RR: What about something like “Grave,” which has another pointed edge to it?

JA: Most of that was written in about five minutes. That was one of those tunes that just popped out, I’m telling you. It just kind of happened. Where I live in Colorado, in my town, there’s all these coal trains that go by, and I was sitting and stopped by these coal trains. And I was thinking, “This is just a gigantic train. There’s gotta be about 113…” and that was it. I just sat there, stopped by the train, wrote it, got to my house, finished it up, and once again, bringing it in to Brendan, and the structure and the movement, and, yeah, that one kind of blew off the page. It wrote itself. The chorus stuck with me, and went through some editing processes when I showed it to Brendan.

Man, you know, it’s so…for me, to see these songs finally coming to the stage, it’ll be cool for people to hear them, and it takes it to a different place. I think of when that song was first written, we first tried to record it as a duo, and we said, “This needs a band behind it. This needs to really move.” Yeah, it’s crazy. That one wrote itself. That was one of those ones that you just can’t write fast enough. If you look back at the original lyrics of that, it’s like all abbreviations because I couldn’t write fast enough. I thought, “Oh, shit, I better get this out, or I’m going to forget it.”

RR: I’m glad you said that because my feeling is that the classic songs that stand up are sometimes the ones that just wrote themselves rather quickly.

JA: Sometimes songs like that, I think—the other part, too, about talking about how we edited and mixed the record for 14 months, sometimes, you can mix yourself into a corner. Sometimes, it’s so in your head. When that first line came out—113 coal cars, I can hear ‘em scream—it was like, “All right, this thing doesn’t need to be overthought. It just needs to be a rocker, and comes out.” It was a relief to write it. When an idea comes, it doesn’t matter what kind of context I’m writing it for—a duo, or a bluegrass band, or a rock band—I just write it, and let it happen. Like I said, you can put yourself in a corner if you overthink things sometimes. (laughs)

RR: How about “One More?”

JA: That was another one. That one wrote itself pretty quickly, too. The time that those songs were written, emotions were so on the surface and raw that it’s almost like the indent in the paper was so deep because I was pressing—“one more, one more”—you know, that kind of stuff. That just comes from a place of straight up frustration like “what the hell’s goin’ on? Make up your mind.” (laughs) That’s where that song came from. In truth, I always wanted to write a little Bo Diddley [Austin scats the repetitive stutterstep riff sound often heard in Diddley’s tunes]—that’s the way it’s addressed in musician circles: “this one has a Bo Diddley feel.” That’s kind of my let-loose-and-hear-you-go-have-at-it, so…

PART II – STRONG COFFEE HELPS YOU FOCUS WITH JEFF AUSTIN

Chasing up and down corridors. A bit of sub-Errol Flynn work. Anti-swashbuckling. To be actually living these childhood dreams and fantasies…I have to pinch myself mentally to be sure it’s happening.

– Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years, Michael Palin

RR: What are your plans with the band at this point? Brendan alluded to the fact that you’re going to try to take 30db back out on the road in September.

JA: Yeah. I think we’re going to make that happen. We’ve got a chunk of time in September. I’ll tell ya, after even just one show, we’ve got to figure out times to play some more shows because that was just too much damn fun.

RR: Last fall, Yonder Mountain released a strong studio album called The Show, but at the time, you must have been thinking that you also had this project on the horizon, ready to take off. How do you balance all these projects in your mind? Do you take one day at a time, thinking of what you have in front of you on that day?

JA: Yeah, you know, I’m not quite sure. (laughter) It’s like that overthinking…I’m not quite sure. I just try to let it happen. After a couple of weeks when I got off the road with Yonder, and really immersed myself in all this material, I knew that “oh my God, I have to make sure I have all this stuff right.” But, for me, structure and me are at odds sometimes. Sometimes, just letting it happen is the best. Strong coffee helps you focus, as well. (laughter) Strong coffee. It goes back to the whole thing—when Brendan and I started doing this, we said, “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it all the way. Let’s really commit to it. Let’s really make this happen.”

Which hat do you put on? Try not to overthink it. I found that when I try to be really, really serious, sometimes, it just doesn’t work out so good. (laughs) You always try to take it with an air of lightness—not being lackadaisical with the responsibility that comes with it, but just trying to stay loose all day. When I try to do this: “I’ve got to sit down. I’ve got to drill these songs into my head. I’ve really got to put on the 30db hat”—it doesn’t always end up so well. You overthink everything, and put yourself in a box.

RR: But what do you envision that you’ll be doing over the next year or so?

JA: What I’d really like to do is really commit to this and make this a really legit kind of thing. The cool part is we’re all on the same page with that. Brendan and I—this is not just a record that we made, it came out, let’s just do a couple of gigs, and let’s be done with it. We both really have a desire to have this become a real legitimate band, and an entity that operates and lives on its own. Like I said, Brendan has the same emotions. And the rest of the guys in the van—they wouldn’t be sitting in the van right now if we all didn’t have the same desire to really really commit to this. Over the next year, I’d say that would be my main focus—to really see where this can go. I sound like a broken record, but it goes back to “enough talk; let’s put this into action. If we’re going to do it, let’s really commit to it.”

We’re a band. We all consider ourselves that. It’s not like me and Brendan, and then these other guys that we brought in. We are all members of 30db. We’re all in this band, and we’re all in it to win it. When that stuff happens, when a guy like Nick Forster, or Cody Dickinson, or Eric Thorin says, “You know what—I’m in it. I’m committed. I’m ready. Let’s jump in the van, and go out on the road,” that’s a bold statement from guys that both Brendan and I really admire and have a lot of respect for. When they’re willing

to stand there with you, shoulder to shoulder, you’d be a fool not to make that a focus, and not to make that something that you really see through. That’s really my main focus if I had anything other than what I do first in my bluegrass world—that will always be

part of my life, and I’m well aware of my responsibilities with that—but this is something that is pretty dear to my heart, and four-plus years in the making. Now, that it’s in front of us, let’s get after it, and let’s do it. We’re searching to see if there’s a summer date, or some festival date that we can try to pull off, and the fact that everybody’s into it is already powerful, but what it could be is what I think is exciting. It’s because all of us on our own have been through our own musical journey. We’ve all done our thing, and have these bands that we are identified with, so what a cool thing to put these five brains together, and really commit to something that has endless possibilities. We could play bars for the next three or four years and that’s where it goes, or it can turn into something else. Who knows what? It’s a pretty exciting world to live in (laughs), right now, this little 30db white cargo van kind of world. It’s pretty cool.

RR: “In it to win it” is the key.

JA: Yeah, we are. Listen—when Brendan and I were first writing, it was more talk than work. We would say, “Oh, yeah, this could happen, and that could happen,” and, finally, it got to a point where “all right—enough fuckin’ around.” Yeah, that’s the thing. When I do something half-assed, I don’t get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Material that’s this close to who I am, and who I am as a writer, and as a person, and as a (laughs) breathing being going through this life, it would be such a disservice to not be in it to win it. (laughs) That’s just kind of how it goes.

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