From the Vault: Fine Print – Sunny Day Real Estate Frontman Jeremy Enigk’s OK Bear
Isn’t Jeremy Enigk adorable? Cute as a bear, the softhearted might even say.
In the off-chance you’ve never heard of him before – or the even offer-chance (?) that you’ve never heard of Sunny Day Real Estate, the recently reunited post-rock pioneers – Enigk doesn’t look like this anymore. He’s all grown up now. In fact, the sweet-sounding singer/songwriter is actually celebrating his 35th birthday on Thursday, as the stalkers among us are probably well aware.
Since the above photograph was snapped, Enigk has put out a backpack’s worth of albums. But his recently released solo effort, OK Bear, actually marks the first time he’s slapped an image of himself onto a cover.
Why? Well, it’s funny you ask, because we just asked Enigk during his recent IndiePit interview, the first part of which we posted last week (you might wanna read that article before going forward with this one, since in it he provided all the 411 on OK Bear). In addition to what you read prior, we also chatted with him in detail about the album imagery and beyond.
So, for starters, whaddup with that album cover?
“Ramon Rodrigo – he’s my friend who actually set up the whole [project] in Spain – that was his idea. I had done a tour documentary of me touring in Spain, and he needed some pictures of me as a kid thrown in there. And he was really into the idea of using one of those pictures as the cover of the record.”
As it turns out, the picture couldn’t be a better match with the album name, even though it wasn’t planned that way. “It was all totally random, but when you put it all together, there’s no choice but to say it fits,” Enigk said. “[But] the lyrics really don’t apply to me as a child. There’s really no connection there.”
Enigk acquired the photo via his mom, who is credited with the pic in the album liner notes. “I believe the cover photo was probably taken when I was 7 or 8,” he guesstimated. “It was the first day of school, ’cause I was wearing my new school clothes, which I wasn’t allowed to wear until the first day of school. So I was really excited.
“Also, when I was younger, a lot of my friends called me ‘Jer-Bear,’ ” Enigk said. “The girlfriends and stuff. (The guys, I don’t think they felt comfortable with that.) So, on a personal level, that photo actually connects for me.”
Enigk added that the house outside of which the photo was taken was located in a town about 30 minutes north of Seattle:
“You can’t really see the house. There’s a house way behind me, that’s a neighbor’s. But the patio on which I’m standing is the house I grew up in till I was about 15. And the van was my dad’s old van that he used to take to these van fairs. Like, these gigantic fairs where people with vans would go – you know, hundreds of vans would park for the weekend. And there would be a festival – games, drinking. People would hang out and party. Dancing. I miss that whole concept.”
Inside the booklet are additional pictures crafted by up-and-coming artist Jacqueline Johnson. “This is the first time I’ve worked with her,” Enigk said. “My manager started reaching out to artists a while back … and she was one person who sent in her ideas and stuff. And she’s really good at what she does. [She crafted for us] the kind of picture a kid would draw,” which dovetailed perfectly with the cover.
Johnson might be working on a new JeremyEnigk.com site as well. “There’s been talk about that for a while,” he said.
But unfortunately, everything didn’t go so smoothly with the package.
“The album artwork is actually messed up,” he pointed out. “The CD, the actual music, is in the right order, but ‘Sandwich Time’ [track 7] and ‘In a Look’ [track 6] are switched on the artwork. It should be the other way around. There were a handful of records pressed that have that mistake on it. As soon as they sell, it’s going to be fixed.
“It was something that I noticed waaay too late, and I was bummed out,” he sighed. “It was, like, ‘Not again.’ ‘Cause [former project] the Fire Theft had a similar sort of thing happen, and then [on his 2006 solo release] World Waits, one of the song titles was spelled wrong. ‘Canons’ was supposed to be C-A-N-O-N-S but ended up being ‘Cannons,’ like ship cannons.”
Ship cannons make us think of the Spanish Armada. And, wouldn’t ya know it, OK Bear has a different pressing in Spain, where he recorded it. Ramon Rodrigo released the effort over there through his Cydonia Records.
“The Spanish version has a completely different cover,” Enigk said. “You can only get it in Spain. Well, I’m sure you can get it here – you’d just have to order it from Cydonia Records, I’d imagine. But it’s the same picture of me standing there … just different colors and artwork surrounding the picture.”
Listen to “Mind Idea”:
And “Life’s Too Short”:
[This article was originally published on IndiePit in 2009.]
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