Spires That in the Sunset Rise blends the talents of four very different, very independent women -- Taralie Peterson, Georgia Vallas, Kathleen Baird and Tracy Peterson -- in a fascinatingly extreme mix of folk, world music, art rock and pure chaos. The four come, improbably, from the factory town of Decatur, Illinois, where various members played in the marching band, drove around in cornfields listening to Throwing Muses, and floated down the pollution-choked local river on a dare. From these idyllic beginnings, band members explored punk and rock and moved to Chicago. There, they discovered both traditional multi-cultural music and the work of skewed experimenters like Sun City Girls, and began to make their own untuned, cliché-avoiding, world-encompassing songs. Their first self-titled album sounds like nothing you've ever heard before -- imagine Jarboe backed by Akron/Family or Thalia Zedek in mad peasant regalia. The second album, Four Winds the Walker, recorded several years later, offers a sharper glimpse at their difficult art, aided by cleaner recording, polished through live performance and augmented with the addition of Taralie's sister Tracy, who joined the band between records. I talked to Taralie Peterson and Kathleen Baird about their collaborative, their occasionally difficult songwriting process, the instruments they use, the tunings they do (or don't) employ, and where the band is going from here. Through the telephone call alone, I got a sense of what it's like to have four distinct and forceful personalities at work; though it represented only half the band, it was sometimes... tempestuous.

Splendid: I love both of the albums you sent me. They're so extreme and beautiful. The name of the band, Spires that in the Sunset Rise -- is that a quotation from something?

Kathleen Baird: It is. It's from one particular translation -- and unfortunately, I don't think I have that translator's name -- from the third part of a poem called "The Voyage" by Charles Baudelaire from Flowers of Evil. It's taken out of context...

Splendid: Is the poem meaningful in the context of the band?

Kathleen Baird: I wish I'd been better prepared. The passage itself was very appropriate. I think simply that the imagery evoked in that has a lot to do with our sound, and the fact that it's kind of ridiculous. (She laughs) It's a mouthful. Very few people can remember it the first time they say it. Just kind of this melodrama that runs through some of the songs. And also it hints at some kind of spirituality that's gone totally fantastic and surreal. I think it resonates. The actual name picking was somewhat random and unthought-out, but the name keeps on... gaining and assuming strengths. Even though we all think it's sort of totally absurd and hard to remember...

Taralie Peterson: And a pain in the butt to say.

Kathleen Baird: That's why it's been shortened to Spires. Which is fine, but that's really different, a different idea than what's in Spires that in the Sunset Rise.

Splendid: It's also echoed on your web site imagery.

Taralie Peterson: They did that on purpose.

Splendid: Your songs, it sounds like there's more than four people.

Kathleen Baird: Really?

Splendid: Yeah, and I think that's because you do a lot of switching around.

Kathleen Baird: Maybe.

Taralie Peterson: I'm not sure. Both albums? Sound like there's more than four people?

Splendid: Yeah...it sounds like there could be 20 people.

Kathleen Baird: I think there definitely is a denseness to the sound. I think that has to do with ....

Taralie Peterson: I feel like it might have to do with our lack of playing in any traditional way?

Kathleen Baird: I think for the most part, there are only a handful of songs that we did a lot of overdubbing. There might be just a very minimal overdubbing we did on the first album, except for maybe on the first track, where we did some overdubbing on that last part. And then on Four Winds the Walker, again, I think there were only a handful of places where we added very minimal... Isn't that right, Tara?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, it's hard for me to figure that out. Maybe two or three songs. But why does it sound like there's more than four. That's what I was trying to answer.

Kathleen Baird: Well, yeah... I think it has to do with exactly the way that we approach these songs, which goes into something we'll maybe talk about later, which is how we compose. There's very, very rarely one person who comes with a solid body or a structure. Musically, there are so many ways that different groups do things, but that's still a fairly common way for a band to write -- to build around a very strong base. When we come together, we usually prefer to write songs, sometimes in groups of three or groups of two, just kind of spontaneously. The writing is done in the room that day, and I think that creates a kind of web, an intricate weave of notes. It can make for what a lot of people consider a very haphazard, almost like we just threw it together kind of noise, which really is very, very constructed. Our songs are very tightly composed. There are parts, of course, where we have assigned from this point to this point as free, but really, for the most part, our songs are very composed.

