Tag: Chris Pandolfi

Telluride, the Most Beautiful Bluegrass Festival, Turns 50

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Notes: Headline image of Béla Fleck & the Flecktones. Scroll to see a photo gallery.

To mark Planet Bluegrass’s 50th annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival, we asked author and music journalist David Menconi to reflect on its impact – and the vibrant community that’s grown up around this iconic roots music event.)

The circuit of roots music festivals in America has some similarities to the Professional Golf Association. There’s at least one festival as well as one golf tournament pretty much every week of the spring, summer and fall. But a few stand out as special and even career-making – golf’s four major championships, and the handful of prestigious main-event music festivals. North Carolina’s MerleFest is like The Masters, the early-season springtime kickoff each April, while late-season festivals like San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass line up nicely with the British Open.

But there’s no question which music festival stands as the summit of the circuit, and not just because it’s in the mountains of Colorado. That’s the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, which marked its 50-year anniversary with the 2023 edition last weekend, June 15-18. The fact that Telluride has prospered for half a century makes Telluride something like golf’s U.S. Open championship, the big one that everybody wants to be a part of. Telluride’s status is something that the musicians who play it are well aware of.

Del McCoury Band performs Thursday, June 15, at the 50th Annual Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

“Festivals and musical trends come and go, and acoustic music has been through some serious peaks and valleys the last 50 years,” says Chris “Panda” Pandolfi, banjo player for Telluride regulars The Infamous Stringdusters, who were on this year’s lineup. “The one mainstay throughout has been Telluride Bluegrass Festival. When we started out, Telluride was the place to be and the definitive crossroads we aspired to, and it still is. Lasting 50 years is an amazing testament to its importance. Bluegrass is more popular than ever now, and Telluride is a big part of that.”

There are literally hundreds of music festivals spanning every style imaginable nowadays, including massive annual gatherings like Bonnaroo in Tennessee and Coachella in the California desert. But there were just a small handful of festivals when Telluride Bluegrass Festival started up in 1973 in the scenic Colorado mountain town that bears its name. And even though Telluride’s daily capacity of 10,000 fans is significantly smaller than a lot of the other major festivals on the circuit, it has still maintained its prestige status.

A drone shot of the festival grounds of Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

In spite of that smaller size, Telluride does have a few structural advantages that set it apart. One is a picturesque setting of surpassing natural beauty on the western edge of Southwestern Colorado’s San Juan Mountains. For performers as well as attendees, there’s not a better view anywhere than what you see at Telluride.

“The view from the crowd is amazing, but from the stage it’s the most incredible view imaginable as an artist,” says Pandolfi. “It’s this multi-layered inspirational snapshot of some of the best music fans, at the best-run festival, in the most beautiful environment in the world. I think a lot of people have this experience, knowing of Telluride as this iconic festival with an outsized reputation, but it more than lives up to the hype. First time we played there, I remember feeling intimidated because so many heavy-weight players we looked up to were there. But as soon as we got onstage, everything clicked.”

Yasmin Williams performs on Telluride Bluegrass Festival’s main stage – its sole stage.

Another major difference between Telluride and its festival peers is scale, and not just in terms of the size of the crowds. Most festivals cram as many performers onto as many stages as possible, all of them running simultaneously, resulting in sensory overload as well as the fear that you’re missing out on something elsewhere. By contrast, Telluride still has just one stage. Every act gets a solo spotlight at Telluride.

“Every year’s festival lineup is an interesting thing,” says Craig Ferguson, who oversees Telluride Bluegrass Festival under the auspices of Planet Bluegrass. “I’ve always said, just watch and it will book itself, and that’s really true. Our process is unique because we have just the one stage and not a bunch of bands, so everybody in the crowd gets to have the same experience. There’s not 18 different stages, so we can create one festivarian experience that everyone shares. We do the booking one act at a time, and we often wind up with interesting combinations.”

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss perform at Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Indeed, those interesting combinations can venture well beyond what you see at a typical folk or bluegrass festival. Along with Sam Bush, Emmylou Harris, Peter Rowan, Del McCoury and The Infamous Stringdusters doing a Sunday morning gospel set, this year’s lineup features ringers like the West African ngoni master Bassekou Koyate and the venerable jam band String Cheese Incident. Some of the anomalous acts from previous years include pop-star jazz pianist Norah Jones, the comedic folk duo Tenacious D and even singer/rapper/actress Janelle Monae. Even with the unlikely acts, the Telluride experience sells itself. It doesn’t take much convincing to get any artist to play.

“Janelle Monae was the most interesting person to talk to,” Ferguson says. “I snuck into her RV just as she was sitting down to a meal by herself, and I was able to sit and talk to her for an hour. I think she would’ve signed up to play every year if she could have, she was so enthralled by the fact that there were elk in the park. It was the most wonderful conversation, and she was great. We’re famous for our curveballs and she was the oddest, I’ll give you that.”

BGS’s own Ed Helms with Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas at Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Apart from the change-ups, multiple generations of musicians in the world of acoustic music count Telluride among their major artistic, career and personal milestones. One of them is Sarah Jarosz, a four-time Grammy winner who first went to Telluride as a fan at age 14 and played it herself for the first time two years later. Telluride is where Jarosz first connected with idols and future peers like Gillian Welch and Abigail Washburn. It’s also where Gary Paczosa saw Jarosz for the first time at her 2007 Telluride debut. He subsequently signed her to Sugar Hill Records and produced her first four albums.

