Tag: Dave Simonett

Basic Folk: Dave Simonett of Trampled By Turtles

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Lead singer and songwriter of the bluegrass adjacent Trampled by Turtles, Dave Simonett is a talented musician and a great outdoorsman. From the small town of Mankato, Minnesota, to the vibrant music scenes of Duluth and Minneapolis, Dave shares his upbringing in a musically inclined, nature-loving family shaped by the sounds of church hymns and classic rock. He opens up about his dual passions for music and the great outdoors, recounting his experiences with pheasant hunting and conservation efforts in Minnesota. He also reflects on the parallels between the camaraderie found in hunting and playing music, emphasizing the importance of trying new things and embracing the unknown. Follow as we delve into the evolution of Trampled by Turtles’ unique sound, described as a “butterfly’s heartbeat,” and trace the band’s journey from traditional bluegrass to their own distinct style.

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In our Basic Folk conversation, Dave also talks about the challenges and rewards of maintaining artistic integrity in the music industry while balancing creative growth with commercial pressures. He shares insights on his band’s latest project Always Here, Always Now, a dual EP featuring recordings by both Trampled by Turtles (Always Here) and his solo project, Dead Man Winter (Always Now). He wrote five songs and instead of picking a band to record the tracks, he handed them over to both bands to do what they will to the music. The results are very cool to listen to side by side. The episode wraps up with a fun lightning round, where Dave reveals his dream supergroup and favorite hunter orange accessory (gotta be safe out there!).

Photo Credit: Olivia Bastone

PHOTOS: Trampled by Turtles and the Unique Appeal of FreshGrass Bentonville

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On my way from the Northwest Arkansas International Airport to the apparently booming town of Bentonville, Ron, the man driving the van, pointed at an old farmhouse that was now sticking out like a sore thumb among its newer, beige-r neighbors. “I remember when that house was way out in the country,” he told me. The town is growing rapidly, and the surrounding countryside is disappearing at the same rate. Bentonville is probably best known as the birthplace and headquarters of mega-retailer Walmart. However, it is also now home to a couple high-quality art museums, miles and miles of mountain biking trails (the city’s Chamber of Commerce website dubs Bentonville “The Mountain Biking Capital of the World”), and a very cool festival, FreshGrass. I’m here to play that festival with my band, Trampled by Turtles.

Trampled by Turtles perform under the lights at FreshGrass Bentonville. Photo by Cooper Baumgartner.

We have played FreshGrass a couple times before, but those shows were at its other and original location way up in Massachusetts. This being our first foray into the burgeoning Arkansas version, I was curious to see how it would compare. As with its Massachusetts sibling, FreshGrass Bentonville is set up on the grounds of a multi-use art space. The Momentary, as it’s called, is a decommissioned cheese factory that is now a hub of artistic activity in the region. There are indoor and outdoor installations, several performing arts venues, a variety of food experiences, and for our purposes here, a large outdoor concert area. I mean, what a cool place to play a show! I love the venues this festival chooses. We have played all manner of these things and though it probably goes without saying, the setting has so much to do with the experience of the ticketholders and the performers alike. There is something about a concert being surrounded by an atmosphere of artistic creativity that gives the FreshGrass festivals their unique flavor. Don’t get me wrong, we have had great times at festivals set up in nameless fields, but given the choice, I would choose this. I enjoy playing a show at a place that I would go anyway.

Fans react to Trampled by Turtles. Photo by Cooper Baumgartner.

We had a lovely experience here. The crowd seemed very happy to be there and all the music I heard was great. I want to give a little shoutout to whoever set up the main stage concert bowl as well. Often at outdoor venues with both seated and standing areas, the seats are up against the stage and the standing lawn is way in the back. At The Momentary they’ve made a bit of a hybrid setup. There are small standing room areas right up in front, a large section of seating, and then a wide lawn in the back.  Everyone can enjoy the show in the way they choose, whether that’s dancing like demons in the front row, having a comfortable chair in the middle, or spreading out on a blanket with the family in the back. Having standing room up against the stage is such a boon for the band that’s up there, as well. There is an energy partnership with those wilder, bouncing audience members and it can feel weird to have them way behind the seated crowd. I don’t know if that was the reason for this layout, but we enjoyed its effect at our set last night.

Trampled by Turtles and a “full house” at FreshGrass Bentonville. Photo by Cooper Baumgartner.

I am not surprised to be impressed with the younger FreshGrass. This festival has consistently proven its desire to provide a unique and art-forward experience for both band and crowd alike. They invest in interesting lineups and create visually exciting venues in which to show them off. They’ve made us feel very welcome over the years and I hope we get to play these festivals forever.  – Dave Simonett, Trampled by Turtles

Make plans to attend FreshGrass Bentonville next year May 16 – 17, 2025 at the Momentary.

Dave Simonett is the lead singer, guitarist, and a songwriter for fan-favorite bluegrass group Trampled by Turtles. Subscribe to his Substack, Good Record, here.

Photo Credit: All photo credits as marked. Lead image and Trampled by Turtles photos by Cooper Baumgartner. All other photos courtesy of the Momentary.

Trampled by Turtles’ Dave Simonett Offers Illuminating Look at ‘Alpenglow’

Posted on by Editor

It was conceived and written during the pandemic, yet Dave Simonett is leery of tethering Trampled by Turtles’ new album Alpenglow to the lockdown. “Fucking COVID record,” he snorts when he wanders into that territory in answering a question about its inspiration.

“I won’t say that the changes in the songwriting have to do with that in particular,” he clarifies. “But I do think it gave me and all of us a real long time to look at everything. I haven’t been home that long in my adult life. It was weird and awful and wonderful and a unique experience that we all went through. It gave me a chance to look inward and to look forward too, into a new and unknown landscape.”