Splendid: You're right. You seldom have two people that are really writing a song together. It's either one person that comes in and another contributes, or you have a whole band sort of jamming together.

Kathleen Baird: Yes, and that structure could make songwriting a lot more straightforward. I would consider our songwriting not straightforward.

Splendid: You also use some unusual instruments.

Taralie Peterson: I think that's also part of it, because we don't have the normal set-up. Maybe you're used to what that sounds like when four people play the normal set-up? But because we're not doing that, you're like, "Whoa, three people on sort of mid-range to treble songs. That sounds really crazy and busy." Really, the only bass instrument we play is the tuned down guitar, with one string tuned down, and also the thumb piano has some low tones, and the cello. So we don't have the bass.

Splendid: How do you decide which instruments to play? I assume it has something to do with where you come from and what you can play?

Kathleen Baird: It's partly a conscious decision and partly just what's come into our environment. I think for probably the past eight years -- I don't know, time has been slipping away from me -- but Tara and I, we both have been very interested in different types of sounds than your standard electric guitar and bass. We've kept our eyes peeled for auctions...

Taralie Peterson: Finding things cheaply...or for free. I get a lot of them for free.

Splendid: Have you really found instruments for free?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah!

Splendid: How do you do that?

Kathleen Baird: A lot of these, the zithers we use, an autoharp, we got an at auction.

Taralie Peterson: I got the cello for what? $150?

Kathleen Baird: The cello we got from a friend. He had built it. He had found it abandoned in a house and put it together and ended up giving it to Tara for $150 or $200, something like that. The zither we got from the same friend.

Taralie Peterson: We've been kind of playing Mbira. Where did we get that? We didn't go out and buy that. That was just laying around. Where did that come from?

Kathleen Baird: That was Andy's as well.

Taralie Peterson: That was Andy's?

Kathleen Baird: Yeah. Our good friend Andy has found us a lot of instruments.

Taralie Peterson: Oh my, I didn't know that. The zither, the cello and the mbira.

Splendid: So should you include a thank you to him? Andy who?

Kathleen Baird: This is actually Tara's boyfriend.

Taralie Peterson: Nah, he's not my boyfriend. He's my baby's daddy. (laughs)

Kathleen Baird: The harmonium was something I went out and got. And guitars, of course, we had. I'm trying to think if there's anything else.

Splendid: But how much of this is you deciding, "Oh god, we've got to have an mbira!" and how much is it, "We've got this thing. How do we use it?"

Kathleen Baird: Right.

Taralie Peterson: Sometimes I think it's a good idea, but we all disagree. It's very hard to say, "Okay, Georgia, I really think you ought to play the mbira." She's going to do what she wants to. You know what I mean?

Kathleen Baird: What was that mbira record you really liked, Tara? The one you played a lot.

Taralie Peterson: The Soul of Mbira.

Kathleen Baird: The Soul of Mbira, okay. Anyway, I think that there was just a tendency to be really attracted to music outside Western culture. I'm slightly obsessed with this.

Splendid: Do you use a lot of alternative scales and tunings?

Kathleen Baird: Yeah, we do.

Splendid: That's what I thought.

Taralie Peterson: We didn't even tune half of our instruments for the first two years. The first album is very much untuned. In other words, the zithers were... we didn't pay attention to the tuning. And then, over time, they started to slip and we started to realize "Oh god, we're losing these songs," so we started to pay attention to the tunings more.

Kathleen Baird: Right, so now we tune every single instrument.

Taralie Peterson: Now I have it all recorded and written down what the tunings are. We did start out...

Kathleen Baird: That's our biggest set-up. We don't have a big amp and we don't have all the pedals that the other bands have. But we have 12 instruments to tune.

Splendid: I was talking to Nick Castro. Do you know him?

Both: Yeah.

Splendid: He's like you. He loves instruments that come from different cultures. He was telling me that you can't really use them in Western music until you've altered them so that they all play in the same keys.

