First Avenue Presents
MOUNT EERIE with Julie Doiron
Sunday, December 8th, 2019 / Doors: 8:00 PM / Show: 9:00 PM
All Ages
Seated Show
$25 General Admission
This is a seated show with general admission, first-come-first-served seating. The Cedar is happy to reserve seats for patrons who require special seating accommodations. To request seating or other access accommodations, please go to our Access page.
General Admission tickets are available through First Avenue online (click the "Buy Tickets" button below), at Electric Fetus, and The Cedar during shows.
A Word from Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie)
What is it about a bonfire?
The flames are charismatic and dance, the sparks billow and flicker off. But what is beneath? In smoldering embers that stay alive until the next morning there is a slow endlessness. The flashing whims of light and dark pass by without stopping, but the glowing coals beneath the action offer a new perspective. Something approaching permanence in the relentlessly impermanent world.
In all these years of making up songs, the aim has always been to just say the thing as directly as possible. Name it, don’t decorate. Nonetheless, what has come out has often appeared as billowing clouds of metaphor and half-formed feelings. Then in the shadow of close real death in 2016 I made a couple of records that managed a little better to speak directly. The terror in opening up so unreservedly to an abstract public was blown away by the higher stakes of actual death.
Nothing stops changing. Love returned. With this love came a new understanding of the weird balances between real life and art projects, between home and exposure. I moved into a new world and happily angled the work inward, keeping more quiet.
But nothing stops changing. It didn’t work out and I had to move again. Finding myself staring into another fire, disoriented by the changes, these songs came out.
I hoped to write songs about the smoldering foundation beneath all of this surface chaos, a love that doesn’t die, songs beyond mere sorrow. If I again mined the circumstances of my life for these words, I tried to do it with liberation in mind for everyone. I tried to make songs that did not rely at all on who I am or who I am singing about. “The song, not the singer” is my guide, even while singing inescapably as and about myself.
Knowing that anyone with internet access might have questions about my specifics, I don’t want to say anything personal that isn’t already in the songs. My fingers are crossed that when I push them out to sea they will be met with calm humane understanding. That’s what they’re about after all.
In a grab for deeper continuity, I called and asked Julie Doiron if she could join me in the recording. She has been my favorite singer since 1993 when I first heard her band Eric’s Trip and subsequently devoted my life to music and art. This 26 year path from teenage obsession to collaborator has made me feel very fortunate. We made another record in 2008 called Lost Wisdom, more flames, more love, more turmoil. Now we get to do some more singing and playing together.
In 2019 life on earth can feel insane, but in the early hours before the sun comes up, I look out and the world is blank. Everyone deserves liberation, and as the sky gets blue and loud with the day I try to remember this blank peace and I hope that it will stay with us into the wild arriving future.
- Phil Elverum
Sept. 5th, 2019
Visit Mount Eerie’s website
Mount Eerie performing “Ravens” courtesy of P.W. Elverum & Sun’s YouTube channel.
About Julie Doiron
Julie Doiron started playing music in 1990 with Canadian indie rock band Eric’s Trip. They were the first Canadian band to sign to Seattle’s Sub Pop Records. After the break up of the band in 1996, Julie started performing on her own. In 2001, Julie became the first Canadian to sign to Jagjaguwar records releasing 8 albums on the label.
With more than twelve albums published (one of them awarded with the Best Alternative Album in the Canadian Juno Awards), Julie Doiron has become established as one of the most expressive and thrilling songwriters of her generation, thanks, too, to multiple collaborations with Mount Eerie (in the outstanding and emotional “Lost Wisdom”), Herman Düne, The Wooden Stars, Shotgun & Jaybird, Daniel Romano or Jon McKiel. Julie was part of Gord Downie’s band the Country of Miracles and plays in Julie & the Wrong Guys with Eamon McGrath and members of Cancer Bats.
Spiced up with her prolific live curriculum participating in important festivals such as Primavera Sound (2013 and 2017) , Montréal Jazz Festival, Sappy Fest or Tanned Tin, her latest English LP, So Many Days (2012), went in even deeper into stories with an intimate weight and extreme sensitivity, just as if she was singing by your side, just as if she was whispering her songs into our ears. With the firm hand of Will Oldham in her songwriting and the ability to find treasures in simplicity like Nick Drake, Julie Doiron weaves bittersweet melodies which reveal sober tenderness and direct emotion.
She has also released records in French and most recently in Spanish, when she started a collaboration with Jesús Llorente of indie label Acuarela. After releasing a limited edition 7″ in 2015 and several 10″ of her best songs adapted into Spanish, she played two extensive tours through Spain and Portugal. She will continue on with this project and has just finished writing new songs that will be part of her forthcoming record in English set to release in 2020. Before going into the studio she has 2 tours across Canada and Europe that will take place in the summer and fall of 2019 respectively.
VISIT JULIE DOIRON’S WEBSITE
Julie Doiron performing courtesy of NPR Music’s YouTube channel.