Field Report Invites You To Try Some Summertime Songs at the Back Room at Colectivo, 4/20 and 4/22/18

“It takes an unknown amount of people to push on the rock before the rock will move, but suddenly we have people pushing rocks around here,” triumphantly stated Field Report’s Christopher Porterfield in a recent conversation when asked about the state of live original music in Milwaukee.  Field Report has been at the heart and soul of the Milwaukee music scene for quite some time now with a reputation for honest tunes, riveting performances, deep lyrics, and wonderful songcraft from Christopher Porterfield and company. With their release of Summertime Songs last month, Field Report pushes beyond the nuanced folk sound that they have been known for, and in the process have created songs that are as intimate and earnest as ever, but also expand their collective sound to fill larger spaces.

With two sold-out shows coming up at the Back Room of Colectivo this Friday, April 20th, and Sunday, April 22nd, a critically acclaimed new record, and a ton of energy, Field Report is ready to take Milwaukee by storm much like this spring time snow and sleet.  MKE Rocks had the chance to catch up with Christopher Porterfield to talk about the new record, current tour, and the thriving Milwaukee music scene.

MKE Rocks:  Congrats on the amazing new record and tour.  How has this tour been going you and the band?  

Porterfield:  Thanks so much!  The tour has been good.  The record came out on the 23rd of March and then we started on the road in Chicago early the next week on the 26th.  The record was just out so the first leg of the tour was for the early adopters- the ones that knew about the record when it came out and who got to hear it first.  We do really well obviously in Milwaukee, and our idea is to get every city in North America to feel like Milwaukee when we come to down. We had a great turn out in Chicago and a couple of excellent shows in New York, Ann Arbor and Toronto. Even by the end of this leg of the tour we noticed that there are more unfamiliar faces in the crowd along with folks who’ve supported us regularly over the past several years.

MKE Rocks: Last time you performed a show in town it was with Bon Iver and Collections of Colonies of Bees at the Bradley Center for the epic For Emma, 10 Years show that Justin Vernon curated.  Knowing what a big Milwaukee Bucks fan you are, what was it like to play on that stage at the Bradley Center?

photo by Daniel Ojeda, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 

Porterfield: It was cool to get that notch in our belt before that building just disappears.  It was such a beautiful day to be a part of terms of celebrating music in Milwaukee and the state.  There was great energy and camaraderie. Our dressing room was not too far away from where the Bucks locker room is.  It was fun thinking about Giannis Antetokounmpo getting ready for his games not too far from where we were and thinking about if roles were reversed for Giannis to be tuning up a guitar.  It was kind of surreal to be part of that for me.

MKE Rocks: One of the things that fans love about your songs is your creative use of similes. On your song, “Summertime,” you have a great one, “quiet as a gas leak,” that really resonated with me as a listener.   This is going to sound like an English teacher question (coming from a teacher by trade), but where do you find inspiration for your lyrics, especially your similes, on the new record?

Porterfield: I really am a sucker for similes.  Like and As are good pals for a songwriter.  They are a useful tool to describe something that otherwise is not describable.  Similes are helpful because as a songwriter, you need to make choices. You can’t spend 8,000 words describing every thing so similes really help listeners.  As an artist, they get me excited and allow me to explore some of the ideas in the songs too. The line, “quiet as a gas leak,” is a particularly good one, in part because you can’t even hear a gas leak, you smell it first, and when you do, you know there’s danger.  That thought goes across the different relationships in that tune where things are ok or maybe not ok. It creates more questions than answers at time.

MKE Rocks: Speaking of Summertime Songs, the track “Healing Machine,” was first debuted in a different form back at the Alverno Presents “How to Write a Popular Song” show a couple years back.  Can you talk a bit about how this song progressed to where it is on the record?

Porterfield: For that Alverno show everyone did a version of a Charles Harris song, and then made a new work after reading his book How To Write A Popular Song.  The song that came out for me was “Healing Machine,” which wasn’t part of anything Harris wrote, but a tune I’d been working on that I thought the cast of people who were there could do something with. It started off as a minor key American folk sort of thing. In the studio it morphed into a kind of spookier Peter Gabriel sounding tune.  We changed the key to the song to make it feel closer to the ground. That’s the cool thing about songs-- they can change at the drop of a hat. Records don’t change, but songs can change and morph all the time when performed. There are a lot of synced up rhythm things in “Healing Machine” that almost sound mechanical at times, which goes with the theme of the song.

