After a full-length about transportation and profound rootlessness (2006’s The Transit Rider) and an eccentric collaboration with Will Oldham (2006’s The Letting Go, recorded in Iceland), Dawn “The Faun” McCarthy and Faun Fables are setting down roots, working on a series of songs about hearth and home. The first installment in the group’s ongoing project to write about domestic issues is the four-song EP A Table Forgotten, released this July on Drag City.

A full-length covering the same subjects is on the way, but A Table works as a self-contained cycle, kicking off with a mystical birthday party on a clearing in an open plain (“With Words and Cake”) and closing with a rather lonesome song about, perhaps, hibernating in a snowstorm (“Winter Sleep”) orchestrated in clean, ringing, Nordic style by Icelandic composer and producer Valgeir Sigurdsson. In between, McCarthy — songwriter on all four tracks, composer on all except “Winter Sleep” — considers life pictures and a dinner table, singing in her unmannered alto about the memories and life contained within such timeless placeholders.

It’s not easy or terribly illuminating to pin down the antecedents of Faun Fables’ sound, which seems to adds circus band and café jazz instrumentation to a bedrock of mystical, acoustic ’70s British folk (think Fairport Convention or Nick Drake). It’s nearly all acoustic, except for a theramin that pops up on “A Table Forgotten” and electric guitars hiding behind those of the acoustic variety, with violin, flute, harmonium riding high in the mix.

Some songs on the EP and upcoming full-length come from a stage show McCarthy wrote and performed with teenage students at Southern California’s Idyllwild Arts Academy in spring 2007. She calls that production “a first sketch of a theater show about the home” and plans to change the script, add songs and pick out a new cast. During an interview with NUVO last Friday, she sketched the outlines of that first show.

McCarthy: It was about these orphans that were all coming of age — they were all getting ready to turn 18 — and they didn’t really remember where they came from, or if they were actual siblings. They thought they were all siblings. So they’re out in this kind of remote setting, haven’t had visitors; they’ve made up their own ideas about what life is about. They know that there’s something living under the floor of the house. You can’t tell how much of that is just their own fears — the kids were left to just kind of design the world themselves. There’s one brother there who just loves to scare the other two, so he has all kinds of stories about it.
But there is something under the floorboards. In folk tradition, the spirit of the house was represented as a snake that was believed to be coiled at the base of the hearth, underneath the fire. So this snake is kind of like an odometer that tells where the house is at, how happy the house is.

They’ve never really known how to properly cook or make house; they never start a fire because the brother says that that will wake up a thing under the house. So they just do these very simple things. They have a house pretty bereft of any household charm and warmth. 

And then one day a visitor comes — and they’ve never had a visitor before — and really kind of shakes some things up, teaches them about the world. They discover that they were put there because they were orphans, and they’re getting ready to have to leave, and they’re coming of age. Which was interesting because the kids in the cast were actually turning 18, and they were getting ready to graduate from high school, and move on to all these different colleges in different towns. It was very apropos to where their lives were at, and I planned it that way; I wanted to work their stories into the show as much as possible. It was really enjoyable.

NUVO: Have you been living in the same place for some time?

McCarthy: We were living in a place for about eight years. It was a very special cottage by the Oakland Zoo, kind of by the Oakland hills. It was just this little lot that time forgot because around it, it’s a little bit of a rough neighborhood, but the place itself was just kind of on the edge of all that. I think it’s the longest place I’ve lived in, besides the family house that I grew up in; we were there about 10 years. I’ve moved around a lot. My parents separated when I was 10, and we moved about once a year, different rentals. I definitely enjoyed moving; I’ve got that spirit, kind of nomadic, gypsy … I think that one of the things that especially fascinates me with kitchens and making homes is when I see it done in settings that are makeshift, that are nomadic and on the fly kitchen settings. I’m really fascinated with pioneer stories, just that whole pioneer movement of moving across this really intense land with family. What makes the structure of a home; what makes the kids feel safe and happy? I think it’s something that I’ve been applying to my own life in times of nervousness and security as a way to kind of center myself, feel kind of grounded.

NUVO: What’s the significance of following an album about movement and travel (1996’s The Transit Rider) with an EP about home life (July 2008’s A Table Forgotten)?

