Fust is a band from Durham, North Carolina that started off because the songwriting undertaking of Aaron Dowdy. Earlier than shifting to a dwell group, Dowdy home-recorded and self-released a number of EPs on Bandcamp between 2017 and 2018; they’re not obtainable on the platform, however you may revisit that period of the band through Songs of the Rail, a group of 28 demos recorded throughout the identical time interval that got here out a yr in the past. After releasing their sun-kissed, soulful debut Evil Pleasure in 2021, Fust – now a seven-piece that includes drummer Avery Sullivan, pianist Frank Meadows, guitarist John Wallace, multi-instrumentalist Justin Morris, fiddlist Libby Rodenbough, and bassist Oliver Baby-Lanning – decamped to Drop of Solar to document Genevieve with producer Alex Farrar, with whom they reunited for his or her astounding new album, Huge Ugly. Named after an unincorporated space in southern West Virginia, round which Dowdy’s household has deep roots, the document is conflicted but aspirational: homey whereas grappling with the thriller of dwelling, hopeful when hope rests between the promise of a brand new life and relenting in outdated, sluggish, ragged methods. Because the title might counsel, it wrings magnificence out of probably the most surprising locations, honing within the band’s knack for making small emotions seem monumental – that’s, nearer to their true expertise.
We caught up with Fust’s Aaron Dowdy for the most recent version of our Artist Highlight collection to speak about his relationship to the South, the stress between documentary and fiction, making Huge Ugly, and extra.
There’s a narrative within the press launch a few placard you noticed memorializing a gutter off the streets in Athens, the place I dwell. I’m fascinated by how being away from dwelling or your roots can drive you to see them in a unique mild, and it appears like that’s one thing that was occurring once you have been in Europe a few years in the past.
Athens was such a particular place. I don’t journey properly – I’m form of a homebody. After I journey, I begin to get anxious or really feel out of my aspect, like I’ve strayed too far and I’m dropping my superpowers that basically solely exist after I’m at dwelling and cozy. However Athens was one of the best touring expertise I ever had. I feel perhaps what I felt there – I used to be beginning to write in direction of new music, and simply being round such a disparity between the traditional and the trendy, visibly all over the place, this type of stress of time. What I actually liked was not simply the main monuments, however how every little thing, with time, turns into essential. Clearly, Athens is the middle of one thing the West has inherited, however seeing the gutter was the primary second the place I used to be like, “Wow, every little thing has worth.” Even the forgettable element, the factor that goes neglected.
I began to suppose then concerning the South. Now we have mountains and landscapes which are very outdated, however by way of the supplies – the issues folks have made that you just see round you – you don’t get that sort of historic stress. So that you nearly should undertaking into the long run the worth of issues. In my yard now, there’s a fallen gutter, and it’s nowhere close to as stunning or well-made, however you nearly should see it with that viewpoint. You can begin to make monuments out of your personal world and see how the detritus would possibly belong to one thing sooner or later, even when it doesn’t really feel essential now. I needed to take a look at my place with that sense of historical past – not simply speedy historical past, however an enormous historic weight. I began to think about a few of these photographs – houses, buildings, trash – and surprise what it will appear to be in the event that they have been taken as beneficial.
You talked about issues folks make, however folks clearly additionally make artwork and literature, and there’s undoubtedly a lineage of Southern writers honouring that perspective – seeing the worth in issues in any other case misplaced to time.
Yeah, that’s precisely proper. I are usually very involved in folks and human relations. I write about battle, disillusionment, pleasure – little emotions. Clearly, these emotions have been had properly past the South, properly past Athens. However by Southern music and Southern literature, it turns into clear that a part of our monuments are very particular sorts of human relationships – making one thing, a relation or interplay, that appears so unimportant, one thing anybody else would go by, right into a supply of literary worth. If we don’t have that speedy sense of huge historical past, we nonetheless have historical past, and a number of it values human relationships and the poetry or dissonance inside them. I’m an enormous fan of Southern literature and Southern music, and I take these issues very severely. So after I say Athens made me need to rethink the best way I view the South, it doesn’t imply we don’t have our personal monuments. It simply seems to be totally different, and you need to change the best way you concentrate on what we do have.
