Low - by L. Jeanette Strole

Ten years ago, some of us were busily filling our closets with tattered flannel shirts, stocking up on faded, ripped jeans, and thermal underwear, and tromping around in Doc Martens. The likes of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots were hijacking the airwaves, and in the midst of all that alt-rock ruckus, the Midwestern milieus of Minnesota became the birthplace of Low. Husband and wife Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk brought forth their musical love-child, making slow, melodic tunes that - whether intentionally or not - have paved a path for countless disciples to follow suit. A year later, Zak Sally was also added as a permanent member, and contrary to some recent rumors this year, he is still in the band.

Alan Sparhawk contemplates the last decade=s trials, tribulations and triumphs. "It goes quick, of course. I'm glad I did it ten years ago, and not now. It would be harder to start a band these days. It was a struggle getting shows ten years ago. Nobody would come, and we still had to fight to get opportunities out there. Ten years ago we were such a weird sounding band, and such a novel thing that maybe that=s why it worked, but now you have to be even more novel to catch people=s eyes."

Alan is sitting on a sidewalk on Capitol Boulevard in Olympia, Washington. He is touring with his side-project, Black-Eyed Snakes, and takes the time to answer a skein of questions about his music and his personal thoughts. The micro-cassette recorder picks up the noisy traffic, and the spillover sounds from the venue where the Snakes are playing tonight's gig, and the inebriated revelry of chatting scenesters, and Olympia-royalty (among them K Records' Calvin Johnson, and Lois). Somewhere in the course of ninety minutes, the muffled and introspective answers of Alan are also recorded on the cassette, covering more topics than even initially intended.

Despite a decade of perseverance, critical acclaim, rabid fans, cult-like underground status, and a recent invitation to open several Radiohead gigs, Low's front-man still teeters on the shaky grounds of hesitant self-confidence. It could be argued that the mark of real talent is masked by a true sense of humility. And yet, it seems almost harsh to hear someone with such prolific longevity speak so modestly about himself and his music.

These have been ten years of showing up in punk rock clubs, only to have the attending audience furrow their eyebrows in confusion at the sparse orchestration being played out on stage in dirge-like fashion. But for the lack of self-confidence, he speaks of their tenacity. While Alan won't admit to any sort of self-grandeur, he concedes, indirectly, that he believes in the consistency of Low, because they've been willing to persevere. And maybe it was just simply based on the fact of believing that they wanted to make music.

"Ten years ago, it was a struggle to assemble the mechanism of being an independent band, and getting in the car and going on tour. Just the cost and logistics of putting a record together, and mass producing it, making copies, selling it. It was a little more prohibitive. So when you decided that you wanted to be a musician or that you wanted to make records, it was a bit more of a gamble. You had to really believe in what you were doing. That was the struggle then. All those things are now much more accessible, and there every town in the world has several places to play, and unfortunately only twelve people in town care to show up. So, meanwhile, it's easy to record your own thing, and it's easy to duplicate, and easy to flood the world with your recordings. I can't imagine running a club right now and having a hundred cd's every day to listen to, and book bands, or having a store and having to decide which albums to carry. There's so much stuff. There are so many people scrambling to get their spot in the bins. I've never been very good at telling people that we had a band that people should check out. I see people that do that, and I've never been comfortable with that. It's probably the Midwestern Scandinavian thing. You just don't want to impose on anyone's moments, you know? I mean, part of it is a pride thing, that you think if they like it they'll eventually hear about it, or eventually like it or not like it."

Bit by bit, the audiences of the indie scenes caught onto the sounds of Low. As if an exponential growth factor took over, the band received more and more exposure, taking opportunities to perform, as they came. e were very much international and national very early on. We didn't spend a lot of time trying to conquer the local scene. If five people in our town liked us at first, we didn't bother trying to convince everyone else. We just decided to go to another town and find those five people and so on. That was kind of our feeling." Their third live performance ever was in New York, again operating on the principle that any opportunity to play a set should be seized. "We set up a show while we were recording there. It turned out really cool. Early on, we figured out it was not about convincing the public. It was just about going around and assuming that eventually the people that would be into it, would come around."