McCarthy: That’s really interesting. Someone else pointed that out and I hadn’t been so consciously aware of that. I was like, “Wow, that really is quite a shift.” I almost think they’re two polar opposites, two forces that kind at work…They represent different sides of me. I think there’s this part of me that struggles with a kind of homelessness in the universe. I think in the human species, especially in modern civilized life, there’s kind of a disconnection from nature. Urban life can do that, but living in the suburbs too; anything that disconnects you. The other side of me has been finding — as the antidote to that kind of homelessness, and intense transient feeling — the home and the hearth. And when I think about it, that’s totally how that’s been in my life, as far as, I’ve been especially drawn towards the kitchen, really getting into enjoying being a homemaker. I’ve found a lot of solace in it. No matter where I’m living or travelling, it’s something that I can go to that’s a connection with tradition…Feeding oneself is quite an animal instinct. [train whistle] It’s a way of finding roots, no matter where you are, and I think I’ve used that for that purpose throughout time. At some point, I realized I wanted to make some art about it, write some songs, a theatre show; just do something with it. I feel like it’s something that I could potentially work on for a long time to come, on and off. I don’t feel like the material I’ve written so far is the total definitive statement on the home, and housekeeping. But it’s definitely been a really fun start. So far I’ve been calling it the first in a series because I definitely foresee more things to come in the future. It’s been such a vast basic thing in my life. So I guess I’ve been moving more towards just feeling more rooted as I’m getting older. And now I’m pregnant and that’s also been something that’s made me feel that much more connected.

NUVO: This’ll be your first child?

McCarthy: Yeah.

NUVO: On the first track, the character thinks of herself as a guide for the child that’s having a birthday. I wonder if you’re thinking about playing that role.

McCarthy: Mmm, yeah. I would love to. It’s fun to kind of put yourself in the shoes of the person that knows. I think we all have the parts of ourselves that are the wiser parts; we know what we’d like to be told, what kind of a guide. The voice in that song is kind of a grandmother character, a grandmother in the woods able to pass on wisdom of — okay, here’s what you have coming up. That would be great if I can be that character to a child.

NUVO: Do view the home as a place that blocks out the natural world or something more synthetic?

McCarthy: Yeah, definitely more synthetic. A place to welcome it in, no matter how urban a setting you’re in. And I’ve been living in big cities for sixteen years or something now: I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a couple years, but grew up in Spokane, Washington which is a small town, but is not a big town; it’s definitely not like New York City and the Bay Area which is where I’ve been living the last sixteen years. I’ve been in quite urban settings but — like the place we lived in for eight years by the Oakland Zoo, we were right by the hills, and we pursued the nature around there almost continuously. But I did find that the home was a pathway to that, a way to be rooted to that. I really enjoy studying all the recipe books and traditional way of food preparation and wild food gathering. I want to learn more of that and I know some stuff — I’ve done plant IDing. I have some plant IDing books and I’ve been taking some courses as well. I definitely want to pursue that more. And just getting more into providing as much of this food as possible myself, doing more fishing and even learning to hunt at some point, though I don’t know if I could really kill any larger animals. But certainly if you know people who are hunters, than you can have access, you know how to prepare the animal. I did take a workshop where I took an animal processing class. We killed a sheep, it was a group of us, so we slaughtered a sheep and had to do all the work of skinning and hanging the animal. It was intense! It was a lot of work, just this one animal. But we were able to make so much food from it: we made sausages; we made all kinds of stuff. Just the idea from it was to use as much as possible, so even with the skin and the feet, the hooves, people could make jewellery. They taught you how to tan the leather. It was an amazing workshop.

NUVO: What did you think of the video for “With Words and Cake”?

