Men of the People
How aaron dessner and Justin Vernon are harnessing collective spirit to power their Big Red Machine “It’s less about records and more about community” AAroN DeSSNer
BACk in 2007, Aaron Dessner of the national wrote a minimalist piano sketch called “Big Red Machine” with the intention of working up it somehow for his Red Hot charity compilation
Dark Was The Night. Having recently snagged an early copy of For Emma,
Forever Ago, he made contact with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon via Myspace. not only did Vernon agree to donate a brand new track for the album, he also took Dessner’s piano sketch and fashioned it into a fully realised song within a fortnight.
“I was struck by his generosity and fearlessness,” says Dessner. “We finally met in person at the concert to celebrate the release of Dark Was
The Night. Justin ended up singing with the national, and with Feist, and he sang in Portuguese with David Byrne… He definitely reminded Bryce [Dessner] and I of how we like to be – just play with anyone and everyone and not be in love with your own shadow.”
so began a decade of fascinating collaboration between the two indie-rock titans, playing out on stages everywhere from eau Claire to Copenhagen, culminating this month in the release of an album – also called Big Red Machine – and the launch of People, an ambitious new musicians’ collective, festival and online music portal with collaboration at its core. While the songs on Big Red
Machine were primarily recorded by Dessner and Vernon at their own long Pond and April Base studios with a core band including bassist/ producer Brad Cook and drummer Jt Bates, the finished album is a true community effort: “After we’d tracked about 80 per cent of what is there now, we created a Dropbox of all the songs and sent it to 30 or 40 friends. We didn’t really give a lot of instruction other than pointing out parts that we thought could need more vocals or new ideas. you hear many other people woven into the fabric of the record.”
Among the contributors are Phoebe Bridgers, lisa Hannigan, this Is the kit and members of the staves, Arcade Fire and Mouse on Mars, while several of the drum loops originate as recordings made by the national’s Bryan Devendorf in his basement and then sent to Dessner via voice memo. even the lyrics were open-source, Vernon compiling them in the studio or inviting contributions from the likes of Icelandic performance artist Ragnar kjartansson.
With its songs reflecting the esprit de corps of their creation, Big Red Machine is the perfect flagship for People’s website, which launched in beta form earlier this year. “We see the People platform as an outlet for this collaborative work, which is giving people time and space to do stuff together, outside of the industry’s usual promotional bottlenecks,” says Dessner. “It’s definitely an experiment as to how we bring the audience along, but right now it feels like there’s a huge groundswell of activity. And the hope is that it will spread far and wide to diverse corners.”
People’s online catalogue will be boosted by the fruits of their August festival at Berlin’s Funkhaus. over 200 musicians are due to attend, woodshedding for five days and making use of the site’s 30 mobile recording studios, before throwing the doors open to the public for the final weekend. Dessner is looking forward to continuing a project he’s begun with lisa Hannigan and playwright enda Walsh, as well as another with Danish punk singer selina Gin, both of which are earmarked for released on People. “But it’s less about records and more about community. Part of the joy of making music is the process, not just the polished shiny thing that you want to present.”
Big Red Machine is out on August 31 via People/Jagjaguwar; People festival is at Funkhaus, Berlin, on August 18-19