Luke Hawley
I would not have written this record if we still, if I still lived in St. Paul, like if I still lived in an in an urban urban city, even in like, I don't know, like not even a big city. There's something about all living on the same block and thinking about community and, yeah, that led to the the bulk of his record in a lot of ways. Like we see each other basically every day. We could certainly we could see each other every day if we wanted to.
Laremy De Vries
I mean Christian works for me. Jake runs a bar in my building, and these are things that happened, you know, after being bandmates. So, if anything has happened, our relationships have gotten even more muddled. It's so literal. For us. I mean, things like, you know, it's hard as hell to love your neighbor, is, like, an actual, like, true thing about, I mean, jeez, it could be any of us talking about the other.
Luke Hawley
Jake lives across the street, and occasionally one of us is like, "He should probably mow his lawn." And, you know, I mean, that's it, like, part of loving your neighbor is like letting them be who they're going to be, which is, you know, somebody who doesn't mow their lawn as often as somebody else might want to. The only reason I mow with mine all the time is because we have a rider and my six-year-old really likes to ride on it. So, that's it There are references on here too. There wouldn't have come up. I mean, there's a reference on one track about pink and teal of harvest dust. I don't know that that was something that was on my radar before I moved to a small town in Iowa. So, yeah?
Laremy De Vries
So, anyway, we're walking past the Sioux Center Public Library. A beautiful... Yeah.
Sometimes I show up at the Fruited Plain, and I think I have three things to ask Laremy about, and I can only remember one by the time I get there. And by the time I've left, we've covered about a dozen. Like, just running into people is, you know, I mean that's a big part of it.
Luke Hawley
Well, that's because they burned down last one. So, I mean, there's a story about fireworks in the book return. This right?
Laremy De Vries
Yeah. That's the story.
Luke Hawley
Yeah. That's the whole story. End of story.
Laremy De Vries
And it was so the library burned down and then, you know, we got a beautiful library.
Mark Munger
Prairie style?
Laremy De Vries
Yeah, indeed. Anyway, it's nice. Our kids spent lots of time there. Jake's house, the bass player.
Luke Hawley
You can see Larry's house from here. It's, there's one on the corner two, three, and then there's a little like half street, and then it's right across that.
Laremy De Vries
We keep walking. We keep walking with To this... right over here next door to Kramer is Jeremy Perego, who is featured on saxophone on "Mother Mary."
Luke Hawley
Yeah, that's actually maybe the best example. Like, there's one guy in the neighborhood that plays saxophone, and we're like, "Where can we put him on the record?" I mean, it was like how do you get everybody? That's I think that's one of the things that's different about this one than the last couple, like we wanted to think about this as a communal record, like Ruralists and Friends.
Laremy De Vries
So this is Luke's house.
Luke Hawley
This is me right here.
Laremy De Vries
How long have we been walking? I don't know. A couple of minutes?
Luke Hawley
Yeah.
Laremy De Vries
But there's the barn in which we recorded. There's a lot of gang vocals on, like, "People are People Too." Every year for Labor Day,
Luke Hawley
Nope, Memorial Day.
Laremy De Vries
Sorry, I get them mixed up. We got a big barbecue. Everybody hangs out. We always play wiffle ball in the street right here. One time my son broke his arm .This is probably the worst place to stand for wind.
Luke Hawley
The library parking lot causes like a wind tunnel. So this is not great. I mean, the EP that we made before this record... was that just? I mean, was literally recording in my barn. So the last barn in town. See that weird looking birdbath thing down there? That's like an original like fence post. And the house, there's a white house right over there that was like the farmhouse for this barn. That's a well that, I don't, our pumped doesn't work anymore. But that's, anyway, apparently the guy owned it before us used the water his lawn with that well, so. So, we don't, I mean, we don't use a banr. You can tell there's a ping pong table in there. We play ping pong. We record records in there. Generally store things in there. Yes. Yeah. It looks as if you could park in it, but you can't really even park in it. So yeah. This is Christian's house. Yeah. So Christian lives. It's literally right next door. My daughter and his little sister are, sort of, have been best friends for a long time. And her window is there. And Savannah's window is there. They're like, literally they shout, in the summer they shout across the driveway at each other at bedtime. At least they used to when they were little. I don't know what high schoolers do, really. Christian's dad, who, actually at the last like show that we had. He got all he got all neighborhood kids to play with him. So, let's see. His daughter played the drums, and my daughter sang, and Laramy's son played the bass, and they played a bunch of, like, 80s metal songs.
Laremy De Vries
Not 80s, I mean, some 80s some 90s.
Luke Hawley
It was like a weird Pied Piper situation. Like the bearded theologian that lives on our block, who plays electric guitar decided he would start a band with all the neighborhood children. So, it was just... yeah. These are the kind of things that don't happen when you don't know your neighbors. Like actually know your neighbors. Because it's creepy if you don't know your neighbors, right? If my neighbor came by and was like, "Would your kid like to play in my band?" I don't know that I would answer yes to that question. But I know him, you know? I don't know.