Perhaps that’s why many of the characters that populate Alpenglow are on the precipice of some major change, whether of their own volition or because it’s forced on them. They move to new locations, endure breakups, and generally confront the unknown with eloquent self-awareness.

“I know several groups where certain members didn’t come back. They were like, ‘I love being home and this is way healthier for me,’” Simonett recalls. “I think that all of us who were out of work for a while had that space to make sure we were still on the path we wanted to be on. I realized that I am. But I did some other work. I’ve done a lot of carpentry and construction, and I did some work with a guy I know who runs a remodeling company and it was a blast. And there was a part of me that was like, ‘Maybe I’d like to do this for a while.’ But I did some long hard thinking and decided that the life of music, well, the nightlife ain’t a good life, but it’s my life.”

The album title refers to the reddish and pink glow seen on mountains in the moments just before sunset and sunrise, and TBT’s delicate acoustic interplay perfectly captures the awe of that visual. The six members of the band (Simonett on vocals and guitar, Tim Saxhaug on bass, Dave Carroll on banjo, Erik Berry on mandolin, Ryan Young on fiddle, and Eamonn McLain on cello) each deliver instrumental virtuosity that’s never overdone and always in service of the song.

“Our band is going to turn 20 next year,” Simonett explains. “We’ve had a lot of time together to go through our phases. And I’m sure we’ll continue to do that. We’ve had time to settle in, I guess. We don’t really do a lot of planning before we go into the studio. I’ll show up with the songs and we’ll all learn them together. Sometimes there is a little conversation about ‘Hey, how do we want to approach this session?’ But a lot of that stuff, even if we’re saying it, goes by the wayside once we get in there. It becomes its own beast as we’re making it.”

To tame this new “beast,” Trampled by Turtles reached out to Wilco auteur Jeff Tweedy about producing Alpenglow. They decamped to his Chicago studios with a bit of trepidation about what would transpire.

“It’s an interesting thing going into the studio with somebody,” Simonett admits. “There’s always a feeling before you get there, like, God, I hope this works. If that recording time doesn’t work out, it’s about another year before we got that time on the calendar again. That’s one thing. Another part of it is I’m really excited to work with this person, but I hope we like each other.”

Tweedy quickly put those thoughts to rest when the band counted in “It’s So Hard to Hold On,” which opens the album and features a daring crescendo that mirrors the urgency of the lyrics. It was a song the band had already worked out on their own, or so they thought.

“We were all gung-ho to record that first and we were very happy with it,” Simonett remembers. “By the time Jeff got done with it, it was probably about half the length, and he moved some stuff around and put in that build-up. It’s so funny, you have something you think is done, and then you find out that it could be so much better. He even helped add a couple vocal lines into parts where there was space that he thought could just use something there. That was the first song we recorded, so that was our first time working through a song with Tweedy. It was not at all how I imagined it, but I really liked it better than I had it before.”

He continues, “Almost every song got rearranged in some way by Jeff, vamping on ideas. Sound-wise, that studio is just super cool. We just sat in a circle and played and sang everything live, which Jeff was cool with. He came out and played guitar when he felt like it. It was very casual. It felt like we weren’t even recording. The best way that we can present ourselves is that way, and that whole overall vibe was set up by Jeff.”

Tweedy also encouraged Simonett to do some rewriting. Rather than take offense, Simonett embraced the suggestions. “I felt like I really needed it once we started doing it,” he says. “Anybody that writes, you look at yourself and find yourself falling back on familiar turf. He helped take these songs apart and find different and maybe more interesting ways to put them back together. It was a fun process. I learned a lot from it actually, about kind of doing that on my own and just never settling for something being done until you explore a lot of options with it.”

Simonett rose to the occasion, crafting what may be his strongest set of songs yet. He generally eschews point-to-point narratives, instead allowing old memories, observed details, and bits of world-weary wisdom to do the work. “I’ve never been able to write a good song like that, A to B,” he says. “I’m sitting next to my dog right now, and if I wanted to write a song about my dog, I don’t think I could do it in a linear way. Some people are so great at that, but I guess it’s just not the way my brain works. I’m a little more scattered. It’s all right, and I’ve come to terms with that.”

Simonett and the band made a point of orienting listeners with stirring choruses throughout Alpenglow, choruses usually lifted to the rafters by their homespun harmonies. “Don’t let go,” he begs on the rollicking ode to wanderlust “Starting Over.” Later he implores his lover to “Climb out” with him on “Quitting Is Easy.” By the final strains of “The Party’s Over,” a gloriously sad waltz featuring Simonett’s killer parting shot “The party’s over/And I’m left here thinking/Of the dogs and the moonlight and you,” you’re left with the impression of a band operating at a potent peak. You’d never know just how close Trampled by Turtles came to imploding, before the forced break inspired a fresh approach.

“The older we get, the more breathing room we need,” Simonett muses. “Because we have families, and there are other parts of the garden that need gardening, it’s really important for all of us to keep that balance alive. It’s easy to get carried away with touring. We’re very fortunate that there is no shortage of gigs. But we get in these rhythms where it becomes a lot, and then all of a sudden, you step away from it, and say, ‘Man, that was exhausting. I can use a little time off.’ I feel like we’ve come back at it with a different perspective. We are playing less and being a little bit more conscious about why and where we’re playing. All of that has resulted in us having a really good time playing music. I’ve become thankful for that part of the experience.”

No, Alpenglow isn’t a COVID record, but it may be the most thematic in the Trampled by Turtles discography. “There was a lot more conscious effort into putting these songs into an album. Even leaving some songs out, because they didn’t feel like they fit into it as an album,” Simonett says. “As far as my role in the band in making the record, I feel like it’s the most effort I’ve put into making it seem like a cohesive piece of work.”

Could that mean Simonett and company will go even further next time and give us a TBT concept album?

