ZapTown

Despite the announcement made by the band that Cloud Cult was going to take a break the last few years, it certainly did not feel like it. During this time, the band released their impressive documentary No One Said It Would Be Easy, and Craig Minowa re-released their early albums They Live On The Sun and Aurora Borealis (both re-mastered and wrapped in a double CD), as well as put out Lost Songs From The Lost Years, containing unreleased songs from the last 15 years.

It’s enough to make anyone exhausted, but they continue, going back out on the road and back into the studio to record an album that’s slated for release later this year. All of this remains on the Earthology label, and the band (singer/songwriter Minowa, Sarah Young on cello, violinist Shannon Frid, Shawn Neary on bass, Arlen Peiffer on drums, and visual artists Connie Minowa and Scott West) stays true to their beliefs by continuing their crusade of environmentally conscious products and practices.

Minowa talks about current affairs about the band, as well as the move from Minnesota to the wooded landscape of Wisconsin.

Link: http://www.cloudcult.com/

(Photo by Cody York)

It’s exciting news to know that Cloud Cult is coming out with a new album this fall. Is there a title for the album? Can you tell me thus far how the band is further evolving and what kind of experiences everyone has comparatively put into this album? What does this album mean to you?

This album is another focused exploration into chasing the God/meaning/truth/purpose of life.  We just had a new baby, so there have been a lot of lyrical insights.  We also uprooted our organic farm and moved to the woods of Wisconsin, where the new recording studio is. So the wildlife out here is inspiring a pretty cinematic feel to the album.

It has also brought the band back out on tour? How has that been going? Cloud Cult’s live shows are always an experience. What have fans been experiencing this year and what plans do you have once the new album is finished.

We’re adding another musician to the live shows, Sarah Elhardt. She’s a multi-instrumentalist who plays French horn, trumpet, accordion and keyboard. When the album is released, we’ll be doing a full supporting national tour covering our usual cities across the U.S. We had an offer some European touring, but we have a new baby, so we’re going to hold off on that for a while.

Last year led to a documentary and the recent re-issue of the double disc “They Live On The Sun” and “Aurora Borealis.” As both albums are incredibly special, what do these albums mean to you today compared to what they did when you made them.

When I first made them, I had no idea Cloud Cult would actually catch on, so they were music strictly for the sake of making music. I had a lot of pain in my life at that time, having just lost our two year old son, so I had a lot of issues to work through, and the music helped me do that while giving me a vent. Music literally saved my life at that time, and the songs on those albums are essentially the snapshots of that insane period. So that’s how I treat them… If I’m looking to dig through an old cardboard box of memories of that time period, I can put one of those on and grieve. But I don’t listen to them for casual listening. It was very hard to put the double disc together because I had to really focus on those tracks again, because it brings back that intense grief for me.

You are a band who was one of the first outspoken “green” bands. How did that initially interest you and why did you want to get involved? Can you tell us how what you have done  that has positively made a change, something that has made all of this work worth it? Also does that consciousness interfere or persuade how people perceive the band or how you create music or does the two go hand in hand. Without that perception, what would Cloud Cult be like?

I’ve had strong environmentally tendencies as far back as I can remember. I used to skip school to avoid the beatings, and I’d hang out in the woods. I really got in touch with my spirituality there, so it became natural to want
to protect and respect that.  I just feel like it’s the logical way to run any business, and I wouldn’t want to be a part of any business that doesn’t take steps to respect this living biome.  It was initially an uphill PR battle for Cloud Cult, because we did all these green things way before it was the trendy thing to do, so a lot of reviewers got caught up in that and assumed that if we were a green band, we must be a hippie jam band, because they were about the only other bands out there trying to be green.  Now it is very trendy to be green, and the concept has become watered down, but I love running into those people who do it because it’s the right thing to do, and not because it’s something that people will think is cool.  For the most part, at this point, I don’t think our green pursuits have had a part in our fan-base building.  Most people we meet at shows don’t even know we’re a green band. The lyrics are  really not directly indicative of those ecological pursuits. But I also think that if I wasn’t in love with nature, I wouldn’t have the same sort of reverence and connection with this living universe, and it’s precisely that connection where I try to tap most of the lyrics from.

How did the idea of creating artwork during the live shows come into being, and for you, how does that accentuate the music when you are on stage surrounded by it all?

My wife and my best friend were both career painters, so it was common for them to be painting around me while I created music, back in the days of small apartment living.  I’m also a fan of shows where there are really great visuals, because even as a musician, it can get boring for me to go watch a band stand there on stage for 90 minutes without anything else for my eyes to feast on.  So the early Cloud Cult shows were these multi-faceted creative explosions where we invited as many people to bring their art as were interested.  We also had performance artists on stage with us, and live video in the background. The crowd would literally be surrounded in art unfolding. It was really great, but as the crowds and venues got bigger, it became a logistical nightmare to plan shows like that for touring, and we needed to simplify to stay sane.  So for the past five years, Connie Minowa and Scott West have been the visual art show of the Cloud Cult performance, and Adrian Young did the live video.

During that break in 2008-2009, what did you do in the downtime, and how did that help you? After “Feel Good Ghosts” what was you mindset and what were you thinking at the time. Did that time off refresh you?

We were planning on taking a break in 2008, but we actually decided to keep touring, so the break didn’t actually occur until September of 2009 when we had a baby. The break has been refreshing, and it has allowed space for
doing a lot of writing on the new album.

Why team up with Esurance on this tour? How is that helping to educate the fans about being environmentally conscious? Has it become easier, with the term “green” becoming a more common word amongst society?

Esurance sponsored our tour in spring of 2009.  They helped pay the costs of greening the tour, like planting enough  trees to absorb our CO2 and buying enough wind energy to power our shows. These are costs that we’ve always had, but we have usually just had to do them out of pocket. Esurance offered to pay them for us.

Multi-instrumental talents of the band have been an approach to help turn your music into art, and it has developed and expanded through the years. How is that helping you continue to achieve vision in a band like this?

Having multi-instrumentalists on board is essential, because the albums pay little heed to how a song is going to be performed live. That is to say, if a recorded song calls for bagpipes, it gets bagpipes, even if we don’t know
how we’re going to do that live on stage.  So, once the songs are recorded, we see how we can piece them together in a live setting.

You have seen much success from this band. What has surprised you the most about this? What has impressed you the most?

I’m most surprised by our success, because we’ve always been an independent band. In my younger years, I was bitter enough to believe that the music industry was so messed up that the only way you could make it was by getting signed to some golden record label.  But we’ve just worked hard for many years and it gradually gets better and better. There’s no instant success recipe when you look at the history of Cloud Cult. Most people have never heard of us, so when they see us on Carson Daily or hear us on National Public Radio, they assume we exploded from out of nowhere. But, in actuality, we’ve been here for over a decade, and with each year, our organic roots dig a little deeper, and our branches grow a little taller.

What are your plans for 2010?

I want this to be the best album we’ve ever done, so A LOT of work is going into this. We’ll do a sprinkling of shows until it comes out in August and then tour nationally.  Thanks!