Taralie Peterson: That's because he cares about keys. It's true. We don't care about keys. Georgia refuses to admit that she's playing in a key.

Kathleen Baird: Well, yeah, there's that. In one of our instruments, we actually tune the notes in between two major Western notes.

Taralie Peterson: (laughs) I didn't know you knew that.

Kathleen Baird: But the harmonium is always tuned in sort of somewhere in between two notes. We will tune our instruments up, for the like the harmonium. For an instrument to create a drone, it will create a very blatant sort of clash. But with the string instruments, like the harp, we can always change the tunings. They have movable pegs.

Splendid: There's something really foreign about some of your songs. They sound really strange. I was thinking about "Sheye" -- I can't even pin down what culture that would come out of, but it's definitely not Western.

Taralie Peterson: That one's definitely from the void.

Kathleen Baird: I think we're all very proud of that song. I call it the masterpiece of the album.

Taralie Peterson: I didn't know that.

Kathleen Baird: I do. I just think it's incredibly interesting, and it's a lot of fun to play. We actually played that song when we were playing with Barbez from Brooklyn, whom we're actually playing with again this weekend. And they came up to us and said, "We love this song!!" They thought we were saying Shi'i, which is a strange utterance that I'm not sure where it comes from.

Taralie Peterson: We are saying "sheye"!

Kathleen Baird: Somehow they got it construed that we were this really radical political...

Taralie Peterson: You meant to say that we were saying Shi'ite.

Kathleen Baird: I was about to say that. They thought that we had this radical, strange political agenda, that we were making up strange commentary on US relations with the Middle East, and that we were saying Shi'ite instead of She-eye.

Splendid: But that was not it at all. Can you tell me a little about the four of you? I've heard rumors that you're all from the same town?

Taralie Peterson: Decatur, Illinois. We all went to the same high school.

Splendid: Wow, were you all in band and stuff?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, we were. No, wait -- Georgia and Tracy quit in the eighth grade.

Kathleen Baird: Tara was the only one who stayed in band all through high school. She was in the marching band and all that stuff. I quit after my freshman year. We were...

Taralie Peterson: Tell her about how we met.

Kathleen Baird: We're a few years apart. The others came up with a band, Tracy and Georgia. Tracy is Tara's little sister. She's three years younger and Georgia is the same age as Tracy. I think that there's been...

Taralie Peterson: It's a long involved story. Tracy and Georgia used to be in a punk band ten years ago.

Splendid: I grew up in a small town in Indiana, and I'm assuming that Decatur was probably the same kind of environment...

Kathleen Baird: Decatur is a really blue-collar town, where ADM and Bailly's headquarters are. Very factory-based industries. It's where Firestone was.

Taralie Peterson: Caterpillar.

Kathleen Baird: That's right, Caterpillar. When you come into Decatur, Illinois, you get bombarded by this...

Taralie Peterson: It stinks.

Splendid: We had International Harvester in my home town. Same kind of thing, I'm sure.

Kathleen Baird: My friends and I -- including Tara and I -- we were in high school. This was one of our first bonding experiences, we floated down the polluted river. It was, like, Salmonella-infested and unsanitary.

Taralie Peterson: That might flow through Indiana.

Splendid: It might have started in Indiana. Who knows? So how do you get from that kind of background to making this weird and world-encompassing music?

Taralie Peterson: It's taken a long time.

Kathleen Baird: I do not know.

Taralie Peterson: It takes a long time. I used to not even be open to world music. So it's just... It's a long process. Chicago is very influential in terms of opening your eyes to the world. There's a lot of world music festivals here. There's a lot of free music you can see. There's a lot of other cultures here.

Kathleen Baird: I think that just how long we've been playing together.

Taralie Peterson: It's also a natural sense of just getting bored with the normal stuff. The guitar-based stuff.

Kathleen Baird: But you, Tara and Tracy and I, we were involved when we were in high school. We started to write music when Tracy was a sophomore, I was a junior and Tara was out.

Taralie Peterson: Right, but we started writing very normally.

