An inexplicably electric thing happens when creative energies converge. We are talking about the band …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their friend and collaborator Autry Fulbright, of Brooklyn upstarts Midnight Masses. BlackBook sat in on an interview conducted by Autry with Conrad Keely and Jason Reece, the founders and chairmen of Trail Of Dead. These artists have been friends for a number of years, and have teamed up on their respective musical projects. Autry sang on the new The Trail Of Dead album, Century of Self, and Jason is an official member of Autry’s band. They hit the road together beginning late February. Here, not a dreary questioning and recitation of canned answers, a blasé who-what-where Q&A—but an inspired, kind of dialectical discussion between old friends with reverence and stimulated wonder, one creative artist to another.

Are you guys ready to do it? Jason Reece: Yeah, let’s do this.

I’d like to start with having you guys talk a bit about the contrast between when I first met you guys, to what’s going on now. What projects are you working on besides Trail of Dead, and how have the changes in the world as we know it, changed and informed the music? JR: When we first met you, you were living in Atlanta and Conrad was living in Austin, and now you guys are New Yorkers. The simple fact that you guys migrated here, I believe that New York has had an influence on the record. Conrad Keely: I think what’s funny is, when I moved here and we started hanging out, it was Autry that started playing me all of these bands. You turned me onto Dirty Projectors, Yeasayer, the Psychic Ills, even Fleet Foxes. It was at a practice we had one day, and you had been listening to them like, ‘This is the BEST record, you have to listen to this,’ and that was before it even came out.

So, what was a bigger influence, moving to New York, or leaving familiar surroundings? CK: It was all those things. I think being away from Austin was liberating. I’ve traveled a lot throughout my years, and being in Austin for 13 years is the longest I’d ever been in any one place. I always tell people that Austin is a great place to live. But, it’s that sense of comfort and complacency that I think is dangerous when you’re trying to challenge yourself as a writer. There is nothing easy about living in New York, it’s a hustle. You’re trying to make rent or look for a place to live, and you never know, any minute your shit might be out on the sidewalk.

The Trail Of Dead was influenced creatively by moving and migrating, my thought is that Midnight Masses was influenced a lot by loss—the loss of my father. Would you say that change can sometimes be synonymous with loss? CK: Well, you know the song on the record “Halcyon Days” is actually about that. Halcyon days conjures up an image of a great time of your life, those solid days, the years with all your friends, and the peak of your youth. For me, that’s what Austin represents, probably the best years of my life. But you can’t wallow in that. You don’t wanna be that guy in the bar who talks about ‘the good ol’ days’.

Do you reminisce about how your band used to be? Specifically, with how technology has changed music and the industry, with many records being only sold and listened to in this kind of faceless digital format. Completely different from when we first met, when people were buying records and CDs. Do you miss those days? JR: When we went to Brazil in 2001, the only way that kids could get our music is by burning it from Napster. So we’d become accustomed to that mentality from the start. It was commonplace, and we embraced it as ‘well, this is the way it’s going to be.’ CK: I think that when you create a record these days, you have to be self-sacrificing about it; you have to assume that if anybody wants to share this record, they can. If anybody wants to get this record for free, they can. The Internet can make you famous and you don’t ever have to leave your living room. So yes, it does cost money to make records, and it can cost thousands of dollars to make a record sound good, but what is really at stake here? I would rather have a kid in Brazil hear our record. At the time when distribution was done with cassette tapes and vinyl, it would’ve been impossible for those kids to have heard of us.

You’ve been very forward thinking with a lot of business and creative decisions, working with Interscope before, and now having your own label [Richter Scale]. So, what do you feel needs to happen for bands to stay afloat at a time like this in the music industry? JR: Play live. I think it all comes down to the fact that you can’t duplicate that live interaction. Hopefully that will remain sacred.

I remember when I first saw you play. I had never done any sort of hallucinogenic drug, but I can say you guys were equal to any idea of what I had of being completely in a trance, being in awe of a performance. I feel that you guys set the bar very high. So, with so much emphasis on the live show, what draws you to new bands, to bring them on tour and be involved with them? CK: With Midnight Masses, and the bands that you’ve introduced me to, I have to say vocals. I really want to hear lyrics that mean something, and bands that have a strong grasp of harmony I suppose. JR: It’s also the fact that something being said, a sense that something is behind the music. You understand what is being emoted. CK: There are instrumental bands that I think are very passionate: Mogwai, Russian Circles—there’s something they’re doing which is moving and mood-creating. It’s funny that you’d mentioned hallucinogens, because I think that one of the earliest visions I had about what I wanted to do with music, the marriage of the energy of punk rock with the artistic sensibility of ‘70s prog-rock that I grew up with, was a vision that came out of a hallucinogenic trip. I was listening to Vivaldi, having a vision of a web being weaved, which was never repeating but continuously evolving. It was one of those visions that you would only have on drugs. You could spend the rest of your life trying to duplicate in a studio, and you’d always be one step behind that vision. But, in the attempt of trying to achieve that vision, you’re going to go through this musical journey that is hopefully going to give people that experience you just described.

