On September 13th, Experimental Folk duo Foreign Fields released their fourth full-length album, What It Cost, and for this collection, have expanded to a full-band sound. This marks a departure from their previous two-person efforts, but it not an about-face in an ongoing new direction. Rather, it captures a particular experiment in a particular period of time, one which Foreign Fields have been very grateful to undertake.
On the album, which focuses loosely on ideas of experiencing love and relationships, Foreign Fields members Brian Holl and Eric Hillman are joined by two friends and fellow musicians, Nate Babbs (drums) and Nick Morawiecki (guitar), and engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Volcano Choir). Expanding to a full-band sound meant not just bringing friends into the studio to see what might happen, but everyone spending time together, and with the music, to envisage its full potential.
We don’t have to purely imagine what the recording experience might have been like because Foreign Fields decided to capture some of these moments in time, raw and unfiltered, on videos that have been released. That further reinforces their commitment to allow the album What It Cost, to be a “postcard” like experience, capturing the beauty of making things in particular moments in time. I spoke with Brian Holl and Eric Hillman about taking the plunge to go full-band for What It Cost, and some of the ideas that guided them in this direction.
Does the album feel like a kind of secret until you get to reveal it all to the world?
Eric Hillman: Brian and I have talked about it a ton, but releasing music is always an interesting thing. Especially after you’ve done it for a really long time. It feels like the creation process is something where we’re getting everything we need out of it at that time, and releasing it is at least a year later. It’s been lovely, as the singles have been coming out, to get feedback and response again, and seeing people diving into the music. But it is very much like, as soon as it’s done with the mixing and the mastering, for us, it’s kind of gone. [Laughs] That’s releasing! I get to release it from my shoulders and my brain!
Brian Holl: It’s something that you learn as you get older too, that it’s the journey, not the destination. We’ve learned that, since this is our fourth album, but fifth or sixth release, if you count EPs. You get used to the process, especially nowadays. If we were doing the music for that reason, just to see it be released to the public, you would get burned out so fast. For me, personally, and I know it’s the case for Eric, that the most fun part of the whole thing is in the first couple of months. That’s when you discover a song out of thin air and find a cool sound for it.
Eric: Once a song comes out, for someone to reach out to you and tell you about how it connected with them, that part of it I’m excited about. But there is a song on this album called “Bloodstone” that I feel is the best song that I’ve ever written in my 30-plus years of life. When I think about it that way, I want it out there, but it could be one of those things that I make that speaks to someone directly. That’s exciting to think about. Also, as soon as it’s all out, we get to make more!
Brian: That’s also the exciting part!
I can see how that’s different ways of looking at the same creation. Many people work on projects that have multiple years of development, and by the time it’s finally coming out, it’s amazing that musicians carry it the extra mile talking to fans about it.
Brian: Right, we started this album two and a half years ago, now. A lot of the ideas relate to that time. We were chasing certain emotions and ideas at that time. Artistically, you’re always champing at the bit to do the next thing that keeps you going.
Eric: It’s also difficult during release time, trying not to over-explain the music and the songs, because our songs tend to be quite personal and come to a specific place. Once it’s out, and it’s affecting them, then that becomes what the song is about. It gets a little bit of a second life, and we find the ability to let go of it fully and let the songs be what they need to be. That’s a gift for us.
That relates to these ideas of permanence and impermanence, which I know was on your mind when you were working on this album. You had a desire to capture certain moments in time, to allow them to be more transient, in a way. That aspect of human life was allowed to be part of this album. But there’s also the permanence of recording. I love the videos, by the way, that you all made during recording, which reinforces that time.
Brian: Yes, exactly. That’s kind of always been this Foreign Fields project for Eric and I, because we have other projects that we’re focused on. The songs aren’t necessarily “diary entries”, but it’s always been a cool thing that whenever we’re working on Foreign Fields, it’s like a diary entry, where we’re writing, writing, writing, and then, we turn the page and close the book. Then, when we open the diary up again, we’re not really referencing the past, we’re asking, “Where are we now?” We allow people to see it as that, rather than something that we’re building on.
Eric: I think that’s come about over time. Early on, in Foreign Fields, and in everything I put creative work into, I would put so much weight on things. It was the idea that it was a quintessential piece of art I was making, that had to be the best thing I had ever done. It’s that sort of flawed idea that you should always be getting better, or making things that are more elaborate, more complex, more interesting. But I think that over time, Brian and I have realized the joy in just making a “postcard” from a certain time stamp in your life.
