“John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”
from the album Illinois
2005
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It’s not often that Illinoisans have an opportunity to hear an album that mentions towns such as Jacksonville, Decatur and Peoria in track titles and song lyrics.
Nor are there numerous historical, musical explorations of their state conveniently summed up in about 75 minutes.
But the Land of Lincoln can hear about the state and other Illinois facts on folk musician Sufjan (pronounced Soof-yan) Stevens’ Illinois, released earlier this month.
“I feel like some of these songs I’ve written specifically for Illinoisans,” says Stevens, a 29-year-old Michigan native. “A lot of it’s written just for anyone, but it’s kind of nice to have the support.”
Illinois is Stevens’ second album in his planned tribute to each of the 50 states. In 2003, Stevens released Greetings from Michigan on the Asthmatic Kitty label, which he co-founded with his stepfather.
Stevens thought he could sell more of his Michigan albums by proposing that it was the first in a series of 50 albums, one for each state. The musician didn’t think anyone would buy Michigan or take his proposal seriously.
That was until fans and media started asking him what state was next.
“I think I started to realize that I did have a greater vision,” Stevens says.
Although Stevens frequently has traveled overseas, he says he hadn’t explored the United States. The “50 States” project allowed him to learn more about his country.
“It became an inquiry into American identity and geography,” he says. “I started to do more research and started to travel more in the U.S. and realized maybe this project had some bearing, had some real personal meaning to me.”
Stevens jokes that he chose Illinois as his second state because the state gave him funding, but he says, “It really was a matter of aesthetic.” At the time he was writing Illinois, he also was writing Rhode Island, Oregon and New Jersey.
“It came down to that the nature of the songs for Illinois are on a much grander scale, more epic sounding,” he says.
“I guess I just had a strong inclination to work on songs that felt more grand.”
As with Michigan, Stevens wrote, composed, recorded, engineered and produced the Illinois album. The album features more than 20 instruments, including a string quartet and more than 15 musicians.
Stevens started his career as a member of Marzuki, a folk-rock band from Holland, Mich. After going solo in 1999, he released his first album, A Sun Came, in 2000. Enjoy Your Rabbit, which was released in 2001, highlights the symbols of the Chinese zodiac. His only album not self-produced is 2004’s Seven Swans.
His state albums are distinctly different — Michigan is an emotional assessment of his home state, while Illinois is an historical assessment based on research instead of personal experiences.
“It’s really a record about history,” Stevens notes. “So much of history isn’t about personal experience, but it’s an assessment of events and then formulating meaning from that assessment.”
In researching “Illinois,” Stevens read books about such towns as Decatur, Rockford and Jacksonville. Stevens says he became “obsessed” with Jacksonville, which is the title of a track.
He also read many of Carl Sandburg‘s works.
“I was really interested in Carl Sandburg because he sort of takes on the voice of many people — the voice of the worker, of the Illinoisan and the Chicago blue-collar worker,” Stevens says. “I felt like a lot of what I was doing was channeling voices and characters and I was taking on sort of the American voice with the same kind of classicism and the same kind of pretension that he was required to do.”
Although Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd Lincoln were frequent subjects in Stevens’s reading, they are barely mentioned on the record.
“There’s been so much already written about them,” he notes.
Stevens, who has a master’s degree in creative writing from New School University in New York, had written several songs and eulogies for Lincoln. He eventually cut them all. The only trace that remains is an instrumental track titled, “In This Temple as in the Hearts of Man for Whom He Saved the Earth,” a reference to text at Lincoln’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Stevens, who has been playing music since childhood, plays more than 10 instruments on the album. Because he doesn’t own all of the instruments that he plays, he uses his portable eight-track recorder to record where some of the instruments are kept.
“I tend to gravitate towards environments where there are interesting instruments,” he says.
For example, he recorded the sound of a grand piano at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brooklyn and his friend’s electric organ in a basement. The string quartet was recorded in a quartet member’s apartment.
Most of the record then was assembled piece by piece, Stevens says.
“A lot of it was done in isolation, so it’s painstaking because it’s not live at all,” Steven says.
Because Illinois was recorded under such conditions, Stevens modifies songs for live shows — changing a key, altering arrangements or rewriting songs completely.
“I’ve done songs from the record live that sound nothing like the record,” he says. “It’s kind of a new experience, and it’s kind of work-intensive because it’s like doing the record all over again.”