There’s a lore that surrounds Rhode Island folk band The Low Anthem that reads like a Paul Bunyan tale.
The band is made up of Ivy Leaguers and NASA technicians. They record their albums in an old pasta sauce factory they had to sign death waivers to occupy. In their downtime, they enjoy repeated readings of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Their facial hair has been honored by the American Mustache Institute.
Some of it’s inflated by the press, and some of it is gloriously true. The mustaches, for example – true story. The AMI issued a statement in January praising multi-instrumentalist Jeff Prystowsky for his “noble, no-nonsense mouth brow, shining like a beacon of freedom to all of the music industry.”

“I’m very proud of them,” says Jocie Adams of her mustachioed bandmates during a recent chat from her home in Providence.

Also true is the part about the pasta sauce factory, and the bit about The Origin of Species – Prystowsky keeps a copy of in his tour bag. Related is the fact that The Low Anthem’s latest release is titled Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

Even the part about Ivy Leaguers is true – Adams, Prystowsky and primary songwriter and singer Ben Knox Miller met while attending Brown University (Adams is the former NASA tech). But Adams maintains that, while folks outside the band may be caught up in the snowballing mythology, the members themselves remain as grounded as their rustic, earthy music implies. The band writes songs in the deep, well-trodden tradition of American music, the music created and sung around campfires since the first wagons headed west. From hushed falsetto dirges to gruff, galloping rockers to sweet, paper-thin Americana ballads, it’s folk music in the Woody Guthrie tradition, full of purpose, for the people and built to be hand-delivered to the masses.

Fly Magazine: You just finished up a new album. Can you put your finger on what direction you’re pushing in musically?
Jocie Adams: I’m going to answer that liberally. I think what really makes this record that we just made interesting is that we recorded it in a very, very large space, and the space was captured. It was so integral to every single song on the record. It also was really, really cold, and so I feel like there’s a lot of calm in the record. We were just all cold and our hearts were slower. We recorded in an old pasta sauce factory that was previously owned by the corrupt mayor of Providence, so it also has a nice history in the building.

     FM: The Low Anthem doesn’t just get positive reviews. You make music writers all rabid and feverish. Do you ever wish everyone would just calm down?
JA: We don’t really feel that end of it as much. I’m not perusing the news every day and reading the articles that have been written about us. I’m out of that loop. For me, I guess I’m less aware of it than maybe I should be or could be. Maybe that’s a good thing.

     FM: You’re often summarized as a bunch of genius Ivy leaguers who happen to make music. Do you think of yourselves like that, like some musical brain trust?
JA: It’s not like we think of ourselves as brainiacs in any way, shape or form. That’s something that the press has latched onto and decided to run with. I think it’s probably pretty obvious to anybody – I mean, none of us are dumb, but we’re just normal people. But we work really, really hard, and I think that is the important thing. We put so much love into everything. When we were first starting as a band and were sending out new press packages and everything, we hand-painted our CDs. We made sure that everything was beautiful. Every little detail matters. I think that’s what makes it special, not that we’re geniuses or anything like that.

     FM: Do you think there’s anything exclusive about the music, like you have to be one of the literati in order to really, truly appreciate The Low Anthem?
JA: At a certain point, that’s always going to be true. For instance, we don’t like to play in France; people don’t speak the language, and our songs are very wordy. I think there’s definitely a certain element to our music that is lost if you don’t understand the words. At the same time, I would hate to alienate anyone and say that if you don’t understand some literary reference, you’re not in, you don’t get it. The music in itself also tells a lot. Even if different people understand it in different ways – like on our next record, there’s a song that references Philippe Petit, the man who walked the highwire between the twin towers. Even if you didn’t really understand those references, even if you don’t understand who Philippe Petit is, there are other things within the songs, other stories within that can be understood universally.

     FM: Was this level of success a goal or desire when you were writing and recording the first two albums?
JA: Not at all. I don’t think that we ever were against people hearing the music – any time you’re a musician, you want people to hear your music, and that’s the reason why you’re making it. But we had been playing local gigs, and you can make a living doing that. You don’t need to be sharing your music with everybody in the world to be able to make a living as a musician, if you play your cards right. And we were perfectly happy that way.
It was never something that was a priority for us to be a well-known band. It was more just about sharing the music. Right now, it seems like a really beautiful thing is happening, where we’re able to share with all of these people and people are getting it. It’s been really amazing.

     FM: What does forward progress look like for The Low Anthem?
JA: Three years ago when we first started, the amount of time that we put into doing business stuff for the band versus creative stuff was heavily weighted towards business stuff, and now it’s amazing how it’s shifted. That’s the best part of all, I think. Now when we talk about that stuff as a band, it’s usually emotionally just about the music. “What are we going to do for our next album? What’s our next creative project?”