Aaron Dowdy leads the Durham-based band Fust. Their latest record, Big Ugly, is out now on Dear Life.
(Photo Credit: Graham Tolbert)
Aaron Dowdy leads the Durham-based band Fust; Merce Lemon is a singer-songwriter from Pittsburgh. Fust’s new record, Big Ugly, was just released earlier this month on Dear Life, and to celebrate, the two friends got on the phone to catch up about it, and more. You can catch Fust and Merce together on tour through the Midwest in April.
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music
Aaron Dowdy: I was thinking: something that I’m so impressed with — and this is something that a lot of people in our generation are so good at, but I’m very bad at it — you’re so good at taking photos, and just documenting the everyday experience wherever you are. It’s in your music, too, and you seem to be kind of like a tchotchke collector of experiences and little details. How do you think about taking photos and collecting little parts of your life and your day? Because I’m so bad at it. Even though I know it’s a good thing to do, I still don’t do it.
Merce Lemon: When you say bad at it, you mean it’s not intuitive that you’re like, “Let me document this part of my life, or remember this vacation from this little string I found on the ground,” or whatever the fuck?
Aaron: Right, I don’t. Even in just walking around, I forget that my phone’s on me. And that’s probably the best thing a phone is for, being able to quickly take a photo of something and to see the world as [being] full of these little things worth taking photos of. That’s something I’ve never been able to get naturally be inclined to do. It’s always my New Year’s resolution, to take more photos, but I never do.
Merce: Well, I love that you walk around and forget that your phone’s in your pocket. I feel like that’s something a lot of people wish they could do. Sometimes you leave your phone at home and people are still reaching in their pocket intuitively. So I think that’s kind of beautiful also.
Aaron: Well, I’ll take that beauty and I’ll raise you: I wish I could take photos.
Merce: Yeah. I mean, I like to take them to share them. I know a lot of people who are good at organizing and keeping their photos in a way where they can come back to them, and mine are completely disorganized. I can’t find anything. But it’s just little moments that make me think of people. And I like speaking through images rather than words, sometimes — texting photos when you’re not with somebody, and something reminding you of them.
Aaron: Texting with you is always really awesome because you always have images that you’re surrounded by.
Merce: I’m like, “Here’s my stew!” [Laughs.]
Aaron: Yeah, you sent me the darkest stew I’ve ever seen, and I was so happy. You didn’t have to share that, but there’s something so kind about thinking about taking an image for someone else.
Merce: I think there’s only so much words can do over a screen, and an image can make you feel like two people are there together.
Aaron: Yeah. Obviously the apps that we have to be on are image apps originally, and you can sometimes just get so lost in the music promotion side of things that you forget that images are actually this incredible thing to share with people. I even bring it up because I’m very aware when I see other people sharing images, how beautiful it is and how original to the idea it is of why these apps were even created in the first place. And it’s funny that to do that seems like you’re true to what the thing is, but you’re even undercutting it because everyone is way too good at it now. They’re producing images, and it doesn’t feel like you’re doing that at all. It feels like you’re very intimately just looking at the world and coming across things. It feels valuable to see it photographically and to share it for what it is.
Merce: That’s really sweet to hear. I don’t know if I ever thought about it. It’s just kind of intuitive. I was really into taking film photos and learning how to use the darkroom when I was younger, so I’ve had a big photography phase. I’m pretty out of it, but I do want to bring a point-and-shoot on our tour. I keep meaning to remind myself that.
But your songs are also very tangible. I feel like you capture a lot of what a photo would, because they play like movies in my head sometimes. I was thinking about the first time that we met, which was at SXSW last year.
Aaron: I wanted to talk about this.
Merce: [Laughs.] I was near breakdown, covered in poison ivy, FaceTiming with your bandmate’s dermatologist — who was giving me really good advice, actually, for hacking the system.
Aaron: Tell everybody what that advice is.
