10A • July 29, 2016 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Blind Pilot speaks the language of loss
Nebeker talks
songwriting,
inluences and his
father’s death
By Erick Bengel
EO Media Group
The songs in Blind Pilot’s
latest album, “And Then Like
Lions,” are strung together by
themes of loss and courage.
But, according to Israel Ne-
beker — the band’s frontman
and songwriter who hails from
the North Coast — the tracks
don’t merely meditate on sor-
row and grief; they examine
loss from often overlooked
angles — from the way it can
bring families and communities
closer together, to the sudden
sense of perspective it gives to
those in mourning.
The album itself — Blind
Pilot’s irst in ive years —
sprung from loss.
In September 2014, Ne-
beker’s father, Royal Nebeker
— an internationally celebrat-
ed artist, beloved teacher and
major igure in the local arts
community — died at 69 after
battling cancer for nearly two
years.
Shortly after his father’s
diagnosis, Israel had a falling
out with a group of friends and
experienced the end of a mean-
ingful relationship — all within
a month, he said.
“I just personally went
through a chapter of my life
where those were the themes
coming to me, where I hadn’t
really experienced loss in that
way before,” he said.
To be sure, Israel had seen
it from the outside. Some years
ago, a high school friend’s fa-
ther died of cancer.
“I remember wanting to
console my friend, or give him
what comfort I could, and re-
ally being uncomfortable not
knowing what the right thing
is to say. And I realized I had
no vocabulary for it,” he said.
“And then I realized: That’s
strange.”
American culture, he said,
lacks the language to grapple
with loss, and with death in
particular.
“It’s not easy for us to share
it, as a community or even with
close friends. It’s a little bit
tricky to know what to say to
people,” he said.
“So I think I wanted to make
an album that was a conversa-
tion about that, and an invita-
tion into a conversation about
it, from a perspective that this
stuff is not nearly so hard if we
experience it together.”
Family focused
These unexpected turns in
Nebeker’s life partly account
for the ive-year gap between
albums. “And Then Like Li-
ons” — which debuts Aug. 12
— is the indie folk band’s third
album, after 2008’s “3 Rounds
and a Sound” and 2011’s “We
Are The Tide.”
Once they inished touring
on the second album, Nebeker
set off to write the third. But
when his father’s illness be-
came known, “I decided to
move closer to my parents’
home in Gearhart and spend
as much time with my dad as I
could,” he said.
“I was kind of spun out and
didn’t really know what to do,”
he said. “I deinitely didn’t
know what to write about.”
As a band, they “try to ind
that balance between sadness
and happiness,” he said.
“Israel came with these
songs pretty complete, and
then to have them illed out
and do them justice — it was
a good challenge for all of us,”
he said.
Ydstie, who sings and plays
bass, said with “And Then Like
Lions” the band ventured be-
yond their comfort zone — past
the spare acoustic sound that
deined their irst record and,
to a lesser extent, their second
— and into uncharted musical
terrain.
DANNY MILLER/EO MEDIA GROUP
Israel Nebeker, lead singer and songwriter of the band
Blind Pilot, poses for a portrait Friday on a trail near the
house where he grew up in Gearhart.
Bandmates Luke Ydstie
and Kati Claborn, who live in
Astoria, had a daughter, Hazel,
around that time as well.
“They weren’t ready to go
into the studio then, either,”
Nebeker said. “We mostly just
focused on family stuff that we
were going through. And then,
eventually, it made sense again
to write the album.”
He scrapped his old ideas
and, fueled by his recent emo-
tional journey, took his work in
a new direction. “It was a very
different album than I was ex-
pecting,” he said.
New musical terrain
Ryan Dobrowski, Blind Pi-
lot’s drummer who co-founded
the band with Nebeker in the
mid-2000s, said Nebeker al-
ways “digs pretty deep in his
songwriting, but I feel like he
was really ambitious with this
one, tackling some subjects that
people are generally afraid to
talk about, or talk about in great
depth at least.”
Given the rather heavy
content, the band “had to ind
the arrangements that were
appropriate for that,” he said.
“There’s that challenge of try-
ing to ind something that feels
hopeful, but not just like, ‘Ev-
erything’s great and has always
been great’ — because things
aren’t always great.”
“There are some things that
will sound more familiar to peo-
ple, and there are some things
that are pretty different — tonal
palettes and different approach-
es, I think, arrangement-wise
and production-wise,” he said.
Recorded in chunks over
the course of a year, “And Then
Like Lions” marks the band’s
irst time recording with a well-
known label, ATO Records.
On the road again
Once again, Blind Pilot is
facing the tempest of the “al-
bum cycle”: recording, rehears-
ing, promoting, touring and
shooting music videos.
Come next month, the band
embarks a cross-country tour,
including two shows, on Aug.
19 and Aug. 20, at the Liberty
Theater, where Nebeker is a
board member.
