Warm and gypsy-like, on their latest release, The Snow Magic
, Dark Dark Dark use instruments normally reserved for VFW halls to create a sound that cruises downstream along the Mississippi from Minneapolis to New Orleans. Chief
sat down with band members Nona Marie Invie and Marshall LaCount shortly before they embarked on their European tour to talk about banjos, accordions, and Americana adventure.
Nona: My name’s Nona and I play accordion.
Marshall: I’m Marshall and I play the banjo.
Chief Magazine: So I noticed your website says you’re from Minneapolis and New York, and listening to your new album, a lot of your music has some loneliness, and sadness to it. You mention that a lot of it was written on cold dark nights in Minneapolis in a short amount of time. Do you think that living there, being there, and recording there had a lot to do with that?
Marshall: I think it’s probably shaped our personalities in a way, and I also think that we gather stories from traveling and they’re not always—I don’t think our music is very regional—but it’s definitely part of a genre probably that happens in Minneapolis, and the other places that we spend a lot of time: New Orleans and New York.
What do you think you pick up from these places?
Marshall: In New Orleans—
Nona: There’s liveliness in New Orleans; that I get inspired by. Just the quantity of music is crazy. Everywhere, everybody plays, and they play really well, and they write a million songs. And they know how to play a million songs, and there’s a definite spirit of liveliness.
So how much time have you spent in New Orleans, and how did you end up there?
Marshall: A couple of months. It happened at a time when both of us were learning our instruments, so it had a big impression on us. It’s not that we spent years there, but definitely our new friends there helped shape how we play music.
Nona: Our instruments—the accordion and the banjo—have such stereotypes. In Minneapolis, there are accordion and banjo players, but they are more often traditional. Bluegrass for banjo, or something accordion is like polkas and waltzes. Things that are fun to listen to and great to learn about. But then we went to New Orleans and [people were] playing our instruments in a way we’ve never heard before and we realized, ‘Oh this is what we’ve been doing,’ and for me, this is why I don’t totally understand why I don’t fit in with the traditional accordion players, because there is just so much more going on.
I think in listening to all the tracks off your older EP, and listening to the track you have out on your new album, you hear the banjo and the accordion, and it’s so beautiful. And it’s not the polka and it’s not the banjo you hear in bluegrass. But how did you two wind up picking up these instruments?
Marshall: My first banjo was loaned to me. I was babysitting it. And I just felt I played other instruments, and I’m attracted to the percussive element, and the millions of ways you can play rhythm on it. I treat it like a hip hop instrument.
Nona: I played piano growing up for like ten years or something, but I never got very good at playing the piano. I never really cared about it. And then I moved in with someone who had an old, stinky—like literally stinky—accordion, and started just like goofing around on it. And then I started to realize, ‘Oh, I’m actually getting good at this! This is fun! I love this thing!’
So how long have you been playing it?
Nona: About two years.
Marshall: Same.
So how did you guys come up with Dark Dark Dark?
Marshall: I returned from traveling and started playing more music with Nona in Minneapolis. Both of us were between projects or between lives, and felt a lot of musical chemistry, which doesn’t always happen. I’ve played with a lot of people, and I think both of us have weird ways of understanding music. But the name story is kind of long. I just finished traveling with a bunch of people, the Miss Rockaway Armada people. And you know, people pull out songs to play around the fire, and I always felt like my songs were sad, or darker, obviously. They weren’t fun-time-camp-party songs, so I was telling someone that I was self conscious about that, and she assured me that I shouldn’t be, and I should continue writing the way I do, and even more so, and really just push it. So I think I kind of laughed to myself and came up with that name, Dark Dark Dark.
And how did you to end up getting together, musically or as friends?
Nona: We were in the same circle of friends in Minneapolis, I don’t know how. The people I was playing with moved to San Francisco, and I think I was really lonely. But someone and Marshall had a little studio, and they said I could go there.
So you’re coming out with The Snow Magic in the end of October, under your own record label, Blood Onion.
Marshall: It’s actually being nationally released under a label out of Providence [Supply and Demand] and it’s a co-release with our label.
So how did you decide to have your own label, in conjunction with someone nationally releasing it?
Marshall: We are just really consistent about controlling a lot of things. Like I was telling you about being media-critical about things. We’re really into experimenting, and we’re open to working with this new label, as well as having our name on there also, but we’ve always done everything ourselves, and we don’t know a lot about anything else but that.
