Festival Frenzy: Life on the Road with Greensky Bluegrass
From our archives in 2012:
Anders Beck of Green Sky Bluegrass joins this episode of Country Fried Rock for an engaging and insightful conversation about life on the road and the artistry behind his music. He offers a behind-the-scenes look at the demands and rewards of touring, sharing how the band consistently performs 150 to 200 shows each year while connecting with diverse audiences through the festival circuit.
Beck also reflects on his musical beginnings, crediting his parents for inspiring his passion and recalling the pivotal moment he discovered the dobro at a bluegrass festival, an experience that set him on his current path. The discussion delves into the band’s creative approach, highlighting the role of improvisation in their live performances and how it naturally shapes their songwriting process.
This episode delivers a thoughtful and relaxed exploration of musicianship, creativity, and the unique energy that comes from making music together on stage.
Chapters
- 00:09 - Introduction to Green Sky Bluegrass
- 02:56 - The Journey into Bluegrass Music
- 06:05 - The Evolution of Bluegrass: Embracing New Influences
- 13:12 - Joining the Band: A Journey into Green Sky
- 15:47 - The Evolution of Green Sky
- 20:16 - The Creative Process Behind the Album
Mentioned in this Episode
- Greensky Bluegrass
- Grateful Dead
- Metallica
- Benny Galloway
- Yonder Mountain String Band
- Infamous Stringdusters
- David Grisman
- Flatt and Scruggs
- Bill Monroe
- Todd Snider
- Radiohead
- Bon Iver
- Wilco
- Railroad Earth
- XM Radio
- Nuci's Spave
- Muscle Shoals
Recommended If You Like
Country Fried Rock, Green Sky Bluegrass, Greensky Bluegrass, Anders Beck interview, bluegrass music, jam bands, music festivals, songwriting process, improvisation in music, acoustic instruments, music creativity, Grateful Dead influence, country music inspiration, live music performances, bluegrass festivals, music collaboration, recording process, vinyl records, analog recording, music industry insights, country music podcasts
Mentioned in this episode:
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These podcast episodes are from 2009-2020. Links are probably dead. Half these places do not exist any more.
Transcript
Welcome to Country Fried Rock, where we talk with musicians to find out what inspires their creativity.
Speaker A:Country Fried Rock music uncovered.
Speaker A:My guest today on Country Fried Rock is Anders Beck of the band Green Sky Bluegrass.
Speaker A:Welcome to Country Fried Rock.
Speaker B:Thank you very much.
Speaker A:Great to have you here with us.
Speaker A:Y' all been on the road a lot lately.
Speaker A:What's going on for the band?
Speaker B:Yeah, we have been on the road a lot lately.
Speaker B:We pretty much always are, comparatively to a lot of bands, probably play somewhere between 150, 200 shows a year.
Speaker B:Adding travel days adds up to more than that.
Speaker B:That's a good thing, the way we see it.
Speaker B:So we've been busy.
Speaker B:We had a really busy summer.
Speaker B:Lots of festivals and flying around, playing festivals, which is kind of a new thing to us.
Speaker B:You know, we'll do a festival in North Carolina on Friday and a festival in California on Saturday and be home on Sunday.
Speaker B:It's like.
Speaker B:It's a whirlwind, and it's pretty cool, but also, you know, present its own set of problems.
Speaker B:But, yeah, things are going great for the band, which is exciting for us.
Speaker A:So the band has been around for a while, but let's back way up into how you first got into music.
Speaker B:I certainly blame my parents, and they probably blame me as well, which is good.
Speaker B:But growing up, they listened to a lot of music and took me to lots of concerts growing up and stuff.
Speaker B:And, you know, they have memories of a friend of theirs bringing over, actually Urban Alrich, who was Lars Ulrich, the drummer for Metallica's father, was good friends with my parents and would come over from, I think, Norway or Sweden.
Speaker B:They all played professional tennis together.
Speaker B:The day before sergeant Peppers came out, he showed up with the record, and of course, everyone's waiting in line to get the record.
Speaker B:And he was a.
Speaker B:And Turbin Ulrich was a DJ in Shiver's Canadian country.
Speaker B:He was from, I believe it was Norway.
Speaker B:And my parents have always told me the story of them sitting on the floor of their living room, you know, with candles, listening to Sgt.