Kathleen Baird: But on a broad spectrum. I had visions, before I even left, when were in Decatur, of, like, driving around in the cornfields and listening to Throwing Muses and driving around in tight circles. There was some crazy music even then.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah... I still like them. So we always had a desire for something more intense, or something more real.

Splendid: At this point, you get included sometimes in this psyche folk universe.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah.

Splendid: And there are obviously some folk influences in your music, but there's also something a lot wilder, more art rock. It reminds me as much of Swans as it does of Devendra Banhart.

Taralie Peterson: I would agree with you.

Splendid: Where do you see yourself? Do you ever think about where you fit into the continuum?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, because people ask about that all the time -- not just magazine writers, but normal people off the street. Or you have to write a bio about yourself. Yeah, that's something... I would agree that I don't think we're folky, really. We're a little unhinged for that.

Kathleen Baird: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Tara, you're probably better at this question.

Taralie Peterson: Well, I'll try. I guess art rock is probably a better way to describe it. How would you label something like Sun City Girls?

Splendid: You know, that's the next -- well, no, I was going to ask you about Comus first, but then Sun City Girls.

Kathleen Baird: I would say those two come to mind more than anything, just because there's some sort of continuum, a sort of tradition.

Taralie Peterson: Is Comus folk? They're kind of folky. I could see... they're kind of like...

Kathleen Baird: You think they're more folky than we are?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah. Because they're more on key.

Kathleen Baird: I don't know.

Taralie Peterson: They're so... They're very well...

Splendid: I think they were trying to break free, but when was this? Mid-1960s? What they were doing must have seemed really innovative.

Taralie Peterson: Oh, I think what they were doing was totally wild. I'm not saying that being on key means you're not wild. I'm just saying that to me, folk music is very melodic, or...

Splendid: It's a conservative tradition.

Taralie Peterson: I guess it is conservative. They were, like, dramatic folk or something.

Kathleen Baird: There are certain types of folk that are so formulaic that you can guess the next note. I think that certainly the Spires are almost neurotic against formula and any type of predictive quality.

Splendid: The thing that's sort of folk-oriented about your music -- and not folk in the sense of the coffee shop singer, but folk as in the music of the people -- is that it's got this sort of ritual quality to it. I was thinking about "Ong Song". Is that something you strive for?

Taralie Peterson: It must be something we strive for. We try to act like we don't. We always say that it's unintentional, but I think we have some sort of inner desire to do that. It's like unintentional intention. It's got to pass the vote. All four of us have to agree.

Kathleen Baird: There's a desire to make the songs, you know, very far from passive. Very, very in your face. You're going to love this or you're going to hate this type of music.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah. We all want to make something that we're excited about, right?

Kathleen Baird: Yeah. We don't have the volume that some bands have. We don't have the power chords. So it's like we have to create that drama or that presence in a much different and I think a much more interesting way. I think that there's unintentionally some type of ritual present to our songs that we're still trying to understand ourselves, you know?

Taralie Peterson: It's probably just a longing to hear that sort of thing. Being in a society without that for so long, our souls sort of crave it. I know when we write a song, I get excited about it. It excites me in this way that I'm hearing something that's really hitting that part of me, that makes me want to give my time and energy to figuring out the riddle of that song. I guess what I'm interested in, things like that.

Kathleen Baird: I think we're all... We all have tendencies to... Oh, never mind.

Taralie Peterson: We're picky. We go through a lot of songs.

Kathleen Baird: We throw away a lot of songs.

Splendid: You throw away the ones that sound too easy?

Kathleen Baird: A lot of times, yes.

Taralie Peterson: It's weird what happens to songs.

Kathleen Baird: Maybe that is an oversimplification. I think we all have a little bit of a different criteria that we judge things on.

Taralie Peterson: Right.

Kathleen Baird: We're dealing with four people, and if one person is just kind of sitting there going, "I don't get it guys. I'm not feeling this..."

Taralie Peterson: No, we've talked people into things.

Kathleen Baird: Sometimes, yeah, we can talk them into it. Other times, though, it's like we kind of brainwash each other. One person starts not to be completely into it, then another person is like, "Well, yeah, this isn't so great." There's that fine line between completely accepting it and going with it or saying "Wait a minute. Either this is too crazy or this is way too boring, or this is way too sappy." It's just...

