Production Notes: Devendra Banhart

(Above [L-R]: Andy Cabic, Devendra Banhart, Noah Georgeson, Thom Monahan. Photo by Autumn Dewilde.)

More than any of his contemporaries in what has become an extended musical family, freakfolk avatar Devendra Banhart has fomented a rebellion against Pro Tooled and packaged popular music—he’s a Moses in reverse, leading his disciples back into the wilderness. But Banhart is hardly a Luddite, and what many of his fans don’t realize is that the rustic nature of his recordings has been more a matter of severe limitations than any philosophical stance.

So when he began work on Cripple Crow—his fourth full-length album and first for a full-fledged record label (XL)—Banhart for the first time was afforded an opportunity to fashion an album with a full set of resources, including a sizable budget and an actual recording studio, as well as his choice of producer and players. Naturally, he utilized these resources his own way.

The Production Team

“We had the opportunity to work with some bigwig dudes, and it seemed so ridiculous and pointless,” says Banhart. Instead, he tapped two friends, Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom) and Andy Cabic (leader of S.F.-based acoustic group Vetiver). This brain trust had enough brains to know they still lacked a crucial component—a bona fide studio expert to guide them through their first big-time project. Without hesitation, Banhart rang up Thom Monahan, bassist and producer of the Pernice Brothers, who’d gotten to know all three while producing Vetiver’s debut album and EP (he also recently produced the band’s full-length follow-up). Monahan enthusiastically accepted the co-producer role. “It was like working with family,” he says. Banhart agrees. “Thom has the most endless source of energy of anyone I’ve ever met. We love Thom.”

Monahan felt right at home in this crowd. “I’m not this super-top-down producer,” he says. “I’m in a production role most of the time, but I co-produce with people—that’s what I do. Joe Pernice’s brother said that I’m like a player/coach, and that was the coolest thing that anybody could ever say.”

The Facility

The whole crew, including a sizable revolving cast of players, convened in March at hallowed Bearsville Studios in Woodstock, N.Y., to help their bro make a record. “I don’t really care about the equipment,” Banhart points out. “I care about the stored vibrations of a space. Bearsville was just what we needed, because it’s all pure wood, and wood stores energy—it was just a straight-up, aged-energy battery. It was the perfect studio for this record.”

Bearsville, says Monahan, “was technically incredible because I had tons of ribbon mics to choose from, great preamps, everything. It was totally straight-up, old-school, classic recording, straight to tape. I just didn’t want it to sound like some up-to-date, state-of-the-art, modern record.”

The Sessions

“Making a record is like cooking,” Banhart offers. “The ?rst record I ever made, I was cooking but with very shitty utensils and very shitty ingredients—like a matchstick, the corner of a piece of paper, some peanut butter from the ’80s, a broken lighter, a couple of pieces of hair, etc. And on Rejoicing in the Hands and Nino Rojo, it was just a recipe book. On this record, we tried to get cooking, but it’s still not a full meal. I hope to someday make something that feels like an entire meal.”

There’s an old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth, but according to Monahan, the members of the four-man production team interacted effectively during their month at Bearsville—they did, after all, manage to complete 40 tracks (with 22 making the album). “It was a very fluid kind of thing,” Thom explains. “Everybody was engaged in making decisions. My job was making sure that we were getting the right tones and going in the right direction. Noah was awesome to work with, and Andy is just a totally amazing person.”

The sessions proceeded at a careening pace. “I didn’t know what was gonna happen from one moment to the next,” Monahan admits. “We’d go in a million different directions. One day I had 14 mics up just for percussion because there was so much stuff going on that I had to be able to respond to it in an instant. It was like, boom, do it, go to the next take—it was kung-fu action all the time. You totally had to not think about it, just get it done. That record was only possible because people nailed their parts. You’d run it down for them, they’d rehearse it, you’d roll tape and they would peg it.

“It was as ideal a situation as you could possibly imagine,” the producer marvels. “You were there with your best friends, making a record with somebody who’s firing on all cylinders all day long. Devendra was f—ing incredible. He would go out and do a vocal take or a guitar overdub, and he would be completely throwing himself into it. He’s not psychotically running around and screaming into a microphone all day; he’s trying to make music in a way that he feels is true to himself and is the best that he can do.”

The Result

There was obviously a lot of love in the room; Banhart’s dad even cooked dinner every night for the entire entourage. And out of all that love came tangible results. Cripple Crow is the most developed work of Banhart’s short career, yet it sounds utterly homemade. And in “Long Haired Child”—with its infectious groove, beguiling vocal and a lyric that’s at once insightful and hilarious—Banhart and his cohorts have fashioned what actually sounds like a radio hit, inadvertent as that may have been.

“For me, this record had a glow about it,” say the 38-year-old Monahan. “I really consider myself lucky to have been there. If I get to do this as a career, I’ll get hired by people I don’t know, and at some point I’ll be doing something I’m not as engaged in. But for that moment, I couldn’t have been more down with what was going on.”