North Carolina is having a moment. Wednesday and MJ Lenderman enjoyed meteoric rises to indie rock stardom and shone a light on their vibrant hometown scenes. Dotted with rural enclaves and college towns, North Carolina artists present a diversity of narratives that shatters existing stereotypes. On Big Ugly, released by artist-run Dear Life Records, Fust preserves the nuanced grittiness of Southern life while challenging dominant narratives.
Post-Trash caught up with Fust lead Aaron Dowdy to discuss evolving Southern identity, adding nuance to existing musical themes, and jamming with your friends.
Photo by Charlie Boss
by Giliann Karon (@lethalrejection)
GILIANN KARON: What’s your musical upbringing?
AARON DOWDY: Not a very extensive one. I grew up in a town in southwestern Virginia called Bristol. There wasn’t a scene in the traditional sense. People weren’t in bands or making music, but there was a culture of music because Bristol prides itself on being the birthplace of country music. It’s where the Bristol sessions took place. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter family originally recorded there. My parents were musicians. I grew up around music and a love of music. I started writing songs very early, around age 11. It was awkward at first, but I had a drive. My family and friends encouraged me to keep with it, despite the rockiness of trying to write music when none of my peers were.
GK: Who are your favorite artists from where you grew up and where you live now?
AD: It’s hard to say because there weren’t a lot of mentors or current bands in Bristol that have stayed with me or directly influenced my work. The exception is the Carter family and a folk tradition that’s clearly embedded in me. I grew up near Asheville, North Carolina so I’d drive there to see shows. That’s where you’d have to drive to see touring musicians. I saw a lot of incredible shows throughout my childhood. Seeing Will Oldham play Bonnie “Prince” Billy at a young age was really inspiring.
Since I’ve been in the scene here, I’ve realized the most important thing is having friends who make music and bands all around you. We have a lot of that in North Carolina, especially in Durham. A lot of members of my band also play in Sluice. Justin [Morris] is one of my favorite songwriters. I'm very honored to not only play with, but also be in a community where my friends are my favorite songwriters.
GK: What does it mean to you to be from the South today?
AD: It’s complicated. Everyone in Fust is from the South and all grew up with Southern culture. I struggled with it a bit. Being in a rural area felt politically compromised. Even aspirations felt out of touch with what was going on around me. I liked Southern culture and it’s my home, but there were enough things that drove me to be confused.
I left for a period of time, as did most members in Fust. I lived in New York for a while and so did Frank [Meadows], Avery [Sullivan], and Justin [Morris]. Ollie [Child-Lanning] lived in Philly. So did Libby [Rodenbough], who spent time all around the world. Part of what we learned from leaving is that we not only missed it, but missed something about it – a very specific way of life.
It’s very regional. It doesn't play as many games. I love and miss the community in New York, but I'm somebody who's going to have community wherever I go. I’m vexed by what was in conflict with that drove me to leave, and what was missing that brought me back.
I’ve not only come back, but I’m attempting to defend it despite itself. First off, it’s such a beautiful country. It’s very special. There's a lot of people struggling, and it gets overlooked as a place that isn’t necessarily forward-thinking. If you take the time to get to know it, it's an incredibly rich culture that is forward-looking.
People aren’t bound to the insufficient political history of the South. They’re inspired by the resistance to that, which builds its own communities. That’s what draws me here. People understand the like-minded tension here.
GK: How do you ensure that you're accurately conveying Southern culture and stories while making your songs still accessible to those who don't get it?
AD: I'm a very particular and detail-driven songwriter. I'm obsessed with nuance, so I don’t deal with cliches or images that people already have assumptions about. Instead, there are details people do know, like details of a relationship, a road, or a doubt. Listeners can immediately grab an image or get a detail they project onto very quickly.
I like my songs to take those details and build out a story with a problem or situation, which becomes more universal, whether it’s different kinds of conflict or resignation to your environment. I think I’m doing something a lot of people can do anywhere because it’s about regional experience.
A lot of the situations or problems in my song have Southern-specific elements of feeling stuck or cultures of messiness. The whole concept of the “Dirty South” has its own character of feeling excited and frustrated, or just roughhousing. I always try to bring some of that energy into the situations I write about. I give the characters heart despite their situations.
GK: What dichotomies do you want to address in your songs and what myths are you trying to bust?