“We’re really happy to be
doing these two shows at the
Liberty — and incredibly lat-
tered,” said Dobrowski, who
shares a house with Ydstie and
Claborn. “I was pretty amazed
at how fast that irst one sold
out. It’s pretty cool to have that
support after going dark for a
little bit.”
Touring is “what we love to
do. We play music to play mu-
sic,” he said. “I think the band
always gets much better when
we’ve played consecutive shows.
102.3 fm
the Classic Rock Station
“There’s a really great thing
that happens when you’re per-
forming night after night, and
you really get into the craft of
that,” he said. “So I’m excited,
not only just to get out on the
road and see all the great plac-
es again, but to sort of tap into
that thing that we can do when
we start playing in front of an
audience.”
Nebeker and Dobrows-
ki performed Blind Pilot as a
duo until 2008, when Ydstie,
Claborn, and Portland mem-
bers Ian Krist and Dave Jor-
gensen joined.
‘This is my thing’
Nebeker, who now lives
south of Cannon Beach, said
the music that most resonates
with him inds “a universal core
within a deeply personal senti-
ment,” citing Bob Dylan, Joan-
na Newsom, Neutral Milk Ho-
tel and Talking Heads as some
of his main musical inluences.
Asked whether their work
seeds his own, Nebeker said,
“It has to be that way, right?
Just the nature of art, and the
way that it moves through his-
tory — it doesn’t come from
nowhere.”
His lyrics — charged with
lares of intense feeling and
snapshots of nonlinear story-
telling — recall the work of
Beat poets like Jack Kerouac,
an author he read as a teenager.
Kerouac’s experimental 1960
novel, “Book of Dreams,”
had a profound impact on Ne-
beker’s songwriting.
“That was it for me — that
idea of capturing these strange
sort of gestures of expression,
but not totally on solid ground,”
he said. “The communication
seems to happen on a more
emotional level.”
But Nebeker’s greatest ar-
tistic inluence? His father.
“We kind of had an ongo-
ing conversation about creative
process,” he said, “and we both
just would get really excited
about the ideas that would ap-
ply both to painting and song-
writing.”
Neither father nor son
would encroach too far onto the
other’s artistic territory, though.
“He played banjo, and I still
draw for myself and do water-
color,” he said. But, “for some
reason, it just always felt like,
‘No, that’s your thing, and this
is my thing.’”
“And Then Like Lions” is
now available on preorder,
which comes with the single
“Umpqua Rushing.” Tickets
are still available for the band’s
Aug. 20 performance at the
Liberty Theater.
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Amy Hutmacher and Melissa Reich in the ield.
New plant species are
identiied on mountain
east of Arch Cape
Three species
discovered on
Onion Peak
By Lyra Fontaine
Cannon Beach Gazette
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Onion Peak — similar in
habitat to Saddle Mountain —
is home to many rare plants,
since some species specialize
in high elevations near the
coast, North Coast Land Con-
servancy Stewardship Direc-
tor Melissa Reich said.
Three new plant species
were identiied this month on
Onion Peak, the third-tallest
point in Clatsop County at
3,057 feet.
“It’s signiicant because
it tells us a little more about
the biodiversity of the site
and we’re constantly learn-
ing more about all lands,
both conserved and not con-
served,” Reich said.
Certain species found on
the mountain, located east of
Arch Cape, have not been
found elsewhere in the region.
Although the recently discov-
ered plants are not new to the
region, they are new to Onion
Peak.
The new species are Caro-
lina bugbane, Paciic waterleaf
and kneeling angelica. The
plants were not yet in bloom.
The discoveries bring the plant
species or subspecies identi-
ied on the peak up to 271.
Reich, botanist Kathleen
Sayce, North Coast Land
Conservancy Conservation
and Stewardship Manager
Amy Hutmacher, and wet-
lands ecologist Doug Ray
were on the trip.
Queen of the Forest on-
ions found growing on
Onion Peak.
Although two timber
companies own Onion Peak,
North Coast Land Conser-
vancy manages 387 acres at
the summit for conservation.
Timber cannot be harvested in
that area.
Although discovering new
species increases knowledge
of lands, Reich noted that On-
ion Peak is private land and
access is limited to protect the
sensitive habitat. North Coast
Land Conservancy only visits
the site once a year.
A subalpine forest and
meadow habitat, Onion Peak
has open treeless meadows
called “balds.” Other species
found on the peak are Queen
of the Forest and Chambers’
paintbrush.
Looking south from Can-
non Beach, Onion Peak is
distinctly rounded at the top,
Reich said.
Onion Peak is located in a
coastal edge conservation ini-
tiative area, a region between
Tillamook Head and Nehalem
Bay with unusual biodiversi-
ty, according to the North
Coast Land Conservancy.
Reich said inding new
plant species in an area is
rare, but they will probably
continue to ind more at On-
ion Peak.
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