Grinding out great shows and impressive albums for almost a decade, The Mallett Brothers Band has built a loyal fanbase. Their legion of supporters may well expand exponentially over the coming weeks, thanks to a newfound fan, drummer Jon Fishman who will join them on their spring Tour, which kicks off on Friday night in Rhode Island.
“This is what we were meant to do,” Luke Mallett says from his home outside of Portland, Maine, discussing his love for playing live music. And as Luke says in the interview below, between their new album Vive l’Acadie and their friendship with Fishman, the future is looking very bright for The Mallett Brothers Band.
The Mallett Brothers Band are coming up on a decade of touring together, but I assume you and your brother Will have been playing together longer than that right?
Actually, not that much longer. We were 18 months apart, we grew up sharing a bedroom for 18 years. When we were both in our 20s—through the early 2000s—he went off to school in Vermont, and I was based around Portland and we had lots of different projects. But it wasn’t until he graduated college [that we started playing together]. Me and Nick Leen, our bass player, were in another band together previously, and Will was kinda crashing on our couch and that’s how this whole thing started. We started writing songs in the living room, and we just never stopped. It took off and we’ve been going ever since. It was 2009, I believe, when we played our first show.
You guys shared a room for all that time and you never played a lick of music together?
We had different paths, you know? It wasn’t until we were older that everything came together. Will was always the guitar player, very early on. He started playing guitar when he was about ten years old and it was much, much later for me. I started writing originally. I was gonna be a writer, I went to school for a little bit to be a writer. And that was what got me started in music in general, was just as a vocalist and a writer. I didn’t pick up a guitar until I was in my 20s, so it took me a long time. I think I played everything but guitar. And that was probably because our Dad is kind of a phenomenal player. I consider him one of the greatest guitar players I’ve ever watched. It’s a little intimidating.
Your Dad has a connection to Peter, Paul, and Mary right?
His very first records were produced by Paul Stookey who was based out of Maine and had his studio up in Blue Hill, Maine. And that’s where my Dad cut his first record, which I think was in ’78 or ’79. So yeah, they helped him early on and he had lots of other little boosts along the way. But they still work together. Paul put [backup] vocals on my Dad’s last record, I believe. He put some backup vocals on it.
A lot of people describe you guys as like Maine-based but Southern-infused. Having the perspective of you and your brother growing up in Nashville and then gaining a whole new heritage moving to Maine, do you feel like there’s something inherently Southern about Maine? Sometimes does it seem like the way of life there is more southern than northern?
It’s a funny thing, the whole Southern-North thing. We’re very much Maine-based and we’re very proud of it, and we talk about it a lot. Me and my brother, just us, let alone the rest of the band. We’re seven generations in northern Maine, and I grew up in the same farmhouse that my Dad grew up in. I think the whole Mallett family, or those that are left, are still all living up on The North Road in Sebec, Maine.
But I think, ultimately, the similarities between North and South it goes further than that, it’s everywhere. There’s just this real frontier vibe in Maine, and we run into that when we go to Texas which is why it became one of our first markets outside of our home region. There’s just this feeling of wide open space and this frontier mentality that we can totally relate to, even though the landscape is drastically different. I think people’s’ attitudes are pretty similar.
While we’re talking about the North-South, Maine thing, in your new single, “Vive l’Acadie,” you guys bring in a third, French-Canadian influence. Can you talk to me a little bit about the story behind that song?
We always grew up knowing that our grandfather came from Nova Scotia, he came when he was a kid to Milo, Maine with his family. We’ve always been told if you go to Salmon River, Nova Scotia, the whole cemetery there is filled with Malletts, and they’re all spelled differently too which is funny. But we’d always known that connection.
My brother wrote that song, and it came directly from one of the shows that we played way up in Fort Kent which is the last stop before Canada. And we were driving up there and you turn on the radio and it’s French covers of American country songs.
The name itself, specifically, “Vive l’ Acadie” was from an after party. We were at the bar in town and there was this older guy who was talking to us. He started chanting “Vive l’Acadie!” He said it was the Acadian battlecry, more or less. And I think my brother just took that and ran, so it’s kind of an ode to all of those influences, because it really is a melting pot up there.
Your last album, The Falling of the Pine was a concept record, re-imagining a bunch of Maine folk songs. Do you guys have a similar concept, for this new record, or a new theme you’ve kinda wrapped all these songs around?
