Splendid: Hi Greg. I was just asking about your upcoming tour.

Greg Thomas: We're gonna do a week and a half in the Southeast and the Midwest. And then I think Mark's gonna possibly try and do a solo West Coast tour, probably California -- I don't know how far North he'll get -- in August, maybe.

Splendid: So how did you get stuck doing the booking?

Greg Thomas: Well, I guess the real answer dates back to me being unemployed and having the time.

Splendid: I've talked to some musicians who think that's absolutely the worst part of the job.

Greg Thomas: Yeah. I mean, sometimes I like it, but uh, it's a bit of a challenge. And if you succeed, it's a good thing. But yeah, it's definitely not the most fun thing to do.

Splendid: Have you ever caught any flack from the rest of the band for booking someplace kinda shady?

Greg Thomas: ("Has anyone ever given me any flack for bad shows?" he asks his bandmates.) Yeah, probably. There's always one that we probably regret doing.

Splendid: Right. Well, thanks for the tour info. Should I talk to Mark for the duration of this?

Greg Thomas: Probably. He has all the good answers. I'll give him back to you.

Mark Janka: Hello.

Splendid: Hi again. So, back to the beginning -- can you give us a quick rundown of the Lesser Bird history?

Mark Janka: Sure. Let's see. I had a bunch of songs that were kind of acoustic-y and quiet in nature. And I would get together with friends who would help me play them out. I usually would open for Melochrome -- that's a fellow, Pramod Tummala, who ran our first label, Loose Thread Recordings. Sorta just a hodgepodge of people. Tim and Greg were living elsewhere at the time and then eventually we all settled back in Chicago and started a core. And then we made a record for Loose Thread and then an EP after that, both for Loose Thread. The record was recorded by a friend of ours, Justin Mayer, and then for the EP we hooked up with Barry Phipps. And we had a good time and thought it was great fun so we used Barry again for the second full-length record, the one that we just put out that's on Contraphonic.

Splendid: With your first two releases, you were commonly classified as an alt-country band. Those influences seem a lot less noticeable to me with String of Bees. How did that shift come about?

Mark Janka: I think part of it is I learned to play my guitar differently. I learned how to do finger style stuff, so that appears a little bit more on this record. Kinda like, alternating bass line and what they call dead-thumb playing. And then I went through a phase where I was really into these jazz chords. It's hard to fit those into some alt-country songs. So that's where, like, "Mermaid on the Boulevard" came from, just from wanting to play major sevenths and major sixths and stuff like that.

Splendid: I would say that String of Bees is a lot quieter. A little bit more organic than your previous albums. Is that part of the new style you were trying out?

Mark Janka: We've always been interested in trying to have an organic, rootsy -- we try to be more cool than rootsy -- really, we've been interested in having a rootsy, kind of folky sound. I think maybe we just did a better job of achieving it on this record than we have in the past. I mean, we still like the funny instruments, like the theremin or whatever on the EP, but I think on this one we just found other ways to make those funny noises. We'd have Tim wave a cymbal in front of a microphone or play hammer dulcimer in some kind of backward -- how can I say this? -- savant style.

Splendid: The connection with your producer, Barry Phipps -- how did you hook up with him?

Mark Janka: Actually, he's also a DJ. So he has a DJ company; that's kind of his real bread and butter. And I got married a couple of years ago and he was our DJ. We were over at his house arranging our little wedding plans and he had a theremin in the corner and I was like, "Hey, is that a theremin?" And he said, "Why, yes it is. Would you like to hear it?" And it kind of went from there. He had done a lot of engineering stuff but he was learning ProTools at the time and he let us be his guinea pig with the EP. So we came in and he gave us an affordable break in terms of cost of recording and he sort of learned on us, on our songs.

Splendid: And you obviously were happy with him because you keep going back.

Mark Janka: Yeah. And he's great to work with and he's real friendly and he's got a lot of good ideas. And he kinda gets what we're going after, I think.

Splendid: You use a pretty wide variety of instruments in your recording process. I'm kind of wondering how that evolves with the songwriting.

Mark Janka: Most of the songs start as just a guitar/vocal, chords and words kinda thing, although we're getting away from that a little bit. The last record is a little less that way, but essentially all the instrumentation comes from Tim Joyce being able to play anything you put in his lap.

Splendid: So Tim's sort of the wizard of instrumentation?

Mark Janka: Yeah. He's the man behind the curtain. He just has a knack. He has a musical nature, y'know? So if you give him an accordion, he'll be able to make it sound good. He's not gonna be the maestro on the accordion, but if you were looking for a little line here or something to fill in the spaces, he can figure it out.

Splendid: And you also added some string parts on this album. That's a new addition, isn't it?

