Friendship Find Profundity In The Everyday

If you’ve been paying even cursory attention to indie rock in recent years, then you’ve likely noticed it’s gotten a lot twangier. From Wednesday and Hovvdy to Julien Baker and Torres, alt-country has been the lingua franca for indie rockers of all stripes. With Friendship, however, it’s been a core part of their sound since their 2015 debut, and it still is with their latest record, Caveman Wakes Up. The Philly band’s second album for Merge is another vehicle for Dan Wriggins’ lived-in, universal songwriting.

Wriggins litters his music with quotidian imagery: dishes in the sink, roommates playing Resident Evil, a landscaper rolling down sod. But, it’s in these everyday occurrences where striking profundity lurks. Like country music itself, a genre so often predicated on “three chords and the truth,” Friendship unearths meaning in the seemingly meaningless.

Ahead of the album’s release in May, Wriggins sat down with Uproxx to talk about Nanci Griffith, mushroom pizza, backpack leaf blowers, and more in our latest Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Good songs, played right.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

Good songs, played right.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

The answer is probably Kurt Wagner but he’d get bashful if he heard that so I’ll say his pal the late great Vic Chesnutt, who gave me an incredible number of classic lightbulb moments in terms of form and lyrical merging, like “oh, that can be a song too???”

Where did you eat the best meal of your life and what was it?

Mushroom pizza somewhere in Northern Maine. Maybe the town of Allagash. It wasn’t that good a pizza but I was very very hungry.

Tell us about the best concert you’ve ever attended.

Similar to the pizza situation, a jam band I can’t remember the name of at a long-defunct all-ages venue in Portland, Maine called the Station, which was in the shopping plaza on St. John Street. I was probably 16. I remember there were six or seven of them, a horn player, a kit drummer and a percussionist, they played like maniacs to an audience of five or so; it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

What song never fails to make you emotional?

Nanci Griffith’s “Love At The Five & Dime.”

What’s the last thing you Googled?

Map of Maine to answer about the pizza.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

We stayed at a punk house in Wilmington, NC once where the shower was full of cat sh*t and the two options for sleeping were the living room or the attic, a sort of Scylla and Charybdis situation because the living room couches were comfortable-ish, but there was a party going on all night, so we were just in our sleeping bags trying to sleep in the midst of drunken revelry. The attic was quieter but not comfortable and the number of dead cockroaches up there presaged the number of live ones. One guy who lived in that house was wearing a loincloth constructed from two bandanas, one in front and one behind. For all I know, he still is.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform and what’s the city you hope to perform in for the first time?

We love to play in Philadelphia, PA, the cultural capital of the world. And I don’t know; we want to play everywhere. I imagine Mexico City would rule.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

CHERISH.

What’s one of your hidden talents?

Good with a backpack leaf blower.

If you had a million dollars to donate to charity, what cause would you support and why?

Not sure how to answer this. I suppose I would have to research various organizations thoroughly. I don’t know enough about that because I don’t have any money. Food banks and housing programs in the Philadelphia area might be a place to start. It’s hard for me to tell how to convert USD into effective global relief efforts. But I know that Palestine will be free.

What are your thoughts about AI and the future of music?

No idea whatsoever. Maybe we’re all screwed. I hope not. As often as I encounter evidence that huge numbers of people dig slop, I encounter the opposite: undeniable signs of the curious, marvelous soul.

You are throwing a music festival. Give us the dream lineup of 5 artists that will perform with you and the location it would be held.

I always wanted to see the Meat Puppets. Do they tour ever anymore? Meat Puppets, MJ Lenderman, ML Buch, Mary Margaret O’Hara, and let’s say Prince in ’87. So I guess it has to be held in some type of time-bending vortex area. Maybe the Puppets know of one in Arizona.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on social media?

Dray Leason, on job., tks. -trek

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

No story, just thought it would look cool.

What is your pre-show ritual?

Four private torments.

Who was your first celebrity crush?

Probably N. Portman in Phantom Menace.

You have a month off and the resources to take a dream vacation. Where are you going and who is coming with you?

Rent a kickass villa in Spain or Greece or something and invite every Philly punk I can think of.

What is your biggest fear?

That the numbness I thought my soul would shed as I got older will only grow more intractable each year.

Caveman Wakes Up is out 5/16 via Merge Records. Find more information here.