Nona: I think that we have the capacity, and access to recording studios and all the equipment and everything we need to make good recordings, but we’re doing so much. I mean, I call Minneapolis home, but I haven’t been there in six months, you know? We don’t have the capability of actually putting our music out there beyond the people we talk to.
Marshall: That’s why it’s good to work with the Tom at Supply and Demand, also.
Nona: It’s just one guy. He’s our friend, and he is very nice. We’re very high-maintenance.
Oh really? In what capacity high-maintenance?
Nona: We just have these four control freaks in our band, and we all have different issues, so he does a good job of meeting our demands.
That being said, do the four of you work well together, coexist together? I mean, I understand that you guys work on a couple of different projects other than being in a band, but being apart of the Rockaway Armada, and being a part of [Swimming Cities of] Switchback Sea. Despite the fact that you’re control freaks.
Nona: [laughs] It’s just a small part of all of our characters.
Marshall: I think that somehow we found each other, and I think if we tried to bring someone new into it, it’s very difficult for all four of us to agree, but somehow we all communicate well musically. It’s important that we’re all—it’s us. Todd’s [Chandler-Upright Bass] working on a movie too.
Right, so you want to tell me more about the movie, and how you guys play a part in it?
Marshall: Um…Nona?
Nona: Well, Todd is a brilliant filmmaker, Todd Chandler. He’s worked on a lot of movies in the past, but this is his first big thing, big fictionalized drama piece. And all four of us are in it in different ways, and we play music together. Our friend Ryder—Todd’s in another band called Fall Harbor and Ryder is in there—and the five of us play music together in the film, and build this raft, sort of this barrel raft for the movie, which is the barrel raft for the swimming cities project, and then that’s how those two projects combine; and that’s what we’ve been spending our time on all summer.
It seems to me that building a raft that’s entirely navigable on the water, on a river is a daunting task. Do you guys have any experience doing that, or did you decide just to wing it?
Marshall: A lot of people on that project got their experience from being involved in Miss Rockaway, and on that project, people were winging it, and learning from other people who had done similar things, [the] Floating Neutrinos; Poppa Neutrino… Miss Rockaway taught a lot of people a lot about that. And the switchback project is dealing with much more specific water conditions: tidal, the nature of the river, more vessels, and more engines. Crazier everything.
Nona: And like a short period, like fixed deadlines, because we have the performances. So there’s always this weight on people’s shoulders. ‘We have to fix this because we have to make it to Nyack for the performance!’
Marshall: We never missed a show.
That’s impressive. What kinds of problems did you run into along the way?
Marshall: There’s many [pause]… That’s not a concise answer [laughs].
Nona: Minor mechanical issues that our brilliant mechanics always fixed.
Working along the river seems like an American adventure, an adventure that not many people do anymore. So what was it like to explore the Mississippi and the Hudson, and explore all the towns along the way? Was it an interesting adventure? Was it scary? What were your feelings about it?
Marshall: Well it’s really—it’s awesome. There were times in the Midwest when I was actually scared, but everyone doesn’t feel that way. There were times when the community was extremely welcoming, and giving and open to what you’re doing, and at times, totally closed. The performances we did are something we offered to the community in trade for taking up space. And usually people are pretty excited, and other times people are very critical, people with different values were saying things about us. We’re any number of derogatory things.
Where do you think were the most welcoming places? I’d think New York or New Orleans; but were there any surprises along the way? Places where people were really excited, or where they were really responsive?
Marshall: There’s too many to name.
Nona: On the Hudson every town was great. I didn’t feel any kind of bad feelings. Usually word kind of slowly travels back down the river to us, but I haven’t heard anything [negative].
Marshall: It might be the Bible Belt that’s the most scary. I heard second hand—I wasn’t on the raft for the most southern parts of the river between Illinois and St. Louis—but there’s a few stories that came from that region.
So what is the Project Heartland in Europe about?
Marshall: The woman came to the Miss Rockaway installation at Mass MoCa, and she came to our opening there, and invited us there, because the museum there and some other galleries there are doing a heartland-themed season. It opens the weekend of November 7, 8, 9, so it coincides with election time here, and I saw that they have Low, the band play. They’re having some pretty big things there that I’d like to check out early. Miss Rockaway suspects the reason we were asked is—we kind of have two theories. One is the water engineering similarities, the water engineering problems in Holland and Mississippi. The other is that we made an attempt at an community, an autonomous community, right in the middle of the U.S., and that we’re a bunch of freaks floating down the river.
So what kind of group things are you talking about? I know that you guys put on a performance at the Deitch projects in Long Island City. What was that performance?
