Manifest Destiny
Two down and 48 states to go, Sufjan Stevens brings the Illinois
By Randy Harward
Photo by Denny Renshaw

Sufjan Stevens is discovering the difficult side of his “50 States” series of albums. The first, Greetings from Michigan, the Great Lake State (Asthmatic Kitty), was relatively easy—he was born and raised there. The latest, Illinois (aka Come on Feel the Illinoise), was a different story.

“It definitely felt like I was back in college doing a research paper,” says Stevens from San Diego, where he’s rehearsing his band for an upcoming tour.

“I don’t think I’d had enough time and enough experience to create a whole fabric of [Illinois] experiences,” he explains. In order to buttress the knowledge he did have (which was scanty, culled from college road trips), Stevens hit the Internet for interesting tidbits about the state, then the library to find definitive works on the subjects that piqued his interest. Among those that inspired songs were serial killer John Wayne Gacy, several ghost towns and haunts, and the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

As with Michigan, Stevens set the songs to lush, baroque sonics, employing countless instruments, most of which he played. And again, the songs go from rich, sweeping pop with gorgeous melodies (”Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois”) to folksy fingerpicked acoustic tunes (”John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”) to rustic banjo-plucking (”Jacksonville”). He even dips into disco (”They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhh!”) and progressive rock (the title track), perhaps as a compositional one-up to Michigan. That’d be hard to believe, though, given the problems that Michigan’s diverse arrangements presented last time out on the road.

On tour, Stevens was hard-pressed to recreate studio versions of the Michigan tracks, which some—Stevens included—lamented. “I just don’t think that I was prepared to do that,” he confesses. “This time around, we’re trying to do a better job of that.”

To that end, Stevens has staffed his touring band with Illinois alums. With them, he feels a certain inherent comfort, a rapport. And although he’s still limited—even with eight musicians, he’s confident that justice will be done to the songs.

“It’s been a lot of work this week in the rehearsals,” he says, “and we still have a lot of fine tuning to do. [But] we’re definitely in a better place and we’re more capable and we’re more adaptable.” If not, he’s proven he’s always up to a difficult task.

“I kind of like to start from scratch sometimes,” he says. “It’s a great challenge to step back and say, “How can I make this work with eight people? I don’t have 30 people, so let’s try to do the best we can with what we have.”