God Bless the Sufjan Stevens
By Cameron Lawrence
Photos by Denny Renshaw

Two Down, 48 to Go: Sufjan Stevens’ ambitious project to write a soundtrack for each of the 50 states started with Michigan in 2003. At his current rate, he will be 127 years old when he finishes.

The music world has been kind to Sufjan Stevens. Only five albums and six years into his career as a recording artist, the Michigan-bred singer/songwriter has near-idol status in indie circles. Even the more cynical music journalists have turned into certifiable “fanboys,” plastering his face across their magazines and websites at any sign of news. Scroll through his MySpace profile (anonymously run by a fan), and you’ll see they have been good to him, too. You’ll find no less that 1,000 messages from adoring fans. One user gushes that Stevens’ music gives his life meaning, another says it sets him free - not to mention a couple dozen comments about how sexy he is. And that’s all in the last week.

Stevens lives in a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn where he doesn’t get recognized or accosted by devotees - just how he likes it. He takes a humble, if not bewildered, approach to his success and finds comfort in New York’s vastness. “That’s the great thing about New York,” he says. “There are always bigger fish out there. You think you’re a big deal, and there’s always a much bigger deal standing right next to you. I actually don’t like attention anyway, so I’m grateful to blend in and remain anonymous.”

His neighborhood is one of the most diverse in the city, he claims, and not one of Brooklyn’s trendier spots. It affords him the opportunity to live a normal, down-to-earth existence where it’s easier for art to remain secondary to life. He laughs when asked if moving to New York lives up to the hype. His reasons had little to do with music and were much more practical.

“I moved here about six or seven years ago to go to graduate school,” he says. “So I wasn’t drawn to the hype so much as the university I went to. I think everything is over-hyped anyway.”

Everything?

“Yeah, in life,” he says. “Our rendering of things through story and our expectations are often inflated. The reality of life is much more even-tempered. And that’s true for any place you live after a while. There’s a process of demystification.”

At the moment he’s taking a break from his project of making an album for each of the 50 states, which he admits is all a gimmick anyway. But taking a break doesn’t mean he won’t be working. “It’s a misnomer, I guess, because it’s not completely true. I think what it means is that I’m not ready to embark on a recording just yet. I’m going to be playing a festival in Washington, and I’m going to collaborate with other musicians as well. And I’m going to work on some arrangements for strings, just as a way of honing my composition skills.”

As prolific as he is in both composition and recording, Stevens hasn’t yet come to terms with being a public figure. “I’m not sure why, but I get really frustrated with my role as an entertainer,” he says. “I’m communicating something to the world, but the people who appreciate what I’m doing tend to project their appreciation onto me, and I get really frustrated with that. I’m a little embarrassed by it because I want to redirect this kind of reverence to the song, and the song in itself. It’s affecting people and has power and authority regardless of me. I think it’s important for me to distinguish that, because honestly, I’m just as in awe of the mystery of music as anyone else.”

But love him they do, and his catalog garners mere praise all the time. Once playing only in small venues for small crowds, Stevens now headlines tours that regularly sellout, and the venues are only getting bigger. But he’s learning to deal with it.

“It’s my challenge at every level, even before I had any public appeal, to create music that’s gorgeous and beautiful, that has mastery and deeper meaning. That’s always been my challenge, and even if you have success, I think it should continue to be your challenge. I do a pretty good job of ignoring any kind of attention I receive. I try to be gracious, but I’m not always as gracious as I could be. I tend to not do well when I’m recognized or when someone is showing gratitude for what I do. I get a little embarrassed.

“But something must change when there’s an audience for what you do,” Stevens explains. “It does tend to affect what you produce and what you write. Even if I’m not willing to admit it, or I’m embarrassed by it, or haven’t reckoned with the social aspect of it, there is inherent in songwriting the desire to communicate something and share it with other people. So in some ways, a larger audience could augment that experience and inspire and challenge the songwriter. Hopefully that’s the direction I’ll take. Knowing that there is an audience, you’ll have a greater respect for your work and greater respect for the listener. There’s a greater accountability to what I write or record.”

