On The Verge

Horse Feathers

Portland, Ore.
American Cherry Picker
www.horsefeatherstheband.com

Songwriter Justin Ringle is perfectly honest about the music business: “When you first start to play music, usually it starts from a really idealistic and pure sensibility,” he says. “Now, I’m in it deep enough where it’s like my job. The thing I find more and more is that it’s not about the touring and [recording]. I’m ultimately trying to use this type of lifestyle to fund playing music.” That attitude is part of what makes Horse Feathers —true to its name—a reverent alternative to a lot of bullshit across the folk spectrum, from traveling pastoral theater to the latest artist’s nativity scene. “I’ve never been interested in being a revivalist or a traditional band,” Ringle says. “There’s a lot of material and breadth to American music and I’m just cherry picking the parts that I like. Not focused on making it sound exactly like anything.” His third full-length, Thistled Spring, represents Horse Feathers’ expansion into a quartet. Among a few new luxuries are the same elegiac string arrangements, threaded into vignettes of the lovely and dismal moments of Ringle’s working life. “I feel absolutely privileged to come home and not have to go to a day job.” he says. “I get up and spend my day making music, and I feel like I am just fighting to stay in that mode.”