Avett Brothers slowly building fan base by being honest, genuine

At times, their throats as are raw as their words.

Then there are moments of quiet reflection, a sudden stillness, with promises whispered in the dark.

These aren't isolated instances -- often, they occur on the same tune.

For the Avett Brothers, a free-range folk/punk/country/kitchen sink trio, any attempts to parse their wide-open repertoire, to draw any distinctions between the aforementioned aesthetics, is largely academic.

"When you talk about punk rock or folk, there's always these arguments about what's a pure punk sound or a pure folk sound," singer/multi-instrumentalist Scott Avett says. "The whole punk rock spirit -- there's a number of sounds that would fall into that. It's much more about, 'Get out of the way, do your thing.' Really, if it's good and it's honest, no matter what, people are going to dig it. If it pushes through with a genuine nature, man, it's gonna gather a crowd, for sure."

Avett isn't speaking in theoretical terms.

Over the past decade, the Avett Brothers (rounded out by Scott's brother Seth, a fellow singer and man of many instruments, and bassist/percussionist Bob Crawford) have built a substantial following at a glacier's pace, slow and steady, until reaching the point that, on this tour, they're playing such renowned venues as New York City's Radio City Music Hall and Nashville's Ryman Auditorium.

Because their tunes don't fit into any one niche, neither does their audience, and as such, the Avett Brothers have been successful in cultivating a fan base directly reflective of their hard-to-pin-down sound.

"We've always been really lucky to not ever have any one type of person" come to our shows, Avett says. "I would laugh sometimes, out of happiness, because when we'd play in a city like Atlanta, and one half of the room would be black T-shirts and tattoos and the other half would be, like, button-up shirts. It's just terrific. In the end, there's a great leveling where, no matter what a person wears or does, we're all of the same makeup."

On their latest disc, 2009's "I And Love And You," the Brothers have created what sounds like a culmination of their career up to this point. It's a dusky, diffuse record, with the Avetts sharing vocal duties and harmonizing with one another over hard-plucked banjo and mandolin lines and some purring organ.

Along the way, they navigate spry piano pop, rootsy Southern rock, stark, heart-on-the-sleeve balladry and touches of high-energy bluegrass.

"Decide what to be and go be it," Scott sings on "Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise," and then proceeds to live up to his words on this uninhibited record.

"There's a seriousness to growing up, and I really do feel like this album was step one into chapter two of this story," Avett says. "I think that it was an introduction to a comfort -- and I don't mean comfort as far as being warm, fed -- but a comfort in getting a little closer to accepting who we are in some realms instead of maybe trying to battle that. As a singer, you start to learn your range, and when you start to learn your range, those limitations are freedom for you. That's just a great thing for an artist to learn, and I think this was the first step of us realizing some of those limitations."

This has been a gradual process, especially for Avett.

He's not a trained musician.

In a way, he fell into all of this, and years later, his feet are still in no danger of touching the ground just yet.

"Since I can remember, I always jumped on any stage that I could get on to entertain somebody or grab attention. I've always been that, before a musician," Avett says. "I'm not the type of guy who can sit down and talk theory or cut heads with any other musician. I'm just somebody who uses music as an expression."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.