Photo credit: Josh Cheuse
Field Report
Field Report has come a long way since the early 2010s, an era when the search for the next Justin Vernon inevitably led to some of the guys who had played with Vernon. In the years since the group’s eponymous 2012 debut, the lineup backing songwriter Chris Porterfield has completely turned over, as the group shifted away from purist folk and roots rock and toward something a little harder to pin down—music that, as Porterfield tells it, asks more from the audience while hopefully rewarding that buy-in. Ahead of a holiday show at Turner Hall Ballroom on Friday, Dec. 14, billed as “An Evening with Field Report and Friends,” Porterfield chatted with the Shepherd Express about touring behind the group’s uplifting, electronic-tinged new album Summertime Songs, and about playing the long game.
I didn’t know you were such a Christmas fan.
Well, ’tis the season I guess [laughs]. It’s not going to be a full-on Christmas show. I want to make that clear. It’s a Field Report show. We’re going to be touching on material from the three Field Report records and additionally supplementing some of that. Everybody in the band—which is Tom Wincek, Barry Clark, Devin Drobka and Caley Conway—comes to Field Report from totally different places. Each of their lenses is super valuable and affects how the material is presented. So, we decided to take an opportunity to let everybody have some time in the set where they can present holiday music that is meaningful to them, and bring on whoever they’d like to perform it with, just as a special, one-night-only, Milwaukee, end-of-the-year, end-of-the-album cycle experiment.
It must be nice to shake it up and challenge yourself a little bit.
Yeah, it is. I don’t think it’s quite sabotage, but I like to stay a little bit uncomfortable and stay on our toes to see what could happen. This is part of that. And, it seemed like a good moment to reflect. Field Report has been around since 2012, the lineup has changed and the way we present stuff has changed. Things that excite us have changed. So, this seemed like a good way to check in with the whole body of work and present it in a way that’s of this moment for us.
How was the tour behind Summertime Songs?
It was pretty good. We went all over the country. We had more people at pretty much every show than we’ve ever had before. We’re on a slow arc of a thing. I really like that. There was a moment, early on, when people thought—and maybe I might have believed it for a second, too—that we were going to be... well, that we were going to have the cultural cachet of the moment. But then the moment changed, and we changed too. So, we’re on our own path and it feels really good to be there, honestly. The ship to cool has sailed for us. But, now we just get to do work and build our audience one at a time. Build a relationship with them. Earn their trust. It seems to be working. More people showed up this time around than ever before.
I think you’ve done a good job divorcing yourself from that moment. I don’t think you want to only be remembered as the band that was kind of a thing when folk music was kind of a thing.
Yeah, it’s interesting. A lot of our peers and contemporaries that started making music publicly around the same time we did, they’ve either stopped at this point or they are kind of stuck in that snap shot. And, we’re not. We’re a little more slippery, I guess. But, I think that’s an asset. That’s something we’re proud of.
Your sound has obviously changed a lot, but do you think your songwriting has, too?
I do, yeah. I feel like I’m almost to a point where I’m getting to where I’m aiming at. Things are getting leaner. Things are getting a little less clever. This is going to be the last show on this record and I’m sort of deep in the throes of writing whatever’s next. And I’m really excited about that stuff. But, I still like the songs on Summertime Songs, too. I feel like we built those to have a longer emotional shelf like that we have in the past. Some of the change is just in how I see the world, too. I’ve learned now that in writing songs and making records and playing shows, that those are three completely different disciplines. And something that works well in one of them might not in another. If you take the time to write songs and then make a record, you’ve got to make sure that you’re leaving enough room for bettering yourself to grow and change, but also for the listener to climb in and be able to respond to it in a way that’s uniquely theirs, because that’s when the circuit is complete. So, you have to build in room for the listener.
There’s still some risk involved in making a song a living thing, though. Even now, sometimes I’ll go to a show, and part of me will just want to hear the songs as they are on the record. Once you’ve made a connection to a particular version of a song, it’s hard to break.
I think that’s a normal thing to default to. But, ultimately, the way I approach this project, it does require some trust from the audience. We’re not trying to weed people out, but we want to develop the trust of an audience that wants to see a band present something in a way that feels authentic in that moment. Sometimes, it’s a pretty straight read on the record. But, sometimes, it’s different. I’ve always respected songwriters and bands who have enough trust in their audience to expect or request some trust back, whether that’s somebody like Neil Young or Dylan or Joni Mitchell.
But, especially with this lineup, there’s so much potential for improvisation, which is totally different from jamming—it’s a completely different thing. It’s just being able to be in the moment, and to present the work with people you trust and believe in, and just take a breath, and just see what the moment, the room, the song, all those things coming together, seeing what that’s like and what it’s asking for. That’s a really important part of what I dig about this project. That can be a hard thing to explain. It can be hard to get everybody on the same page, especially the first time. But, we’re just starting. This project, even though it’s been around for a few years now, this is just the beginning. We’re going to be doing this for a really long time. We’re going to slowly find the people who like that and want that, and we’re going to build it with them.
