photo credit: Kenna Hynes

In late April 2020, as the country was only just beginning to wake up to the realities of a global pandemic, Pinegrove released their second official live album, Elsewhere 2, via Bandcamp. In retrospect, the modest eight-track collection was a much-needed offering for the New Jersey-bred DIY indie outfit’s devoted fanbase (known as Pinenuts) as they unknowingly entered a period of over a year without the sanctuary of live music.

Even then, singer-songwriter Evan Stephens Hall’s note on Bandcamp— written, much like his lyrics, in airy, stream-of-consciousness prose free of conventional capitalizations, as is his style when sending fan missives— lamented the loss of in-person concerts, calling the album a “record of the recent past when people could gather together by the hundreds.

“I also see it as a note from a future where people will gather and applaud again,” he continued, “the crisp percussive clatter of all those hands, people chatting to their friends or people they just met, going ‘woo,’ singing along—it’s very surreal and nearly heartbreaking to hear now… it’s a sideways smile hearing so many people together but a smile nonetheless.”

This past January, Pinegrove bestowed upon their fans a much heftier, and sorely needed, gift: Amperland, NY. The 80-minute “movie” confidently straddles the line between a live in-studio session and an abstract, goofy short film, set against the backdrop of the group’s former headquarters—a rural house in the Hudson Valley village of Kinderhook, N.Y. (The title Amperland, also a nickname for the house itself, stems from Hall’s fascination with the ampersand as a symbol of inclusiveness.)

Amperland, NY finds Pinegrove running through 21 songs from their decade-long career—many from their most recent albums, last year’s Marigold and 2018’s Skylight, along with some older gems—in various locations around the Amperland house and property, taking the “in-studio session” concept to new, often intimate heights. Most of the tunes were filmed in the large, open room that makes up half of the house—and served as the studio for the two aforementioned records—with each band member dressed in their own color and surrounded by items, instruments and tapestries of the same hue. It’s a nod to another Pinegrove aesthetic staple: Hall’s love of solid, primary colors.

The resulting product, it turns out, is exactly what Pinegrove fans were yearning for over the past year: a satisfying (if not entirely equivalent) substitute for all those live performances that the pandemic washed away.

The Pinenuts community is strong— and intentionally cultivated by Hall and his bandmates via inclusive acts like sharing the chords and lyrics to new tracks even before an album’s release, encouraging fans to create their own interpretations before they hear Hall’s versions. On the Pinegrove website, there’s a fan-to-fan forum section, with discussion topics ranging from favorite songs to a Pinegrove book club to someone asking for help with their school paper on semantics. This online community is also called Amperland.

“We just have to say, at a point, that Amperland is a state of mind and not an actual place,” Hall muses, calling from his home outside Woodstock, N.Y. “Amperland is what happens to you when you listen to Pinegrove music.”

That state of mind was on full display during the two virtual premieres for Amperland, NY, both of which raised money for climate change legislation advocate group Sunrise Movement. During the second premiere, hosted on YouTube, fans immediately started sharing their thoughts and feelings—there’s always lots of feelings—about the movie, the songs and the band through the live[1]chat function. In a more unexpected move, the band members themselves all began to chime in, answering questions and expressing their gratitude for all the support they’d received throughout the COVID-19 crisis. It wasn’t quite like they were taking the stage again in a packed venue, yet there was something analogous to that happening nonetheless—the Pinenut community finally had a place to reconnect, in real-time.

“I have to say, even though I’d seen the movie so many times in its various iterations, it gave me the jitters that you get before playing a show,” says drummer and Pinegrove co-founder Zack Levine. “I didn’t expect that, but it was cool. I think that has to do with the fact that none of us have played a show in a year.”

The fans seemed to have the same experience, discussing song choices, calling out funny moments or praising specific triumphs like Levine’s impeccable snare-drum sound—praise that, to be fair, should be shared with multi-instrumentalist and recording engineer Sam Skinner. In certain ways, the interactions were similar to the conversations that tend to occur before and between songs at a concert, albeit in a frustratingly distant and less tangible way.

“When we recorded this, the pandemic was not a thing,” Levine adds, noting that the movie was largely filmed in November 2019. “We didn’t realize that this might end up scratching an itch for folks who hadn’t been to a concert in a long time. The idea was not for this to be some sort of concert replacement, but I think it ended up filling that void a little bit. I got to feel those jitters—which was bizarre because I was sitting on my couch. Just knowing that there was an audience watching us play live felt invigorating.”

Adding to the draw of the first premiere was the host of the post-movie Q&A session: actress Busy Philipps, one of the more high-profile Pinenuts, who lent some star power to the band’s fundraising effort, while also proving herself to be a tried[1]and-true fan of their music.

“She is a riot—so much energy and sass to spare,” Hall says with an audible grin, noting that he first connected with Philipps after he learned she was sharing her love of Pinegrove’s music via her Instagram. “I guess she heard us on the radio—which is like, ‘Oh, man, we’re on the radio? That’s great!’ And there was this one cool story that she shared: She was in her backyard playing ‘Darkness’ super loud, and these birds started to circle around the yard. They were really low-flying and, apparently, listening to the music. While they were flying around, she said that she happened to be singing ‘Endless’ to her daughters as a lullaby. I was really moved by what seemed like a deep and sincere connection to these songs.”

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Amperland, NY could be called a dual love letter/farewell message to the titular Kinderhook residence, which had housed various musicians in Pinegrove’s creative sphere since the spring of 2017. That’s when Hall, guitarist Josh Marre and future Amperland director Kenna Hynes collectively moved into the space while Levine, then-bassist Adan Carlo Feliciano and contributing Pinegrove vocalist/ instrumentalist Nandi Rose Plunkett, who also records as Half Waif, settled at their own place nearby.

