Punch Brothers banjo player Noam Pikelny has already released three albums under his own name, but in many ways, Universal Favorite is his true solo debut. Recording his fourth LP on the heels of last year’s “one man show,” Pikelny plays all the instruments on Universal Favorite himself and even shows off his skills as a guitarist and lead vocalist. Pikelny recorded Universal Favorite with Punch Brothers fiddler Gabe Witcher, who has produced his last few solo records, and will support the project during another run on his own. While driving between Pennsylvania and New York during a March tour, Pikelny spoke about his decision to pick up an electric guitar, Punch Brothers’ summer plans and how he proved one particular Funny or Die video very wrong.
Your new album Universal Favorite is a true solo album, based around just you and the banjo. After playing with Punch Brothers for so many years and leading your own ensemble, what led you to this one-man approach?
Around February of 2016, I booked a solo tour—a couple weeks of dates around the country—just to essentially work up the idea of the one-man solo show. I spent most of my career on stage with a much larger ensemble, four- and five-piece bands, and I always thought that any good musician should be able to play solo—that they should be able to do their thing with just their instrument and their voice. I kept myself exempt from that idea for whatever reason, maybe out of the comfort of playing in bands. But playing solo is something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time.
I finally bit the bullet and put some shows on the calendar last February. It started as a little bit as a personal challenge, but I also saw it as an opportunity to showcase the banjo in such an intimate setting. The banjo is capable of a lot of different sounds and, surprisingly, a lot of different sounds that don’t always translate very well in a larger band setting. So when the banjo gets to take up the full frequency spectrum, there are all these possibilities. That was the initial conception of it, and I wanted to write music that would stand alone as a solo performance, live or on a record. I started writing instrumentals back then, but I quickly saw that it was running the risk of becoming a purely instrumental recital. I didn’t really want the record or show to be that; I wanted it to be a more accurate representation of where I’m at musically.
I love playing songs. I love playing with great singers, and it’s so satisfying as a musician to play in support of a good song. That’s such a huge part of my musical fabric that I didn’t want there to be a blind spot on this record, in that area, just because I’m not known first and foremost as a singer. I felt like there was an opportunity to gather material and to show another side of my musicianship and make it a more honest and direct setlist of what I do and what I like.
The album also marks your proper debut as a lead singer. You joked about your voice when you made your “Bluegrass Diva” Funny or Die video around 2011’s Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail, but you sound great on the new album. Have you been taking vocal lessons?
When I made the Funny or Die video, that wasn’t part of some elaborate plan to lower expectations—five years in advance of this record. It was just a silly idea—I’ve always enjoyed singing harmony on stage. I sing harmony with the Punch Brothers sometimes. I’m always eager to sing songs in a jam session in the living room or around a campfire. It’s always something I’m down with, just not something I’ve been featured as—justifiably, when I’m on stage with world-class singers, whether it’s a guy like John Cowan, who I’ve played with for a number of years, or Chris Thile, or some of the stuff on the side I’ve done with Tim O’ Brien. I’m not really trying to elbow my way in to sing lead. I felt like it was really necessary as far as the setlist on this record and that I could maybe shed some light on these songs with the way I sing them. I sing them in a much lower register than most bluegrass singers would sing. The classic bluegrass sound, being the high and lonesome sound—we’ve removed the high from it. As far as preparing for it, I’ve been singing for most of my career, just not in a lead situation. The tour that I did last year was exploratory; it was my boot camp for getting my half in order on the vocal front.
In addition to the new, original material, you mentioned that you “searched for some covers” for this new record. You found a mix of traditional bluegrass music and some unexpected choices, like Elliott Smith’s overlooked “Bye.” What was the process of choosing these covers like?
I was just looking for material that I thought was worthwhile musically, but something that I could make my own. There’s this song “Tears Don’t Show” on there, which I’m actually playing electric guitar on, an old Telecaster. I first heard that on a John Hartford record. When I first heard it, I thought, “God damnit, he’s done it again. It’s another quintessential Hartford song.” It’s kind of quirky and [it has] a really twisty melody, and rhythmically it is kind of crooked. I said, “It’s just another great Hartford song.” Then I became aware of the fact that, no, it’s not a John Hartford song; it’s actually a song that Roy Acuff recorded first in the 1960s. John Hartford had reinvented that song with this completely different groove, approach and delivery. He made it his own, to the extent that I assumed it had been an original song. That’s the model for me. I was inspired by how he did that with that song, and I thought it was a pretty worthy song to cover. I thought if I were going to try my hand at this, to make it my own, how would I reframe it? I did—I found different instrumentation and a different tempo and feel, and I think that was the guiding force of doing a cover. It’s like, what’s the point in doing it if you’re just going to by copying the initial version, if you’re not casting it in a new method? If you’re not shining a different light on it, then there’s no point. You’re always just going to want to hear the original.