Merce: He was like, “I can’t really get you prescription steroids, but the over-the-counter hack is Flonase, which has steroids in it.” I just sprayed Flonase all over my legs for five days in Austin, Texas. I think I left our show — which, we showed up and there was no infrastructure for a show in the first place — and it was the first time I was meeting you guys, and you guys just got out of the van and you’re like, “Alright, we’re gonna make this happen.” I left for 30 minutes to find Flonase at a Walgreens, and I came back and you guys had set up and the dude that was running it was sweeping dirt and leaves into the venue on purpose.
Aaron: Yes. I was thinking about it from our angle, which was that we were on our first bigger tour, and we were playing SX — or slated to play SX, and then we pulled out for the defense sponsorships — and we went into it like, “OK, well, what are we doing here? Is this still going to be fun? Is it going to be worth it?” And we show up to this weird gallery in Austin with these Quonset huts, and nothing’s set up. We see you, Merce, and the Merce band, and our manic energy is just totally aligned. And it was extremely fun.
Merce: Like, immediately.
Aaron: Immediately fun. You were covered in poison ivy, you were suffering, you had your own dilemmas. Everyone was kind of freaking out, but then it was just immediately the best time.
Merce: Yeah, that night was really special to me because I was having such a hard time. My whole band was exhausted already at that point. We were already in the thick of it, and we played and it felt fine. Then, I had never heard Fust before, and Benji, my bassist, was already a big fan. And I think he asked you to play a song, and you were like, “I’m not going to play that.” And then you did, and he freaked out. But also, I was in such a weird headspace, and I’d seen so much music already, but I was so impacted by y’all’s set that night. It was the boost that I needed to feel like it was worth it, all of the craziness.
Aaron: Yeah. Then in the aftermath, I’ve thought about y’all a lot — and we’re going to play shows together in April, which is very exciting for us.
Merce: My dream.
Aaron: A random interaction under a weird circumstance can produce a future that’s a very sweet one. This very strange moment actually has turned out to be a really lasting friendship. But I also thought about — I get asked in interviews about North Carolina and Durham and all of the people here, and community seems to be one of the questions that I have to answer for. Or at least, if not answer for, it’s the answer I give for why this is worth doing what we’re doing. And I also think about you in Pittsburgh, and now in in Burlington. I don’t intentionally surround myself with musicians that turn out to be my favorite musicians, but it just so happens that that turns out to be the case. And it seems like it’s the case for you, too. I’m in awe of the incredible people that you have around you, in all of your areas where you spend time. I think of music as a byproduct of these friendships. It’s not like I’m looking for music and, therefore, I have these this group of people. I just wonder how you continue to find yourself surrounded by literally the best people in Pittsburgh and Burlington. It’s so inspiring. How do you see that coming about?
Merce: Well, I definitely see the same in you, when I’m around the Fust band and the Sluice band. That is such a magical energy, and it’s so special how you guys coexist in Durham and surrounding areas. I feel I’m not somebody that’s going to bullshit or go out of my way to talk about something that I don’t care about, but when something really moves me, I want that person to know. And I don’t go into it with the intention of wanting anything out of them. I just, like, am in awe. And when that is reciprocated or turns into a friendship… I feel like so many of my friends, I’m also huge fans of.
Aaron: Right.
Merce: They’re so talented. And that’s how I feel about y’all. And even my bandmates who have their own projects, and my partner — I loved the art they made even before I totally knew all of these people.
Aaron: I think about it a lot with my group, but I also think about it more with your group, just because I have so much admiration for all the members of your band and all the people in Burlington that I’ve met. People ask me, if they’re starting out, “How do you do this thing?” And I’m like, “Well, really, this thing isn’t the music making or the music performing. It’s being around good people and people who happen to love music and love recording music and listening to music.” Music seems to be core to it, but it seems like part of this is giving absolute privilege to the people and to the friendships. And then when you start making music, you have that community around you. They happen to sync up.
