It’s 11 a.m. and Britt Daniel is at his Portland home. It would be nice to imagine the deep-voiced songwriter and Spoon frontman stumbling into a café mid-morning to sip coffee with this Pacific Northwest city’s ever-growing roster of musicians that includes the Dandy Warhols, The Shins and ex-Sleater-Kinney member Carrie Brownstein — like a “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” painting with hipster credibility.

But not today. Not now. No, it’s 11 a.m., which means that it’s time for him to embark on the day’s interview schedule. This Thursday in mid-November, when the singer chats with Chicago Innerview, is no different than most other days in for Daniel — at 11 a.m., he hops on the phone with a journalist or two or several from across the globe, kicks his feet up, takes a deep drag of a cigarette, and prepares for a barrage of questions.

“Britt does his interviews at 11 a.m.,” the band’s publicist was quick to point out while confirming the meeting. Not because he’s fickle, or a time-obsessed prima donna. Rather because since 2002, his life has been a whirlwind of acclaim, with press requests and appearances to boot. “Today, I have only one interview,” said Daniel. “Usually it’s more, like two or three. When the new record [2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga] just came out, it was a lot busier. And when I do overseas press it could be six to eight interviews a day.”

That hasn’t always been the case for this Texas native. Flashback almost seven years to a pre-Garden State pop-culture environment, before Gap models sported Converse All-Stars and just before the SXSW Music Festival became Cancun for music geeks on spring break. Daniel was preparing what would later become his band’s semi-breakout release, Girls Can Tell, for then-home Elektra Records. Despite being signed to part of Warner Music Group, the singer was far from living in the lap of major-label luxury. Daniel was splitting time between his stalled rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and chugging along in corporate America. It’s a far cry from today’s 11 a.m. routine, and it would get much worse before it got better. After a falling out at work and finding himself dropped from Elektra with a mostly recorded new album, the frontman relocated to New York.

“There was never a time that I thought, ‘Hey, I’m not going to make any more music.’ But if there ever was a time that I thought that maybe nobody would ever hear another one of my records, this was it,” Daniel said. “I had moved to a new city with what I thought was the best thing that I had ever done, and wasn’t sure if it ever would get released.”

Luckily, Daniel only was half right. Girls Can Tell was the best thing that the band had recorded up to that point, with its Elvis Costello-like structures, swallowed vocals and herky jerky rhythms. It was then that the group first began using guitars as accent instruments instead of focal points, a result of their first studio time with producer Mike McCarthy, a relationship still in tact today more than seven years later. But Daniel was wrong in thinking that the Girls Can Tell tapes would go unheard, as they found a home on the stellar North Carolina-based Merge Records. It was a natural fit. The label, started by seminal indie-pop act Superchunk, was carving out its niche as a home to left-of-the-center pop outfits with experimental tendencies. With a few tweaks and a couple new songs, Girls Can Tell would prove the first step in the sprint to 11 a.m. on this November afternoon.

As the band was set to release its second album for its new label, Kill The Moonlight, Daniel found himself quitting his last “real” job — a position copy editing online books that he was able to maintain from a laptop from tour. It was a turning point for the musician, and more importantly for Spoon and all of the band’s peers. Acts that once had been dropped from major labels were finding financial and critical stability on independent imprints. It was the same year that Wilco battled Reprise Records over the commercial appeal of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot en route to much more success on the much smaller Nonesuch. Jimmy Eat World was reaping the rewards of the platinum-selling, self-released Bleed American to the tune of a multi-album deal with Interscope. Matador Records darlings Interpol were battling for the top slot of many year-end “best of” lists, while quintessential DIY-turned-mainstreamers Nirvana saw a resurgence.

It was a moment primed for a quirky band from Austin, Texas, with a wiry red-haired frontman, and Merge seemed to know it upon the release of Kill The Moonlight. The masses were starving for individuality, and every record store owner, magazine publisher, FM music director and TV/film music supervisor was poised to glom onto this wave of cool. While frat boys began hitting goodwill stores in search of ironic t-shirts and cheerleaders started looking twice at boys in skinny jeans with angled haircuts, Spoon was back in the studio prepping 2005’s stellar Gimme Fiction.

“You should never do something musically to keep an audience,” said Daniel. “You should always record music that you want to make. Bands that maybe hold back or do things to make A&R guys happy are setting themselves up for a pretty nasty fall.”

Although each Spoon album since the McCarthy partnership has delved a bit more into odd instrumentation — such as the beat-boxing track, “Stay Don’t Go,” or the thumping beats underplaying falsetto vocals on “I Turn My Camera On” — the only drastic change in the past five years has been the band’s commercial appeal. Now, a band that once had been dropped for its lack of sales found itself slotted at No. 44 on the Billboard “Top 200″ and at No. 1 on the Billboard “Top Independent Albums” charts. If the commercial success of Gimme Fiction was a surprise, when this year’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga cracked the top 10 of and again reached No. 1 on those two respective Billboard lists, it was flat-out jaw-dropping.

“We keep doing new things,” said Daniel. “In October we sold out the Roseland [Ballroom] in New York. I even acknowledged this from stage that night, but it was the biggest place we had ever sold out.”

The performance came a mere two weeks after the quartet had played another historic NYC venue: “Saturday Night Live.” That the band flawlessly ran through the tunes “The Underdog” and “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” was one thing. But that a Merge Records act was gracing a stage previously shared by the likes of Nickelback and Bon Jovi was another thing all together. “I never thought that would happen,” said Daniel. “I still can’t believe it. Even up until the rehearsals I didn’t think it was going to happen. When we started hearing rumblings from our management that this might happen, I was cautious about getting excited because I never expected it to actually go through.”

However, it did. And it solidified Spoon’s reputation for crafting music that serves as a perfect compliment to the screen — whether that screen be late-night TV or the band’s highlighted material on the Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack and Daniel’s score accompaniment, something the songwriter admits to wanting to do more of if time permits.

But for now, his free time is sparse. His four days at home before heading back out on the road will be packed full of writing material for the band’s next record. Refusing to write on the road because of the hectic nature of a tour schedule, Daniel locks in alone time when he can, dedicated to forcing himself to lay down new material. He fits it in somewhere between meeting with friends, catching up on e-mails and taking the occasional nap on his couch.

But never at 11 a.m. That time is for interviews.

Chicago Innerview Magazine, December 2007