As Levine recalls: “I was on tour with Half Waif in Michigan, and I got a call from Evan: ‘We just saw this house. I think it might be really hard to heat in the winter, and it’s old and weird; but it’s really cool and it could be a great place for us to set up.’”

The quirkiness of the Amperland house is evident in the film—maybe most obvious with the large recording room that inexplicably takes up half the square footage. But that unique nature was certainly part of the allure for a band trying to find a creative rural oasis. (Skinner notes: “If I wasn’t a recording engineer, I would not build a house that way.”)

“Initially, when I took the tour of the space, I brought my mom along—she’s an interior designer so knows a lot about houses. After we saw the space, she said to me: ‘This is an amazing house. You should definitely rent it, but do not buy this thing.’ It was built in 1732, and, of course, modifications have been made since, but there were… structural concerns.”

Although Amperland, NY was created after the band members found out their time at the house was coming to a close—the owner decided to sell the property—the idea for the film had been gestating since the early days of Pinegrove, when they discovered their affinity for the one-take, live in-studio sessions that groups frequently perform at radio stations and other production houses. In fact, their 2016 session for Audiotree in Chicago unexpectedly became a hit among their fanbase (partially due to it being the only live recording by the band available on Spotify) just as the Pinegrove buzz was gaining traction in indie circles everywhere after the release of their breakout album, Cardinal.

“I’ve met so many people who have said that the Audiotree session is their favorite recording from Pinegrove—which I totally don’t understand at all, but I love that they love it,” Hall laughs. “That was a lot of people’s entry point. And there’s something really awesome about knowing that you can’t do another [take]. I think that’s part of the reason why Audiotree is so raw. It’s just like, ‘Alright, here it is—this is live and it’s noon and I’m hungover.’”

The point of Amperland, however, was to take that intimate, live energy and present it through a Pinegrove lens, hence the striking chromaticism, the various settings around the house—the bedroom, the kitchen, the yard, even the bathroom— and, of course, the narrative that ties the film together. (The movie is based on a short story that Hall wrote and follows two “mustachios”—Hall and Levine—as they employ Pinegrove to help them find a missing stuffed sloth, Lincoln, a frequent onstage guest at Pinegrove shows).

“We didn’t want to do an interview with ourselves in between [songs], so it turned into a movie, loosely, with the Lincoln narrative going on,” Levin explains. “And that really opened it up to more goofiness—which was really, from where I stand, the point. A lot of these songs aren’t necessarily humorous or light—they’re intense to play and listen to—so it’s really nice to break that up with some fun stuff.”

Hynes, a musician who has toured with Pinegrove in other bands, also directed the group’s 2017 series of documentary shorts, Command + S, and has worked for Audiotree, so Amperland gave her the opportunity to use her film experience and creative relationship with the band members to help pay tribute to her former residence. Though everyone involved was acutely aware that these musicians are decidedly not actors, the lack of refinement in the nonmusical sections of the film is more than made up for by the fun, surrealist vibe that pervades. (Hynes admits that she had The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night movie in mind during filming, and she appreciated the shoutouts from fans who compared her style to directors like David Lynch and Wes Anderson during the YouTube premiere.)

And then there were the personal touches that only someone close with the band could engineer, like the moment when Levine, who married Plunkett in 2019, nervously stands up and knocks over his drum set like a middle schooler who just caught a glimpse of the girl he likes when the singer/multi-instrumentalist first enters the house to join the “band practice.”

***

It’s fitting that Amperland, NY’s sillier side is tempered by the seriousness of Pinegrove’s songs—which have long served as emotional reflecting pools for their listeners—because the film is truly a sweeping, all-inclusive, end-of-an-era tribute to the house where the band created so much of that music while forming and strengthening relationships with each other and with their fans.

But the intent doesn’t end there, and the Pinegrove story is far from over. Hall says that the band plans to release an album in the next year, but anyone who has heard him speak for more than a few minutes likely knows that there is a lot on his mind even besides Pinegrove— from a possible stint in grad school to working on completing a book that his late grandmother began—so things are still up in the air, especially with the pandemic.

One topic that seems to be at the top of Hall’s short- and long-term agenda, though, is a staunch commitment to the social causes that he and his bandmates hold dear. Last year, Pinegrove donated the proceeds from their Elsewhere 2 live album to the Black Lives Matter movement, and then there’s the more recent fundraising for the Sunrise Movement. And Hall is never shy about voicing his support for progressive causes, many of which he sees as intrinsically linked, especially in the U.S. Specifically, he notes that climate change—which has reared its head in devastating ways in just the last year or so between the increasingly rampant West Coast wildfires and the destabilizing Texas cold snap—will undoubtedly and disproportionately harm low-income people and people of color

“All of the problems we’re experiencing right now in this country are starting to dovetail in a very violent way,” Hall explains. “We have a lively anti-racist movement going on in this country, which is really heartening, and I think it’s time for people to ask: ‘OK, if we’re saying that Black lives matter, how do we support that with policy?’

“Art is about imagining possibilities, and it’s also about imagining yourself in somebody else’s shoes,” he continues. “Whatever local, personal, emotional message is in our music, when you extrapolate that out to a more macro message, it involves considering policy that is that is supportive of vulnerable people. So there’s a pretty clear through line, to me. It’s not a leap; it’s not going outside the prescribed bounds of an artist. That is exactly the mission of the artist, to imagine a better world. That said, there’s no one way to do it—and I welcome debate about that. But it seems to me that, if you have a microphone, you should be using it.”