Free from Fleet Foxes, Father John Misty finds his wild, fearless self

• http://clatl.com/atlanta/ImageArchives?by=1223504
• Just an ordinary day with Father John Misty hanging with some model witches in the forest

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Having released seven albums under the established name of “J. Tillman,” Josh Tillman threw his hands up to the flailing project in 2010. Last year he subsequently made the daring (and what looked then to be dumb) choice to quit drumming for an itty bitty band from Seattle called Fleet Foxes. He went on a now-legendary trek in his beloved van, filled his body with drugs, wrote a novel as bearded traveling men tend to do, and finally came out of the midst of a debilitating depression with a newfound realization that he had never really said anything honest about himself in all seven of those albums.

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So he did what few people in this world are able to do: He changed. He took his fear, turned it on its’ head, and had some fun with it. These losses and events seem to have served as fuel to the fire in the resulting masterpiece Fear Fun. Given his penchant for playing with words (courtesy his appetite for multiple and conflicting lyric meanings) and toying with people (his drunken middle-of-the-night Twitter rants to Pitchfork are not to be missed), Father John Misty could be the next Bob Dylan or Jack White, no question. We hit Josh up and talked about his girlfriend turned dominatrix actress, why fear is not so important after all, and why everything that he says in this interview may one day be the foolish vanity of his past - and why he’s not afraid of that, or really anything at all, anymore.

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Father John Misty. With Har Mar Superstar, Damon Moon and the Whispering Drifters. $12. 8p.m. Tues., May 22. Masquerade, 695 North Avenue NE. 404-577-8178. http://www.masqueradeatlanta.com/

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Nancy From Now On is a video in which you deal with a dominatrix in a hotel room, with her eventually cutting your hair and ending up together. How was the filming?

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Father John Misty: That was a really intense one for me because I’ve recently kind of found this real love and companionship and empathy and mutual respect with this woman, Emma, who’s in the video. The video is essentially her and I trying to explore issues of intimacy through the lens of what you might call a radical honesty, or something. It’s actually a very innocent video. For me, if I want to make something about love, I don’t want to fall back on the tropes or cliches of discussing love and intimacy in an artistic context because it’s fucking just not me. That first scene, that really was just me and Emma getting a room at the chateau and saying “let’s just fucking get weird”. We’re both into getting weird, and I wanted a hair cut, and I wanted her to do it. What you see on screen is shockingly this meta whirl wind.

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And it really was paradoxically an innocent video. Considering the concept it could’ve been way less tasteful.

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The music press is so goliath and shit. As far as press is concerned, you really don’t get the benefit of the doubt that you’re actually trying to do something meaningful, so what I ended up seeing was a bunch of “parties with a bunch of dominatraxes and then goes home with a different girl” and I’m like dude, it’s the same girl the whole time you fucking dummie! Like, think about this for a fucking second! I like confronting people with shit like love but with all kinds of symbols that are not particularly precious. Is it possible to portray real understanding and intimacy between two people with mutilating images like domination?

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How long have you and Emma been together?

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Oh, I’m not going to divulge the intimacies of my life here! Laughs

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Laughs What is she like?