Merce: Yeah, it’s such a privilege. I’ve gotten similar questions, where people are like, “How do I start touring or meet people?” And I’m like, “You just have to talk to the people who inspire you and you admire human-to-human.” You know? Because it is meaningful to get that from somebody. And I think that we can be shy to go out of our way to reach out to people who really inspire us, but it’s an important thing to do, and those are when really beautiful connections are made sometimes. And when it feels right, it’s kind of hard to stop yourself anyways.
But I was also thinking about, when talking about my most recent album, how much inspiration I’ve found in just living in Pittsburgh. Which, until I put it out and read articles that people had written about it, I don’t know if I totally understood how influenced it was by the place I was born and returned to live. But I was thinking how yours is even more of a direct homage to this town that really shaped you. When I first asked you about the cover and the name, you told me a really good story about it, and I want to hear it again.
Aaron: Well, I wanted to call it Big Ugly because I think that’s a really funny name. But also, it’s a real place. All of those things coming together, where it has a sense of humor and it gives heart to something that sounds bad on one level — but it’s actually more endearing than if you just say, like, “Big Beautiful.” [Laughs.] That doesn’t work. But “Big Ugly” has this odd pairing that gets at the heart of something, a way of experiencing the world and also of respecting things that don’t often get respected. But they’re the things that I’m really drawn to. When I landed on that title, I started to think about imagery from there, from Big Ugly, West Virginia, and I found this blog that had taken this really crappy phone photo of this mural at a weird angle. I downloaded it and I was like, “Wow, this is a really strange, beautiful image.” I researched it, and I realized that there was this community center in Big Ugly that sort of serves as an after school education program for kids in the area, and they had painted this mural for a play they did around 2004, where the kids interviewed the elders in the area and then took those stories and turned them into songs and skits and put on a performance that was published with a book and a CD of everything.
Those things immediately appealed to me, that there was this weird mural of a weird looking parking lot with these buildings and this gas station — and there was no perspective. It wasn’t meant to be perfect. I mean, it’s kind of folk art. It kind of looks like Grandma Moses or something. And it reminded me of every place I’ve ever lived, this kind of any-place-whatsoever. Yet, it also had this story behind it, where it was this backdrop to a small place trying to understand itself and to tell its story, and to do it through song and narrative. It’s this blend of real fact and real story and narrative and performance, and that’s exactly what I’m all about — taking things that are very real and routing them through these narratives and songs. It was like a perfect storm for me of finding this image that I thought was beautiful, and finding this town name that is close to where my family lives.
Merce: OK, that’s what I was going to ask, what your connection to Big Ugly is. You didn’t live there, but you grew up near it.
Aaron: I didn’t grow up there, it was my family.
Merce: OK.
Aaron: So part of it was me getting to know the areas that my grandmother and dad grew up around. There’s this river called the Guyandotte River that cuts through the south part of West Virginia. I have photos of my great-great-grandmother swimming in this river, and I’ve been to that river. I was taking these trips with my dad and my mom and my grandmother, getting to know this region and explore her experience of growing up, and I got stuck on the way that generations work — the way that her experience is what keeps that area alive, because it looks so run down. But her experience is so alive and well. You have this tension between towns that are sort of forgotten and the immense memory and joy of people experiencing it still. And so thinking about my own experience here in North Carolina, through her or my dad’s experience of West Virginia, was sort of the trick of writing this record — routing my personal experience through something that is a family history, but allows me to have something once removed, a little distance from the things I’m talking about. I think I write really personal things, but not a lot of actual things that I experience.
Merce: Yeah. You’re telling it through other people’s stories, the characters.
Aaron: Right. And so place does become a character, the way Pittsburgh does for you. I think I do it in a different way, but it is still a similar thing where the importance of regionalism is what’s at play or what’s at stake in these songs a lot of the time.
Merce: Yeah. I didn’t even realize that for myself until it was told back to me.