“Once I Had an Old Banjo” is a folk song that had been played by my teacher in Chicago. He told me to check out the version he first heard, where he first learned it—from a Chicago folk singer named Flemming Brown. He had an album called _Little Rosewood Casket and Other Songs of Joy_—I still love that title. But each one of these guys played it in their own way. They were both folk banjo players, and I saw this song as a springboard for playing it in a bluegrass style. It was a song that was ripe for improvisation, and I could tell by the tempo, faster than those guys did it, and it just felt right to me. It felt like the right material for me and it felt proper, because I was the third Chicago banjo player to be putting his own spin on this song. I think the key for picking these covers is figuring out what the justifications are. Of course it has to be good music, but then what justifies re-doing it? I’ve always loved “Sweet Sunny South.” I think it’s one of the great melodies and I see that song almost as a duet. It’s a duet between the guitar and the vocals, just as much as a guitar treatment as that song is a vocal delivery and that felt like that aspect of my guitar playing felt like it was missing. Without that song there was just blind spots as far as my approach on guitar [goes].
Each cover had a different justification, and what’s great about doing covers like that is that you can make them your own. There’s no reason to shy away from great songs, even if they have been done a million times—they’re great songs for a reason. Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings still play “I’ll Fly Away” in their setlist and that’s something that’s been done a million times, but it’s their version when they do it, and it’s just an inarguably great song. I got to pick their brains a little bit about some of the material for some of this show, and they stressed that, “If something is a great song, and you do your own version of it, don’t shy away from it just because a lot of other people have done it before.” I really feel like “Sweet Sunny South” falls into that category for me. It’s like, “Well yeah, this song has been recorded so many times, but for good reason, and here’s my take on it.”
Your last album, Noam Pikelny Plays Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe, was a recreation of Baker’s classic 1970s tribute to Monroe. What did that recording process teach you about reinterpreting other people’s material?
The last album was focused more around my voice on the banjo, my actual sound and technical approach, and those Kenny Baker arrangements of the classical material provided a jumping-off point to make a banjo thesis. This is how I play the banjo. This is how I interpret this music, the kind of style of banjo that I’ve put together. I feel like the covers on this record might be more visceral, more of the over-arching picture of who am I as a musician, an opportunity to curate a set of music—those covers came in to round-out the picture. It was different from a Kenny Baker record and being more focused specifically on the banjo. I saw it as a chance to curate music, to create a story and give a glimpse of where I’ve come from musically, or what I appreciate the most.
You’ve mentioned your guitar playing. You’re known as an award-winning banjo player, but who are some of your guitar inspirations and heroes?
When I was 16, I got into flat-picking guitar and of course was obsessed with Tony Rice—love Tony Rice, still do to this day—and from there I followed a lot of the more predictable paths as far as other flat pickers. Like David Grier—he was another huge influence of mine. Then Clarence White—who was an amazing flat picker, who is also an amazing Telecaster player—really had a huge impact on me. From acoustic guitar, I got very interested in the electric-country guitar style on the Telecaster. It was really popularized by guys like James Burton, Albert Lee. Around that time, I just couldn’t get enough Danny Gatton or Brent Mason or Vince Gill, who is still one of my favorite guitar players in that regard.
A lot of those guys were influences, and for a while I put the banjo down and was more interested in playing flat-top guitar and country-electric guitar. When I got to college in Champaign Urbana, everybody played guitar. There was so many guitar players, it was enough reason to start playing banjo again, so I could get an invite to the jam session, or get an invite to the gig. Nobody needed another guitar player. So I started playing banjo again in college, and what was most interesting to me was the music that I’ve learned on guitar, whether it was David Grier or Albert Lee or Vince Gill—a lot of that stuff transfers back, or at least had an impact on my banjo playing. When I picked up the banjo again, I felt like my style had changed significantly after that experience playing flat-top guitar and Telecaster.
You’ve worked with Punch Brothers’ Gabe Witcher on your last few solo projects. How does having a bandmate produce your solo work change your dynamic in the studio?
