In the past there’s been that [goal], that I’m going to inspire people or we’re going to help people, but it’s starting to seem like that’s not my responsibility to lead people to the truth or to teach anyone, given that I don’t know the answers myself. So, what can I do but continue to seek truth and continue to open and soften my heart and keep letting go of my conceptions, my attachments, my desires? -Aaron Weiss  

Every Blade of Grass

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With orchestral arrangements, dig in your cranium melodies and folky charms, their fourth studio album It’s all crazy! It’s all false! It’s all a dream! It’s alright (released May 19 on Tooth & Nail) is a further departure from their dense, post-hardcore drive and Aaron’s rapid fire lyrical scrawls, which were often marked with a palatable vexation. Here, there’s more peace at play, with songs set in talking vegetable gardens and fables sketched vividly, striking imagery drawn out in melodic vocals rather than sing-shouting. The album simply sows its seeds, at times gently pawing the meditative soil, at times stirring the inquiring heart into a joyful swell, particularly on the last track, “Allah Allah Allah,” which begins with a rousing celebration of interconnection, “Allah, Allah, Allah/ In everywhere we look,” shifting to “In everyone we meet” and “In every blade of grass” in respective verses. Elements of their earlier fervor and darkness are still present on the record, but they are served up in a sonic shift where the branches stretch towards brighter skies. Digging to the roots, some songs do draw from personal stories and shared band experiences, but many draw from religious texts and figures, from Lao Tzu to the Bible, spiritual plurality as inspiration. The strongest presence on the album is Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, a Sufi teacher and mystic. A well-respected figure that encouraged spiritual unity, his influence comes from Aaron and Michael’s parents, who both converted to Sufism from Episcopalian Christian and Jewish traditions. Michael describes what growing up in their household was like:

“On Christmas we would go to my grandparents’ house on my mom’s side, and we would celebrate Hanukkah and Passover with my father’s parents. Then there would be certain celebrations my mom would try to push on us, like I would witness her fasting for Ramadan. I’ve been exposed to the three major religions of the world pretty extensively. I think it always gave me a belief that there was a God, and that’s been pretty strong, but not necessarily a specific religion or way to worship. Just going out into the world as an adolescent and seeing different friends of mine, some were Catholic or Jewish or Protestant, and it was very hard for me for a while to really latch onto any of them. But I really had a sense that there was something more than just what we perceive on a daily basis. Growing up in my house there was a strong sense of there being an ultimate moral truth, it wasn’t just something we decided as individuals.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Besides the new album’s title, which is taken from his words, two songs – “The Fox, The Crow And The Cookie” and “The King Beetle on a Coconut Estate” – are based on Muhaiyadeen’s stories. “The Fox, The Crow And The Cookie,” is taken from a book the Weiss’ parents used to read to them called My Love You My Children (“a book of stories for children of all ages, that’s what it says, right on the cover,” says Aaron). You’re probably familiar with the premise from Aesop: a crow steals a cookie from a baker. The crow’s then approached by a clever fox, which compliments his beautiful singing and begs for a song. The crow is so taken with the praise that he opens his mouth to sing, dropping the cookie for the fox to steal. The fable especially rang true for Aaron’s own experience as a musician.

“It’s warning against flattery and people trying to puff up your ego and pride,” says Aaron. “That’s something in playing music that’s an obvious danger, when you go up on stage and everyone claps or after the show someone wants to take a picture with you or wants to do an interview with you, you might start to get the idea that, ‘Oh look at this, I have something important to say,’ or, ‘I must be a wise person. I must be very talented.’ For my life, I’ve been hurt by that. When I started a band I went looking for that, I really wanted that affirmation, I really wanted that praise and those compliments. But you reach a point where you go, ‘Boy, that doesn’t bring me peace to hear that about myself.’ Instead, it brings me peace to give praise to God, to give all the glory to God, to look to God within and not to worry if people approve of me or not. But, it’s really powerful because that is still strong in me, that wanting people to like me and that kind of thing, but I think it has a limit.”

