As the Crow Flies The Continuing Adventures of Devendra Banhart
by Steven Leckart | 00.00.0000

"The world has always been about change. People who don't change will find themselves like folk musicians, playing in museums and local as a motherfucker." -Miles Davis
THE SUNSET CASTS a warm, fading glow on a smiling Devendra Banhart, as he ambles barefoot and shirtless down a cement stairway. He's grasping an acoustic guitar in one hand, a Native American headdress in the other. Above his eyebrows rests a maroon dot the size of a pencil eraser. It's called a bindi and at this moment it's staring through me like no other.
We exchange a brief "hello," as he leads me upstairs to the house where he's been crashing the last few days. Banhart and his pals have just finished mastering the 22 tracks comprising Crippled Crow, the 24-year-old's third full length since 2004—and people say Conor Oberst is prolific. Scattered across the kitchen table are abstract sketches of vines, a half-drunk bottle of tequila and a series of Polaroids from the photo shoot I've obviously interrupted. Apparently the headdress isn't a part of his everyday wardrobe (no word on that bindi).

Banhart hands over a Discman: "Here's the new record. Listen. So we'll have something to talk about."

Take my word for it. There is nothing more awkward than previewing a musician's album (a whopping 22 tracks no less) while he's a few steps away, engaged in a conversation you can no longer hear. Throw in the fact that during this listening session, Banhart (still shirtless) will don a light brown top hat, begin playfully mugging for the camera and actually turn the lens around on the photographer. Right now, it's as if we've stumbled into some eccentric, timeless silent film scored by him, starring him, directed by him. Of course, the film doesn't begin here.

If the walls of Club Waziema could talk, they wouldn't merely explain how to make injera bread. They'd also whisper intimate tales of Billie Holliday. An Ethiopian restaurant specializing in vegetarian cuisine, Waziema currently has a cool side gig hosting jazz, blues and folk shows. Rumor has it 40 years ago it was a radio station frequented by some heavy performers like James Brown. Yet, when these walls speak—and in the realm of Banhart's surrealist songs they do so frequently—they haven't forgotten the crisp San Francisco night when a skinny art student's haunting warble blew away a room of close friends and probably more than a few befuddled restaurant goers. For a minute let's shush those walls, 'cause they tend to get painfully loquacious after a few Harars (that's a beer, by the way). Instead, let's turn to Noah Georgeson, Banhart's guitar player friend who (along with the Pernice Brothers' Thom Monahan, Vetiver's Andy Cabic and over a dozen other musicians—a bit more on them later) helped birth Crippled Crow.

"There was something that struck me that night," recalls Noah. "It was really an obvious projection of his personality, very consistent with him as a person. It was just touching. I remember Devendra had these little dried out beans in a shaker, and all of a sudden this little Ethiopian kid came up, grabbed it with his little hand and just started shaking it around. Had Devendra never played again, it still would have been a really nice memory. It was a cool little moment."

In just four years that thread of a moment has been woven into one of the most perplexing but downright original back-stories in contemporary music. It's the tale of a guy with a Hindi first name (it means "King of Gods") who was born in Texas, raised in Caracas (his mother is Venezuelan), uprooted to Southern California at the age of 13, and later moved to San Francisco for a spell (deep breath) before wandering through New York and Paris, essentially homeless. From there, it's the story of how this "fucked up hippie kid" (Banhart's phrasing) went from releasing a demo of odd acoustic sketches in 2002, to ultimately being crowned the prince of the so-called freak-folk movement.

It is one hour later and the improvisational photo happening is over. The light has downshifted to a cool blue gray, so Banhart puts on a tie-dye T-shirt and collared denim overshirt. Although the headdress and top hat have been retired, he still looks the part of the vagabond artiste—his thick beard interfaces with the wavy mess of jet-black hair pulled behind his ears, a large hoop earring dangles and smacks against the dark, red-tinged beard, and yes, the bindi is still gazing. To some, it's a calculated façade, one that can be written off as a throwback to the 1970s. Rolling a cigarette (just tobacco, if you must know) and sipping on a cold beer (not a Harar), Banhart says he's far from ignorant of the harsh critiques of his persona. In fact, he actually keeps up to speed via the Internet.

"I don't go online all the time but I do email, and my friends forward me shit that they read about me. This one website had this list of names to call me, like 'Defakera Banhart' or 'Devendra Badhart.' All these shitty, really funny names. It's a real trip that I could be such a disappointment to some people, you know? People say that I'm shit or I suck or I don't know how to play or write songs or sing or anything. But I feel like I should be inspiring, not something to hate. They should be really excited that somebody who can't sing, play or write songs—according to them—is doing it and getting some recognition for it. Shouldn't they feel like, 'Groovy. I can do it, too'?"