He laughs: “We’re not there yet.”

Photo Credit: Zoe Prinds

Building on Double Banjo, The Lowest Pair Concoct ‘The Perfect Plan’

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The Lowest Pair may be best known as a double-banjo folksinger duo, yet their new album is a full-band effort that somehow sounds like a complete departure without actually straying from home. It’s a fitting theme, considering that the release of The Perfect Plan – their sixth album in seven years – arrives during a global pandemic. BGS spoke with bandmates Kendl Winter and Palmer T. Lee as they were isolated in separate homes in Olympia, Washington.

“We’re supposed to have been on the road now — a couple of festivals the past couple of weeks,” says Winter, who spent this past winter in Antarctica working at a scientific research station and running the annual South Pole Marathon, in which she set a women’s time record. “We were thinking we were going to hit the ground running and now we’re just hitting the ground, trying to figure out how to promote the record in this new paradigm.”

On the bright side, with any luck, the fact that everyone is stuck at home will provide plenty of time to digest The Perfect Plan’s complex instrumentation and intuitive arrangements, worked out with multi-instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis (Bright Eyes). Although previous efforts feature the stripped-down duo sound fans have come to enjoy in their live sets, this project is a little more aurally ambitious. Listeners still get their banjo and acoustic guitar, but these are afloat amid bass, drums, and electric guitar with all its effects.

“We wanted to hear what [our music] would sound like with a bigger sound,” Winter says. “We went into the studio pretty open to what Mogis was thinking, in terms of production. I think we both have dreamed about having drums and bass behind us. It’s not as easy to do on the road, but it was kind of a fantasy record.”

Lee, a Minnesota native who spent his winter at a writing retreat in Wisconsin, agrees. “We’ve definitely been talking about doing bigger band stuff in different ways over the years. Logistically, it’s a bit of a challenge and a bit of a gamble, I suppose. Being a duo, you keep your overhead pretty low. It’s just simpler that way. But it’s definitely been a dream of ours for a while.”

The Lowest Pair began when Winter and Lee were playing in other groups. They spotted each other at a bluegrass festival. “I remember seeing Palmer’s string band and noticing a kindred thing he was going for,” Winter says. “He played the banjo but differently from other people, putting more notes in it. He has a soulful voice, saying stuff that isn’t very common in bluegrass music. He had a song about tea and I had a song about tea, about drinking tea. I felt like … we’re going for similar things from really different places, with different vehicles.”

That night, they spent hours jamming around a campfire. Though they continued to follow each other on social media, it was another five years before their paths crossed again. Both were considering solo projects and decided instead to join forces, ultimately naming their duo after a John Hartford poem.

Winter remembers: “Palmer got a hold of me and said, ‘You look like you need a singing buddy.’ He proposed the idea of doing an album together. As soon as we started singing together people responded immediately. Both of us were like, ‘Well, we’ll just do this.’ We kind of had shows lined up before we even had a band, because I had been working on a solo project and no one really minded that I came with somebody else.”

As it happened, when that summer wrapped, Lee had studio time booked with Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles as producer. “I was going to do a solo record and then I [told Dave], ‘Hey, I’m working on this new project. Let’s do this instead.’ That’s when 36 cents happened,” Lee says of the duo’s 2014 debut album.

A string of quickly-released projects followed as Winter was on a roll, churning out great songwriting for one recording after another. Somewhere along the way, the duo got into a rhythm, barely even needing to break from a tour in order to jump into a studio and produce another album. But the idea of, at some point, slowing down long enough to put a full-band effort together kept gestating. They wanted to explore sounds beyond bluegrass, to see how their songs might be able to stretch them in new directions.

By the time they visited Mogis’ studio in Omaha last year, they knew almost instinctively that it would be the place. Though Winter and Lee stuck to the core of their sound on The Perfect Plan, balancing their banjos and vocals, there are a few tracks where they veered especially far from the norm.

On “Morning Light,” for example, Winter played most of the instruments herself while Lee simply added vocals. “We decided not to have banjo on the track,” she says. “That was one we actually did [with] layers and built it up. We had a vocal line that was … kind of an obnoxious vocal line that didn’t really work. We wrote lyrics for that song during the time we were there. That one got fleshed out in the studio. But, most of [the songs] we performed all together with the band, so it was really like, ‘Learn the song and let’s go.’”

“Mike had the demos for a couple of months before we came in,” Lee adds. “He had all sorts of ideas and had some musicians in mind. Then it kind of just happened organically. Kendl and I started playing through the songs and everyone would start jamming. It was pretty awesome.”

Mogis encouraged the duo to bring their own drummer, so they roped in Minneapolis mainstay J.T. Bates (Bonny Light Horseman, Big Red Machine). Fans of bluegrass know well that banjos and drums don’t always mix, as the latter can so easily overpower the percussive tonality of the former. Luckily Bates’ subtlety is so on-point his rhythms seem to follow the duo’s acoustic strings, rather than the other way around.

Lee explains, “On that ‘Wild Animal’ track, for instance, we just started jamming. Rather than drive the song in a particular direction, J.T. was able to find the best way to accent what was already happening.”

“Sometimes as we arrange, we fill up the space according to how we’re going to play as a duo,” adds Winter. “On the one hand, it gives us endless options. On the other hand, it gives us really limited options as to how many different sounds we can do as two people. But I think we left some space on these tunes to let people be creative. We didn’t want to get in there and have too strong an idea [of how everything should sound] because we knew Mike was magic and we wanted him to have a voice in it.”

Thanks to this somewhat laissez-faire approach, the arrangements are deeply intuitive, an extension of the intimate pairing of the duo itself. Rather than drown out the delicate subtlety that makes the Lowest Pair such a stirring band in the first place, The Perfect Plan centers the duo well and allows their unique vibe to lead the way.

