In a mere four years The Infamous Stringdusters have accomplished what many bands have spent their lifetimes trying to do. They’ve played Red Rocks with Yonder Mountain String Band and Railroad Earth, earned a Grammy nomination in the “Best Country Instrumental” category for their song “Magic #9,” and even have their own festival called The Festy Experience which drew over 3,000 people in its inaugural year. Stringdusters bassist Travis Book postponed a morning bike ride to talk to Jambands.com about the upcoming festival, traveling the states with a bluegrass band and experiences with Jersey Shore cast members.
Justin: So while doing some research on you guys I came across the website for The Festy Experience. Can you tell me more about that, how did you guys decide to throw your own festival?
Travis: Well, you know, we’ve been going to festivals pretty much our whole lives. And festivals, I’m sure you know if you ever go to festivals, they’re the best thing ever. There’s only a few reasons why people get together these days, you know, major events, people go see music, religious events, sporting events, but music events are the only ones that there’s no question of what the motivation is, there’s no other side, there’s no other team, there’s no oppositional force, it’s nothing but positivity and people living in the present. We go to so many festivals, we’ve been going to festivals for so long, we ended up playing at this place called Devil’s Backbone Brewery and we loved it—the vibe was spot on, the location was gorgeous, and we played a show out there and we were all hanging out later that night, drinking the beer that they brew on site and pickin’ tunes, and we woke up the next day and we decided, we’ve been talking about throwing a festival since we started the band and the opportunity presented itself and we went for it.
People thought we were crazy, you know, everyone told us we were going to lose money and it was going to be a lot more work than we thought, and it ended up just being completely badass so we kind of upped the ante this year, we bought in some more bands, we’re doing an extra night of music, and we’re thrilled man, we’re trying to throw one of the best camping parties around and that’s sort of the goal, and I think we’re getting really close to getting it dialed into exactly what we want.
Justin: It seems most festivals just have music, maybe a late night DJ tent or a make your own hula hoop stand, but in reading about the Festy Experience you guys have a climbing wall, organized hikes, and cornhole tournaments, just to name a few activities. What made you guys decide to do that on top of the organized music?
Travis: Well part of it came from me being a competitive cyclist, and with events happening on the weekend it’s rare that I get to race or ride my bike and also do the music thing, and there’s amazing trails right where the festival is, and not everybody is interested in hanging out in the sun for 12 hours a day and listening to music. For example, some people have shorter attention spans, families have a bunch of different needs. Even within a couple, you may have one person who just wants to drink beer and listen to music, and someone else who may be good to do that for six hours, but we provide the opportunity to get out in the woods, hike, or even just engage in some non-music activities. There’s all kinds of workshops there, we’ve got sustainability workshops, we’ve got camping workshops, and I think as amazing as music festivals can be, a lot of times it feels really one dimensional.
Like I said originally, it was sort of born out of our own desire to have a more well rounded existence, so to have a weekend where you’ve got more than just the music going on, and granted if you’re into 12 hours of music a day I think we’ve got one of the best lineups going. We’ve got that going for us, but if you need something more or your spouse isn’t into it, there’s of different stuff to do, and furthermore the climbing wall and kids area, I know it can be tough keeping them occupied if you’re a festivalgoer and you’ve got little kids. If you want to talk about short attention spans, kids got the shortest. [laughter] And you know, having a place where they can wear themselves out and be safe and do their thing while parents can drink a few beers and listen to some music, it’s great. Basically we’re trying to create the ideal weekend based on what we’re into and what we want out of life, and Festy is totally becoming that.
Justin: And is that how you guys came up with the name The Festy Experience, making it more of an experience than a standard music festival?
Travis: Yeah definitely, that’s exactly where it came from. Knowing where the Relix roots are, there’s more to a music event than just the music, it’s about really creating a full complete experience. I never got to see the Dead but I used to go to Phish shows, when you go to Phish shows you go early and you hang out in the lot and that’s part of the experience. There’s the show and there’s the hang afterwards, and it’s more than just showing up, giving your money, sitting there watching the music and leaving.
