Will Sheff

Will Sheff is the frontman of Okkervil River, whose new album, “Away,” was released in the fall. The band plays a Lincoln Center Songbook concert on Friday, Feb. 3. Credit Photographs by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

I grew up on the grounds of a New Hampshire prep school where both my parents taught. It was my whole universe. I ate every dinner in the school cafeteria. I knew the secret passages, the hidden theater tucked behind the basketball gym backboards, the gap in the hockey rink eaves you could slip through to marvel at the Zamboni. This was the 1980s.

My childhood had been defined by health problems, starting with a life-threatening brush with epiglottitis that required an emergency tracheotomy and intubation. Doctors would laugh with wonder when they’d pull out my hospital file, thicker than a phone book. I had severe asthma, allergies and pronounced nearsightedness that wasn’t discovered until grade school. Perched on the playground at my rough-and-tumble rural elementary school — with my trach scar and Coke-bottle glasses and messed-up teeth, Ventolin inhaler in my pocket — I felt like the chicken with blood on it, the one that the other chickens instinctively want to peck to death.

But I was creative, and I was good with words. By the time it was my turn to attend the prep school, I had become simultaneously insecure and pretentious. I loved to write, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I loved music, but I didn’t know what I wanted to hear.

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