For the members of Michigan veterans Greensky Bluegrass, making a bold and unconventional statement is just another day in the office. Since forming over 15 years ago, they’ve striven to find new and unique ways to mesh bluegrass melodies with jamband improvisation to create a sound of their own. 2016 is yet another year that they’ve driven that point across loud and clear.
The past year has been full of highlights and milestones. For many popular touring bands today, the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado ranks high as a bucket list performance destination. Greensky Bluegrass reached that milestone in July when they sold out the venue as a headliner, using the open and wild confines of the amphitheater to aid energic and improvisational nature. The band also played the Ryman Auditorium and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, among others.
That momentum has carried over (and then some) to the fall as the band released their sixth record, Shouted, Written Down & Quoted. It’s an album that finds Greensky Bluegrass at its most ambitious and most patient creative state to date. They recorded it during two different sessions — one at Echo Mountain Studio in Asheville, North Carolina, and the other at the Mountain House Recording Studio in Nederland, Colorado. With no time limit, the band took their time to get everything right. Shouted, Written Down & Quoted is a well thought out and diverse sounding collection of songs that further pushes the envelope of the group’s sonic potential.
Here dobro player Anders Beck reflects on the band’s busy year, breaking new ground on the new album and the power a dobro can have on a song’s mood and atmosphere.
It looks like band’s been having another busy year. What are some of your favorite moments so far?
We played at a lot of festivals. Playing festivals is always fun. Selling out Red Rocks for the first time. Headlining and selling out Red Rocks was a pretty phenomenal experience. And now it’s just nice to be back out on tour playing shows inside and getting to do full two set shows and starting to play songs from our new album, which was released a couple weeks ago. And play some of those songs live that we haven’t played before. It’s proving to be very exciting.
How do you keep yourself energized to keep up with the band’s busy schedule?
The bottom line is I really enjoy playing music with my band, who are my friends. So it doesn’t seem that hard to me to keep the vibe high because it’s really fun. We’re lucky to do what we do. And that’s certainly not lost on us. We also have a great crew that works with us with life and sound and day to day work. They work their ass off so we can be energized to play the show. So that’s incredibly helpful. The third factor is the fans. When we go out on stage there are a lot of people that excited to see us play. If you’re tired on that given day those people really help to create that energy. That transfer of energy is so important to improvisational live music.
The album’s title seems to be reflective of this collection of songs and its variety. Could you tell me a little bit about the title’s origins and why the band liked it so much?
Shouted, Written Down & Quoted is one of the lines from one of the songs. Traditionally, the last four albums we’ve taken a line from a song that’s not a song title. So there’s no title track. We picked something we thought was an interesting phrase that wouldn’t have worked out as a title of a song but because it could be the title of the album it becomes part of the collection. We find it an interesting dichotomy of words. We’re sort of word geeks. The full line from “Hold On” is “Sometimes things better left unspoken should be shouted, written down and quoted.” So in some level, in my opinion, what we’re saying is while the album is called Shouted, Written Down & Quoted, we’re also alluding to some things that are left unspoken. Which to me is another interesting phrase to me in a way that is important to me because it’s got a little bit heavier content on the album.
How’s it heavier?
It’s a little heavier due to the way people grow up. People change and things change in people’s lives. Beyond that much, I think it’s leaving it up to the listener to decide.
What were the biggest influences for you with approaching this album?
For me on a personal level, I try to go into an album pretty open. We arrange a lot of the stuff in the studio, so I use a lot of my different musical influences in bluegrass to more of the jamband and rock-and-roll type influences. For me, playing dobro on the album, there are a lot more rock-and-roll tones. There are a lot more electric sounding solos, which is something we haven’t done a whole lot of on the albums. For lack of a better word, getting a shreddy tone on an album was really fun, interesting and exciting for me. So I got to use more of those rock-and-roll influences that I have.
How do you think the band is pushing the boundaries of bluegrass with this one?
Traditional bluegrass is a pretty strict genre which I think we pretty clearly fall outside of. We have a lot of influences outside of bluegrass. So it’s our version of bluegrass music. We have bluegrass instruments—banjos and mandolins and dobroes—and they’re all acoustic instruments. But then we use those instruments and voices to create a sonic palette that is more a rock-and-roll band in our live shows as much as we do it on the album. So that to me is how we push it. We take it outside of this small box that is bluegrass and turn it into a bigger box.
What was the most surprising or revealing song on this album for you?
I know our band pretty intimately, so finding something surprising is hard to figure out. Each time we make a new album, it’s always a really exciting process and you’re always a little nervous going into it. So the biggest surprise is that we can continue to create soundscapes that are interesting to us. There’s a certain point that you start to think you’ve created a lot of different things and how we recreate the band for the next album. And it’s somewhat scary to keep trying to do it again. But that’s making music, that’s improvisation, that’s writing music. For me, it was really exciting just to do it again. In my opinion doing it well and create another version of Greensky for these eleven songs. We continually recreate the band on [each] album.
One phrase from the song “Living Over” that I like is that “songs keep us honest.”
Yeah, Paul’s a pretty spectacular songwriter. He shows songs to the band and there’s a moment of excitement and almost reverence in that we get to take a really well-written song and get to turn it into a Greensky Bluegrass song.
The band stretches the song in the live setting while the studio you’re more restrained in this regard. Can you talk about maintaining a balance between the live and studio sound?
I really consider us as two types of musicians. There’s the live there where we’re probably more of a jam type band and we stretch out the songs that we’ve written and really dig into the freedom and improvisational aspect of the song. We improvise as a band and musically peer over the edges of cliffs and see what happens. We all love that aspect of music. So that’s one side of it.