“King Beetle,” on the other hand, has a more ambiguous moral, one which lends itself to further inquiry.

mewithoutYou by Jake Krolick

“My dad told me that one, and he told me, ‘There’s other ways of investigating what’s true,’” Aaron describes. “By hovering around and pontificating or observing from a distance, you might not get the full experience compared to giving yourself completely over. But the meaning of the story I wouldn’t be able to describe or explain accurately, so I will try to keep my words few here. ‘Cause of course Bawa is the one that told the story, and mostly I’d want to tell people well, I might interpret it one way but you could find the story for yourself and read it or you could come visit where Bawa lived in Philadelphia, or read some other of his books or watch his videos. The closer you get to the source probably the better chance you have of having a true interpretation of it. Or just look in your own heart and ask God in your heart, ‘What’s true?’ Is there truth and is there a right and wrong? Does love really exist and is there really a God, you know? Is it a certain religion, is it a certain philosophy, why are we here? Just keep searching for the truth within us and not just keep coasting through life numb and entertained or comfortable.”

“King Beetle’s” dramatic story is scored by a lush, stirring orchestral landscape. According to Michael, producer Daniel Smith had the idea of bringing in composer Joshua Stamper to create classical arrangements for some of the songs.

“[Joshua] just took the direction that we gave him and nailed it with songs like ‘Beetle King.’ It was kind of a tall order, we told him we wanted something that sounds sort of like a Disney cartoon, something really magical and out of this world, like Fantasia,” says Michael. “We wanted there to be a musical representation of certain characters and so the military beetle, you hear trombones come in, or the professor beetle, strings. The flute gave it a very magical, majestic sort of Moody Blues sound, and that’s exactly what we wanted – just a real out of this world [sound]. You know, Aaron’s not singing about his personal life on this song; that was a little bit of a departure for him. So with that we wanted to create a song where you’re just being transported to a different space.”

Another departure the band took on the album was in their approach to the songwriting. Previous albums took a collaborative approach to the music, with Aaron’s vocals added later to fit around the melodies. This time around, his vocals were present on the demos.

“In the past there [was] more of an instrumental approach, everybody putting their two cents in on everything, everybody’s song from start to finish, and then the vocals and the lyrics coming in [after]. Too many chefs in the kitchen sometimes make for a salty soup, as they say,” Michael remarks. “So, I really liked the way Aaron already had rigged tunes, and we just sort of made them better, or tried to, well, hopefully we did [laughs]. [We] just figured out where we need to provide support, rather than just construct this big monster and sort of see where the vocals could fit after.”

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  It’s just common sense, when someone’s throwing it away to eat that as long as it’s still healthy, rather than going and buying something new. It’s more just me being a cheapskate, knowing I can ride my bicycle and get around a lot cheaper than putting gas in a car and maintaining it… It’s not an ideology that I would want to push on anybody… I’m happy that my brother has a cell phone so I can borrow it right now. And I’m obviously happy that many people have houses so I have so many places to sleep. -Aaron Weiss  

What’s a ‘Freegan’?

The press on their environmental leanings initially piqued this writer’s interest in the band. Almost every article you read about mewithoutYou touches on, if not focuses on, the band’s biodiesel bus and Aaron Weiss’ lifestyle, which is often described as being “freegan.” But these sorts of focuses can be somewhat misleading. Yes, the band tours in a veggie bus (now their second bus in five years), and yes Aaron does not own a home, cell phone, car or computer, and yes, he will eat discarded food. But none of these facts, however admirable or interesting, amount to an ethos the band wishes to espouse.

Aaron Weiss

“It’s just common sense, when someone’s throwing it away to eat that as long as it’s still healthy, rather than going and buying something new,” Aaron says of his embrace of simplicity. “It’s more just me being a cheapskate, knowing I can ride my bicycle and get around a lot cheaper than putting gas in a car and maintaining it. It’s a lot less to worry about. Or I can sometimes find free food or I can sometimes sleep on my friends’ couches or at my parents’ house rather than having my own house, or like right now, borrow my brother’s cell phone to have a conversation. It’s not an ideology that I would want to push on anybody or tell people, ‘Hey, it’s wrong for you to have money or wrong for you to spend your money or to have your own things.’ I’m happy that my brother has a cell phone so I can borrow it right now. And I’m obviously happy that many people have houses so I have so many places to sleep. So, it’s not something I’m trying to spread or convince other people of.”

“[But] people hear that there is someone that is relatively well to do, someone who could afford their own food but chooses to eat out of a trashcan instead [and] that’s a little weird,” he continues. “A lot of the interviews that we’ve been doing recently, that’s been one of the first questions, ‘What’s with you being freegan?’ and that’s a term I don’t think I’ve ever used to describe myself. I do buy things. I buy food, and I do sometimes buy all kinds of things. You need underwear and socks and toothpaste, dish soap and all kinds of stuff [laughs]. So, I don’t know what it’s like to be a freegan because I’m not one.”

