Catching Up With... David Barnes, Of Montreal's secret weapon

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Paste: You’ve been drawing since you were a kid. What was it like growing up with Kevin? Were you both very artistic at a young age? Did you do projects together all the way back when you were kids?
Barnes: Like all brothers, when you’re really young you’re friends and you hang out, and then it reaches a point when the older brother hates the younger brother but the younger brother always wants to hang out with the older brother. So there was a lot of me trying to hang out with him, and in return getting him sitting on top of me giving me a typewriter on my chest or something like that. When we were really young we put on a lot of plays. We saw the Little Shop of Horrors in the movie theater—the second one, with Rick Moranis—and I remember writing and putting on our own version of it for my aunt right when we got home. As we got older, he started playing music like most kids do—because it’s cool and you’re listening to heavy metal, and you want to be in heavy-metal band. But then, at some point, it turns into art. You know, I always drew, my whole life, but it was just drawing, kind of like playing with toys, and I drew battle scenes and things like that, but [Kevin] was the first one who turned me on to the idea that “No, this is actually something important that you’re doing, and it’s called art and you’re an artist.”

Paste: Was he a pretty big influence on you in that way?
Barnes:  Oh, yeah. Definitely. I would go to his shows, his open-mic nights, at a little coffee shop with five people. So I’ve been listening to him since—I think I have literally every piece of music he’s ever recorded. At least on tapes.

Paste: I caught Of Montreal’s set at the Langerado Festival earlier this year, and I was really blown away by the part where Kevin was wheeled out, almost naked, in a coffin full of shaving cream. I asked Kevin about it, and he said it goes back to this thing you used to do in college at FSU. Tell me a little about the shaving cream monster.
Barnes: I would go door-to-door, and one of my friends would have a video camera and we would just wander around apartment complexes with me in the shaving cream, and knock on doors, and the person with the camera would be across the street, zooming in, and so you couldn’t hear what the people were saying, you would just see this weird shaving-cream monster go door-to-door and the different reactions from people who would open it for a split second and them slam the door and you’d hear this bolt lock. And some people would be stoned or something—like, five guys with long hair would walk out and be like, “Oh, man what’s going on?”

Paste: Was the shaving-cream monster inspired by anything in particular, or was it just a crazy, random idea?
Barnes: I don’t remember. Maybe I was just shaving, and messing around in front of the mirror and put it all over my face, and I thought it looked funny, and then realized, “Oh, God, you could put it all over your whole body.” But I tried to re-create the human torch, and I put red shaving cream in it not realizing that it would dye my skin, and so I had to go to class the whole next week with like a slightly inhuman red color.

Paste: A lot of stuff like this gag has translated to the band’s live show. I was talking to Kevin about how, since the band has more of a budget now, things have changed. I remember seeing Of Montreal play at a little bar in the suburbs of Charleston in 2003, and [former drummer] Jamey Huggins was out front sewing costumes before the show. But now that you have more of a budget to work with, what has it been like to have a little more freedom to try these different things as the band has gotten bigger? And also, there’s this parade of what seem like these weird non sequiturs during Of Montreal shows—hair in a box, weird masked creatures. Do you think this is fitting for the music?
Barnes: I think so. It definitely fits some sort of spirit of this—there’s never a visual idea where it’s like, “Hey, Kevin I was thinking about doing this,” and he’s like, “No, don’t do that.” So if you come up with a weird idea and you’re willing to make it happen, then it will happen. That’s what’s really fun because a lot of times I don’t really know what’s going to happen. If we go to a festival and we haven’t been on tour for like a month then it’s like, “Oh, God, we have a show tonight.” So we grab a bunch of stuff and right before the show, we’re like, “OK, so what are we gonna do?” And we’ll say, “Alright, you come out and do this, and maybe I’ll be there to do this when you do that…” So it’s really fly by the seat of your pants, which I think is fun. We were thinking of getting dancers for this tour, but then we were thinking, “Dancers are going to want to know exactly what to do, and where it’s gonna be and when it’s gonna happen. But if we get creative, weird people that are willing to do anything, then that’s sets it more up so that anything could happen." On stage, live that person might do something that makes me think of something, so then I do it, and then someone else thinks of something, so it’s definitely that free form versus strict, choreographed live performance.

Paste: What do you have planned out for this tour?
Barnes: We’re gonna be bringing a couple more people with us just to be performers on stage, just because it gets kind of lonely out there when it’s just me. There are limited things you can do by yourself, but once you have two or three people then those people can start interacting. One of things we wanted to do—we were thinking of silent film and how that’s basically just music and people interacting and doing things, and you kind of understand what they’re doing and it’s kind of funny and you seem some emotion, but it doesn’t necessarily have to fit the music. And we have some pretty advanced ideas for the actual stage setup, where the stage will be a character, so it’s this revolving set in the middle of the stage where the insides of it can be changed constantly. So while one thing is up front, people can be changing what’s inside the back part of it, and it flips around and the stage completely changes.

Paste: Is that something you’re going to have to build also?
Barnes: No, luckily Nick Gould, the guy who does our projection, him and Dan, the sound guy, and Davey, the bass player, are all really handy, so they’re going to build it. If I built it, it would fall apart in two days.

Paste: What’s the age difference between you and Kevin?
Barnes: Two-and-a-half years.

Paste: At what point did you start accompanying the band more or less full time on the road?
Barnes: Well, I used to go in the very beginning, while I was on summer break from college. But we had no money and all of our props were made of paper. It was more of an excuse for me to travel, and I’d just get up on stage and do some silly things. Then, two years ago, it kind of started for the same reason. I was like, “I wanna go on tour!” Kevin was like, “Alright, but you have to do something.” So I said, “OK, I’ll go on stage, I guess.” And that was funny for me because I’m a painter, and I realized that I’m a performance artist, too, now. But it really just came out of like, “I wanna travel around, I wanna go to Europe and New York.” But now I really like it, at first I definitely wasn’t—being on stage wasn’t something I felt comfortable with; I was pretty terrified doing it. So I always wore masks because that gives you a certain type of strength, and you’re kind of hidden. And now that’s just sort of become a permanent thing, but now I really enjoy it. And I love—especially with me and Kevin, I don’t know that people would really notice other than us, but there are times on stage when things sort of slow down and we’ll just start interacting with each other and read each other’s minds. It’ll be like, “I’m gonna do this and I hope that he’s gonna do this next, and it just seems like he reads my mind, or vice-versa. He’ll move over and I’ll think he’s going to something, so I’ll go over there and it works out. Those are the really amazing times.

Paste: So you guys have this connectedness, having spent so much time together.
Barnes: My family always says we cheat at Pictionary, because of that connection.

Paste: One more question for you. Were you the ninja onstage at the Langerado show?
Barnes: Yeah. I love that suit now. Whenever we go on tour and I take the suit out—because I’m really big into comic books, so it’s perfect for me. The only way it would be better is if I was actually fighting crime after the show.