Tonight: Okkervil River at The Heights Theater (Plus Matt The Electrician & Benjamin Lazar Davis)

Interviewing people is hard. Well, maybe not for everybody, but it definitely is for me; I’m just not very good at chatting people up, even when they’re people I like or who make music I love, y’know? It’s just not something that comes easily to me.

So, here’s a little story: once upon a time, more than a goddamn decade ago, I got the chance to interview Will Sheff, frontman, guitarist, singer, and songwriter for Austin-dwelling band Okkervil River. I’d heard and loved the band’s first full-length album, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See, which is to this day one of the finest collections of songs I’ve ever listened to, and was psyched to hear new album Down the River of Golden Dreams, so I jumped at the chance to talk with Sheff on the phone and did my best to be all writerly and come up with serious questions for him about his band and his music.

I called, we talked, and he was a blast, seriously. I made the mistake of bringing up O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the kinda-sorta bluegrass revival that had been going on, which sent him into an awesome rant about music in general and how the “revival” was fake and how Allison Krauss sucks. It was awesome. By the time we said our goodbyes, I was grinning so hard that my face hurt.

And then I rewound the tape and listened…and heard nothing but lots of me going, “uh-huh… Oh, yeah… Wow…” It turns out that I’d connected the fucking tape recorder incorrectly, and caught literally none of Sheff’s side of the conservation. I felt like I was going to throw up, a feeling that increased once I realized I’d need to contact Sheff and ask for a do-over, at least via email.

So that’s what I did, and he was very kind about it, although I could pretty much feel the eyeroll through the Interwebs. We did another take in email form, and the result, while not as fiery and over-the-top as the original interview would’ve been, was (I think, anyway) pretty good.

Naturally, time rolls on, and Okkervil River and Sheff have yet to slow down. In the intervening 15 years, Sheff and his cohorts have released seven albums and six EPs, plus some split releases, compilation appearances, and a slew of singles, not to mention doing a stint as Roky Erickson‘s backup band. I’ve listened to as much as I can, and loving 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, 2007’s The Stage Names, and 2008’s The Stand Ins in particular but liking a whole lot of it.

And with every album, I’m reminded again of what I loved about that first one: Will Sheff is a phenomenal songwriter. More than that, he’s a pitch-perfect storyteller, the kind of songwriter who can spin out an entire life in the span of a five-minute song, and he’s the kind of performer who can imbue it with a ton of intensity. To use the cliché, he’s a “songwriter’s songwriter” — back when I used to attempt to write songs, I’d listen to Sheff’s music and just shake my head and say, “well, shit, I may as well not bother.”

These days, mind you, Okkervil River is a very, very different band. Not in sound, maybe — while there’s more of a ’70s AOR feel to the last two albums, 2016’s Away and this year’s jubilant In The Rainbow Rain, it’s still definitely the same overall vibe for that — but in personnel.

The Don’t Fall in Love lineup is long gone, having been replaced at least twice over, although the crew he’s got now seems pretty solid, with Sheff saying that with Rainbow Rain for the first time he’s writing songs with the band, where before he’d pretty much brought them in as finished pieces and just told everybody what to play. And while I may be biased having heard that, part of me thinks I can tell just by listening; it sounds a little more “together” than previous efforts, a little more vibrant.

Now, with all that out of the way, here’s the crucial part: Okkervil River is playing tonight, Friday, May 25th, up at The Heights Theater, and trust me when I say it’ll be a show well worth seeing. Matt The Electrician, who I also like quite a damn bit, and NY musician Benjamin Lazar Davis, who used to (still does?) play with Okkervil River himself.

To round this out, here’s the video for excellent Rainbow Rain single “Pulled Up The Ribbon”:

Alright, now get on out there; I’ll be there myself, so say “hey”…