“It’s the quintessential place to see your heroes, and even get to jam with them,” says Jarosz, who is back on this year’s lineup. “You’ll hear, ‘There’s a jam at this house down the street after the shows.’ So I brought my mandolin and before I knew it, Chris Thile was showing up. Also Jerry Douglas, Tim O’Brien. That was really life-changing, this proximity to heroes that allowed me to become friends with them. And even though Telluride is rooted in bluegrass, they always bring in artists from beyond that world – Janelle Monae, Decemberists, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. It feels like anything can happen, and the audience that goes is very supportive of that.”

The stalwart House Band of Telluride Bluegrass Festival.

Still, no matter how far afield the lineup wanders, Telluride is ultimately rooted in bluegrass.

“Bluegrass is a fable, and a team sport,” says Ferguson. “That informs how we create the lineup. Looking to the future, socially as well as musically, we think of bluegrass as an allegory. It’s a context that is invitational to all these other styles, country or jazz or classical, and it complements all of them. That remains the heart and soul of this festival, surrounding bluegrass with these other complimentary musics. We are fortunate to be of service to the festivarian community. It’s an annual privilege to see how much it brings to people’s lives, the connection to community.”

All photos by Maya Benko, courtesy of IVPR

Tray Wellington Shares a List of Banjo Players Thinking Outside the Box

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

North Carolina musician Tray Wellington is fresh off a nomination for this year’s IBMA New Artist of the Year, following the release of his full-length debut album Black Banjo. Still in his early 20s, Wellington pulls from a myriad of influences — on his latest album he cites jazz as the major influence of his progressive bluegrass style. Many other banjo players of this younger generation are using the influence of genre and blurred genre lines, adapting and subverting narrative and traditions, and utilizing sheer unrestrained creativity to operate outside the traditional confines of the instrument.

In honor of BGS Banjo Month, Wellington gathered a collection of current artists who are thinking outside the box, creating their own voice on the banjo in new and innovative ways, and striving to make the banjo a better-known and appreciated sound.

Photo Credit: Dan Boner

We’re giving away a Recording King Songster Banjo in honor of Banjo Month! Enter to win your very own RK-R20 here.

Chris Pandolfi and Drew Becker Embrace the Infamous Stringdusters’ Side Hustles

Posted on by Editor

The Infamous Stringdusters have been together for close to two decades, and one big reason for their longevity is that everyone gets the chance to step out with side-hustles and solo projects. Even live sound engineer Drew Becker has one – a side business to market one of his inventions, a device that reduces volume on a vocal microphone when the singer walks away.

“That’s my baby,” Becker says, “and I hope to see one on every stage in the future.”

Multiple Stringdusters members are putting out solo albums this year, including banjo player Chris “Panda” Pandolfi, who also makes soundtrack music. But his primary extracurricular project is a podcast, Inside the Musician’s Brain, currently in its third season on Osiris Media.

“It’s deep-dive interviews, musician to musician,” he says. “Béla Fleck was my last guest and Aoife O’Donovan was the guest before. Billy Strings, Trampled by Turtles, Sierra Hull, too. It’s an awesome outlet to take fans deeper inside the music.”

The band’s 2021 release, A Tribute to Bill Monroe, will compete in the category of Best Bluegrass Album Grammy Award in the ceremonies in Las Vegas on April 3. Meanwhile, to commemorate the release of their new project, Toward the Fray, we’ve been catching up with all of the Stringdusters – our BGS Artist of the Month for March – for a series of three conversations from the road. Read part one with Dobro player Andy Hall and guitarist Andy Falco. Read part two with fiddler Jeremy Garrett and bassist Travis Book. Here is part three with Becker and Panda.

BGS: Drew, how long have you been the Stringdusters’ live engineer?

Becker: Since 2008, the van and trailer days, and we’ve just been working our way up to where it’s logistically easier and more efficient. They were my first professional job outside the bar gigs I’d been working through college going to sound school. We’ve grown together technically through the development process, figuring out ways to put on better shows on a night-to-night basis. It’s a learning process, one puzzle piece at a time. You fix one thing, and that might create something else that needs improvement. I do sound for just the live thing. Early on, I’d hang with them in the studio, too, just because it was awesome and I wanted to absorb anything I could about the process. But studio and live are totally different teams and skill sets. Like spray-painting versus watercolor, both are painting and some of the tools might be the same. But it’s totally different skills.

Panda, we heard you’ve been dealing with banjo issues today.

Pandolfi: It went out during last night’s show! Something was wrong with the pickup within the instrument.

Does that happen often?

Becker: Not often, fortunately. For a pickup to melt down, like three other things have to go wrong before that. This is kind of the worst-case scenario, where it’s not totally dead. It works for soundcheck and maybe even a full show, then presents issues the first song the next night. You spend hours troubleshooting, it solves itself, fails again. Then you call every music store in Atlanta and drive 30 minutes to get the one pickup you need.

Panda: It’s kind of an anomaly. Electronics, nothing to do with the instrument. Part of the bluegrass world we’re in is having to amplify acoustic instruments to create a huge sound. These are instruments that weren’t necessarily designed for that, so it’s an imperfect science with limitations. It takes a lot of time and energy for us to perform bluegrass in big venues for big crowds and we’re always trying to do better at it. Some nights work, some don’t.

 

 

Do you have just one banjo you play all the time, or a lot of instruments?

