Somehow in 2022, with the average rent in New York City climbing northwards of $5,000 a month, the idea that an artist of his or Crutchfield’s notoriety could thrive outside it or Los Angeles — let alone in a modest midsize city in the middle of the country — remains baffling for many in their industry orbit and the writers who cover them. (Both admit mild exhaustion with explaining how they do to those who still can’t fathom it.) But after the living room talk, Morby thought more about musicians he admired: Will Oldham (Bonnie “Prince” Billy)in Louisville, David Berman in Nashville, Justin Vernon in Eau Claire, Angel Olsen in Asheville, Conor Oberst in Omaha, John Darnielle in Durham. He realized buying a house in Overland Park, the suburb where he grew up on the Kansas side of Kansas City seemingly straight out of a ’90s family sitcom, might not be that novel an idea after all. It might just be the secret sauce.
“I think a lot of people wouldn't quite understand the desire to want to move back to a place like Kansas City, or be open to it,” says Morby. “But our love of middle America and the South is a huge part of it and understanding those places. I mean, there are the Lou Reeds or Patti Smiths that are so synonymous with a place like New York.”
Crutchfield picks up his line of thought: “But, at our core, at our essence, that's not who we are. We are people from small cities in the middle of the country. As soon as we started to tap into that, I feel like it paid off creatively.”
“The complexity and the beauty of these places, I think a lot of people who haven't lived in them or spent time in them, are naive to that, which feels frustrating,” says Morby. “Some people weirdly fear the middle of the country, especially post-Trump, or have the wrong idea of it.”
“It’s more inspiring to be in places that are less tapped into,” says Crutchfield.
“Rather than the bright lights of New York or the way the ocean looks in southern California, there is something in the middle of the country where you lean into the silence and lean into the whisper of it; it's a big payoff,” he says.
“Yeah, we're searching for treasure out here,” she says.
“Like a thrift store,” Morby adds.
At first, Morby didn’t even live in the house he bought in 2015, instead renting it out to a friend while touring the country. But the next year, he, like so many other Americans, started to reassess his values after the presidential election.
“Trump was coming into power and I felt some sense of responsibility to return to the middle of the country,” he says, a sentiment Crutchfield echoes.
“I felt a responsibility to take myself out of a liberal bubble that I was existing in socially, and come back to a place where my vote would matter more,” Morby explains. “To be on the ground politically.”
“When Kevin was moving back to KC, when we first got together, and I was thinking about moving back to Birmingham, that was even a weird parallel,” says Crutchfield. “We both had this strong desire to have a landing pad that felt calmer and more comfortable and less charged. I felt like I was getting to a point in my career where I did not need to be in the mix orparticipating super-heavily in a scene. I actually felt like that was starting to hold me back and distracting from making records I wanted to make. I needed a clean slate.”
Less than a year later, Crutchfield woke up one morning in Barcelona after playing the Primavera Sound festival and made another monumental life decision: She was done drinking, for good. Unlike some of her artistic contemporaries, there were no close calls or interventions, no incident to hang a press release on. Perhaps just emblematic of her generation, Crutchfield had seriously reevaluated the role alcohol played in her life and concluded it was drowning out her inner voice, one that spoke clearly to her about who she wanted to be as a person and artist. Back home, she leaned into the quiet of Kansas, turning the crash pad into a sanctuary on the plains where she wrote what would become “Saint Cloud” while keeping what she calls “banker’s hours.”
“It was like a working theory in my head,” says Crutchfield. “If we can work on stuff in Kansas City and make the sacrifice of being away from bigger cities and our friends there, I do think it'll pay off. Then I put out ‘Saint Cloud,’ which is very much written in the midst of living here. And then when he put out ‘This Is a Photograph,’ we both had the same experience of, ‘Oh, I think this is working.’ I think this is the right place for us to turn off all the outside noise and really focus on being in the thick of our work.”
“I could have never made this record in Los Angeles,” says Morby.