The other side of it is Greensky Bluegrass the band the makes the albums. You try to make an album that will stand the test of time and try to make these finite best versions of these songs that you’ve written. It’s a really different type of art to me because you’re trying to make concise and interesting and hopefully truly great versions of these songs. That’s the studio side and the live side is make improvisational music. Maybe it’s not so perfect every time. You take more risks.
So there’s a real dichotomy between the album version of Greensky and the live version of Greensky. I really like that dichotomy. I really like that we can do both well. I like the fact that what we created affords us the ability to do both things. We’re lucky to do both and I think we’re lucky to do both really well.
The band recorded the album in North Carolina and Colorado. How did recording in two spots affect how things turned out?
It worked really well in my opinion because there was a month in between the two recording times and processes. We did most of the tracking and creating in Asheville, North Carolina and then got away from it and spent time listening to it. And then a month later we’d go back after processing and digesting what we had done, and go back and add things on top of it and tweak it a little bit. The best way I can say it is, that beyond doing it in two different places being a factor in this particular recording, I think that the time in between those two places is what was the best for us. To step away and think about it for a while and then go back and do more work. That’s what I liked about having two big recording sessions and two locations.
Since the two places are different, did that contribute to the album’s diversity?
On paper, I think it could probably easily look that way. But when we record albums we just hole up ourselves in the studio for twelve to fourteen hours a day and then eat a couple meals and sleep as much as we can and get up and do it all over again. As important as location is to the vibe, we’re so locked up in the studio creating music that you could drop us anywhere in the world.
Compared to past albums, it sounds like it was a pretty long time that you were in the studio. What was it like recording for such a long time?
I think with each album we end up spending more time. And I think that just helps. The more time you get to spend on it, the better. For some bands, it may not work that way. But for us, as we keep expanding the recording process, I think it’s a really positive thing to take more time. And you get to add more sonic layers when you have more time to do it. That’s what I like, being able to tweak it. And not at the end of it just being satisfied because you got everything done in a week. The more time you spend with it the more satisfied you are that you took all the time that you needed to actually make this thing that you’re trying to create. There’s no such thing as perfect but you’re striving for something when you’re making an album. So I think the more time you have to do that, the better.
How did the process of working on this album differ from the previous one?
We typically worked within our own confines and produced albums ourselves between the five of us. This time we had Steve Berlin, the horn player and saxophone player from Los Lobos, in the studio as a producer. So it was really interesting to have an outside perspective from him. That was helpful for us to have a different outlook on it. And he’s a great dude to have around and has a great musical mind. He shared a lot of ideas with us and worked with us really well. A lot of our opinions are pretty strong with what we think it should sound like and he was cool with that. He didn’t try to come in and reinvent the wheel but he certainly pushed us to explore other avenues. Which in my opinion is the role of a good producer. So it was really great to have him on board as well.
What’s one example of him pushing the band?
Coming from a background where he works with bands with drums and keyboards and more rock and roll type bands, he really spent a lot of time exploring layers that he could create with us over songs. Like “Room Without a Roof.” It was a really pretty song and could have been doing as a few acoustic instruments. And Steve really pushed us to keep adding layers. There’s extra electric mandolin and an electric guitar on there. They’re all buried in the mix. So it doesn’t sound contrived or out of nowhere. It’s all very subtle. But in the end, it creates these big sonic layers that we all really liked.
You’ve mentioned in the past that the dobro is a lyrical instrument that can really speak and add some musical emotion with the rest of the music. How do you think it applied to this album?
I find my role in the band is to be the other voice, the other lyrical voice behind the singers. There’s a lot of space on this album, which gave me room to do what I think I do best which is to be the instrumental lyrical voice on the songs. The call and response is sort of a musical phrase that could refer to what I’m talking about. But the dobro itself can push and pull a lyric or phrase a certain way. And that’s what I love about the instrument. By playing something after a line, I feel and hope that I can make it feel even stronger. A lyrical sentence is a really strong thing and that’s the most important thing. But if I can play a note that pulls it to be a little darker and I think that phrase is maybe dark, I think it’s an amazing thing that I get to do. On this album, there are a lot of spots where I helped the singers and whole band accentuate the feeling or mood of the song.
I imagine with each album you’ve learned more how to use the dobro in different ways.
Yeah, it’s like the give and take of life, as it should be. Playing music is a learning process and you should never stop learning. Sometimes there’s times that it’ll tell you things that surprise you and I’m always try to find a new way to approach the musical situation.
Last year the band performed a set of entirely Grateful Dead covers. Can you talk about what that was like?
That was a mean trick on our part. We were on the West coast and there were a bunch of people that decided to skip one show in Bend, Oregon. It was tiny little place so we figure ‘”Ah, fuck it. Let’s make them feel like they’ve missed something.” The idea stems from Phish. I listened to Phish a lot back in the day, in ’95 and ’96. [They have a philosophy of] “Don’t skip the small shows.” Like they played the entire Dark Side of the Moon one night in Salt Lake City. It was an in-between show. Nobody wanted to go to Utah. But I went to Utah and they ended up playing the entire Dark Side of the Moon album just as a hard lesson. Don’t skip shows, you never know what will happen. We’re lucky to have a lot of really hardcore fans and it’s fun to mess with them.
What Grateful Dead song is on constant rotation at the moment?
Oh, I don’t know. There’s so many good songs, it’s hard to say. I like the stuff some the early to mid ‘70s from the Grateful Dead so if I want to listen to them that’s what I listen to because they’re very interesting improvisational band during that period. They would go anywhere. They would follow each other over cliffs musically. And that’s what we like to do and what I like to do.