Mark Janka: Yes, it is.

Splendid: So what made you decide to go that direction?

Mark Janka: Well, hanging out at Barry's North Branch Studio between when the EP and the LP came out, we just met some players. We were working with this woman, her name is Heather Tobin -- she's from LA but used to live in Chicago. She was working on some demos here that she had some string sections on. And we just thought, "Wow, what fun, and what a neat thing to put on a record." Plus we had another little project we were working on called Holiday Music where we were able to make a little money off of licensing a song to be used in a commercial that nobody heard. It was a radio commercial for Budweiser. I don't know if it actually even ever happened. But we could better afford to pay three people -- four people -- to sit in a room and play their instruments for a while and have Max Crawford arrange string sections for it and everything.

Splendid: The string parts sound great. They give the album a slightly more epic feel. But uh, you guys did a Budweiser radio commercial?

Mark Janka: Barry also, in his little bag of tricks...we started this in his apartment. We've done three now. In the winter, he'd invite people over to record songs. But you couldn't come with a song that was finished, that was part of the deal. You sorta had to have an idea that he would record to ProTools which could be chopped up and flipped around and whatever he wanted to do. So we would just burn a couple hundred copies of these little records that we would make. It wasn't just us and Barry. It was any musician that we knew, we could pull in. I think the last record had, like, twenty people play on it or something. Never everybody at the same time. It was kind of just...you'd record a part and come back a week later and it was this huge thing with a vibraphone and bass clarinet and stuff. And just through a friend who works at an advertising agency, part of one of the songs was used in this Bud Light commercial. We heard the commercial, but I don't know if it ever actually made it onto the air or anything. So we got paid a little bit for them using that.

Splendid: So that wasn't a Lesser Birds project? That was just something that you did on the side?

Mark Janka: Right.

Splendid: Got it. 'Cause somehow I can't imagine Lesser Birds selling Budweiser or Bud Light or whatever it was.

Mark Janka: Yeah. I don't think they would sell much beer with one of our songs.

Splendid: It took you guys quite a while to release this album. You were talking about it on your web site as long ago as November 2002. Why was it such a long process for you? Or was it a long process?

Mark Janka: It was. We had songs, but we didn't really have a -- I wanna say a narrative thread, but it's not really -- we didn't have a gluey nature between the songs. We sort of started recording some and we had some that were louder 'cause we thought maybe we should put in some things that were more rocky that sort of break it up a little bit. And we started doing some recording and then went to mix them and we just felt that we weren't putting forth our best effort. We didn't have what we wanted. We ended up using some of the songs. I think they're kind of okay. But we used them on a split EP with Jarred Grabb. The two rock songs went to that. Jared Grabb is this guy from Peoria who runs this label called Thinker Thought Records. He also did a compilation and one of the other songs that was kinda more of a poppy, kinda jolly little ditty, ended up on that. We had to record four or five songs, and then realize that it wasn't what we were looking for, before we found a sound, a connective sound.

Splendid: It does seem very cohesive.

Mark Janka: Yeah, that was a big part of it. We would line the songs up and be like, these don't go together. This is not working as a record.

Splendid: You've elicited comparisons throughout your career to a pretty wide range of artists -- Wilco, for one, and then I heard some Iron and Wine on this album. Do you want to set the record straight at all? Where would you guys classify yourself?

Mark Janka: That's a good question. Let me start with this: We get compared to The Weakerthans all the time. And we have no idea...actually, I downloaded some Weakerthans songs the other day. And I guess I can kind of see it. I can kind of see where people are coming from with the vocal quality and his lyrical style. Who do we want to sound like? I like Iron and Wine, although we recorded this stuff before we heard those recordings. Magnetic Fields we've liked a lot. I like 69 Love Songs. Tim was a Magnetic Fields fan well before me and -- well, I'm putting words in his mouth -- but I think he's more of a fan of the previous stuff. I guess I could say Uncle Tupelo and maybe even Wilco. I don't know. I kind of feel like the Replacements, even though it doesn't come through in the sound, I think, the characters in the songs. American Music Club, I suppose. And then with the finger style stuff, y'know, all those guys: Mississippi John Hurt, Fred McDowell, probably throw John Fahey in there while we're at it.

Splendid: I noticed that a lot of the reviews of String of Bees have relied heavily on metaphor to describe the album's effect. Everything from "a nap in a warm blanket" to "a warm cup of cocoa on a cold day". Your label's website describes it as similar to "the feeling of holding the hand of your first love". I wonder if you have a theory as to why your music elicits such, I guess, poetic responses?

