Brooklyn’s Bishop Allen began this year by embarking on a decidedly outside-the-box strategy—rather than pursue the typical method of writing, recording and marketing an album, they decided to spend the entire year writing songs, and releasing the fruits of their labors each month in the form of quickly assembled EP’s. The year-long series, each EP named after the month of its release, would be available by mail order from their website. Even without great songs, the tactic was sure to get noticed, and sure enough, attention to the project soon came from all the usual outposts on the interwebs.

But the good news is that Bishop Allen has got the songs—fantastic songs, in fact. Songs with a genuine sense of occasion. Songs where gorgeous melodies tease themselves out of simple arrangements that eschew pop gloss for a hearty immediacy. Songs that aren’t merely glibly clever or poetically profound—rather, they conjure a fully portable worldview: where orphaned musical instruments tug on the heartstrings, folk heroes emerge to rally the drunk tank, and the lights above the city at night serve as an excuse for the homebound traveler to take whoever’s nearest in their arms and dance.

Bishop Allen will be playing DAM! Fest on Saturday, October 28 at DC9. We recently had the opportunity to talk with Justin Rice about the band’s experiences over the past year, the source of their inspiration, and their future plans.

Let me go ahead and ask the question that’s got to feel rote by now. What made you guys decide this year that you were going to release a four-song EP every month?

We toured for over a year after releasing our first record, Charm School. We played every city in the U.S. at least twice, as well as every town in Sweden. When we came home, exhausted, spent, and sick, we started working on a follow-up. We were calling it Clementines. Where Charm School was an intimate little bedroom record, we wanted Clementines to be bigger and louder and more boisterous. We were hacking our way through new songs, cadging studio time when and where we could, trying to piece it altogether as we went. It wasn't working. The more time we spent on it, the less clear our progress became. Every change seemed lateral, and nothing brought us closer to finishing. The twelve songs we were working with stopped sounding like anything.

As an antidote to our malaise, Christian Rudder and I started messing around with new songs in our studio. He would play guitar with his hands and the drums with his feet, and I would pound away on the rickety, out-of-tune piano and sing nonsense. It was just for fun. We needed to have fun with music for a while. But a few days into monkeying around, we found we had a handful of songs half-written. "We should finish these, and put them out," one of us said. "An EP?" replied the other, "why not a series?" And, in a classic double-dog-dare back-and-forth, a series became four, then six, then one a month for a year. It had an undeniable logic to it. And, once we had arrived there, neither one of us wanted to be the one to back down.

Even if you leave out the August Live EP, we’re talking forty-four songs—which is just a huge commitment. Was there anytime during the past year where you just felt like saying: “Wow. This is crazy?”

In June, Christian got married. In August, we went on tour. In October, I spent a big chunk of the month working on a movie. In November, we're going on tour again. When there are other things going on, it's difficult to keep on track. We've had to plan in advance. We started working on October in September, and November in October, and sometimes it seems like an impossible amount to manage. And then there's the fourth song. Often, we'll have three all set to go, and find the fourth song falling apart as we try to nail it together, and we'll start over with little or no time. Often, I end up liking those last-minute fourth songs just fine. Like "Shrinking Violet."

In general, though, we just have to make sure to work all the time to find new songs. The more we work, the more we finish, the less crazy the idea seems. We have the rhythm down, and we have momentum, and, as ever, it's up to us to work hard in the time we have left. Sometimes I feel like a newspaper reporter working under the crush of unending deadlines. If they can write article after article month after month, well . . .

At this point, do you think the decision has paid off? I mean, the Village Voice has already named it the "Best Dorky Indie-Rock Marketing Gimmick" of 2006, confidently dismissing the very idea, I guess, that an even dorkier gimmick could emerge in the next two months.

The decision has indeed paid off. First, we're out of our rut. We have a tremendous amount of material, and we're better at writing and recording, and we're thrilled about our new songs and the songs we have yet to write. We got our excitement back, and our excitement is vital to the kind of songs we're capable of making.

