Chatting with Greensky Bluegrass on the ninth week of an almost complete tour across America, Anders Beck (Dobro) and Paul Hoffman (Mandolin, Vocals) talk about their journey to success, personal struggles and inspirations, songwriting and instrumental creative processes, and a little bit, of Phish.
Falling into the newgrass scene, Greensky definitely has a flavor of their own. How would you describe the twist you put on bluegrass?
Anders Beck: It’s uniquely us, which is appealing to a lot of people it turns out. We use bluegrass as the spring board to kind of create or own music. We have lots of influences from jam bands to traditional bluegrass to rock n roll and jazz-just all across the board. We use bluegrass instruments as the starting point and create our own thing that is an accumulation of all those influences. The original music is the key component, it’s hard to put a label on yourself when essentially what you’re doing is being yourself.
If you could throw any other instrument or instruments in the mix, what would they be?
AB: Well, we’ve done ‘em all really. A lot of drummers sit in and that makes it totally different. Having Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann from the Grateful dead was one of the coolest musical experiences of my life. Adding drums is always really fun, because we create this rock n roll sound without drums, which is on some weird level a point of pride that we can rock that hard without drums, and then when you add drums it becomes this whole other beast. I think pianos fit really well with our band, horns, and fiddles. Sam Bush has played shows with us where he played his fiddle for the whole show, which was a great addition. Being really musically open I can’t say there’s just one instrument that’s the one, because we love them all. We’ve had the guys from Toubab Krewe sit in with Koras and all those weird African instruments; we don’t even know what the hell they are, but they’re awesome. I don’t think I can pick one, because we’re down with them all; it’s fun.
What is the songwriting like in Greensky, is it a group effort?
Paul Hoffman: Myself and Dave, our guitar player, bring most of the stuff. We do the beginning stages and most of the development writing on our own, but the band is really involved in the arranging process. Songs reach the band at different levels of development, sometimes with little to no development. Maybe I just have lyrics and a chord progression, and some idea, but I write most of the lyrics alone.
Do these revelations of a lyric or a riff just come to you or is it more thought out?
PH: It varies for me all over the board. Sometimes I mull over an idea for a long time. A good example is the Handguns song. I had this concept of a lyric that went along the lines of going to buy a handgun and making less mistakes. I thought of the juxtaposition of owning a firearm and the self-prescribed making less mistakes. I couldn’t figure out how to use it at all and then one day I just sort of breakthrough and just sort of wrote what I did. Other times I just sit down with a guitar and start singing and it comes out.
Who wrote the new song, ‘Windshield’? What’s that song about for you?
PH: I did. I think that song is about a lot of the things I’ve been listening to. It’s certainly angsty. I wrote it in a very whimsical fashion. I didn’t expect anything serious to come of it. I was just messing around writing a really angsty, rock n roll, kind of screamy sounding song. I wrote it in seven minutes. I have a recording of myself writing it; it’s pretty creepy. That song was like an exercise in melody writing for me, and then the lyrics were this angsty stream of thoughts, just this thing I was spitting out. It’s pretty dark and angry, but it’s not like its about me finding out I was adopted. (Laughs) I just wrote it.
What is your biggest struggle in songwriting?
PH: Early on writing for the band was really hard because I tried to write bluegrass songs, and they were dumb. (Laughs) They were just really contrived. The struggle for me recently is I think I have a very distinct style and voice and occasionally I can sort of break that mold, and just create and idea they’re usually really spontaneous like that song. I wrote this song called I’d “Probably Kill You,” which I think is really different from all the other songs I write. Sometimes I write songs over pre-existing song melodies and then I re-apply the lyrics to new melodies, because it’s easy to write in certain cadence, in certain melodies. My mind connects the phrase of a long structure of a verse and then I write the new more complicated melody. I’m doing all sorts of crazy things to try and keep it fresh. (Laughs)
Is singing and songwriting more important to you than playing the mandolin, or do you hold equal passion in both?
PH: This is a very good question; I ask myself that sometimes. I think it’s an equal passion, and that’s what I really love about our band. I’ve found this home where I’m able to pursue those passions equally, and I think people are interested in both. We can play a fifteen minute improvised jam where we can explore our instruments and voice our ideas on them and then I can resume singing lyrics that I feel are very important and poignant and it’s like neither of the two things is just a vehicle for the other. They are both profound, and important to both me and our fans…grateful for that. I don’t think I see that in a lot of bands. Not to say that in those early Phish songs those silly lyrics aren’t serious, but I think to a lot of Phish fans it’s not as important what the lyrics to “Tweezer” are, “Tweezer” is just a vehicle for the song. I think they’re great; they have a voice of your own. I just sense that they’re not the same somehow.
I feel as though you guys have really polished and elevated your sound, and have been reaching bigger stages. Have there been specific things you’ve worked on as a group to make that happen?