Panda: I collect old Gibson banjos from the 1930s, the heyday. From 1929, when they settled on the modern flathead design most players use, to 1939 when metal had to go into the war effort, and they never regained their former glory. Anything from the 1930s is coveted and I have a bunch of those. Eight right now, I think. It’s always hovering between seven and 10 or 11. I’ll sell one, buy another. I’m not in it to make money, but I love them and know what I’m seeing when I look at one. I like to get them into the hands of younger players who may not be as versed in the marketplace but want these banjos because they’re special.

Who would you both cite as mentors?

Panda: My biggest inspiration is Béla Fleck. I did not know anything about bluegrass before I heard the Flecktones. That’s what introduced me to banjo. I worked backwards from there, to Earl Scruggs and Tom Adams. Those two and Béla are my top three influences. Tony Trischka, Bill Evans and Ron Block are good friends and mentors I call on for advice about music and life. I’m lucky to call those guys friends.

Becker: Early on, a lot of my mentors were in Nashville working with bands in our acoustic genre as we grew. Bands headlining festivals, their engineers mentored me. As I’ve grown in this genre, I’ve looked outside bluegrass to pick up lessons and techniques from rock or electronic music. Learn to understand PA systems and how to optimize musical spaces. It’s a challenge, figuring out how to amplify acoustic resonant bodies on a stage 10 or 15 feet from the PA speaker.

I’ve heard about the show-and-tell sessions with songs before recording. Is there a live-show equivalent to that before tours?

Panda: We go through a big process of arranging songs for the band to make them quintessential Stringdusters songs. The focus first is the studio, making the album. Then there’s usually a long lag time before they come out. They might sit there for a year before we play them live. Then we have to rediscover and relearn the material for the stage, learn what works and how to translate them. I make the set list, divvying up singers and instrumental features with transitions, so there’s a process of understanding how the new songs fit in with the whole other step that happens much later than the record. Drew will have to work to replicate things from the album, and it’s always evolving.

Becker: Throughout my 14 years, some records have come out with material they’d already been playing live for months. That’s not happened for a while. The last few, the band is off recording, and the crew might not even know about it. Then we get the new material and figure out how to pepper it in. I heard this record for the first time in January and it came out in February, so I was studying and taking notes, seeing where effects might translate directly and where we have to improvise. Like if it’s a double-vocal effect from one singer, something impossible to have anyone do live, how do we recreate that? It’s a fun process.

Panda, you do the set list every night?

Panda: I do, though not entirely alone. I’ll get requests, somebody hits me up with, “I really want to do that song tonight.” With a new album, a lot of that stuff comes in night after night. We exist in a world where fans come to multiple shows on a tour, so we never play the same song two nights in a row. That gives a baseline of variety. I’m granted a good amount of autonomy to make the set list and it’s something I put a lot of time into. I’ll consider what we played the night before, also what we played the last time we were in that town. This tour, we have an hour and change every night so it’s a matter of packing in heavy hitters as opposed to pacing out two sets over three hours. A lot goes into it.

 

 

Becker: I looked it up and the Dusters have played over 300 different songs since I’ve been with them. It’s quite a list.

Panda: Since our inception as a band, all four members have been very involved in the business and different aspects of making the operation go. Early on, set lists were something that had to get done and I jumped on it for reasons that make sense. I rarely sing lead, so my role is to be impartial in divvying it up between singers so there’s a good balance between voices.

Drew, are you going to the Grammys with the band?

Becker: Not this time. If I ever have an opportunity that makes sense, I’ll go. Maybe it will be worth it to do one time. I had as much fun watching the stream of them winning when I was visiting my parents in Florida. I got to jump up and down with them. That was great.

Panda: My parents have always been supportive but also a little skeptical, like every parent. That questioning feeling about music as a career is not just something you feel from parents; you feel that within yourself, too. We’re ambitious people working hard to achieve goals and the path is not always straight or linear. So, winning a Grammy was a great moment of validation and confidence, something that keeps you going and inspires you. I was proud of not just that album but all the trust and commitment and work it took to get there from the band, team, and crew. That was meaningful validation of a much longer arc of work than the one record. It was an amazing moment that helps fuel the mission you’re on, helps you stay committed.

Want to win tickets to see the Infamous Stringdusters at the Echoplex in Los Angeles? Enter our ticket giveaway.

Photo Credit: Trent Grogan / Mountain Trout Photography

Artist of the Month: The Infamous Stringdusters

Posted on by Editor

The Infamous Stringdusters continue their career ascent with Toward the Fray, a new album that comes on the heels of a Grammy nomination for a Bill Monroe tribute EP and hosting duties at the IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards. Their first new album in three years, Toward the Fray captures the live energy of the band, though all five guys put an emphasis on the lyrics, too. Upon announcing the project, band member Andy Hall stated, “Sometimes the times call for some serious reflection, and these songs really hit home. Get ready to go deep with us!”

As the Bluegrass Situation’s Artist of the Month for March, the ‘Dusters paired off for upcoming interviews, with longtime sound engineer Drew Becker joining the fray. Look for the award-winning band in Colorado later this month before the ensemble travels the West Coast. Then it’s back to Colorado for a stop at Red Rocks Amphitheater just before Memorial Day — another reason to look forward to summer.