Second, there are a lot more people out there listening to our music. While putting out an EP every month is a terrible idea if you try to release and promote records the old-fashioned way -- coordinating and consolidating retail distribution, publicity, and radio promotion behind something that lands everywhere all at once – it does give people something to talk about. We haven't had to spend time or effort promoting the songs. We've spent all our time writing and recording, and the way we've structured the releases alone has made people notice. That and the fact that we give away an mp3 every month.

It's a gimmick like running a marathon, or assembling an encyclopedia, or going on a hunger strike: it takes a long time and a lot of effort, and it consumes you while you're doing it. Hopefully, it also leaves you with a glowing sense of accomplishment. I'll let you know next year.

If you begin with January, you lead off with “Corazon,” a song that feels to me, to be a conscious introduction to Bishop Allen—a sort of origin story, if you will. Would you say there’s any truth to that?

"Corazon" is the story of a piano we found on the street. Our friend Ken called us from Bay Ridge. A school was getting rid of it, and it was out with the trash, and did we want it? Christian drove out there, and with the help of the neighborhood kids, who took a timeout from their stickball game, he and Ken loaded it into the van and hauled it to our studio. We hired a piano tuner, who tuned it relative to itself, but couldn't bring it up to concert pitch without snapping the soundboard. It remains, to this day, a little flat.

I hadn't played the piano since I was a little kid -- six, probably -- but I liked the looks of this thing, and I liked its beat-up sound. When we found the piano, and when I started playing it, we broke away from the songs we'd been stuck with, and started writing again, and ended up with the EPs.

"Corazon" happens to be the first song we wrote on the piano. I thought it fitting that the first song written on the piano should be about the piano, and yes, it felt like the beginning of something, and the song is about that feeling. I think writing that song helped convince us that we could make it through the year. Not only that it came first, and that we managed to finish it, but that the song itself suggests the piano will continue to help us find new things to be fascinated by. I guess writing an "origin story" makes it easier to believe in everything that comes afterwards. I always liked that the cover of January -- designed by Darbie Nowatka -- is an old-timey engraving of an upright piano. I think when I saw that, I knew for the first time that we would actually go through with the EP project.

From a lyrical standpoint, many of the songs in the body of work you’ve released this year have a storytelling point of view, with some richly drawn characters. Where does your songwriting inspiration come from? Are these snatches of autobiography, flights of imagination, or a little of both?

I try to nurture my curiosity, and to seek out everything in the world that I find interesting. When I find something interesting, I go to task on it and try to figure out what draws me to it, to unravel what makes it strangely compelling. I walk by the former Continental Ironworks everyday, which is where they armored the Monitor, and I often find myself pausing to imagine the triumphant send-off, the sturdy little cheese-grater boat hunkering down the river. Hence "The Monitor." This Spring, there was a giant fire in Greenpoint, Brooklyn -- my neighborhood -- and the smoke was everywhere for three days, and I came home after standing at the edge of the police barricades, and I was overwhelmed, oddly enough, with something like happiness. Hence "The Same Fire."

Most of the time, the songwriting starts with something I witness, and ends with me trying to draw connections between that and something else real or imagined. Sometimes, it starts with something I read. "Flight 180" is based on a Robert Penn Warren poem, which already echoes similar thoughts everyone has flying home at night. "Butterfly Nets" is based on a poem I read in German a long time ago -- I can't remember what it's called—that goes something like: "When the enemy comes, I will take up my butterfly net and run to greet them."

I like songs that are written from a particular point of view. I like it that all of Born to Run is sung by a guy enamored of and trapped by the faded glory of the Jersey Shore. I like it that all of Highway 61 Revisited is sung by a guy who wanders endlessly, encountering character after character, always unsure what to make of it all. I always try to have a sense of who the narrator is, and where he's standing, and to whom he's speaking and why. I haven't yet figured out if I always use the same narrator, or if he's just me. I guess I don't have to anytime soon.

You guys are well traveled—and you’ve lived in Boston, Lynchburg, now back in New York City, and so many of your songs evoke this idea of travel--departures and arrivals—and places real and imagined. Does that idea of location play as big—or as conscious a role—to your songwriting as it seems?