Speaker B:Pepper the night before it came out, the night before anybody could get it in this country.
Speaker B:And that was like this huge thing.
Speaker B:So that's a cool story I'll never forget.
Speaker B:But they were really into music and encouraged me to be in the music as well.
Speaker B:Little did we all know what that would eventually mean.
Speaker B:I played drums until a friend came over, and I was getting pretty good, and I said, hey, check out this song.
Speaker B:You know what this is?
Speaker B:I went.
Speaker B:And he goes, man, that's every song And I was crushed.
Speaker B:And then the next day I started playing guitar.
Speaker A:So that next day when you picked up guitar, what did you choose to learn?
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:It's probably, you know, whatever classic rock song was the easiest.
Speaker B:But I had a really cool guitar teacher and taught me a lot about music.
Speaker B:And eventually, years and years later, I got into bluegrass and realized that I wasn't really going to be a good flat picking guitar player.
Speaker B:And at the same time stumbled upon the sounds of the dobro at the Telluride bluegrass festival, actually.
Speaker B:And so it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Speaker B:And I realized that that was the instrument that I was looking for because it's acoustic, but it's like the electric guitar of acoustic instruments.
Speaker B:So I could be in this bluegrass vibe and sort of seeing what I was getting into, but still figure out a way to kind of rock exciting for me.
Speaker A:So what brought you to bluegrass?
Speaker B:Honestly, I think really what happened was I had been into sort of more jam bands when I was growing up.
Speaker B:The father, grandfather, mother, and everything of jam bands was the Grateful Dead.
Speaker B:And my parents.
Speaker B:I was lucky enough to have my parents actually let me go see the grateful Dead.
Speaker B:I mean, I'm not that old, but, you know, they would let me go see three nights in a row of Grateful dead shows when I was 15 years old.
Speaker A:Mine did too.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I can't believe it.
Speaker B:I mean, I. I still thank them and ask them what were they thinking, but I convinced them that it was for the music.
Speaker B:And it really was.
Speaker B:I was there because I was a guitar player and I love music and that's what I listened to.
Speaker B:I'm lucky that I got to see a bunch of those shows.
Speaker B:But that being said, I was heavily into the grateful dead As I was sort of exploring more music, I realized that it kind of works that way where you're like, whoa.
Speaker B:Well, Jerry Garcia was in this band and figured most everyone knows this story by now.
Speaker B:It's happened to so many people.
Speaker B:And then like, whoa.
Speaker B:He plays banjo in a bluegrass band.
Speaker B:What?
Speaker B:Bluegrass.
Speaker B:You start listening to it and you're like, man, this is cool.
Speaker B:And you can't stop listening to it.
Speaker B:And then you find as a musician, it's pretty easy to play along too, and the songs are great.
Speaker B:Then you realize that this guy playing mandolin in that band is named David grisman.
Speaker B:You start to work backwards from old milane and you're listening to David Grisman, and then all of a sudden you're listening to Tony Rhododd.
Speaker B:You Wonder where those songs came from.
Speaker B:And next thing you know, you're listening to Flattened Scruggs and Bill Monroe.
Speaker B:And somehow that happened because of the Grateful Dead.
Speaker B:I mean, it's so weird.
Speaker B:And I mean, I try to call it, like.
Speaker B:What would you call backwards evolution?
Speaker B:Devolution, I guess it would be.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's like this backwards evolution into bluegrass where I think most traditional bluegrassers probably hate the idea.
Speaker B:This is how it happened.
Speaker B:That original old in the Way album was by far the highest selling bluegrass record of all time, which has got to have a lot of traditional bluegrass people up.
Speaker B:Like, it's got the energy in the songs, and it's awesome.
Speaker B:That's how so many people got to that music.
Speaker B:I don't know that of all the things that Jerry Garcia or the Grateful Dead will get credit for, I suspect that's probably not going to be one of them.
Speaker B:It should be.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And I find that, like, bands like Green sky and beyond, the Mountain String and Leftover Salmon, you know, bands like that and those other bands which are a little bigger than us, have been around for longer.
Speaker B:I firmly believe that a band like Yonder eventually will get it for what they're really doing for the music.
Speaker B:And that's bringing the hippies into the fold.
