All Quiet on the Midwestern Front
Sufjan Stevens finds his own private Illinois
By Susan Moll

“From a wilderness of prairies, Illinois, Illinois / Straight thy way and never varies, Illinois, Illinois / Till upon the inland sea, stands thy great commercial tree / Turning all the world to thee, Illinois, Illinois” - C.H. Chamberlain, “Illinois”

To a coastal people itching to migrate West along the National Road two centuries ago, Illinois meant manifest destiny and the Doctrine of Discovery, the auspicious prospect of freedom, adventure, and opportunity waiting on the other side of the Alleghenies that were supposedly ours alone to conquer. Bordered by the Mississippi River on the west, Lake Michigan on the east and, further south, by the Mason-Dixon line, it’s a state of frigid winters, tornado summers, and plains molded by glaciers during the last ice age. Though it’s been mapped, charted, recorded, profiled, and documented within an inch of its life, the story of Illinois has rarely, if ever, been relayed with such wit and cerebral elan as Sufjan Stevens does now.

For the second installment of his “50 States” album series, Illinois (Asthmatic Kitty) the native Michiganian (whose name is more typically spelled Sufyan in the Arabic realm) created a bold, delightfully ornate ode to our nation’s 21st state. A ferociously-talented songwriter, storyteller, and multi-instrumentalist with an attunement not only to books but to life - a rare combination - Stevens is as wont to ponder sonic abstraction and the subconscious mind as he is a roadside oddity spotted during his recent tour. And, judging by the barrage of press inquiries that followed the album’s release [and a surprising #3 showing in the 2005 Pazz and Jop Village Voice music critics' poll-ed.], he’s very much in-demand. “That’s not true,” he insists, sitting down to dinner two nights before his five-night stint at New York’s Bowery Ballroom. “I’m not on tour, and no one wants a piece of me!”

Stevens has cleverly dubbed his Bowery lollapalooza “Spirit Week,” conceptualizing each evening as one would high school homecoming theme days; it also doubles as an unofficial showcase for Stevens’ label, Asthmatic Kitty, featuring LIZ JANES, BUNKY, CASTANETS, and HALF-HANDED CLOUD as alternating openers. Friday was designated “Backwards Night,” yesterday was “Pirate Night” (yar!), and tonight is “Fake Tattoo and/or Fake Facial Hair Night.” (”I’m going to do both!” he gleefully announces, indicating that an outline of the state of Illinois or an image of ABRAHAM LINCOLN would appear on either bicep.) If you were aching for an excuse to summon that taffeta nightmare from the fifth ring of fashion hell, the final night was “Formal Night,” complete with guy-girl slow dancing.

Saturday, meanwhile, was “Fake An Injury Night”; Stevens, who was in reality recovering from a nasty cycling mishap on the Brooklyn Bridge, sported a bike helmet and bandaged elbows: “There was a couple of people with crutches and walkers, and some of the staff were kind-of oblivious to the whole thing. They kept pulling out chairs or offering them a table upstairs. [ha ha!-ed.] There were so many people with little limps and crutches, and they didn’t figure it out until later.”

Though Stevens first began using such exuberant theatrics as a diversionary tactic while he found his footing as a live performer, “it’s become a major part of our show and a major part of my persona, kind of inadvertently,” he admits. “We’ve been doing cheers, and we have a gold grand piano onstage, and I come out in a jumpsuit. And at the end we have balloons falling from the balconies. It’s totally corny and weird and awkward - I feel like MARIAH CAREY or something. We’re doing what all these commercial musicians are doing, but we’re trying to do it within the context of an emotionally-responsible, emotionally-dynamic show that takes into consideration all the variables of human psychology.”

After immortalizing his home state on 2003’s Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State and creating the moody, confessional missives on love and faith that ended up on last year’s Seven Swans, Stevens turned his attention to Oregon, Rhode Island and Illinois. As those projects developed, though, he discovered that “the songs for Illinois seemed more celebratory and triumphant, and the research I had been doing about Illinois seemed to fit the character of the songs really well. It had as much to do with the nature of the songs as it had to do with the state itself.”

Chosen partly for its convenient proximity to Michigan, as well as his longtime connection to Chicago (”It was the next big city”), Illinois piqued Stevens’ interest through not only its history and lore but also its geography. “I thought it was just like Michigan at first,” he confides. “But what I realized is the landscape is completely different: Illinois is relatively flat with a lot of farms, prairies. And cornfields, and as you move south, it becomes more Southern in its tone and culture, and in its disposition. I think that southern Illinois has an allegiance to the South, whereas northern Illinois has an allegiance to Chicago - and there’s a real discrepancy in convictions and political persuasions. Michigan isn’t really like that so much.”

