BGS 5+5: Her Crooked Heart’s Rachel Ries

Artist: Her Crooked Heart
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Latest album: To Love To Leave To Live
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): My choir calls me ‘Coach Racket’ or just Coach which is super sweet. (My sister calls me Racket because I make noise, despite being a generally quite quiet person).

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I’m the founding director and choral arranger for a weirdo charming 60-voice indie choir in the Twin Cities. For our first season finale, I arranged a backup choir part for a song of mine called “Ghost” off my last album, Ghost of a Gardener. That moment there on the Icehouse stage [a venue in Minneapolis], when the outro hit and all the vocals coalesced into one determined statement of faith in humanity and purpose — holy is the best way I can describe it. I’ve never felt so proud, satisfied, gratified, faithful, boundless on stage.

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

I very much enjoy using my hands to create things I find beautiful and pleasing – from linocut prints, hand-sewn CD sleeves, detailed pencil portraits, to homemade rhubarb sour cherry jam… While I can’t say these art forms inform my music, I steadily strive to find ways to merge the various expressions with my music. I make handmade editions of releases, draw portraits of my patrons from time to time, make jam to sell at the merch table… I used to be a fairly unhappy monochrome musician. It’s helped me immensely to find ways to bring more of my entire self to this music-presenting table.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I have no idea what led up to this moment, but I clearly remember being a 4-year-old, the youngest daughter of Mennonite medical missionaries in Zaire, sitting on Sue’s lap in our little house in the village. She was my friend, minder, and a fellow mission-worker. I gazed up at her (I adored her) and declared “I wanna be a singer when I grow up.” I have no idea where that came from and why. But it sure stuck. It’s been my engine of purpose; my wheel of longing for as long as I have memory.

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

Ah the toughest time… When I was living in a relationship I knew in my core was not right for me; for either of us. The denial was deep and I wouldn’t let myself see it clearly, let alone articulate it. During that time, whenever I’d sit down to write a song, it was as if I’d lifted a manhole cover and this dark demon snarl of “Get me out / Run / Abort! Abort!” was trying to rush out and burn my life to the ground. So I’d quickly slam the cover back down and do something, anything else. Curiously, once I’d finally been honest, all those snarling sad song fumes just… vanished. They dissolved into the ether and I finally had songs again.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Almost never. And if I do, it’s an intentional choice with a reveal at the end when the pronoun switches to ‘I’ and I claim my role within the song. If memory serves, I’ve played this card a few times, though, so I might have used up that hand…

But this links up with something quite important to me in songwriting – attempting to articulate universals with emotionally resonant specificity. “Pleasant Valley Reservoir” describes the day I got dumped and willfully got lost driving the backroads of Vermont. It ends with the lyric, sung almost as a dare: “Am I lost if it’s where I choose to be?” I’m the ‘I’ but that’s totally for us. It’s one of my favorite lines to deliver live. If I’ve done my job, I swear I can almost hear the click of recognition in the audience. Pronouns are wonderfully mutable at times.


Photo credit: Nate Ryan

BGS 5+5: Kind Country

Artist: Kind Country
Hometown: Minneapolis
Latest album: Hard Times
Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): Evil Country

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

It has got to be Jerry Garcia, his ability to fuse elements of American music and bring it to a new audience is undoubtedly an inspiration. A lot of Jerry’s inspiration came from the original bluegrass artists — Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers and the like. Their work ethic, drive and dedication to the music serves as a framework for us all.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Well it’s still pretty recent to be considered a ‘memory’, but just this last week at First Avenue in Minneapolis. The room holds such significance for any Minnesotan artists who steps onto that stage, and all of us being there together was very special. I remember at one point, Chris and I finished a song lying on our backs, and the crowd went nuts. I was laughing, looking up at the lights, and everyone on stage was smiling. And when I looked out into the crowd, I could see so many people who had been with us since our first show smiling too. It really felt like family; it really felt like home.

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

We hang out out with a lot of crafters: jewelers, carpenters, luthiers, glassblowers and such. Their process of obtaining quality materials, paying attention to detail, incorporating their art into something useful and meaningful at the same time. We strive to emulate that our music.

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

Before most of our shows we go on really long van rides. It’s sort of a forced ritual.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Driving the highways across the Great Plains is very comforting to me. In the summer, when everything is in bloom, it’s just the green touching the blue. I’ve spent much of my childhood and adult life against that backdrop. And watching the sun set over Sandy Lake in central Minnesota from the view of the porch at our family cabin speaks volumes to me. When the water is still like glass, dragonflies hover over the water and almost silence except the occasional call of a loon. In those moments of stillness, all the troubles of the world melt away. In the summer time as a boy I would eat supper on that deck with my grandparents, aunts uncles and cousins. This year I’ll be spending evenings there with my wife, children, nieces and nephews. These places hold a special place in my heart and mind and I imagine that’s where my songs come from.


