Jonathan Meiburg exists. That much is clear as he appears on-screen, broadcasting from the rehearsal space where Shearwater has been meticulously crafting their upcoming tour. But it’s not just any tour—Meiburg and company are going all out, repurposing industrial lights, acquiring questionable laser gloves from China, and generally approaching the whole thing like a high schooler raiding the local party rental store. “It’s super low budget,” he laughs, “but it’s really fun.”
Shearwater has been at this for a long time, long enough for Sub Pop to declare Jet Plane and Oxbow their “career-defining” album—a phrase Meiburg acknowledges with both amusement and a bit of distance. “I don’t know if I’m at the height of my powers musically,” he muses, “but I can see that from here.” Turning 40 on this tour, he’s got the perspective that only comes from years of making, breaking, and refining. “People expect a band’s first record to be their best, but if you give them time, they actually get better.”
That’s certainly the case with Jet Plane and Oxbow, a record that Meiburg describes as a kind of oblique protest album, inspired in part by David Bowie’s Scary Monsters. “I wanted to make something that probed the pathologies of America but still had room for you to find yourself in it,” he explains. The album is drenched in blood, lies, and paranoia—its themes eerily resonant in an election season where, as Meiburg puts it, “the national id comes screaming out of the attic and onto the streets.” But despite its darkness, there’s an undercurrent of compassion, an intervention staged for a country grappling with its own contradictions.
Bowie, unsurprisingly, is a recurring presence in Shearwater’s world. Meiburg and the band had already planned to learn and perform Lodger before Bowie’s death made it a tribute rather than an experiment. “We thought for a second, should we still do this?” he recalls. “Then we were like, f*** yes.”
And then there are the expeditions—the jaguars, the spiders, the bird-eating tarantulas. Meiburg’s parallel life as a researcher and writer takes him deep into the wild, far beyond the usual indie rock tour circuit. His forthcoming book, The People of the Sky, explores South America’s strangest birds of prey, leading to surreal encounters like a jaguar emerging from the jungle and locking eyes with him. “Time just kind of stopped,” he says, the memory still vivid. “And then it disappeared. And the ornithologists just kept looking for their little brown bird.”
Back in the rehearsal space, surrounded by homemade lighting rigs and soon-to-be-tamed laser gloves, Meiburg seems genuinely energized. “It’s been a long time since I’ve played music consistently, day after day,” he says. “I’ve been surprised at how much fun it is.”
And check out their previous interview from 2013, recorded at SxSW:
