Photo courtesy of Califone Part pop, part folk, and part classical group Califone creates atmospheric music with just four members and many, many instruments.

Califone has been to Tucson before, but this was before a new sound detonated in their latest album Quicksand/Cradlesnakes. Tim Rutili is the sweet talker for Califone. His voice is the music of old pipes; it stirs you from sleep, and makes you call out "who's there?" His lyrics are strange and beautiful: "braid your sins into its mane/ and kick it to the county line." Califone is music for driving on highways between barbed wire fences, for watching landscapes go by, and for folks going about their daily routines and thinking, "This world is amazing."

Califone talked to the Wildcat while on tour. The band plays Club Congress, 311 E. Congress, on the 14th with Clem Snide. Tickets are $7 and the show starts at 9 p.m. Call 622-8848 for more information.

Wildcat: How do you view playing concerts out of the whole music scheme?

Rutili: We treat playing shows completely different from being in a studio so you really figure out what the songs are about after playing them every night. It is really fun, things change and are completely different on the record than the way we treat them live.

Wildcat: You guys use all types of handmade, homemade instruments on your newest album. What do you bring with you on the road?

Rutili: We have four people and ten instruments. Jim is playing fiddle, banjo, guitar. Our drummer Joe has a sampler and horns and all sorts of stuff back there and Ben, the percussionist has · I don't even know what he has. He's got garbage. I mean, he plays garbage. Like paper bags and baby dolls. There is all sorts of things going on.

Wildcat: Would you consider Califone a blues rock band like you have been labeled in the past?

Rutili: It doesn't feel like that. Sometimes it feels like a pop band and other times weird folk music and other times classical.

Wildcat: What musician would you pee your pants to play with?

Rutili: I would love to play with Keith Richards or Tom Waits. That's about it for me. Or Bob Dylan, too.

Wildcat: Did you see Dylan's new movie, "Masked and Anonymous?"

Rutili: I did see it. I love Bob Dylan so I liked it but it was totally weird. It's the only time I ever liked Val Kilmer in a movie. Just the weird background stuff like the Penelope Cruz character was talking to Ghandi and the Pope.

Wildcat: What places influenced the songs on Quicksand/Cradlesnakes?

Rutili: To me a lot of it is suburban. You have this cluttered crazy inner life and you are in this place where people don't go outside. Where everything outside is perfect and a lot of it's really about that conflict for me.

Wildcat: How did the band get its name?

Rutili: When we were working on the first album we didn't have a name and it wasn't coming, And we were running vocals and guitars and drums and everything through this speaker on a turntable and it was called a Califone.

Wildcat: What do you want your audience to leave with after a show?

Rutili: To leave with Joy and a little joy to do something creative themselves. Maybe it will make them look at us and go Îwow, if these weirdos can do this then I can.'

Wildcat: Has this album changed directions for the band at all?

Rutili: It was the beginning of a pretty fertile period that we are still in. We just finished another record that will be release in January. So that record just made me want to record more and play more.

Wildcat: If your music smelled like something what would it smell like?

Rutili: I think it would smell like weird Asian food. A nice soup with mint in it. A nice Vietnamese soup with mint in it.