me right now. I’m the only one who’s growing it.

At one time, you were pushing 100-percent as a band.
[Laughs.] Maybe we were just making it too predictable! But I’m sure you’ll see some more beards on the faces here soon enough. They can’t hold out too much longer without letting the beards go, there’s no way.

Does the new record [“I and Love and You,” out Sept. 29] have anything to do with your new home life?
Not necessarily. The title came from the song, the title track; the phrase came from a line in the song that was expressing how difficult it had become to say three words together, and then separating the words to explain that—not saying that you didn’t feel those three words together for that person anymore, but the awkwardness that had come in saying that to that person. Seth dissected it and wrote a mission statement of his interpretation of it, which really peeled back a lot of layers and deepened where it started from…

He wrote a mission statement?
He did. There’s a mission statement that will come with the record. It’s kind of a concept statement, if you will. Kind of like an artist’s statement that is all about “I and Love and You.”

You worked with big-name producer Rick Rubin for this album; did that result in any drastic changes to your sound?
I think what’s gonna be different about the record is that we rehearsed and based a lot around how we wrote. We wrote a lot on piano and drums, and a lot on piano and guitar, and we based it around those instruments—mainly piano and guitar. It could be piano-heavy. And someone may think, “Well, that’s what’s so different about it; it must have been Rick didn’t want this in it or that in it.” That wasn’t it at all; he didn’t ever try to deter us from any of that. So, I think what you hear is, where before we didn’t go that extra mile to always get the note right, [this time] we just re-sang it over and over and over whenever we needed to. There’s definitely a step forward in our professionalism that’s apparent on the record…it’s kind of a new ballgame for us.

That’s complementary to a quote where your brother said you guys were trying to go from being a “good” band to being a “great” band.
It is. We really want to be able to do that. We want to do it ‘cause there’s always some way you could.

What constitutes a great band to you?
That changes. The definition of it changes. Right now, what constitutes a great band to me is: Stay focused on change, utilize that change in [your] expression and do it successfully. I realize that doesn’t mean every single record’s gonna be a hit with the mainstream; there’s no possible way. My example would be Neil Young. He’s a successful artist or musician or writer. I don’t always like what he puts out, but I always respect it and I always believe it. If he’s doing what is core and true and natural to what he’s feeling, then you’re going to believe it because he believes it. One that can be believable is definitely a successful artist.