Photo credit: Tim McG Photo

BGS 5+5: Palmer T. Lee

Artist: Palmer T. Lee
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Latest album: Winebringer

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

The moment I first realized I wanted to be a musician was catalyzed by an experience I had when I very young. I don’t remember why I was there but I do remember the height of the ceiling, the shape of the windows, the colors of the building, and the smooth painted bricks of the gymnasium. So I know I was at the junior high school of the small town I grew up in and that it must have been the junior high band set up on the floor just in front the stage, and the folding chairs wrapped around them. I was standing in the back and could see the horn section. I have a distinct memory of the ineffable feeling that surged through me the moment the band started playing. The movement of the players, the loudness, the vibrations pulsing through my entire body. Though I was so young I somehow knew I was old enough to where I wasn’t supposed to cry in public, but I wanted to.

Years later, I was maybe in junior high myself at this point, my brother had a garage band. It was just two of them, guitar and drums, and my brother invited me to come watch them play a couple songs. I sat on van bench a few feet away, they began to play Led Zeppelin songs. Immediately, the loudness, the movement, the vibrations, the urge to weep and the stoicism that held back all but one or two tears, that ineffable feeling, something like if you were able to feel beauty with your fingers. Shortly after I began “borrowing” CDs from my dad and my brother and when no one was home I would crank the stereo do my best Robert Plant impressions. That’s when I learned how incredible singing feels and that it’s what I needed to figure out how to do.

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Which artist has influenced me the most is a little tricky because there have been a number of periods with varying influence. But lately, the past two or so years, without hesitation would be Jason Isbell. He’s like a Steinbeck of songwriting, the way he can paint a picture with words, so vivid and visceral. And his delivery is genuine and powerful; he can give the simplest line a potent and palpable quality.

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

If I had a mission statement for my career it would be to continue to grow musically and find new ways to express myself emotionally and creatively, to always pursue evocative expression, to create a space where people can simply feel something. It’s a simple idea but I know I am not alone in finding tremendous value in it and it’s important to me that other people know they are not alone in finding value in that cathartic experience.

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

Literature informs my music greatly and regularly. I really enjoy emerging myself in the world and voice of a novelist or a poet to the point where I start thinking and processing things in that voice. It’s a really interesting and fun place to write songs from. It’s a place where I most often surprise myself.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

I don’t, very often, hide behind a character in my songs, they tend to be very naked and personal reflections. Though characters do happen and it happens that a song will take on different meanings and contexts over time and I will use different mental imagery while performing them in order to get behind it and into it. When that happens the people and the “me” in the songs may begin to shift or switch around and that can vary as quickly as night to night or even mid-song.


Photo credit: Jessie McCall

Inspired by Dylan, J.S. Ondara Spreads His Own ‘Tales of America’

Six years ago just about now, J.S. Ondara landed in Minneapolis on a pilgrimage, lured by his love of Minnesota native son Bob Dylan’s music. He made his way north to Duluth, where Dylan was born, and Hibbing, where the singer-songwriter was raised. It was not quite what he expected.

“I thought I’d go to Hibbing and it would be a magnificent city with music coming from all over the place,” he says, now, laughing at his thoughts of the small town as the Emerald City. “There wasn’t much to find.”

We can forgive him his youthful fantasies. He’d never traveled like that before. He’d never seen snow before, let alone a Minnesota winter. He’d never really been away from home, and home was a long way from there — Nairobi, Kenya, where as a teen he’d fallen completely for the music of Dylan. But at just 20, he impetuously decided to trek to where his hero’s story began.

“It was all very romantic for me,” he says. “I just said, ‘Oh, I’m going to do this. It makes sense right now.’ It was all a very romantic choice, a thing I tend to do regularly in my life, make all these romantic decisions and not have any expectations out of it other than, ‘Let’s see how it goes.’”

That, uh, freewheelin’ spirit went pretty well for him. This month sees the release of his own debut album, Tales of America, on Verve Records. It’s a collection of moving, personal folk-influenced songs drawn from the journey he’s made and the observations along the way, produced by veteran Mike Viola (who as vice president of A&R at Verve signed him to his deal) and featuring appearances by such fellow Dylan acolytes as Andrew Bird, Dawes’ Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith and Milk Carton Kids’ Joey Ryan. The release comes on the heels of his first major tour, opening for no less than Lindsey Buckingham, and a subsequent European jaunt.

