Bright Eyes

When you’re young, live in Omaha, Neb., and run your own label, you can do damn near whatever you want. You can drop absurd jokes between powerful songs, wear every heartbreak and tantrum on your sleeve, and write perfect lyrics, only to scream them away. You can work with nobody but your friends and behave like you owe nothing to show business. But what if it all works?

While photo shoots always capture his intense stare, in person Conor Oberst—best known by the moniker Bright Eyes—is slight and courteous; he buys every round and only starts cursing when we talk politics. We meet at a nameless Irish pub in New York’s East Village. Designated only by a Guinness marquee, the cozy, dimly lit room is complemented by John Coltrane’s tenor on the stereo. It’s one of those meeting places that finds life in the city, even on Mondays. The middle of the room is hosting a birthday party, with a buffet we’re invited to share, and later, we have to move our interview out of the back room to accommodate a poetry reading. Oberst’s own posse—which he rejoins after we finish—has already settled in at a nearby table.

For years, Oberst and the record label he helped found, Saddle Creek, have been intertwined with Omaha, but he’s since moved to New York. He explains that after visiting on tour he began frequenting the city and ultimately got his own place. His house, family and friends are back in Omaha, but “it felt good to wipe the slate clean, you know, be somewhere where you didn’t really necessarily have too much of a history.” And he made sure to set up a base before he settled. “At the same time as wanting to start fresh, I also don’t like being alone,” he says of his new East Coast friends. “So it made sense to come here because there were already a lot of people I knew—and musicians to play with.”

You can hear elements of his new home on the pair of albums Oberst released in January. The discs are pretty much split rural/urban: I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning displays an even more rustic Americana than Bright Eyes’ earlier efforts, while Digital Ash in a Digital Urn is filled with beats and rhythms influenced by the indietronica of bands like The Postal Service. But both albums include songs Oberst wrote about the city, and they both tap his new friends. Nick Zinner—Yeah Yeah Yeah’s guitar experimentalist and poster-child for Williamsburg hipsters—plays on Digital Ash, while I’m Wide Awake features the acoustic guitar of Norah Jones-hit-writer Jesse Harris.

Oberst has embraced a new professionalism, climbing deeper into the music industry’s embrace. During his recent sessions, he took a Nashville detour to add the harmony vocals of Emmylou Harris. And, as part of the politically charged Vote for Change tour, he opened for R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen, playing to some of the biggest crowds of his life. And last November, the first two singles from his new albums made a surprising dash to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.