Andrew Bird's Highflying Folk

By 2005, the size of the crowds at Bird's shows had mushroomed. Last summer, he played for 13,000 in Chicago's Millennium Park. The massive hometown show went well, thanks in part to Oprah. "She had done a special about the Olympics that day and left these huge TV screens up in the park," Bird says. "We got to use them for our show."

Today, Bird has the flu. After lunch, he treats it with a hot toddy, followed by a glass of Maker's Mark. He fears his rigorous schedule — which includes gigs at Carnegie Hall and on Letterman, and a tour that runs through April — will somehow land him in the hospital. He fears he'll play shows in which nothing special happens, nothing to differentiate one night from the last. Of course, he also fears not being in front of the crowds. "I'm afraid of downtime, honestly," he says. "The fact that people come out of their houses and are coming together in a communal way for me... that's pretty cool."

[From Issue 1072 — February 19, 2009]

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