A GRADUAL CLIMB

Stevens first took steps toward his now-prolific and highly celebrated career while an undergraduate student at Hope College in Holland, Mich. At the time, however, he didn’t consider himself either a singer or a songwriter. Singing was an activity relegated to the private sector, either in songwriting or his home studio. Since then, recording remains an integral part of his songwriting process. Until his last semester of school at Hope, he experimented with sounds and assembled songs on a simple 4-track recorder.

In that final semester, Stevens enrolled in a class on Pro Tools - professional-grade recording software - and began uploading and editing the material from his 4-track on the computer. The output of that semester’s work became his first release, A Sun Came - a record he defines as a collage of songs, styles and musical experimentation. After releasing A Sun Came in 2000, Stevens felt a lack of focus and direction. Ultimately, he became disenchanted with creating music, doubting his abilities as a singer and as an instrumentalist.

He graduated from Hope and moved to New York to join a graduate program in fiction writing at the New School for Social Research located in Greenwich Village, “I was frustrated with songwriting and wanted to write fiction at the university and maybe be a part of the academic environment,” he says. He claims that he felt that playing music was his natural inclination, yet he didn’t think it would ever become a viable opportunity for income - it was just his hobby, “I wasn’t going to produce anything I could live off, and that’s why I went to writing school,” he says.

While spending most of his time on the computer, both for his day job as a designer and writing for school, he started writing songs - one for each month of the Chinese Zodiac. Those songs eventually became his second release, a mostly electronic and instrumental record called Enjoy Your Rabbit. In light of his catalog today, Stevens considers the record an anomaly, but a vital step in his career. “I think it was a response to my frustration with songwriting, the acoustic guitar, etc.,” he says, “I was sort of sabotaging all of my methods and habits for songwriting through self-abnegation - you know, not letting myself write on banjo or guitar.”

Enjoy Your Rabbit proved to be what Stevens needed - what he now refers to as a cleansing, fast-like experience. In essence
he gave up his musical life in hopes of truly finding it again. “I guess, when I look back, it sounds really puritanical - forcing myself to suffer so that I could somehow come to a point of recognition about who I am as a songwriter. And of course, immediately after, I wrote the songs for Seven Swans.”

Stevens released the biblically literate Seven Swans in 2004, after the previous year’s album, Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lake State, a melancholic tribute to his childhood and adolescent home. Where Michigan’s songs explore themes of
faith more generally - the idea of location, brokenness and redemption - Seven Swans is a more personal, direct treatment of his Christian faith, focusing in on subjects such as Abraham taking Isaac to the altar in “Abraham” and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross in “To Be Alone with You.”

Stevens intimately delves into the personal, which often includes his faith, though he doesn’t consider his music to have or be a religious platform. Nevertheless, David Crowder, a recording artist and worship leader, recently latched onto one of Michigan’s songs, “Oh God, Where Are You Now? (In Pickeral Lake? Pigeon? Marquette? Mackinaw?),” and recorded his version of it for A Collision, a worship album released last year. But Stevens didn’t have anything to do with the Crowder deal. His label, Asthmatic Kitty, set it up, and Stevens has yet to speak to Crowder, though he’s flattered. “I have to admit - honestly, I like his arrangement better than mine,” he says. “He shortened the song, abbreviated the arrangement and pulled out melodic elements that are there but made them more prominent. I think he did a better job of honing in on the emotional climate of the song.”

2005 saw the release of Stevens’ Come On Feel the Illinoise, followed by The Avalanche, a collection of leftovers that released in July of this year. Illinois was widely received as a big-budget reworking of Michigan, but not to Michigan’s detriment; it remains a beloved favorite among many of his fans. When asked if he felt the same way about the rest of Michigan as he does about “Oh God, Where Are You Now?” he’s quick to affirm.

“It was the best I could do at the time,” he says. “I didn’t have a lot of time or resources then, and I was just recording on the weekends - sort of desperately running around trying to fit it all in. I think Illinois was somewhat of a response to my lack of resources on Michigan. Illinois is just a fuller realization of what I was trying to do with Michigan musically.”

While Michigan may sound like a downgraded Illinois to some (Stevens included), it remains a testimony to Stevens’ values as an artist - those of being a resourceful and dedicated person, which are traits he admires in other artists and musicians. Those who are able to accomplish a lot with modest means earn his respect and, often, that of his label.

Stevens started Asthmatic Kitty with his stepfather, Lowell. The label runs on a foundation unique to indie labels: relationships, common ideals and work ethic, rather than big money.