AD: Backwardness versus some kind of forwardness. This is a place that's been left behind by history and you have to go to the city to find the future. You have to be a part of scenes to find the next phase of things, but there’s so much exciting history here.
Like I said earlier, it's a history that's not just a corrupt history. It's a history that has a lot of resistance. That’s what I mainly tell stories about – people in everyday struggles and hurts and excitements to it give a trajectory. Life here is still worthwhile.
I know that’s so simple, but it’s the defense of a life that, upon first glance, doesn't look like it's participating in all the things it should be.
If you're trying to find Southern themes within songs, you’ll find them in country music more than any other kind of music. I don't know if we're a country band, but because we deal with similar themes, we'll always get that reference.
I’m trying to add nuance to the themes that people are already aware of in this very big genre, and to add nuance and character that expresses different emotions and problems than the ones that normally get discussed, whether that’s themes of trauma, wage jobs, or the price of groceries.
I'm not against country music. I love country music and I love its themes, especially the defense of Southern imagery. I'm trying to break the myth that it's a place devoid of intrigue. There’s room to add nuance, which is something I definitely get from Southern literature. I think Southern literature is really important and often overlooked. That’s a similar thing I strive for in songs – adding that depth.
I don't want to sound holier than now. I’m not trying to make these things deep. They're not that deep. They're a little more careful than I often hear.
GK: You’re currently getting your PhD in literature at Duke. How does your academic background inform your songwriting and vice versa?
AD: It really doesn't all that much. I feel super compartmentalized, like anyone who has a job. If you work a service industry job, you might have interactions with people and it might fuel your songwriting, or you might feel frustrated and that makes its way in.
I can see how that stuff is obviously very real. I feel like with the PhD, I’m just doing my job. I like to read, and maybe what it comes down to is the sensitivity that comes with reading and experiencing a lot of nuanced argumentation. It makes me careful about the things I write.
People won’t always take my songs as something to listen to absentmindedly. If someone did take these words seriously, they might get a lot out of it. I'm a little careful to collapse the two just because I'm the same person doing them.
GK: What song on Big Ugly challenged you the most?
AD: There's a song called “Jody,” which is a really special song. It was originally a different song. After recording this other song, I felt like it didn't really get at what I was trying to do. We rewrote and re-recorded it a bunch of times over.
Every time I rewrote parts of it, one little thing would stay. I'm very happy with where it wound up because it's a very personal song for me. It’s about the reckless drinking culture in the South and the people who come out of that and develop relationships out of it.
Even something so dangerous still has a lot of love, which I try not to undermine. When you start drinking at an early age, you build relationships around it. It’s a rocky foundation, but it’s a foundation nevertheless.
I wanted to write a love story about difficulties that emerge out of that fraught starting point. I worked really hard on it. I was listening to NPR’s “American Roots” and learned “Jody” is historically used in a lot of songs, especially the Black American songbook. I like that this character has a bit of a new life.
I lucked out on being able to finish that song. I didn’t think I could finish the record without it.
GK: What did you watch, read, and listen to while writing Big Ugly?
AD: I was reading a lot of Southern literature, especially things by Harry, Barry, and Larry – that’s Harry Cruz, Barry Hannah, and Larry Brown.
I watched a lot of regional American cinema. People talk a lot about regional and realist European cinema where, after the war, producers in Italy tried to cast non-actors to create something more intense and less contrived.
So I watched the American version of that. Penny Allen made a film called Property in 1978 starring her group of friends. None of them were actors. It’s about her friends getting kicked out of their gentrifying neighborhood in Portland, so they banded together to raise money to buy the property.
This group of counterculture outcasts and freaks had no prior knowledge of dealing with property. I love the sense of community among weirdos who have to grow up. That’s something I talk about on “Jody,” people who are in no position to be in a great relationship, but what happens when you are? Against all odds, you somehow grow up.
I listen to so much music and I don't really have a lot of references when I write an album. I returned to Neil Young, who I hadn't listened to in a long time. Fust started as a recording project, and then we've morphed into a band that plays live.
I was looking for examples of great songwriters who were loose and allowed their bands a lot of freedom to make their live shows not necessarily something rehearsed, but an open forum to play music. I wanted to write something that would be fun to play live.
Big Ugly by Fust is out now on Dear Life Records. Follow Fust on Instagram.