Photo by Larry Hulst
“Oh shit,” I thought. “I’ve killed Jeff Austin.”
Not the sort of thing you want to be thinking halfway through a phone interview, is it? I mean, being responsible for having caused your subject to gag to death is bad form, right? If nothing else, it’ll really put a crimp in your chances of a follow-up with any of the other members in the band – in this case, Yonder Mountain String Band, whose mandolin madman was currently gagging over a remark I’d made.
“Great – just great,” I thought. I didn’t even know where Jeff was; did he tell me … Philadelphia? I couldn’t remember. And this was a phoner set up by his management folks, so I didn’t even have a number for him – just them. Perfect. I could hear myself now: “Hi – Ann? Yeah, this is Brian Robbins calling back from Jambands.com. I had to, uh, hang up on Jeff because I think he was choking to death … maybe you ought to call somebody?”
My life didn’t pass before my eyes, but the last couple minutes of our conversation did as I desperately tried to figure out where I’d gone wrong and what I should’ve done differently. We’d been discussing the inclusion of drums on Yonder Mountain’s new album The Show and, amongst other things, the band’s fans’ reaction to it. (Drummer Pete Thomas, on loan from Elvis Costello’s band, did the deed in the studio, sitting in with Yonder: Austin, guitarist Adam Aijala, bassist Ben Kaufmann and banjo player Dave Johnston.)
Austin makes it clear throughout our conversation that the group’s relationship with producer Tom Rothrock was the key to the sessions for The Show: “It was really Tom’s ear and his guidance that we were depending on, him saying, ‘This works here’ or ‘Let’s try this here.’ Part of the decision was based on wanting to get songs played on the radio – Tom’s had great success with that sort of thing. It was a matter of us having trust in his talents as a producer and his ability to tap into people’s emotions and get the best performance out of us in a studio setting, you know?
“And when you have a situation like that, where no one is fighting it and they have absolutely full faith in the producer, then it’s simply awesome. That’s when it works best; everyone’s on the same page and it all comes together.
“So as far as the drums go, Tom was the one who said we needed to find the right songs that are going to work with and without drums. But it was also Tom who said, ‘In the end, the songs need to be able to stand on their own in a live setting – just the four of you and no drums.’”
Knowing that fan forums have been abuzz with drums/no drums discussions, I wanted to hear it from Jeff himself: “What’s the consensus of opinion out on the road – are people expecting to see a drum kit out on stage? Are they disappointed when there isn’t?”
“Oh, I don’t know … I don’t think so,” he answers. “I don’t think people are looking for drums and mad when there aren’t any.”
“Ahh, that’s the other side,” I say. “Do you have people who are relieved when they find out that you aren’t out on the road with a full-time drummer?”
“Oh, yeah – you have people showing up saying, ‘Oh, man – I thought you were going all drums,’ and I’m like, ‘You gotta be kidding…’ But Tom was right – and that’s the thing that we’re conscious of: in the end, the songs have to be just as powerful in a live setting with the four-piece band, you know?”
And that’s the point where I probably went too far, albeit in an effort to lay Jeff Austin’s worries to rest. I tell him about the first time my wife and I heard “Complicated” (the current single off The Show): “We were on a road trip up in Newfoundland and this song comes pounding over Sirius on the Jambands channel. It had this yin/yang thing of the big, big drum against Dave Johnston’s banjo and the mando chugging along. Ben’s vocal was great – and then when Adam just ripped the living dogsnot out of the guitar solo, we were hooked, man.” (Austin’s reaction to the “dogsnot” thing is the first sign of trouble: the road rasp that’s been in his voice cracks into a short, violent cough as he laughs.)
“But the part you need to know,” I continue, “is after we got back home, my wife calls up the YouTube video of just the four of you guys playing “Complicated” at Red Rocks back in August. There’s that big bowl filled with thousands of people and the four of you are just playing your guts out, man.”
“Yeah?” says Austin with some hesitation – he’s not sure where I’m going with this.
