When Blitzen Trapper's last record, Wild Mountain Nation, burst on the scene in June 2007, it was a breath of fresh air just as the summer heat wave struck. The opening Neil Young guitar peals of the title track and the rollicking campfire singalong "Country Caravan" had the internet going crazy, but the record itself -- for all its jumps in style and frenzied rhythms -- was a slow-burner, rewarding the fans who stuck around after the first flurry of mp3 activity passed by.

The record put the Portland, Oregon sextet on the map, but it was actually their third, self-released full-length. They wound up with real national exposure -- Rolling Stone named the title track in their Top 100 songs of 2007. A buzz-storm ensued, and eventually they landed at Sub Pop. Multi-instrumentalist Marty Marquis took a few minutes a couple of days ago to talk with us about life on the road and their upcoming album, Furr, ahead of their show tonight at the Black Cat's backstage.

Where are you all right now?

We’re just getting out of the hotel in Columbia, Missouri. We finished up a headlining show with Mahjongg. Do you know them? They’re pretty cool, kinda heavy on electric tip, lot of percussion going on, kinda funky. Not too much of a vocal group, more jam-based than, like, actual songs, but great, I really enjoyed it.

You all are about halfway through a massive tour. What’s it like to be away from home for so long?

Yeah, it’s almost two months long, we’re kinda right in the middle of it. I think it ends April 19, and it started in the last part of February. It’s pretty exhausting, just because the distances you have to cover are so vast, you don’t sleep as much as you like to, you don’t have time to get good food. It takes time to get good food in America.

Any particularly good or bad places to eat?

America’s kinda dominated by fast food, so it’s just really hard to find good food. We have some books we use to try and find those sorts of places.

Do you have Road Food?

Yeah, we do actually, but there’s just not enough time to get off the beaten path to find good food. So sleep and food are problematic; that’s just inevitable when you’re on the road. But on the plus side, it’s great to play for different crowds each night, and we have friends in each of these cities that we get to see. Plus it’s really a beautiful country, it’s great to just get to take it all in.

What have been some of the best stops?

Birmingham, definitely. It was our first stop there, and we played with Dr. Dog, who we all really like. It’s a great town. We played at the Bottle Tree, it’s a totally totally awesome place, just had a great crowd and the people at the club are incredible. We’re playing Memphis today, Nashville tomorrow, and we’ve never played either of those. We’re really hitting the South this tour because we had to go from this festival down in the Everglades to SXSW and so it made sense to schedule more dates down here and see some places we hadn’t been. The Southern audiences have really been getting into our stuff.

That kinda makes sense, there’s a distinct country bent to what you all do–

Yeah, I mean, your random club-goer in the South might have more sympathy for what were doing than someone in, say, in Cleveland.

Does the band have any rituals on tour? Anything you do to pass the time in the van?

Ha, so what do we do to keep ourselves sane? Well, we all have different things…some people getting into their reading spaces, video games. In terms of music, whoever’s driving has the trump card. Four of us drive, so if you don’t like what’s going on, then you just deal with it and put on your iPod. It’s one of the fringe benefits of driving.

What’s been popular on the van stereo this time around?

Hmm, let’s see…well, Townes Van Zandt – a lot of him; some David Sedaris spoken word comedy and Garrison Keilor, that stuff is pretty hilarious. I like to bump some Outkast every once in a while. We also get tons of comp CDs, so we’ve listened to lots of new music. Yeah, we’ve got like twenty copies of this Citizen Cope demo that we still haven’t listened to. I guess we will at some point though.

On this tour you have played with a ton of other bands. Any favorites?

First, Menomena – those guys are just total angels and they totally rock. We also played with Starfucker. I don’t know if you can print that, but those guys are so good. They’re making really cool, unique music. Then Dr. Dog, of course, and Man Man, Matt Pond PA. I didn’t know them before we met up and played with them.

What about Fleet Foxes? They’re playing with you in D.C.

Oh yeah, they’re our tourmates, so they’ve been around every night. Those guys are so great, and, live, their vocal work is really fantastic.

Let’s talk about what’s ahead. Have you been playing any new material?

We’ve got some songs that we’re playing that will be on the first Sub Pop release, which will come out in September. So two or three off the new record, and then we have a tour EP with six songs that we’re playing a lot off. That stuff is new for most people, but we’ve had those songs around for a while, I think we were starting to get tired of playing Wild Mountain Nation.

You all released three albums independently before this one. How has being signed to the Sub Pop label changed the process for the next record?

The new record, Furr, is done and getting mastered this week, and then Sub Pop begins its slow process of getting it out there. We had 30 songs recorded for it, and from that narrowed down to 13 of those.

The way the album was made isn’t much different at all. Typically labels with deep pockets will give an advance, but since we do the recording ourselves we didn’t need any advance money. It remains to be seen in terms of releasing and getting it out there. They’re a bigger label, so they need more lead time to get everyone on the same page. We'll see how it goes, but the hope and the reason we went with them is that they could reach a lot more folks with Blitzen Trapper music than we could on our own. They just need a little more time to get things going on. I guess there’s more inertia behind them so it takes a little longer to do things.

What people seemed to like about Wild Mountain Nation was that it kinda jumped all over the place but still held together well. How does the band go about crafting something with so many different styles and moods?

Ha, well the new one, it’s also a genre-hopper, if that’s how you wanna talk about it. I think it covers more ground than Wild Mountain Nation, but it’s also a more focused record. There are some piano ballads with just vocals, piano, and harmonica, some just jams, some guitar-centric rockers, and some almost soul music, some straight-up folk. It might be more of the same in terms of being all over the place, but I wouldn’t say it’s another Wild Mountain Nation.

How do you piece it together?

Eric, our singer, writes most everything and he’s just got mad skills, so he doesn’t feel limited to one style or another. Typically he’ll work up the idea of a recording with the basic idea of an arrangement, and then he’ll mess around and the songs will kind of go in some direction and then maybe another, and basically Eric just comes out with it, and then the rest of us cheer. I don’t really know how his mind works, but it keeps it interesting for the audience. It requires more of the listener, but I think it’s a more rewarding experience.

A lot of what’s been written about you all draws comparisons to Pavement. How do you feel about that? Is that something the band is conscious of during recording/writing?

It's cool you know, it’s kinda like saying “sounds like the Beatles” for the indie rock set. When someone makes a comparison, it’s not always necessarily accurate, it’s a symbolic statement. It’s like saying that these guys sound like something that everyone in this little sub-world of indie rock likes. Personally I was never a really big Pavement fan, but some of the other guys listen to them a lot. But I think there’s a lot of appeal of Blitzen Trapper music and with Pavement, it’s like “here’s something else we can always get behind.” It’s shorthand for suggesting someone who likes their stuff might also like Blitzen Trapper.

People seem to mention [Wild Mountain Nation’s] raggedness – I think Pitchfork called it something like “fuck-off sprawl”. Malkmus has this off-the-cuff thing going on where he makes everything look very easy, and it’s messy but still glorious, and that’s kinda what I think they were alluding to. It’s just the same kind of aesthetic.

You actually did some shows with Malkmus at the end of last year. How was that?

Oh, fantastic, it was a total blast. The Jicks are really cool. They put on an amazing show. It reminded me of live Led Zeppelin or Hendrix, something super heavy, a throwback to '70s guitar gods. And Janet Weiss has some Bonham qualities, she’s very heavy on the drums.

What are your favorite records of the past year?

We all like the Panda Bear record a lot. We like MIA, and we all liked Of Montreal’s last record a bunch. I’m just trying to think of our “year end list.” Hmm… some Portland, under-the-radar acts from last year. Deerhoof, we liked that last one, Friend Opportunity; they’re one of our favorite bands. Oh, and Joanna Newsome too, but that’s not really new.

Blitzen Trapper performs tonight in the Black Cat's backstage with Fleet Foxes