Although the world has seen its share of upheaval over the last few years, which is certainly reflected in Toward the Fray, the band lineup has remained consistent: Travis Book on bass, Andy Falco on guitar, Jeremy Garrett on fiddle, Andy Hall on Dobro, and Chris Pandolfi on banjo (and he’s also the only member who doesn’t take a lead vocal). The band released the album on their own label, Americana Vibes.

In our 2019 interview, Book stated, “Our band can be challenging to listen to because it’s not one-dimensional. You’ve got four guys that sing, and every song sounds a little different, and certainly the way I approach every song is as though it’s its own universe. The people who are into our band, they’re ready to go wherever. If you’re into one singer or one style, you’re not going to get very much of that when you come to our show.”

That’s still the case with Toward the Fray, as the band members shuffle the songwriting credits among them, including the exceptional instrumentals. It’s a project that should easily sustain the band throughout the festival season. Keep an eye out for our BGS Artist of the Month interviews in the coming weeks, and meanwhile, enjoy our Essentials playlist.

Photo Credit: Jay Strausser Visuals

Bluegrass is Trance (And Old-Time, Too)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass is trance. Old-time, too. 

With a slightly more zoomed out perspective, this fact comes into focus pretty quickly. American roots music and its precursors, especially their string band forms, have been interwoven with dance for eons. Before the advent of recorded music, when the popular musics of the day could often only be consumed by upper classes, dancing and other social group activities were the center places music inhabited. Before radio shaved popular music down into bite-sized, three-minute chunks, the tunes would last as long as necessary to provide a backdrop for a reel, a hornpipe, or a square dance, extending fiddle tunes into ten- to twenty-minute, cyclical, musical meditations. “Turkey in the Straw” as mantra, “Chicken Reel” as a slightly wonky, onomatopoeic sound bed.

Detached from dance, it’s easy to forget that string band music has been designed with trance embedded within its structures. Chris Pandolfi is a banjo player who’s explored quite a bit in trance and trance-adjacent music with the Infamous Stringdusters, a seminal jamgrass band with a level of bluegrass’s technical virtuosity that’s unmatched in all but a select few ensembles in a similar vein. Pandolfi’s new record, Trance Banjo, which was released under his solo stage name, Trad Plus, moves further and further beyond American roots aesthetics, cementing the banjo and its musical vernacular within trance – the electronica variety as well as the age-old, human kind.

Trance Banjo, and tracks such as “Wallfacer” — whose trippy visualizer music video almost cements this article’s central argument — recalls albums by Scott Vestal, or live shows by post-metal shredders like Billy Strings, or experimental, avant garde compositions by cattywompus flattop mashers like Stash Wyslouch. It’s not just a simple coincidence that so many players from bluegrass and old-time backgrounds find themselves dabbling with trance.

John Mailander, a fiddler who’s toured with Molly Tuttle and Bruce Hornsby and has been hired as a side-musician with many a jamgrass-leaning band, is comfortably uncomfortable in a very similar musical realm as Trance Banjo. On an EP of sketches and improvisations released last summer (from the same sessions and experimentations that became his upcoming album, Forecast) Mailander and his bluegrass-veteran backing band play with trance centered on sparseness, vacancy, and negative space in a way that’s engaging and baffling, both. Mailander’s rubric of vulnerable, emotive, and transparent expression as a foundation for improv is key here.

That personal touch, the personality endemic in these trance experimentations, is certainly what makes them most compelling and it must be, at least in part, what ties these songs to the centuries-old tradition of music as meditation. Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi make more than just a musical brand of showcasing their personalities and identities in the music they create, it’s more like a mission statement. Giddens has an incredible aptitude for writing and composing music based on empathy and human connection and Turrisi holds expansive knowledge of world folk music and percussion.

Their compositions and collaborations illustrate that, when we connect our music to dance, percussion, and trance, we’re connecting it to thousands and thousands of years of history — of humans of all ethnicities, cultures, backgrounds, and identities, gathering, connecting, sharing, and loving through music, dance, and trance. On stage, Turrisi and Giddens deliberately connect these dots as well, utilizing stage banter to educate their audiences about these exact connections.

While old-time has held onto its penchant for movement and choreography through the generations, bluegrass continues to grow distant from this and many of the other cultural phenomena that gave rise to it. Trance Banjo, and projects like it, while they seem to gleefully run away from what we perceive as “traditional” aspects of these genres, are in many ways guiding us right back to the very folkways that birthed them. 

Photo credit: Chris Pandolfi by Chris Pandolfi

The BGS Radio Hour – Episode 199

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, the show has been a weekly recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on BGS. This week we’ve got everything from quirky pop hooks by Aaron Lee Tasjan to outcries about workers’ rights by the Local Honeys. Remember to check back every Monday for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour. 

APPLE PODCASTS, SPOTIFY

Black Pumas – “Black Moon Rising”

As we welcome the spring, we bid farewell to our February Artist of the Month – Black Pumas. The duo, up for a total of three Grammy Awards this March with their breakout album, sat down with BGS this month to talk about Black Pumas (Deluxe Edition), and the influences that brought them together.

Terrible Sons – “What A Friend”

From Christchurch, New Zealand, Terrible Sons brings us a song this week from their newly released Mass EP. “The song looks into a life that is unravelling internally and externally, a character who struggles to communicate, someone who’s on the edge,” the duo tells BGS. “We’re really singing about being a failure as a friend, about not being there.”

