A Conversation With The Milk Carton Kids’ Kenneth Pattengale

The Milk Carton Kids return to the Englert on March 4, 2019 as they tour on their new album All the Things That I Did and All The Things That I Didn’t Do, the first time that singer-songwriters and guitarists Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan ventured beyond their known identity as a duo. Accordingly, unlike their previous two performances at the Englert, they’ ll bring along a band to support them. I spoke with Kenneth Pattengale, one half of the group’s
founding duo, while he was in NYC a few months before they performed – Dan Boscaljon

DB: You’ve played at the Englert twice before.

KP: The first time we came was opening for Over the Rhine in 2013, and that was right when our ship was taking off — the end of 2013, and when everything good was moving for us. I remember when we walked into the back of the Englert and looked past Over the Rhine’s setup and saw the theater—it was one of those days that we were happy to stand in the kind of concert hall where we were hoping to play. Until then, we’d had a mixture of dive bars and rock clubs and other locations that weren’t perfect for our music. I remember distinctly that show at the Englert and how wonderful it was. We came back in 2016 — I remember that during our concert, tornado sirens were going off and we wondered if we should be alarmed — and the audience didn’t do a thing. We thought: “Boy, should we seek shelter” and nobody really cared. I dated a woman from Iowa for a long time, and I have a secondhand knowledge of tornadoes and warnings thereof and if I heard them as often as you do I’d be desensitized as well.

The new album, which features more than voice and guitar, has become famous for its departure from your previous take on music — both the inclusion of other musicians and recording what essentially was an improvisational jam for the first single, “One More for the Road.” Can you talk a bit about what it was to think about songs without the kinds of restrictions that you’d placed on them before?

KP: From the beginning, this whole thing was always envisioned with just the two of us. Necessarily, when writing songs or doing arrangements it was with the idea in mind that as long as Joey and I rolled up our sleeves we could get to what we were saying in a complete way. Everything was between the two of us, and knowable. If one of us has
an idea, and it falls flat on its face, the two of us as we rehearse in a bedroom can tinker with it until it has the emotional impact we were going for.

When you write songs and you also know that you’ll have a band — you don’t have that kind of time, but need a faith and trust in other players that you’ll get to it as the clock is running.

The primary difference was rather than following our natural progression — a song like “Michigan” would be something that before the song was finished, we’d look at shifting the harmonies or verses — we did it as it came up and felt natural. On this album, we had to table that and assume it’d be addressed during recording. Addressing the fundamentals of songwriting — a compelling melody, a simple and direct enough song, one you could sit down with
one guitar and play and everyone would understand its identity—we needed to see that was achieved before going to the studio and stylizing it.

It expresses two paths toward the same end goal. Our earlier songs didn’t miss out on anything, but this time we came to the material in a more direct way. It makes an evolution in our songwriting, as there are bolder statements and more primary colors — and that’s a positive thing if it is that much more identifiable or relatable to an audience.

DB: You’ve mentioned telling your musicians to avoid playing an A or A flat on “One More for the Road” to avoid clarifying whether it was in a major or minor key — how often do you work to bridge the space between
such things?