Past music or different folks’s poetry, how do you go about relaying the Southern expertise when folks ask you in day-to-day life, or once you spend time away from it? Or do songs make up for the dearth of language for that sort of factor?
That’s a great query. I’ve at all times gravitated in direction of track as the best way I interact the world. It’s a kind that helps me piece issues collectively and make sense of my very own expertise. But additionally, after I hear different Southern music, it feels prefer it expresses or will get at one thing, and it’s usually very unclear what it’s about – there’s this ambiguiry, which I like and attempt to keep in my very own work. I lived in New York for some time, I lived in Brooklyn, and I moved away from the South, from North Carolina, partly as a result of I assumed different locations on the planet had a vanguard – it was doing one thing urgent and forward-thinking. Rising up within the South, I assumed, perhaps poorly, that there have been some backwards, conventional, or conservative methods of life. I used to be involved in what it will appear to be to be in a spot the place everybody was productive, at all times making issues, pushed.
However after I was in New York, I instantly began utilizing varieties from the South – melodic varieties or references. It took me leaving to appreciate these Southern parts aren’t backwards in any respect. They may be slower, however they’re really one thing lacking that’s lacking elsewhere – a sure ready, wading patiently. A sure slowness I grew up with and liked, I embraced and embodied it. After I was within the South, I assumed, “I’ve this different factor – I make music, I’ve this different aspect that’s not being expressed right here.” However the second I left, I embraced these parts. I liked being sluggish once more, embracing this down-homeness, this dirtiness, this factor I didn’t know was so a part of me till I felt it wasn’t round me. After I was in different places, I felt dissonant, and coming again made me need to perceive what that was – what attracts you again and makes you need to defend it.
However I feel a number of us listening, studying, taking severely what it means to be from the South – it’s about that stress. It’s not only a full embrace. It’s embracing it as a result of there’s one thing difficult that makes it beneficial. While you learn Faulkner or Frank Stanford’s poetry, these tensions are all over the place – there’s hurt, damage, and ache lurking all over the place. It’s not one thing that’s usually stated; and whether it is, it’s at all times coded in one thing else. Saying a nicety that covers over one thing extra painful is a part of the language of the South – how do you say one thing so tough about a spot whereas saying, “That is the place I select to dwell”? That’s a number of what’s happening on this document – a disaster of language, of having the ability to categorical this worth.
Talking of slowness, one among my favourite strains on Huge Ugly is from the title observe: “Even when typically I’m slowing down, I do know I’m slowing over you.”
Yeah, thanks. That’s a track, I assume, about dedication. “They’ll should haul me off,” you understand, they’ll should take me out of right here if I’m going to go away. However what am I sticking round for? It’s this relationship to the earth, the place, the folks, and its particular lifestyle – the way it compels you and makes you relate to it, and act that method, too. I like that track and that line. It’s an odd one.
I relate it additionally to the ultimate track and that query of “Have I been okay at residing?” The road that basically strikes me is the one which comes proper after: “Do I’ve coronary heart after I’m blacking out from residing?” I really feel like that’s a number of what the album is finally about: the issues that compel you to remain, to not bask in escapist or dissociative behaviour.
Yeah, I feel so too. A whole lot of these items is about being overwhelmed, feeling incapable, just like the world is transferring within the fallacious route. So that you shut down – whether or not by staying dwelling and turning into extra insular, consuming tradition, or no matter lets you shut out the world. Clearly, blacking out has a consuming high quality, but it surely’s greater than that – it’s an actual closing out of the world. A whole lot of what we see at this time is, having coronary heart means being open, delicate, cautious. That’s excellent – it’s a great route and solution to be. However how do you try this once you’re born out of virtually a repressive method of approaching the world? If that’s your core, having coronary heart looks like the factor you don’t have in that new sense of being open. I like that stress – when the particular person or character can’t do one thing, but it’s that very factor the place you anticipate it to not be that may shine by as essential. That’s what I like about Southern literature and themes – the kindnesses are precisely the place you don’t anticipate them.