Aaron Espe – “Take You Home”

February brought many great releases; Aaron Espe’s Rock & Roll Man EP is certainly no exception. As the Nashville-based songwriter told BGS, songs can mean many things to many people, all of which are valid, and shouldn’t be ruined by the songwriter explaining it to them – so best for us not to spoil this one!

Lonesome River Band – “Love Songs”

Steve Martin used to tell a joke about how no one could be sad while playing the banjo. And while the banjo strikes a happy tone, songs from the bluegrass repertoire just aren’t the most optimistic – often, they are about heartbreak, loneliness, or death. In their new single, the Lonesome River Band recognizes that we have to write about what we know – and it ain’t always love songs.

Judith Hill – “Baby, I’m Hollywood!”

For Judith Hill, “Baby, I’m Hollywood!” is a defining statement, summing up the drama, love, and pain that surrounds her life as an entertainer in an epic performance and video.

Cristina Vane – “Prayer For the Blind”

From her upcoming Nowhere Sounds Lovely, Italy-born and Nashville-based Cristina Vane brings us an old-time banjo meditation on finding levity in heavy situations, and the bonds and intergenerational burdens shared between mothers and daughters.

The Wild West – “Better Way”

Women-led upergroup The Wild West strike on uniting us all amongst the differences that divide us – touching the idea of being born with love and without hate, and calling us to find our way back to innocence, understanding, and compassion.

Aaron Lee Tasjan – “Up All Night”

This Nashville artist is no stranger to BGS. Tasjan is his own producer on his newest release Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, the most-Tasjan album that he’s released so far — quite literally. From deep personal experiences in his writing to silly pop hooks, Tasjan’s newest album is one worth hearing.

Lily B Moonflower – “Midnight Song”

One thing we’re all surely missing is community, be it local jams, concerts, or just visiting with your neighbors. From Lawrence, Kansas, Lily B Moonflower brings us a song inspired by her community coming together through music and love, and the magic that follows on the honky-tonk floor.

Spencer Burton – “Memories We Won’t Soon Forget”

From Ontario, singer-songwriter Spencer Burton joins us for a 5+5 this week – that is, five questions, five songs to go along. From favorite stage memories to a dream musician and meal pairing, our conversation with Burton is one we won’t soon forget.

The Local Honeys – “Dying to Make a Living”

Even while they’re stuck at home like the rest of us, the Local Honeys continue to get their message out to the world. While in past times they’d be touring Europe with Colter Wall or Tyler Childers, the Kentucky-based duet now sit down with BGS to talk about the problems created by extractive industries like coal mining in Appalachia, reflected in their new two-song release.

Chris Pandolfi – “Astral Plane”

From Grammy Award-winning band the Infamous Stringdusters, ‘Panda’ joins us this week on a 5+5 in celebration of his latest album, Trad Plus Presents Trance Banjo. What’s better than banjos, beats, and Stuart Duncan?

Moira Smiley – “Days of War” (feat. Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan)

With the accompaniment of Sam Amidon and Seamus Egan, Moira Smiley brings us “Days of War,” a song written after yet another shockwave of white supremacy in 2017. While Amidon sings the ‘human’ voice in this song, Smiley is the ‘bird,’ who flies and sings in spite of all.

Photos: (L to R) Black Pumas; The Local Honeys by Melissa Stilwell; Aaron Lee Tasjan by Curtis Wayne

BGS 5+5: Chris Pandolfi

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Chris Pandolfi
Hometown: Golden, Colorado
Latest Album: Trance Banjo
Personal nicknames: Panda

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

From one perspective, this is a really tough question for me because there are many sides to my music, and many influences that have factored in really heavily at different periods. But from another perspective, it’s easy. I wouldn’t be playing the banjo if it wasn’t for Béla Fleck. I discovered the Flecktones in high school and was just blown away in every possible way. It was a moment of pure inspiration, and after a handful of shows all I wanted to do was learn how to play the banjo. That was the start of my journey as a musician, and none of that happens had I not discovered Béla’s music.

But his influence doesn’t end there. He’s a legendary improviser on the instrument, and that’s a big part of what the Stringdusters do. But maybe even more importantly, he’s made his mark by recontextualizing the banjo, combining it with so many eclectic sounds and bringing it to many new genres. That’s a big goal of mine as well, and that’s very much inspired by Béla. He didn’t leave too much undiscovered territory! But the bigger your imagination, the more territory there is to explore, and I love that challenge.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I have many great memories of being on stage, but the night that we played in Covington, Kentucky, in the summer of 2019 stands out. It was an electric show, and the moment we walked off stage we all sort of simultaneously decided that we had just made a live album. That has only happened a handful of times in our career, even though we have had many gratifying shows. But this was one of those stand out nights where something connected on a deeper level. It seemed like everything we did just hit the crowd with maximum power, and then they were feeding us with so much energy and emotion. That’s what can happen at a show. It can happen any night, even when a venue is not packed out, and that possibility is one of the great thrills of this career. On a night like that, everyone there is an equal participant in the performance. There’s no divide between the performers and the crowd, and the possibilities are endless.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

I get inspiration from a lot of places, but books and visual art are high on that list. I love artists and writers who surprise you. It may not inspire a specific melody or song, but it definitely stokes the idea inside me that anything is possible, and with imagination and creativity you can always find new paths to travel. Lately, I have really enjoyed the work of Clyfford Still. Still was an American, abstract painter whos work is bold and stunning. There’s a beautiful museum dedicated to his work here in Denver, and it turned me into a big fan.