AB: I think it has a lot to do with playing together so much for so long that we can read each others minds and finish each others thoughts musically so the musical jamming aspect of it has really come together over the past year or so on a whole other level. It’s something we’ve been working towards and not really knowing it. Playing 175 shows a year you get to this level where everybody’s so tuned in to each other musically. I think that’s a big part of it. The other point you brought up is also pretty true. As we get to play on bigger stages in bigger theaters consistently we can hone our sound to those places. We’re getting to create the sound we’ve all been hearing in our heads for so long. Playing in dumpy bars you can only get to a certain level of perfection, not saying we’re perfect, but when you’re playing places like the Fillmore in San Francisco the room is impeccable and the sound is impeccable and you can create the thing that you really want to. So as we play a little more consistently rooms like that we can create the sounds we’ve all been dreaming up. A fair amount of credit also goes to Greg Burns, who is our front of house engineer, and mixes the band. He’s helped us have this consistent thing where we can work to achieve something that we’ve been going for all along.
Your home state is Michigan, but you do a lot of touring in the west and in Colorado. Do you feel a greater attachment or popularity out west, or just feel the love in a lot of places?
PH: I think we sort of started having more response in Denver and the Northwest before the Northeast and South. There are certainly places where we’ve grown a little more and we get to play bigger venues, which is more exciting for us because we have more control over the show and we can be a deciding factor in the whole environment of the show; it’s not just about the songs we pick. It’s about the way the stage looks, how the security treats the fans, what the place is like, if there’s chairs or theirs dancing. Places where we’ve tracked more momentum and we have more fans we can play more fans, but that’s starting to happen everywhere and that’s exciting.
Do you feel like you’re a Midwest band?
PH: I think we’re a Midwest band. We’re not all from the Midwest, Ander’s isn’t. I think we’re different than the Colorado-different from every band, and every band is different from every band, but I’ve noticed some similarities with bands from similar areas. There aren’t very many bands from our area to compare us to so maybe that makes it easy to identify with it because it feels truly unique for me.
Anders, you mentioned at Harvest Festival that a lot of the bands in the newgrass scene, that you now play alongside at festivals, were great inspirations to you when you were making your way. What has been the biggest, ‘holy shit, this is happening?’ moment for you.
AB: I’d say having Billy and Mickey play with us is probably still the biggest ‘holy shit moment’. Having gone and seen a lot of Grateful Dead shows growing up, that’s something I never imagined happening in my wildest dreams.
What impact has the Grateful Dead played in your life musically?
AB: In my life musically, growing up I listened to a lot of them. I was lucky my parents let me go see them a lot when I was 15, 16 years old. I still thank my parents for that and tell them they’re crazy for doing it, but thanks anyways. I think musically the impact it has had on me is that improvisation is one of the truest art forms that there is-the idea that music can go wherever you want it to go on any given night, or even just sitting in your basement or whatever, that there’s no rules or boundaries, that’s probably the biggest part for me that I learned from that music. In hindsight I think it doesn’t have to be perfect, you can take chances, and that’s one of the key tenants of our band. We can take chances every night, and I’m not gonna say it always works out, but you have to leave behind the safety net to really create something that is potentially really beautiful. If you never take chances you’ll never know.
PH: I definitely listen to the Grateful Dead. I got more into Phish as a fan. I think it spoke to me a little differently. There’s a little more excitement to it for me. I listened to Grateful Dead as a teenager and it opened a lot of doors. I love the Grateful Dead, don’t get me wrong, I just didn’t become the fan of Grateful Dead that I am of Phish. If I hadn’t been in a band I probably would have gone on Phish tour. I would have gone on tour one way or another.
What is it about Phish that is particularly inspiring?
PH: They’re just badasses! They have a really unique sense of counterpoint, the ways that those guys melodically play. It’s really amazing what they’re able to do and it’s just always really excited me. They have the gusto to compose some pretty intense music right off the bat so they found their musical voice over a very complicated palate of songs. Those early songs and the composition, like all the songs on Junta, they’re all very elaborately composed. It’s just really intense music. It’s not like they were in a garage playing three chords getting to know each other. They were like lets play this really fricken complicated music and once they mastered that, the rest is history as they say. I notice in their later band history that there’s this strive for simplicity compared to their early music. I love that band; they really inspire me.
Do you still find yourself on Phish tour?
PH: I went to Tahoe; I went to a few shows this summer, yea. I can’t go on tour because I have my own shows to play. They don’t tell you that when you join a band.
Have you guys ever covered a Phish song?
PH: We played “Rift” for Halloween, and a couple times since. We played “Down with Disease” once too.
What have your other musical inspirations been?