“And there we were, two 50-something-year-olds, holding hands with the tears in our eyes -”
“HAW-WAAAARRRRK!” the phone blats as Jeff Austin starts to laugh and then explodes into a lung-wrenching cough. And I don’t have enough brains to stop there.
“That’s right – you made us cry, you bastards.”
“HARROOO! AWWARRK!” gags Jeff Austin.
That’s when I realize what I’ve done.
“Not your cliché mando player”
From the legendary Buddy Cage, pedal steel guitarist for The New Riders of the Purple Sage:
“Our appearance at the Northwest String Summit in 2007 happened because of Yonder Mountain String Band’s invitation to the New Riders to join them on the show. Since I had met Yonder thru an interview I chaired on Sirius Radio, I cared very much what they were about and what they played. It was a natural for Jeff Austin to sit in with us at Horning’s Hideout – Jeff’s NOT your cliché mando player. He’s SO unique and fell right in with us. A real treat.
“Yonder also provided us with an introduction that will live on in NRPS’ musical history, delivered by their colleague, Pastor Tim. Our late founder, John Dawson joined us for that concert to sing his song, “Portland Woman” (in Portland!!! his final public performance) all because of the courtesy and kindness of Yonder Mountain String Band!
“Jeff’s amazing contribution to “Garden Of Eden” was the perfect complement to a song that is as significant now, as it was in 1970. Thanks, Jeff …”
Buddy Cage calls ‘em like he sees ‘em – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If he doesn’t like something, he’ll tell ya – and if he says he likes something, he means it. In a recent note Buddy’d sent me regarding the New Riders’ ’07 appearance at Yonder Mountain String Band’s annual Northwest String Summit, he reflected on the experience – which turned out to be NRPS founder John “Marmaduke” Dawson’s final performance with the band.
The soundboard of the New Riders’ set for 8/24/07 is a piece of work – a piece of history, really. You can feel the love and support from his bandmates as John Dawson takes the mike for a bit towards the end of the set, his voice wavery and weakened, but his spirit feisty as ever.
The first time I heard a recording of the show, my ears had perked up about halfway through the Riders’ set. With little fanfare (“Any of you guys know this guy?”), the Riders bring someone up onto the stage as they start the slow, ominous, tumbling swirl into “Garden of Eden.” The bass growls, drums roll, Telecasters bark, and the pedal steel howls a warning – and in the midst of the chaos comes a sound not usually heard on a New Riders recording these days: a mandolin. Jeff Austin is in the house, folks. A polite guest, he weaves a little tremolo into things delicately, shifting into rhythm mode as the band rumbles into the first verse.
Coming out of the first chorus, the Riders rip into a break, David Nelson working the piss out of his B-bender Tele and then handing it off to Cage, who lets loose with wild-arse abandon on the pedal steel. You can taste the stink of hot amps in your mouth just listening – sustained notes almost-but-not-quite turning into roars of feedback – but these guys are pros at this stuff and never let it get out from underneath of them. All the while, Jeff Austin’s mando can be heard chugging away, holding down the rhythm and biding its time.
Another verse, another chorus and now we’re well over five minutes into the song and headed into another break. There’s some really bad craziness happening: Cage is making the steel wail like something big and awful that’s trying to claw its way up out of the tar pits and Michael Falzarano and Nelson are thumping out big crashing chords as the drums and bass try to keep all hell from breaking loose – and then the mandolin emerges from the middle of it all, sounding sweet and clean and brave.
And for the next couple of minutes, Jeff Austin rules Horning’s Hideout.
The solo starts out with a few double-stops to clear the throat, then takes flight with little light flutters of notes. Austin brings the heat up smoothly, working from a graceful run along the neck punctuated with light hammer-ons to a make-you-flinch wild flail – and even though what you’re hearing is simply flesh and pick and bronzewound strings attached to a little wooden-bodied instrument, the way he pushes the thing gives it just as big a voice as anything on the stage.
It has more to do with heart than it does with volume.
