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For the last nine years, Brooklyn-based acoustic artist Kevin Devine has been making music and releasing albums, slowly but surely establishing a place within his audience's hearts. However, like many artists nowadays, it was never going to be the smoothest of runs. After signing to Capitol Records in 2006, he found himself to be a consequence of the major label's struggle, and was promptly left to fend for himself once more. Yet, after a little help from his friends in Brand New and Manchester Orchestra - who have since also provided him with opportunities to broaden his fan base around the world - and their record label, Favourite Gentlemen, Kevin got back on top.

We meet him tonight on a dark Dublin street, at around midnight, after he has finished playing with the aforementioned Manchester Orchestra. We begin by generally chatting with him how tonight's show went, and then we realise it's probably time to turn on the recorder..

OS: I can only imagine that it's hugely difficult to get up alone, with literally just a guitar, and have to play for people who you're not even sure know who you are.
Kevin Devine: Yeah, I mean if I got up in front of 2,500 people with just my acoustic guitar and like 1,800 of them or 2,000 of them don't know who I am - then that's a tough sell because people get antsy at shows and when something's not intimate.. 2000, 3000, 4000 people - that's not intimate. Neil Young can come out and play 'Harvest Moon' by himself in front of 50,000 people and it's ok - but that's cause they're all there to see him. Bruce Springsteen can set up a piano and play 'Thunder Road' in front of a stadium and people would be like *silent*. So for me - if I played this show tonight and it was my show, there would have been like 70% less talking. There would have been talking sometimes but that's because people are standing still for an hour and a half watching you play acoustic guitar, but generally speaking my fans are really attentive and respectful.

OS: What about when you supported Brand New in the UK last month?
Kevin: At a Brand New show; and plus Brand New, one of my favourite things about their band is their capacity to also mix in some of these really elegant, sweet songs and that all of their songs - no matter how loud they are - are good songs. If you took all of it away, they'd still be good songs if you were just playing them on a guitar by yourself and figuring out how to make them work, and Jesse definitely does. But, I can't get up in front of their rock show crowd and play a folk set for 35 minutes by myself. I've done it! I did a tour with them in the states where I did five dates in 2004 and did just me, so it was not ideal. But I mean, I loved playing those shows that way and I love being able to come back and do this stuff too. I like being able to mix it up that way. I think it keeps it interesting for me and my hope is that it keeps it interesting for the people who like what I do - that they get to see a different show when they come out.

OS: Obviously you're bringing out Brother's Blood - do you prefer to play those songs with a full band or strip them down like tonight's show?
Kevin: I think that depends too - I wrote them all just me but we consciously made a very band oriented album. So I think that depends on the size of the room too. I love playing with the band and I love playing those songs loud. It's a release and it's fun and its big but sometimes that can be ridiculous too when you're playing these big, epic sounding things in front of 60 people in a little club. Yet sometimes that can be intense and cool. So it depends; right now it's a challenge for me to get up and play alone again since it's been a long time since I've had to do it, so I kind of like it. I like re-imagining the songs in a way that will work if no one else is with me.

OS: Like with the actual song 'Brother's Blood' you have to cut out a big chunk of the song to play acoustic, but it still works.
Kevin: Well, that's my hope - if you have faith in your stuff there's gonna be sometimes when.. I've said this before, I've gone to shows were people have said 'Where's the band?' if I'm alone and then there's shows I go to with the band where people say, 'Oh, I wish you were alone!'. What I take from that is that I'm lucky that I can do these two really different things. I very rarely hear people say 'Oh Kevin Devine's playing? Is he with a band? Then if he is then I'm not going' or 'Is he by himself? Cause I'm not going then'. They might prefer one way or the other but people who seem to be really fans seem to get that it's about the song and it's about some kind of expression - whether it's really bare or it's really full.

OS: It must be great that, like with your last headline UK & Ireland tour, you're able to play the first half acoustic solo and then you introduce the band, and you're able to play both ways in one show.
Kevin: And I'm lucky that I have people to play with me that are OK with that, that don't sit there going 'When the fuck is it our turn to play?'.
I model a lot of what I do off other people that do it and I feel like people I grew up liking a lot [do the same.] Like I've gone to see Eliot Smith or Mark Kozelek from the Red House Painters or David Bazan of Pedro the Lion or song writers that I loved, I'd go see and sometimes I saw them alone and it was incredible, or sometimes I saw them with a band and it was incredible. Sometimes I'd prefer it one way to the other but the songs are so good that that's all [that matters.] Those performers made me conscious of the fact that your songs should be good enough to work regardless of what else is happening. That doesn't mean that the room is always going to agree with that philosophy but that's the way I look at it.