As much as there is a subconscious ideology motivating their continued efforts, Alan Sparhawk seems to be at odds with himself at times. As if to make a reference to the title of the latest release, Trust Alan brings up this poignant reflection. "If there's anything I've learned, it's that you can never, ever trust what you're doing. You just do the best you can and sort of trust that logically it's going to be okay and somewhere down the line you can look back and say, 'Okay, I think we did nail that,' or 'That was pretty close.'"

He continues, "I don't think we have ever felt like we've hit our stride or getting it right. I mean, there's little victories. You finish writing a song, and that's a little moment. It's a constant struggle. I think that's why I'm more comfortable talking about what I'm doing at the moment, instead of what I did in the past. Because in the moment, sometimes that's all you have to trust is relying on logic. There are times when you can record something in the studio and it sounds like crap. So you have to think, "Well, when I wrote this song, I thought it was really good.' You have to fall back on that and trust that it will be okay. Still, I have no idea what it's like to finish a record and know if it's any good."

Even though he seems uncomfortable with determining if his own music is good or not, he seems just as ill at ease with deciding what is good on a universal level. "There certainly is bad music. To me, bad music is made for bad reasons, and is uncreative, and doesn't inspire or do anything. But that's such a gray area. Who am I to say that what some twelve-year-old kid is listening to, like Avril Lavigne or whoever, is bad music? It's inspiring them, and someday they'll grow up and what inspired them when they were twelve will lead them to other things that will inspire them later. Maybe they'll come across Leonard Cohen or Billie Holiday or stuff like that. It's hard to say, but I don't know. I think good or bad music is a gray area, and I'm more interested in the idea of honest music. Music that you can tell someone is really trying to reach beyond the possibilities and reaching for something higher. There's just a little box in my head that tells me what's good music, and it's based on what I've heard all my life and I could never really come up with a description of what I think is good music. Everyone has a personal thing about what is good music. I guess I just base it on the little box in my head that keeps all the good music in, and I want to make sure the music I make fits in that box of good music."

Still, the music he creates with Low has some sort of depth that can't quite be mined with ordinary tools of observation. Given their devout faith in the teachings of the Church of The Latter-Day Saints, Alan admits that faith does become part of the equation. "I'm aware that it comes out. The longer I've been writing songs, the more I notice that it comes out. Over the years, I've become a lot more able to reach further and further into myself and determine my thoughts and draw from that. Some of our early songs were just introductory attempts at finding that kind of stuff. Over the years, I've gotten a little bit better at reaching deeper inside. The further I go in there to draw from, the more comes out. I allow it to be there. A lot of writing stuff just comes out, but I allow myself to use that terminology. And that's fine. I don't think it would be as honest if I made it intentional."

If Low is calculated and bare, Alan's side project, then Black Eyed Snakes, is strangely similar in theory. It is rough but just as bare in places as Low is. In principle, both bands conduct similar experiments in structure, albeit with a completely different outcome. Black-Eyed Snakes are a raucous, raw, blues-tinged, and loose number, with the kind of edginess that comes only from completely letting go of any predetermined notions. During the Snakes' set at The Brotherhood bar in Olympia, even the most sedentary scene-queens were seen heaving in fits of loud, nervous, twitchy dance movements to accompany the loud, nervous, twitchy music of the Snakes on stage. "People think that I'm letting out all the things I can't let out in Low. But I actually find a lot more satisfaction and release in doing Low, but this is just more physical for me. It's very similar in fact. There's repetition, and simplistic music that you're trying to reach higher with. There's a lot of similarities to me. It's kind of a weird thing, and it's fun."

Speaking of the music, Alan makes it clear that he has a very stripped back idea of what the Snakes are about. "It's very simple, and there's not a whole lot of over-thinking. We just play as hard as we can. It's very physical, very exhilarating, very spiritual, and it's interesting to play it. I think it appeals to people who are drinking beer and are tired of their jobs. They'll see us and say, 'Wow, those guys are going crazy.' It's loud and people like loud music, and people like to dance and hoot and holler, and that must be the appeal. Meanwhile, we still have this freedom to do just about anything we want. Some of the sets are often very improvised, and still there's this thin line of blues and something that anyone can hear and connect to. [Black-Eyed Snakes] can play punk clubs, biker bars, blues bars, and play anywhere. A lot of Low fans come out to see the Snakes, and check it out. They hear about the side band of Low, and some really like it and some are kind of shocked because it's very physical, and it's just kind of a shock to some people that are just used to me standing very still while I perform."

