Fiver
When I met Austin-transplant and Montana native, folk-rock wunderkind Fiver, at Quack’s Coffee, he stood out strangely from the hip and fashionable patrons. Seated outside next to his black lab, Fiver sipped a soda and pensively flipped through a worn book of poetry during our brief interview. His tightly-cut, almost military style hair, dark, piercing eyes, and strong nose complimented his track jacket and dickies, making him look more like a Scottish soccer hooligan than a Dylanesque troubadour. As he answered questions he avoided eye-contact and nervous ran his fingers through his hair.
“It’s difficult turning that same microscope that I maybe use in my songs back on myself. I don’t think I have as much capacity for self-examination as I’d like,” Fiver stated as he pet his dog, Hazel.
The admission seemed in many ways as if the youth was selling himself short. Equal parts literate, verbose musings on the state of the Nation, God (or lack thereof), and the working man’s dilemma, to incisive and stark confessions on personal tragedy, loss, and haunting humor, Fiver’s sparse, earthy approach to the classic singer-songwriter mold recalls Conor Oberst if he was more into Woody Guthrie than Dylan. Still, Fiver is very much the poet. He flips through a compendium of Auden excerpts, landing on “The Fall of Rome,” from which his debut LP gets its names.
“I just think that . . . and I’m not educated on this or anything like that . . . that Auden was talking about people like me here. Runaways from the system. I get a real sense of flight when I read this poem.”
Fiver, real name Tennessee Sturges hails from a small town in northeastern Montana. His father died in an oil accident in the early 90s he said and his mother kicked him out of the house at 16 for being gay.
“I don’t like to talk about my sexuality all that much. It is what it is. I’ve lost a lot of old friends because of it. Friends who are in the Army now, in the Marines, which is pretty much all you can be if you’re from that town. That or an oilman and I wasn’t going to do either of those things anyway.”
Leaving with a pickup truck, a sizable collection of books, and his trusty canine partner, Fiver left for the big city lights of New York. It was here, almost two years later, that the young man made a name for himself amongst the Occupy Wall Street movement, singing his brand of dark, confessional workingman’s songs to the huddled protestors. But it wasn’t until his sparse cover version of Bright Eyes’ “Ladder Song” began making waves across the blogosphere that listeners really began to take notice.
“That’s a devastating song. I’m not even all that familiar with his music. I like folk as much as the next guy – Dylan, Leadbelly, Singin’ Brakeman, Muddy Waters, Scruggs, etcetera – and Conor Oberst’s music definitely seems to fit that mold a lot, even if he really rejects the label. But that one song, man, really struck a chord with me. So many of my friends, whether in Montana or New York, they just kind of gave up. And I just wanted to shake them and say “there’s no point in dying!” So I recorded that song in someone’s shower in Brooklyn, which was inexplicably in their kitchen, along with all the other tracks and here I am.”
Fiver has since migrated to Austin due to what he considers “a capacity to love folk musicians – a great big musical heart.” He’s about to embark on a Winter tour of the US, traveling with little else than his dog and his guitar in his beat-up old Chevy. Oh yeah, and his impressive collection of books.
“That’s where Fiver comes from. It’s one of the rabbits in Watership Down, the prescient one who insists they travel away from their home. That was always me. The little artsy kid that no one ever liked but under that surface was deep and introspective. I love that book.”
I asked if that’s where his dog Hazel’s name comes from as well. He cracks the first smile of the day.
“No, that’s obviously Hazel Dickens my friend. Good eye though.”
Mp3s are forthcoming Cannibal Cheerleader readers. I’ll post them soon. Until then, stay hungry!