McCarthy: I thought it was really fun! Really fun. The woman who made the video — Annmarie Piette — she’s quite an artist with film. I’ve seen her stuff before, so I knew the end result would be really interesting, really beautiful looking. She did a lot of hand-coloring of the film stock, and used a lot of old cameras. We filmed it almost a couple years ago, but there was a long time period where they were working on just the animation and all the stuff afterwards. All the added aesthetic things, so it took a while for it to be finished. I was delighted when I saw it. Where it’s filmed is in my kitchen; it’s in the place where we lived for three years. It’s really awesome to have it documented before we moved out of there. I don’t know if you’ve seen the “I’d Like to Be” video? It’s The Transit Rider character wandering the hills, and she’s kind of found the picnic, the picnic place that she’s searching for throughout The Transit Rider story, and where that’s filmed is the hills right above that house, that cottage. So it was really nice; with those two videos, to get documented the two places where I spent a lot of time. Those were the hills I spent the most time in when I lived over there. That was the house we were in for about eight years. We have another video that’s in the works for “A Table Forgotten,” the song. That’s going to take a little while to get finished. That’s also turned out to be quite an epic. The woman who made “I’d Like To Be,” Lara Miranda — she’s working on the “Table Forgotten” video. We spent a good part of the spring, this spring, working on it, and did a few different weekends in the national parks out here. And we made costumes and did all kinds of stuff, and brought our little crew out there, and camped, and filmed. Keep a look out for that. That’s going to be another fun one.

NUVO: What’s the stage show like for this tour?

McCarthy: There’s a lot of new material which our audiences from the eastern half of North America haven’t seen before. I think the last time we’ve been out in those parts is the Transit Rider tour, so that’s two years now. So we’ll be playing a lot of new material from the new EP, but we’ll also be playing songs from the upcoming full-length record; thematically, there’s more of the home and hearth them there. One thing that’s really nice is, the last year, me and Nils have been working with a full-band set up, a four-person band. So it’s me with Nils, Kirana Peyton and Meredith Yayanos. We have some fun things. Some kitchen utensils, some physical performance with some of the songs, some sweeping. “The Sweeping Song,” that’s all percussive, and there’ll be some dancing with that one. There was a theatre show that some of the stuff was taken from that I did with some students at the Idyllwild Arts Academy in Southern California, so “A Table Forgotten,” “With Words and Cake,” “Pictures”: Those were all a part of the show. That’s going to be something I’m going to continue to develop in the next chapter, and get that theatre show out and tour with it.

NUVO: That’s where you think these songs will go, developing into a full show?

McCarthy: I saw that as a first sketch of a theatre show about the home. It was very particular to those kids because I developed it with the kids. I had an artist’s residency out there, so I had some time with them; it was really a special time. But I want to continue to develop it. Probably work on the script more, change the script. Figure out who the cast will be in the show — there will probably be more songs in it. But there were several songs in the show that didn’t make it on to the EP that will be on the full length record, so there’s more kind of house songs coming up. So just to give you a little background of where the materials is from, where it comes from first writing.

NUVO: Both “A Table Forgotten” and “Pictures” have objects as the characters in the piece. Sort of a vague question, but I’m wondering if animism informs the way that you consider those objects. Do they have a life on their own? Are they inhabited by memories?

McCarthy: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. You’ve hit the nail on the head.

NUVO: Well, it’s in the song…

McCarthy: Well, I think it’s something, well if we were to talk about animism, I might say, “Well, I’m interested in that.” But to just write something about, I hadn’t consciously thought about that as animism, but I realize that’s totally where it comes from, and that is my animist interactions with these subjects that I’m talking about. Especially with the table. I’ve found the table to be something that symbolizes gathering. And not just symbolizes; it holds the gatherings in it. I don’t know if you’ve experienced with pieces of furniture, having gatherings, and when you clean up afterwards, these objects get imbibed with the energies and with what’s happening there. So, yeah, I did regard as something living, interesting and profound as just about anything else that’s alive.

NUVO: And you write pretty consistently about your spiritual and mystical journey. I wonder if there’s any recent discoveries that you’ve made or anything that you’re thinking about at this point.

