Sufjan Stevens
Issue #24
The musician takes on Illinois for the second part of his American states project. But he asks that you not take him so literally. He’s really not the historian he’s cracked up to be.
By Kristina Francisco
Published: June 1st, 2005 | 1:27pm
Much has been made of Sufjan Stevens' 50 States project, his wildly ambitious plan to make an album dedicated to each state of the Union. And with the July release of Illinois, the second installment in this journey, Stevens builds on his American catalog — despite his frustration that the project is the only thing people seem to talk about.
“It’s a little boring because I think people expect me to be some kind of historian and I’m not really,” Stevens says. “I’m really an observational artist, a songwriter, and [the 50 states] became a concept for songs that are really about greater things. People are taking me way too literally.”
Yet, in the follow-up to 2003's Greetings from Michigan: The Great Lakes State, Stevens traverses the landscape of the Land of Lincoln, making 22 stops in Illinois' past, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the World’s Columbian Exposition, and to lesser-known cities like Jacksonville and Decatur. It's an epic album much like Michigan is, yet decidedly more optimistic.
Stevens’ approach to his work is admittedly quite different from other musicians, his method more academic than most others. “I think most people just write songs, go into the studio and record them, and that’s the album,” he assumes. “What I’m doing now is more [like] I come up with a concept, do the research, and I begin to sort of develop it on a grand scale. It’s a very epic endeavor.” The 29-year-old studied Illinois for a good four months, approaching it like a college thesis project — reading a lot of biographies and stuff on Chicago jazz, learning a ton about immigration, looking at maps — before putting it all down on tape.
Like Michigan, Illinois is released on Stevens' Asthmatic Kitty label, which he started in Michigan in 1999 before moving to New York to pursue a master’s in writing. While there, he worked as a graphic designer (and still freelances on occasion), taught a couple of continuing-education classes (his students were twice his age), and strove to become a published author (his work has appeared in a few small presses and university journals). “For me, writing is a greater art form than music just by the nature of its requirements. It requires so much time and isolation, and it’s a lot of work. Writing is my first love, whereas music is my instinct.”
But now that he’s this big indie rock star, Stevens is struggling to find a balance between his music success and personal life. “I continue to work with the same people that I’ve worked with for years with my label, and I kind of feel like that’s a really great buffer between me and all that meaningless psychobabble that goes on in the media,” he reveals. “I realize that my music and my career and what I do with my vision and projects are incredibly egotistical and about a singular vision that I have. I get a little tired of myself, so I solve that problem by surrounding myself with people who are really caring and talented and keep me accountable for what I’m doing, and who also really collaborate and participate with what I’m doing. … I know that sounds incredibly naïve.”
Naïve as it may or may not be, as Stevens continues to produce albums of folk-chamber pop, he’ll find that he’ll need to explain his music and life to more and more people, no matter how difficult that may be. “Music is a form of communication that sort of transcends conversation, and yet as songwriters, sometimes we’re required to communicate our work in pragmatic terms,” he rationalizes. “It’s all soundbytes and anecdotal, with the level of meaning that gossip has.”
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