OS: So, would you agree you'd prefer to play to 250 people than 2,500..
Kevin: That's not to say that if 2,500 people wanted to come and see me play I'd start telling them no. We're at a place in New York where we're doing about 700 people and it's right at the lip of getting away from where I can do what I do. I don't know - even at my own show - if I could get up and do 90 minutes acoustic in New York anymore. Or I could, but it would have to be a special thing. 700 people is a big room and you're trying to keep people engaged for 2 hours doing a headlining show. So I'd rather have 250 people who are passionate and committed - I'd rather have 70 people at a show that were passionate and committed than 1,500 that don't give a shit about what I'm doing.

OS: So, you're constantly thrown in the mix with Brand New and Manchester Orchestra and the whole 'Long Island Legend' that's developed over the years. How does it feel to be one of the smaller acts in that? It must get somewhat frustrating with people asking you 'What's going on with Brand New?'
Kevin: I don't answer questions for Jesse. If someone asks me about what he thinks about blah blah blah or what he's doing about blah blah blah. I mean someone came up to me tonight and asked me if I had seen the photograph of The Last Supper where someone had doctored it so that Jesse was Jesus. I was just like "No" and then the kid mentioned something about how Jesse thinks he's God. I was just like "Listen, I'm down to talk to you for as long as you want - I enjoy being able to have dialogue with people who come to my shows. But, you're talking about someone I'm friends with. He might be something else to you, and I understand that, but he's a guy I read comics with or play basketball with or go talk to about the stuff you talk to your friends about in your life, or do with friends in your life. So I'm not gonna stand around while you tell me that you think my friend's conceited because of the way he acts on stage in his band. If you think that, I get it, that's fine but we're not gonna talk about that." It's like any other friend of mine who's not a semi-famous musician. If someone walked up to me in the street and said - I have this best friend who I've known since I was twelve named Mike who everyone calls Dolan - if someone came up and said 'Dolan's an asshole' I'd be like 'Fuck you, that's my friend!'. The only difference is that Jesse does, and I do, something that's public. But Dolan works for a magazine that's non-profit so no one knows who he is. So, my thing is if you're going to insult my friends, I don't want to talk to you. If you're going to ask me to speak for them because they don't speak about this stuff - there's a reason they don't so I'm not going to. But [musically], I know what I do and what I am and I know that my music is different to what Manchester [Orchestra] does or Brand New does or it's not as immediate - it's a little bit more.. I've been told that people live with it for a while and they're like, "I love this" or they move on.

OS: What sort of person do you think listens to your music?
Kevin: [I attract] a certain kind of person in a certain age group who likes a certain kind of music.. I can understand why a nineteen year old kid who listens to loud rock music would prefer immediately Brand New or Manchester Orchestra. That kid might like me and may grow with me; that kid's mom who grew up listening to Simon & Garfunkle and Bob Dylan might like my music more than them. And the kid's sister who listened to like, REM and The Replacements and Nirvana before they were a popular band - that person might too. I don't know how - and I don't associate Brand New or Manchester Orchestra with "emo" - but I never understood how I'm associated with it..

