In the summer of 2003, Arcade Fire went out on a tiny East Coast tour, playing to rooms that started small. Very small. At one show in Providence, Will Butler remembers, the audience was two people. A little over a year later, Funeral was out on Merge Records, Pitchfork had sent the band's web traffic through the roof, and they were on their way to closing the tour with three sold-out nights at Montreal's Corona Theatre.
In our latest bonus interview, executive producer Courtney E. Smith sits down with Will to go back to 2004, the year everything changed for Arcade Fire.
Will spent eighteen years in Arcade Fire, from 2003 to 2021, playing synth, bass, guitar, percussion, and just about anything else within reach. He has built a wide-ranging career: an Academy Award nomination with Owen Pallett for the score to Her, two Tony nominations for the songs and orchestrations of the Best Play winner Stereophonic, and three solo albums on Merge, most recently Will Butler + Sister Squares in 2023.
But in 2004, he was a student at Northwestern in Chicago, splitting his time between poetry seminars and a band on the verge of exploding. He tells Courtney about recording Funeral during the cheap overnight hours at Hotel2Tango, Godspeed's You! Black Emperor’s Montreal headquarters, and how the frenetic energy of the 3 a.m. shift seeped into the music. He recalls mailing handmade demo packages to every label the band could think of, including one that later overhauled its entire demo system after realizing Arcade Fire’s demo slipped through the cracks. As Arcade Fire's webmaster, Will also found himself haggling with a hosting company after the Pitchfork review sent traffic soaring.
He looks back on asking his professors if he could miss class to play Late Night with Conan O'Brien, explains why the band was grateful not to have a radio hit, and walks through Arcade Fire's near-blanket "no thanks" policy on licensing, along with the one TV show they jumped at.
Along the way, Courtney and Will discover they grew up in neighboring Texas suburbs at the same time, tuned to the same commercial alt-rock station.
Join the conversation to hear reminders of how much of indie rock's breakthrough ran through music blogs, file sharing, late-night TV, and long drives in a van.
The full interview is available exclusively to subscribers below.