Taralie Peterson: Sappy? How often do we get sappy? Never.

Kathleen Baird: I'm kind of the sappy one out of the bunch.

Taralie Peterson: You're more tuneful.

Splendid: I see, and what are you, Tara?

Taralie Peterson: I think I might be one of the wild ones.

Kathleen Baird: You and Georgia.

Taralie Peterson: Georgia is the one who has no musicianship at all. She hasn't taken any lessons. She doesn't know how to play guitar. She doesn't know things. She does everything intuitively. She tends to play very texturally. I've always felt a kinship with Georgia, in the sense that I have always been very interested in the outsider sound of things. Actually, the Spires started with me and Georgia. About five years ago.

Kathleen Baird: Tara is probably the most paranoid of any type of a cliché.

Taralie Peterson: That doesn't sound good.

Kathleen Baird: Well...

Taralie Peterson: I'm just not inspired by that. I don't want to spend my time making music like that.

Kathleen Baird: Whereas I...well, that's what my solo project is all about, letting my sappy, tuneful side out.

Taralie Peterson: Have you heard any of Kathy's solo stuff?

Splendid: I haven't, but that's Travelling Bell, isn't it?

Kathleen Baird: Yeah.

Splendid: I've heard about it and it sounds really interesting.

Taralie Peterson: It's great.

Splendid: And you have a solo project as well, Tara?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah.

Splendid: Is that stuff you can't do as Spires?

Taralie Peterson: That's kind of an interesting question. I'm actually at a point now where I've considered bringing stuff to Spires more seriously. but when I'm like, well, why? I don't know how to answer that question. I just feel stubborn about it. Like that would make things too easy, and I don't know if the girls would really be willing to do that.

Kathleen Baird: None of us feel very comfortable being this sort of blatant ringleader, someone who takes charge and gives orders.

Splendid: Right.

Kathleen Baird: I think it's made a very democratic sound.

Splendid: I think we should talk about this, how you write songs and how you build consensus for the songs. It sounds like that's something that's really different about your band.

Kathleen Baird: Absolutely.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, I wonder how other bands do that. I've been in other bands. I remember.

Splendid: A lot of times, the guitar player comes in and plays the song, and the other people tell him how brilliant he is.

Kathleen Baird: Quite frequently.

Taralie Peterson: I've been there where it's not so much that you're given a riff, but you know you're supposed to play a certain vibe. Keep it a certain way.

Kathleen Baird: I'm not going to say that it's easy to write music this way. It takes an incredible amount of patience and I think it's only been recently that I've been able to kind of swallow my pride, because I feel like I finally have completely accepted every member of the band as a strength. They can contribute something that I would never even think of. I'm proud of how different we are musically, but how we can create these really great noises together at the same time. As ego-lessly as we possibly can.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, it takes a lot of patience.

Kathleen Baird: There certainly are heated moments. I won't say there aren't.

Taralie Peterson: There have to be. It's crazy.

Splendid: So, do you all throw things sometimes?

Taralie Peterson: What's that?

Kathleen Baird: It's been bad at times.

Taralie Peterson: We above all, like me and you, Kathy. We have yelled at each other. But we've really learned. Tensions have changed. Like Tracy just joined the band. Of the two albums you got, Tracy's not on the first one. So tensions have changed.

Kathleen Baird: And of course, there are sisters in the band...

Taralie Peterson: There are sisters.

Kathleen Baird: And it's basically people who have known each other for ten years.

Taralie Peterson: Sometimes we wring ourselves out.

Kathleen Baird: Sometimes we think we would benefit from a new member, with whom we'd be on our best behavior. But we have gotten better.

Splendid: You could get a mediator, like Metallica did.

Taralie Peterson: They got a mediator?

Splendid: Yeah, have you seen that movie?

Taralie Peterson: No.

Splendid: You've got to see it. It's hilarious. I wouldn't pay the mediator any money at all. But Metallica's got so much money they don't care.