Speaker B:You know, I'm letting them know that, hey, bluegrass is cool and fun.
Speaker B:It doesn't have to be this real strict thing, you know.
Speaker B:Hey, this is Anders Beck of Green Sky Bluegrass.
Speaker B:I'm here on Country Fried rock.
Speaker A:The influences that lead to what y' all are doing may be quite different than those that are leading to the influences from some more traditionalists.
Speaker A:A lot more freedom in what you can do.
Speaker B:Yeah, we'd be a pretty boring band, in my opinion.
Speaker B:It's that freedom fun to listen to.
Speaker B:And thankfully, I think that's the reason lots of people are coming out to see us.
Speaker B:Because, you know, improvisation is.
Speaker B:It's an important thing to us all as musicians, and we've found that it's a really important thing to listeners and fans as well.
Speaker B:We're all in it together.
Speaker B:And, you know, in a live show, it's like, well, let's go for it.
Speaker B:If this thing flies, certain jam or whatever, it's going to be amazing.
Speaker B:Sometimes you crash and burn.
Speaker A:There's interesting things with both jam bands and jazz using that time to move in and out of, to take the motion and the sound where it may lead.
Speaker A:Do you all use that in any intentional way for creating new sounds, maybe for the future?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I'm more of an instrumental writer.
Speaker B:So I'm sort of writing the hooks and the licks and the things that fit into the songs.
Speaker B:I find that through the more freeform, exploratory jams, you find things that you sort of make a mental note, you know, just like, oh, my God, try and remember that for later.
Speaker B:That was cool.
Speaker B:And half the time you don't.
Speaker B:And then half the time it wasn't that good anyway.
Speaker B:But Paul, our mandolin player, we've been working on figuring out some sort of hand signal that has yet to work, where, like, let's say I'm playing something and it's a really cool idea that we want to.
Speaker B:And he thinks it's really cool, you know, not.
Speaker B:Not me, necessarily.
Speaker B:It's just some way he can signal, like, you know, touches or blink twice.
Speaker B:We haven't quite figured it out yet.
Speaker B:The idea being that a little breadcrumb that you can drop.
Speaker B:And in theory, we would remember, like, oh, remember that thing in the Don't Lie jam that we were playing?
Speaker B:What were you thinking?
Speaker B:That kind of thing.
Speaker B:Maybe one day it'll work.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Improvisation is really positive to our songwriting as well.
Speaker B:I think eventually we're lucky enough to have people taping our shows most every night.
Speaker B:And so if we want to go back and list usually within the week or whatever, up on archive.org, which is an amazing website, you can find whatever you want.
Speaker B:And it's funny, sometimes there'll be a moment where you're.
Speaker B:You want to go back and listen to it.
Speaker B:But that's the one show of the tour that didn't get taped or something.
Speaker B:But in general, we try and leave it on stage.
Speaker B:You know, if it's something that might lead to a new song, you know, individually, we might go back and kind of listen and figure out what was going on.
Speaker B:We don't really listen as a band.
Speaker B:What is surprising to a lot of people is that we really, for the most part, don't talk about what happened on any given night.
Speaker B:We walk upstage, we definitely don't talk about it right away, and we might sort of discuss it a little bit the next day.
Speaker B:But in general, it's like almost a personal thing for each of us where we think about what happened and if there's anything good or bad or weird or awesome or, you know, whichever way it went.
Speaker B:And then we all sort of internally take it upon ourselves to use whatever experience happened on stage that time, use that for the next time.
Speaker B:Not always like the jams or the.
Speaker B:You know, the more jazzy parts happen on the same song every night, and we mix up our stutters a lot.
Speaker B:We might not play the same song for a couple nights.
Speaker B:We're on tour, but kind of an internal thing for us, which I've been realizing more and more recently, and I think that really helps us keep sane in a lot of ways.
Speaker A:How do new songs develop for you all, then?
Speaker B:The main way currently, let's say, is Paul Hoffman is our mandolin player, and he's currently the most prolific songwriter in the band.
Speaker B:And he's just cranking out really good songs, which is awesome.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:You know, I mean, he literally is one of my favorite songwriters right now, which is exciting to me because he's in my band.
Speaker B:I guess I'm in his band.