The Festy Experience is also sort of an extension of our shows, when The Stringdusters play shows we really hope that people are going to show up and do their thing. Some people want to listen to music, some people want to socialize, some people want to throw down and dance, some people just want to hang out at the bar and get drunk, and it’s crucial for us that people are able to do what they want. All we ever want to do is whatever we want to do, that’s what life really should be all about, just following your folly, and so making it a situation where people can come to our show and they can feel comfortable to do what they want to do, The Festy is sort of like that concept taken to the 10th degree.
Justin: I saw there was a whole section on the festival website about the local sustenance. There was a lot of emphasis on supporting local restaurants, farms and businesses, such as The Devil’s Backbone Brewery which you mentioned before, The Rock Barn, Relay Foods, to name a few. I find that interesting compared to a lot of other festivals I’ve been to, where there’s 900 burrito stands, there’s Jerry roll stands, and all the standard fare. What was the reason for the emphasis on local sustenance?
Travis: Again, it’s all the same concept. We travel around, we spend so much time on the road, and even when we’re at home, food and drink is such a huge part of life, and it’s so important, you know? You want to talk about experience, going to have a beer in the afternoon at a beautiful beer garden, there’s nothing like it. And when that beer is really good and it’s brewed right there, it’s a lot better than if it’s a Bud Light. And also, there’s no question that local economies are stronger and people who have meaningful work and work that’s important to them are a lot happier, and so buying food, bringing in local food that’s grown by actual people nearby, it’s going to taste better. I feel like the whole experience is enhanced.
When the food is coming from real places and it’s grown by real people and when the beer is high quality, you know that someone put love into it and care into it, it’s not just a Budweiser, you know, one of ten trillion beers that Budweiser is going to brew this year. And you know, you’ll still be able to get real dirty on some carnival style food, that stuff is going on right there. The Rock Barn does cotton candy with bacon in it, I mean there’s some amazing old school kind of dirty food there, and again, if I’m hanging out for a weekend camping and listening to music, I would love to be able to eat some good food that’s going to make me feel good. And at the festival, shit man, festivals will wear your ass out if you’re doing it 100%, so you need to make sure that you’re drinking enough water and getting at least a few hours of sleep and eating some good food, cause that’s what’s going to keep you going, you know?
Justin: Yeah, you definitely have to keep yourself going, I normally start dragging by the last day of the festival. [laughter]
Travis: Oh yeah.
Justin: So one sponsor I saw—The Devils Backbone Brewing Company—gave $1700 to The Blue Ridge Medical Center Dental Program. Were you guys involved with that, or was that a completely separate thing?
Travis: Well the liquor laws in Virginia are very complex, so in order to pour remote taps, you have to partner with some type of nonprofit, so that was the nonprofit that we worked with. I believe that was last year, and we may be working with them again this year, there’s some talk about us maybe trying to start our own nonprofit, maybe something based around music in the schools, you know, something a little closer to our wheel house, but I think it all worked out to be something that was really convenient.
Justin: That’s really great of you guys. So what can you tell me about The Blue Ridge Burn, the 5k/10k race that you guys close the festival with? What made you guys decide to do that, was it based around the repeated emphasis on an outdoor lifestyle that you mentioned earlier?
Travis: It’s sort of the same concept, they were already doing this event out there once a year, so not everybody is a mountain biker, and the great thing about trail running is that the barrier to entry is so low, you don’t even need to own a pair of running shoes, you know? You can just get out there and walk the trail and they were already doing this event at some time, I think it was in September so we asked them if they wanted to move it to this weekend and make it part of our event and give people yet another option to sort of energize themselves. I know for me, a day without a run or a ride or some yoga is an incomplete experience. So it just made sense to sort of balance it out, it’s one of the most simple outdoor activities that you can do.
Justin: Yeah I like that, you can go at your own pace and don’t have to worry about being the last person in line, which is where I usually end up. [laughter]
Travis: Totally.
Justin: So to shift gears, I see you guys have some dates with the Emitt-Nershi Band including two nights in Seattle and San Francisco, Portland and et cetera. Jesse [Cobb] (Mandolin player for The Infamous Stringdusters) is playing a show with Noam [Pikelny] from The Punch Brothers, you guys opened for Yonder. It’s interesting to see that you guys support eachother at different festivals and shows, rather than just a casual sit in situation. Do you guys feel there is sort of a family vibe to the bluegrass scene? How’d you become friends with The Punch Brothers or Yonder or Drew Emmitt and Bill Nershi?