I also love reading science fiction, mainly because the imagination factor of good sci-fi is off the charts. I read a trilogy of books in recent years called The Three Body Problem by a Chinese author named Cixin Liu that blew my mind. The story is gripping and endlessly creative. Two song titles on my new record, Trance Banjo, are references to that trilogy, both from the second book, Dark Forest, which is my favorite. Great art of any kind transports you to a place that feels very free, where there’s no strong sense of self. I get a lot of inspiration from that feeling.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Playing music is one challenge, but performing is a whole other hill to climb. When I am getting ready to play live or record, I always try to spend some time with my instrument (15-45 minutes or so) playing really mindfully and getting in the zone. That zone of being deeply focused on the music has seemed like a mystery at points in my career, and will forever be elusive in some way. But there is also something methodical about it, and that’s where practice comes in. When I practice I spend some time focusing on more mechanical elements, a new technique, transcribing or that sort of thing. But ultimately, I want to devote a good chunk of every practice session to building that zone. A good practice session should be like a meditation. The more time you can log in that focused zone, the more you know what it feels like and the easier it will be to conjure up in a performance setting. It’s a lifelong journey, and it certainly keeps you humble! But it’s not magic, it just takes practice.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

I think my most consistent goal is to sound like myself as a player, and craft music that is unique as a producer. Bluegrass is the banjo’s native territory, and a common goal among proficient bluegrass players is to study and copy the styles of the early masters. For banjo players, that’s Earl Scruggs, and I would give anything to sound like Earl! There is so much great knowledge there, and so much expression as well. It’s a bedrock element of the instrument that practically every great player has a deep knowledge of.

While I have spent much time working on the fundamentals of Earl’s style, that is more of a starting point for me, and not an end-game. There are times on stage when I really try to emulate that older sound. But when it comes to crafting my own style and my own music, I try to use those old school bluegrass rudiments — timing, power, tone — but then add my own voice as well. The same goes for producing. It’s all about identifying and connecting with sounds that move you, and then using your imagination to grow from there and utilize those tools to bring your own vision to life.

Photo credit: Chris Pandolfi

The Infamous Stringdusters Look to the Light on ‘Rise Sun’

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The Infamous Stringdusters’ new album Rise Sun acts as an invocation. Across 13 tracks, the band — consisting of Andy Falco (guitar), Chris Pandolfi (banjo), Andy Hall (Dobro), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), and Travis Book (double bass) — summon the light, which is all the more astonishing considering they tend to formulate their ideas individually before bringing them to the table. When the band came together to record the follow-up to 2017’s Grammy-winning Laws of Gravity, they found themselves interested in sharing a similar message: about hope, about love, about light.

As Book explains, “I only get to sing so many songs a night; I only get to record so many songs in a lifetime. What do I want those to look like? What am I trying to do here? Do I have the opportunity to raise the vibration? Do I have an obligation? I mean, these are the existential questions that I’m going through and we’re all going through as we’re making this record. That’s why it’s so oriented towards the light. It’s the opposite of Dark Side of the Moon.”

As with past albums, Rise Sun is dazzlingly energetic. But there’s also a sense of time—that strange paradox wherein it speeds up as it runs out—threading the project. It can be heard in Garrett’s swift, almost giddy fiddle on the opening title track, Pandolfi’s pacing banjo on “Truth and Love,” and the band’s shared meter, chiming as a mystical grandfather clock on “Planets.” The Stringdusters recorded the album in order, framing the songs with melodic interludes that bring the whole affair closer to the feel of their energetic live shows. As the band gets older and time ebbs, there’s still much to say — new messages that spread a little light.

BGS: You’re a bluegrass band famous for not coloring within the lines, so to speak. How do you set about stretching those boundaries in ways that make sense to both you and your fans?

Book: Our band can be challenging to listen to because it’s not one-dimensional. You’ve got four guys that sing, and every song sounds a little different, and certainly the way I approach every song is as though it’s its own universe. The people who are into our band, they’re ready to go wherever. If you’re into one singer or one style, you’re not going to get very much of that when you come to our show.

The album’s message revolves around wanting a better world, and so many songs involve some theme of light. Since you all write individually, how did you all cohere around that? Was it all kismet?

That’s what happened. It comes out of the culture of our band. We all live in different places, and this last couple of years has been transitional for all of us—in terms of our personal lives and our professional lives. We’re all firmly entering into the second half of our lives, and growing personally and spiritually, and digging in a little more deeply.

I think, for everybody, when that election went the way that it did, it tilted the axis of everyone’s awareness. When we would get together, we’d get into talking about real shit. It came as no surprise to me that when we all showed up with these song ideas, there were these themes emerging. We’re like a family oriented towards positivity and good attitudes and making everyone’s lives better, so when we go home, that pattern continues.

The band is no stranger to political fare, as with “This Ol’ Building.” And it’s not that any one track on Rise Sun feels overtly political, but what’s the band’s response to those listeners who want artists to keep art and politics separate? That seems nearly impossible nowadays.

Every act is political, I think. Why would an artist’s life be any different? Certainly, an artist has an opportunity—essentially a responsibility—to give voice to the larger questions, the larger existential crises of the culture.

Artists certainly can broadcast messages of humanity, of commonality at a time of particular divisiveness.