And while the Dylan influence is present, this is in no way an imitation or even homage, per se. With an almost jazzy looseness, often swaying around stand-up bass played by Los Angeles stalwart Sebastian Steinberg, there’s a closer resemblance to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. At the center is Ondara’s high, pure, finely controlled voice, an instrument unlike any of his heroes’, though you might hear some Jeff (and Tim) Buckley in it, at times piercing the heavens with an otherworldly falsetto, movingly unguarded on the haunting a cappella “Turkish Bandana.”

Hibbing wasn’t Oz, but he’s definitely not in Kenya anymore. And what swept him to this new life was, of all things, grunge and indie-rock.

“We really didn’t have much growing up,” he says. “Had food, a place to sleep and that’s about it. And a tiny little radio, about the size of my iPhone. That was all we had.”

Through that little radio came Nirvana, Radiohead, Death Cab for Cutie, transmissions from another world in a language the Swahili-speaking youth didn’t understand. It was magical.

“I was intrigued by the music and language, all these sounds,” he says. “I couldn’t make any sense of it. To me it was a spaceship to another universe.”

He tried imitating those sounds, though not knowing the language he sang gibberish — well, maybe not that far off with some of Kurt Cobain’s often hard-to-decipher mumbling. But it worked its way into him.

“I heard all these songs and developed a kinship for a long time, and used them to study English because I wanted to understand what Cobain was saying, or [Radiohead’s] Thom Yorke or [Death Cab’s] Ben Gibbard,” he says. “I was curious about the language and the spirit and that spurred me to learn English, and I built my vocabulary listening to these songs.”

Another song that caught his ear was “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” — the Guns ’N Roses version, which he assumed was an original by that band. It was only after losing a bet to a school mate about the song’s authorship that he discovered the music of Dylan himself. It was an epiphany.

“I wrote stories and poems, from a very young age,” he says. “I wrote about a puppy, about school, I wrote a lot about the sun for some reason. I was fascinated by the universe in general and wasn’t really receiving the answers I needed. So I would write poems and stories about it as a way to process it and learn about the world. But I never wrote songs. One reason I believe I was drawn to Dylan was listening to his records I thought, ‘These are poems with melodies! I could probably do this!’ I felt I saw a path for me. ‘Perhaps there is hope. I can take these stories and poems and put them in melodies and perhaps people could like them in a grand way. This is something people like? Great! Maybe I’m not lost in my path!’”

He soon set his sights on America, where he had a few relatives and friends scattered about, including an aunt in Minneapolis. But finding a way was rough.

“I started by applying to the University of Minnesota and looking for work opportunities in the state, but nothing bore any fruit,” he says. “As I ran into a wall and was running out of options, I was suddenly awoken, quite rudely, in the wee hours of the morning to be told that I had won a green card lottery and could move to the States. Turns out an aunt had applied for these green cards for a few of us and mine went through. I had no idea. The mischief of the universe!”

His family helped get the money together for the trip after he told them that he was going to become a doctor. That was a fib, he admits. Once settled in Minneapolis, he dove into music-making seriously.

“I picked up a guitar and learned a couple Dylan songs, a couple Neil Young songs, then would go back to those melodies and these poems I’d written, turn them into a melody, call it a song and then go out and try to play for people. That’s how it began for me.”

He hit up the open mic nights around town, started getting some small club bookings, “gradually, very gradually trying to get these songs in front of people.”

And with some money he’d saved from work via a temp agency, he made an acoustic EP that he put online. Soon a local public radio station put his songs in regular rotation. Word spread and contacts started to come in from the music business, both in Minneapolis and around the country.

Among those reaching out was Viola, a veteran musician (the band the Candy Butchers, as well as singer of the title song from the movie That Thing You Do) who had recently taken the job at Verve. The two hit it off right away.

“I had done meetings with others, but with Mike there was a connection,” he says. “I’d do meetings and mention favorite Dylan records and no one knew what I was talking about. Freewheelin’ remains my favorite. When I met with Mike I brought this up, the idea of trying to make a very stripped-down record like that. A few things happen, but not crazy, doesn’t take away from the stories. And I brought up Astral Weeks, which does the same thing. A few things on it that embellish the stories. Those two records. He went, ‘Oh yeah! Those are my favorite records, too!’ There was just chemistry I hadn’t had before.”

From there it was simple.

“It was the old troubadour style of making folk records,” he says. “You get into the studio — you wrote a bunch of songs and maybe get some people around you and play this, and that’s the record.”

The result is an album that portrays the wonder and delight — and also the struggles and heartbreaks — of his time in America, with a facility for language that escapes most native speakers. (An essay he wrote about his life, “The Starred and Striped Fairy of the West,” shows another facet of that.) The opening song, “American Dream,” is equal parts welcoming embrace and distancing suspicion, his poetic images boiling the national spirit to an intimately personal level, a dream world, as it were. That inner view is there throughout the album.