Taralie Peterson: So, what somebody just comes and hangs around while they practice?

Splendid: Yeah.

Taralie Peterson: Wow.

Splendid: And they get into fights and he tries to help them smooth it out. It's a really interesting documentary, Some Kind of Monster, even if you don't like Metallica.

Taralie Peterson: Some of our fights have led to songs. I can think of two at least.

Splendid: Really?

Taralie Peterson: On the first album... You've got to understand, Kathy was a wild horse. You could not get this girl to do anything she didn't want to do. If she didn't feel like practicing a song twice in a row, or if she didn't feel like taking suggestions, she would just leave.

Kathleen Baird: I would storm out of the room.

Taralie Peterson: Or she would quit the band that day and come back the next. Me and Georgia would just roll our eyes and say, "I'm going to write a song about that." So we'd write a song. And here Kathy would come back into the room two hours later and say, "I like this song." And she'd play on the song.

Kathleen Baird: I remember specifically on Four Winds the Walker, with "This Ain't for Mama", which is a really, really fun song to play live, and how we capture it on the album is good, but anyway... The point is, it's a great song, and probably one of our strongest songs live. They started writing that where Georgia's on her knees with the banjo and Tara's drumming, and I left the room. But it was so great.

Taralie Peterson: Kathy, I didn't know you left the room on that song.

Kathleen Baird: Yeah. And on "Leader of Change And The Leader Of Within".

Taralie Peterson: And on ""I Follow You Follow Me".

Kathleen Baird: Okay, those are the three I left on.

Taralie Peterson: I remember those two, but I didn't remember you leaving on "This Ain't for Mama".

Kathleen Baird: I did.

Taralie Peterson: Oh.

Splendid: Wow, it sounds amazingly volatile, the chemistry.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah... It is.

Splendid: You know, the term "witchcraft" comes up a lot in your reviews. My first reaction is that that's really sexist, because if it was a bunch of guys making extreme music, they wouldn't call it "warlocky". How do you feel about that? Do you think you get perceived differently because you're women?

Taralie Peterson: I never thought about that... but I suppose everything is sexist.

Kathleen Baird: I guess when I see that maybe there's a part of me that's a little bit annoyed. I don't know why exactly. The whole history -- I don't know a lot about witchcraft. It's not as though I'm against certain types of witchcraft...

Taralie Peterson: What? What are you saying? You're against witchcraft?

Kathleen Baird: No, I'm not against witchcraft. Even though I don't even know what I'm saying. What am I saying?

Taralie Peterson: Well, I kind of like it when people say that. I can see why people would say it.

Kathleen Baird: I think it's a little bit of a cliché.

Taralie Peterson: Well, right, but that's what sexism is. It's not always hateful. Sometimes it's stupid clichés.

Kathleen Baird: I was more unhappy when we were described as Charles Manson-esque.

Taralie Peterson: That annoyed me. Those girls were just followers. That's annoying.

Splendid: Between the two albums, it sounded to me like there was a pretty significant evolution between the two albums. Do you think that's the case?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, I guess I'd have to say that's the case.

Splendid: What do you think happened between the first and the second?

Taralie Peterson: We got more ambitious about songwriting. At first, we were like, "Oh, here we are," and everything sounded great. Anything could be a song. But then I think we got more picky. And then Tracy joined the band, so we got...

Kathleen Baird: That's a huge thing there, Tracy joining the band. We did our best recording. We did everything ourselves, including recording, and we're getting better and better at that. I think the second album is recorded at least a little bit better than the first. And the drums are much more present on the second album as well. Which I think is a big change.

Taralie Peterson: The second album is very long, which I'm sure you noticed.

Kathleen Baird: It's almost twice as long. Well, it's 30 minutes longer.

Splendid: But the songs on it seem to be more structured and more dramatic and it's easier to see the bones of the songs.

Taralie Peterson: Hmm.

Kathleen Baird: You think the second one's more dramatic?

Splendid: Yeah.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, I could see that. You know, we took a long time. There was a lot of space in our lives before we were able to get that stuff down and documented. So I think the first album we recorded pretty quickly into our process. We started after maybe not even a year.