McCarthy: Currently, what I’ve been interested in experiencing nature on its own terms; whereas, in the past, I think I’ve needed to feel there’s been some extra thing. Like an anthropomorphic thing that would be somewhat human, something that would particularly pertain and reflect human things; fairies or anything. And I’ve always loved folklore; I needed to feel like there’s this extra presence. And what I’ve come to feel now is that I just really want to experience nature on it’s own terms without any kind of extra human thing added to it. I’ve found that to be just so full in and of itself, and I’ve found the different creatures — different animals, different plants — to be so wild, so varied, it’s just more fantastical than anything fantasy could offer. Really looking into it and studying lichens, deep sea dwellers, different insects. It’s really quite amazing. So that’s the mode I’ve been in for a while. With that, I’ve put folklore in more of it’s own kind of thing that’s made for man, by man. But what I’ve been thinking most recently, I’ve been wondering about this presence that have been in human tradition, that whether or not it comes from something outside of human nature. Where does imagination come from? Regardless of whether it’s something from beyond humans or if it’s from the human animal, it’s had such an undeniable presence and impact in our lives, it makes it real. What is the boundary of that? Whereas before I think I put it together in one lump thing; I blended nature and folklore. And we’re obviously all one big picture, but I started getting more into thinking — what stuff comes from the human mind and what would be there in nature regardless of if humans ever existed or not? And I don’t have the answer for that — I’m keeping it open. [Laughs.] I’m interested right now, just seeing how something does become a real force and how our lives get shaped by it, even if it is just from the human mind. There’s these ideas of underworld tradition, where, apparently, if you commune with elements in a parallel reality, the primal planet. If you were to find pure nature energies, you could really go into it. There’s supposedly some people who have done just that, and there’s so many people in folklore who have taken journeys into it and come back. Rip van Winkle is one of the most famous ones. There’s stories like that throughout different cultures, so you really start to question: was this something that was happening to people? Were they actually going into this other dimension of the planet, a parallel world? There’s some current writers that offer exercises to commune with this place, be able to go into it. There’s some people that would go, and didn’t actually physically die but would be there someplace, and you’re supposed to be able to access them; they’re there to teach others. It’s very planet-centric, earth, elemental-centric, and kind of environmental-minded too, as opposed to New Age stuff which is kind of out of the mind, out of the body, going up into space. This stuff is very about digging into the planet and the forces there. I have to say that I feel very planet-centric, very physical, interested in the nitty-gritty of nature and seeing things being a part of that. I’ve just been really fascinated with all of that, and not really feeling the need to escape out of it.

NUVO: Not feeling the need to escape into that parallel universe?

McCarthy: No, that would be getting closer. It’s kind of confusing. I was very interested in that idea of underworld tradition. I would say that I would definitely include that in getting closer to nature and the elements. The escape being more of the New Age thing — out of the body, transcend the physical realm. Where I’m really interested in being informed by the physical realm, and seeing all that’s contained in it, in and of itself, and not necessarily needing other things to make life interesting or worthwhile or to feel like there’s some additional forces making things happen. I really feel like it’s contained within it, and it’s just amazing and as powerful as any god would need to be.

NUVO: As far as an experience on another plane, your writing about dreams is really fascinating, both music and lyrics. I wonder if you can talk about how you approach writing about a dream state, particularly on A Table Forgotten’s “Winter Sleep” and The Transit Rider’s “Dream on a Train”?

McCarthy: “Winter Sleep,” the music, the chords and everything was written by Valgeir Sigurdsson, an Icelandic composer. Initially I wrote the words and put the vocals down on his record — it was kind of his debut, his first record of music he had put together, because he had always produced other people’s records. And then “Dream on a Train” was something that I wrote. So maybe I’ll focus on “Dream on a Train” with that question.

I don’t know if there’s really a different feel — that’s a great question though. I think that, whatever the subject is, I’ve just let it inform what the music needs to be. But it’s true though: I think that  “A Table Forgotten” is very concrete, there’s very concrete memories, and the feel of the song has a very real, right on the surface, blues kind of feel. And then “Dream on a Train” has a very shifting, dreamy feel to it. But I think that just came out kind of unconsciously with what the subject matter was. There wasn’t a different approach per se. I just knew that with “A Table Forgotten,” I wanted to write a song that had a gutsy feel to it. And “Dream on a Train” kind of came out of an improv I did on a keyboard, with the shifting chords, and it took much longer to get it to a finished point, and that was something where I worked the arrangement out with Nils a bunch. I had that on keyboards, and he wanted to put that guitar, we wanted to perform it. So he kind of translated the chords to guitar, and added some other guitars, so he gets a lot of arrangement credit on “Dream on a Train.”

NUVO: How did you meet Valgeir?

