Alex Ebert finds artistic freedom in an alter ego
Band's happy sound had genesis in a dark period for 'Edward Sharpe'



Usually, when rock stars take on alter egos, like David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust or Beyonce as Sasha Fierce, they do it as promotional gimmicks or crazy attempts to change their style. Alex Ebert, 32-year-old front man for the brassy, happy Los Angeles rock collective Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, did it for freedom — plus a few more sobering reasons.

"It's kind of fun, in a way, because it's a bit of disregard for form, you know?" Ebert says by phone from Bogalusa, La. "The lack of identification in general is somewhat healthy … because it reflects the natural, nonstate, nonconsistency of things. As far as taking on a persona, or being two people, or anything like that, I'd say I'm more like 1,000 people than two, if anything.

"It's really just that I came up with the name while writing a book," says Ebert, whose band headlines the Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival Saturday at the Congress Theater. "I'm sure, in subtle ways, it did allow me to express different sides of myself — more than, perhaps, I felt comfortable doing. I'm not sure."

But "Edward Sharpe" was more than Ebert's Garth-Brooks-as-Chris-Gaines-like attempt to shake things up. The name, and the concept of the band, came to him during a dark period. He had been the leader of an LA rock 'n' roll band called Ima Robot, and wound up in Alcoholics Anonymous, soon becoming disenchanted with the program's legendarily rigorous 12 steps.

"I was very political and philosophically staunch about all kinds of things I had pondered and read and written down — and all that was helpful, but eventually it built a sort of a fortress around me, and I felt very isolated from 'the moment.' I was living a very dogmatic life," he says. "I just wanted to be the best I could be, and be helpful in the world, or whatever it is. And to do that, I really had to just get back in touch with my instinct."
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Ebert, who is given to long beards and flowing robes, found his personal answer in Edward Sharpe, which was at first a MySpace alter ego, then leader of a 10-person band he founded in 2007. The Magnetic Zeros' first album, "Up From Below," came out last year, and it's a lighthearted batch of swirling psychedelic pop and rock songs, such as "Home," "40 Day Dream," "Janglin" and "Come In Please," with choruses so subtly catchy that listeners find themselves wondering, "Did I hear that on TV?" (In fact, Ford licensed "Janglin" for a commercial, and it appeared on "Gossip Girl" earlier this year.) The band's pop ideas are similar to another happy-rock collective, the Polyphonic Spree, but Ebert's songs are far sturdier, and the band has a knack for adding just-right touches of horns, whistling, police sirens and Spanish guitars.

"I'm a sucker for that messianic kind of pop music," says David Menconi, a veteran rock reviewer for Spin and other publications. "It's funny — people in disparate bands will sometimes get an urge to 'come on, come on, get happy' and get a whole mob of people together to make a joyful noise. This is an example of that."

Menconi believes "Home" is far better than any song on "Up From Below," in part because of the rambling hillbilly-vaudeville exchange between singers at the end. It seems Ebert's former girlfriend, Jade Castrinos, a Magnetic Zeros member and occasional songwriting muse, had once fallen out of his apartment window into a bougainvillea plant and required brief hospitalization. In "Home," the singers effect a sort of Okie-stomp dialogue — "Jade, you remember that night you fell out of my window?" "Yeah, you came jumpin' out after me!" — at the end of which Ebert spontaneously professes his love for Castrinos. "I just decided to tell her about this moment I had when we were driving her to the hospital — she requested a cigarette as if it were her last request," Ebert recalls. "That moment was really a crystallization of the immense love I felt for her, and so forth."

After putting out the debut album, the Magnetic Zeros piled into an old school bus — towing a trailer of bicycles, for maximum exploration potential — and toured the country. They recently paused, decamping to New Orleans to record their follow-up album (which still has no title or release date). While there, they heard about a studio in Bogalusa, about an hour away, and the entire band decided to live together, for a month, in a farmhouse on the same property.

"It's a much more communal process," says Ebert, who for "Up From Below" basically wrote all the songs in advance, then introduced them to the band in the studio. "It's really great to be living in the country, and just entirely focused. It's this giant sort of property, (and) it just sort of seemed intensely right — just very right for us."

onthetown@tribune.com

When: 9 p.m. Saturday

Where: Congress Theater, 2135 N. Milwaukee Ave.

Price: $42.50 for Friday-Saturday pass, $35 for Saturday;
773-598-0852, cbbfestival.com

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