Kathleen Baird: With the second album, we had various recording catastrophes. It took us a little while to document the songs, so we ended up playing them live tons.

Taralie Peterson: We got really good at them.

Kathleen Baird: We got really good at them and they also evolved. There were songs that we thought we were done with and we said, "Wait a minute." I'm thinking of "The May Ham".

Taralie Peterson: Yeah. Even "Imaginary Skin".

Kathleen Baird: Because we played them more and more, making them longer, making them shorter, creating tension in certain places, or adding different crazy vocals. Small nuances.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, it seems like there's more detail.

Splendid: Now, the album title, Four Winds the Walker, pulls together the first and the last track titles, and it's also a fragment in "Wide Awake".

Kathleen Baird: Wow, very good.

Splendid: What does that mean, "Four Winds the Walker"?

Taralie Peterson: Well, when I wrote it as a lyric, I didn't think it would be an album title. At the time, I just meant that there are different elements in life, but you just have one person. So you have all these things culminating in this one person. But then when we were trying to come up with an album name. Thinking, thinking, thinking. And someone threw it out there -- I don't know who -- because they saw the lyric.

Kathleen Baird: Me, as I was transferring analog to digital.

Taralie Peterson: Oh, okay, so you thought of it while you were working music. But it makes sense because it's four of us now, so it had a logical meaning and fun, poetic sound.

Kathleen Baird: Yeah, it has this straightforward meaning, along with a more kind of metaphorical meaning.

Taralie Peterson: And going back to witchcraft, it is kind of based on sorcery.

Splendid: Huh.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah...

Splendid: How so?

Taralie Peterson: Well, because in sorcery... If you're part of this group of sorcerers, everyone has a wind. You're either a north wind, south wind, east wind or west wind. And they each have different personalities. So you have one of each for every group. Kathy, you know this. I tried to figure out which wind each of were.

Kathleen Baird: Right.

Splendid: That sounds like a really good metaphor, because you've got these four really strong personalities in the band, coming together. So, you've played with some really interesting bands. I was wondering if you could talk about some of them. For instance, you opened for the Incredible String Band on their reunion tour.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, that was exciting.

Splendid: Had you been fans?

Taralie Peterson: Yes. When I heard they were getting back together again, I was like "What?" I was so surprised.

Kathleen Baird: They were kind of stamped in my brain as this legendary band that was certainly no more. We also were really big fans of Clive's Original Band as well. It was a real treat. It was just two shows.

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, that was really great. It was a lot of fun.

Splendid: I interviewed Mike Heron a while ago. He was a riot. He had so many great stories.

Kathleen Baird: I don't know what Mike thought of us.

Taralie Peterson: I don't know what any of them thought of us.

Kathleen Baird: Well, Clive... I think he thought we were a riot. He thought we were crazy and interesting. Mike... I don't know. He was more interested in Joanna Newsom.

Splendid: No one ever accuses her of witchcraft.

Kathleen Baird: Yeah.

Splendid: And what about the Million Tongues Festival? That sounds like it was pretty cool.

Kathleen Baird: Yeah, we got that through a friend of ours, Steve Cracow. A guy... the guy who put out our first album.

Taralie Peterson: He put out the LP version.

Kathleen Baird: Last year's festival was really amazing. The more I think about who we were on the bill with... It was five big festivals, and just, gosh, so many of the great bands out there now. He's doing it again this year in November.

Taralie Peterson: Me and Kathy are doing it.

Kathleen Baird: Right, he's doing no repeats, so Spires are out, but Tara and I are going to be doing our solo projects.

Splendid: Cool. And you're playing some shows with Fursaxa?

Taralie Peterson: Yeah, we're did a California tour with her in July and August. We know her really well now, because we were in a van together for three weeks.

Splendid: That'll do it.

Kathleen Baird: I think she's a witch.

Splendid: There's something about talented women. They seem to draw that kind of epithet. What have you got on your plates for next?

Taralie Peterson: Well, we're currently recording our third album. We have six or seven songs. I forget how many.

Kathleen Baird: It'll be a shorter album...

Taralie Peterson: But they're long songs.