McCarthy: I worked with him because I work with Will Oldham on a Bonnie Prince Billy record we recorded a couple of years ago. Will wanted to work on the record with Valgeir, he wanted Valgeir to be the producer; I think he was interested in doing a different approach to a record, because he usually works with his brother who has a studio in Kentucky. So he had met Valgeir because he sang a track on the Drawing Restraint Nine Bjork/Matthew Barney film soundtrack, and he met Valgeir through that, and they both expressed an interest in working together. So when we were going to work on this record together, he said that it would either be in Louisville or Reykjavik. [He said] “I’m wondering if I can get you to come out and work on some songs with me, and it’s either going to be in Louisville or

Reykjavik.”  So I spent some time out there working with Valgeir, and he’s a really wonderful, kind person. I’ve been very interested in Icelandic folklore and history. Nils as well; Nils is really into reading the sagas. So we actually returned — I wanted to bring Nils there for his fortieth birthday, and so I brought him out there, and we went hiking, and we got to see Iceland much more. And we ended up staying with Valgeir for part of it, and that’s when he was working on the record, and that’s why I got interested in putting vocals to one of the songs.

NUVO: You stress the storytelling element of your work more than, perhaps, your average rock band. I’m wondering if you can pick out any kindred spirits that do the same.

McCarthy: Let me think. I wish I could just pull out a bunch of names for you right now. Pregnancy just makes your brain kind of “whoo, OK” — especially late pregnancy. One singer that comes to mind immediately is Mariana Sadovska. She’s a Ukrainian singer and she used to be the music director for this Polish theater group for ten years that is really wonderful; I did some training with them. I have her listed in my bio as an inspiration. She always takes on a very physical character approach to songs and performing songs. She’s done a lot of work with learning traditional songs, especially Ukrainian songs, from specific people, from old women; getting the songs directly through an oral tradition source, and performing them.

I would also say, someone local that I know of, Jewlia Eisenberg, who has a project called Charming Hostess. And she did an amazing amount of academic study with stories she works on — it tends to be stuff of Jewish culture and Jewish tradition, but Eastern European culture and political things. She put out a record called Sarajevo Blues a couple years back that was based upon a writer from that area that was writing about what life was like in this war zone. But it’s not just about the gunfire and bombs, it’s also about regular life continuing on. Jewlia writes really brilliant music; she always tries to push things with vocal harmonies and physical presentations of songs. A lot of acapella singing. I’ve done some work with her material; I did a little tour with her. So she’s someone I’d recommend too.

NUVO: I’ve heard Brecht and Weill mentioned as a bedrock influence on The Transit Rider, but I’m also wondering if there’s any contemporary musical theater that you’ve found influential or interesting.

McCarthy: This Polish group, Gardzienice, for sure. They’ve been studying ancient Greek stuff. Very very physical theater, almost continuous singing and really interesting rhythmical stuff, breathing. So they’ve been kind of focusing on Greek tragedies, and I haven’t been focusing on Greek tragedies, but the energy of their work really inspired me to unleash big energy, and really big, but kind of gritty energy. As opposed to big in a kind of Broadway, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” kind of way.

Flamenco performance is really inspiring to me. I saw this clip on Youtube that was a five year old doing a Flamenco dance. Her whole energy about it; it wasn’t like seeing a really technical display, although she was good at it, but it was the energy and the way that she was so self-possessed with it was an amazing thing to see.

And I really enjoyed — this is some years back, and I think this actually inspired The Transit Rider, more than, I’d say, the Kurt Weill thing. I think probably someone else, the journalist probably wrote that, compared it to that, I don’t think I’ve ever said that myself. I definitely have to give credit. I haven’t seen that much of theirs. I just saw the “Pirate Jenny,” an old film. I think their stuff is probably so absorbed into modern musical theater stuff that you don’t even know when you’re being influenced by.

But I really love Robert Wilson’s stuff. He did  The Black Rider with Tom Waits, and I saw that years ago, and I think that was one of those moments where I just felt like, and I just said, here’s some of the musical theater stuff I’d like to do. There was this German theater company performing it — the Thalia Theater of Hamburg — and they were wonderful; the singing was really dynamic and unusual. It was Tom Waits music, but just the way that they were performing it had kind of an edge that was different from the soundtrack he put out.

