On Thursday, Conor Oberst will complete his latest attempt to shake up the routines that develop when you’ve been making music for over 30 years. Every week throughout March and April, the prolific, Omaha-born songwriter assembled a new band, spent four days rehearsing with them, and then performed a distinct, career-spanning show with a set list filled with his lesser-known songs. Billed as “Conor Oberst and Friends,” the run was split into two locations: The first four installments happened at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, while the following New York appearances took place at the Bowery Ballroom.
Oberst estimates he’s written about 500 songs in his lifetime, and at these eight shows, he’s played over 100 of them, plus a smattering of covers by the likes of the Replacements and Daniel Johnston. He’s had to relearn tracks he’s released both under his own name and as Bright Eyes, his pseudonymous solo endeavor that developed into a group with Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. Some of his albums got more love than others (lots of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and his self-titled, full-length album from 2008; not so much Cassadaga or anything from Desaparecidos, unfortunately). Each assembled band had its own musical director and its own flavor, from the turn-of-the-millennium New York cool of Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to the rootsy approach of James Felice of the Felice Brothers, to the ramshackle, early Saddle Creek vibes of Maria Taylor of Azure Ray—all of which correlate to a sonic element of Oberst’s music.
Oberst has been a key influence on younger artists including Hurray for the Riff Raff, Waxahatchee, and Phoebe Bridgers, his Better Oblivion Community Center partner who joined him for three songs at the third Los Angeles date. In turn, those artists’ fans have started discovering Oberst’s music, and these residencies were their first chance to see him attempt some of these rarer songs live.
Just before the last Conor Oberst and Friends show, The Ringer spoke to him about how the whole thing came together and how he feels now that it’s almost done. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Why did you decide to do this now?
This guy Eric [Dimenstein], who’s been my booking agent for like 20 years, we’ve on and off talked about the idea, but the timing was never right. There’s always a record or something else to do. So, yeah, it kind of worked out timing-wise. And New York and L.A. are the most obvious spots, but they’re also two places where I have lived in my life and have a lot of friends, so there’s a lot of musicians and people to draw from, as far as the bands.
Why did this idea intrigue you in the first place?
It was honestly just trying something new. Sometimes when you go on tour, it’s great and you get really close with the people you’re with, but after a while, it becomes routine, unfortunately. I’m not really in a jam band, so you end up doing similar sets. You might change a couple songs a night, but for the most part, once you get the show up and running, that’s the show and that’s what you present in every town you go to. It seemed fun to just change that dynamic, where it’s just once a week, but every week I don’t really know what’s going to happen. That’s exciting because I’ve been doing this a long time. And then it’s just a chance to revisit a lot of past material and random songs I haven’t played in a long time.
Each week, one of the people in the band acted as the musical director and helped pick the songs and organize the band. Even with Bright Eyes, besides Mike and Nate, we always had different people on tour with us, so I’m used to playing with a lot of different people, but I’m not used to doing it so consecutively and quickly. It’s the closest I feel like I’ve had to a real job for a long time. Because it’s rehearse Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, play the show Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday are my days off. But even those days, I have to try and listen to the next week’s songs and remember stuff.
Are the bands practicing together beforehand without you, or is it really that week when you all start playing together for the first time?
Maybe some of them were practicing on their own, but no, not really. Another thing was, I didn’t want any songs to repeat in New York or L.A. The ones we played in L.A., we could play in New York, but that was the rule: For the city, don’t repeat any songs. That’s a lot of songs. Once I figured out who was going to be the band leader for all the weeks, we had to get square with the set list because some people wanted to do the same song.
Some negotiating had to happen.
Yeah, exactly. But I’m a natural-born diplomat, so it’s fine.
Were there songs that they would pitch that you were particularly excited about revisiting?
Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs was last week. We made the Digital Ash [in a Digital Urn] record, and he was in the band for that tour. So I knew we were going to do a bunch of those songs, or I assumed that would be the case. He picked this song “True Blue,” which I wrote for my nephew when he was, like, 4 years old. It’s just the weirdest song for Nick to pick. He’s like a vampire, so I just think he’s going to pick the darkest ones, but he picked this. It just made me laugh. I was like, “You really want to do that one?” So there was stuff like that along the way that was surprising.
Were there songs that you had never played live that came up?
I don’t know about that, but there’s definitely ones where it had been years [since I had revisited them]. There were some covers that were brand new to me. I’m pretty sure I played all the songs of mine at some point in my life, but like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I don’t have the greatest memory.
Were there any songs where you were like, “I’m not doing that one?”
I really shied away from the ones that I’ve played so much, like “First Day of My Life” and “Lua.” Those didn’t feel as exciting. I guess we did play “First Day” on Maria’s week. [Editor’s note: He also played “Lua” that night as a duet with Phoebe Bridgers.] I was definitely leaning a little bit away from the ones that we’ve done in the last couple years.