Touché. Yet, after listening to the more mysterious references on 2004's Rejoicing in the Hands and Nino Rojo (the latter contains the line: "We belong to the floating hand that's made by some animals"), it is clear most folks can't even come close. It takes a fertile imagination to write a compelling narrative where the basic rules governing everyday life are tossed aside. On Crippled Crow, Banhart has done more than simply turn convention on its head—which is not to say that he has cast the freak flag at half-mast. The idea behind the upbeat jam "Chinese Children," Banhart explains, was actually inspired by the paranoid conspiracy theories of the old burnouts he's met. So says they, sometime in the near future China will invade North America and then the rest of the world (uh, watch out for the brown acid, everybody). Regardless, Banhart professes that much of Crippled Crow's content isn't grounded in "acid casualty babble" or the more abstract poetry his fans have come to expect.

"The core of selling out is when you start doing things to second guess people. They're reactions. Someone says I write a lot about teeth, so I go, 'Ha ha. I'm not gonna sing about teeth on this record.' But Crippled Crow isn't a reaction. I just wanted to do something that could be really, really direct and straightforward, something that's me, completely, really me.""

From track one that's evident. A slow, acoustic reminiscence, "Now That I Know," traces various points in Banhart's peripatetic life—from wearing his mother's clothes at the age of 12 (a topic covered incessantly in interviews; he currently has a girlfriend, if you must know) to returning in deep financial debt after his last sold out tour in Europe (he's since learned a deluxe tour bus doesn't pay for itself). This is Banhart as candid and as personal as he's ever been on a record.

Rejoicing topped a plethora of critics' lists at the end of 2004, but Banhart reveals that things at that point were not so, well, groovy. After two and half years on the road, he was tired of hop scotching from one tour to the next—especially in light of the fact his band mates received just $30 per show on the last sold out European tour (a problem he's since learned how to remedy, hence, "Now That I Know").

"That was the lowest point in my life—physically and spiritually. I was really this charcoal of a person. All I thought about was having a home. I wanted a desk, you know? But once I forced myself to stop living in the future and freed myself from thinking of living in the future, my body just relaxed and instantly reenergized—the minute I could just exist in the present."

Or the past, depending how you look at it. See, Banhart hibernated this past winter at Bearsville, the barn-studio founded by Bob Dylan's former manager near Woodstock, New York. OK, let's settle things once and for all. If Banhart were at all concerned about being pigeonholed, would he have really chosen Woodstock (where Jimi Hendrix introduced the national anthem to LSD)? Placing himself in front a serene backdrop dotted with deer and wild turkeys, Banhart also cast over a dozen of his friends (including CocoRosie, YACHT, Adam Forkner, Feathers, Bunny Brains, and of course, Georgeson and Cabic), opening up a process that, up until then, had been a private affair. Yet, even with the support of his friends and the tranquility of the frozen forest, Banhart had to put to rest the neuroses that often cripple a songwriter.

"For a minute I started getting really freaked out when we were focusing so much on making the record. You can turn into a real egomaniac and get obsessed with yourself and what you're creating, and think of yourself in this fucked up light. There was a moment where I had to step back and open all the doors and not allow that to happen. You can really lose touch with spirituality making a record in a really nice closed-in studio because you exclude the world."

So Banhart opted to let in the world—literally. Likening the recording process o cooking, he shares how his longstanding love of Brazilian tropicalia helped illustrate why he needed to season this next crop of songs with more than a quivering voice or a fingerpicked guitar. Known for its unbridled eclecticism, the tropicalia movement—a form of artistic "cannibalism," as he calls it—showed him the importance of incorporating his favorite sounds: reggae, American folk, salsa, British folk, American blues, calypso, African blues (the list goes on).

"For sure, it's world music. Yeah, man. I mean, the genre that I really feel like all of us inhabit is the New New Age. There's an old New Age and there's like a New New Age. That's very vague and general, but really, it's way more that than new folk, psych folk or anything just folk. It really is a [he pauses as the sound of the words become as pleasing as the principles they summon]...New...New Age."

Everything begins to swirl together. Not simply the lyrics that slide between English and Spanish. Not just the gleeful reggae jams, South American rhythms, allusions to Chinese children and the all-inclusive vibe of what really is whirlled music. It's also the vision of that cozy little Ethiopian restaurant, the Native American headdress, a Venezuelan childhood and certainly the bindi, all balled up within this complicated, global orb of personality that is Devendra Banhart. And whether he's transmitting his far out presence through a pair of headphones or standing right in front of you commandeering the camera of a photographer who was assigned to shoot him, it's clear that this film doesn't fade to black here. It's most remarkable moment begins now.