NUVO: Faun Fables gets compared to 70s British folk rock rather often, and I’m trying to sort that out. Was that an influence, and were you ever drawn by some of the mysticism and folklore that makes its way into songs by some of those performers?

McCarthy: Possibly. I’m sure that that’s true. I don’t feel like I’ve been more influenced by that movement than some other musical influences I’ve had. But I definitely have enjoyed a lot of that music. I think probably one of the biggest links of that is just being interested in actual folk culture and folk tradition. Reading up on that stuff, and country life too, country traditions. I do like a lot of English cottage culture, and small towns in England. England countryside culture, tearooms; I do really enjoy being out there, and traveling around cities. Their historical stuff there — there’s a different feel to it. I love the English language as they speak it. I have a lot of love for English traditions, especially English peasant tradition.

NUVO: Not into the royalty?

McCarthy: Well, I’ve wondered how some stuff starts with the royalty, and then the peasants get it and do something interesting with it. With tea drinking, there’s definitely a kind of elite version of that, but then for everyone over there, tea began such a day-to-day part of life. I’ve definitely spent some time with that music; I’m not thinking about it when I write stuff.

NUVO: Then what are your more dominant influences?

McCarthy: I would say, I really like people that are working on the edge, that have a kind of crazy fire in them, and that could just be in various genres. I do love flamenco singing, some of this theater work – this music theater stuff, like this Polish group that does singing that’s almost based in physical, extended vocal techniques, tribal singing, singing that would come out of just people singing out of doors, and yelling, street singing.

NUVO: So it’s more about the energy in what you’re looking for?

McCarthy: It’s more about the energy. I do like it when vocals are really heartfelt and intense, and it doesn’t mean that they all have to be an aggressive vibe. I can enjoy some really beautiful singing too. I’ve listened to a lot of different stuff, I have to say. I’ve heard a lot of great things from people I’ve met while touring, unknown people. I have a huge stash right now from people I’ve met one time touring, that have given me CDs. I could give you some names of people that, I don’t know if you’d recognize them at all.

Some of the ones you would recognize, I enjoy Buffy Sainte-Marie. I like Magma a whole lot, this French band that’s been doing really interesting progressive music, singing in their own found language. The energy of it is just really wild and playful, and just keeps going, and they work things into kind of a fury. Popol Vuh has been a more recent inspiration. The music of Popol Vuh reminds me of worship music; it sounds like people doing semi-religious stuff, but it has a real elemental feel to it. It feels kind of pastoral, and it’s really beautiful. Those would be some, I would say.

I also really like the Shangri-Las. The storytelling they do in the songs, the girls’ voices are urgent and kind of heart wrenching. There’s so much good stuff out there.

NUVO: Press materials and common sense would point out that non-dysfunctional domestic issues, particularly the art of homemaking, have been neglected in contemporary art. Do you think we’re at the point where it might not seem anti-feminist to explore domestic issues in some depth?

McCarthy: I’m not sure if we’re past the point where it would be considered anti-feminist. I’m kind of curious how feminists would respond to this material. I don’t feel like this kind of material is that represented in music, alternative music or popular music that’s currently being listened to — contemporary music that’s just kind of out there and being distributed and stuff. I haven’t heard it myself, I have to say. So I’m kind of curious as well to see what the response would be. Hopefully the way that’s it’s being shown in my music would make people see the spirit of it, beyond the political and social issues. My feeling of it is just coming at it from a very instinctive place. No one ever made me have to be domestic and be in the kitchen. And I wasn’t even all that interested in it growing up. It’s something that kind of hit me in my later teens.

NUVO: You started to get interested when traveling quite a bit?