The result is so sonically pleasing, it can be easy to forget there are so many people in the room behind the group. Winter and Lee had planned to pull that studio band together for a few live dates once the album dropped, but that part of the release schedule is on hold for now. Luckily, there’s plenty of richness on this album to dig into in the coming weeks.

But if The Perfect Plan is the album the Lowest Pair has been building up to for years, don’t mistake the duo for having hit their stride.

“A stride implies it was kind of smooth,” says Winter, provoking laughter from her bandmate. “I think we just got hooked on each other and the project has a momentum. I think we just kind of rolled into a lifestyle where this is what we do.”

Photo credit: Sarah Kathryn Wainwright

Dave Simonett Offers Clarity and Community on Solo Debut, ‘Red Tail’

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Dave Simonett has proven himself to be a man no genre can hold. Some days the Minnesota-based singer/songwriter is fronting prominent Duluth string band, Trampled by Turtles. Some days he’s playing with a full rock band behind him as Dead Man Winter. Now his latest project comes in the form of his first full-length solo album, Red Tail. In a phone conversation with BGS, he discussed his freedom from expectations, the project’s emotional clarity, his love of musical diversity, and more.

BGS: Tell me about making this album. What’s memorable or special about it for you?

DS: Well, I started out just making it by myself. That was kind of what I had in mind for the whole thing, initially. I have a studio in Minneapolis and I was working there. I recorded pretty much all of the songs that ended up being on the record and thought I was done, but at the end of that process I thought I’d like to expand a few of them with some other players.

So I ended up going down to Pachyderm Studios outside of Minneapolis with a small band and re-recorded about half of it down there. Still used some of the stuff from my studio, some from Pachyderm, and just kind of smashed it together. This happens to me pretty often. I’ll have what I think is a concrete idea of what I want to do at the beginning of a project, and then it evolves from there. I’ve learned over the years to let that process happen.

You mention that Red Tail benefited from a freedom from expectations because you recorded it without really knowing if anyone would ever hear it. How do you think that freedom helped flavor the album?

I do think there’s a freedom to that and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever done that. Normally when I started to record anything there was an end product in mind: “We’re going to go make a Trampled by Turtles record,” or something like that. That carries with it a certain amount of pressure, which this didn’t really have. I just had these songs and I wanted to record them. I didn’t know what it would be, I just wanted to record them. So I had a little bit of time on my own doing it, and then I thought, “Well, let’s see what they sound like with the other people and a little bit of time in the studio.”

The whole time I was thinking, “You know, this could be something or not. Maybe this is just demos for another band.” But as the process went on, it started to fuse together into something that felt like a record to me. It ended up being a really easy and natural feeling, and that came from the thought process at the outset when I thought, “This doesn’t have to be anything.” I didn’t have a deadline. I didn’t have anything like that. It was really open, and in a weird way it took away a lot of stress.

From the point that you realized this album was something that you’d be releasing, did the songs change in any way from an arrangement or textural standpoint?

Yeah, definitely. Both of those. They even changed from a lyrical standpoint, and I think that a lot of times when I’m working on a record it will do that throughout the process. It’s something as simple as adding some different people in there. That in and of itself just changes it so much.

We recorded everything pretty much live, which is how I generally like to work, so there wasn’t a whole lot of forward thinking in that way. It was more like, let’s get these guys in a room and see what happens when they play the song however they feel like it. And then maybe a couple little adjustments, but that was really all of the arranging we did. Just the fact that there were other people contributing stuff from their own creativity was enough to change it quite a bit.

You say that recording this album was the best you’ve ever felt in your personal life while recording. Do you think that helped give you the clarity to better examine some of the darker subject matter on the album?

Yeah, and I generally get the same vibe from other writers that I’ve talked to. I think that maybe depression, or hard times in general, get a little bit romanticized in music. It might be like the whole Townes Van Zandt myth or something like that; that you have to be super messed up to write music. In my life, in periods where I’ve been like that, I can’t make anything. I feel like creativity and the drive to go make something are at their peak when I’m feeling good.

I think that’s a pretty simple equation when you think about it. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of bed, let alone go to a studio and write all day, along with all of the stuff that goes into making a record. I do think that “clarity” is a good way to put it. Everybody has rough patches in their life. Being at a point to look at some of those and examine them, I think the best way to do that is from a different place. For me it is.

A healthy mindset keeps you from being sucked down an emotional rabbit hole that can end up impacting the entire album and recording process.

Yeah, that’s a good point. You can look at it and almost have a sense of humor about it instead of taking it, and yourself, too seriously in that subject matter.

You talk a lot about how special it is when the listener can apply a song to their own life. At the same time, this is your solo album and sort of a vulnerable look into your life. How do you write in a way that’s specific enough for these songs to mean something to you, but also broad enough that any listener can apply it to their own lives?

I have no idea. [Laughs] I don’t think it’s very intentional. I feel like most of the time I’ll just write, and once in a while I’ll see a line and recognize that from some experience in my life. Instead of thinking about an experience and writing towards that, I just write and then I can look back on it and say, “Oh, I know what that was about.” Most of my work has been that way. It starts like that for me. It starts kind of ambiguous.

It all comes from inside. All the stuff that’s jumbled up in my brain comes out as this, so it’s by its own nature personal. I’ve never really been good at writing stories about things that didn’t happen to me. Some other people are really good at that, but I can’t do that. It all comes from me, but very rarely does it get very specific, and I think that’s just my general style. Maybe a comfort level thing.

“There’s a Lifeline Deep in the Night Sky” strikes me as one of the purest representations of the community and fellowship that surrounds roots music. For somebody who may not know anything about this music, what would you want them to know about the community that surrounds it?