I can’t speak for the other guys, but when I was younger I thought it was really trite when I’d see an artist accept an award and they’d give it all up to God. I was like, “No, that’s you.” But as my awareness expands, and my gratitude for being alive increases, it seems there is a concept that I can much more closely identify with, where the idea that songs and concepts, so many of them, are already in existence. “Rise Sun,” for example, is a perfect example. I didn’t write that melody. I brought it into form, but that melody is almost timeless—it’s like gospel music. It’s not like I’m standing here, like, “God gave me that song,” but I brought it into form.

That’s the way I see the artist’s role. There is some responsibility and ownership over bringing this stuff into form, but these are concepts and ideas that everybody’s thinking about. Not everybody necessarily has the same angle on it, or the same opinion—not everybody is oriented towards the light—but these larger philosophical ideas, it’s all part of the collective consciousness. So for an artist, of course it’s political; if you’re doing anything and it has any intention or meaning, it’s political.

You all worked with Billy Hume again. What did that feel like, to return to the studio with him?

This one, we did in Denver. We recorded another record with him years ago, Silver Sky. It’s almost like Rise Sun is the third record in that.

Like a trilogy.

Yeah almost. Silver Sky is a really great record—it’s got that Billy Hume sound. He was more of a producer on that. He was more of an engineer on the last two records. Billy is incredibly skilled, and he has a great ear, and his work ethic is insane. He’ll work 16 hour days and never complain. The tone is great and it’s sort of a no-brainer—I’d assume we’d make another record with him.

Andy Falco said you guys don’t use click tracks and you don’t layer a lot during the production process. Do you record live to track?

Yeah, it’s great. These days, we get everything by the second or third take. A big part of it is preparation. We spend a lot of time figuring out how things are going to go before we go into the studio so we can reduce stress. Some bands go in and do all their figuring out in the studio. We have five people intimately entwined in the music, so like to check out everything, and see how it feels to play a song in this key, or tweak the arrangements. For us, sometimes it had a tendency to suck the life out of things, but recently it feels much more like we’re able to get things down, and then go into the studio and not be worrying, but just be deep in it and free-flowing and capture the best performance.

You chose the songs in order before you recorded them. How did that shift the recording process?

It was genius. What it meant was it took us a little bit of time to pick up speed. The opening track “Rise Sun” maybe would’ve been better if we tracked it the third day, but what it does mean is that the record has a very linear feel. We put a bunch of segues in there. It’s sort of like the live show, where a bunch of songs flow into other songs with musical interludes. I’m inside the record, but every time I get through the record and get to “Truth and Love” I start crying. It feels like I watched a Star Wars movie.

Well, talk about a heavy track. That one asks some real hard-hitting existential questions.

I get to the end and I’m overwhelmed by it.

“Planets” is such a standout, too, and I know your wife Sarah Siskind co-wrote that. The interlude that comes in around the 5:30 mark is so striking. Can you explain that moment?

We knew it was a good sonic opportunity, letting it all space out. That was a live take, that was us jamming, and then we overdubbed a little bit of piano.

You were talking about the collective unconscious earlier, but I think you all tapped into something cosmic there.

That wouldn’t surprise me, either—functioning on the astral plane. There’s a lot going on in the world that we don’t understand, or that we can’t quite quantify or make sense of, and it’s all very interesting. The way that things unfold and even just the making of a record is such an interesting combination of all kinds of random circumstances that leads to it. It’s all remarkable and amazing, and we’re all feeling really grateful to be putting this record out right now.

My First IBMA

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Ahead of this year’s annual gathering of bluegrass lovers at the IBMA’s World of Bluegrass festival in Raleigh, North Carolina, we asked some of our favorite players to recount a memory of their first time attending the illustrious event. Here’s what they told us:

Chris Pandolfi (Infamous Stringdusters)

“While my first IBMA was certainly exciting, driving roundtrip by myself from Boston for several days of nothing but jams and live music, it was my second IBMA that will always be my most memorable. It was a more formative, purposeful mission — my first trip there as an aspiring ‘professional musician,’ even though I wouldn’t necessarily describe my agenda as ‘professional.’ I had no formal engagements, no hotel reservation, no tickets, no real money to spare, and no worries about any of it. We were there to make music, meet new people, and tap into that magical, living art form that we all know as bluegrass.

The seeds of the Stringdusters had been planted, but we needed to find a few more players, and IBMA was the universal meeting place for anyone serious about the music. So when Travis Book sauntered off the elevator, no shoes and a backpack full of beer, we knew we had a good candidate on our hands. I also met Jeremy for the first time that year at IBMA, and it was definitely the first time that we five jammed together as a group, which was memorable, to say the least. That trip was a key part of the advent of the Infamous Stringdusters, which has become my passion and my life’s work.

Though our main purpose was to get a band going, we were also there as fans. I loved the sound. I was there to chase that passion, and just as important as meeting my bandmates was the ability to get that much closer to the music. I didn’t need a plan to know that making the pilgrimage to IBMA would be worth it, and it most certainly was, as there is no better place to connect with bluegrass.”

Casey Campbell

“I’ve been lucky enough to attend IBMA’s World of Bluegrass all my life. There are so many pictures of me as a baby and little kid running around Owensboro and Louisville. However, I didn’t really start making memories until the event came to Nashville in 2005. At that point, I was starting to get into playing music and discovering that there was more to WOB than just the hotel hallway jams. Thanks to Deanie Richardson and Kim Fox, I joined the Kids on Bluegrass program the following year, and my world opened up as I met these incredible young musicians like Molly Tuttle, AJ Lee, Cory & Jarrod Walker, Seth Taylor, Tyler White, and more. In fact, the majority of the folks I met during my Kids on Bluegrass tenure are still kicking ass across the bluegrass and acoustic music scenes today.