McCarthy: Yeah, I had this one friend, back when we were about 14 years old, and she had already started studying tea parties, and she said, Hey, everybody, we’re going to start doing tea parties. Throwing tea parties that would be like me and her. It was great; they were some of the best tea parties I’ve ever been to. And she would bake all these things. All of this to say that I came at it in a way that’s really instinctive, and at some point, realized this could be seen as kind of a backwards, anti-feminist thing. I value what feminists established, but I think that were at a point that that cause doesn’t have to fight in the same way now, and I think that’s a big part in the way that I feel free to explore domesticity to my own design, at my own pace. I do think that, in looking around me, and seeing some of the lifestyle things from feminism or just from modern life — the pace of modern life being quick enough that it does make more sense to get something that’s already prepared, a meal that’s already prepared, something you can just kind of toss together quickly. I think that there had been the baby thrown out with the bathwater kind of syndrome, where there’s things to check out with domestic life that are really wonderful and nourishing, to use a very wholesome-sounding word, but it’s true. My hope is to give that to people in a very pure way that doesn’t have the dogma attached to it or doesn’t sound like I’m preaching something. There’s some subjects that if you approach them, it’s easy for you to sound too preachy, hokey, political. My hope with this is just to give people the spirit of the stuff and how I’ve been experiencing it; the joy of it. Not to say I always enjoy washing dishes, although I do enjoy washing dishes, but to bring people’s focus back to this amazing center they can have in their life. I think it is something that can really affect people’s lives in a good way, and it’s just right there, right there in their homes. But I think in order to give it to people in a way that’s going to be effective, you have to watch that you don’t do it in a sort of us vs. them, preachy way. You don’t want to get on a soapbox.

NUVO: Another way to look at it is, not only are people not making art about making their homes because of the legacy of feminism, but also, as you say, because of the speed of modern life and convenience. People aren’t taking the time, because of that convenience, to make their home reflect their personality and interests.

McCarthy: I would have to say I think that’s a good point. Convenience is such a big part of what culture and technology is heading towards, with all the different tools, appliances, gadgets and the things that you have, to make things more convenient and faster. When reading some of these pioneer books, you can really see how that was such a gift — some of that really mundane grueling stuff they were doing with simple tools. It has to do with when people had to start doing things in larger quantities, so it really is connected to population increase as well. For a household, it would be so much work to have to grind grain for your particular household needs. When you see what these time-saving machines were like, there’s a certain point to which it makes sense, but it ran amok a little bit, where we can see now how it’s also taken away. I think a lot of convenience things have created isolation too, where [before] people would have to do things together, doing laundry would be this kind of communal thing that you would, hang out with other people and do your laundry together. And now we have machines that can do that, which is cool on the one hand, but it also makes more of an isolation, a separation. That’s really interesting to see a lot of examples of that. I guess it’s up for people to decide where in their lives they can change the pace, but I think reminding people that they really can change the pace of their life. Sometimes you feel like, it’s just this wheel that’s spinning, it’s happening, I’m in the throes of it; how can I step out of it? It’s kind of this reminder that’s there’s so many thing you can really change with what you spend your time doing and the pace of it. Even taking a day, half a day, where you make food for the day, have it be your baking and cooking day. Make a soup. Make bread for the week. It’s still possible to put that in there, but it kind of takes an adjustment. And once you put that in there, it can become more of a reflex, something that doesn’t seem so against the grain of what you’re doing.

NUVO: And you’ve lived in communal settings?

McCarthy: I haven’t lived in many actual communal situations. I’ve had a lot of great community from traveling; community in different towns, different countries; that community that you make by doing work, doing projects in different places. Sharing shows with people and returning to those same towns, and it’s amazing how quickly you feel a friendship and connection with people, especially when you only get life in these small increments at a time. A lot of cut to the quick, get to the good stuff, and bond. Right now we live in this old artist’s warehouse in Oakland, and it’s one of the more communal situations we’ve been in. We have our own place, but it’s a bunch of funky interesting places. Some of the places are old boats. It’s interesting. But were actually looking to have a little more of a house, like a cottage, in more of a rural setting. But I think ideally it would be great to have some neighbors nearby, but people having enough of their own space. Living in a community is something I value, and I definitely could work on it more, that kind of day-to-day community. Doing the music biz work has in some ways created a kind of isolation from my local community because it can fragment your life; you’re out there so much of the time in other towns, other places, and when you come home, a lot of the work you want to do is hermit-type work, maintenance, or you just need a break from being out on the road. So it can make you a kind of a hermit, and you can find your local community life can suffer from it. So that’s something I’m striving to do in times to come, do stuff that’s more connected to whatever local community I’m living in.