Did you guys collaborate with your general projects, like would Dave ever send a Dead Man Winter song to one of the guys being like, “What do you think of this?”

DS: That stuff has happened before, but not really in the way you’re saying. I think that I just write songs and then decide what kind of project I want to do next. And rarely do I write toward a certain thing. It’s just, “Okay, we’re gonna make a Trampled record. Here’s the songs I have. Let’s do them in this band.” And that’s how the Dead Man Winter record worked, too, because I had these songs, but I wanted to do something musically different with them. So there wasn’t really much musical communication when were were apart from each other.

EB: No, but when Dave came in to play a show in Duluth, I sat in on a few tunes.

DS: But when I was writing the new stuff, we did get together for a weekend before we went into the studio and played a few songs that I had, just informally.

And that weekend was the first time that you guys got back together?

DS: Yeah, we had a little retreat

EB: It turned out to be really heavy, because it was the day that Tom Petty died, and it was the day after the Las Vegas shooting. I kinda had a hard time with that Vegas shooting. You know, somebody’s asking Jake Owen, “How come [Jason Aldean] didn’t stop playing as soon as he heard shots?” And Jake Owen’s like, “Have you ever had in-ear monitors in? You really can’t hear anything.” And I’m listening to him talk about that and I’m just like, “Oh my god.” I’ve played outdoor festivals in Las Vegas with in-ear monitors in, and I could’ve easily been in that situation. And I was like, “I want to talk to the guys!” Luckily that’s where I was going, where we were going. But I was in radio silence going over, so I didn’t find out that Tom Petty died until I got there. “This day sucks.”

DS: Yeah, it was just a shitty day for America.

Right. But I guess it turned into a good weekend for you guys.

DS: Well, I sat and got drunk and listened to Tom Petty for about an hour-and-a-half by the lake, so that I think kinda set the mood for me.

You guys were up in Minnesota, right?

DS: Yeah, at our banjo player Dave Carroll’s parents’ cabin. And then, you know, it felt super casual and just easy. We just showed up, everybody trickled in. When it felt right, we got the instruments out, worked out a couple new songs and cooked. It was just a hangout.

EB: Before, when we’d have to go into the studio, I’d be nervous about it. But I just have positive memories of Banjo Dave grilling burgers on his parents’ big grill and us sitting around playing cards as much as playing music.

DS: It was just playing music in the living room, which is how we started playing music, you know? And there’s a lot of stuff that was happening in our lives in the last few years, but very few living rooms were sat in with us playing music with each other. And there’s something to be said about that. I think it’s important to keep the musical friendship and not just the musical business partnership. Like, we want to play music with each other.

While you were up there, were you playing just new songs?

DS: Just brand-new songs. To me, too—some of them I’d just barely fleshed out. We started talking about the record and deciding on the technical side of things what we wanted to do. We ended up going without a producer on this one. My vision, when we were thinking about it, was to have it be like that living room, and we pretty much ended up just sitting in a circle playing songs in the studio, pretty live, very few overdubs, and just capturing more of whatever energy happens when we’re doing that together. That’s the only way you can get that, by doing it live. And we’ve always been comfortable recording live. We’re not a terribly polished group of people anyway.

EB: its really amazing how many songs on our records are second or third takes—and that means ever. Dave will be like, “Okay guys, do you want to try one? Should we roll a tape while we’re doing this?” And it’s like, “Okay, I got my chord chart in front of me, I think we’re good.” I think “Victory” [off 2010’s Palomino] is take one

DS: That is take one. I think it might have been the first time we ever played that song together.

EB: There’s a thing that happens when Trampled is is playing stuff not for the umpteenth time but for the first or second—it’s just, “Wow.” That’s the sound of our musical chemistry bouncing off each other.

DS: With most bands that play together for a little bit of time, that is a magical thing to catch, you know? Neil Young taught me, years and years and years ago: don’t beat a song to death in the studio. I’ve recorded lots of different ways, and I’m not some kind of purist or anything—I’ve sat with grids and drum machines and shit, too, and that’s fine. But, with what we do—I feel like it’s hard for me to be objective cause I’m in the band—but for me, what we have, whatever you want to call it, is a sum of all of us together. So, to capture that, there’s our sound. And there’s some mistakes in there, and that’s fine. It’s fucking rock-and-roll, man. Don’t whitewash it.

EB: I’ve always wanted to have a Trampled box set where after a record comes out, we go back in the studio a year later and play all the stuff that’s developed as we’ve been on the road. Because that definitely happens. There’s stuff that we’re doing even on the new songs now that we weren’t doing a week ago. We’ve been playing them for a week, so we’re growing stuff on them.

DS: The brain’s trying to keep them new.

EB: I’ve often thought it’d be interesting to have that first one and then, like a year later, out comes [the new versions], and now it’s a two-disc set. Which one do you like better? Cause I don’t know which one listeners would like better. I always want to have time-traveling Eric come back and be like, “Play this part here. It’s gonna make it more graceful.”

DS: In my experience, people usually attach to the first thing they hear. When people talk about their favorite bands and their favorite records, it’s usually that first record that really got you into the band that’s your favorite record from the band. And, you know, you don’t want to hear that differently. I mean, people want to hear it differently, but it’d be hard to replace. Even though I hate old records, man. [Laughs.]