Travis: The ties that we have to those bands are real in the sense that our banjo player Chris Pandolfi was the original banjo player for the Emitt-Nershi Band when they first started. And when we started The Stringdusters he decided to play with us full time, and he turned Emitt-Nershi Band onto this great banjo player Andy Thorn who I played with for several years in a band in Colorado.
The Punch Brothers, they started right around the same time we did, we were already a band and then they asked our guitar player Chris Eldridge to join their band, so he left our band, we got Andy Falco and he started playing with them, so that’s a very real and obvious connection. We’ve known Noam for years when we were living in Nashville.
Then in terms of Yonder, they’re sort of at the top of the bluegrass peak in a lot of ways, and I got into the music going to Yonder shows, I used to drive 10 hours from Durango, Colorado to go see those guys, and they’re a huge part of the reason I got into the music and the great thing about acoustic music and the bluegrass scene is that it really is a mutual admiration society. We all love to pick and we all love to hang, we love to show eachother new tunes and new music, we love to watch each other play and Yonder is such a powerful band and they’re all really hip cats and they’re big fans of ours and we’re big fans of theirs and it just feels really natural and obvious for us to get together and play some shows. We did Red Rocks with them this summer, it was them and us and Railroad Earth and that was just an amazing experience and there was so much positivity coming from those guys and from every corner of the acoustic and bluegrass world. I think it’s a real incestuous scene full of people who just love to play music, so our paths cross a lot.
Justin: So you just mentioned Red Rocks, a lot of bands that I’ve talked to said Red Rocks is a goal of theirs or that Madison Square Garden is a goal of theirs. What are some of your personal goals, and what are some of the goals of The Stringdusters for the future?
Travis: Well Red Rocks was a major milestone for me, growing up in Colorado I used to go up there and see shows, you know, I went up there to see String Cheese a bunch of times, and saw R.E.M., and if you’re a musician in Colorado, then that’s a sort of Mecca. The Stringdusters philosophy in general is to have a really good time, to enjoy life, be present and play good music. I think if we can share that with larger and larger audiences, that will be really amazing. As far as specific venues I don’t know if we necessarily have any goals, there’s a lot of festivals that we’re really excited to play and for us, we just want to see continued growth as a band, we want to explore new musical territory and hopefully continue to have a lot more people get turned onto the scene. I think if what we’re doing is good and if it has value and meaning, then we’ll see our audiences grow and if our audiences don’t grow then, you know. [laughter]
Then we’ll know that it’s not meant to be, but right now things are just cruising along for us, we just got out of a record deal and we released our live record, it comes out actually at the Festy but you can pre-order it right now, it’s name your own price. We’re super psyched to finally have a live record out and to have ownership over it, the record label had us sort of chained to the ground for years so that’s been a major goal of ours. The Festy is a major goal, releasing and distributing our own music on our own timeline our own way is a huge goal and, you know, getting some more people on the road with us so we can put on a bigger and better and more exciting show. More lights, better sound, that sort of thing.
But honestly man, the most important thing for us is to just stay together, keep being true to our music and playing music together and to love each other, you know, we’re a band of brothers and the experience of day to day being on the road, so many bands are out there and they’re hustling and they’re thinking that there’s this place they’re going to get to, thing’s are going to get so much better whenever this happens. And we don’t have that mentality, you know, we play the shows that we want to play right now. We’re going to do a Ski tour in January cause we love to ski and we’re putting on The Festy cause it’s important to us and we try to enjoy every show, focusing on the present. I think every night that we enjoy ourselves, the goal is achieved.
Justin: So you just mentioned a live album. Can you tell me some more about that, is it a compilation or it is a certain show? How’d you guys end up picking the tracks for that particular album?