Aaron: What about now that you know it? Has place become something you’re trying to avoid? Or are you looking at place more specifically as you write?
Merce: Yeah, it definitely made me a little more hyper-aware of that. Which is not always a good thing. I want to be open, and knowing too much can be kind of confining. I try to let that pass. And I think the way I write is maybe changing a bit, but it feels like it’s an organic process that is not really tangible how it’s changing. It’s small, but it just feels different. But I am having the feeling of needing a new environment to reinspire me, because I don’t know how many albums I can write in my little apartment in Pittsburgh. Maybe I can, but I think that a new setting and new inspiration would be really helpful. So I love the journey you went on with Big Ugly.
Aaron: I mean, I think you have an infinite number of records you could make in your little apartment in Pittsburgh. I have a firm belief in that. But I also totally agree that trying something new and having a place inspire you or new situations is what can keep a song and keep the love of writing songs alive.
I was also thinking about your record, because it is about Pittsburgh, but it’s really intimate. You have a lot of interiority and a lot of the writing is up against small little natural occurrences or little natural figures and tiny places and tiny images that then become the way of reading turmoil or emotional crisis. And I was thinking about both of us because, in one sense, we both deal with serious themes, and the tone is very serious. Yet you have these funny moments, and they’re really biological moments — like when you talk about barfing in “Rain,” and in “Birdseed” about droppings.
Merce: I’m just poopin’ on people’s heads as a bird. [Laughs.]
Aaron: [Laughs.] Yeah. You let these moments of humor come in. I have a similar thing too, where maybe it’s not so explicit, but I try to let humor in. There’s a tension between the way we write. Some people want things to be funnier. If it’s going to be serious, it has to also be funny, or it has to not make any sense at all. Do you feel a pressure with this idea of humor? Because I sometimes do, like, “Oh, the songs need to be funnier.”
Merce: So you’re very aware of that, and you intentionally are trying to craft that when you are writing?
Aaron: I’m on the lookout for things that are funny. It goes back to the photograph — when you see something on a garbage can or in the yard that shouldn’t be there, and there’s a funniness to it, when I see it, I have no problem being like, “That is funny.” But I’m not always the best at finding humor in the song. The song, especially for Fust, almost rejects humor, even though I think some of the stuff that ends up being there is funny. But therefore, I’m aware of its lack of humor. Or if there is something that’s funny, I’m like, “Oh, I’m really glad that’s there.” Because I love humor in other people’s songs. Like in your songs, these moments of humor that break out of something that feels huge and weighing. I just was curious about how you think about humor in general.
Merce: Yeah, I feel like it’s very important for me, writing songs that are often very intense and there’s a lot of sadness in them, for that to be balanced with humor. Because that’s life. I feel like it’s a more realistic reflection for me of how you can be in the depths of depression, but something at the same time can make you crack up. I think similarly, I’m always on the lookout for little phrases or moments that could potentially turn into a song, and I feel like so many of my songs and albums have come from those little moments. I have a million stories, but one funny one is the first album I ever put out when I was 19 years old called Ideal For a Light Flow With Your Body. I got that off of a tampon box. I was going to the bathroom or something, and I was like, “That’s so beautiful.” [Laughs.]
Aaron: [Laughs.] Yeah.
Merce: Well, I feel like I barely even touched on your record, but I will say that on one of my really long drives, I listened to it five times in a row and then listened to silence after. So it’s really special to me and I feel like everyone’s going to be so stoked to hear it.
Aaron: Thanks. And you’re on it. You sound incredible on it. That’s my favorite song on the record.
Merce: I loved singing on that song. I think we’ve talked about this — I have a hard time with harmony sometimes, but when you asked me to do that, I was like, “This is a challenge that I’m really excited to face.” I really wanted to be on the record.
Aaron: I’m so glad you’re there. Every time I hear it, it’s just so much joy.
Merce: I can’t wait to sing it live.
(Photo Credit: left, Graham Tolbert; right, Justin Gordon) 