I don’t know if I can think of anything that specifically applies to roots music. This might be a roundabout way to say it, but when I started playing music in Duluth with Trampled, and a couple other bands before that, the music community was really tight. It was also really diverse. There wasn’t another string band in that town. The scene was small and creative enough to sort of only allow for one or two bands who sounded similar, and then nobody else would want to start something like that because it’s already being done. So my sense of musical community comes more from the diversity of the scene.

[Trampled by Turtles] didn’t really start out in an Americana scene. We’ve grown in that world since then, but I think community applies to music in general. I think a lot of people divide stuff up into genres a little too harshly. The people who came down and sang with me on “There’s a Lifeline Deep in the Night Sky” were just a gathering of people who happened to be at the studio. These were people, a lot of them musicians and a lot of them not, who were from all over the place musically. It was more like, let’s all get in a room together and sing a song. I feel like you could probably find that in hip-hop, metal, or anywhere. I hope so, anyway.

I felt really lucky to grow up musically in Duluth in the early 2000s. Every show we played would be with two or three bands. It would be us and a punk band, a hip-hop band, a straight-up rock ‘n’ roll band, but we were all friends. It was celebrated that we were all different from each other, and that’s why we were all doing this together. That’s one of my favorite things about local music scenes across the country. Finding that stuff. You’re right, we do have a great roots and Americana scene around here in the Midwest, but there’s great everything. When people get too caught up in one thing it can get a little poisonous. I feel like music itself brings communities together.

Recording a song like “There’s a Lifeline Deep in the Night Sky,” we recorded it with one microphone onto a cassette player. It was about as informal and unrehearsed as it gets. It was just fun. Nowadays, especially with the modern recording process, it’s easy to make a perfect song. You can make the tempo perfect, the pitch perfect, and everything. Still nothing compares to getting a bunch of people in a room and playing a song live. Embracing the little imperfections that happen as part of the uniqueness of the recording.

Playing with punk bands and metal bands, how does coming from a place like Duluth impact your scope? Does coming from a scene with so many different types of music open your borders and give you some freedom to explore new ideas?

Absolutely. If nothing else, it helped me get out of my own head. If I wanted to go see some live music I would see so many different kinds of music. It wasn’t like it is in some places, where I could go see a folk act every night. I can’t go see a bluegrass band every night in Duluth. It forced me, and hopefully a lot of other people, to celebrate all these different bands.

To me, the genre doesn’t matter at all. A song could be on a banjo or a laptop, but if the song connects with me then I’m into it. I don’t really give a shit which instruments are played. It’s about the song, or if you can see some kind of art in the performance that you really connect to. To me, that’s the most important part. That’s what I want to celebrate. When I record, this is how I like to do it, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to go see Atmosphere some time. Just because I can’t play that music myself doesn’t mean I don’t love it.

I try to be honest with myself in the recording process, where if something comes up that I want to try I’ll give it a shot. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. But to your question, I really am thankful for that diversity in my music growing up. That’s helped me keep an open mind. I feel like the older people get, and the older I get, it’s even more important to keep your mind open.

Photos: Zoe Prinds

Trampled by Turtles Revisit Iris DeMent’s “Our Town”

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Over the years, Trampled by Turtles have occasionally added Iris DeMent’s stark folk song, “Our Town,” to their set list, with lead singer Dave Simonett delivering the Midwestern loneliness and wistfulness that the tune calls for. Now the Minnesota-based band has finally recorded “Our Town” for an upcoming EP, Sigourney Fever, which drops on December 6.

The track list also includes covers of Neil Young’s “Pocahontas,” Faces’ “Ooh La La,” Warren Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart,” and Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” The band will be touring in January and February.

“We are getting back into the readiness of making a full record,” Simonett tells American Songwriter. “Right now, I’m starting to write, but it’s kind of a limbo time. This is sort of like an appetizer for us.”

DeMent once told NPR that she wrote the song after driving through a boarded-up Midwestern town when she was 25 years old, and that the song came to her in its complete form. She wisely recognized that musical experience as her calling to be a songwriter. More than three decades later, it’s good to know that the sun still hasn’t set on “Our Town.”

Photo credit: David McClister

Them Coulee Boys Find Their Muse

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The tendrils of Them Coulee Boys’ bluegrass roots have often reached out into the realms of punk, rock ‘n’ roll, and beyond. Die Happy, the newest album from the Eau Claire, Wisconsin-based string band, is a beautiful and introspective journey toward finding community in our human imperfections. Produced by Dave Simonett of Trampled by Turtles, the project stands out for its sonic consistency and deeply personal, yet relatable lyrics. A phone interview with lead singer Soren Staff revealed the story that Them Coulee Boys wish to tell with the record.

BGS: Describe the experience of making this album. Were there any particularly challenging, rewarding, or memorable parts?

Soren Staff: Well, we recorded at Pachyderm Studios. The whole history of that place is insane. We made the record 25 years to the month from when Nirvana was in there making In Utero. Seeing pictures from that time and it looked exactly [the same]; in the middle of January, so a bunch of snow. That in and of itself — and hearing about the other people who recorded there — brought a certain weight of, “This is something completely different.” We’ve recorded in living rooms, and farm houses, and small do-it-yourself studios so this was definitely a whole different thing for us.

Explain the band’s relationship with Dave Simonett. How was creative control shared between the band and the producer?

I would say there’s a little bit of both [taking control]. The reason we really wanted to work with Dave was that he’s made all of those great records with Trampled by Turtles being the bluegrass band, which is where we started, and he’s also made some great rock ‘n’ roll albums with his Dead Man Winter project. We try to straddle that sound a little bit and made sense to have that on there. He has experience with both of those sounds so when we wanted a little more of “this” or a little bit of “that,” he knew what we needed. I think the big strength with Dave’s production was giving us some agency over our own work.

