28. The Microphones
Phil Elverum has been making music under the moniker Mount Eerie, named for a mountain in Washington, since 2003. Prior to that, he made music as The Microphones. We’ll get to the origin of that band name later. I first met Phil in the mid-2000s in his hometown of Anacortes, WA, a small town where for years he helped organize What The Heck Fest, a music festival that drew acts and audience members from the world over. In the last 25 years he has been taking his music all over this earth and has released and produced a ton of music and visual art. On his latest album, he goes back to being the Microphones again. Simply titled Microphones in 2020, he delivers a sung memoir on his music career so far, over the course of a single 45 minute song. There’s a really beautiful video of it that you can find online, too. I called my friend Phil to chat about the new record, his winter isolated in a rural cabin in Norway, photography, his hilarious cartoons, writing about life and death, and his artistic development while living in Olympia.
Here’s my conversation with the original line-up of the Microphones.