For Seth Avett–one half of the folk-rock duo The Avett Brothers–there’s no such thing as an ordinary day.
“Right now, I’m sitting at the kitchen table,” said Avett as he spoke to Revue. “The curtains are pulled back just a little, not all the way, but enough for the room to be completely filled with gray sunlight. It’s a little bit overcast, but it’s stunning. It’s very normal and very regular, but if I will allow myself, I can be newly inspired right now.”
Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Seth and his sibling Scott formed The Avett Brothers 25 years ago. Since 2000, the duo has had four Grammy nominations, six top-five albums on Billboard, and amassed more than 300 million streams across their five most-played Spotify tracks.
While the numbers exemplify his achievements, Avett’s measurement for success speaks far beyond metrics.
“Is there such a thing as a typical day? Would I want one if I knew how to define it?” asked Avett. “The target’s always moving.”
Lately, his target has focused on finding a sense of balance within himself.
“Home life is radically different from touring life. There’s already this built in partitioning, or compartmentalizing, that happens,” Avett said. “I’m always looking to solve the same things every day, and I often feel like I’m starting from scratch trying to figure out how to solve them, while at the same time letting things be as they are and not be too in love with the process. To just be okay with being who I am and where I am.”
Avett has sought balance in various forms over his life and career, but his findings shifted most dramatically when he became a father to his 10-year-old son, Isaac.
“In spending time with Isaac, there’s that eternal, hilarious process of rediscovery,” Avett said. “Somehow, the things that you thought you already understood are made brand new. You’re being hit in the face with the reality that you don’t know the things that you think you know.”
This constant realization has radicalized Avett’s songwriting.
“Having Isaac was this great lightning bolt. It was just like when people fertilize their fields with nitrogen and it makes the grass crazy green, it was like that across the entire field of my life experience. It has to be the most impactful influence on my art making. His birth just has to be.”
In this, Avett has also discovered that he doesn’t have to look far to find things worth writing about.
“I find myself fooling myself into thinking that I need some new external stimulus to break open some new idea, to break open a melody that I haven’t found yet, or a phrase that somehow breaks the truth open in a way that I haven’t thought of,” Avett said.
“But a lot of it just comes down to knowing yourself and finding out what’s in those corners, what’s behind those masks, and to reveal those parts without fear.”
Luckily for Avett, he isn’t predisposed to fear.
“I don’t consider myself a very fearful person. I don’t really look for it,” he said. “Which is not to say that I don’t have leanings toward the darkness, or things that can trip me up or sabotage my own productivity, or constructiveness. It’s just that fear is not a natural place for me. I can be afraid, but I don’t lead with that.”
Fear takes on a different shape through his son’s eyes, however. As Isaac’s childhood progresses, Avett has started to re-experience life’s hardships with him–puzzling together a new reality for both of them.
“At 10 years old, it’s all flooding in. All of the dark of the world is flooding in. It’s becoming a more realistic thing that there is war. People can be inconsiderate, and selfish, and thoughtless,” said Avett.
“To have this little person, this soul that you love so much for so many reasons, not because of who they are, but because of what they’ve broken open inside of you, what they’ve born in you, and what they killed in you. There is a hard hit in the chest of like, ‘Okay, it’s not your story anymore.’”
While Avett knows that every child eventually grows up, the thought of Isaac’s independence has set grief in motion for something he has yet to lose.
“If you’re going by the generally American template where, at around age 18, perhaps the kid is moving out, when you’re at age 10, you’re like, ‘Oh man, there’s less to go than we’ve already done.’ You just take it for granted, to have family so close.”
Avett sometimes finds the idea of his son no longer living at home to be overwhelming. “If I had to dial in a fear, it would be what it feels like when that absence becomes a reality.”
But today, Avett’s perspective from his kitchen window in North Carolina brings him the peace and creativity he needs to carry on both his legacy of fatherhood and his half of The Avett Brothers.
“I’m looking out, and there’s a little crow out on the fence. And it’s just busying itself, hopping from one slot down to the lowest slot of this fence. A Toyota Camry is driving by. And I can see a bunch of new wildflowers.”
It’s apparent that if there is a balance to be found in this version of his life, he isn’t far from it.
“All of it is wrapped up in whatever the now is,” Avett said. “The power of now. It’s a real thing.”
An Evening With The Avett Brothers
Wings Event Center
3600 Vanrick Dr., Kalamazoo
June 27, 7:30 p.m.
wingseventcenter.com