We’ve always been confident in what we wanted to do. We’ve always had a big vision for what we wanted to make, but you get in a studio with a guy like Dave, who, we had met him in the past and had nice interactions with him, but he’s still the dude that I once waited like six or seven hours in line to see. It was one of those kinds of things where I think he knew that we saw him in a certain way, and he used that to inspire a little bit of confidence in us.

Once we got to that mode we became really comfortable with him, like an idol turned to a friend. It was a cool energy, because we obviously had tremendous respect for him. It was hands-on, in that he knew when to assert himself, but also hands-off in that he knew what we wanted was what the project needed.

Was this album written in a condensed time span, or over a longer, drawn-out series of experiences?

I would say it was more condensed. Our first record was just everything I’d written up until that point, then the second record had leftovers from that record and a few others I had written to add it all together. But with this one, I had gone through a breakup … and was searching for something.

Before this album was called Die Happy, we were going to call it “My Anxiety & Me,” which is the last track. It’s framed as this journey. The first few tracks are alluding to, “I’m going to win somebody back. I’m going to get to this place and get us back to where we need to be.” With this record the whole writing process started as me processing this relationship and processing what happened, and it came more to an acceptance of myself and my mental illness. Trying to come to grips. And not in a negative way, but in a positive way that, “This is me, and this is a part of me that I can navigate.”

It was definitely a record that was all written in this one point in time and that definitely shows through a little bit. All the songs have references to each other, and it’s all that same moment for me.

Did that theme evolve throughout the process of making the album?

This is the most I’ve ever planned what I was going to talk about. I write about what comes to mind at the moment when I’m trying to write, but when I started writing for this one I was noticing a lot of common themes and a lot of common ideas. I did want it to be about that self-acceptance because that was something that I was working on personally in my life. Trying to get to that point of being OK with what I was and what I am. It started as trying to be a collection of those kinds of songs, and then sonically we had some fun stuff going on, so we wanted that theme to come through in the music as well. We’ve always wanted to be this kind of band. I don’t think we were capable of it in the past, but I think we’ve grown into what we wanted to sound like.

Is there any particular song that you believe sums up the message of the entire album?

The last one, [“My Anxiety & Me”]. … It’s not a single and we recorded that song with just one mic and the room mics. It doesn’t have that shiny production or the sound of the rest of the album, but lyrically that’s what we were getting at. That song is about accepting who you are and realizing that a lot of those low points are going to help you get to where you need to be. I wrote that while we were recording. It was the only thing that I hadn’t written [yet], because I knew that was going to be the last song we recorded, so I wanted to live in that moment and write in that moment. It summarizes a lot of what I’m trying to say.

Has the new album changed the dynamic of your live show?

We’ve gone to full-time having drums. In the past we toured as a four-piece: banjo, guitar, bass, and mandolin. So now we’ve actually gotten a little louder live, but we also try to strip it all down because you play those rock songs and then strip it all down to nothing and play songs like “My Anxiety & Me” or “5’6” Monument.” Putting those in the live show has given us a different wrinkle. We’ve always had those kinds of songs but haven’t really played them because we’ve always been hired to play the big, fun, exciting stuff. It’s fun to show a different side of us every once in a while.

If you could pick one setting in which to listen to this album, where would it be?

There’s this bar in Eau Claire called The Joint. It’s this townie bar where all the musicians hang out, all the art kids from the university, all the old fogies. It’s got the cheapest beer and they’ve got this 25-cent jukebox. I would love for that to be the first place I actually listen to it. I think that would be such a great place to finally sit and take it all in, because it’s a place I love.

It’s a record, that, while it’s a personal journey, it’s asking — like in that first song — “Is it just me … or does everyone else feel this way?” It’s about seeking community in the stuff that we keep to ourselves, so I think being in a space like my favorite bar would be a perfect place to listen to it.

How has your sound evolved between this album and your previous one, Dancing in the Dim Light?

We’re more conscientious of our tone and how it all fits together. We’re louder now in some moments because of the drums but we’re quieter in other moments. We care a lot more about the tones of what we’re doing and how it all fits together than we have in the past. This is a much more cohesive sound. I think that’s the biggest change. We care more about it all fitting together than “let’s get as many great songs as we can.” Not that these aren’t great songs, it’s just that we wanted them all to fit together more.

Photo credit: Kyle Lehman

Reading the Room: A Conversation With Trampled by Turtles

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Trampled by Turtles are living up to the title of their newest album, Life Is Good on the Open Road. The Minnesota-based band parked the bus for nearly 18 months after touring behind their prior album, 2014’s Wild Animals. Leading up to the new project the six-piece group gathered at a lakeside cabin and rekindled their connection forged over more than a decade of performing together. Those positive vibes carried over to the new album, which emphasizes their exceptional acoustic chops. On the afternoon of their Ryman Auditorium show in Nashville, frontman Dave Simonett and mandolin player Erik Berry visited backstage with the Bluegrass Situation.

I know you cut this new album live-to-tape, but I was still surprised to see it took just six days to record it.

Simonett: We were surprised too. We had two weeks booked in a studio, which I think for a lot of people might be fast as well. For us that’s plenty of time, usually. But we ended up mixing the whole thing while we were there too.

Berry: Yeah, there was a dinnertime meeting where it was like, “Gentleman, I think we’re done. We got one more song to record tomorrow.” “Really?”

Other than just the general efficiency, what’s the upside to that?

Simonett: I enjoy lots of parts about live recording. I like to do it quite a bit. When I produce other people, I try to get bands to do it as well. It’s always spoken about in a vague way because I think it’s really hard to describe. But you do capture some kind of energy, a vibe. People play differently, if you want to get practical about it, when they’re all playing with each other, rather than playing to something that’s already been recorded.

