Fleet Foxes

By Kjersti Egerdahl

Photos by Sean Pecknold

Anyone who’s been in a band knows how intimidating it can be to set up that very first show — but Fleet Foxes are probably one of the few to enlist an imaginary friend to help them along. “I had no idea how it worked, so I made a fake email address for a fake manager guy whose name I made up, and I was like, ‘I’m working with this band and we have a bill for you,’” confesses Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes’ singer and guitarist. “So I had to maintain this charade for like a week or so, talking to the booker at Chop Suey. That was pretty dumb.” Luckily Fleet Foxes figured out pretty quickly that bands don’t need an entourage in Seattle, and soon picked up shows all over town, good press, studio time and the interest of a couple local labels — plus a real live booking agent.

The rest of the bandmembers, Skye Skjelset (guitar), Casey Wescott (keyboards), Nicholas Peterson (drums) and Craig Curran (bass), are prepping to hole up in the studio to work on their long-awaited debut, but Pecknold is willing and able to tell the story of how it began, and how they back it up with warm, open songwriting and meticulous three-part harmonies.

In the beginning, there was Joni Mitchell — and two 12-year-old best friends learning guitar together. Skjelset eventually got into the crazy lead guitar end of things, and Pecknold started writing songs. “When I was 14 or 15, it was total Joni Mitchell rip-off music, even like copying her chord changes and guitar tunings,” Pecknold says.

Fleet Foxes’ sound has branched out a bit since then, encompassing rich, melodic folk that’s always propulsive, if not driving. Pecknold still loves everything ‘60s, with some Crosby, Stills and Nash thrown in. He’s also gotten over his initial skepticism toward freak-folk, and says he’d love to sing with Marisa Nadler someday. Pecknold himself has a strong, straightforward tenor — shades of Jim James minus the effects — that nevertheless blends right into the group’s effortlessly rich harmonies. A serious chunk of their thrice-a-week rehearsals goes towards vocals, and it shows. All the singers stay right on key, even when the other instruments drop out, and Pecknold conducts with his fist in the air. “We could make a record of just voices and I’d be happy,” he says.

It’s taken Fleet Foxes a little over a year to get to this point. Now they’re completing their first album while writing songs for a second, and trying to decide which local label they’ll go with (they won’t name names). “I’d love to do the whole band rigmarole,” says Pecknold, but he’s not itching to do nothing but music right now. “You also can’t work on music 24/7 either — you have to have something to write about,” he says. “It would be fun to not have a menial job, but that reality doesn’t bother me at all.”

Considering their tour experience so far, it’s no wonder life on the road doesn’t have mythic appeal. So far they’ve accidentally headlined one minor folk festival in nowhere, Oregon, and driven to Vancouver BC in a snowstorm for a tech tradeshow. “It was some kind of forward-thinking music-internet synergy thing,” says Pecknold. “So there were all these business people.” Icy roads be damned: “We were like, ‘Do it, dudes! We’ll die for the cause!’ But that didn’t really work out.”

Sticking close to home has paid off just fine for Fleet Foxes though, and they’re enthusiastic about their small but supportive community in Seattle. “Nobody’s hustling,” Pecknold says. “It’s not about, like, ‘Let’s move to Seattle to make it happen dudes!’ It’s more chill than that — it’s more laissez-faire.”

Now that Seattle’s shown them some love, Fleet Foxes plan to give back a little. In the downtime between finishing the album and releasing it this spring, Pecknold and his brother Sean are planning to get a sort of umbrella organization of goodwill for artistic types off the ground. “There’s some negativity in town, and just to kind of overpower that . . . we’re trying to start this thing called Golden Dawn of Washington,” says Pecknold, “put together some shows, maybe put out some records, just kind of be like, all are welcome.” They kicked it off with a hike in October — so it looks like the utopianism of the ‘60s is set to beat out the hustling ‘80s for a little longer in Seattle. Come on people now.

www.myspace.com/fleetfoxes