I really feel like that stress is foregrounded within the title, which at first looks like a continuation of the linguistic juxtaposition of Evil Pleasure, but it surely’s an actual place. While you determined to make use of the mural depicting the realm round Huge Ugly Creek because the album cowl, what function did it play for you? And extra broadly, how does the true lineage, neighborhood, and private historical past you found function a backdrop for fiction and songwriting?
I’ve at all times been drawn to little couplets, two phrases that, when put collectively, really feel fallacious or like they shouldn’t exist. “Evil pleasure” must be adverse, but it surely’s one thing folks know intuitively, this badness that additionally offers a sort of pleasure. I feel “huge ugly” is a extra developed model of that. I like beginning with one thing very adverse and attempting to exploit it for its magnificence, helpfulness, or sensitivity. Linguistically, it units me up for the narratives I like to inform: an unsightly scenario that has a number of coronary heart. I assumed it was a fantastic identify for these thematic tensions, but it surely’s additionally a fantastic identify for the spatial issues happening on this document – small cities, an nearly documentarian sense of individuals residing their lives. I needed it to be actual, as a result of not every little thing stated on right here is actual tales about actual folks, but it surely ought to really feel actual. I needed it to be an actual place that somebody may discover on a map. That stress between documentary and fiction, historic reality and narrative, is completely encapsulated in that identify.
It’s not like I’ve a particular relationship to the small, unincorporated space known as Huge Ugly, however I’ve a relationship to West Virginia and the Guyandotte River, the place my household is from. Huge Ugly is a type of names that sticks with you as a spot and as a reputation. It’s humorous that a spot like that exists, and it’s humorous that the identify has lived on. After I began to look into it, I discovered that it’s really an extremely stunning place. What I discovered there was this mural and a complete historical past of individuals producing music and literature about this space. It’s very conscious of itself and impressed by itself, producing all this reflection on itself. For me, exterior of my very own investments and poetry, that turned an actual instance of expectations being completely undercut.
Equally, with my household, going to West Virginia, there’s an expectation that it’s not going to be nice. However then I went with my grandma, and she or he confirmed me all of the locations she went to, all of the love she had, all of the experiences and desires she had. She sees them as being there, and it undercuts it. You suppose one factor, however then you definately go there, and it’s stuffed with desires and aspirations. All of that collectively made it such a robust start line or picture for me to maneuver by.
Are you able to inform me extra concerning the expectations that have been undercut throughout these journeys along with your grandma?
Effectively, my expectation – and that is simply from residing within the South, even in North Carolina and Virginia, all of the locations I’ve lived and visited – is that these are locations in decline. Locations which have suffered financial crises, drug crises. These are locations which are hurting, and individuals are closed off, conservative, cautious of outsiders. Regardless that I’m from right here, I anticipate them being rundown, struggling areas. However as a substitute, with my grandma there, strolling round, along with her vitality and speaking to folks – her private historical past is projected onto it, and she or he sees it come to life. If she’s doing that, if she’s bringing this place to life – it could look rundown and exhausted, but it surely’s not. It’s crammed, by her view, with all these recollections and energies. And if she’s doing that, then everybody’s doing that. It takes a reconsideration by the lens of the individuals who dwell there, staff, the individuals who dwell on the land. Appearances are misleading. Clearly, there’s a number of poverty and structural poverty right here, however that’s not the top. Restoring or emphasizing the hopes and aspirations there appears to be the inversion wanted.
I feel these items are additionally truisms. Each place has its issues, but folks stay. Folks look previous it and suppose ahead. I’m not saying something completely new, but it surely was huge for me, as somebody eager about private historical past, to expertise it by my grandmother – to see her trying on the dwelling she grew up in, the steps she performed on, or the home she was born in that was torn down. She’s taking a look at this absent constructing – a constructing I can’t see, however she will. It’s that historic reminiscence overlaid with appearances and expectations, rewriting these adverse projections with pretty ones – that was so profound for me.
You talked about being fascinated by human battle, these little emotions, and what I get from Huge Ugly is folks being on the verge of vulnerability – or folks on the opposite aspect of that vulnerability, attempting to dig it out. Is that interpersonal stress one thing that appeals to you?