Nona: We performed at all the towns we stopped at along the way. It was a play by Lisa—Lisa DiMoore—and it was a series of monologues, with a bunch of action in between by all the crew members on the boat. It was a really beautiful thing about nostalgic boat life, looking at the historical voice.
Marshall: Kind of mythologizing it, the people who live on and navigate their boats.
So being a part of it, was it a kind of romantic, reminiscent of the adventure of traveling by boat?
Nona: There are parts of it that are very romantic, like floating up to Bannerman Island and running around castle ruins, cliff jumping in a quarry, sleeping outside at night.
I was going to ask you about that—living and sleeping arrangements on a floating raft of, well, essentially garbage.
Nona: We camped. People slept on the boats. There were always people on the boats in case they floated away, and other people too.
So what happens to [the boats] now?
Marshall: Well the installation lasts a month [September], and I think there are any number of plans that could happen. I don’t know if that’s really our place to talk about that. It’s more Swoon’s place.
So after the Heartland project, there are a number of dates all around Europe. Is this the first time you’ve toured Europe at all? Are you looking forward to it?
Marshall: We’ve had friends report back that people are excited for us to come. We did the Love You, Bye EP professionally recorded for us in a small record label in France called What a Mess! records: What a Mess, exclamation, records. And he organized our whole tour and it’s really fantastic. He’s helped a lot of our friends play. He seems very busy. We haven’t met him personally yet.
So it’s just through e-mail and phone calls? Great! So then after you come back you have more tours like through here and Ypsilanti Michigan, and lots of other places. So how do you go about that, do you have a bus or are you just figuring it out as you go along?
Marshall: We have a van, [laughs]. I don’t know how we got so good at this. Necessity? I’m so sick of living in a van. I’d love to have a room somewhere. We’re usually traveling with too much stuff: crafting supplies and art supplies, carpentry tools and our instruments.
So you’re making art projects while you’re touring, constantly making something.
Marshall: Definitely [would] like to have a room somewhere to put some stuff.
So any other future plans at the moment, besides touring consistently, and promoting your new album?
Marshall: After Europe, we’ll take a break in New Orleans. Then we’ll be back in Minneapolis, thinking of how to tour a live soundtrack with Todd’s movie; and think about another record that’s not related to that.
So is Todd’s movie finished?
Marshall: It’s still [in production]. The majority of it is there, there are a couple more shoot dates, all around New York, Vermont a little bit.
Have you ever run into problems filming, with permits, or any legal problems, or issues with the public?
Nona: There was this one time was got kicked off a property. We were filming a dumpster diving scene [laughs] we staged and someone came out and said we couldn’t film. There’s no problems really, people are usually…
Marshall: It’s not a big enough crew, it’s not like a New York crew that take up an entire block with trailers. We get to go around; were small enough to get to do what we want. It’s taking up millions of terabytes.
Terabytes? I don’t even know what that is!
Marshall: It’s HD digital.
So is there a set group of songs that you really enjoy playing, or performing for people, or are they all favorites?
Marshall: It changes with the space and how we can perform—if we can play quietly. I feel that when we have a lot of control over the sound, and people are really there to listen, then we have the freedom to play very quiet or very loud, and very expressive. But I think all of our songs are favorites in a different way, like i don’t have a favorite.
Nona: Right now I like playing ‘Cloud Story’ a lot. We played it on the river, and I feel we’ve gotten familiar with it, since we played it like five million times this summer. I have an intimate relationship with that song now, which is nice.
And who writes the songs, or is it a group effort?
Nona: Me and Marshall write the songs. We write the melody and the words, and everyone writes their own parts.
Do you have any shout-outs you’d like to have or projects you’d like to mention? I’m sure you have some things going on that we haven’t even mentioned.
Marshall: If we do any more shout-outs, we’ll have to talk about other projects, and it’ll go on forever
Coming from a place like Minneapolis—based in the ‘Heartland of America’—do you have any objection to being grouped into that classification?
Nona: I think that I feel pretty heartland-y a lot; I think it’s okay. I have a total accent, I have total passive-aggressive tendencies. It’s nice to travel, and it’s nice to be out here where everything is a little bigger and a little brighter; I feel like I think a little bigger and a little brighter now, which is nice.
And why don’t you like that term?
Marshall: I guess I don’t like the stereotype, or I wouldn’t see us getting that. I mean I do know about horses, and I do know about flannel shirts, and I do know about corn. But we know about other things as well. So I guess I probably fit into that.