MKE Rocks:  The song, “Summertime” is another highlight and features some incredible work by Mark Waldoch.  Can you share how you came to have Mark do vocals on that track? It was just epic hearing it live.

Porterfield:  It’s funny because that song (“Summertime”) doesn’t have a chorus.  It has line after line of telling the story. The instruments are all hooks, but there is no chorus.  We were having fun with the idea of what is a “summertime song” exactly. It’s a little Spingsteeny, a little bit like Arcade Fire, and a little like LCD Soundsystem… there’s even some U2 in there.  It had a feel of a song that is meant for bigger rooms. We decided, if we’re going to do this, we need a vocal that is all the way in. That’s not me! Our first call was Waldoch, who came into the studio and punched it out in an hour and nailed it.  Whenever we can we like to bring Waldoch up on stage to sing that with us. We brought him up on stage in Chicago and enjoyed doing that. I think now that we have people who have had some time to live in the record that it will be a special thing for people in Milwaukee to see him cut loose.   Mark Waldoch will be joining us for both shows at Colectivo to perform “Summertime.”

MKE Rocks:  With your two sold out Colectivo shows, what can fans come to expect?  Obviously, you’ll be playing songs off of Summertime Songs, but are any older tracks from Marigolden or Field Report making it into the set?

Porterfield: We are touching on a little bit of Marigolden material with the band and built in a section of the show where I do some solo songs that we haven’t hit yet.  Those songs change every night. When we were on the road that was a really cool opportunity to break down the wall between us and the audience.  I was able to chat with people, answer questions and take requests. I really love playing with the band and creating an immersive and really intentional musical experience experience.  I also really love doing the solo thing and talking about the tunes and honoring the fact that anybody might have a relationship with songs that aren’t on this record that were there before.  There were different requests in every city. It was really cool to be reminded that people like a bunch of our work and be able to share that in an intimate way.

MKE Rocks: You have two amazing opening acts slated for the Back Room at Colectivo shows. Caley Conway is opening up the show on Friday, 4/20, and Buffalo Gospel will share the stage on Sunday, 4/22. Can you share a bit about how you came to pick these great acts?

Porterfield: It is cool when you get to curate the entire show.  With those Colectivo shows I got to hand pick people whose aesthetics are close to ours.  I wanted to couple our energy with theirs. I always like to keep an eye on people up to good things in Milwaukee.  Caley I’ve gotten to know over the past year or so. She has a killer voice and just shreds. I have a improv trio “Agropelter,” and we’ve had Caley sit in with us, and she has been really great and just loves to jam pedals and play guitar.  She has got a great point of view and something to say.

Buffalo Gospel keeps getting better and better.  Ryan Necci is just a fantastic songwriter, and I used to play in that band.  They have a great soulful country sound and will just rock the place, and they keep getting better and better.  The band is tight and Ryan’s vocals are amazing. When catching up with Ryan Necci about Buffalo Gospel opening for Field Report, Necci stated, "It's an honor to be part of the show- truly- but as a long time Field Report fan, I'm most looking forward to watching our friends do what they do best."

MKE Rocks: The Milwaukee music scene over the past several years seems to be blooming in all different directions from rock to pop to hip hop to Americana.  Can you comment a bit on the scene as a whole?

Porterfield: Scenes ebb and flow.  Sometimes there’s a high tide and sometimes there’s a low tide.  It is approaching a high tide right now. There are some young people who don’t care at all about the old scene.  The people who are doing important work don’t really remember the 90’s stuff or care about it. You have a lot of young people doing whatever they want in the city.  

I recently was at B-Free’s show as part of the Alverno Presents series at Turner Hall where she curated a concert paying tribute to the late Michael Jackson.  That might have been the best Alverno show I’ve seen. She was killer band leader, singer and arranger. I think B-Free suddenly got vaulted up to the top of the list in Milwaukee.  People are starting to realize that some of the stuff that’s happening here is a serious cultural export. Radio Milwaukee’s generator project is doing lots of good work to get artists beyond the city too.  There are a bunch of people who are talented enough to start making waves over the breakers of Milwaukee It will be really exciting to see who can make it over the wall.

We are so proud of Field Report for being an amazing Milwaukee export sharing their emotionally gripping tales and fascinating sound with the good people of Milwaukee and all around the country. They are a big part of what has gotten the metaphorical rock of the Milwaukee music scene to start moving.