“Ultimately we are trying to just get our music out there and make a living, and you can’t blame anybody for wanting to do that,” Michael says, putting their decision to have a biodiesel bus in a similar perspective. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, and you do have so many people you are transporting around in that bus, so it’s not like that big heavy guilt of just driving around that Hummer as your personal vehicle. So, even if we were to run diesel all the time, the guilt of that would sort of be offset, in that we are ten people in that bus traveling. It’s not as horrible when you think about the per person effect. And there’s also the fact that we are saving a lot of money; we aren’t buying as much diesel.”

Aaron Weiss

“I don’t know, it’s really just a way,” ponders Michael, pausing before continuing. “We aren’t trying to make a huge statement you know? I don’t want to. It’s more of just a personal thing for us, but we get asked a lot of questions about it. It’s gotten to the point where we had a manager that really wanted to work this angle of our story, that as a band that we have this bus, everyone will hear about it and it will be a media kind of thing. It’s not really what we want to be known for. It’s kind of funny but I guess at the end of the day that’s what people know you for. They chose to write about you and the reasons to want to check you out. If they aren’t the reasons that you wish they were then you just have to sort of accept it, but we didn’t start a band so we could tour in a veggie bus; we started a band to make music. The veggie bus is a part of getting us to the show to do what we love to do. [It's] definitely kind of a character of its own, ’cause it’s an old beat up bus. We made a shirt with all the people that have been involved with us, the main friends along the way, and yeah, the bus is on that shirt, but just as a part of that, just the fact it’s been our home. We’re not trying to promote any kind of awareness by having it; that’s taken care of itself.”

The bus is just a part of the mewithoutYou extended family, and if there’s a specific value at mewithoutYou’s core, on the most basic level, it would seem to be family – both literally, and in a philosophical sense. When it comes to the Brothers Weiss, “That relationship we’ve had has always been a big part of the band,” Michael explains. “He’s been my right-hand man and I’ve been his, basically since high school,” Michael says of he and Aaron’s relationship. “We’ve always had the same friends and we went to the same college together and then I joined his band. And every step of the way he’s been my best friend. We’ve been to the point of no return where like it seemed like we would never talk to each other again, all the way back to him being the only person that I could trust with my deepest feelings. He’s been everything to me in-between those two points, which is as much as this guy has experienced thus far, the whole spectrum.”

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  I’ve been exposed to the three major religions of the world pretty extensively. I think it always gave me a belief that there was a God, and that’s been pretty strong, but not necessarily a specific religion or way to worship… I really had a sense that there was something more than just what we perceive on a daily basis. Growing up in my house there was a strong sense of there being an ultimate moral truth, it wasn’t just something we decided as individuals. -Michael Weiss  

Epilogue: Travelling Light

Given to contemplative stream of consciousness answers, Aaron admitted that he had reservations about doing more interviews, out of a concern for not having, “the right answers. Without fail, when we do interviews I always say something that I regret, or it ends up when I read it back, if I read it, I think, did I really say that? Boy, why do I ever open my mouth?” Despite any hesitations, he was generous with his time. There’s a refreshingly open quality to him and the gracious way he shares his reflections. He also seemed genuinely curious about this disembodied voice on the other end of the line, and when it came to my prepared questions, I threw most of them out.

mewithoutYou

“It can sound like a bad thing, like I’m struggling or I have doubts or I’m not sure, but really it could also be a good thing,” he muses, when we’re talking about spiritual struggles. “While I’ve experienced many things, I want to go deeper. I want to go further and put the past behind me. To see what more mercy there is.”

I wondered if Aaron ever gets frustrated at the superficiality of our culture, where it sometimes seems few are willing to go deeper.

“No, not anymore. I used to,” Aaron admits. “It would be really easy to find someone to point the finger at, ‘This guy, look at how superficial he is. Look how many hours of TV this person watches,’ or, ‘Look how much they spend on their wardrobe.’ But my parents told me, whenever you see a fault outside or you see somebody else, it’s really a way God is showing us something about ourselves. So, if we see superficiality on the outside, and say, ‘Oh the world is so superficial,’ well I must be superficial because something within me is resonating with that. So it becomes a real blessing whenever you see something like that on the outside, it means I have to go deeper in my own heart and find a place that is true and real within me. I’ve done so much judging in my life, finding fault with the culture or the church, or even my own friends or the guys in my band or people in my own family; I’m just kind of burned out on it. So, I’m just really happy with the world outside as it is, even with all the craziness that you see.”

