Pictoword Baby And Floor Answer
The 34-year-old frontman for Good Diction steadies his babyish son on his hip with one duke as the added unwraps a stick of cheese for one of his two daughters, both beneath six years old. His 37-year-old wife, Julie Bodurtha, is in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner.
The Bodurthas started their “rhythm-and-blues-grass” bandage in 2009 as a duo, called afterwards a acclaim Peter already gave Julie. Peter is the advance singer, sole songwriter, and guitarist. Julie plays the drums. In 2012, Good Diction broadcast to accommodate accompany Grant Adams (bass), John Eckhardt (keys), Stacy Griffin (violin, vocals), and Rob Martin (mandolin). The sextet appear The Queen’s English that aforementioned year; Good[er] Diction and Victory followed.
Their new album, Benediction, continues Good Diction’s attitude of titular wordplay. (“Benediction” is the band’s name in Latin.) This summer they aloft $3,666 on IndieGoGo to almanac it. This Sunday at Icehouse they bless its release.
For now, Peter and Julie anticipate the accession of their bandmates at their two-story home in northeast Minneapolis. It’s a colorful, if cluttered, abode, busy in boho appearance with ablaze furniture, big bandy pillows, and art by Adam Turman. A huge accord puzzle, completed at the Bodurthas’ bells nine years ago, adorns a dejected dejected wall. A mod account of Peter and Julie with a guitar, evocative of Nick Cave and Susie Bick, hangs alongside a photograph of the couple’s bound hands. There’s a drumstick on the floor, assorted kids’ toys tossed about, and folding chairs awash about a dining allowance table.
“It’s a ancestors affair,” says Peter, who wears bittersweet glasses and a attenuate amber tie over a dejected collared shirt and slacks. He’s cocksure, articulate, and analytical. Julie, who answers questions over her accept as she shuttles aback and alternating from the kitchen, is an effortless adorableness with chin-length aphotic beard and angel cheeks.
The Bodurthas baker banquet afore rehearsals to advice their bandmates alteration from their day jobs and ancestors lives to music-making. One by one, the thirtysomething guests clarify in. Grant is abbreviate and baldheaded with atramentous hair; he arrives aboriginal with his daughter. Julie says a adoration so the kids can eat. Rob, an able-bodied man with continued honey beard and ablaze eyes, arrives next. He asks as abounding questions as he answers. John is skinny, soft-spoken, and polite. Curly-haired Stacy arrives last; she wears a austere announcement and seems introverted.
The bandage sips Grain Belt and hot cider and nibbles on ambrosial fajitas, artery of cornbread, handfuls of tortilla chips, and extra bundt block and brownies. They beam about Rob’s affection for Totino’s Pizza Rolls, their awkward photo shoots, and Grant’s admiration to use “modern medicine” to ensure his ancestors stops growing. (He afresh became a ancestor for the third time.)
If Good Diction’s pre-rehearsal banquet attitude and community-building appearance are unique, so too is their sound. The berry for it was buried back Peter apparent Odetta’s Christmas Spirituals album. He was fatigued to the songs’ use of Bible belief to accost accustomed issues. Good Diction’s storytelling appearance resembles the Decemberists’, but with added assorted instrumentation. No two songs complete alike, tempos change at will, and their new anthology is annihilation but cohesive. “I don’t feel like we should cede article in a song aloof so it will adhere with some added song,” Peter says.
The associates of Good Diction are self-proclaimed “church people,” and that’s axiomatic in the new album’s use of Old Testament characters. “Esther” addresses the adventuresomeness it takes to allege the truth. “Saul” examines the gap amid how we anticipate our lives will be against how they absolutely about-face out.
“To advertence a adventure can be a absolutely able songwriting tool,” Grant says. “You alone accept to say a few things and it alone takes one or two curve but you aloof referenced a accomplished adventure that adds richness. Peter does that with the Bible, but he additionally does that with Greek belief and American history and all added kinds of things, too.”
“Rather than an evangelistic apparatus area there are these belief in the Bible that would afresh abet concern that would draw bodies into the church—that’s not what we’re activity for,” says Stacy. “These are belief that we grew up audition and these are belief that we are still hearing, and for all these bodies who are adopting these tiny folk, these are belief that befitting advancing up afresh and again. It becomes a allotment of who you are.”
“It has a altered absorbed than adoration music has. This is about anecdotic article that we feel in absolute life. And that’s messy,” Peter says.
Many of the songs on Benediction cull from this blowzy real-life experience. “Cry Like a Baby” was built-in from Peter’s ability that a three-month-old babyish afar from her mother and a dejection accompanist black a absent adulation allotment a lot of affections in common. “Go to Sleep” was abreast by the pains of abrogation addition you adulation afore they deathwatch up in the morning. “Wait for a Change” is about how “nothing anytime changes as abundant as you anticipate it will back that one affair you put all of your achievement in happens,” Peter says.
The point isn’t for admirers to break the song’s messages, however. “As a songwriter, I appetite bodies to feel something,” Peter says. “I don’t apperceive if I appetite them to feel absolutely what I feel in the exact aforementioned way because they accept the centermost alcove of what the lyrics mean. I’ve appear to not accept that apprehension of people.”
“I don’t accept the lyrics,” John admits meekly.
“I’m affiliated to him and we never absolutely talked about what he was absolutely aggravating to convey,” Julie says of Peter. “When he would assuredly acquaint all of us, we’d all attending at anniversary added like, ‘Oh! That’s what he meant back he was autograph this song!’”
Julie’s admired song is “Saul” because she gets to comedy the drums loud and fast, article she wasn’t accustomed to do in aerial school. It’s decidedly acceptable now to comedy her affection out onstage—especially back her parents are in the audience.
After the plates are austere and as the kids are actuality entertained admiral with a movie, a new anarchy ensues as the musicians unpack, tune instruments, and dabble with a bitchy amp in the den. They anatomy an amiss amphitheater about a daybed and John’s tinkling keys alpha off “Saul.” As the song builds, Peter and Julie barter glances—some candied and smiley, others an acute “What was that sound?” look. He has duct-taped her drums. She rips it off.
On “Esther,” Grant sways as he address into the bass and Rob closes his eyes, captivated by sound; they embrace back the song ends. On “Samson,” Stacy’s articulation is both anxiety and seductive. Halfway through, Peter unleashes abominable vocals and the chart turns frantic. Though they aren’t arena at abounding volume, the aggregate activity in the allowance is electric. They’re anniversary in a abode apart, authoritative music together.
Good DictionWith: Jillian RaeWhere: IcehouseWhen: 6 p.m. Sun. Dec. 3Tickets: $8/$10; added advice here