Some of these songs are over 20 years old. When you revisit a song like that, do you still relate to the person who wrote it?
To be honest, sometimes not really at all. But I do have memories connected with them. There’s this song that we’ve actually played quite a bit over the years called “Falling Out of Love at This Volume,” which is on the very first Bright Eyes record, and I was literally 15 years old when I wrote it. So yeah, I’m not at all the same person, but I do connect it with the memories of that time in my life. It’s not like doing a cover song. There’s an aspect of it I can relate to, but it’s a very distant memory. What I was feeling when I wrote it or whatever, that’s long gone.
I’ve been a journalist for a while, and sometimes I’ll read articles I wrote when I was just starting, and I’m like, “What was that guy thinking?” And sometimes I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s pretty smart, kid. Good job.”
Right. This is actually weirdly connected to this whole thing in a way, which is Bright Eyes did this whole set of EPs that were companion pieces for all the records. I don’t know why I put myself through these fucking challenges, but we rerecorded a bunch of our old songs in new ways. I was very particular about which ones I wanted to sing, and they were the ones obviously that I still felt held up and that I felt some connection to, emotionally or mentally. You want that to be there or else it can feel like you’re just doing karaoke or something.
Why do you put yourself through these complicated challenges?
It’s like when people get older and they want to stave off early-onset dementia so they do a lot of crossword puzzles or something. I do shit like this, try to keep what brain cells I have left active.
Have the shows felt different between L.A. and New York?
New York, this has been really a real trip down memory lane because I lived in the East Village. I paid rent in New York for like 13 years, although I was on tour a lot of that time and in Omaha and stuff. I had probably five different apartments over the years, but they were all in the East Village. And now I got this apartment sublet thing for the month, so I’m really deep in. Obviously, some things have changed, but there’s ghosts everywhere. I can walk from the apartment to the practice space to the Bowery [Ballroom]. I don’t know if I’ve even gotten in a car here at all. It’s a trip because I have things I had forgotten about.
I still live in L.A., and there we were just rehearsing at my house. So that was very comfortable and cool, but it was a little closer to my actual current life.
As far as crowds and stuff, I don’t know, I don’t think they’re that different. All the crowds have been super gracious and nice and excited. We’ve made a point of not letting people know ahead of time what was up each week. Of course there are some diehards that are trying to go to every show, but a lot of people, they just pick the show and that’s what they got. I hope they had a good time though. I’m sure there’s some people that are like, “Aww, I wish I would’ve gone to that week.” But that’s the nature of the experiment.
For these shows, are you reinterpreting songs in a different way than how you recorded them?
Not really vastly reinterpreting, but we’ve extended a lot of parts. Like Miwi [La Lupa]’s week, we had a four-piece horn section, so there were parts that we extended to make room for that. Nick’s week, Lee Ranaldo [of Sonic Youth] was in the band, so you’ve got to make some time for him to solo and stuff. And then Nate Walcott’s week, which was the second week in L.A., was with Jeff Parker, the guitar player. It was all jazz musicians. I would say that week was the furthest from the way I would normally perform a song.
How do you feel about playing live these days?
You and me and everyone that follows music knows that it’s much harder to make a living off of record sales, so playing live is part of the job in that sense. I don’t have kids, but the guys in my band have kids and bills. It’s like, you got to keep making money. That’s the unromantic part about it, but there is truth to that. But I still like playing live. Honestly, I feel like when you’re on tour, you’re getting paid for all the bullshit you have to do, like check into the hotels and go to the airport and get on the bus and find food and do this and whatever. Actually being onstage performing music, for the most part, not always, that’s the best part of the day. Unless the show is total trash.
Has this experience made you more or less excited to go on tour?
It’s been so interesting and different, just because that stuff I’m talking about is gone. I don’t have to get on a bus or a plane or a hotel, but I have to rehearse all the time. The only thing I’ve been stressing on is just my voice holding up. People think, Well, it’s once a week; that should be easy. But the truth is, if you’re on tour, you’re singing maybe two hours a day. I’m singing eight hours a day for four days in a row [at rehearsals] and then doing the show. So I’ve been trying to be careful. I barely smoked cigarettes for these past couple months. I’m trying my best. Lots of tea, lots of Throat Coat, lots of Halls, whatever, all the tricks. From a physical standpoint, that’s the biggest difference. But on the other hand, you don’t have all the stress of travel. You’re in the same city and with your friends, so it’s great.
Would you ever do this again?
I don’t know. I guess it depends how long I live. Maybe it’ll sound fun in five years or something. One of our guitar techs and good friends, even when we’re having a shitty day, he’s like, “Beats sweeping the floor.” I’m like, “That’s true.” It has been a lot of work. I knew it was going to be a lot, but it’s been more than I thought it would be. I would have to be very rejuvenated to want to do this thing again.
Eric Ducker is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.
