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.
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