Mark Janka: Um, I don't know. A lot of the reviews have been calling it romantic, which I guess is kind of true. I guess there are love songs on there, sort of. But I was surprised to see that once, and then to see it two or three more times. I was like, "Wow!" It seemed to be pitched as this lovey-dovey, light-some-candles-and-drink-some-wine-with-your-baby sorta thing. I was surprised by it, but I guess I can understand it a little bit. I don't know. I think it's maybe because the record's quiet and there is some emphasis on the words. They sort of figure into the being of the song a little more than, say, The Strokes or something. I don't know. And maybe that's why people sort of respond to it by focusing on the poetic side of it. I think it's probably the fact that it's a quiet record, people go to that first.

Splendid: A lot of the songs on this album -- but also on your previous albums -- deal with outsiders and wallflowers and loners. I'm just wondering if that's autobiographical or where those characters come from.

Mark Janka: Parts of it are autobiographical. Although some of it is from stories that I hear about my friends. The stories are sort of changed to be a little tighter, to be a tighter story and to make sure the front fits the end and stuff like that. But I just like those characters, I find 'em appealing. I think that's sort of a folky thing: these characters that are sort of present as witness but aren't necessarily the center of action all the time.

Splendid: Can you talk about "Josephine" a little bit? Where did she come from?

Mark Janka: Josephine. It's funny, 'cause I have a friend who, when we would play it, felt it was about her, and I really didn't have that in mind when I was writing it. Well, I have a fondness for Philadelphia and I like songs where there's either travelling or -- actually, I kind of prefer songs where there's the hope of travelling or the planning of it, 'cause it's more interesting to me than the actual happening of it. And I don't know. I'd written a few of these songs, some of which didn't appear on the record, that tried to have this small town feel. There's a Richard Thompson song called "Small Town Romance" that I admire. It just has this feel of people knowing each other's business and how that affects a person's private relationship. How much of it can be private? And how it can support certain expectations and it can make the people involved want to subvert them, and how do you deal with that?

Splendid: I was actually going to ask you about small towns. It doesn't seem like your music should come out of Chicago. You seem more tailored for a small town, maybe by the sea. So how does Chicago play into your music or affect it one way or another?

Mark Janka: I think Chicago is a presence in the songs even when it's not there. Someone pointed out to me -- actually, I think it was Barry -- it was in a little session we were doing; there was more than one song dealing with California. I've really only been there once. And I kind of work under this theory that if you live in Chicago you have this love/hate relationship with California because it's sunny and beautiful. Warm, or whatever. But a lot of Chicagoans, they're dedicated to their city, but you can't help but look across the continent and wonder what's going on over there. Chicago is also to me a city of neighborhoods. In a way, it's got its own small town feel, it's just that they're all smashed together and stacked on top of each other.

Splendid: You mentioned that you like to travel. Is there anyplace that you've sort of been struck, "Wow, this is the place that our music belongs to."

Mark Janka: Well, I've only been to Athens, GA for about eight hours and that place kind of feels like it. I guess I've never really thought about it until you brought it up, but that's the first thing that comes to mind.

Splendid: For any particular reason?

Mark Janka: We played a show in Athens and we just walked around and it felt like the kind of a place where...I don't know, because it's this liberal college town in the South, it sorta has this isolated -- or at least, my impression, being there for eight hours -- it has this little island feel to it. It just seems kind of separated from what's around it, and therefore the stuff that's in it is a little more connected.

Splendid: And that's how you would characterize your music, then, by comparison? Kind of self-contained?

Mark Janka: Yeah, I guess that's fair. Although I do feel like we draw influences from lots of places. But in terms of "do we fit in with the surroundings?" Yeah maybe. I guess that's pretty accurate. We do have a tough time being the quiet band on the bill all the time around here.

Splendid: Is Chicago a pretty loud town, as far as music?

Mark Janka: Yeah, I mean there are bands that do stuff that's kind of quieter. Fruit Bats come to mind.

Splendid: There's kind of a tongue-in-cheek humor to some of your earlier songs -- "When You're a Pretty Girl" -- comes to mind. And that's something that isn't really noticeable in String of Bees. Or maybe I missed it; I don't know. Is it fair to characterize this album as more serious, lyrically?

Mark Janka: Yeah. There aren't any songs that are kind of jokey. There might be a line or two, but I don't know... Usually, I think it serves a song -- even a serious song -- to have one joke in there. Or just a phrase or a line that could be read as humorous. In those Wes Anderson movies, he talks about how a lot of times the jokes have a bad side to them. He kind of tries to highlight those in his movies. Maybe that's how some of those songs work.

Splendid: "Into Pieces", about the R&B singer, kills me! ("If I could stir the blood in your veins / Then maybe you'd take me to bed / And we'd make love like all the R&B singers do / And we would do it just like R&B singers do", from It Isn't the Fall.)

