They’ve been together as a group for a little over a year now, but Hurwitz has been recording and writing in NYC since 2004, most often as a solo artist. Since they’ve been together as a full band, they’ve opened up the throttle and are exciting and surprising crowds in NYC and elsewhere with their unique musical ideas and literate lyrical wanderings. Hurwitz has an interesting lyrical voice: his vocal style and word choices are sensitive and occasionally dainty and would seem to say ‘love me, imperfect man,’ but there’s a raw edge there that always seems on the precipice of saying fuck-it and flipping everyone the finger. It’s really quite a tightrope walk. David and I talked about a bit about the making and writing of the record “A Fire to Make Preparations.”

Q: Tell me about some of your “Artillery” players. Two of the most striking things on the record for me are the horn arrangements and the pedal steel that keeps bubbling up. Were these elements a recording afterthought, or were they always integral to your vision for the songs that use them? Who did the horn arrangements and who’s playing? Who played the pedal steel?

A: Alto saxophone was my first instrument. I played in wind ensembles and marching bands as a kid and in high school I started composing for an orchestra. I think that approach and aesthetic never left me. I wrote the arrangements on AFTMP, played alto sax and got friends or acquaintances to record the violins, trumpets, French Horn, cello and tenor sax. The pedal steel player is Rich Gilbert who is a member of Frank Black and The Catholics. I met him on tour in Dallas and he agreed to track some stuff. When we got to the studio he didn’t want to hear the song first, he just hit record and blew our minds on the first take. A similar thing happened with cellist Greg ‘Cosmo’ Heffernan. After finishing a long session of reading and recording parts I had written for him I was like “well there’s this country thing that I don’t have a part for…” and POW! What you hear on the ‘The Beasts Obey’ is his first take.

Q: How does songwriting work in ‘The Boy Bathing’? Did you write everything? What about songs that Jeannie’s singing lead on like ‘The Pilgrim’s Last Stand?’

A: It’s weird recording an album over such a long time. I wrote the songs for AFTMP and even recorded some of them before Dylan (TBB’s current guitarist) and I ever knew each other. I guess you’d say I write all the songs but lately we’ve taken a more collaborative approach when it comes to creating parts and arrangements. Writing ‘The Pilgrim’s Last Stand’ was a blast because I knew that it was going to be sung by Jeannie while I was writing it so it allowed me to step outside of my own voice (head) and have a lot of fun. It’s an interesting exercise for anyone to do. Try writing a letter from someone else’s mouth and see what they say. Try it with your girlfriend or parents…try it with our president.

Q: How long have you been together as a band? Was the genesis in NYC?

A: Man, having a band in NYC ain’t easy. I started out solo which was hard as shit but I later found out that that’s pretty much as easy as it gets. Things built up slowly. It started with me and Jeannie and then after about a year we had a band with bass and drums and keyboards and everything, then about a year later everyone graduated and moved out of New York for good so it was back to me and Jeannie and DPM was the only one still around. So this led to that, Jeannie relearned the bass (great job girl!!), Dylan moved to the city and then the greatest drummer on earth, Matt Bogdanow, threw his hat in the ring. We’ve been going strong in this lineup for over a year now.

Q: Hey, I’ve been wracking my brain ever since I heard that guitar line at the end of ‘The Leaves.’ I’m too dense to figure it out, but what is that a quote of? It seems like something in the classical realm, or something that’s Public domain…

A: Hah, good ear, you’re right! It’s Stephen Foster’s ‘Beautiful Dreamer’. Most people probably remember it from the Bugs Bunny episode when Bugs is rocking Elmer Fudd to sleep in a cradle and singing it to him. Stephen Foster is one of my biggest influences. He was called the first American pop-song writer penning ‘Camptown Races’, ‘Oh! Susanna’ and (in a weird TBB coincidence) ‘Jeannie With the Light Brown Hair’. He also wrote a dirge called ‘Every Night When the Sun Goes Down’ which TBB has covered from time to time.

Q: One of my favorite cuts on the record is the ambitious and asymmetrical ‘Razorblades’. What can you tell me about how that one happened?

A: Asymmetry is a good word for that song. The structure is incongruent and the relationship of the two characters is in perpetual imbalance. The chorus’ are in time but as soon as they build momentum the song returns to the verse which (as far as I can tell) has no time signature. I just wanted to create a world around the story of the song that was as magical and convincing as the events that inspired it. This approach led to hyper-extended metaphors, the ‘Singing Pirate’ interlude and other extremes but, to be honest, I need something to hit me hard these days. I need a song to take me as far as I think it can possibly take me, then somehow go farther. I’m kind of a junkie that way but it’s the only time I feel like I’ve done my job and can calm down.