I’d never really thought about it that way. This song, quite literally — you’ll call bullshit or laugh — that
instruction is because we were in F and playing an A or A flat would take it out of modal. I couldn’t be trusted in a long solo to stick to one or another because I’m not a good enough guitar player. If I [were to choose major or minor], then [they could] do it — but if you do it, I’ll fuck it up. That was specific for that song. There’s never been another declaration like that in our history, but the idea of working between major and minor is an idea that forms one of our unique qualities to the beginning. Less so than in the improvisational space in “One More for the Road” but in a more conscious space like in “Michigan, or “Monterey,” I play with accidentals in my lead guitar playing (the
space filling I do while Joey and I sing — it’s a misnomer). There are accidentals in my playing that create and release tension and create confusion over the more clear chord choices Joey uses as a skeleton for our songs. Our harmony choices and my guitar choices confuses what those lines or boundaries are. It isn’t a heady musical process, but the
pursuit of making this music feel like we want it to feel. It’s purely a musical exercise, something done out of instinct or sheer expression. The clearest example is in the chorus of our song “Michigan”: the main harmony is a flat five…if you go on YouTube and look at covers, they sing a wrong note. The one I sing is not natural to the voice. We started it
normal, but as we worked up the song, I told Joey to go back and I dropped it a half note. It was weird, but not enough that you had to think about it. A lot of music made today is written to be understood on an intellectual
level, and I’ve always hated it because it makes me use the part of my brain that I wanted to turn off. When I flat that note, it’s different and unsettling, but close enough that people feel it, rather than think about it. This work of blurring the lines of major and minor — if there’s anything that makes our band unique, it’s these movements to be felt and heard. You’ve mentioned that some of the songs on this album are more personal — more intimate, more vulnerable — than ones in the past. How do you think that does (or doesn’t) relate to your decision to bring in other musicians? And how has that affected performing the songs live? There’s one difference, and it is fundamental — it goes in the opposite direction that the question asserts. It’s not that them being there influences the idea to be more clear, more personal, or more on the line. The fact that they’re there requires that you do so. For those songs, done up with a band, means that the songs need to be compelling whether one voice and guitar or with a band and backup singers. Before, the songs — you could write the chords and the notes, and if we didn’t record it, someone else could play the song. If you’re endeavoring to write that song and the lyrics that accompany the song, you need to go a little deeper, write in more primary colors, and lean into that side. Because that was the context, we needed songs with that much more of an identity. I don’t think that it’s better or worse, just different. That, in combination with the
time period in which we wrote the songs: life changed in a way that we wrote more personally. I had a cancer
diagnosis— thankfully everything now is okay — which fundamentally changed how I look at life and myself, and Joey had a second kid which flipped his world upside down, and obviously there’s a lot going on in our world. We’re both 37 this year. And this is a different scenario in which we write songs. How has that changed your performance?
Does the band play exclusively on the new songs, or do they fill in through some of your previous work? We do a mixture of both. A lot of the old material is re-envisioned through the band, and it’s been delightful to reinterpret the
songs in a different way. It changes how they’re performed.e can tap into something more fundamental about those older songs. I find personally that I step to the mic and sing them in a different way, a more direct way, a way that feels like you can rely on the lyrical content more than relying on me and Joey, two guitars, voices doing all the work. It casts the songs in a new light — not better or worse, just a different one. This work of blurring the lines of
major and minor — if there’s anything
that makes our band unique, it’s these
movements to be felt and heard.
Culturally speaking, what do you think
the role of music — particularly folk
music — is relative to discussing the
truth of human relationships? Do you
see it as exposing problems, as providing
solace, opening new opportunities? Can
the same song do things in multiple ways
for different people at different times?
Folk music is such an interesting term
because it encompasses so much. By
definition, folk music pre-exists anybody
ever thinking about music in this way.
It’s a musical representation of common
folk and community, and an expression
that isn’t even musical — it comes from
other personal and societal music. Music
predates any other modern language. If
you look at it anthropologically, cavemen
grunted. Communication was inflection
and music, prior to words. Here we are,
so many years later, and there’s still a
necessity to communicate in that way.
It’s taken a lot of iterations throughout
human history. In recent history, it’s
become “Folk Music” with capital letters,
and the Great American Folk Revival of
the 60’s and 70’s with Dylan in the center.
If you go before that, the progenitor was
Guthrie and what was happening a few
decades earlier, how it intersects with
society and popular culture. If that isn’t
clear, you can fast forward to the aughts
with Old Crow Medicine Show, Mumford
and Sons, the Avett Brothers. It gets woven
in differently than Dylan and Baez.
The one that Joey and I tap into as a band
is folk music as a place where you can write
from you heart, an honest place, a world
view with a personal narrative in a way
that sometimes is preachy, sometimes not.
For us, it isn’t meant to be that. We don’t
write rallying cries the way that social
protest music from another era did. But it
is personal, and serious, and is meant to
be taken seriously. The way that society
understands folk music as a space protects
that — it’s the context that lets us write
songs that people will take seriously.
The Milk Carton Kids
with Vera Sola
Monday, March 4 at 8 p.m.
$45 Golden Circle
Reserved Seating + fees
$33.50 Zone 2 Reserved
Seating + fees
For ticketing and more
information please go to
englert.org/events or call
the Englert Box Office at
319.688.2653