The rhythm is one. You’re not following anything, you’re all just kind of moving in the same direction at the same time and it’s elastic. Nowadays it might be considered risky because it’s so easy to make things perfect now. But I’ve never felt like that really benefits that many people anyway. But especially us who have been playing together for a while. When we all sit and play and look at each other and play with each other, it sounds different than if we don’t, I guess.

Berry: To add to it, we hadn’t played together for about a year, outside of the weekend retreat we did. To build on what Dave’s saying, when people are playing together live, there’s also something different when something’s happening for the first, second, third, or fourth time, than when you’re playing that tune for the 50th time. Stuff grows on it; they move together differently.

Simonett: Yeah, I’ve always loved trying to capture a song before people start to really think about what they’re doing. Before people come up with parts to play. Before it gets dissected too much. It’s cool to see what happens naturally. I’m burnt out after a fifth take. That’s as far as I want to go.

Dave, how do you introduce your new songs to the band? From what I understand, you had songs already in your back pocket when you got together to record. How do you show the band, “Here’s some songs I’ve written”?

Simonett: That’s about as simple as that. Sit down and…

Berry: I use the phrase “coffee house ready.” Dave’s got them to a point where you could go to a coffee house and play the song.

Simonett: Yeah, I can play them. Core structure, melody, lyrics are pretty much done. And then I just sit there and play it a few times, and people join in when they feel like they have the hang of it, and it’s pretty organic.

That seems cooler than recording a little demo and emailing it to everybody.

Simonett: Yeah. I do that too, just so people can get the vibe, or at least know what’s coming – maybe if I have the song done in time to do that kind of thing. That is a nice thing to be able to have. I don’t think the real learning of it happens until we are all in the same space, though.

Berry: The real benefit of having stuff in advance is like in “Annihilate,” where I have a part that I wrote on it because I had the time to think about it.

Simonett: I also don’t know how to write music down on paper, so it’s all pretty simple anyway.

You guys seem to operate a lot on instinct. Is that something you had to develop and learn?

Simonett: Oh, I think it’s the absence of learning for me. I don’t really know any other way to act.

Berry: I hate the word “easy,” but there’s been a certain easy chemistry that all of us have always had with each other. On the very early shows, I’m like, “That’s pretty good. I could see doing that again.” So there’s something like that, too, now that it’s 15 years down the road.

Simonett: There’s a lot of bands in the string band world, if you want to call it that, that are amazing at that kind of stuff. I guess I don’t want to list examples because I’ll probably leave somebody out, but I think we’re pretty comfortable being a band that’s not that. It’s maybe more song-driven than upfront-playing driven, if that makes sense. That’s just where we naturally fit, I think.

Berry: I’ll name a couple names. When we first started, I didn’t know what I was doing. So I went across the street from where I worked to the Electric Fetus Record Store in Duluth and said, “I’m just getting this bluegrass band starting. I don’t know what to listen to.” So they sold me a Bill Monroe CD and they sold me a Yonder Mountain String Band CD. They were like, “This is your basis. Here’s what’s happening right now.” That Yonder Mountain disc was Mountain Tracks, Volume 2. That’s a live one. There’s some really great stuff on there. It didn’t take me very long for me to realize I couldn’t play like that. [laughs]

You guys are good at reading the room by now, I’d imagine, after 15 years on the road.

Simonett: Yeah, I think so. It’s always kind of a mystery. You can play the same set list two nights in a row and the response could be completely different. My goal as a performer is to get as far away from caring about that as possible. Any true performer will tell you that you can’t please everybody and that’s really not your job anyway. My job onstage – I don’t view it as to be up there to make everybody in the room happy because I can barely keep myself happy, you know? But I feel like we tailor to rooms, though, with our set list.

Berry: If we were going to do a set that no one was going to watch, I think that what we would prefer to do would be like, “OK, let’s take a break with a little slower one, now. Now we’re going to kick it up again.” I think people like our tastes. We’re pretty lucky … I don’t know, I’ve had to come to grips with it, too, because people aren’t shy about letting you know they’re disappointed.

Simonett: They love it, actually.

Berry: People have been telling me after shows that it’s bullshit that we didn’t play “Song X” or “Song Y” since the year 2005.

Yeah? What do you do when that happens?

Berry: You play a 90-minute show. If you have more than 90 minutes’ worth of material, the odds of dropping a song are high. … If we played every original song we have, that’s a four-hour show. That’s not going to happen. So I could challenge any Trampled fan: “Here. Write your ideal set, 24 songs.” I know that I could read it and be like, “But you left off… Now you know how it feels.”

Simonett: A listening crowd – it’s a weird relationship, man. It feels great generally. I like performing. It took me a while to like it. I still get freaked out about getting up on stage. But I enjoy the act of it now. But you can’t go up there with the illusion that everybody in the room is going to enjoy what you do. I think if you start thinking about that too much, you start changing yourself and you’re really close to becoming a cover band.

Do you mean like a cover band of your own material?

Simonett: Of ourselves, yeah. To just go up there and try to do what you think people are going to like. That’s not the point. For me, I like to think as an artist, I want to be able to feel totally comfortable. This tour is a good example – to go up and play new music every night. That’s holding on to still being valid in some way.


When I listen to this record, there does seem to be a sense of motion in the writing and the songs. Do you agree with that?

Simonett: I agree with it, yeah. I think even the title. But all of that came about after we made it. It’s happened to me before. You write a bunch of songs and make a record and you have no clue of any kind of thread that binds them all together until you put it in order and listen to it. “I guess I was singing about traveling a lot.” [laughs] I don’t really notice it as it’s happening.

Listening to “Thank You, John Steinbeck,” I heard a reference to the book Travels With Charley. What are the literary influences you draw on for inspiration?