OS: The whole idea of "emo" is so exhausted right now anyway..
Kevin: A guy came up to me tonight with a Fall Out Boy t-shirt on and bought my shirt and my record and he said he loves my stuff and I'm grateful that he does. It's cool as shit that he does, but do I listen to those bands? No. And do I understand why I'm put in with those bands? No. I realised a long time ago that I'm not in charge of who listens to my music - and I wouldn't want to be. I've done tours with those bands a lot but I've also done stuff with bands like Stars and Bright Eyes and Cursive - bands that are more indie rock. Then I've done stuff with KT Tunstall and Corinne Bailey Rae and these are people who are popstars. And then I've done stuff with a guy from London called Tom McRae, who's not indie rock or singer-songwriter - he's something that maybe people that are into popular music might like.
I know that it's not a coincidence that I'm the only person I know in my group of friends that does all those different kinds of shows and tours. It's because my music.. it doesn't exactly fit any of those three places yet it kind of fits in all of them. Brand New wouldn't go on tour with KT Tunstall. I don't mean that as a knock on Brand New or KT: it just wouldn't fit. I sort of have this passport that works in all three of those worlds. The ultimate thing is for me to know or figure out; it's just for me to show up and play if I start getting asked to play. I go through phases where I play a lot of 'hip' shows and then I go through phases where I'm playing a lot more shows with kids who like bands on the Warped Tour. Then I play shows with people who are in their mid-thirties, playing shows at jazz clubs. The fact that I can do all three to me is really special. But I think it's part of why I'm.. it's not a slam dunk to categorize my music, which makes it harder to market it which makes it harder for me to become this massively popular person. I'm satisfied: people like my music, people come to see me play all over the world. I've been able to go to Japan and Australia and Europe and the UK and Ireland and all over the States and Canada because of songs. So, I may not be on the cover of any magazines but I haven't had another job for five years. As far as I'm concerned, I'm doing fine.
That's not to say that there isn't times when your ego gets involved and there aren't moments when you're like.. I can look up at fifty or a hundred song writers and go 'I wish I was in the position he's in'. But I can also look behind me and realise that there's 15,000 or 20,000 people playing open mic nights or playing for friends in their apartments, wishing they could be sitting on the streets of Dublin at midnight, when they live in New York City, on a tour talking to someone that cares about their music. It really just depends on which side of the bed you wake up on, like anything else in your life.

OS: Before all of this, you actually did a course in journalism. Do you ever think, even subconsciously, that side - especially since you talk a lot about political issues in your songs - of you allows for you to use your lyrics to portray your journalistic views?
Kevin: I actually think that gives me too much intellectual credit! I was a journalism student, I did freelance journalism for a little while and every now and then I dabble in that stuff, but I was never a socially.. I wrote about film and music and art and opinion pieces - small life. I wasn't writing about socially political issues or investigative journalism in that regard. That's not to say that if I hadn't gone to college two or three years later that I might not have been, because I graduated school four months before September 11th. I'm 29 so when September 11th happened, that catalysed a lot of the radical, political stuff I was brought up around in the hardcore and punk rock scene when I was a teenager in New York that I thought but never had to act too much on. Then, September 11th happened and it was like all this dormant shit in my head appeared, about America and the world and about why certain things happen and it's not always because everyone else is wrong. It kind of went *thonk* and it was almost as though a new set of eyes were in my head.
But by this point I wasn't a student anymore. So maybe, maybe I write about that stuff too because I tend to write about things that evoke a feeling in me - whether it's a true story or something I make up, or it's about my own life or about relationships or about observations or things that come to my mind. I get the same way about social issues as I do about my history with drugs and alcohol or women or about my family or some fiction I'll make up about something that's happening in that apartment. It's a feeling and it's a colour.

OS: But if we go back to 'Brother's Blood' there are a couple of tracks on that like 'Another Bag of Bones' that are quite clearly politically driven.
Kevin: That song is very much a clear cut laundry list of fear and of anxiety and of wanting to figure out how to exist inside all this stuff. To me that's a sister song to 'All of Everything Erased' - one is a bit more imagistic and surreal. It has a bit more poetry to it and is a little more about kind of kaleidoscopic nightmare about one person's experience about the day they wake up and realise everything's ending. The other one is more of a communal laundry list of what the fuck is going on. A little more hit and a little less massaging it. 'All of Everything Erased' is a little prettier or something.

OS: When you play 'Another Bag of Bones' live do you tend to see people react as they realise what the lyrics are projecting?
Kevin: You can tell with that song, and 'Brother's Blood' itself, especially when I'm playing by myself they have the capacity to. If there's the murmur or talking happening, those songs have the capacity to quiet the talking because people start to pitch forward and I can tell that sometimes and it's gratifying. It's certainly not a song I wrote for people to go, "it's so cool that he's saying that." But it's a song and I wrote it and I play it and I recorded it and I want people to like it so I want people to react to it. That song's heavy and some people might hear it and be like, "this kid's a clown" or "I don't want to hear about this, I'm out to have some drinks. I came in this building to not have to think about all of that". So I'm sure there are some people that hear it and react that way too; "I don't want to deal with this right now, it's a Friday night and I'm in the bar". I notice that and it's very powerful to be able to stop people with words. I love so many musicians that have done that and do still do that. It's quite a confusing feeling, it's a nice feeling about a really fucked up song. But it means that people are letting themselves connect to it and that's the point.

