Kids cut down on time for composing

Faun Fables will open for Rasputina.

“Early in the morning is typical of my available time to do any biz work,” McCarthy says. “My girls sleep in a little floor bed 10 feet away from me. At this point, we’re very acclimated to being on tour and in a good rhythm for sleep. Nils often leafs through comic books, but he likes to have some quiet autonomous time taking in neat things.”

The duo have been working together for nearly a decade, and their last album, “Light of a Vaster Dark,” was released in 2010.

McCarthy says in the past two years, the duo – who also are life partners – have traveled across the world touring. Now she’s hoping to write some new music.

“The time I have to create anything except mothering is very limited nowadays,” she explains. “So when those windows open, the wellspring overflows. I just began opening it, getting ready for this tour. I’m a songwriter that really has to live for a while before I have something to write about again, and this stuff has been assembling for about four years of motherhood. Motherhood and time on a large forgotten ranch where we had our girls. I’m eager to return home and work on it. I brought my papers with me, but this tour hasn’t proven to be a time I can work on any writing.”

McCarthy says the way she writes music has changed. She explains that her flow is surer, when it kicks in.

“I’m still able to have melody leap out with different ‘settings,’ different inspirations. I still have music and musicians inspire me, and point me in new directions,” she says. “I guess I’m less of an imitator now, and use inspirations as things that bust down walls and expand dimensions of myself more. Things are internalized and more confidently made my own. There’s a bigger wellspring to draw from, there’s more of my self now, the older I get.”

McCarthy began Faun Fables as a solo artist, but met Frykdahl and the band became a duo. She says while she was a soloist, she worked sparsely and didn’t have a set sound and was in a transition musically.

“Really, I was just starting to decipher my visions. He felt like an exciting puzzle piece,” she explains. “He brings an unrest to the music, movement. Over time, we feel like a well-oiled machine. It is so easy to work with him. It is something we don’t get a lot of time to do nowadays to just sit and explore writing a song. As parents, it’s easy to put such activity on the backburner; the day to day is so intensive. But when we do make time for it, it feels like the kiss of life.”

While the duo continues to tour, McCarthy says the band will spend the winter writing and recording for a new album in 2013.

“I am happy to serve a force in me that gives me such pleasure, satisfaction and continues to give that to some others as well,” she explains. “The quality of the work, collaborations and the time spent at it is much more important.”

Rasputina
With Faun Fables
WHEN: 9:30 Friday, Oct. 21
WHERE: Launchpad, 618 W. Central
HOW MUCH: $14 at www.holdmyticket.com or 886-1251