The Avett Brothers Are Coming to Columbus, Georgia. Here's Our Conversation with Bassist & Historian Bob Crawford.

6 min read

*The Avett Brothers, with Bob Crawford appearing at the far right. Image courtesy of RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.*

The Avett Brothers are coming to Columbus, Georgia this month to perform live at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.

On October 8, the acclaimed band will take the stage at the RiverCenter for a 7:30 p.m. performance, bringing more than two decades of music and members of their devoted fan base to the heart of Uptown Columbus.

For longtime bassist Bob Crawford, however, this particular stop offers an opportunity to connect with Columbus audiences both on and off the concert stage.

*Bob Crawford. Image courtesy of the artist's website.*

Before joining The Avett Brothers at RiverCenter, Crawford will make a special appearance at the Columbus Public Library earlier on October 8, where audiences will encounter another side of the musician as he steps into a role that has become an increasingly significant part of his creative life: historian and author.

At first glance, a library conversation about American history and a live performance with The Avett Brothers might seem like two distinctly different events.

Talk to Crawford, though, and the connection between them becomes remarkably clear. “I hope I can talk about history the same way we present our music,” Crawford told The Columbusite. “It’s a very human experience.”

For Crawford, that humanity is at the center of both.

History, he acknowledged, can easily be perceived as a dry subject, particularly when the people who lived it begin to feel fundamentally different from us. Crawford wants to close that distance.

“The past is a foreign land,” he said. “I hope that I can bring humanity to that and I can have people recognize that we are the same people that lived, you know, 150, 160 years ago.”

It’s a perspective that offers Columbus audiences an interesting opportunity this October: to experience the same artist in two very different cultural spaces.

First, they’ll meet Crawford through conversation at the Columbus Public Library. Then, on October 8, the conversation gives way to music as he joins The Avett Brothers on the RiverCenter stage.

While Crawford’s work as a historian may be less familiar to some fans than the music he has spent 25 years making with The Avett Brothers, he explained to us that the two pursuits grew, quite literally, alongside one another on the road.

FROM THE ROAD TO THE PAGE

“The band has always been on the road,” Crawford said. “What we’ve done and what we’ve created and what we’ve built has happened on the road.”

Crawford is quick to point out the realities of making a living as a working musician. For The Avett Brothers, much of that work has happened through years of touring.

“It is a lot of elbow grease,” Crawford joked, “and a lot of auto grease and a lot of oil.”

But life on the road also comes with something Crawford eventually learned to use to his advantage: time.

As his fascination with American history grew, the hours between arriving in a city and heading to soundcheck became opportunities to read, research and eventually write.

“That downtime was the time I could use to first read,” he said, “and then to read and think, and then to read, write and think.”

These days, Crawford said, he might wake around 6:15 or 6:30 in the morning while on tour. With soundcheck not happening until 2 or 3 in the afternoon, he can spend much of the day working.

“I might work from 8:00 to 2:00,” he said. “And that’s a full day’s work at writing and doing research.”

Rather than viewing his work in music and history as competing creative pursuits, Crawford sees a natural evolution between them.

“You think about music a lot, and you play, and you write, and you become a musician,” Crawford said. “Well, once you’re on the road and you’re actually doing that, you’re still thinking all the time.”

Eventually, he said, “my artistic driver inside of me, just moved over to history.”

*The Avett Brothers. Image courtesy of RiverCenter for the Performing Arts.*

25 YEARS OF CONNECTING WITH AN AUDIENCE

If life with The Avett Brothers gave Crawford the time to become a historian and writer, it also gave him another skill that has proven particularly useful in this chapter of his career: knowing how to stand in front of a room full of people.

The Avett Brothers have been a band for 25 years, and even after a quarter century of performing, Crawford says one familiar feeling remains. “I still get nervous walking out on stage,” he said, “but there’s also a comfort being on stage.”

He has found that same comfort during book events.

Crawford describes himself as deeply absorbed in his subject matter, which makes talking about history both natural and enjoyable. Decades spent performing, speaking with audiences and participating in interviews have also given him years of experience connecting with people.

That connection becomes particularly interesting when fans who have known Crawford through The Avett Brothers begin following him into his historical work.

Crawford hopes his writing reaches well beyond the band's existing audience. He wants his book to find people he describes as “historically curious,” including readers who may have no connection to The Avett Brothers at all.

But when longtime fans do attend a book event, Crawford says there is already a relationship waiting for him.

“There’s a rapport built in,” he said. “I feel like I can very much be myself.”

“The fans of the band, I feel like they know me,” Crawford continued. “We have a very, I would say, comfortable relationship with our fans on the whole.”

That familiarity changes the atmosphere of a book event, too. “It just makes everything feel more conversational,” said Crawford.

FINDING THE HUMAN BEING IN HISTORY

Crawford’s current historical work takes on an ambitious subject: John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States.

“I've written about the sixth president of the United States, who was a failed one-term president, and I did so hoping that I could bring people along,” Crawford said.

He described the relationship between writer and reader almost as an act of trust, with the writer's role being to say, "Trust me on this. Follow me here. I’m telling a story."

Crawford could have chosen a more obvious subject, particularly considering the life he has spent on the road with one of American music’s most recognizable bands.

“I could have written a book about being in a band and personal events,” he said, “but I found this to be more intriguing.”

What drew him in was not simply presidential history, but the complicated human being behind it.

Crawford points to a man who was intensely driven and born into extraordinary expectations. His father was the second president of the United States and helped write the Declaration of Independence. His mother, Crawford noted, was equally formidable and placed significant expectations on her son’s education, study and eventual service to the young nation.

“He had a lot of pressure that came from his family,” Crawford said.

He was also shaped by tremendous personal loss, including the deaths of children.

A remarkable diary, kept from adolescence until his death at age 80 and spanning some 14,000 pages, offered Crawford another way into that humanity.

“He talks about his depression, what we would today think of as clinical depression, in the pages of his diary,” Crawford said.

For Crawford, those deeply personal writings collapsed some of the distance between the nineteenth century and the present.

“It’s just very easy to connect with,” he said. “It’s just very easy to empathize with.”

That may also be one of the clearest connections between Crawford the musician and Crawford the historian.

Both forms ask an audience to listen. Both rely on storytelling. And both can remind us that, across generations and centuries, the human experience may be far more familiar than we think.

FROM THE LIBRARY TO RIVERCENTER

Columbus audiences will have the unusual opportunity to experience both sides of Crawford’s creative life on October 8.

For an artist whose creative life increasingly moves between music and history, the pairing of Crawford’s two Columbus appearances feels fitting.

First comes conversation at the Columbus Public Library. Then, on October 8, Crawford returns to the role audiences know best when he joins The Avett Brothers on the RiverCenter stage.

And while Crawford hasn’t yet arrived in Columbus, he’s already taken notice of the welcome. “Everybody I’ve spoken to from Columbus has been very much the same enthusiasm and hospitality and welcoming nature,” he said.

Then, perhaps appropriately for someone who has built a second creative life around curiosity, Crawford offered an observation of his own.

“It sounds like there’s something really great going on in Columbus.”

On October 8, Columbus, Georgia's audiences will have two opportunities to show him exactly what that is. ◼️