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JULY
The Avett Brothers are about to make the leap.
That's not just an expression. The band from Concord is shooting a video at the Neighborhood Theatre in NoDa for "I and Love and You" - the title track from their upcoming album - and now the director wants a shot of Scott Avett stage-diving into the crowd. By the way, the crowd: more than 200 fans who stood outside half the morning waiting to get in, so they could stand inside all afternoon cheering the same song over and over. Two drove down from Michigan just for this.
The band has already run through the song four times - it's a wave-the-lighters pop anthem, built on piano and drums, nothing like the folk stomp the Avetts are best known for. Now they're playing just the last few bars to set up Scott's dive. He plunges into the fans a third time, a fourth, a fifth.
The director asks for yet another take. There's a lot of gear to coordinate - the mist machine that drapes the room in a haze, the camera-on-a-crane that swoops over the crowd like a kite. You can smell money burning. It's a long way from playing sets between the pig races at the Cabarrus County Fair.
Eight years ago, the Avett Brothers first played together in the empty parking lot of the Media Play out by UNC Charlotte. Since then, the band - Scott and Seth Avett (both sing and play multiple instruments), Bob Crawford (bass) and Joe Kwon (who joined two years ago on cello) - has put out 10 CDs and played 150 to 200 shows every year, constructing a fan base out of sweat and busted banjo strings. They can dependably fill 1,500-seat theaters to Seattle and back. Their last full-length record, 2007's "Emotionalism," has sold 70,000 copies - big numbers for an independent release.
They live in modest homes, and on the road they're happy to score a Hampton Inn, but they've worked their way into a comfortable living. In a lot of ways, financially and creatively, they've already made it.
This week they move to an even bigger stage.
Monday night, they play for a TV audience of more than 3 million on the David Letterman show. Tuesday morning, "I and Love and You" goes on sale nationwide. It's their first album on Columbia Records and was produced by Rick Rubin, co-chairman of the label and producer for artists from Johnny Cash to Jay-Z to Metallica. On pre-orders alone, "I and Love and You" hit the top 50 on Amazon.com.
It's possible, of course, that this week turns out to be as good as it gets. The record could tumble down the charts, the part-time fans could wander off, and before long the Avetts could slide back down the hill they've spent all these years climbing.
It's also possible, of course, that the opposite could happen.
On major labels like Columbia - home of Dylan and Springsteen, Celine Dion and Beyonce - records routinely sell in the hundreds of thousands, and the top artists sell millions.
"We are at the table now," says Dolph Ramseur, the band's manager. "We're at the point where, if the general public likes the record ... well, things could happen that we can barely imagine."
From the outside, you'd think the pressure would be tremendous. Up on the stage at the Neighborhood Theatre, the Avetts are telling goofy stories about growing up - like the time Seth lost their mom's car keys and swore to the family that they were stolen by wolves.
Scott rolls his eyes: "Needless to say, when we were starting out with the band, I did all the business transactions."
Now they have to play "I and Love and You" in double-time - the idea is to slow down the video later but still have the music match the track. But Scott can't keep up. He stumbles over the words and loses his breath and by the end the whole room is laughing.
The director wants one more stage dive. But this time Scott says she has to go first. It takes some persuading, but sure enough, she jumps in. The band pulls her out and Scott goes in right behind her.
Now Bob lays down his bass and flies off the stage. Now Joe grins and leaps. Now the fans are chanting: Seth! Seth! Seth! He looks down at the arms held out to catch him. He closes his eyes. And then the last Avett Brother goes over the edge.
AUGUST
The Avett Brothers have to put up a wall between them and their fans.
That's not just an expression. The building crew at Bojangles' Coliseum is putting up a row of steel barricades in front of the stage while the Avetts do the afternoon soundcheck for their show that night. The wall gives photographers an alley in front of the stage, but it's also there to hold fans back. More than 5,000 bought tickets for this homecoming - by far the biggest show the Avetts have ever headlined in Charlotte.
Their publicity people have arranged for a few fans to meet the band backstage, and the guys are smooth and charming, telling stories about life on the road and Junior Johnson moonshine. They smile just right for the pictures.
But other than that, the Avetts spend most of the backstage time with family and friends. Scott, Seth and Bob are all married now; Scott and his wife have a new baby, and Bob's wife is due in November.