It all came naturally from his experiences.

“I wrote the words ‘I’m getting good at saying goodbye’ just a month after moving to America,” he says of the chorus of the somber “Saying Goodbye.” “They were just words at the time. I didn’t know what they meant. But after turning them into a song and singing them over and over, I can see that I was grappling with thoughts of the past and future. I could see that the totality of my past — being family, culture, upbringing, all of it — was stopping me from becoming not just who I wanted to be but who I’d be best at being, which is the true ‘self’ within.”

That said, he’s also found that echoes of his past can be heard in some of these songs, even if very faintly. He wasn’t a big fan of Kenyan music, traditional or modern while growing up, but it seems some of it crept in anyway. A few of the songs, notably the loping “Lebanon,” bear rhythms echoing those common in music of that region of Africa — the national benga or Nigerian highlife, Tanzanian taraab and Congolese soukous, all quite popular in Kenya. And there’s something ingrained in the vocals that even Ondara only heard after the fact.

“I was listening back to some of the songs and I can hear toward the end of some that I start to make some sounds influenced by my native language, which is not something I tried to do,” he says. “There is African influence there, but subconscious. The more I listen, the most I can track down those sounds.”

LISTEN: David Huckfelt, “Everywind”

Artist: David Huckfelt
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Song: “Everywind” (featuring Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath)
Album: Stranger Angels
Release Date: February 22, 2019

In Their Words: “At the Mishipeshu Trading Post, named for a mythical Ojibwe underwater panther, at the foot of the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I found an old postcard with a woman wrapped in a blanket… Photographed in 1907 by Roland Reed, and standing on the shores of what surely must be Lake Superior, the card simply read ‘Everywind.’

“Nothing else was written and nothing more could be found on who she was, or where, or how she lived. Immediately the wheels began turning on how this woman over a hundred years ago was part of this royal, nurturing, fierce and life-giving lineage of women who have endured all that men have done to them, and this planet, from time immemorial. I flashed ahead to Winona LaDuke, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tara Houska, Faye Brown, and the countless women I know who have stood up and spoken up for the Earth from Alcatraz to Standing Rock in North Dakota; to Louise Erdrich whose novels are staggering in their beauty and whose Birchbark Bookstore in Minneapolis stands as a beacon of truth-telling of a deeper American history vibrant in its resistance ‘Everywind’ is about then and now, the link, from mother to earth, and this moment in our culture when it’s time for men to say to women: ‘You talk. We listen.'” — David Huckfelt


Photo credit: Graham Tolbert

Gig Bag: Vicky Emerson

Welcome to Gig Bag, a BGS feature that peeks into the touring essentials of some of our favorite artists. This time around, Minnesota musician Vicky Emerson details the items she always has nearby at her shows.

Stash Bag: I found this stash bag at a vintage shop close to where I live in Minneapolis. I bring it with me on the road whenever I can because it’s the perfect size to throw all the must-have items in for a gig and wears well with dresses or jeans. The sunglasses are a must for creatively hiding your travel-weary eyes.


Journal: A journal is an essential travel partner for a songwriter. It comes in handy when there is downtime during the day before a show or a quick capture of something overheard at the airport.


Be Brave Bracelet: I received this Be Brave bracelet from a dear girlfriend in Minneapolis and it serves not only as a reminder to be brave but to also be myself.


Black Boots: I always pack a pair of black boots. Always. I found this pair of Western Girl boots in Denver and they are my new favorites to wear with just about anything.


Stuff in My Purse: Items that can be found in any purse that I have with me are healthy snacks, breath mints, tokens of love from friends and family, and the best lip gloss ever (Sephora Glossy Cherry).


Photo of Vicky Emerson: Katie Cannon

WATCH: Rachael Kilgour, “Game Changer”

Artist: Rachael Kilgour
Hometown: Duluth, Minnesota
Song: “Game Changer”
Album: Game Changer
Release Date: Feb 1, 2019
Label: NewSong Recordings

In Their Words: “After my divorce I took a long time to think about what kind of person I wanted to be and how best to share that self with another human. I obsessively deconstructed our ideas of romance and relationship and tried to pinpoint what exactly made a connection a healthy one. I met my current partner after a few years of living a fulfilling single life and was heartened to find someone who shared my sense of cynicism. With equal portions of self-awareness, hope and caution, we forged a relationship I have grown very fond of.” — Rachael Kilgour


Photo credit: Darin Kamnetz

Reading the Room: A Conversation With Trampled by Turtles

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

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