Austin-based band Monahans do to music what poetry does to words. Tonight, they'll bring their stylin' tunes to the Tractor. Also on the bill is local songwriter J. Tillman and the very pretty Zera Marvel. We called up Monahans frontman Greg last week during their brief stint with the Cowboy Junkies to find out why he thinks people should come to tonight's show.

9 p.m. // Tractor Tavern // $7

Where are you right now on the road?
Right now we’re in San Francisco doing a few shows with the Cowboy Junkies in Northern California. We’re doing those as a duo, and then the rest of the band is going to come up here and join us. We’re going to do Seattle and work our way back down the coast to Los Angeles. Our drummer lives in San Francisco now, so this is sort of our home base out here.

So how did you get hooked up with the Cowboy Junkies? How has that been?
It’s been great. This is the second time we’ve toured with them a little bit. They actually do Waterloo records in Austin. Somebody gave him a CD and he liked it, and emailed me once. We’ve kind of corresponded a bit over the years. Of course it was great to hear from him out of the blue, because we’ve been fans for a long time. In fact, on the record he heard, there’s a reference to [one of their albums] in one of the songs. So, anyway, it’s been kind of a thrill for us to get to play some shows sometimes with those guys.

Tell us a little about the Undertow Music Collective, and how you got involved with that...
Well, they’re kind of a St. Louis-based company…they don’t operate like a traditional label, but they formed as a label and management company. But it’s really more of a network of artists who can collaborate with each other and share their resources. It’s very much a do-it-yourself operation. It’s a way to get yourself heard by association with other artists.

It seems like there’s a lot of that going on. Do you feel like that’s a better direction than trying to get signed to a major label these days?
Yeah, I do. It seems like this is a real interesting time. I don’t think anybody has a clear picture of where [the music industry] is going to be. But you spend a lot of time working on records and how songs work together and that’s kind of how I was influenced. I grew up listening to records, but the format is changing and I think Undertow is right there on the forefront of it. I think they’ve got their finger on the right pulse of what’s going on, so we’ll see what happens. I think everybody’s kind of testing the water right now.

Where did the inspiration come from for Low Pining...or do you just wait until you have enough songs to make a record?
We had played for several years and we got to a point where we felt like we needed to start from scratch creatively. [Our new band name] Monahans is named after sand fields—kind of a white sand in West Texas. Initially that was a nice clean slate, and then we also had a song called "Monahans" on another record that was an instrumental, kind of a jam. So that’s where we started. We didn’t have any preconceived notions about making a record in a series of what we’re doing. It’s never about writing a song on guitar or crafting a song….we started out with a lot of rhythms and decided to just create music focusing more on the negative space, and less on words. A couple of months into it, we started getting fragments of words. Not necessarily fine-tuning the songs, just words. Those started developing a little bit. I think there’s a balance between songs, lyrics, and the music tells as much of the story as the words do.

So the music came first?
Yeah, the music came first and steered the direction of the songs.

What about the title Low Pining? Where did that come from?
I think a lot of what we were thinking of…I don’t know how to describe it, really. But that feeling of being a kid, kind of detached from some of the harsh realities that are out there. You know, sometimes you can just play in the dirt and forget about the other stuff that’s going on. I think Low Pining was kind of that idea. We’re sort of down here in our safety zone looking at everything else, trying to keep it from world events and politics, and all that kind of thing, and just having a little escape. I think another way of phrasing Low Pining would be "little prayers." That’s kind of a way I think of a lot of these songs, as little prayers. [laughs] Music’s kind of hard to talk about.

Austin has a killer music scene. How much of an influence and inspiration do you take from the other bands in town?
There’s really a great feeling there, unlike some other places where you have songwriters who hire people to play with them. Austin’s very much a collaborative scene. Artists are there because they want to play, and they want to play with a lot of different people. So there’s a lot of camaraderie between the bands. It doesn’t seem so much like a competition as it does in some other places. Like in Dallas…they had their own thing 15-20 years ago when it was emerging, it seemed to be competitive thing. At least, that’s the point it got to. So Austin’s a nice breakaway from that.

What kind of music would you say you guys play? How would you describe it to people in Seattle that may not know what you’re doing, and need an excuse to go out on a Tuesday night?
Well we try to create little sonic landscapes. It’s indie rock, I guess, for a lack of a better term. But the reason we called it Monahans was that escapist mentality, digging open spaces that we get a lot of in Texas, that we like. But it’s still a rock band, but we let the ambiance and the beats drive it.

Do you think there’s a big difference between poetry and music, song lyrics?
I guess it’s pretty similar, but I don’t know…I mean poetry, you can maybe be a little bit more descriptive and more specific in the references you make writing poetry. Whereas music, you can leave things more open to interpretation. We’re trying to focus on that side, leaving it open for interpretation and letting the music take it. Just give enough specifics to give someone an anchor, a reference point. Then, from there, they can kind of live in that world wherever they see it. That’s what we like to try to get out of it, as well.

Is there anything else you want people in Seattle to know before they come to your show?
Not really. I just hope people….there’s always a lot going on in Seattle, so we’re looking forward to getting out there. We hope people will come out and check it out. We’re working on a new record now, though. We’re pretty close to being done with it, actually. We’re still playing a lot of Low Pining stuff, but we’ll be playing some of the new stuff we’ve been writing. Hopefully we’ll have something new out this year, as well.