In Illinois, Stevens found a plethora of subject matter at his fingertips; his natural curiosity has fostered a voracious appetite for the stranger facets of American culture. He openly thrives on the often-bizarre, “only-in-America” sights usually located far from thoroughfares, and almost always omitted from AAA guidebooks. Illinois teems with such pit stops, including but not limited to the world’s largest catsup bottle, and the Millennium Spire, which purportedly transmits messages to God via light-emitting diodes. Indeed, Illinois hardly seems worthy of its flyover-state reputation; it served as a breeding ground for innovators, artists, literary figures, and statesmen long before it entered the Union. “There’s also one of the world’s only two-story outhouses,” Stevens points out, “and the world’s ugliest Abraham Lincoln statue is in Illinois.”

While he admits to becoming “obsessed with details, little tiny things like 4-H clubs and hog queen pageants, and strange parades people have - like the Santa Claus parade or the Superman parade in Metropolis,” Stevens’ excitement at tackling a state with such a colorful and multifaceted past proves not only palpable but dangerously contagious. From the vibrant montage in the inlay book to the unbridled jubilation of songs like the orch-pop blowout “Come On! Feel the Illinoise,” Stevens’ inventive, intelligent portrait of the Prairie State is far more fun than experiencing it carsick in backseat of your parents’ wood-paneled station wagon in-between the last historical marker and the Grain Elevator Museum. (Yes, there really is one.)

“I think it’s necessary, with this kind of project, to measure everything with my own convictions and my own memory, because I think otherwise it’s just data,” Stevens opines. “History on its own, as a series of names and dates, doesn’t amount to anything. I think it’s important that all things are contextualized, and given a place within ourselves and within our imaginations.”

With Lincoln its focal point, Illinois was a massive production in both sound and scope. Not only did Stevens sift through history books, maps, and autobiographies, and solicit correspondence and personal accounts from friends and strangers alike for thematic inspiration, he composed, produced and arranged the songs and wrote all of the vocal and instrumental parts for the backing players - whose ranks swelled to include a string quartet, a brass section, and, of course, the ever-present ILLINOISEMAKER CHOIR. Meanwhile, Stevens manned an electric church organ, accordion, glockenspiel, alto sax, flute, banjo, four different recorders, acoustic and electric guitar, Wurlitzer, drums, and his first instrument, the oboe.

“I really emphasize technique and craft over art and inspiration,” Stevens confides. “But I feel like the moments that happen that are inspired are very transcendent and very unique and very unusual and really important. I just want to make sure that my technique is in place so that when I am inspired I’m working to my fullest capacity.”

Immersion in all things Illinois birthed the jubilant bombast of “Chicago” and the doleful guitar-and-banjo ballad “CASIMIR PULASKI Day”; paired beautifully with feminine harmonies, Stevens’ gentle vocals virtually humanize one of America’s most infamous, vicious serial killers on the chilling “JOHN WAYNE GACY, JR.” Far less autobiographical than Michigan, Illinois draws only occasionally from its creator’s personal experience: “I did that on purpose because I felt that Michigan was burdened with an emotional affiliation, and I wanted to distance myself personally from the material.”

“Decatur,” a patchwork quilt of images and historical tidbits interwoven with accordion, banjo, and harmony vocals from DANIEL and ELIN SMITH, was a notable exception. “On one level, it’s just kind of a ridiculous rhyme scheme. But on another level, it’s like surrealist poetry based on real events that happened in and around the town,” he reveals. “And on a third level, it’s a song of reconciliation between us kids and our stepmother, who would often take us on these ridiculous road trips to ridiculous places like Decatur, or Wawa, Canada, or the largest plastic goose on Lake Superior, because for some reason that was her obsession that weekend.”

With fuel for inspiration so abundant, there’s no telling which dot on the map will spur Stevens and the 50 States series next. “We were touring the southwest, like in Arizona and Utah, and I sometimes felt like I was on another planet, going through the Petrified Forest,” he laughs. “One of the roadside attractions had ostriches and makeshift mechanical dinosaurs. They were live ostriches, but then these piecemeal mechanical dinosaurs, where the mouth would open and that was it. They were giving out free pieces of petrified wood, and you could get your hair braided there, as well. I was just like, ‘Wow, they’re just doing everything they can!’”

So is he.