Catching up with The Milk Carton Kids

Known as The Milk Carton Kids, the California duo consisting of Joey Ryan and Kenneth Pattengale have been capturing the attention of music lovers with their heartfelt style of close harmony acoustic-based folk music. On Ashes & Clay, their first release on ANTI Records, they balance lush and emotive vocals with intricate, gorgeous guitar playing. 

Neil Ferguson: So how did your tour dates come about with Sarah Jarosz?

Joey Ryan: Well, how did we meet Sarah? We have a lot of mutual friends and about two years ago somebody gave us her album while we were on tour and we were just really enamored with it. I don’t think we met her until this summer at [the] Telluride [Bluegrass Festival]. We’d been hearing about each other for a couple of years. She’s a really important young artist, so we’ve been trying to do dates together for a few months now, and every chance we get we try to involve each other in our various goings-ons. We’re talking about doing stuff in Europe and Australia. So we’ve just become good friends with her after being longtime admirers.

I was looking at your tour schedule and saw that you just played a dive bar, yet many times on tours, as is the case with your Sarah Jarosz shows, you also play big formal concert halls. Is there a difference for you guys and does the set change?

There’s a huge difference. We started out playing in a lot of bars, rock club type places. It’s hard to find 100-seat performing arts centers, and we’ve only recently gotten to the point where we are able to play some of these beautiful theaters. Tomorrow night we are playing in Columbus, Ohio at the Lincoln Theater, which is like this beautiful restored old theater, and the night before we played in a dive bar in Louisville, [Kentucky] where there are literally pinball machines and the World Series playing. But I think we’ve been able to adapt to both of these circumstances and have a good time either way. Sometimes it can be more fun to play in a dive bar because everybody’s a little looser, a little more interactive, and there’s less of a barrier between you and the audience. We embrace the juxtaposition. We’re up there in suits and putting on this more formal program and everybody’s drinking PBR.

Is there a strategy for capturing people’s attention and getting them to focus on what you’re doing?

I thought the [Louisville show] was going to be a terrible night when we walked in and the World Series was going, but they did manage to turn it off for the show. By the time we hit the stage the bar was filled with people that wanted to see the show. I will say that at this point we are able to draw the line at not having actual sporting events going on in the venue while we are playing. That used to be maybe something we had to contend with in the very beginning, but luckily we’ve moved past THAT threshold.

That’s good. I guess that’s a milestone of sorts.

Progress, exactly. Yes, we wield enough power to have them turn off the baseball game [laughs]. You know, the place we are playing tonight in Cleveland is the Beachland Ballroom and next door is the Beachland Tavern. [The Tavern] is where we’ve always played and that’s kind of a divey scene as well. They are famous for heeding our requests to unplug their beer fridge, which is louder than our show. So when we take the stage they unplug their beer fridge for our performance. This time we’ve finally moved across the hall to the proper ballroom.

Sounds pretty classy.

Well, you know, we only play the classiest of dive bars throughout the Midwest.

During your live performances you are known for humorous banter, which isn’t really reflected in your songs. Is it difficult to write songs without incorporating humor?

No, it’s not. I think it would be harder to be funny in a song. I guess it’s just not our instinct in our songs. As you can tell, we tend to lean more towards the melancholy and the serious subject matter. It’s kind of why the between-song banter evolved to be what it is, out of a desire to present the performance with a full range of emotional experience. Whereas the album can be somber and melancholy, the live performance can be a much fuller experience because of the moments between the songs, whether they’re funny or not. We have an opportunity to bring some comedy, some levity, some edge – to present some other sides of our personalities, which I think becomes a really valuable part of the show.

In regards to your dynamic, I read a recent interview where you mention how all songwriting is 50-50 and done together. Can you discuss how you both came to this philosophy?

I guess it seemed to be the way that things happened naturally for us. We welcomed each other’s criticisms and welcomed the other person pushing us, and I think we felt it was important to establish early on that we both try to get equal credit for everything just as a true reflection to the spirit of the approach. I think it started to develop naturally. For example, we’ve given each other this unconditional mutual veto power over everything, from any business decision down to any lyric or chord change. If either one of us is uncomfortable enough with it to veto that’s it, it’s done. It’s like a filibuster or something, you know, we both live under threat of filibuster from the other one. What that means is that nothing gets out the door either creatively or from a business standpoint that both of us aren’t entirely proud of. We have to push each other and make sure we are both always doing our best work.

I would imagine that leads to some challenges or some passionate filibusters?

It does, yeah, but somehow we are lucky that we fight very productively. I guess that’s the key to any good relationship really; productive fighting is an art and it often leads to some really good results. If you can learn to not take things personally, always prioritize the best results over any sort of pride or ego, it’s good when people push each other. The same philosophy goes for my marriage [laughs].

You touched on business decisions. In the past you have made a point to release your albums for free. Would you say that has helped people get exposed to your music, and do you see that as a sustainable model for other groups?

I think it definitely was a very important factor for us in getting everything off the ground. We both considered ourselves from the beginning to be a live band, and giving away our music helped define an audience for our live shows much more quickly than we otherwise would have. I think there are a couple important things about the way that we’ve done it. Those first two albums are still free on our website, and importantly, there is no element of transaction to it – there is no email address required, no money that changes hand, and there’s not even the option to put in any money or an email address. Just get these albums for free with literally no obstacle, no hurdle to overcome. What it did was engendered this sort of spirit of generosity or gratitude for people to share the music a little bit more than they otherwise would have. What we noticed was people showing up [to concerts] with big groups of friends that had all discovered and experienced the music together, which in the end is what it’s all about. As far as whether it’s a sustainable model for us or anyone else, I don’t know. There’s a million different ways a band can start off now. It’s the upside to the tragedy of what’s happened in music between pirating and the current model of streaming. Basically everything is unsustainable with the current music industry, so this was just a little angle we found that worked for us to get things off the ground.

When talking about the Milk Carton Kids writers often reference the musical connection to groups like Simon and Garfunkel and the Everly Brothers. Would you say that you and Kenneth embrace these comparisons or you’re trying to get away from them?

I think we’ve chosen a very specific traditional framework as a close harmony duo which has been done countless times before, and I think when you choose to be a close harmony duo you’re consciously following in the footsteps of that tradition, from The Louvin Brothers to the Everly Brothers and Simon and Garfunkel, and more recently Gillian Welch and David Rawlings. It’s a template that’s familiar and traditional, and so when you’re operating within a template like that, obviously it’s almost like the idea will be considered within the context of the others who have operated within the same framework before you. I guess in choosing to embrace it versus whether to break away from it, you have no choice. If you’re going to be a slide guitar player and you’re a woman you’ll be thought of in comparison to Bonnie Raitt. I guess in the end it’s the most flattering to be compared to the greatest of close harmony duos that have come before us. People see us as operating within that tradition and that’s exactly how we see ourselves.

This interview was originally published on The Horn, an online publication based out of Austin, Texas. To see more of Neil’s work for No Depression check out his profile page!