Had you guys gone without a producer before?

DS: Yeah, most of our career. Our last record, Wild Animals, we had our friend Alan Sparhawk produce, and that was a whole different process. That was us wanting to go someplace we hadn’t been, and I think this time it was trying for some place we had been. But, you know, as older people.

How did it feel getting back into the studio with the guys?

DS: I felt extremely comfortable right away.

EB: It helps that we’ve all literally been there before.

DS: We were on friendly territory for sure. And I’ve grown to love the studio. The studio is my favorite thing. Those levels are probably different for everyone in the band, but if anything, it’s an easy place for us to get together. One thing we’ve learned that we actually follow through on is that we gave ourselves more time than we thought we would need. So there was no time constraint; its just, “Let’s see how they work.” I don’t remember what song we tracked first, but I remember it feeling really good and thinking right then and there, “Cool. We’re gonna make an album; it will happen.”

EB: One other cool thing that happened is that we’ve been in that space a few times, and the house engineer Nick was there when we did Wild Animals, but he was more hands-off because we had other people in those positions. And he told me—me and Eamonn [McLain] and Banjo Dave were the first ones there—he was like, “I always wanted to just take a minute and listen to you guys in that room and move you around.” I feel like we have a tendency to walk into a space and be like, “Oh, Dave you’re sitting there, I guess I’ll sit here.” And that’s all the thought that goes into it. And then, someone else was like, “It might sound better if Eric moves, but Eric sat there. Eric wants to sit there.” So Nick was like, “Would you mind?” Since Dave was ill.

DS: I had to miss the first day

EB: He couldn’t come down that first day. So [Nick] was like, “Since the first day is a wash, why don’t you guys just play in here and I’m gonna make some decisions.” And he was kind of moving us around. And then Dead Man Winter record had been recorded there, too, and Nick had engineered at that, so Nick was like, “I know exactly where I want Dave to be, what rig he’s gonna be using. I know how to set that up. I know where he’s gonna be, I know how to do Tim [Saxhaug].” And it wasn’t dramatic changes, but it was like, “Move here, move here.” And then this room was ringing, and it just sounded good from the get-go. We couldn’t try anything until Dave got there, so as soon as he walked in, it was primed.

DS: Yeah see, I just like to have it all set up for me before I show up. [Laughs.]

EB: And there was some kind of plague, once we were there, when we did Wild Animals.

DS: I was the only one who didn’t get sick on that.

EB: Me to—everyone was like, “Oh, don’t go in there.”

DS: It was the death flu while we were making Wild Animals. Almost everybody got it. Really high fever, vomiting. But the guys with kids didn’t get it, I noticed. So this time around I was the casualty.

You mentioned this a little bit, but was there anything when you got back together that you noticed other people had learned while working on other things during the hiatus and brought into the studio?

DS: I don’t think I noticed anything that dramatic. I mean, they were probably there; just because I didn’t notice it doesn’t mean its not there. But I just think it’s just a continuation in the flow of things, and everybody’s had a few extra experiences now. Those things aren’t quite as dramatic as, like, before I recorded like this, and now I record standing on my head. Its probably more internal than anything. For me it has been. I can tell you how I feel different, anyway. I felt way more comfortable singing in the studio this time around than I had ever felt with this band. And that was probably because I did a lot of different vocal things on my record that I hadn’t tried. Almost like tips for singing in the studio, exercises and stuff like that. That has really helped me. And I think going back and playing in a rock band in front of a drum kit in front of floor monitors in little clubs—it shook me up enough I think. It felt easy because of that stuff.

This album opens with the first single, “Kelly’s Bar,” which maybe sounds a little more traditional-bluegrass than you guys have been leaning toward recently.

DS: That was a little bit of the point. After this many years of doing it, it’s really hard to sound different than yourself, but at least you’re gonna sound different than the last record you made. And so, I think that was kind of like, “Okay, it’s not going to be anything like the last one.” That was my thinking behind it being first, anyways.

EB: And truth be told, Dave really [decided] on an order early on, and whenever we listened to playbacks, we listened to them in that order, so I never even entertained a different option.

DS: And it seemed to work really well.

My last question is about the tour and those first shows in Minnesota—how has it felt to be back on tour?

DS: It’s pretty early in the process, but so far so good for me. It’s been really fun.

EB: Yeah, it was kind of interesting in Madison, which was the third show of this tour. I’m from the Madison area, so I was off with my parents and some of their friends, and they’re like, “So how’s the tour been?” And I was like, “Today is the first day tour.” [Laughs.] “I’ve been gone from my house for a few days, but these other guys, they slept in their beds last night.”

DS: It’s just a couple shows old right now, but the response has been really good, and I feel like we’re playing really well.

EB: One thing—I feel like everybody’s listening, really listening. We’re listening to each other better. Our timing is better, so we’re playing better.

DS: You can always get better at that, listening to each other.

EB: And that’s something that happens when you don’t play with each other for a little while.

DS: You don’t take that for granted, you know?

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