To be fair, Farquhar had already offered his fond praise of his father, his friends, his collaborators and his 10-year-old daughter Samira. I asked him how it was being a father and a touring musician. “It’s bad,” he said. “She doesn’t like tours. It creates some distance sometimes. She’s a really creative kid so I’m hoping when she’s a teenager we’ll put her to work. She’s a maximized version of me. She’s really sarcastic and funny. She puts on all these characters to mask how she’s really feeling. She’s a bright, enigmatic little girl. So it’s a joy hanging out with her. When I try to over-parent her that’s when things get fuzzy, so I try to just bask in her glow. She’s into music and jewelry. Making jewelry, kinda. She’s into film. She’s writing some screenplays. She’s always filming and writing things.” He paused glancing around at the nearby stores. “That reminds me, I need to get a new cord for her camera.”

Farquhar has an odd habit of halting and drawing out ‘ee’ sounds in the middle of words as well as inserting unusual pauses between syllables. Perhaps it’s a stretch, but it gives one the impression that he’s breaking everything down into measures and bars, thinking as much about the beat and cadence of what he’s saying as the content. At one point he told me that a song on his upcoming album was inspired by friend and collaborator Giovanni Marks, a.k.a. Subtitle and then retracted it.

“Maybe I’m just telling you that because that’s what I think you need,” he said. “Really it’s all craft. It’s all just rhythm and beats and words and syntax. I farm words. I find words I like and put them together with other words and only afterwards do I realize that I have to make it make sense or at least halfway make sense or half-heartedly make sense. Unfortunately that’s what I spend most of my time doing. I write from a really cold intellectual place: things! and words! and stuff! I think if I wrote from a different place it would probably be better for me emotionally and I’d probably make more money. I’m trying to do ‘things’ less and ‘human’ more. I’m just trying to write better songs.”

Busdriver’s new album Jhelli Beam will be released on June 9 by Anti- Records. Produced by Daedelus and DJ Nobody, the album will include guest appearances by rapper Mikah-9, Nick Thorburn of The Unicorns and guitarist John Dietrich of Deerhoof. Busdriver also recently appeared on Themselves’ theFREEhoudini mixtape available for free download from Anticon.

_{*photos on pages 1, 3, 4, & 5 by Matt Proghovnick and courtesy of Anti-}