Dylan turns 60 May 24. Smokin’ Grass fans are gonna notice. The Burlington, Vermont-based new-grass band has covered two Dylan tunes in
as many albums: "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" on the
1998 self-released debut "Take Yer Pick" and "Mixed-Up Confusion" on the current
follow-up, "In the Barn," the first non-Phish-related recording at Trey
Anastasio’s Barn Studio in Vermont. Apparently the band’s original mandolinist Jason Koornick and his
replacement, Beau Stapleton, opted for the nods to Bob. But then there’s
bassist Michael Santosusso’s hysterical but poignant,
Dylanesque-by-way-of-Arlo Guthrie folk tale "Arizona" that contemplated the
legalization of medical marijuana well before the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent
deflating decision. "Arizona" is one of 10 simple but masterful tunes on "In
the Barn," which was recorded in just two weeks compared to the more
leisurely paced and, therefore, more experimental and eclectic "Take Yer
Pick." Gone are the global groove-grass of "Desert Square Dance," "Some Funky
Grass" and the cover of Duke Ellington’s "Caravan." In their place are
traditional-sounding, songwriter-oriented tunes like dobroist Adam Frehm’s
contemplative "Open Road" and Santosusso’s tongue-in-cheek "The Tow Truck
Song" alongside a cover of the old-time nugget "Cattle in the Cane" and Don
Reno’s new-grass classic "Country Boy Rock & Roll." Then there’s Frehm’s
achingly beautiful instrumental "California Waltz." But with the help of new drummer Eric D. Hammell, Smokin’ Grass still get
funky and jazzy on such tunes as the Allman Brothers-like "Big Question,"
guitarist and longtime Phish acquaintance Doug Perkins’ blazing "Mercury" and
"Syracuse Stop," a collaboration between Perkins and newest member,
18-year-old Patrick Ross, who won Vermont’s Old-Time Fiddle Championship at
the tender age of 14. Santosusso, Frehm and Perkins formed Smokin’ Grass in 1995 at the height
of Burlington’s hot bluegrass scene that included Phish bassist Mike Gordon,
mandolinist Jamie Mansfield of the Jazz Mandolin Project and his former
bandmate, banjoist Gordon Stone, who heads a jazz-grass trio of his own. The
Burlington bluegrass scene has quieted down since those artists went
national, but the national scene is peaking now with The String Cheese
Incident, Yonder Mountain String Band and Blueground Undergrass, while
veterans like Ralph Stanley and Peter Rowan are enjoying a resurgence
inspired by the old-time soundtrack of the Cohen Brothers’ movie Oh
Brother, Where Art Thou.’‘ Smokin’ Grass is glad that it’s been around long
enough not be considered a wagon band, and it’s glad to have made friends
with Yonder Mt. and Blueground jamming till 4 in the morning backstage at
the Old Settlers Bluegrass Festival in Austin, Texas, last month. I spoke with Frehm and Santosusso about the band’s solid past, happening
present and bright future, which includes the High Sierra Music Festival in
Quincy, Calif., in early July and Podunk Bluegrass Festival in East Hartford,
Conn. later that month. For more info, visit smokin-grass.com.
You must be pretty psyched that the bluegrass revival is peaking right now. There’s all this
resurgent interest and it’s not like you guys are bandwagoning because you’ve
been doing it since before the resurgence kicked in. Frehm: There’s no way to tell for sure if it’s peaking now. I’m hoping
it’s not peaking.
You know how you can tell it’s peaking? Because so many daily newspapers are
writing about it. That’s usually the beginning of the end of any trend. Frehm: We started back in ’95. At the time, all I knew about was us and
Leftover Salmon. It was before String Cheese got big. It was before Yonder
Mountain String Band. It was before a lot of the bands you’re hearing about
now. Unfortunately, we were not able to get out there and tour to take real advantage of how fresh we were. I hate to say that because there were a lot of
bands that came before us. You could credit the Newgrass Revival for doing a
lot of stuff with Bela (Fleck) and Sam Bush. There’s been all these other
bands like the Dead and Phish, a lot of bigger bands who have thrown
bluegrassy stuff into their repertoire. Widespread Panic. When we started, we
knew the guys in Leftover Salmon. They used to come to the Metronome in
Burlington. At the time, I considered us something different. We looked up to
them in a lot of ways and what they were doing, but we often knew that we had
our acoustic edge. We weren’t using amplifiers at the time. Our style was a
little more acoustic, yet we still incorporated drums and electric stuff. It
had that element.
You guys are huge out West and in New England. What is your following like in
the South, where bluegrass was born and how much do you think ‘In the Barn’ will
appeal to folks there and in the New York area, which has been a tough market
for you to crack? Santosusso: I don’t know how New York’s going to do, but the South is
just as good. We’ve been working really hard down below the Mason-Dixon line.
So far, those people who’ve gotten it are lovin’ it. New York is so big. It’s
like a big amoeba. I don’t know which way it’s going to go. We just keep
playing there for those people who are on our mailing list and come out to
see us. We hope that there’s more and more people when we go there. But the
South has been great. The response we’ve gotten down there has been really
good.