Austin’s windmill-on-speed final attack forges a path for the rest to follow, eventually evolving back into a chunky rhythm. The band pushes the jam into the old Stones’ song “Last Time” before swinging into one last verse and chorus of “Eden.” It’s a rolling, tumbling beast as it heads to the end – but now that the mando has spoken, it seems to be the pack leader for the rest of the song … the big critters having been awed by the little one’s power. As the song lands in a smoking, squonking heap, a voice – Falzarano, I think – says simply, “You know Jeff.”
It’s a hell of a performance. Couple that with what turned out to be Marmaduke’s last performance with the band and it’s no wonder that Buddy Cage speaks of the day the way he does.
When I share Buddy’s remarks with Jeff Austin, he sounds truly honored – almost embarrassed: “Oh, that’s so cool for him to say that, man. It was just an amazing day and a major honor to be on stage with those guys. To have Buddy say that about my playing is one of the best compliments I’ve ever gotten … you just made my whole day, man.”
You’d almost think that Jeff Austin had never been complimented on his playing before, he sounds so sincere. The truth is, although he wasn’t exactly a child prodigy (he first tackled the mandolin at 20), he has a distinctive, powerful style (and stage presence) that is one of the keys to the Yonder sound. “I love your leads,” I tell him, “but even more than that, your rhythm is just fierce at times … you go beyond the standard stuff.”
“Thanks, man – I appreciate that,” he replies. “I have my favorite mando players – especially rhythm players that I admire – and I’ve tried to take all the different ideas I’ve gotten from them and turn it into this one hybridized kind of thing. Sometimes the music needs to be driven … and sometimes it’s a matter of space. Like when Adam is soloing on the guitar, you have a bigger space to fill than just chopping along; that’s when you work in all those little pull-offs and things – to fill that space and make it interesting.”
Austin has a number of mandolin heroes, among them Sam Bush (“gutsy and adventurous, but also has the technical chops; the perfect mandolin player”) and Roland White (“I listened to a lot of Roland White and the Kentucky Colonels when I first got into bluegrass). But it’s when he mentions the late John Duffey (founder of The Country Gentlemen and The Seldom Scene) that I really get a grip on what Jeff Austin’s all about.
“John Duffey was another gutsy player – tons of heart, tons of soul – I loved the way he just attacked a solo. At times, someone might say, ‘Well, that was a little behind the beat’ or ‘That was kind of sloppy’, but I’d say to them, ‘Who cares? What’s sloppy? What’s too far behind the beat? It’s got guts; it’s got … it’s got heart.’”
At that moment, I realize that in talking about one of his heroes, Jeff Austin has just summarized his own style in a nutshell.
“I’d take heart over technique any day,” I say.
There’s a pause, then a chuckle on the other end of the phone. “Oh … I’m with you, man. There are a lot of great mandolin players, but some of them are hard to watch, ‘cause it’s kind of like watching a machine. I’ll take the guy that’s relaying a lot of heart through his playing … that’s what I like.”
For a moment, Jeff’s excitement about playing the mandolin is so infectious, I lose my focus on the rapidly-ticking clock and lurch off the main highway of the interview onto the graveled side road of mando stuff. We talk briefly about his instrument of choice (a Nugget) and picks (“Golden Gates – with the rounded edge. The big fat pick and the big fat strings kind of all go together … it’s the sound I’m looking for”).
At this point, I go right off into the puckerbrush of unfocused conversation: “Hey – have you ever tried those Sam Bush signature Monel-wrapped strings that Gibson makes? They’re not a great sustaining string, but they pack a lot of punch.”
“You know, I have, but I just don’t like the way they sound on my mandolin. I use the D’Addario J-75 phosphor bronze … they really give those E strings on top a big sound – a great round sound. But it really is what works best for a given player on a given mando, you know?”
All of a sudden, the ticking of the clock drowns out everything else. I yank the wheel of the interview back on track with the big question about Yonder and the whole drum thing. That’s where everything went to hell … and I figured I’d killed Jeff Austin.