Speaker B:He's the one writing all the songs, or I guess what's cool about our band, that we're all in each other's band.
Speaker B:But he'll write songs on the guitar, and so he's the mandolin player, but he'll write on the guitar.
Speaker B:And then we'll get glimpses of songs, and we'll be messing around soundcheck.
Speaker B:And he'll.
Speaker B:It usually comes up, like, we'll be like, say, what's that?
Speaker B:And he's like, well, it's.
Speaker B:It's not quite done yet, or whatever, you know, so we all kind of have got the idea that there's something brewing.
Speaker B:But he'll bring.
Speaker B:When he's got a song, you know, kind of pretty much hashed out, he'll bring it to the band.
Speaker B:And what's interesting about the process is that while he wrote the song, he wrote it on the guitar, and he's never played it on the mandolin before, for the most part, when he brings it to the band.
Speaker B:So it's new to us, but it's new to him as well on some level.
Speaker B:You know, even though he knows how it goes, he's picking it up on a different instrument, which, you know, maybe to some people is really simple, but it's just.
Speaker B:It's different enough so that, like, he's kind of experiencing it for the first time with us, which I think is a really important thing for the way that we sort of create music, because, you know, he's written the song, and then we all kind of get to approach it new together and try and turn it in.
Speaker B:Turn it from a singer songwriter song to a green sky bluegrass song, which I think is what helps make our music sound like ourselves and unique, you know, and then sometimes we'll collaborate with each other or with other people.
Speaker B:And, you know, there's tons of different ways that it happens, but in general, that's like the usual way it goes.
Speaker B:Song Don't Lie, which is the first song on the newest album, Handgun.
Speaker B:That started as Paul had an idea for a song and I had this kind of lick, this instrumental song that I was working on writing.
Speaker B:And one day, I think we were in Steamboat Springs, Colorado before a show, just hanging out.
Speaker B:The bag was beautiful out, and he was sitting over on this bench working on this song, and I was sitting over by this tree working on a song.
Speaker B:And we were figured, well, let's just mash them together, see what happens.
Speaker B:Like, this could actually be cool, you know, and so there's the.
Speaker B:There's like the instrumental part of the song and then there's the vocal part of the song, and we just sort of mashed them together to create this thing where it actually works better than either one probably would have in the first place, which is cool when it happens that way too.
Speaker A:Several great musician friends of country fried rock generously donated songs for a free music sampler.
Speaker A:Download it@noisetrade.com countryfriderock 19 songs to help raise awareness and money for Nucci's, a nonprofit serving the mental health needs of musicians in the Athens, Georgia area.
Speaker A:Find out more about Nucci's at n u c I.org what did you all listen to?
Speaker B:Well, we still do drive around a lot, that's for sure.
Speaker B:When we were in the van, it was rules that the driver's choice, which you get to listen to, which means that you could get anything literally from like a lot of Grateful Dead, myself or Dave were driving because it's just good driving music.
Speaker B:A lot of songwriter stuff, you know, Todd Snyder would be in pret heavy rotation usually.
Speaker B:We're all pretty huge fans of that guy.
Speaker B:You know, a lot of the new.
Speaker B:I guess you call it pop music.
Speaker B:I don't know what pop music is anymore, but Radiohead, Bonvere, Wilco, I mean, I don't know if that's pop music, but it sure is popular and really good with popular songwriters.
Speaker B:And then you'd have your share of gangster rap, smooth west coast jazz, everything.
Speaker B:It's like the beauty of the ipod.
Speaker B:And then we would often listen to, you know, whatever's on XM radio, different channels.
Speaker B:And this is, of course, before they ever played us on XM radio.
Speaker B:Everyone now tells us, oh, we heard you on xm.
Speaker B:We're like, we don't have that anymore.
Speaker B:We were always looking forward to Seeing our name come across that screen just once.
Speaker B:We could all hold hands or whatever, you know, share in this moment.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:It is pretty darn cool, though.
Speaker B:I guess we'll never know what it feels like.
Speaker A:Festivals give you an opportunity to catch some people that might not be on your radar either.
Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker B:We play a lot of festivals.
Speaker B:We could either be the token weird band at a bluegrass festival or the token acoustic y bluegrass ish band at a weird festival.
Speaker B:That's just to make the metaphor work.