Simonett: Steinbeck is really high on my list. That book in particular. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve done this, but I used to read that book before every tour. Hopefully this isn’t too long-winded of an answer, but after a certain amount of time touring, maybe the traveling part of it starts to lose its sparkle a little bit, and you forget … It’s amazing how easy it is to have a life like this become predictable, which it’s not supposed to be. At least I don’t want it to be that way. [I want to] remember that it’s still an adventure. You’re still roaming around the world playing music. I think the core of that book is appreciating the adventure of a road trip. It made me want to pack my camera, you know?

Photos by David McClister

A Peaceful Place: An Interview with Dave Simonett

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Some people seek counseling to work through the pain of a divorce, lying prone on a couch while a therapist helps guide them through the evolving course of their own emotions. Others drown themselves in booze, pills, or even the black hole of denial — or sometimes a combination of all three. Trampled by Turtles’ Dave Simonett, however, did something that he didn’t expect in the wake of a breakup: He wrote about it. Though Simonett has always reached deep into his personal experiences to enliven his songwriting, he’d never quite set out to make a concept record — one that charted the dissolution of his 10-year marriage and let the past go up in flames. But Furnace, his second solo LP under the name Dead Man Winter, is a sonic catharsis; a catalog of 10 slow-chugging, heart-tugging folk songs that explore the most gaping wounds left when a romance suddenly fades away.

To write Furnace, the Minneapolis-residing artist decamped to a small cabin in Finland, Minnesota, a remote and tiny town about two hours from the Canadian border. There, songs like “This House Is on Fire” and “Am I Breaking Down” spilled out, devastatingly raw despite the fact that they sometimes rock as hard as they hurt. For those who turned to Trampled by Turtles for their progressive breed of aggressive bluegrass, Furnace is a lush, emotive surprise that trades fast-picking strings for introspective acoustic strums and chugs of organ, all centered in Simonett’s stories that approach his shifting world with a keen sensitivity, but plenty of humility, too. “I’m full of charm, I’m full of whiskey,” he sings on “Red Wing Blue Wing.” “I’m full of shit most of the time.”

The release of this album has effectively put Trampled by Turtles on hiatus. What made you feel comfortable putting things on break?

There are a few different parts to it, but mainly it was creative. We were in a good spot, as a band, and things were going well. But I had wanted to put out a Dead Man Winter or solo project thing for a while, and making the album wasn’t the problem. Fitting it into the Trampled downtime was too much, so it was mainly to clear up space for me. That wasn’t a hard decision, but it also messes up other people’s lives. These are my dear friends, pretty much family members, who count on [the band] as their income. That was the hardest part for me — I’m going to put these guys out of work for almost a year. But it will be good for us; we’ve been touring so hard for almost 15 years, so it’s nice to get a little breathing space.

Is your frame of mind different when you approach songs for your solo work versus with Trampled?

I don’t think I can separate the two. It’s just kind of what was natural at the time and so much of that was caused by my divorce. I don’t write for one project or the other: I just write songs, and any song either band has recorded could have easily switched to the other. It’s just whatever outlet feels right.

Did the material you created for Furnace instantly feel like it lent itself to a solo project?

I think mainly it was how I wanted to make the songs in the studio. My life was in an extremely confusing place, and I was in the spot where I needed to change everything about my life, artistically as well as just needing new shit. It was very chaotic and fast paced. And I think it worked out perfectly.

Was there a moment when you knew that songwriting was going to be a force to help you work through your divorce?

It’s my only place to go. Being in the wilderness is helpful, but as far as actually letting this stuff out of my body, songwriting is, for better or worse, what I have to use. It’s a process I enjoy, and for me it works all right. And I knew that well enough to try and avoid it.

What do you mean by that?

Well, I didn’t want to do a breakup record, per se. But I couldn’t fake it. [Divorce] is not a unique experience, but I hadn’t done it before. It’s a huge transitional experience with a lot of pain and chaos, and it’s the only thing I could focus on, even if I tried to be something else. I kind of just gave in, and said, “Maybe this isn’t healthy for me. I’m a songwriter. I should write songs about what I know.” Once I let that go, it came out pretty easily.

So did you have reservations about being so personal?

I’m kind of a private person generally, but I have come to terms with the fact that it’s probably good for me, as an artist, to just get out of my comfort zone a little bit. It’s not groundbreaking, but for me, it’s a really new direction. It’s almost a gift.

A divorce is undoubtedly a difficult thing to go through. Do you find you write better or find more inspiration when things are in tumult?

I don’t, actually, and that might be a bit of a romantic myth. I think of the Townes Van Zandts of the world — people almost treasure that guy’s pain. For me, when I’m in a bad place, I don’t do anything well. I have to find some kind of peace before I can be creative. I don’t consider the writing on this record to be great. I’m happy with the record. I like the songs. But I didn’t put a lot of thought into the lyrics. Because it’s almost a direct translation, a pressure release valve. It just came out. I thought, “I’m just going to record this picture of my emotional state instead of thinking about it as a creative piece.”

Was it always clear to you that this album would deal in one united concept?

Yeah, it was. But I was kind of mad at myself — like, “You’re making a damn theme record?” I knew it going in, which is a rare thing for me. A lot of times, I’ll go back, and there will be themes running through a record, but I don’t notice it at the time. This is the first time it was a conscious thing from the front.

And you wrote most of the record in a secluded cabin in the woods, one of music’s most beloved tropes. It worked pretty famously for Bon Iver. So what is it about a cabin that is so conducive to songwriting?

It works! It probably depends on the writer, and I know some people where it’s not their vibe, but it is mine. Growing up, [the outdoors] was always my church — just being alone and being away from people, but in a natural setting that is beautiful and quiet and secluded. When I’m in that kind of environment, I feel really good. I got to that physical place and I was in a much better mental place, because it was so peaceful. It allowed me to focus just on the speed of daily life. Because believe it or not, even Minneapolis can feel too fast.

Photo credit: David McClister