I decide if it turns into a legal matter of some sort, I’m going to use the abbreviated interview period as a defense. “I was hurrying, Your Honor – if I’d had more time to think about it, I never would’ve said what I said and initiated the deceased’s coughing attack.”
Just as I’m about to cut the connection and call for help, Jeff’s gagging slacks up and he begins to get his breath back. “That whole thing about you and your wife – that’s a great story. That’s so awesome to hear – I’m taking that to heart, man. Thank you.”
I think: “Thank you for not dying on me.”
In The Studio & On The Road
With Jeff back from the grave, I quickly prioritize my questions for our remaining minutes. “Hey, what’s the latest on your 30dB project with Brendan Bayliss?” I ask. (Austin and guitarist Bayliss of Umphrey’s McGee have been doing occasional side gigs as a duo since 2006, with rumors flying of an upcoming album.
“We do have an album coming out – we just completed the final round of mixing and now we’re into the mastering … we’re looking to get it out either late this year or early next. At this point, we’re trying to find the ideal time to release it. We’d like to put it out and then travel a little bit with it, but we’re both a little busy – it looks like we probably wouldn’t have a chance to go out on the road together until early next year. The website should be active pretty soon – 30dB.net – and we’re going to have a little bit of fun with it. You know, it’s one of those things that people have known about for a while, but they really don’t know what it is.”
Pressing on (leery of any more respiratory system issues), I ask about some of the specific cuts on The Show. “‘Dreams’ reminds me of a sweet ol’ Ronnie Lane sort of tune,” I say.
Austin laughs: “Tom Rothrock has this little outdoor area at his house and one afternoon we’re sitting out there, kind of just messing around and talking. I had my mando and Tom gets everybody else to bring their instruments out, too. Now we’re all sitting there and he’s like, ‘Cool – let’s write a song.’ And we did – we worked out a chord progression that was the main body of the song and Tom said, ‘Great; now how about a chorus?’ So we did that, too – we came up with that really simple one-line chorus that you hear on the album. And then it was, ‘Okay – now each of you guys go off to a different part of the house and write your own verse.’ So we went for it; we all went off and wrote our own thing and came back. And it all kinda fit – we had melody lines, but it just worked together, which is kind of neat, you know?”
“While we’re talking about the group mind,” I say, “How about ‘Honestly’: the middle of that song reminds me of an acoustic RatDog thing, following Weir’s approach of an ensemble jam, rather than solo spotlights on any one player.”
“That’s a good way of putting it,” says Austin. “If you listen closely, there actually is a long banjo solo that kind of rolls throughout that break, but everyone is sort of weaving around it. I’m playing the mando plus there’s another track on that song with all the noise and the effects. That was me and Tom just punching buttons and turning knobs while the mando feeds back … we wanted to add an ambient texture – an atmospheric wash – and let it get really chaotic before it unifies into that melody at the end.”
“It works,” I agree. “Everything’s wild and swirling – and then you land the spaceship on the back porch and get out to finish the song with a full-fledged bluegrass stomp.”
That makes Austin laugh, but he manages to keep the road cough in check. “Cool – great image! I love it.”
If there’s an opposite end of the spectrum to spaceships and joyous bursts of bluegrassiness, it would be “Isolate” – six minutes of tension that never gets resolved. When asked what it was like to record the track in the studio, Austin again gives credit to producer Rothrock, who directed the band like a modern-day Alfred Hitchcock. “Tom had me keep my mandolin part as sparse as possible. He was like, ‘Just play one thing,’ so my hand never moved on the neck. Even when everyone else is changing the chords, I’m hanging right there on the G and -”
“Excuse me, guys – time’s up.” The PR lady cuts in to pull the plug on things (never knowing how close to disaster we were just a few minutes ago).
“Hey, that was fun, man – especially the mando stuff,” says Jeff. “When the time comes, let’s get together and talk about 30dB, okay?”
And then he’s gone – I hope on his way to a nice cup of tea and nap before tonight’s gig.
But probably not.
*****
Brian Robbins is a musician and former offshore lobsterman who lives on the Maine coast.