I’m really trusting when working with Gabe—we’ve built up this shorthand with Punch Brothers over a decade, and he’s now produced the last three solo albums of mine. And what I think is really unique to my relationship with Gabe is that he’s keenly aware of when I’m playing something that might be good, average, mediocre, and he really knows when I’m hitting upon something that’s special. Being able to have that perspective is important. Most musicians, myself included, our natural habitat is not the studio, which is so ironic about studio albums, because they’re kind of the most permanent offering that musicians give the universe. The most official and permanent, in a sense that they’re not as fleeting as live shows. We spend most of our time on stage playing for people live and not in the studio. So when it is time to go into the studio to make a record, to make the thing that’s most permanent, we’re the most inexperienced that we ever are as professionals. Except for the people that are studio musicians or have made so many records that they’ve been able to become masters at that. I still, to this day, don’t know how many total records I’m on—12 or 13 full albums—but I’ve spent 95% of my time as a professional musician on stage playing for audiences. When you get into a studio, it’s such a different context. It can become really sterile and people can put their guard up or be intimidated by that, and it’s really a shame that happens. There are lots of bands that are amazing live but when they get into the studio they can never capture the magic of what they’re doing live. It’s so foreign.
I feel like Gabe, as a producer, provides an audience of somebody listening who I’m compelled to get a rise out of. I’m not playing to impress him, but at least having the knowledge that the person on the other side of the glass is listening with a sense of the scope of what I can do is important. We’ve done this enough times together that he gives as much attention to detail as I have, but I think he’s much better at keeping an eye on the bigger picture, whereas I might be stressing about whether one thing wasn’t played very cleanly. He pushes me forward; he’s much better at keeping perspective. He’s been an incredible ally in making these records. It’s a great working relationship.
Some people take different approaches. Some people want a different producer each time, because that change in relationship will, by definition, deliver a different result. I feel like [there’s] a lot of contrast in the concept of my records, like this record being so different from a Kenny Baker record that the contrast is built in. So there’s no risk that we’re going to make the same record over and over. He’s not a producer with tricks, as far as how to mic something, as if that’s a solution. It’s not a box of tricks for him; it’s just a real set of ears and a sense of perspective on whether a story is getting told and how the narrative or piece of music fits in. He’s a really sharp guy to have around. I can’t imagine having made these last few records without him there.
This is your third solo album since the Punch Brothers’ formation, but you released a record under your own name before then. How has playing with Punch Brothers changed your view of what the goal of a solo project is?
Just out of respect for the guys in Punch Brothers, I’ve done my best to make sure that my solo banjo career never eclipses Punch Brothers’ international popularity—just out of respect to my buddies. I wouldn’t want my solo band or instrumental albums to overtake Punch Brothers as far as popularity goes. So I’ve spaced them out over the years. [Laughs.]
Even when Punch Brothers first started, Chris Thile had already recorded as a professional musician for over a decade and had formative experiences with Nickel Creek and recording with his heroes like Edgar Meyer and having guested on these records. But when we first came together, the rest of us were pups, in certain ways. I don’t mean that to discount anyone’s abilities or anyone’s prior musical experience on the road—obviously Gabe Witcher had toured with the Jerry Douglas Band and has been on stage with Béla Fleck before. But the Punch Brothers was, for the rest of us other than Chris, the first chance to really do something that we felt like we had serious ownership of, creatively. Even though Chris was spearheading this thing and had assembled this group, the whole mission for Punch Brothers was to find new music that we could create with each other and to really set out to do something original together as this collaborative experience. I feel the experience with Punch Brothers early on, and throughout, continually, to this day, has changed everybody as instrumentalists, musical thinkers, composers. And I feel like my voice as a banjo player really didn’t become defined until I had this experience with Punch Brothers. I’m still proud of my first records, but that happened pre-Punch Brothers.
I still feel like, when I listen back, it sounds to me like a talented banjo player with good chops, but who was still searching for who he was musically. I think Punch Brothers provided such an invigorating, challenging and rewarding atmosphere for all of us that we came into our own as a band and individually. The music that I was working on with Punch Brothers, like “The Blind Leaving the Blind” [suite], was such a Herculean undertaking, especially on the banjo. At first it was like, “How the hell am I going to do this? How could you dream up this music, and how am I going to play this on the banjo?” We willed our instruments and we willed ourselves to play this music, and it completely changed how I approached the banjo. It became apparent that even if I’m playing traditional bluegrass music now, I’m doing it in a way that is much more unique because of that experience with Punch Brothers and because of what Punch Brothers did to my playing. It gave me an opportunity to find my voice alongside these guys. The ultimate irony of the Kenny Baker record is that that’s the most traditional project I could ever set out to make. There was no justification for that record whatsoever if it wasn’t my style of banjo that had been cultivated by the radically progressive Punch Brothers experience. For any traditionalist who didn’t approve of what the Punch Brothers were doing initially—well, if it wasn’t for that experience, you wouldn’t have gotten the Kenny Baker record. That’s what informed that. If I hadn’t had that experience with the band, I would’ve never cared to make a traditional bluegrass album like that.
