Okkervil River
Will Sheff's Austin indie band, named for a Tatyana Tolstaya story, whose 2005 album Black Sheep Boy made its name and which includes "Black".
Austin
Okkervil River formed in Austin in 1998, when Will Sheff and friends from Kimball Union Academy in Meriden, New Hampshire moved there after college. The original trio was Sheff, Zach Thomas on bass and mandolin and Seth Warren on drums. The name comes from a story by Tatyana Tolstaya set on the Okkervil river in Saint Petersburg. The first gig was at the Steamboat in Austin on January 11, 1999, and Stars Too Small to Use (1999) was recorded over two summer weekends with the engineer Jeff Hoskins. Jonathan Meiburg met the band at a gig on December 3, 1999 and joined, first on accordion; Brian Beattie met them at their SXSW showcase on March 18, 2000 and went on to produce several albums.
Jagjaguwar released Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See (January 22, 2002, produced by Beattie) and Down the River of Golden Dreams (September 2, 2003, produced by Scott Solter in San Francisco). Meiburg and Sheff founded Shearwater in 2001 as an outlet for songs that did not fit Okkervil River. Black Sheep Boy came out on April 5, 2005 (JAG080), and the companion EP Black Sheep Boy Appendix on November 22, 2005, which Pitchfork's Stephen Deusner scored 8.2.
Black Sheep Boy and the later albums
Black Sheep Boy runs 47:18 and takes its title from Tim Hardin's song, the album's first track. The sessions were with Beattie at his Wonder Chamber in Austin; Wikipedia's articles disagree on the dates, one saying recording began in August 2004 with finishing touches in November, the other saying 2005. Sheff told Consequence in 2015 that the band was nearly finished and that the sessions were in a poorly kept garage studio with rats and cracks in the floor, with the rhythm section in Beattie's living room and the guitars in his wife's garden shed, on ADAT, and that Beattie is a genius on his own planet. He told PopMatters before the record that if it didn't take off, he was just going to quit music, and that he always liked when a sad song was poppy and vice versa. Metacritic scored it 86 and Pitchfork 8.5; Pitchfork ranked it 174th among the albums of the 2000s and Stereogum called it Okkervil River's sublime pinnacle to date. A three-disc 10th anniversary edition appeared in 2015.
The Stage Names (August 7, 2007) reached 62 on the Billboard 200, The Stand Ins (September 9, 2008) 42, I Am Very Far (May 10, 2011) 32 and The Silver Gymnasium (September 3, 2013, on ATO) 66, followed by Away (2016) and In the Rainbow Rain (April 27, 2018). Meiburg left in 2008 to focus on Shearwater. Sheff produced Roky Erickson's True Love Cast Out All Evil (April 20, 2010), with the band backing him. A Dream in the Dark: Two Decades of Okkervil River Live (2020) compiles live recordings from 2006 to 2019. The band played an NPR Tiny Desk concert on October 15, 2013.
Albums
- Black Sheep Boy 2005 · Jagjaguwar
The 2005 album that made the band's name: eleven tracks, built around a character called the Black Sheep Boy.
Songs
- Black Black Sheep Boy · 2005
Track four of Black Sheep Boy, a rollicking, upbeat-sounding song and a fan favorite.
Sources
- Okkervil River, Wikipedia
- Black Sheep Boy, Wikipedia
- Black Sheep Boy Appendix, Wikipedia
- Will Sheff interview, The Believer (2007)