AB: I’m a huge Phish fan- like 135 Phish shows before 2000. That’s kind of one of my biggest influences, that doesn’t really come through in our music necessarily because it’a a different thing, but musically that band taught me most of what I know, which is kind of weird because we don’t sound like them. I’ll never be able to play like Trey (Laughs), but he is still one of my biggest influences in how I approach playing, just like the overall improvisational nature of it and the listening those guys do with each other when they play; that’s been a huge influence on how I approach music. Closer to bluegrass, guys like Jerry Douglass, who is this amazing amazing dobro player. As a dobro player, he’s a huge influence because I can translate what he does to what I do. A guy like Trey, I can’t translate what he does to what I do. There’s another guy, Billy Cardine, who I think is one of the greatest musicians out there, and has been a big influence on me as well.
PH: I was pretty influenced by the Beatles early on. My mother is a big fan so I was saturated in Beatles music, making mix tapes for her off her records. I listened to a lot of music that way sort of transferring their technology from LPs to tapes for their cars. In my adult songwriting stages I am really influenced by a lot of different things. I’ve become even more inspired by the art of songwriting. Anything that I can listen to thats different or has some thought put into it. I sort of find inspiration in everything. If it’s more outside the box I find it more inspiring to translate it to our ensemble and to write for what we are which is sort of a drum-less, sick, rock band.
What were your biggest struggles in trying to make it musically, either in your playing, or mentally?
AB: On a real musical personal level I get stuck inside of the same box sometimes, and when you’re trying to constantly learn more you hit these plateaus as a musicians where you feel like you’re not getting better, you’re not getting better, and then you get these breakthroughs, and thank god for the breakthroughs because it’s so challenging when you feel like nothing is changing and you’re working really hard and your playing is not evolving. I’m trying to really evolve, a lot. On a personal level, it’s just holding it together when you’re playing 175 shows a year and to try and keep believing in the music. I’m thinking more to 4 or 5 years ago when we were playing bars every night. It can be rough, it can be really rough, to keep the creative juices flowing when we’d be having these really hard tours. I guess that being said I’m just really thankful we all believed in it enough to keep going. The key element was that we really did believe in the music and the songs to the point we thought it was going to work. So I’m glad it’s going so well now. It’s exciting to look back and be like, we were kinda right!
PH: Time. There’s not enough of it. We dedicated a lot of time, played a lot of shows, and been on a lot of tours. There’s never been an overnight explosion of our success. I’m not bitter, mind you. We’ve put a lot into it. The biggest hurdle we’ve made is the sacrifice for music, but it’s made us a great band; we’ve played a lot of shows. Like Anders said, we really are just able to read each others’ minds, and I think that’s why we force ourselves to try new things so that we’re finding new ideas and trying to experiment in new ways.
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Greensky is the cover selection. How do you choose your covers?
PH: You must not have heard all the covers we’ve played, because we’ve definitely played some bad ones. It’s sort of a group decision. We’ve done two Halloweens of all 80s music, so that’s led to a lot of covers because we intentionally picked them in that decade, but they didn’t all stick around; some of them were just novelties for the Halloween shows. Sometimes I’m self- conscious we play too many. Phish plays covers; they’re my hero band, so we can play covers right? (Laughs) It’s the singing of a song that makes me wanna play it-something I like to sing along to when I listen to or a song that I think is really great. Sometimes it’s totally off the wall that it will work well. We play “Dancing in the Dark” by Bruce Springsteen. One of the tricks for arranging non-bluegrass for bluegrass, in my opinion, is that we play it fast to preserve the vibe of the original song. It’s got the intensity and the upbeat energy of the original even without the drums. We play it a little bit faster than he does, and I sing the phrasing most of the same way he does, and that feels more cool to me. We’re playing it bluegrassy, but I’m still singing it the way that it is. It’s as if the bluegrass was in the song all along. I could just hear it when I listen to it.
What is your advice for young musicians trying to find their way?
AB: Be really critical of yourselves and your songs and your playing. For me songs are the big thing. You can be the greatest musician, or the worst musician, and it doesn’t really matter if the songs are killer. I spent a lot of time with Benny Galloway whose a great songwriter and he taught me the power of a song, and editing a song until it’s right, and by right I mean damn good.
PH: Keep doing it. It takes time.
What do you feel music has brought to your life?
AB: Everything. As a fan of band it’s always been the go to thing. Music has been my life for a long time. As a musician it’s given my life purpose on some level. It sounds kind of epic and maybe a little cheesy, but I have purpose; I have something to do with my life. I have something to share with people. I feel extraordinarily lucky that my job is to make people happy. That’s probably the simplest way to put it, and I think we all feel that way. It’s sort of easy to get lost in it, but I think we are all constantly reminding each other how lucky we are to get to this. We are all really thankful this is the way it turned out and we’re not working in gas stations, or behind desks, or growing weed or whatever. We get to make people happy on a daily basis and it’s a hell of a good feeling.