OS: The song 'Fever Moon' on the new record, what was the influence on that? Because it's such a different sounding song to anything on any of your previous records, were you listening to a certain kind of music when you were recording it or anything?
Kevin: I listen to Leonard Cohen, who has some of those kind of jazzier ballads; those moments that there's even a sort of Latin flavour to it. I started writing this song and immediately was like, "that's ridiculous, I can't write that" especially because it's a kind of sexualised song. While it's not that I've never written about that stuff but I've never written that way about it and I was a little.. I let my projection of what other people would think get into my head and I thought "they're going to think that this is ridiculous" and then I just asked myself "Why?"
I played it for the band when we were doing the demos and they really liked it. They were like "we should totally do that!" The rule with the Brother's Blood record - and all of the records really but this one in particular - was to produce each song to its strength; not to make a record that will sound the same but to try to make a bunch of songs that sounded the best they could sound, which would work together and so I think Fever Moon has a place on that record. It's a tough song to fit in live, especially if you're not doing a headlining show - and if you're doing it with bands like Manchester [Orchestra] or Brand New because it's a very slow burning kind of.. weird, sultry kind of song. It's not really the type of thing a kid that's there to hear something abrasive or poppy or peppy or angry and loud [would want to hear] They're gonna be like, "what is this?"
I like Leonard Cohen as much as I like Nirvana and I like Hank Williams as much as I like Pavement and I like Neil Young and Johnny cash as much as I like Modest Mouse and Built to Spill, so I think my music kind of reflects that. I think it's somewhere in the middle of growing up listening to tonnes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and whatever my mom played and then listening to loud guitar music, so I guess Fever Moon would slide more towards the Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits side of the brain.

OS: You said earlier that you've managed to sustain what you wanted to achieve, but obviously there have been difficult times for you as an artist. For example, the dropping from your label and the leaking of 'Brother's Blood'. Yet, despite all those hard times, you're still in love with music. What allows you to have that kind of faith in it, keeping you wanting to do this after nine years and five albums?
Kevin: Tonight at sound check I was playing two of the four new songs and it was the first time playing them on a nice sound system, with no one in the room - just for me. I just love the thing so much where the melody wraps around the chord and you figure out the chord you want to use instead of the one you thought you wanted to use and you find that perfect couplet that ties that verse together. I just like making songs. I can be really slow and precious with it too. I've never gotten tired yet of making up songs; the way that music fits with words, the way a melody fits with a chord, the way that you can use words to say something - you can express your feelings and your thoughts in this way that is way impacting and meaningful. I can say some things in songs that I have a really hard time articulating like this but I can write it and sing it and I'm like, "oh, that's what I mean!" That's not always the healthiest way in the world, but that's just the way some people communicate.
I like travelling. I like meeting people. I like when I get my head out of my ass long enough to not be weird and self-pitying about certain elements of it. I really like that there's people out there who care about it. That's all the abstract and philosophical side of it, the other side is, I do make a living but if I didn't make a living, all that stuff would still be true, but I'd have to figure out how to work and go back to school or go get an education degree or go work in an office or go sling coffee somewhere or whatever I'd have to do to be able to do that stuff.
If there comes a point where I'm a 33, 34 year old man, 35 year old man, where I'm scraping out a living, stressing myself out trying to maintain my personal relationships at home while I'm away 180 days a year and it's not as rewarding; it doesn't mean I'll stop writing songs or stop putting out records but it does mean that I'll stop doing it as a primary thing in my life. But until that happens, I feel generally really lucky. There are some days where I feel frustrated or annoyed with it, like anyone would with what they do. You can have great sex for 500 days in a row, but after 500 days of it you might not want to have sex for a while. Anything you do, even if you love it, you can do too much of it and it's conceivable that I could get to that place. I've only been touring steadily, heavily for three years. I was a student, I had jobs, I played locally, I've always had music as a part of my life but it's only been the last three/four years that it's been the middle - or at least doing it every day. I've thought about it every day since I was 7 but I've only been doing it every day since I was 25/26. That wall is out there or if it keeps moving back or if it keeps moving forward. What keeps me doing it is that I love it and I haven't found anything else that I like better.

Kevin Devine's latest album 'Brother's Blood' is available now through Big Scary Monsters Records in the UK. He will also be touring the UK in December.

Extra thanks to Sinead Grainger for kindly donating her photographs to go alongside the interview.