Travis: What we did was we planned five shows in May—we did Charlottesville, Virginia which is sort of our home base, and we played up in Burlington, Vermont, Boston, D.C., and New York City and then we did a compilation of that stuff. We really wanted it to be good, we knew we could keep it simple and package this one show but we don’t like to put a bunch of pressure on ourselves, so we figured we’d just do it over five nights and we’d put together what we feel like is an amazing compilation that is the best recorded representation of our band right now.
We’re all just fucking thrilled with this record, it’s called We’ll Do It Live, and because we own it, we decided that we were going to, in the spirit of empowering our fans, we figured we would let them name their own price. So you can go on there, it won’t be available for another week and a half but you can preorder it, you can buy it for a buck if you want, you can give us 70 dollars, whatever you think it’s worth you can pay us for it. And that feels amazing, you know? To really lower the barrier to entry, if you only have a buck you’re good to go, you can get our record. And if you can afford to pay us more you can do that too. I’m just thrilled for people to hear, and I’m really psyched for it to get out.
Justin: That whole “name your own price” thing seems to be the big thing in the music scene, people seem to be enjoying it. I like the fact that music is now more accessible to anybody.
Travis: Yeah I mean it’s not original in any way on our part, there’s a lot of people who have already done it, but you know, for us it all comes back to just wanting to create the best experience for our fans, for our family, for our people. We were talking about it and we thought to ourselves “Well what better user experience than naming your own price?” I know when I have done that with records it feels so good to just determine the value and when I’ve downloaded things for less money than down the road, sometimes I’ve poured more money into the band because I felt like I got a really good deal. Sometimes I’ve paid more for something cause I feel really good about it, you know, the music industry and recorded music is such a crazy thing right now, nobody really knows what’s going on and it’s interesting to see also what people are paying, and allowing the customer to sort of determine the value.
Justin: Yeah, it seems like a more interactive experience.
Travis: It’s real, for sure.
Justin: So speaking about the craziness of recorded music, congratulations on you Grammy nomination, unfortunately you guys didn’t win it, but could you tell me more about that, about your nomination for “Best Country Instrumental Performance” for “Magic #9?”
Travis: Yeah I mean, there’s not much to it. We weren’t even thinking about it, people just started posting on our Facebook “Congrats on the Grammy nomination” so we booked our flights and went down there and hung out and did all the parties, and the best part of it was watching the ceremony, you know, getting to see like, you know, Mick Jagger and Eminem, it was ridiculous. It was one of the best live shows that we’d ever seen, and just being down there and being part of it and being able to observe that whole L.A. Grammy scene, it was really fun. We didn’t have any expectations of winning, we were just there for the experience and it’s totally cliché but it’s just an honor to be nominated and it was a really really fun party.
Justin: Yeah I’m sure, was there any memorable experiences that come to mind from that?
Travis: One thing that was really funny was when we were walking down the red carpet and we got our picture taken with the Situation from the Jersey Shore, it was hilarious! He had his whole thing, his skin was all glistening and he was puffing out his chest and making his pouty face, it was surreal. Being around that L.A. thing, we’re just a bunch of normal dudes, most of us grew up in the woods. We’re just normal guys, so to be around that whole scene was pretty funny, it was pretty entertaining, we loved it.
Justin: [laughter] Yeah I’m sure that would make a good album cover or CD insert at least. So I was on your Facebook, and it said you just announced a tour with your wife Sarah. Can you tell me more about that? What kind of music is it, and how did that come to be?
Travis: Yeah my wife Sarah is an amazing songwriter and she’s putting out a record, she and I have been doing tours mostly in Colorado for a few years now, so she’s putting out this new record, I don’t know how else to describe it but she’s a singer/songwriter, sort of folk-pop. She did the whole record herself, everything from all the instruments, she engineered, she mastered, she produced, she did everything. It’s really cool, It’s just an opportunity for us to hang out, I grew up out here in Colorado. Right now I’m in the middle of a mountain bike ride and I’m just sitting on the side of the trail, it’s a prime opportunity for us to come out, play some shows, hang out together, make some music and we’re doing this for a week and then we’re going to drive back to Virginia for The Festy.
Justin: And I assume you’ll be playing bass with her?
Travis: Yeah I play bass, a little bit of guitar too.
Justin: Well thanks for taking the time out of your day to speak to me, I really appreciate it.
