Caleb Travers & The Big City Lights

A few weeks back I was lucky enough to do an interview with Caleb Travers, a St. Louis based musician that is making his mark on the alt-country music scene. I got turned on to him by my friend from St. Louis and upon hearing the howling harmonica on the first track from his debut album Blue Weathered Dreams I knew I was listening to something special, something with lasting power.

Check out Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights album Blue Weathered Dreams on iTunes and MySpace. I have attached a few choice cuts that I think will really give you guys an idea of who he is and what he is all about. The man is making incredible music that is largely under the radar but this is the kind of music that deserves, needs, to be heard all over the world. Go see this guy now so you can say you saw him before he was huge.

The Steam Engine: So what’s going on man? How are you?

Caleb Travers: Good, good, I’m trying to get ready for this show, a big show I got at Union Station here in St. Louis this week on Thursday so I’ve just been rehearsing for that and just scrambling around and you know getting the charts made for the band , coordinating the schedules.

TSE: I wanted to let you know that Saturday night I played Blue Weathered Dreams, which I love, I’m digging it big time, for a bunch of people, and usually when we’re hanging out that’s not the time for new music but we listened to it cover to cover, everyone was really getting into it. I want to congratulate you on that, it’s a great album.

CT: very cool, that’s really awesome. It still hasn’t gotten to get out to a lot of people, I’m not even sure if it will but that’s great, that’s really cool man.

TSE: When did it actually come out?

CT: Oh yeah, I should have just sent you the stupid one sheet or whatever. We did the album release in February, on February 9th, which wasn’t a Tuesday like a standard release obviously; it was a Saturday so we could pack a venue and try to make some more money back. We were done recording it by October and then we were mixing it Thanksgiving weekend and then we got final audio done and we planned on the release party being in February so we had time to organize that and promote it and all of that.

TSE: You guys aren’t signed, right?

CT: No, I’m totally independent and it’s just me trying to get it out right now and that’s the rest of this year. I hope I don’t have to go without some sort of representation for much longer, but I will.

TSE: Yeah, I don’t think you have much to worry about.

CT: I wanna stick it out but you know things feel a hell of a lot more in reach than they ever have as far as talking with some smaller, more within reach booking agencies, or a label at this point it, I don’t know. Any label that would be within reach that I would want to work with would be like an indie situation where you know most indie labels aren’t actually making records they’re picking up records that have already been made.

TSE: It’s less money up front on their end, it makes sense. It seems like alt-country is kind of taking a back seat, you know?

CT: Oh man yeah. And that’s the thing. From the whole Take You For A Ride song, that may be a little rootsy but honestly I mean, I think I probably think about this too much but I hope I don’t come out of the game with any sort of rude connotations in people’s minds because it is such a limited distribution. To do that, who can be called alt-country and be completely universal like Neko Case or Ryan Adams or Lucinda Williams and people like that… I mean guys like My Morning Jacket, everybody loves My Morning Jacket… they’re so country.

TSE: So there’s alt-country, country-ish, country-twang all on Blue Weathered Dreams, how would you describe your own sound? What do you want people to think when they hear your music?

CT: Just American song based rock and pop really. Something that references a broad spectrum. Yes we’ve had the Roy Orbison sounding, Tom Petty sounding, very smooth linear pop song but we’ve also had the country and the heavier rock but at the end of the day, at this point I really just want to make music that can be on the radio and has integrity. It’s not like I don’t like 7 minute songs, I mean like MMJ or whatever, because I do it’s just where I’m at I think it would be best for me as an artist to be learning how to make really good songs that are not particularly innovative because what I need is just to learn the basics and that’s just where I’m at now. Just American song based music and if it happens to be rootsy that’s okay but if it happens to be very slick and brit-pop and very sweet and concise and to the point, that’s all there too you know? That’s probably a terrible way to put it…

TSE: (Laughs) No that’s okay. What got you into the alt-country like Ryan Adams and Neko Case and Lucinda Williams? What first got you into that kind of stuff?

CT: Well when I started writing songs in this path of my life, 20 or 21- I’m 26 now, I was not listening to anything that was remotely country or alt-country at all. I was listening to a lot of post grunge stuff like Coldplay, very triple A alternative stuff. But I’ve always grown up with the grunge with artists like Pearl Jam and NIN and Nirvana and all that stuff but my dad was always listening to CSNY, Neil Young and Kansas and really early Chicago when they still sounded like Zeppelin not when they sounded like 80s stuff, whatever that crap was. So that was what was really funny is that I didn’t realize how ingrained that stuff was and I just wrote this like two-step kind of country song and it stuck. And I still play that song, I didn’t record it but that just kind of came out and then I got turned onto a lot of the guys I’m listening to now like Ryan Adams, Neko Case, Graham Parsons… but the whole boat for me now is that everything is in the same boat. That’s what you find out, it’s that the music world is so small and everybody’s into everybody essentially and that’s totally the way it should be. They’re all kind of becoming the same now like Nick Cave, I was just listening to him the other day and really enjoying where he comes from and Elliott Smith… guys that aren’t really country at all but they’re just good artists and that’s all kind of coming together and I’m just losing that “genre prejudice” or whatever.