Every of those songs has a personality – if not named, then it’s about folks, folks having emotions, crises, frustrations. It’s traditional, in a method: ‘Gateleg’ is sort of a love story, ‘Spangled’ is a repressive, traumatic factor, and ‘Doghole’ is filled with pleasure. However none of them are so obtainable – it’s not simply the pure essence of pleasure or love. Every thing is up towards the world in these songs. Like I stated earlier, with the concept of blacking out, a number of it’s about being raised in a tradition with a number of restrictions, and feeling that’s sort of essential: a quiet strategy to the world, not being weak, blocking issues out.
Nobody’s put it this fashion, however I feel it’s precisely proper: this being on the opposite aspect of vulnerability, having it break by in tiny methods. Whether or not it’s by language, having the ability to speak about one thing in a sure method, or releasing the stronghold on expressing your self, like digging a gap – I like that picture of a canine bursting out of the home into the yard, digging. That concept of pleasure, breaking by the barrier, having that be an expression of pleasure and love. Or in ‘Bleached’, trying again on the way you turned what you’re once you barely had ideas, barely may converse. You took up with mates and have become a particular method since you have been attempting to match them, after which realizing it’s saved you from being extra weak – or no less than able to receiving new issues. I actually do suppose that will get on the core of it. I wish to route it by folks and interpersonal relations as a result of it occurs on the stage of individuals.
Within the track ‘Jody’, you’ve obtained these characters who’re in a relationship, and so they each grew up in a tradition that’s perhaps abusive, or about taking part in laborious, having a meanness. After which producing a very wholesome relationship out of that. Like with Huge Ugly, these expectations – you suppose it’s this unhealthy factor you’re outlined by, however as a substitute, it’s this breaking by that provides it the vitality that’s price listening to or placing right into a track or studying. That’s the factor that’s so beneficial right here.
A whole lot of that vitality and pleasure is captured in ‘Mountain Language’. I’m curious concerning the extent to which it’s one thing you personally establish with it, or if it wavers for you, that sort of romanticism.
It feels private. A whole lot of songs on this document really feel extra private in that method. Every verse in ‘Mountain Language’ takes up an issue in every verse I do know very properly from my life – socioeconomic restrictions or conditions that maintain you again, making you’re employed a wage job, have relationships that don’t really feel precisely proper, or have family and friends members in disaster. It’s so laborious to suppose that, regardless of these conditions, there are nonetheless these candy, lived resistances to all of it. But when there was another method – the massive utopian query – we’ve obtained to carry onto that picture, nevertheless romantic or unviable it’s. That track and sentiment are ones I actually really feel.
I’m somebody whose first precept is hope. It doesn’t at all times really feel vital, and typically it doesn’t look very political, however my first sentiment is hope. I feel hope is a good first philosophy to have – to look again on the hopes of individuals as one thing that’s price remembering, even when they didn’t materialize. Sustaining hope, no matter which means – the factor that’s but to come back – makes the current really feel purposeful. It’s a easy wish-fulfillment sort track, however I feel these sentiments are essential.
As you talked about, there’s characters all all through the document, however one among its most transferring songs is ‘Sister’, which has no names or no signifiers of place. It makes me really feel like that’s a track that hits dwelling for you.
It’s one of many solely songs I’ve ever written as a sort of elegy – a track about demise. I wrote it after the expertise of demise in my life. I strive to not make songs too private as a result of then, each time you play or take heed to them, the private factor comes up continuously. You develop bored with it, or your place modifications, and also you don’t need to take into consideration that factor anymore, so the track turns into misplaced. However this was a uncommon instance of processing one thing in my life by a track. I wrote it straight by in about 10-Quarter-hour as a result of I used to be in a really weak second in my life.
It’s just like what’s occurring in ‘Spangled’, the place one thing absent nonetheless has presence on the planet round you. In relation to demise, when somebody passes away, you see the remnants of their life, you continue to see the traces of life. It’s a wierd stress of presence and absence – experiencing somebody’s loss by what they’ve left behind. However I additionally suppose it’s a common track in a method. I at all times really feel that as a result of it’s specific, another person can discover their factor by it. That’s what a number of the characters and particulars do in my songs, or I hope they do. However right here, with out these issues, it’s purely a sense track, an inner track that perhaps does it on a unique stage. It undoubtedly feels prefer it’s an exception on this document, but it surely’s one among my favourite songs and recordings. Libby’s fiddle on it’s so harrowing – it’s droning and crying. There’s a lot on the musical stage that feels prefer it’s doing the work.