On a long drive of a four-month leg of the "Charm School" tour, we listened to Sean Penn reading Bob Dylan's Chronicles. Which is weird because now I will forever imagine Bob Dylan speaking with Sean Penn's voice. And there was a passage in there that went something like, "You can't write songs if you don't go anywhere. A lot of people probably would have written great songs, but they never traveled to find them." I think there's something to that.

In addition to touring, and to living all over the place, I've traveled everywhere I can, and mostly alone. "Chinatown Bus" is about riding the Fung Wah from New York to Boston, which I've done countless times, and also about wandering around in Shanghai and Tokyo unsure of what to do with myself. The words for "Like Castanets" started coming to me riding the funicular up San Cristobal in Santiago. It's not necessarily a conscious decision to write about wandering around, but passing through places leads you to think, and when I start to think, I start writing songs. And, just as I like songs written from a particular point of view, I like songs set in particular places. You can listen to them, and imagine seeing somewhere else through someone else's eyes.

Obviously, you guys have received some support from the music blogging community, something that one would think is beneficial until you read Idolator and, now, Rolling Stone and find out that bloggers are actually killing their favorite bands. Have you found any truth to this? Because, seriously, I don’t want to kill you guys. We can call this whole thing off right now if you like.

Blogs killing bands? Who knew?

I like music blogs. The people who write for them tend to love music -- to really love it -- and they seem willing to give anything a chance. They listen to tons songs, and write about the ones that catch their fancy, and it does seem wonderfully democratic. Bloggers seem to have genuine and boundless enthusiasm, and I can't find anything wrong with that. Plus, they actually post the songs they write about, which means you can listen to them as you read about them, and, after all, music is meant to be listened to, not merely read about.

Growing up in Texas, I had a hard time finding music I liked. Every once in a while, I'd come across a copy of MRR, and study it religiously trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and there didn't seem to be anyone around who could help me out. It's easier now to find out about bands that aren't mass marketed. It's also easier to be a band because people the world over can hear about you, and listen to your songs, and so you can improve your lot in life by merely continuing to produce good work.

If there were no bloggers, this EP-a-month thing wouldn't have worked very well -- if at all -- because very few people would have noticed it. Bloggers creating an environment in which we can release and sell records outside of the normal means? Terrifying.

Come 1997, is the EP a month thing going to continue, and, if not, do you have any worries about what happens when that time comes that you aren’t getting new product on the street in that rapid a fashion?

In 1997, Bishop Allen did not yet exist. I think I was on my way to English 10a: Early British Writers. The EP-a-month project ends in 2007. I think it's important that it's not open ended. We couldn't sustain it indefinitely. Plus, It would be like watching a movie that goes on forever: everyone would lose interest. Projects need beginnings and endings. We will release a full-length in June of 2007. Before and after, we'll be touring. We haven't been able to play very many shows this year because of our rigorous recording schedule. But I have no idea what it will be like to reenter normal life. I hope everything works out, and that we play lovely shows all around the globe. We started kicking around the idea of making a movie musical. Writing songs for it, putting it together, shooting it. We'll see.

Looking over at some of the messages people are leaving you at your MySpace page, you get a sense of the legacy the EP-a-month plan has left--I read people saying things like “I can’t wait for September”…or, “Thanks for September.” That strikes me as being so wonderfully unique. What’s it like to hear from people who are relating to your music in that way, as marking a time of their lives?

A little while ago, we started rehearsing for our November tour with the Starlight Mints. We were teaching to songs to Andy Herod, who is playing bass and organs on the tour, and we put on a song from January. I hadn't listened to it in eight months, and, as soon as it came on, I remembered everything that happened that month. I had all these specific memories, like sweeping up Christmas tree needles, drying my blue shoes on the radiator, reading these intense James Ellroy books. I remembered Peter DuCharme -- who helped record those first songs -- showing me where to put the kick drum mic, and I remembered the first time we sat down to mix for the EPs. I realized that the EPs had structured the entire year and sorted and organized all my experiences. And while I'm sure they draw brighter lines in my memory than in anyone else's, it's nice to know that the songs have also played under specific moments in other peoples' lives.

We always imagined that these EPs would be like regular postcards from a friend. Periodically, he drops you a note to let you know how what's happening on his end, and, ideally, the correspondence helps you appreciate what's going on on yours.