Photo Credit: Cameron Wittig

Hello, all! Happy Friday! I’m hoping your bellies are still full from a great Thanksgiving, and turkey sandwiches for the next week abound.

But, now, looking toward the weekend, and in between leftovers and naps, you can check out MFR’s chat with Josh Scott of Aero Flynn fame below, and snag your tickets to band’s last show of its tour in support of its debut, self-titled album with Halloween, Alaska and DEM YUUT tomorrow at the Turf Club.

What was the writing process like for the new album?

I was kind of writing fully formed songs and I started exploring a different side of myself and I think where I was writing was with a kinetic energy—everything had a movement and a tempo, and open-ended questions. These songs were exploring that side of how I wanted to write. There were a lot of differences, whether it was cinematic or pointing to different genres of art and I wanted to make it an open canvas for people to collaborate on and flush out with me.

Everything started small in my house and I would just kind of draw the rest of the song in the studio.

When you were taking a break from music, were you writing that whole time? Or did everything just come all at once?

It definitely sprung from somewhere. I was always kind of writing. Like I’ve said in the past, when you’re not playing and you’re kind of in a lone place it’s harder and harder to say something. When you’re just writing for yourself, you need that feedback from people or need that feedback from other musicians, so the well was drying up a little bit, but I finally got back on pace when I wrote the first song on the record, “Plates,” and that song kind of became a different way than I’ve written before and everything came through that. As I started to record, I was so inspired in that moment that I just started to write in the studio and wrote the record that way. I had never completely stopped writing.

When you get into the studio, you obviously have some ideas about where you’re going with a song already, but do you go and jam a little bit, or is it mostly done and you just tweak a little?

Definitely not mostly done, it usually starts pretty bare-boned and you build it up, that’s how I work anyway, and there’s a lot of spontaneous combustions of ideas that spring out of that, and depending on what kind of studio you’re in, it’s more like layering and layering. I think about it like how a director would work, like spitting out ideas. We let a lot of instruments fly and throw everything at the wall, then edit everything down. So yeah, it’s not really a fully formed idea where we’re jamming full band. That never happens on the record either, where everyone is playing at the same time.

What was it like collaborating with Justin Vernon on the album? He helped produce and record it, right?

Yep, it was he and I at first. You know, he’s been a buddy of mine forever and he was always hounding me to record and it was one of those things where I needed time to figure out my life. By the time I got there—and he’s such a great engineer—he made it easy. It was really cool because having that place allowed us to have a lot of collaborators on the record, and each session we’d have a different personnel coup that I could use. But overall, yeah, it was incredible. He’s definitely inspiring.

How do you think your fans are responding the album?

It’s been great. It’s a record that takes a bit to process, there’s a lot of long-form and a lot of space in the record, but I think everyone that’s heard it has been drawn to it. It can be something for all people I think in a weird way. Whether it’s a person who’s really engaging with it, or it can be on while you’re cooking. There are a lot of free-flowing ideas in it.

When you first started playing a decade ago, what was the music scene like in Eau Claire and Minneapolis? How is it different now?

When I was in college it was pre-social media a bit, so it was a lot more secluded in that way, where the music scene in Eau Claire was mostly local. I met Justin and the Megafaun boys immediately and we all played in bands together. And in that way, Minneapolis was a big city and that was almost making it in that era for us. Then we ended up meeting the Love-cars and Halloween, Alaska and had this amazing form so we’d just play back-and-forth with those guys, and I think looking forward to the show, having Halloween Alaska play with us is a really big, awesome, cool thing.

What was it like playing with all of your buddies at the Eaux Claires Festival?

It was incredible. To have all of our scene, a crazy, vast river system of artists everywhere across the states and worldwide, to have them all there in the Chippewa Valley was amazing. The collaborations that were happening and just watching all of our friends doing their thing was incredible. I couldn’t have thought of a better festival.

What was your favorite moment? Was it playing or watching another band?

Playing was incredible. Playing with Justin was pretty fun. There were so many snapshot moments. It was great how well the festival ran for its first year.

What’s next for you guys?

We’ll be touring all the way until the Turf Club show.

Any words for the fans coming to the Turf?

Come see Halloween Alaska for sure. (laughs)

It’s gonna be a blast. It’s gonna be really special.

Interview by Sam Fischer

Aero Flynn
and Halloween, Alaska
w/ DEM YUUT
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Turf Club
7:30p // $12 adv $14 door