You have made records that are consistently good, but there are many who identified with your music at a certain stage of the band, and are almost aggressively against the fact of you changing and progressing. I’ve lived through these eras and have loved the music through every stage, whether it’s prog-rock, post-rock or whatever. What is your take on people who are unwilling to accept the gradual transition of a band? CK: Well, there are fans who got into us at Worlds Apart, and don’t like the early music… JR: There was a time when we had no records out, and were playing these all-ages hardcore shows, and the hardcore kids hated us because we were too arty. The indie kids who liked the more subtle forms of indie rock thought we were too aggressive and violent. I think we will always be caught in the middle. CK: I always collected every book I could find about the Beatles, because to me they were the ultimate band. One was written by some kid who grew up with the Beatles. He started out right at the beginning, and when he got to Revolver and Rubber Soul, didn’t like them anymore. He didn’t like “Strawberry Fields Forever.” He grew up with “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” And to me, “Strawberry Fields Forever” is the penultimate statement of the Beatles in the studio. Everything but the kitchen sink is in that song, and it’s like, how could anybody who’s a Beatles fan not adore this masterpiece? So, you know, whatever. Get over it.

I’ve been researching the depression-era people in a tragically stricken area who leave to find something better. I think that going on tour could be similar to that, people traveling nomadically trying to find the next place that’s better than the last. When I think of how the world is today, there’s a contrast of hope, with the new president, and despair, with the economy and war. This is the first time you’re touring on this level, in the Obama age of Hope. It’s like, rather than an Okie going to California, you’re an Okie going from dust bowl to dust bowl. CK: I don’t think it’s quite as bad. We’re definitely not going through some horrible agrarian crisis. In fact, I don’t even know that we’ve quite hit rock bottom yet, I think we’ve just heard these warnings that we could hit rock bottom, and we’re still anticipating what it might be.

Do you feel it may affect this tour, or your future recordings? CK: I don’t know. I’m not one of those people who are easily given to optimism. I have a healthy sense of skepticism about pretty much anything that everyone is on a bandwagon of. ‘Everything is good’, for instance. The Obama administration is a great step in the right direction, but he’s taking on a world of responsibility, a mess that is many years in the making. This financial crisis goes back to The Great Depression and people who were trying to repair that, you know, The New Deal and all of that.

I don’t know that anyone is saying that everything is good. CK: No, I hope they’re not. I’ve been asked this question a lot by people who’ve been interviewing us in Europe, you know like, ‘What’s the climate like over there?

We live in a time that is so technologically advanced and people are not really as reverent and as spiritual as they once were. CK: It almost makes sense. There are two extremes right now: you’re either a complete atheist or you’re a religious nutcase. There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground of honest spirituality, which I was raised with. My parents didn’t believe in, but they studied all religions and yet, they were against the authoritarianism of all religions. So they thought that spirituality was a personal quest. I’ve always thought that art and music were expressions of a spirituality, not necessarily a dogma or some kind of doctrine, but rather, without a doctrine or having to adhere to some old belief—that you’re on a kind of quest, an expression of the most profound creative force in the universe. I mean, isn’t that what creativity is?

The problem with the idea of technology is just how spirituality has gone by the wayside in the western world, with people embracing the modern age. The same passion about the arts has changed as well. They don’t have that same reverence. CK: Well, one of the things I am afraid of is isolation. We’ve moved from the extended family to a nuclear family, and now we’ve moved away from that to these little bubbles of everyone on laptops in coffee shops. What’s more depressing than that? The coffee shops used to be the think tanks of enlightenment, what spread thought throughout Europe. Now everyone sits in coffee shops not even talking to one another. There’s different type of social “networking” going on. My hope is that we can set an example in some ways, of at least trying to keep some kind of semblance of a community alive within music. That we’re not going to become these isolationist creatures that are caricatured in the movie Wall-E.