Punch Brothers obviously incorporate a variety of styles outside Americana and traditional roots music. Are there any other genres you hope to explore in your free time?
I have a lot of enjoyment working on some classical music transcriptions for banjo at home, but that’s more of a pursuit for self-gratification, or furthering myself on the instrument technically. It provides me a lot of enjoyment to put on a Glenn Gould record and hear him play a solo Bach, and it’s an enlightening experience to sit down and try to play solo Bach violin music on the banjo. I’m not at the point on those pieces where I feel like it’s ready to see the light of day or be brought on stage, but I really enjoy doing that stuff.
As far as any other grand concept record like places you wouldn’t expect the banjo to be seen—one thing I’ve got up my sleeve that I’ve long been dreaming about is making a western swing album that has a banjo as one of the primary instruments. I got a really cool electric banjo a couple of years ago that was made in 1938 by Gibson. It’s just amazing to know they were making electric instruments that early—just an electric five-string banjo from 1938—and this thing sounds really great. I’ve often thought, if that instrument had ended up in the right hands of some banjo player in Texas or Oklahoma in the 1940’s, banjo could’ve been on the band stand of a western string band. I’ve been kicking around that idea, I don’t know when it will happen, but that is one thing in the back of my head.
Shifting back to Punch Brothers, have you noticed anything different about Chris’s performance style since he’s been hosting A Prairie Home Companion ?
I haven’t seen or heard all of them, but I had the opportunity to sit in with him and the band at the show they did in Nashville at the Ryman [Auditorium]—that’s the only one I’ve done this year. I thought it was an amazing show. He’s doing a great job. The music is just wonderful. We’re all aware of the impact that Garrison Keillor had on Chris as a young musician and performer. I think he essentially learned how to M.C. by listening to Garrison Keillor on the show. He absorbed a lot of that as a young kid. He wasn’t living in a major metropolitan setting, so tuning in to the radio every Saturday evening was like a masterclass for him as far as playing a show [goes]. It was cool to see him taking over that job that I think really informed a lot of his sensibilities in the first place.
You moved from New York to Nashville a few years ago. Why did you decide to switch cities?
New York was crucial to the existence of the Punch Brothers. There was a time when everybody in the band was living in the city, and we really made New York home. We were playing locally on a regular basis, whether it was the Living Room when it still existed or when we started doing shows at the Bowery more regularly. Once everybody started dispersing and we had people living across the country, it wasn’t as crucial for all of us to be living in the same town because we would have to commute for the whole band to be together. These guys were spending so much time on the road that after a four week tour, we weren’t eager to just wake up the next morning and start jamming with each other. We had fun with each other for a little stretch, so as the band grew and it became a full-time endeavor, it became less imperative for us to live in the same town. I loved living in New York. I lived in Brooklyn for four or five years, and it was such an exciting time of my life and I really feel like the trajectory of Punch Brothers was set in motion by us being in New York and having a local audience that encouraged and inspired us. That will always be a really special time. New York is just a special place to get back to, and I feel lucky to still come back to town every couple months.
As far as moving to Nashville, that was the only kind of place I ever lived as an adult that really felt like home to me. I lived in Nashville before I moved to New York, and I was wanting to get back to the South to have more space. A lot of our friends were moving to Nashville, and it just seemed like the right time to move down there. It’s been great. It’s a great community.
This summer, Punch Brothers will tour as part of the American Acoustic package with I’m With Her (Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz, Aoife O’Donovan) and Julian Lage. How did that concept come together?
We did a show at the Kennedy Center last year with Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyers and Punch Brothers. It was a really cool show. Half of it was each band doing their thing, but the other half was new collaborations—some large, some small—and it felt so meaningful that we didn’t want it to be that one evening event. We were plotting a way to put this together into a longer tour, or at least get something together so that we could tour, and we finally made it happen. It’s going to be pretty exciting. It’ll be pretty great to have Julian Lage out there. He’s just an astonishing talent.