"We're just trying to hang onto what we can get out of them," says Scott and Seth's sister, Bonnie Rini. "We know it's important to them to be around family."
The problem is, the Avetts now have two families. There's the family that fits in the dressing room. Then there's the family of thousands who discovered the Avetts at some little club and brought the band into their hearts. As the Avetts grow - commercially and artistically - they're bound to fray those early bonds.
"We don't have the luxury or the fun to speak to everybody anymore," Seth says later. "Used to be, if you bought a CD of the Avett Brothers, you bought it from Scott or me."
The hardest job for an Avetts fan is describing the music to someone who hasn't heard. So here's a typical Avett Brothers record: intimate lyrics on bluegrass instruments (plus cello!), sometimes played hard like a punk band, sometimes landing on a sweet pop melody, sometimes veering off in odd directions like a Pink Floyd opus. Sometimes a whole album will shamble along like a goose lifting off from the lake. But when it gets airborne, it's beautiful.
The live shows can be uneven, too - sometimes they'll lose the tempo on a song, or drift out of key - but when they're right, the hard stuff feels like Doc Watson shacked up with the Clash, and the soft stuff makes large tattooed men cry.
All this is a blast if you're a fan. But if you're trying to market a band, it presents a problem. Someday the Avett Brothers might sell millions of records. But nobody who sounds like the Avett Brothers is selling millions of records now.
The new record changes that equation.
"I and Love and You" aims for a classic pop sound. The banjo is almost invisible, the wandering verses mostly corralled. The arrangements clear space for Scott and Seth's vocals and songwriting. The band still plays around with song structures - "Laundry Room" starts as a teenage romance ballad, morphs into a hoedown, and ends on a long sustained note from violin and cello. Whatever the Avetts are doing, no other band in the world is doing that.
But there's already a debate among diehard fans about whether the new record strays too far from home and too close to the mainstream. National Public Radio started streaming the record on its Web site last week. Some back-and-forth from the comments:
"It's OK, but where's the bluegrass?"
"Avetts, thank you for having the courage to change, to evolve and grow and create heartfelt music."
"It's a shame that the first major release that most people will hear isn't the Avett Brothers we came to know and love."
"Maybe some just want to lock them up in this little bottle of banjo and twang while leaving out everything that makes them amazing."
The new record chews on that problem from both ends. Scott and Seth (who write the band's songs, usually together) worry about what they're losing while they embrace what they might win. From "The Perfect Space":
I want to have friends
That I can trust
That love me for the man I've become, not the man that I was.
Six songs later, on "Slight Figure of Speech":
They said "I hope that you will never change"
I went and cut my hair
They said "Don't take your business to the big time"
I bought us tickets there
Those last lyrics are couched in a bouncy pop tune with electric guitar, Beach Boys harmonies and a cowbell clanking in the back. In other words, pretty much the opposite of everything the Avetts have ever done.
Scott says most of the new songs developed naturally on piano and drums instead of banjo and guitar. He says Rubin helped them focus on the best parts, and, to hone the performance, had them play multiple takes - up to 15 per song, where on earlier records they might have done one or two.
"I hope we're not done growing," Scott says. "You're never free from turmoil, you know? There's not really any icing on the cake. There's only one way for more, and that's forward, and we don't want to stop."
For their hometown show, they open with "Pretty Girl From Matthews." The fans leaning on the barricades, wearing Avett Nation baseball shirts, know every word. Toward the end the band starts up "Slight Figure of Speech" - the song about plowing ahead even though you know what you're leaving behind.
Scott has a black electric guitar he hasn't used all night. He starts to play but it doesn't work. Normally he'd just switch it out. But this time he spends three minutes offstage figuring out what's wrong, while the band vamps without him.
Finally he comes back. "I had to use this guitar," he says to the crowd. "It's very important. Because I love the people that let me borrow it."
He doesn't tell the rest of the story onstage. But it turns out the guitar belongs to Gus Engstrom, a friend of the Avetts' from Concord. A few weeks before, Gus' father, Terry, had died. The Avetts sang "Amazing Grace" at his funeral. And afterward, Scott borrowed the black guitar to play in Terry's memory.