You recorded the album with Alex Farrar, and one thing that separates you from many artists I’ve talked to who’ve made albums with him is that that is your second full-length collaboration in a row. What was it like working once more with him?
Effectively, once we recorded Genevieve, it occurred so quick. I had come out of years of dwelling recording, and it was my first time in a studio. I used to be at all times towards studio stuff as a result of so many individuals in my technology anticipate the sound of dwelling recording – it’s a part of our musical DNA. However with Alex, it was instantly gratifying. He had such a sound and contact, and it felt pure. I needed to do a second document with him as a result of we had extra time to work on it collectively, which he was very completely satisfied to do.
After I look again on recording Huge Ugly, it was very structured – we labored 10 to 7. Alex has a child, and his associate, Larkin, is one among my favourite folks. They’re the definition of excellent folks. The folks at Drop of Solar are all so caring and considerate. It was a neighborhood effort with Alex. Additionally, he’s a fantastic reader. He reads a lot, and he’s so delicate to themes and philosophical ideas. We’d document, after which we’d speak about books and films. He’s so quiet and severe and cautious in relation to recording, but in addition in a position to break free and have probably the most intriguing conversations. It’s not so technical – it’s very fluid. He’s on a wavelength the place we’re making music not as a result of there’s this urgency, however as a result of we’re mates, and we every have our abilities and capacities, and we need to be round one another. And the music looks like a byproduct of that. After I suppose again on the document, I consider it like that: a doc of two weeks spent in shut quarters with good, caring, considerate folks, versus a transaction.
The phrase we frequently use to explain how bands work collectively is “chemistry,” however I needed to ask what which means you’ve discovered within the companionship – a phrase that feels extra apt right here – of Fust as a gaggle.
Yeah, I don’t find out about chemistry. I feel any mixture of individuals would produce a sort of response, however I’m not somebody who firmly believes in that sense of chemical response. I’ll write songs as a result of I’ve been doing it for therefore lengthy. Fortunately, it was the primary undertaking the place strangers preferred it. There’s the query: What’s totally different? Why do folks like this one? Is it due to chemistry between this group of individuals taking part in it and Alex? It might be, however these aren’t the questions I’m tremendous involved in.
What made Fust nice was that I surrendered to not being the one musician who performed every little thing, to not recording and mixing every little thing myself. I surrendered to complete management and made music not a valuable factor that needs to be precisely proper, however really a dedication to different folks. To Avery, who’s such an unimaginable and delicate drummer – a songwriter’s drummer. He performs with phrasing that provides me the momentum and stability I would like. Enjoying with Ollie and Justin, whose voices becoming a member of me is one thing I may by no means replicate. They’re the right choir to sing with. It’s this dedication to different folks’s hard-earned methods of performing and being round folks. Alex’s hard-earned method of constructing music. Being very cautious and cautious with who I select to spend time with.
I don’t want to do that – there are different methods of residing life. I don’t have to do all of this to place this document in entrance of individuals. What makes all of it price it’s that it means I get to have extra intense relationships with these folks, that I get to proceed investing in them – not simply the music, however these folks. I’ve obtained such a fantastic neighborhood – it’s nearly embarrassing how good the folks I’ve discovered myself gathered amongst are. So proficient, so particular. I like the pivot you made between chemistry as just a few sort of symbiosis – this factor the place abilities come collectively and it really works – and individuals who like to be collectively. Might Fust sound in a different way with a unique group? Completely. However that’s not what I’m listening for. After I hear again to Huge Ugly, I’m listening to my mates, my folks doing issues I didn’t write, issues I didn’t know they have been going to do. I’m listening to traces of the folks I like, versus the musical concept perfected by a gun-for-hire.
This interview has been edited and condensed for readability and size.
Fust’s Huge Ugly is out March 7 through Pricey Life Information.