The subject turned at one point to activism, specifically a war protest where he was arrested alongside his friend, a feisty, trouble-making nun named Sister Margaret. The incident is referenced in the song “Timothy Hay.”

“I went over to join her because I thought it might be a good story, a good way to impress my friends if I told them I got arrested with Sister Margaret. So, it was really just that sort of thing, I was trying to be an activist, but looking back you realized, man, I cared more about being an activist than I did about anyone in Iraq. They arrested five of us, including Sister Margaret. Imagine putting an elderly nun in handcuffs. It must have been a hard job for those police officers, but they were actually very nice and they treated us respectfully and it was a very sweet experience.”

Describing himself as caring more about being an activist than the activism itself, I was curious if he meant that activism could sometimes be used as a tool to feed our own egos.

mewithoutYou by Ashley Nicole

“That’s a good way of putting it, and describes my experience. That’s not to say that there aren’t many people who may have pure motivations, I certainly don’t know. But, I have sensed that with people protesting the war, they are doing it with a spirit of anger and inner violence, protesting a physical war but they’re waging a spiritual war, like you’re dehumanizing people that work for the government or people in power or soldiers,” says Aaron. “[They're] passing judgment, saying these people are wrong and I’m right. And all that is a kind of war. It’s not really offering an alternative; it’s just feeding the fire and polarizing people. It’s not bringing people together. It’s not that I regret my time with those crowds. I learned a lot, but I don’t believe in that way anymore.”

I found Aaron’s initial answer about the “Timothy Hay” incident intriguing. Most of us have a strong opinion on politics, and there are, of course, many devoted activists out there fighting for their causes. But there are also those who use political standpoints to draw attention to themselves, or to create further divisions rather than dialogue. I am curious then, if Aaron thinks it then becomes about cultivating compassion on the most basic level, even with those you disagree with.

“I’ve felt a very clear and simple call to simply put my trust in God and submit my heart to God, who is love,” he says. “God who loves everybody. God who loves not only the people in Iraq but also the soldiers in America, and who even loves George W. Bush, who everybody loves to rail on. I have a very clear sense of my call being to have faith in God and to give my life to God and to open my heart to God and then whatever happens is fine at that point. If God wants to use me to go to a protest that’s fine, I’m happy to go to a protest, but I won’t be angry at anybody and I won’t feel superior to anybody because I would see everyone as my own life, I would literally love my neighbor as myself. Because that’s how God sees us; God doesn’t see us as separate. At least that’s what I was raised to believe and that’s what feels correct to me. So, if we could just do that one thing, just humble ourselves and submit our hearts, then everything else is taken care of, and then we have compassion because God is compassion. And then we love others because God is love. And then we’ll forgive everybody because God is the forgiving one. It’s just so perfect and it’s so sweet and it’s literally no effort. It doesn’t require anything on our part except for that humility and that trust. But just like children, that’s what we have to be.”

It’s simple, but it’s a difficult place to get to.

“Sure, we’ve all built quite a life for ourselves and all of our ideas and all of our accomplishments and all of our identities. All of our possessions, whether they be physical or material or inwardly, whether we possess some philosophy or we possess some religion or we possess our Atheism or Agnosticism, whatever it is we think we are. Once we decide upon that we’re separate from everyone else who isn’t that, and it’s hard when we’re so wrapped up in these things that we perceive. They define us, so we think, ‘If I let go of that, what will be left? I can’t let go of that, it’s who I am.’ It’s just that we don’t know that that’s not really who we are, that we’re not necessarily any of the things we say we are. And maybe that’s a good place to start, just to wonder, ‘Who am I, really?’”

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  It can sound like a bad thing, like I’m struggling or I have doubts or I’m not sure, but really it could also be a good thing. While I’ve experienced many things, I want to go deeper. I want to go further and put the past behind me. To see what more mercy there is. -Aaron Weiss on spiritual struggles  

“It’s really sweet. We can really travel light that way. We don’t have to carry around the baggage of anything anyone’s done to us, or any mistakes we’ve made. We don’t have to carry around the regret from that or all the pride from the things we think we’ve accomplished. We literally don’t carry anything. So, it’s so wonderful,” continues Aaron. “It’s like going on a long journey and then trying to pack all these suitcases. It’s not long before you start thinking, ‘Why did I bring all this crap?’ You think it’s good, like you think you need that microwave oven [laughs]. But as you’re trekking across the desert you start to wonder, ‘Wait, maybe I could drop the microwave, because it used to be valuable but now it’s just a burden to me.’ And that’s the way it seems to everything in my life.”