Contrasting this rowdy, frenzied, and wild-eyed Alan Sparhawk with the Alan Sparhawk that sits sedentary and still during Low's sets, or even comparing those two Alans to the third, and slightly antsy Alan Sparhawk that is shifting back and forth on the hard cement sidewalk outside The Brotherhood bar in Olympia, makes it clear that Alan has a few different masks that he likes to wear, even if he's not fully aware of them himself. But maybe the uniting thread is that he likes to be around people that he loves. Snakes features not only two of his musically gifted friends from Duluth, but also his own brother. "Who am I to be the guy that gets to go on tour all the time, when these guys are every bit as good as I am? They're getting old like me, and they've never done this. They've never traveled around the country and played. So I thought we should just take a few weeks and travel around the country. I don't think we have any illusions of making money, but it's fun for them."

Of course, the band he's most known for, is italicized by the vocal harmonies of his wife and musical partner, Mimi. Having a career in music, without the patience, involvement and sustenance of a good spouse can be difficult for a musician. Alan seems utterly grateful for his partnership with Mimi, because not only does she support and understand the music, but she is as much a part of it.

Their daughter, Hollis, now three years old, also brings a new element of inspiration into Low's music. The demands of music and a touring lifestyle vie for the precious few hours of free time every day. "Ever since we had Hollis, there's definitely more of a sense of having structured time, and thinking about how I can get the things done that I need to do and still be the person I want to be. If you try to do everything at the same time, something always gets slighted. If you're always sort of working while you're spending time with your family, then you're not really spending time with your family and you're not really getting work done."

Whereas music is a career only in the regard of it being something you do to support yourself, he still defends the honorable art behind it. "It's something you create, and your heart is in it; your soul is in it, but 95% of it is work. Carrying crap into a club, calling people, driving in a van, finding out where the show is, arranging studio time, pushing buttons, sliding sliders, changing guitar strings. It's work. We've been lucky enough to be able to pay rent and stuff. But it's hard to call it my career. It's not something you decide to do one day and just do it. It's just something that I've wanted to do always, and it's always been there. It turned into something that I could do as much as I possibly wanted to do. Music is way more than a hobby for sure. It is kind of my whole psyche. Obviously, I have a family that I love, and it's not like they're secondary to music, but they're just part of it. So to me, it just feels like the thing I do."

Their partnership surpasses the act of simply creating and performing the music. Mimi and Alan and Zak take total control of their musical agendas, and managing their musical income to afford them the luxury of getting by comfortably without day jobs. AWe don't have any heavy habits, and we live in northern Minnesota, where it's somewhat reasonable to live. We work very hard so that we don't have to have other people doing what we can do ourselves. We don't have a manager, we drive ourselves around, we do a lot of work and do as much as we can." It is perhaps this admirable Midwestern 'family values' ideology that keeps them fresh, humble and alive a decade after their inception.

Still, now, ten years have passed, and the continued acclaim still makes him wonder if people have run out of things to chew on when considering the status of Low. "We're not a hot new band, or a hot story. We're not the new news. We're just a band that makes music and critics generally like us, but after a while it's just kinda like >So what?'"

The dichotomy of consistency versus stagnation has to be weighed against the extended goals of Low. Alan Sparhawk, himself, is motivated by need to keep plugging along. "If anything can be extrapolated from the things that I'm doing, it would be this: I'm a person who is trying to figure it out. Every once in a while, I feel like I get some answers, and it's a struggle to live by them. I don't have answers, but maybe people can identify with us or what we write, or see a connection with other people. They're trying to deal with life and make sense of it the same way I am. And maybe sometimes, that's all you need is someone to inspire you."