TSE: Right… So how do you keep your influences, like Ryan Adams, purely influences without up mimicking their music?

CT: I think for me I’ve been really lucky that I’m poor at imitating people. I mean essentially that’s how I think really good artists are born are people who have something really unique. Like Ray Lamontagne’s story, he wouldn’t sing for months and months and months on end even though he knew that’s exactly what he wanted to do and I just relate to that so much because he kind of just like was working a shit job and woke up one day and he heard some Steven Stills song or something and he knew he wanted to do music so he quit his job and started writing songs immediately and that impulse for me has always been there. I would always rather write my own songs than listen to other people’s music or if I hear someone else’s music I immediately want to do something with that influence so it’s no different with Lucinda Williams or Ryan Adams when I first got into them. I think that I have, again like the Ray Lamontange thing, he talked about how he got so frustrated with his voice and he hated the way he sounded and he just had to wrestle with it and fight it and just give up some time with it and just say fuck it I’m done. With me, I’ve probably stopped being so self conscious, in fact I’m not self conscious at all now when I write songs because I’ve played so much and this is all I do now. I quit my day job last year and for all this year and part of last year all I’ve been doing is 3 and 4 hour sets to make money and I know enough about my voice now and what I’ve done and it’s gonna be me and it’s going to be informed by someone else. I don’t have some really agile, wispy voice like Damien Rice. When I heard Damien Rice for the first time I literally wanted to just quit music because I thought I’ll never be able to sing as beautifully as he can. But it’s just been a matter of me really really fighting with my voice for the past few years and this year I know if I don’t have a good day it’s just because I need to warm up a little but I know that I’m gonna get there and I know what it takes to get my voice where it needs to be now. And I’ve gotten some good press about my voice which helps.

TSE: Alright now, St. Louis, that’s pretty connected. You’ve got a lot of alt country roots, Uncle Tupelo which spawned Wilco, Son Volt, Bottle Rockets, that Twang Fest that’s been going on for a while, do you see yourself moving to Chicago like Tweedy did to try to get to a bigger audience?

CT: Yeah I mean that’s funny that you would say Chicago. I went to NYC with my wife, I played a show there and we stayed there for a week with a friend and we both loved it and I think that maybe if I were single, and not in a regretful way at all—I’m a terrible single person I couldn’t take care of myself at all but my wife is very helpful for me in so many different ways and I just think I need a home and I like life to go generally slower but I love NY and I love the history of NY and Greenwich Village and all the wonderful places and it’s just a hot bed up there. But we came back to St. Louis and it was just nice to be there. We don’t have a lot of money either so that would be another thing. And I mean maybe if I were single I would move to NY or something. But Chicago makes a lot of sense for us for a lot of reasons. What’s funny for me is that Wilco moved to Chicago and they started sounding like not alt-country. And for me it would be like I would hope to do that too. I mean Tweedy just like lambasted people. I heard this call in show and he was being interviewed and the callers were calling in and this caller thought he was being really clever, and this was during Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and he was like- are you ever going to get back to making music like Uncle Tupelo?” and Jeff Tweedy just kind of snickered and said “I’d like to think of myself as musically upright right now.” And it’s almost crazy because St. Louis has this thing where like Wilco hadn’t played a show here in like three years and people were getting really upset about it so finally they came here and they booked three days. But it’s interesting, you hear all the jokes and all the old guys and players who have maybe done sound for Wilco and they talk about how they know too many people here. It’s just really interesting. I wonder why they left and I wonder what is, and I don’t know the Chicago music scene I just know it’s a big city, and that must afford its own conveniences with regards to recording studios and venues which you know I would be all for- if I could ever see the interior of a real recording studio at all.

TSE: Do you have any covers that you play live that you like more than others? Do you have a favorite cover you like to play live?

CT: I have to do covers in my bar shows to fill time… when I’m with the band I haven’t gotten an arrangement together that’s unique enough to play in a concert show. Most of the stuff I’m doing is all original like in a true concert. No one usually pays attention at any of those shows, occasionally they’ll look up and lightly clap or something and then I’ll say “I’ll be here til midnight” and then they go back to drinking. We do Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. I love singing that song, that’s probably one of my favorite cover songs—it’s just ridiculously dramatic.

TSE: If you could play with anybody, alive or dead, who would it be?

CT: It’s such a close tie between Neko Case and Lucinda Williams for sure. I’ve always pictured myself meeting them or talking with them or working with them for whatever reason that is. I kind of hope that will happen. And dead, who knows man, this is hard. I guess I’m just going to say Elliott Smith because this week he’s just like the greatest, he’s my favorite musician who has passed. He’s totally self-contained. He’s doing everything himself. And the way he records, I was trying to describe it to a friend… it’s like your ear drum is going to explode but he’s whispering. The records are so loud and compressed. The sounds are actually quiet but they’re able to make them so loud when you bring them through a compressor.

Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights - Take Your For A Ride (Live)
Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights - Annie
Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights - Have You Changed
Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights - Wedding Day
Caleb Tavers & The Big City Lights - Lay Me Down

The full interview is available in both text and MP3.

Thank you Dr. Tim Buydos for helping with the interview questions and putting Caleb and myself in touch.

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