Mark Janka: We almost didn't put that song on there because it was just such a weird little bit. And then the R. Kelly -- one of my fellow Chicagoans -- story broke right when we were sending that out to review. So everybody always thought it was about R. Kelly, although it wasn't. Except for Barry, he thought it was about Al Green. I guess there's some story about Al Green having a woman cover him in oatmeal or something in a bathtub. I don't know. Some kind of erotic scene that has to do with oatmeal. That would be a good song right there. We should work on that one.

Splendid: I'll look for it on your next EP. About your name: where did you pick up Lesser Birds of Paradise? How did the name come about?

Mark Janka: I don't know. We were trying to come up with names and I saw it in a little poem, I don't even know where it came from, I think it was something I'd seen online. The line was something about "The Lesser Bird of Paradise hears but can't sing," which I thought of as being a fan of music and not really participating in it. And then it just turned out that birds are a lot of fun to play with in terms of images and lines. The Lesser Bird of Paradise actually has this really neat mythology that surrounds it. It was believed at one time that it didn't have feet, it would just stay in the air all the time. It kind of reminds me of that Kinks song about Johnny Thunder, because they thought that it would just get its nutrients from the air, and drink water, rainwater. And then, I don't know, it's fun: birds and bees.

Splendid: I was just reading about the band Shearwater, the musical project of Jonathan Meiburg, who's also in Okkervil River. And he's an intense bird enthusiast, named the band after his favorite bird and everything. Do you have any similarly obsessed bird-watchers in your group?

Mark Janka: We're all kind of casual bird-watchers. But I gotta say, that was sort of the result of being in a band called the Lesser Birds of Paradise than the other way around. Although we do enjoy all-bird bills. We got to play with a couple bands from Champagne: The Owls, The Buzzards.

Splendid: That's cool. So... Tim has gained some notoriety for his efforts at the 2005 International Beard and Mustache Championships.

Mark Janka: You should see it now! We were just talking about it on the way over here. In fact, you should give him some words of encouragement 'cause he was thinking about -- he just wasn't really pleased with the way things are working out so he's talking about letting it go. (Tim can be heard in the background laughing and saying, "They're talking about my beard!") So when you talk to him, y'know: every artist at a certain point in their development, they get a little self-conscious, so a few words of encouragement could really help.

Splendid: This time it's about the beard, not the music. 2005 is a long way off though. I don't know.

Mark Janka: Yeah. Well. I don't know what the strategy is, though. I don't know if you start designing your look ahead of time and work with it and live with it and see if it's what you want. Or if you just grow as much facial hair as possible and then sort of sculpt it down prior to the competition. I don't know how that works.

Splendid: Well, maybe I should talk to Tim real quick.

Mark Janka: Okay, here he is.

Tim Joyce: Hello. This is like Thanksgiving -- the passing-around of the phone.

Splendid: Yeah, totally. So tell me about your beard.

Tim Joyce: My beard is...I was having a rough time today. It's not coming in on the sides quite the way I'd hoped. That's all right, though.

Splendid: How long have you been growing it?

Tim Joyce: I think since October, maybe. Or July. I can't even remember.

Splendid: That's about the time you start getting sick of it.

Tim Joyce: Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna make it through the summer.

Splendid: Well, when is the actual competition?

Tim Joyce: It's October of 2005. So that's a little ways away. I don't know if I'm gonna make it. We'll have to see.

Splendid: How did you decide to start this little project initially?

Tim Joyce: I don't know. Somebody sent me a photo or a web link and I was like, "Wow!" This is the easiest competition to enter because basically it's doing nothing. The whole point is the less you do, the better off you are. So I figured I was a shoo-in for that.

Splendid: Well, I think it's a great selling point for the band, so keep it up. If you win the National Beard and Mustache Championship you guys will be famous for sure.

Tim Joyce: I know. It's international. So the other thing is, I don't know if I want to make my two-year goal to grow a giant beard and hang out with a bunch of German guys with giant beards. I'm not sure if that's the right thing for me to do in the short term. But we'll see. By mid-July I'll know for sure.

Splendid: Well, good luck with that. I guess I'll finish up with Mark now.

Mark Janka: Hello.

Splendid: Hi again. Okay, so, to wrap up, are there any questions that I missed? Anything I should have asked you that I didn't?

Mark Janka: No, I think it went well. We're really afraid of interviews because a while back we had one where the guy just kept asking us why we didn't rock. We couldn't answer that. And then he just kept asking us, like three times, 'So, you guys don't rock, right?' It's very difficult.

Splendid: That's such a funny question to ask someone.

Mark Janka: You should ask it to the next quiet band you interview. Y'know, to see what they do. If they give a good answer, could you e-mail it to us so we can repeat it?