Aaron Weiss

Letting go of self-definitions can often be frightening, and is something I struggle with, so the subject hits close to home for this writer.

“Right, right, but little by little,” Aaron says. “It doesn’t have to be all at once, it might be too much, but we can start small. Just look at something, take a given thought that comes to our mind, someone who wronged us and we can say, ‘Okay, I can let go of that one. The thing this guy did to me a few years ago, I can accept it. I can thank God for that rather than holding it against him. I can pray for that person or I can be grateful that it happened exactly that way and have a certain faith that it was for a good reason if I don’t understand it.’ Just see if that makes it better, see if that feels lighter or feels more peaceful, and if so, move on to the next thing, until maybe someday we’ll be completely content with everyone as they are, even with our self, but also willing to move forward, you know? I know it’s not easy. I understand what you’re saying.”

Does this mean Aaron feels like he’s coming to his own sense of peace?

“No, but having read enough from and hearing what Bawa said and seeing tapes of him talk – he left the world a long time ago, I don’t really remember him, I was just a little baby the last time I saw Bawa in person – but he seemed to be in that place that I’m describing. And that’s the only reason I would even think it’s possible. You read about people like Jesus from thousands of years ago that were really on a different level as far as their insight into things. But, that’s so long ago you don’t really know if what you’re hearing is true or if it was all changed through history. But Bawa lived up until the 1980s. You can really watch him and listen to what he says and then you see how he was, even with just the look in his eyes you say, ‘Man, this guy saw something. He was at a place that I am not. And he experienced things that I haven’t. And he has a peace and a love and a compassion that I don’t have but he looks like just another human being like me so maybe I can attain that too.’”

I’m also curious about the theme of ego-loss (in the Buddhist sense of the word) in the album. It runs strong, particularly in the song “Good-bye I!”

mewithoutYou

“That’s something Bawa spoke of and was able to draw together, the Eastern philosophies or religions with the Western major monotheistic religions, and particularly my background for awhile really into the Christian religion, but never really understanding that aspect of the teachings, never seeing that call of the cross and seeing that as the call to die or to give up our self, to give up our ego and instead let God who is one live,” says Aaron. “So, it’s all there in the Western religions, too – the unity and oneness and giving up of the self. I never saw it for a long time until I started listening to Bawa, who would talk about Jesus but he would also talk about Buddha and he would talk about Mohamed and he would talk about Moses, and in a way that didn’t seem contradictory. ‘Peace be upon them, all God’s prophets.’ It didn’t seem like an ‘us versus them’ [situation], or I have to give up Jesus to accept what Bawa is saying. It seemed like a part of a continuation of what anyone throughout time who has every really looked into these things and been willing to give up what they were holding onto and what they had created, it seems to be what everybody in their heart already knows.”

When I got off the phone with Aaron, I thought of my visit to New York in the summer of 2005. It was during a particularly painful time in my life, and all I wanted to do on that trip was bar hop until I was sufficiently numb. But for some reason, I felt compelled to go to the Hayden Planetarium. After seeing the star show and other exhibits, I wound my way down the spiral ramp through the Heilbrunn Cosmic Pathway – the 13 billion year history of the universe captured in 360 feet. Evolution, constant change, as each of our steps took us 75 million years further along, through the birth of the Milky Way and the age of the dinosaurs. At the end of that ramp, there’s a thread the width of a human hair. It represents the sum total of our species’ existence to date. I stared at it and, for a moment, my fear and hurt dissipated. Talk about gaining perspective and zooming out on the timeline.

Bill Hicks once said in the monologue that closed his last appearance on stage, “It’s only a choice. No effort. No worry. No job. No savings and money. Just a choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your door, buy bigger guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love, instead, see all of us as one.” There it is again, the simplicity of that choice, to look to this often broken world with wonder and love instead of fear. No matter what fuels you on this ride, there are these common threads to follow, weaving through the songs of many seekers who have danced through this hair in the cosmos, tugging at all those questions we don’t know how to answer when we gaze up into that endless night sky.

mewithoutYou is on tour now, dates available here.

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