Among all the changes, it's a connection to home.
Scott bangs the strings. And this time the chord rings out through the big arena.
SEPTEMBER
The Avett Brothers have no idea what's about to happen.
That's not just an expression. In about five minutes they're going onstage at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center and they haven't even talked about what songs to play. Almost every night they agree on the first song or two backstage, then pick the rest on the fly.
"Let's go with the big hitters tonight," Scott says. "We've been gone eight days and we need to get back into the groove."
"What about the new stuff?" Bob says.
"Absolutely. But later," Scott says. "These people will be ready to go. Let's get them up and running and then we'll see where we can place the new stuff."
You might have a vision of backstage at a rock concert - something about underage girls and a case of Jack Daniel's - but the Avetts' scene is, in the best possible sense, boring. Their preshow spread is grilled chicken, some veggies, a box of Oreos and a bottle of wine that never gets opened. They run out of plates and one of the guys in the opening act eats supper on a coffee filter. In his dressing room, Bob works on a song for his baby-to-be.
But all around them is the sheen of new money. The tour bus purrs out back, sleek and gleaming. The guys carry silver cases with custom-fitted earphones so they can hear themselves better onstage. (One of the weird things about being in a rock band: Because the speakers face into the crowd, it's hard to hear your own music.)
Bob remembers different times. When the band formed in 2001, he was a freelance soundman for films and TV shows. Scott and Seth were cleaning carpets. Bob had to talk them into going on tour. They played 21 cities in a month and budgeted $5 a day for food. (Peanut butter and honey sandwiches.) They made it home with $1,000 each and $1,000 in the bank and the thought that they might make it.
They kept playing towns bigger bands passed over - New Paltz, N.Y., and Chestertown, Md., and Athens, Ohio. Around Charlotte they played Fat City, the Double Door, the Wine Vault, even the sidewalk outside the Arboretum. Scott and Seth would scream the lyrics to a ballad to be heard over the bar chatter. They liked that tension, built it into the songs.
Along the way they encircled themselves with friends. Dane Honeycutt, the tour manager, went to Mount Pleasant High in Cabarrus County with Scott and Seth. Pete Schroth, the stage manager, used to book the band when he owned a coffee shop in Greensboro. Dolph Ramseur is a Cabarrus guy who quit venture capital to work in the music business. Lots of bands drop their managers when they sign with a major label. The Avetts kept Dolph.
They've also stayed home. Scott and Seth live near their parents outside Concord. Bob lives in Greenville, N.C., and Joe lives in Durham. Seth and Joe are 29 now, Scott's 33, Bob's 38. Scott, Seth and Bob have spent much of their adult lives together.
"We'd get one motel room with Scott and Seth in one bed and me and Dane in the other," Bob says. "I've slept in a bed with Dane more than I have my own wife."
The Avetts incorporated years ago to keep their business in order. They'll be checking the charts this week, no doubt. And if it all lines up just right, they might be headed for limos and Grammys and riches untold. But I don't think they keep score that way.
They talk over and over about making art. Scott painted the album cover for "I and Love and You," and Seth wrote the liner notes, and they did the backdrops for the stage set and the designs for the T-shirts and the bandana that comes with the limited-edition boxed set.
In some ways, signing with a major label means slowing down - Columbia plans to spend two or three years promoting "I and Love and You." But the road gets even longer - next year the band will tour Europe, Australia and maybe Japan.
For now, it's showtime in North Charleston. It'll turn out to be an adventure - four songs in, Scott breaks a banjo string, and when he reaches down to take it out, it jams an inch deep in his thumb. He misses three songs while an EMT bandages him up.
But right now, before the show starts, nobody knows that. Nobody has any idea how it will all turn out.
The house lights go down and the crowd starts screaming. This is a theater, so there's a curtain that hides the band as they come out and take their places. They've decided to open with "Shame" - a big hitter. Scott starts bouncing on his heels, and the guys look at each other, and somewhere in there a what-the-hell glance passes, because they start the song while the curtain is still down.
A stagehand grabs the ropes backstage, but for just a few seconds, the Avett Brothers are playing for themselves. They can't see what lies on the other side. Might be a dozen people out there. Might be millions.
The curtain lifts.
