Thinking back to 2000 when O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out, the whole Americana, bluegrass, folk scene exploded due to the popularity of the movie and the soundtrack. Do you think helped the Dusters a bit when you formed to ride that wave a little bit that may not have been there previously?

That’s probably true. O Brother was one of those moments…bluegrass has had these moments, these brushes with the mainstream. You had O Brother Where Art Thou? and then you had Steve Martin and Ed Helms and it would find its way to the mainstream. O Brother was a great example of that. That definitely brought some more people in the door and started some momentum that eventually would morph into what we’re experiencing today because it exposed bluegrass to a lot of people.

Alison Krauss & Union Station, of course, were teed up to ride that wave. They’ve been a huge influence on us. In some ways, what we were doing when we started out was kind of heading off in another direction. So, I do think it played a role, and all of these things play a role in upping the profile of bluegrass.

It’s hard to say how much that really affected us. I think we were heading more in the direction of the Grateful Dead music world, which was a little bit of a different world than the O Brother thing, but every little bit helps.

The Stringdusters calling card has always been we want to head on this world that embraces more experimental science of music, but we want to bring all the virtues of bluegrass with us, and a lot of those for us came from Alison Krauss & Union Station who were tied to that O Brother Where Art Thou? thing, which, of course, featured Dan Tyminski, who was one of the lead singers in that band. She was the lead singer but he sang a lot. Ron Block on banjo who’s like a mentor, a close friend to me. So, we definitely were focused on both and influenced by both parts of that useful dichotomy.

That kind of pertains to a quote I pulled from the making of 20/20 documentary where you talked about, referring to bluegrass, “the evolution and the growth of the music,” which brings us to the band’s Americana Vibes label and it being something that you can control but also having that transition of being that catalyst for others to put out their creative projects as well. The Dusters helping in that evolution.

Americana Vibes is our way of, hopefully, bringing our cache as a band and our experience in the business to the recorded music side of things. We put out a bunch of cool albums, but I’ll tell you one reality we’re facing in today’s music world is it’s hard enough to do just what we have to do and our team and our management company we love and do a great job. They help us with the label side of things.

I think we try to lead by example as far as the musical evolution part of things. We’re out there making our music, following our muse, bringing together these worlds of traditional bluegrass and the experimental things and that’s the main way we factor into that whole process. Americana Vibes certainly had efforts to that end, but the reality is, the music business is so freaking tough right now and we found at times that taking on the releases of other bands—to do that right—you really need to have a vested interest in everything that that band has going on and it all leads into touring plus the album itself.

So, we’ve pulled back a little bit from that just because we really want to focus on our own releases. Now, I think there will be more in that department but that’s where that all sits right now.

The thing is, we want to do it right. The real interesting point is just the reality of the music business. I’m glad that we started when we did and we’ve been really diligent and work really hard over 20 years to build our reputation. We’ve built something very sustainable, something that’s powerful and reaches a lot of people, and we’re really, really proud of that.

I work a lot as a producer, and I’ve produced records for a number of up-and-coming bands. So, I get to see a little bit more on the front lines of what they’re going through to try and get their bands off the ground. It’s hard out there these days with the way the economy is and how that affects what people spend on music, and, of course, the price of travel, the streaming game and the hustle to stand out in a world where anyone can make music. Now, we’ve got AI music coming online, and so it can feel a little bit endless. It can feel like an uphill battle. When we were starting out 20 years ago, there were a lot of things that we had to figure out and a lot of tracks that we had to cut to get our music to the places that we wanted it to be, but there wasn’t a lot of competition on that journey. Now, the whole paradigm split and there are gates out there to be had, but there’s so many bands out there competing for them.

I’m glad that we’re where we’re at now and I have a sense of what it takes to build something lasting and meaningful. Ultimately, the main thing is commitment. There’s no half-assing. There’s no doing it only halfway. It doesn’t work.

I give advice to musicians or bands. Sometimes, I hear them say, “We’re gonna keep our day jobs and try and play 30 or 40 gigs, go out the weekends and stay home.” It’s not gonna do it. That’s not going to get you a national profile. That’s not going to build you a full-time band that can support the band and crew. You gotta be in it to win it, and I know that we’ve really benefited from that over the years.

You started the podcast Inside the Musician’s Brain six years ago. What was your motivation behind it?

I love the idea of giving fans more and giving artists a chance to explain all the things that go into what they create because I am an artist. I’ve devoted my life to creating different types of art, and I know it’s a life-consuming commitment, and it’s a sacrifice, sometimes, and it takes the support of your family and your people. It takes an amazing level of commitment in many areas of your life.

I wanted to give artists a chance to share some more of that stuff. I knew from my time just as friends with a lot of my would-be guests now—I’ve got 60 episodes. I just finished season six—I knew from talking to them and talking to my people, how much goes into creating this stuff and the challenges and the joys.

