Nashville singer/songwriter/poet David Berman has been to hell and back and lived to sing the tale. The former University of Massachusetts student and mastermind behind the Silver Jews has come out the other side of a series of health issues and personal traumas—depression, chemical addiction, debilitating poor eyesight, the suicides of two friends, and a suicide attempt of his own—to release his sixth album, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea.
His latest Drag City Records release is another serving of shambling, literate, country-tinged rock, filled with tales of curious characters and odd events, delivered in Berman's signature baritone. The band Silver Jews has always had a loose, thrown-together feel, and has in fact been comprised of Berman and a revolving cast of musicians, including the likes of Pavement's Stephen Malkmus, Bob Nastanovich and Steve West, Chicago artist/producer Rian Murphy and local guitar slinger and New Radiant Storm King founder Peyton Pinkerton.
Berman took time from rehearsals for his impending tour—which includes a stop at the Iron Horse with local favorite Mike Flood opening—to discuss Chet Atkins, Teddy Roosevelt and Babar with the Advocate.
After spending time in Charlottesville at the University of Virginia, in New York City, and finally at the University of Massachusetts as a student and teacher, Berman moved to Tennessee to live and work. In Nashville, he found a city not only conducive to his work as a (critically acclaimed) poet, but to songwriting as well. "There are statues around the city of Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley. When you're just out running errands, you're constantly reminded of countrypolitan production values," Berman says. "It's nice to live in a town where there is a hall of fame for songwriters. They may not know your name, but they respect what you do."
Berman is also a survivor of the '90s college rock boom. He chugs along while most of his old contemporaries' bands are no longer extant, or are reforming to cash in on the recent nostalgia for that fertile era. "I never really ventured out there during what would have been my early live career," says Berman. "If I'm a survivor, it's only because I was hiding until I was sure the shooting had stopped." In fact, it has only been in the last few years, after having compiled a deep back catalogue of tales of oddball outsiders and loves lost—beginning with his and Malkmus' experiments leaving songs on friends' answering machines—that the Silver Jews have taken to the road. "I never toured until 2005," says Berman. "Never even played a single show longer than 15 minutes."
After battling his demons and personal issues, including the recent cornea transplant that saved his vision, Berman is trying to espouse a much sunnier outlook on life.
Can we trust that this new optimistic attitude is reality, or is it just wishful thinking? "Yes, it's real," says Berman. "You can't afford to be pessimistic when you're older, or you'll die."
Yet there remains a sense of foreboding on Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. Berman has stated that the album is allegorical, portending an unforeseen, inconceivable reality. He samples a 1913 Teddy Roosevelt speech in which Roosevelt implores a group of young men—some of whom ultimately went on to lose their lives in the impending war—to go forth and prosper.
When asked what this future scenario or existence might look or feel like, Berman answers, "Either some disruption powerful enough to break the corporate capture of government and stoppage of the technological log fume, or total submission to more of the oncoming."
Another case in point is the striking cover for Lookout. The painting is part of a series by Australian artist Stephen Bush, who, every year or so, paints the same scene from memory, using one tube of white paint and one tube of black paint. The image features cartoon elephants on a rock formation near the ocean. "It's called 'The Lure of Paris,' and if you've read Babar, you can see he is playing with the theme of colonialism," says Berman. "Perhaps Babar is the colonized subject magnetized to its home-team oppressor. It's a faux-epic scene. Cuter than human heroes and more lovable. Is it pretend danger? It doesn't feel like it. It feels real. Realer than the object in danger, even."
Impending societal doom or no, Berman, ever the renaissance man, is looking forward: "I have a book of drawings [coming out] next year called The Portable February. I just bought the software Final Draft so I can practice writing screenplays. There's a lot that could happen."
Berman says he is also greatly looking forward to returning to Western Massachusetts. When asked what makes him sentimental about the area, he responds: "[UMass professor and poet] James Tate, Emily Dickinson, [local musician] Zeke Fiddler, Calvin Coolidge."
As for the current state of music, Berman is likewise enthusiastic. "I like all of it," he says. "It's an unreasonable opinion. No one agrees with me on this. But I like to stake out on my own. Optimistically."
Silver Jews play the Iron Horse Sept. 4 at 8:30 p.m. Mike Flood opens.
