Who Are … Listenlisten
Banjo-picking, protest-singing, back-porch-rocking citizens of Texas, have we got some music for you. It's called “anarchana” — a name that hints at both its old-timey Americana roots and its anti-government sympathies — and it's being pioneered by ListenListen, a Houstin band of Appalachian folk-rockers. Their haunting new album, Hymns From Rhodesia, takes the lyrics from old church songs — some dating back to the 19th century — and reimagines them as modern-day hymns for tough times, whether it's getting through the Recession or simply dealing with the wreckage of getting old.
eMusic's Melissa Maerz recently chatted with singer/multi-instrumentalist Ben Godfrey about why it's easy for people in 2009 to relate to the lyrics kids were singing back when petticoats were still in style.
On why 21st Century America feels like 19th Century Rhodesia:
The album is called Hymns From Rhodesia because the formation of Rhodesia is a good metaphor for what's going on in politics today. In the late 1800s, Cecil Rhodes was hired by England to go to Africa and start a company called the British South Africa Company, so he founded a country and hired police and ran everything under corporate rule. He acquired a lot of the area's resources, like the diamond mines, and he didn't give people any freedom, not even after they made it clear that they'd rather not live under his rule. To a certain degree, that's still the way big business works in most countries, except we have corporations paying off our senators and presidents. Calling it Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes would be like calling this country Halliburton America — and that might as well be our name.
On where that mean-looking lion on their album cover came from:
I like to hang out in antique stores where they have, like, 200-year-old books and reprints. Once I found this book called The Exploration of Equatorial Africa, written by one of the early explorers as a sort of precursor to the colonization of Africa. He was one of the first people to discover gorillas, so there's an embossed etching of an ape in the book. I thought it would be cool to do an illustration in the same style, except as if it came from Rhodesia. So for our album cover, I made a lion holding an elephant tusk, which was the symbol on the old Rhodesian flag.
On the church hymns he repurposed as song lyrics:
In those same old book stores, I found some old hymns that I really liked, so I made them into lyrics. The words are rearranged a bit, but all the music is original. We have a song called “The Watchman” that's from a hymn from the 1860s. It's about people watching for Christ's return. I grew up Christian, but I'm not sure if I believe in the Second Coming — I just like songs about the end of the world. We also do this song called “Safe Home, Safe in Port” that's about these sailors finally going home, but I think “going home” is really about dying. I like that these hymns helped people not be afraid of death.
On why the band sounds so good outdoors:
I was hoping for a real stripped-down natural sound, but we ended up adding all these instruments to these songs. Shane has a euphonium, and on one song, you can even hear us shaking chains and hitting an anvil with a hammer. We recorded everything at Shane's house, which is in a poor neighborhood, surrounded by empty lots and abandoned houses, so we could play these loud acoustic songs on his front porch and no one would complain. I grew to really enjoy playing unplugged, so much that one night we played in the middle of the woods in a park. All these people showed up and surrounded us with their flashlights. Every jogger stopped to gawk at us.
On why Texans like apocalyptic music:
Right now, with us and the Theater Fire and some other bands who play dark folk music, a lot of Texas musicians share this apocalyptic vision of the future. That's partly because most Texans were raised with a religious background, but it's also because there's a big libertarian movement coming out of Austin lead by people like Alex Jones, an activist and radio host. He's kind of a cult figure — he was in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly — and he's a little hair-brained, but some of his conspiracy theories make sense. He's for libertarian causes and limited government, but he's also a big proponent of the idea that 9/11 was a big government setup. I'm still deciding what I think about that, but I do think there's a lot of bizarre coincidences that haven't been explained.