“It’s crazy because we were so naive early on,” he says. “And through trial and error, and fumbling through the motions, we’ve created this network that’s really supportive. A lot of that has to do with friendships that are created over time and relationships you create with people in the industry.”

BETWEEN FRIENDS

Relationships also remain a core value in Stevens’ work as an artist. While on the road, he makes sure to bring his friends along, and if you’ve seen his ensemble, that’s no small few. “When I’m touring, I bring a lot of people with me, because it’s important for me to be surrounded by my friends and good people, and to create a social environment.”

Stevens says he believes that music is, on a fundamental level, communication between people. In his mind, music doesn’t have meaning when locked away in isolation. “I think it’s healthy,” he says. “We live in community, and we’re created in community. We’re created out of the unity of two people, and then we’re made into a family. It’s just inherent in who we are.”

By contrast, Stevens’ creative process is initially isolated from creative community. Typically, it’s not until he brings his material to the studio, which also is often a solitary experience, or when he prepares to tour that the creative process involves others. He describes writing songs as a sacred and unique experience, believing music exists somewhere in the supernatural realm - even before its incarnation in the physical realm of sound waves, frequencies and ear drums. The songwriter, then, somehow captures the song from the supernatural and reconfigures it into music, which according to Stevens, is somewhat artificial. The song, he says, is a controlled musical environment.

Stevens exudes reverence for music and the craft of songwriting. “As I’m writing alone in my room, there’s a weird communion with the art form. Initially you’re throwing around chord progressions and experimenting with melody. You begin shaping, sort of accidentally, words out of sounds. That’s a pretty special, sacred, divine experience.”

Stevens explains that the act of songwriting, in some way, mimics the act of God creating the earth. “In Judeo-Christian theology, the world is created through words,” he says. “And that’s how I perceive what I’m doing musically. I’m just sort of mimicking, or modeling, that endeavor.”

In addition to being a formally trained oboist, Stevens plays most of the instruments on his records. When asked where creative community comes into the picture, and whether or not it’s a necessary element, he’s conflicted.

“Those are difficult things to reconcile, because I initially work in isolation and tend to write and record by myself,” he says. “That’s always been the case. The social dynamic of performing with other people, and recording with other people, is really important, but it’s a bit of a challenge for me. I tend to be a workaholic and a micromanager and a bit of an egomaniac in how I orchestrate everything. Even down to the drum parts, I tend to micromanage every single nuance. Generally the musicians know they are being hired to perform according to my demands.”

SET APART

While Stevens is widely accepted by people of all kinds, perhaps no one group has latched onto him more than indie-rock-minded Christians, and rightfully so. He’s among a handful of artists - the Danielson Famile, The Innocence Mission, Denison Witmer, Woven Hand and Half-Handed Cloud, to name a few - that have sidestepped the Christian music industry
while still using music to share or explain their Christian beliefs and backgrounds. He’s also among the few embraced by a community of journalists, musicians and fans who don’t share his faith, and yet he didn’t compromise his own faith to get there. Because of the unique position he holds, seemingly standing between two worlds, for some he’s a leader and an inspiration. And still there are others who misconstrue his identity and purpose or misinterpret his motives.

“I can’t honestly say how I’ve been misconstrued; because I can’t gauge the mind of the listener,” he says. “But I do know there’s a tendency to simplify and to categorize. I’ve been categorized as a particular kind of artist, a folk musician and a Christian. And these terms are used to possess and categorize and simplify what I’m doing. But they’re also out of my hands. I’m not concerned with how I’m received or how I’m misconstrued, because that’s really the work of the listener and his or her responsibility.”

While Stevens believes that people oversimplify or misinterpret what he’s saying, he understands that his lyrical honesty and vulnerability are the cause. And he’s not about to change that.

“I don’t ever want to be responsible for or engage with a particular subject in my music in a way that is dishonoring it,” he says. “And I can’t tell if I’ve done that or not. I still don’t know. I do know that I kind of walk that line, and I tend to disclose things about myself that are really important and personal. For me, it’s part of my conviction. It’s necessary for me to do that sometimes to achieve a kind of greater revelation and understanding of who I am and what I’m doing. It’s an instinct that, on some level, I want to share with people.”

CAMERON LAWRENCE lives and writes in Atlanta. Ga