Kathleen Baird: Yes, they're long songs. That'll come out hopefully within this next year. Because there was a such a gap between our first and second, we wanted to do something that was shorter and came out sooner.

Taralie Peterson: Well, it's more because we're ready to record it.

Kathleen Baird: And we're ready to record it.

Taralie Peterson: We're sort of at a strange crossroads right now.

Kathleen Baird: We are.

Taralie Peterson: We're always at a strange crossroads.

Kathleen Baird: It's so hard to keep four people aligned. Even if it's something great, there are always reasons that people need to go.

Taralie Peterson: You have to have freedom.

Kathleen Baird: So we're trying to really get a lot... our definition of the band, and broaden how we write music, even if we are in different places. I don't know. We're trying to figure it out. One of the things is that people are travelling.

Taralie Peterson: Tracy's going to South America for four months.

Kathleen Baird: My life is kind of in turmoil.

Taralie Peterson: Kathy's homeless.

Kathleen Baird: Yeah, there's that. So but I think we all believe in what we're doing. I think in some ways, my belief in the band is growing stronger and stronger, the more it goes on. My reasons for doing it are stronger. I feel like it's such a relief from all this other stuff... There's so much crap.

Splendid: It's not even bad. It's just kind of watered down and pointless. It's nice to hear something...

Kathleen Baird: It's so necessary for people to push it. Like, oh yeah, I can feel this way. But it's hard, too, because you get so little... financial support. So it's challenging. But I don't do this for money.

Splendid: Well, I don't get paid either, if that makes you feel any better.

(They laugh.)

Splendid: Is there anything I haven't asked you that you think is essential for people to understand what you do?

Kathleen Baird: Well, again, I think it's nice... the last thing we touched on. The music is there and we do it for spiritual reasons. For very deep reasons that have nothing to do with quote unquote success or accessibility. Or anything like that which I think is responsible for so much quote unquote entertainment out there.

Taralie Peterson: I was just thinking of how hard it was... We've obviously made peace with performing. We've been doing it for four years. But we don't do it for fame either. Even just the simple fact of getting up on stage in front of ten people. You know, I think we've all been kind of like, "Oh god, we have to do that?" "Why are we doing this?"

Kathleen Baird: I think we've definitely gotten better, but it's been awkward. Depending on the club and the evening, a performance can be so plastic and weird, and then we also switch instruments so much, so that can kind break up this sort of flow.

Taralie Peterson: Our live show lacks the simple, solid flow that you would expect... or want, really.

Kathleen Baird: We've gotten better, though.

Taralie Peterson: Well, I think the concert comes from us more than anybody else. It's obvious if you really want to vibe on something, you don't want to be switching after four minutes. And when we write songs, we're vibing on a song for hours at a time. So it's weird to go and play a live show, because we're just doing this thing for four or five minutes and then switching. It's like, eeeww, weird.

Splendid: So would you do this if no one were listening?

Kathleen Baird: At a show, you mean?

Taralie Peterson: That's a really good question. She's saying would we write the music. Well, probably not. No. Because we go through some painstaking things to make the stuff communicable to other people. Though at the same time, I think it's what I enjoy doing most with my friends. These are all my best friends.

Kathleen Baird: I would answer that differently. I think I would.

Taralie Peterson: I was talking and you totally interrupted me. I was saying that this is what I do with my best friends. You guys are my best friends. I would play with you guys and do this thing and I'd probably... but come on, Kathy, you would painstakingly write songs if no one else in the world was out there?

Kathleen Baird: Well, if it was just us even, I would want to do it. Yes.

Taralie Peterson: Write songs?

Kathleen Baird: Yes. Because to me that's such a wonderful feeling.

Taralie Peterson: Ha ha ha! Well, we're going to be arguing about this for months.

Kathleen Baird: I'm obsessed with composition. I think I would do it.

Taralie Peterson: You're more into that than I am. That's true.

Splendid: Shall we call it a draw?

Taralie Peterson: I'm afraid we keep interrupting you, Jennifer.

Splendid: Oh, no, that's cool. Usually it's hard to get people to talk, and it's great when they do it on their own.