WITH the downtown Manhattan skyline as a backdrop, a big rock concert stage had been constructed for the first time at Pier A Park here, a grass-covered former pier on the Hudson. Loud bursts of static competed with airplanes flying overhead as the last components of the sound system were plugged in. It was the day before Mumford Sons would headline a triple bill at the park, playing for 15,000 people to start the band's late-summer United States tour.
When everything was plugged in, Mumford Sons would do a thorough sound check. But in the meantime the four members — the guitarist, lead singer, main songwriter and sometime drummer Marcus Mumford; the bassist Ted Dwane; the keyboardist Ben Lovett; and the banjo player Winston Marshall — sat out in the park, dining on steak and potatoes from takeout containers and sharing an interview. Adele's album "21" blared to test the speakers; "I'd love to write a country album with Adele," Mr. Mumford mused, perfectly serious.
The tour would include daylong festivals — named Gentlemen of the Road Stopovers, after the band's own label — that had Mumford Sons headlining along with half a dozen kindred bands on two outdoor stages. (Hoboken only had three acts and one stage.) It was headed for cities like Dixon, Ill.; Bristol, Va.; and Portland, Me., places that aren't on the standard circuit for million-selling rock bands like Mumford Sons, whose folky, foot-stomping songs about dark nights of the soul have gathered a fervent audience worldwide.
"We love playing live, and there's that whole adrenalin-filled thing," Mr. Mumford said. "But we're still singing about some darker things because it's just songwriting that comes from our heads. There are those corners in our heads that are obviously there, just like anyone, so they've got to be expressed. Just because they're expressed in a major key with a banjo doesn't mean that they're any different. And that can be quite fun, playing a jolly-sounding tune with darker lyrics."
Setting up its own festival at untried locations, each one diligently coordinated with city government, was a typical choice for Mumford Sons, a band that unites the age-old troubadour impulse with the instincts of arena-scale rock.
"It is a lot of work trying to set up our own shows," Mr. Mumford said. "We just wanted to do things our own way. We wanted to do shows off the beaten track."
Making a career on the road as performers, as Mumford Sons have done almost continuously since the band was formed in 2007, is a practical choice in the 21st-century rock universe, where multiplatinum album sales like Mumford's are increasingly rare. But for Mumford Sons, hitting the road had little to do with careerism, said their manager, Adam Tudhope. "They're made for it," Mr. Tudhope said in Hoboken. "They just love meeting people. They just happen to be really gregarious people. If you don't love it, it's a really tough job."
Mumford Sons' late-summer concerts included previews of songs from the band's second album, "Babel," (Glassnote) which comes out on Tuesday. It was long in the making, largely because the band kept touring as its audience grew. For every band, how to find the balance between touring and recording is always an open question — and will remain one for Mumford Sons. For now the band leans toward the Grateful Dead model: constant touring, sporadic recording. For "Babel" "we pulled ourselves off the road to record and at first we were kind of bent, and torn, like we wanted to be on the road really," Mr. Mumford said. "The studio means adopting a different set of disciplines."
He added: "We don't want our touring cycles to be dictated by albums so much. We just like playing shows. The albums can fit into that and be adverts for our live show, but we hope that our live work can have a path of its own, separate to albums. That might or might not happen."
From the beginning the band was geared for longevity, Mr. Mumford said. "We designed it from the beginning so it could last if we wanted it to," he said. The band financed its debut album itself before offering it to labels, and it owns all its master recordings. It chose higher royalty rates over large advances from labels. "I remember our lawyer saying to us, 'If you make it to a certain level in America, you can have a career for the rest of your lives,' " barring drug problems or band infighting, Mr. Mumford said. "We wanted to be smart about it."
Band members say they are happiest by far on the road. "We formed the band because we wanted to tour," Mr. Marshall said. "That was our common interest."
Source:
http://www.ezonearticle.com/2012/09/22/for-a-big-band-the-road-is-like-home/
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