So, I wanted to share that. Also, selfishly, I love sitting down with all these incredibly smart people, and I’m a nerd myself and a very curious person. Always very focused on learning and learning from other people, and I love asking questions of the artists that I know and the artists I look up to. This was a cool way to formalize that and not only learn these things myself in conversation with these amazing artists but also be able to share that work with the world. I can sit down with Bela Fleck for an hour and nerd out on banjo roles, right hand technique and performance techniques. That is the coolest thing ever, personally, and then, additionally, to have the ability to share that with the world.  I love it. It’s been such a nice outlet. I have a chance, too, to have my own voice because that is also something that makes me unique among my peers, I believe, is that I am a very curious and expressive person and I love to think about different things and how they’re done. Some people do these things much more innately and that’s cool, too.

But I am someone who learns so much about everything around me, and so being curious, digging into that and experimenting and investigating those things, that’s one of the coolest parts of life to me. I get to do all of that through my podcast, and that’s part of why it’s been such a great outlet over the last six years.

Every human being has a unique universe, their own experience in their head, and when we get so lost in our own world, that’s a very natural part of life. If you can get outside of that, and start to tap into what other people are thinking about, what other people are learning and noticing, that’s one of the coolest parts.

Also, outside of your Infamous Stringdusters role, you recorded and released the album TRAD PLUS presents Trance Banjo. It sounded like you had opportunities to go int jazzy directions, EDM directions with it. Were those your intentions to do something outside the box of bluegrass?

Totally. I was so influenced by Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, who I consider one of the most original unique sounding artists. I love playing the banjo. I love writing songs. I love the technicality and the vocabulary of the instrument, but what ultimately drives me is to make my own world and do something unique. So, there’s always part of me that’s pushing me to create something unique, to get away from what I know, to take all the things that I’ve learned and combine them in some new and interesting way through my composition and through my production skills. TRAD PLUS really brings a lot of my production skills. I’ve done a lot as a producer. I’ve done a lot of music for TV and film. I have a studio here at my house, lots of inside the box virtual instruments as well as real instruments.

When I do my TRAD PLUS—and I’ve got two records out there, the first one’s called Interference and the latest is Trance Banjo—I’m using all those skills at once to create something totally unique that combines soundscape elements and also compositional elements and also playing elements. I play almost all the instruments on those records. There’s some live drums that were done by Nick Falk and then some fiddle played by Stuart Duncan on two tracks. I play everything else and lots of vinyl samples, old symphonic records.

The whole concept on Trance Banjo was around using these old symphonic vinyl samples on every track. I don’t even know of another artist in the roots music world who’s done anything like that. That’s not a reason, though, for the music to be compelling. I hope, ultimately, you don’t need any explanation. It’s just something beautiful and catchy that comes from combining the composition and production elements to create something totally unique. That’s always what I’ve been chasing with TRAD PLUS to make my mark, to do something that no one else has done.

That aligns with this quote from you in the 20/20 making-of doc. “Every album is its own moment in time.” That could be applied to TRAD PLUS presents Trance Banjo as well as 20/20. It’s a moment of time. With that in mind Travis is shown during the documentary making the announcement that since the band was going into its 20th year, it should make an album of 20 songs. When he said that was that exciting or was that intimidating?

Oh, it was exciting. We were so excited to make the most epic record we’ve ever made. It’s so much longer than any record we’ve ever previously put out. In some way that’s us saying, “Look. We’re not the new guys anymore. We’ve been around for 20 years. We built something that is very much our own and very unique and original, and we know our crowd and we know our thing. We don’t need to play the game anymore of trimming an album down to 11 or 12 tracks with one single.

We were all so hungry and motivated as writers. We wrote almost 50 songs. So, trimming it down to 20 was a challenge. Usually, you’ve got 14 songs, and you trim it down to 11. We had almost 50. Guys were just writing, writing, and then we’d get together for a pre-production session and then you’d be inspired and go write new songs after that.

The thing that we did differently, though, concept-wise, it didn’t really start out as being a thing where we wanted to have 20 songs. What we wanted to do was start an album without setting an ending, and that was unique. We just wanted to make something great and we wanted to make something that took advantage of our prolific, hyper-creative strength. So, we just started. There was a lot, and then that precipitated more and we kept going. Then, after we had done a few sessions, we’re like, “We’ve got 20 songs in sight, easy.”

So, this idea of “20 songs, 20 years.” There was something really, really cool about it. A gift of music to ourselves and to our fans because every time you put out a new album, the show gets this infusion of energy and 20 new songs to play live, that’s a game changer for your show. For our fans who have been on this ride with us, we know that they are a more-is-better crowd, too, because they don’t come to one show on the tour. They come to five in a row or as many as they possibly can. This was for us and for them. It’s a reflection of the fact that 20 years in we’re as hungry and greater and motivated as ever, and that’s really cool feeling to share amongst the band.

Coming full circle, when you were talking about the importance of songs, writing songs, writing memorable songs, being the glue holding the band together. It says something about letting go of the vulnerability that goes with songwriting and exposing your creativity to others that you wrote the song “Up from the Bottom” by yourself and it means a lot to you but then you gave it to Travis to sing, which I find very interesting and wonderful.

I’ve been singing more lately but he’s a more experienced singer, especially in the studio. Everything that we do is a collaboration on some level, and we have all these strengths between us, and we’re always trying to combine those strengths as musicians, as humans, in the most effective way that we can. That’s a big part of what’s kept us together for 20 years.

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