Do you prefer to record for your own label, S.G. Productions, or would you
like to hook up with a roots label, like Rounder or a Sugar Hill? Frehm: I would love to hook up with those guys. To be a Sugar Hill
recording artist or Rounder artist is a huge honor for any band at the level
we’re at. It could do a lot for us. I don’t know for sure. You hear a lot of
horror stories from bands about record labels but not those guys. Mostly you
hear horror stories about the bigger labels and guys who have signed a
recording contract and the label doesn’t push the album. They don’t sell
enough and they get dropped. I don’t know about this. It’s always been a big
question that’s kind of scary to think about, but I think a lot of times you
have to approach it that the record company is trying to make money. With the
smaller guys, like Rounder and Sugar Hill, I think it’s obvious that they
take a much more active role and have a bigger interest in their artists.
They really support their artists. I think that would help us out a lot.
Is there interest at all from a label along those lines or are you still
developing that? Santosusso: None of the big guys are knocking on our doors. A couple of
smaller record companies have approached us about doing a live recording. Frehm: At this point, we’re really not considering a major label picking
us up because we’re working with smaller distributors. It’s definitely a
tough nut to crack. We want to crack it because it will help us in a lot of
ways having a CD distributed nationally everywhere. That’s what we want. We’ve been working at this for six years now doing everything ourselves.
This is as grassroots as it gets. We’d like to start relinquishing control,
but it’s scary. You’re not sure how much they’re going to do for you. It’s a
step the band does need to take, but it would have to be a wise step, a good
decision.
Why no banjo? Santosusso: There are so many great banjo players out there, if we had a
banjo player, we wouldn’t get all these guys to sit in with us all the time.
We’ve had some great banjo players sit in with us over the years. Frehm: Tom Hanway (Big Apple Bluegrass) appeared on our first album. A
great banjo player named Billy Constable has played with us. He used to tour
with Hypnotic Clambake, a touring band out of Boston. He’s an amazing banjo
player who now tours with Larry Keel. They’re an incredible family band. His
wife, Jenny, plays bass. Billy’s playing the banjo. Larry’s a two-time
flat-picking guitar champion. And he’s a great singer-songwriter. They live
in Virginia. We play with Gordon Stone. He was more of a regular basis when
the band was in its initial days. At the conception of the band, he was
there. He and Jamie Masefield used to drop in unexpectedly and jam. Those
guys played a bunch with us on and off through the years. But those guys are
pretty busy now and so are we. We only play in Burlington about twice or
three times a year. One each semester for a big show and we do a couple of
summertime country shows. We’ve always had two instruments in the same sonic range: the dobro and
the guitar. If you throw another instrument in the exact same range, which
the banjo is, it gets a little cluttered. That’s why when a banjo player sits
in with us, it’s really refreshing and exciting for us because we haven’t
heard a banjo in a while. But if there was one in the band fulltime, it would
cause Doug and me to change the way we play a lot to accommodate the banjo, to
give the banjo space. So a lot of times, I’ll practically drop out when our
guitarist is going so, sonically, it’s much easier to hear what he’s doing.
He lays low a lot of times when I’m playing. We’d have to do that a lot for a
banjo player, not only for solos but for fills in- between verses. We have a lot more freedom and more challenges this way. We added a fiddle last year and went from a five-piece to a six-piece.
The fiddle is not in the same sonic range. It’s much higher. Still Doug and I
have had to play less so we have more space. Santosusso: Plus at this point, we have six great players playing in this
band. That’s already a large number. There’s only six bunks on our bus. Frehm: If you listen to a lot of bluegrass recordings, the better bands
are not cluttered up. The sound isn’t everybody going at once. For a lot of
jam bands, that works. You can focus in on anything at any given time for
more electric bands, but for bluegrass, you have to learn to stay out of
people’s way. There’s a lot of unspoken etiquette that you learn at the
festivals when you’re jamming in a circle. We try to bring that into our band
as far as the space.
What you do stylistically pretty much is summed up in the opening track of
‘In the Barn’: Don Reno’s ‘Country Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll.’ The purist would say,
‘Well, it’s not bluegrass because it’s got drums,’ but the rock fan would
say, ‘Boy, that’s bluegrass.’ Comment on how you can please and turn off both
camps. Santosusso: That’s always been one of the great things about being in
this band. Every night, we look out into the audience, there’s people of
every age range. I think we have a really wide demographic. That’s one of the
biggest appeals about us. There’s a little something for everybody. If you
watch one person all night, you’ll see the songs that make them run to the
merchandise table and buy a CD. You’ll see the song where they decide to get
another beer. But we put that track on first because, like you said, it kind of sums up
what we’re all about in a way. We did that on our first album too. We just
kind of stuck to the basics (with Opus #1). The traditional bluegrass people,
the people that are really serious about any one particular narrow form of
music are always slightly snobbish about their art form in the way that
classical people are purists about their music. There’s people like that for
blues and jazz and bluegrass and for everything. As long as their minds are
closed like that, they’ll never like us. They only listen to (Bill) Monroe
and Ralph Stanley. They would never listen to Newgrass Revival or Nickle
Creek. Frehm: Snobs might say we’re not bluegrass because they have drums. But
those people are fewer and far between. The times are changing, they’re
evolving.
You have somebody like Peter Rowan, who was in Old and In the Way with Jerry
Garcia and in Bill Monroe’s band. Traditionalists would give him a hard time
and now he’s the heir apparent of bluegrass. Santosusso: He’s a very unique individual. Frehm: That guy has more control over his vocal chords than anybody I’ve
heard.
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