I guess if you trace ‘em back every record has its own running theme. The first album we did was much more acoustic-based, much more folk-based, and slowly the road kinda took over. So there was a few records in the middle. Both Land and Low Down, were both heavily influenced by the road because we had started touring really heavily.
I think doing The Falling of The Pine, we spent two years or so working on that in our down days. By the time it was done I think we really had a great appreciation for the hard living that they were doing up here at that point. All the songs, all the lyrics came from the 1800s. It was a real hard life and it was full of tragedy, and it was dangerous to be out there and do what these people were doing. And I feel like our whole goal was to not necessarily make the songs sound traditional, but use traditional lyrics and try and make the sound fit the feeling of those lyrics.
And then this record coming up?
They were definitely a combination of both. I think a lot of them were born on the road but I do think it’s got a little more roots in Maine history. Not necessarily in the subject matter but definitely in the themes. It’s less about traveling and more just about hard living I guess.
One of my favorite things about Maine is its sense of community. For example, you have Jon Fishman touring with you guys, and I really like how part of how you met him was you playing the opening of his General Store.
I think Maine is especially… I see it a lot with people my age and people I went to school with, we all end up coming back. There’s a real sense of pride and a real sense of connection to Maine no matter where you go. And that doesn’t necessarily happen everywhere.
How did you originally cross paths with Jon Fishman? Was it up in Maine, or was it somewhere else?
When the elections were going on, he was doing a run for Bernie and there was one night when sat in with a whole bunch of different local bands doing a whole bunch of local shows. We were playing, I think, in Scarborough at an old church that had been turned into a venue and he came in and played two songs with us. And that was the first time we met him.
And then it was maybe a year or so later, we were playing at American Beauty down in Manhattan during The Baker’s Dozen. We did like a pre-party at American Beauty.
Rest in peace, it’s no longer there.
I know, I heard that, which is a bummer, cause we had a lot of fun in there.
But that night I think his wife and a few friends caught our show and gave us tickets. It was like bang, she caught our show, she started chatting with some of the guys in the band and she said, “Here’s tickets, come on around the corner when you guys are done.” So we did. We went and we got to see one of The Baker’s Dozen shows, which we probably never would have been able to afford to get into otherwise. And it kinda took off from there.
She wanted to book us for a fair up near where they lived, The Union Fair. We weren’t gonna be able to do it because our drummer had a previous engagement. And she says, “Oh it’s fine, Jon’ll fill in. Don’t worry about it, Jon’ll just do it.” So it kinda took off from there.
We’ve kinda become friends since then and that led onto the General Store opening where he sat in, we did double drummers, and he sat in with us for a full set. And from there it turned into the tour, which is kind of amazing, because there’s really no reason for him to do it, you know, he doesn’t have to do this, he’s doing it for fun. He told us he loved the songs, he told us he thought it would be a good challenge for him stylistically, and he had fun hanging.
It’s definitely a boost for us. There’s a whole handful of rooms on this April tour that we wanted and haven’t been able to get into as of yet, so it’s a huge favor to us. We really appreciate it. And it’s cool to hear him say he’s looking forward to it.
Have you guys seen Phish before that Baker’s Dozen show?
Some of us have seen them lots of times. Our drummer [Chuck Gagne] specifically, I won’t speak for him, but I think it’s safe to say he’s styled himself after Jon a great deal. He’s a huge Phishead. Our fiddle player, Andrew [Martelle], has been to dozens of Phish shows, he loved Phish all the way while growing up. I believe it was my first show and it was my brother’s first show. Not that we weren’t familiar, because we’re all very, very familiar. Even being from Maine, when The Great Went happened, that was a big deal. For them to go all the way up there and put on that festival was kinda huge for the state of Maine. So we appreciate Jon’s ties up here. And I think it probably has something to do with him ending up here, because those guys have been good to our state.
You guys mentioned you guys are rocking a double drumkit thing right now. Musically, how does Jon fit into The Mallett Brothers’ equation?
He helps to open it up. We tend to get jammy and we tend to get psychedelic, but from the genre that we’re coming from, I guess, it’s not known for getting really, really out there. He helps with that. Because Chuck is a metronome. Chuck is all groove. That’s been the core of our music I think, is groove. Groove is everything. The groove is all of it. So to have Jon jump in and be able to add those fills that Chuck wouldn’t go for… Watching them look at each other while they’re playing is really, really fun. Because I think they just enjoy playing off of each other. And Jon’s not scared of suggesting, “This one we should open up at the end, this one we should really let it go at the end, let’s make this one jammy,” and we’re all for it. We’re all for it.