It’s permanent in the sense that a picture is. You can always look at it, and it can always take you back to that point. Our albums feel permanent in the same way, like pictures of our lives at points in time. We’ve tried to focus on that. That’s made the process more present. Especially with this record, it gave us the opportunity to be a little bit messy and try something new. We weren’t necessarily looking for some through-line for the sound of Foreign Fields, or trying to make a grand, artistic statement. That makes it more interesting for us.
It reminds me of the fact that when I go on a trip, I take a lot of random photos in the moment, and never think they are that great, but when I look back, I think, “Wow! What a great trip!” It’s hard to get that perspective in the moment.
Brian: We can allow it to be what it is for those six months that we are in the studio. I have a solo project, as an example, and it’s hard for me to feel like I can release a song that’s more acoustic without feeling like I’m putting myself into a box for future releases. But for Foreign Fields, we can just say, “This is the band record.” Maybe the next one will be more electronic, and that’s okay. Looking at Foreign Fields like a corporation would just doesn’t work, it’s more of a sideways comparison. These are just different areas to explore. It’s all those little steps along the way, and then all of the sudden, we’ve released five or six albums.
Eric: As Brian says, we intended to make a band record this time. For Foreign Fields, before this, almost 100% of the time, it was Brian and I, in our rooms, making a record, from conception to final touches. It’s been very much a two-person thing. This time around, one of the things we wanted to explore, as something different and unique was asking, “What if we were a band?” For that, we wanted more of a collaborative effort. This was especially difficult for me, because I’m somewhat of a control freak, who Brian has to put up with for his entire life. [Laughs]
Brian: [Laughs] It’s a good control freak!
Eric: Our process was inviting two friends of mine, who I met at college at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Nate Babbs and Nick Morawiecki, to come in. They are both great guys. It was to taking our songs, that Brian and I had written, into a room with other humans. And saying, “Whatever happens, let’s be open.” For this record, specifically, that was a big change. It was really letting go of full control, and letting outward input in a lot more with friends and people that we trust. It was hugely rewarding and challenging. It shaped everything. I am, personally, very happy that we have at least one Foreign Fields record that does that. It will inform all Foreign Fields stuff going forward, even if it’s not a band record next. It teaches us lessons.
How much did Nate and Nick know about the songs before they came in to contribute? Had they heard demos first?
Eric: There’s a little cabin right by the Mississippi River that one of the bandmates has on family land, and we all got together there a couple of weeks before studio time. We brought the demos, and we just played in a room. We set up all the instruments, slept in sleeping bags, and tried different things. We tried to fully feel the music. A lot of times, when you come to the studio, you have a demo, but in your head you think, “But it’s going to really feel like—this—when it’s done. A bigger thing.” But this idea was to hop into the cabin with four people, and fully feel what was going to come out in the studio and what it was going to feel like by the end. [Laughs] I’m sure that most bands, hearing this would say, “Yes, that’s how you make a record!” But it’s very new for us! It’s very unusual for us to do it in that way. We spent that time, before the studio, and then, in the studio, that process just continued.
Then, we were working with a great engineer up here in Wisconsin, who used to do a lot of work on Bon Iver records, Brian Joseph, and then it just became a snowball of collaborative input. That’s how things were built.
That’s very brave, to change things up so much!
Brian: It’s really fun!
Eric: I think the main thing is that most of our records have been very difficult to make, and not “fun” exactly, to make. We were pretty focused on having a good time, trying to have fun with music, this time around. And other people helped us do that. I think that we achieved that.
Brian: Yes, for sure!
Was it in the cabin situation that you began to realize that a lot of these songs were about love, or about relationships, or was that later, in the studio?
Brian: I think that was probably before. We kind of had the songs that we wanted to do for the album when we brought them to the guys.
Eric: I think it was before. Something that often happens is that we know it’s time for Brian and I to make a record when we find that we are writing songs about the same things, independently of each other. We don’t live in the same town, so we are typically writing separately. At one point, I texted Brian and said, “I think all my songs are about this.”
Brian: And I texted back, “Me too.”
Eric: I think when we have them, we’re grabbing things from the universe that happen to be peeking through. And when we’re grabbing the same things, then it’s time to start making a record. With this record, that happened before everything else. That was the guiding light along the way.
