Five questions and answers with Califone’s Tim Rutili

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Chicago experimental rock band Califone has been challenging music lovers with its eclectic, ambitious, enigmatic grooves since 1997. But with its latest undertaking, “All My Friends are Funeral Singers,” the band is challenging itself, going places few bands have gone before.

“Funeral Singers” is the name of Califone’s latest album, out last October on Dead Oceans, and also the title of frontman Tim Rutili’s film directorial debut, about a fortune teller living in a house filled with spirits. The two go very much hand in hand, to the point that Califone is performing the album as essentially a live soundtrack to the film, including a hometown gig at Lincoln Hall March 9. (Those more interested in the back catalog can see a straight up show March 10).

Chicago Beat contacted Rutili to answer five pressing questions via e-mail.

Chicago Beat: So which came first, the album or the film?

Tim Rutili: Songs started first but once it got rolling both the script and the album fed into each other at the same time. We finished the album in March and shot the film in April.

CB: You’ve done albums, and you’ve done film. Why did you decide to merge the two art forms together for ‘Funeral Singers?’

TR: It felt like a completely natural thing for us to do. Once the story and the songs started taking shape we almost had no choice but to move forward with it.

CB: What were the biggest challenges in creating an album and a film that were intertwined with each other as they are in this project? Talk about putting telling the story through music specifically and the experience shooting your first full-length film?

TR: The biggest challenges were letting go of the concept of the film to make the album sequence flow naturally and stand on its own as an album. Also editing the film and adding in all the musical elements and peripheral characters without losing the story was a balancing act and took a bit of finesse.

Shooting the film was kind of insane. We had 11 days to do it all. We prepared as much as possible, put our heads down and did it. We were lucky to have an experienced crew, and some really good actors to carry us through it.

CB: What about merging the two projects in a live show? Talk about that process, and how you think playing the music live in accompaniment impacts the power of the film, and how screening the film impacts your live show.

TR: Scoring the film live adds a different energy to the film, in the same way that seeing it in a room full of people is different than watching it at home. From the start, there were thre different parts to this (album, film and live show with film) that needed to work together and inform each other but each had to be strong enough to stand on its own.

Once we had an edit and started working with the band on the live score it came alive in a different way. With califone, live shows and even our approach in the studio has always been very improvisational. The live score for ‘Funeral Singers’ is extremely precise. It’s turning out that when we play shows these days without the film we are getting louder and more unrestrained as a reaction to the control it takes to play to the film. Also, bringing an audience into the story has been great and we are figuring out that the story is making some of the abstract elements that have been in our music from the start make sense –finally.

CB: What do you hope people will take away from your Chicago shows this week?

TR: A lovely evening and the will to live?

Califone plays at Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Ave. March 9 and 10. Both shows are at 9 p.m. and cost $15 in advance, $18 at the door. Click here for March 9 tickets (the film/music performance) and here for March 10 tickets (the straight up concert).