It has been such a joy over the past 10 years to watch so many other great musicians come through that program and find their groove in the musical world. I look at kids like Presley Barker and Giri Peters (who are way better than I ever thought of being at their age) and think that, without Kids on Bluegrass, those two might not have crossed paths for another decade. Of course, there will always be plenty of hallway jamming, exhibit hall perusing, and more hallway jamming, but one of my favorite World of Bluegrass memories will always be in the rehearsal rooms with those other musicians my age and thinking 1) I’ve found my people, and 2) Shit, I need to go home and practice!”

Michael Stockton (Flatt Lonesome)

“The very first year I attended IBMA was in 2008. I believe it was called Fan Fest at the time, and it was still at the convention center in Nashville, Tennessee. I had been hanging out with a few friends through the day on the Friday of that weekend. I worked up an appetite from all of the jamming I had been doing, so I went up to the Quizno’s that was on the top floor of the convention center and got myself a sandwich. Lucky enough for me, as I was walking into the grand ballroom, the Lonesome River band was taking the stage. Being that I was very new to bluegrass, I had no idea what I was in for. I can vividly remember sitting in the very back row of the hall, enjoying my sandwich and the music.

The part of the story that stands out the most, though, is from the last song on their set. They ended with the song ‘Them Blues’ (still one of my favorite LRB songs to this day), and they were getting after it! The song got around to the second banjo break where Sammy hangs on the seven note for the first few measures, and I came unglued! I completely forgot that I had a sandwich sitting in my lap and, when I heard that break for what was the first time in my life, I couldn’t help but jump up out of my seat and holler as loud as a I could! I spilled my sandwich, chips, and coke all over the floor, and I don’t regret it one bit. That was one of the first times I really pictured myself on stage. I put myself in Sammy’s shoes and told myself that I wanted to make someone spill their sandwich one day.

Fast forward to 2017: Flatt Lonesome has won four IBMA awards, and we are nominated again for Vocal Group of the Year and Entertainer of the Year. I never would have dreamed, back in the days of spilling sandwiches, that I would share the stage with my heroes. IBMA has been invaluable for me as a young musician. IBMA is where my dream to play professionally was cultivated, and it’s where that very dream has come true.”

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (Mile Twelve)

“My first IBMA was wonderful and bizarre and totally exciting and, at one point, I found myself playing a set with two of my biggest heroes. I ran into Peter Rowan at the breakfast of the Super 8 I was staying in, and he recognized me because I’d played fiddle for him once before up in Boston. He told me to come to his set later that day and play fiddle, and I thought it was odd that he hadn’t found a fiddler yet, but I was happy to show up and play, so I didn’t ask any questions. Then I got there and realized he did already have a fiddler and it was Michael Cleveland — one of my biggest fiddle heroes. That was my first time meeting Michael and, once I got over my initial terror of playing in front of him, playing fiddle on stage with him and Peter was one of the coolest moments I can remember from any IBMA I’ve been to.”

Sierra Hull

“I went to my first IBMA when I was nine years old, when I was invited to be part of the Kids on Bluegrass showcase. I had never been to a bluegrass festival of that size before — anything I had ever been to had been very small, local festivals. Seeing a crowd of 1,000 people would have seemed like more than 10,000 to me. I was so excited to see IIIrd Tyme Out; they were my favorite band at the time — they’re still one of my favorites — and Steve Dilling took me under his wing the whole week.

One night, he brought me up to a hotel suite to meet Earl Scruggs. I couldn’t believe I was getting to meet him! Earl wasn’t picking while I was up there, he was just hanging, but they had me get out my mandolin to play some for him. I had only been playing for about a year and I didn’t know a whole lot yet; I just knew a few fiddle tunes. At one point, I remember Earl asking me, ‘Can you play “Pike County Breakdown?”‘ And I said to him, ‘I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that one.’ I couldn’t believe Earl Scruggs had asked me to play a song I didn’t know so the first thing I did when I went back to my mandolin teacher was tell him the story. I said, ‘You’ve gotta teach it to me! Next time I see Earl I need to know this song.’ My teacher just said, ‘You know he wrote that, right?’ Needless to say, I was super embarrassed, but I learned it! That definitely got me into learning more and more fiddle tunes. I had to be ready the next time Earl asked what I knew!”

Photo credit: Joerg Neuner via Foter.com / CC BY-ND

WATCH: TRAD PLUS, ‘Blind’

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Artist: TRAD PLUS (Chris Pandolfi of the Infamous Stringdusters)
Hometown: Denver, CO
Song: "Blind"
Album: Interference

In Their Words: "'Blind' is one of my favorite tracks from the record. Like a lot of TRAD PLUS music, I used some samples and live vocals to create a deep bed of sound for the melodies to sit atop. Those melodies evolve as the tune moves along, as do the sounds underneath, to create a musical journey from one place to another, as opposed to the more repetitive forms that are so common in acoustic music. And, at the heart of it all, is the natural tone of the banjo.

I shot the video last Winter in some beautiful places in Puerto Rico, and then laid on some editing effects to create a more psychedelic imagery that fits the vibe of the music." — Chris Pandolfi