MON., FEBRUARY 11, 2008
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eMusic Selects Q&A: Breathe Owl Breathe
by J. Edward Keyes
Comprised of Micah Middaugh (guitar, vocals), Andréa Moreano-Beals (cello, vocals) and Trevor Hobbs (percussion), the Michigan trio Breathe Owl Breathe have a knack for wrapping universal emotions in childlike language. In the gorgeous, loping "Playing Dead," from their eMusic Selects EP, Ghost Glacier, a playground game slowly develops into a metaphor for longing and loneliness; "Sabertooth Tiger" is simultaneously about imaginary friends and the desire for protection. The band's music is terrifically disarming, Middaugh's cracked tenor ambling over acoustic guitars, Moreano-Beals cello swooping in gracefully, like a warm breeze or a host of doves. It's the soundtrack to the Brothers Grimm, a lively stroll through the enchanted forest.
eMusic caught up with principal songwriters Middaugh and Moreano-Beals at a studio in Northern Michigan, where they were 19 songs (!) into their next full-length.
Micah, on his childhood:
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 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 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 waking up and hearing music underneath the floor. Then, I'd just start making 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 —
eMusic: Turtles?
MM: 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…" Who knows — maybe I had imaginary animal friends.
Andréa, on the trauma of learning an instrument:
I remember my mom wanted me to play piano. The piano teacher I had in Colombia was 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, and then whenever my mom would tell me the teacher 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.
Then, in fifth grade, I decided that I wanted to play flute. So they got me a flute teacher. I went to my first lesson, and I was trying so 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." 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.
When I got to senior year in high school, everybody was expecting me to audition to lots of different music schools like 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.
And then, there he was, standing in the doorway, playing his guitar. I felt like I was in a dream.
Micah and Andréa, on that meeting:
AM-B: We had a mutual friend, this home-schooled girl I'd met in Ann Arbor. She was the first person I'd met where I thought, "I want to try to play music with this person, and it's not going to be classical." So after a few months, 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. I'll 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 waaayyy out to the boonies. 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 Micah's mom and dad are working in this garden, growing all this beautiful food. And then, there he is, standing in the doorway, playing his guitar. I felt like I was in a dream.
MM: 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 do my thing, but then all of a sudden out of the blue I met Andréa.
AM-B: The way it worked was, [our friend] would play a song and I'd play along with her, and then Micah would play a song and I'd just listen. Eventually, I started wanting to play along with his songs. When I finally did, it was crazy how natural it was. It was like magic. He'd be playing a song I'd never heard before, and I'd just know when to change to the next chord. There was something about it that felt really mysterious — I just couldn't not explore it more.
MM: That night we played the card game "Spoons." So we're playing Spoons and we're grabbing for spoons and things, and I just said to her, "Man, we should make an album."
Micah and Andréa on winning over skeptics:
MM: We've had amazing moments on tour. We once opened for a whole bunch of punk bands — it was really great. They had this whole new intensity of listening.
AM-B: That was so crazy. We didn't even know that it was a punk show before we arrived. 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!"
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 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, the kids think it's funny, and that we're singing it because we're into cocaine. But then, as the story unfolds, it turns out Micah is singing from the perspective of someone's father who got into drug dealing and how that scene ended up being really bad. It really spoke to them — they started getting into it from a totally different angle. They were just really intrigued. We ended up selling so many CDs!
MM: Yeah, and when I brought the banjo out, they started jumping up and down.
Micah, on Shel Silverstein:
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 those poems 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.
Micah, on recreation:
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.
eMusic caught up with principal songwriters Middaugh and Moreano-Beals at a studio in Northern Michigan, where they were 19 songs (!) into their next full-length.
Micah, on his childhood:
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 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 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 waking up and hearing music underneath the floor. Then, I'd just start making 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 —
eMusic: Turtles?
MM: 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…" Who knows — maybe I had imaginary animal friends.
Andréa, on the trauma of learning an instrument:
I remember my mom wanted me to play piano. The piano teacher I had in Colombia was 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, and then whenever my mom would tell me the teacher 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.
Then, in fifth grade, I decided that I wanted to play flute. So they got me a flute teacher. I went to my first lesson, and I was trying so 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." 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.
When I got to senior year in high school, everybody was expecting me to audition to lots of different music schools like 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.
Micah and Andréa, on that meeting:
AM-B: We had a mutual friend, this home-schooled girl I'd met in Ann Arbor. She was the first person I'd met where I thought, "I want to try to play music with this person, and it's not going to be classical." So after a few months, 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. I'll 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 waaayyy out to the boonies. 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 Micah's mom and dad are working in this garden, growing all this beautiful food. And then, there he is, standing in the doorway, playing his guitar. I felt like I was in a dream.
MM: 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 do my thing, but then all of a sudden out of the blue I met Andréa.
AM-B: The way it worked was, [our friend] would play a song and I'd play along with her, and then Micah would play a song and I'd just listen. Eventually, I started wanting to play along with his songs. When I finally did, it was crazy how natural it was. It was like magic. He'd be playing a song I'd never heard before, and I'd just know when to change to the next chord. There was something about it that felt really mysterious — I just couldn't not explore it more.
MM: That night we played the card game "Spoons." So we're playing Spoons and we're grabbing for spoons and things, and I just said to her, "Man, we should make an album."
Micah and Andréa on winning over skeptics:
MM: We've had amazing moments on tour. We once opened for a whole bunch of punk bands — it was really great. They had this whole new intensity of listening.
AM-B: That was so crazy. We didn't even know that it was a punk show before we arrived. 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!"
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 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, the kids think it's funny, and that we're singing it because we're into cocaine. But then, as the story unfolds, it turns out Micah is singing from the perspective of someone's father who got into drug dealing and how that scene ended up being really bad. It really spoke to them — they started getting into it from a totally different angle. They were just really intrigued. We ended up selling so many CDs!
MM: Yeah, and when I brought the banjo out, they started jumping up and down.
Micah, on Shel Silverstein:
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 those poems 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.
Micah, on recreation:
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.
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