“It’s a bit of a riff song. It started with a riff, and I had that Shakespeare line, ‘Oh what country, friends, is this?’ And I was looking at ‘country’ and the concept of country in the American context… and Harold Pinter wrote Mountain Language, an amazing play about the Kurdish people being colonized and only being able to speak the language of their oppressors… Like, you have these people who have a language, but you have to speak the language of capital or whatever’s required of you…”
Aaron Dowdy – band leader of Durham, North Carolina Americana outfit Fust – is talking to me about “Mountain Language” the latest single off of Big Ugly, Fust’s third full-length, which dropped March 7th on Dear Life Records and (like 2021’s Evil Joy and 2023’s Genevieve) serves as an in-depth musical exploration of the complexities of the Southern experience, which he discussed in great depth for Paste this January. The album is the second in a row to be recorded at Adam McDaniel’s West Asheville studio, Drop of Sun, and produced by Alex Farrar, who’s also done records by PHILTHY phriends like Hello Mary, Squirrel Flower, Indigo De Souza, and Snail Mail in the very same room.
Dowdy explains that Evil Joy was done with a home recording situation (but admits that he’s still very happy with the results), and getting into Drop of Sun with Farrar was something totally new for him, and that the process continued to evolve with Big Ugly: “Genevieve was recorded over like three days, fast, and it was our first time in the studio ever as Fust, and I can hear the constraint of time. On this one, we had the most time with any of them, and I can hear the time allowed.”
I’m curious if the process of working with Farrar over these two LPs has altered Dowdy’s approach to music, and he says he likes to balance his traditional methods with those of Farrar: “I love demoing at home, and I like the sound of my demos… I almost wrote songs with intention, like, ‘This is gonna be an Alex song, and this won’t be.’ ‘What’s-His-Name’ and ‘Doghole’ I had written to be almost this strange home recorded sound, as opposed to the density of the songs with Alex, like ‘Spangled.’” However, he tells me, “I just trust him, and play live in the studio, and he just captures that perfectly,” explaining, “I was writing songs that were more fit for that, writing more for playing live.”
Both the concept and practice of playing live are still relatively new for Fust. “I never really set out to be a live musician,” Dowdy tells me, but goes on to say that he’s really enjoyed the experience: “We’ve gotten to explore different versions of the songs, and other things with the songs that can really only happen live.” He also says that being on the road has provided some great opportunities, in addition to playing the music itself: “Going on tour, being with your close friends, meeting people in the industry working so hard to make all of this happen, it’s so much more than just playing the shows. It’s about community.”
Later this week, Fust will set out on the Big Ugly Tour, which will have the band appearing at Johnny Brenda’s next Wednesday, April 2nd, where they’ll be joined by co-headliner and Dear Life Records labelmate Lindsay Reamer, in addition to Dead Gowns, who will be on the road with the band (Dowdy is a big fan of both and strongly recommends checking out the entire evening.) Dowdy also promises that Fust will be playing a lot of the new material, and hopes that fans will enjoy what the group have done with the songs live: “We’re really honed into a very dynamic sound that takes the highs really high and the lows really low.” He says he also hopes that fans can appreciate the bond between band members: “I mean, I’ve obviously never been able to see us, but I’d hope that fans can see some expressions of camaraderie, which people have often told us they can.”
At least one of these comrades of Dowdy should be phamiliar to PHILTHY readers, fiddlist Libby Rodenbough, whose primary band, Mipso, have long been phriends of the publication, and who we saw most recently last September when she handled the roles of both opening act and fiddle player for The Dead Tongues’ most recent stop at MilkBoy. “Libby’s just this genius musician, who came on board as we were developing live,” Dowdy tells me.
However, Dowdy’s relationships with other members have apparently gone back quite a bit further: “A lot of it is over a decade-long time in the North Carolina music scene. I’ve known Frank [Meadows, piano] and Avery [Sullivan, drums] since 2010, so I guess more than a decade [laughs], and Frank and I have been playing together for fifteen years now. Me and Justin [Morris, multi-instrumentalist] went to college together.” Bassist Oliver Child-Lanning apparently came into the fold through Durham’s music scene. “It’s been a long engagement,” Dowdy tells me of the group’s history, musing, “It’s been kind of happy accidents along the way.”
I ask what the future holds for Fust, after their current tour wraps in late April, and Dowdy tells me there’s already new music in the works: “We’ve started to work on the next record, which we have to kind of get on top of… I’m kind of a compulsive writer. I’m kind of just trying to keep the whole thing going.” He also says that there are a number of outtakes that he thinks are really good that he’s hoping to get out in the near future, in addition to one relatively major project that Fust are really excited about: “We’re building a studio in Avery’s backyard! We just broke ground on that!”
*Get your tickets here.