Laremy De Vries
That's another, it just kind of reminds me of, I mean, it's the thing that I love about what we happen to be doing, you know, if nothing else, I think we're just modeling for our kids. Like, you can do this. You can you can you know, my daughter wants to be a songwriter. You know, Luke, your daughter writes songs to, right? And, you know, she's just way deep into Taylor Swift, Phoebe Bridgers, you know, the new boy genius record, she's just into it and and sees it. And it's not, I mean, it's a dream, but it's a tangible dream because they see us kind of doing it and, and it's...
Luke Hawley
Kind of, like, making the music right, which is, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
Laremy De Vries
Alright, so this over here is my house. And then there's Kramer. This is where the infamous Dave Kramer lives. The, you know, the quote unquote godfather of realism. Remember that one time when we were on a? What were we on? It was a fund drive and we were we were calling in. So, this is the garage where we were butchering a pig. Remember that story?
Mark Munger
I, I, I very much....
Luke Hawley
That is a story you don't forget.
Laremy De Vries
I wonder if Kramer wants to come out. This has a very Mr. Rogers vibe to it. We're just walking through the neighborhood.
Luke Hawley
... through people's yard. I was gonna say when we were back talking about my neighbor, Jason. There's a line on one of the songs that goes, there's a word that I learned from a friend. And it's Jason. I mean, that's the other thing. Like there are these things that show up. So Jason told me the word apophatic, which is how to define something by saying what it's not. And apophatic doesn't work into a song particularly well, but it makes us one of the record because we live around these people. This Dave Kramer by the
Dave Kramer
Hey!
Mark Munger
Founder of Ruralism.
Dave Kramer
Hey! Or so it says on the internet. I was just wearing this shirt, rocking out to Smashing Pumpkins, making chicken in my living room. So, that's what we do in Old Town. Because you know, that's another thing. In rural America, you don't last long if you don't do a good job. The Ruralists would not be a band unless they actually made decent music. Then they would have been like, uh, they would have played two shows, and then everyone would have been like, "Eh, no one cares." Right? There's had to be something to be said.
Luke Hawley
Yes, I think so.
Dave Kramer
There's something to that. So, yeah...
Laremy De Vries
But it's also...
Luke Hawley
Because you have to see your neighbors again. I mean, this goes back to the original story of why I never wanted to start the band, because if it went badly, I wouldn't know where to get an Americano. Like, there's one place in town. I mean,
Dave Kramer
So you had to do a good job.
Luke Hawley
There's one place in town to get an Americano. So it had to be a good, you know, it was risk, it was a risk to for me. So anyway.
Laremy De Vries
But I was also just sort of thinking about, I don't know, just another way in which what, I mean, small town living informs our band. You know, Kramer just said something about the Sidebar and the Fruited Plain, like... I was thinking about all the places we hang out. And there aren't really that many, you know. There's our houses, you know? But otherwise, it's the Fruited Plain...
Dave Kramer
It's the BackBack.
Laremy De Vries
...and we do kind of, like, have to be all things. We just got to serve a wide niche, because, you know, that's just kind of, that's all you got. So you got to, so I feel like that's a, it's a good metaphor for the Ruralists as well. We sort of have a kind of wide ranging niche of what our songs sound like. We don't even know what our songs sound like. But like,
Luke Hawley
The other thing about the having, like, the single place, you know, I've said before, like, I think I always wanted to be a regular somewhere, but I didn't really know until I moved here and was a regular, like, we run into each other constantly. And that is, I mean, part of making, part of making music is talking to each other and thinking about ideas, and if we only got together, you know, once a month to play or something, like, all of the things that I would forget in between, you know? Sometimes I show up at the Fruited Plain, and I think I have three things to ask Laremy about, and I can only remember one by the time I get there. And by the time I've left, we've covered about a dozen. Like, just running into people is, you know, I mean that's a big part of it.
Laremy De Vries
To quote my friend Dave Kramer, we like to celebrate and advocate what's good in rural America, but we also, and I think this record, too, like, does look... like take a long look at at everything. It's real, right? This is a realistic record. Is that a fair way of saying it?
Luke Hawley
I think so. I mean, I think, yeah, I've been taking a long look at what my life is and that is, you know, that's where a lot of lyrics come out of. And the sounds to. Most of the sounds are made in the BackBack by, like, actual instruments that we, you know... the accordion is an accordion that someone gave Laramy at some point that just happens to sit around in the BackBack. And that way the music is of a place to, like, a literal place. You can hear him, you know? The record ends with the barn... everybody in the barn singing it "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," and I can pick out Dave Kramer in that, in that situation.
Laremy De Vries
All of the credit. None of the responsibility
Dave Kramer
It's the opposite of parenthood. Ruralism equals public radio. Ruralism is like the public radio of existence in small towns
Luke Hawley
Particulatly independent public radio like you guys are doing.