Speaker B:But you know, a music festival, a bigger centric festival.
Speaker B:We're lucky enough that we get to be the token acoustic ish band at music festivals, so we get to see all sorts of cool music.
Speaker B:We're lucky enough that people that like Green Skies seem to like lots of other stuff as well.
Speaker B:They're convincing festival promoters to bring us to their cool festival, that it's really good for us because we have more of an impact that kind of festival.
Speaker B:And we also get to see lots of cool music too.
Speaker A:What led to you joining the band?
Speaker B:We had met, so Green sky was a band for a while before I joined.
Speaker B:And they'd been operating at the same four piece for years now.
Speaker B:And I'd been in a band called the Wayward Sons.
Speaker B:Really cool band.
Speaker B:The songwriter in that band was a guy named Benny Galloway, who's an amazing songwriter.
Speaker B:Another one of my real favorites, and basically taught me and lots of other people how to be good at music.
Speaker B:He didn't teach us how to play it.
Speaker B:He taught us how to be good at it and how to write songs.
Speaker B:And I know that most of the guys in the Yonder Mountain String Band will credit him.
Speaker B:That Travis book from infamous String Dutchers came from that camp we all lived in.
Speaker B:So Ben had taught.
Speaker B:Spent a lot of time with the Honor Mountain String Band when they were just sort of kids figuring it out.
Speaker B:That was up in the hills above Boulder, Colorado.
Speaker B:Then he moved down to Durango, Colorado, which is where Travis and I were living and trying to figure out how to play music together.
Speaker B:And all of a sudden Benny shows up.
Speaker B:Burl is what nickname.
Speaker B:So Burl shows up and basically shows us how to do it right.
Speaker B:That song's cool, but this is how you make it cooler.
Speaker B:The overall vibe that we learned from him.
Speaker B:We decided to start a band, the Wayward Sons, and put out a record called Poor Boy's Delight.
Speaker B:Pretty good album.
Speaker B:But eventually we decided that it really wasn't a full time touring band.
Speaker B:Few really are.
Speaker B:So at that point I kind of decided I did want to be a full time touring band that to the next level, whatever that is.
Speaker B:So I thought about the bands that were playing that could maybe use Adobro.
Speaker B:And it was a pretty interesting time in my life trying to figure out some band that I thought it might work with.
Speaker B:And Green sky was at the top of that list because I really liked the band.
Speaker B:We had done some shows together and some festivals together and I liked everyone in the band as people.
Speaker B:Another important thing, there's people that you can spend 250 days a year with without killing each other.
Speaker B:I liked the kind of work ethic.
Speaker B:You know, you could tell they were going for it.
Speaker B:The thing that I really liked the most was the songwriting.
Speaker B:And coming from a band with Benny Galloway, I was like, songwriting is the most important thing in a band.
Speaker B:It's the songs.
Speaker B:It's just not gonna work.
Speaker B:It's not gonna be worth it.
Speaker B:It's not gonna make anyone happy in the long term.
Speaker B:It's about the songs because that's what stands the test of time.
Speaker B:No matter what else happens or doesn't happen or killer, you know, they get stuck in your head and you guys know how to write.
Speaker B:And so I approached them and somehow we all decided that would be a good idea to do some trial shows.
Speaker B:And so I sort of joined the band for a tour and it was pretty clear that the way it should go down.
Speaker B:So then that was probably almost five years ago, I would say.
Speaker B:Time flies.
Speaker B:You're having fun.
Speaker B:So if you want to check out the band live, and I strongly suggest you do, check out our website@greensky bluegrass.com we're on Facebook and the Twitter and all those things.
Speaker B:So come find us and come see us live.
Speaker A:Things for the band have changed in those last several years as well.
Speaker A:Reaching new audiences and expanding.
Speaker A:Who knows you?
Speaker B:Oh yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, it worked.
Speaker B:I'm amazed, you know, in that actually made, you know, on a personal level, I definitely made the right decision because the band really has taken off.
Speaker B:People are really into it.
Speaker B:The band is growing about the music that we're making and playing and going from playing in the bars and stuff to being in nice theaters now and you know, going from the early morning afternoon festival, playing around sunset.
Speaker B:At festivals, you can judge your measure by what time you play at festival.
Speaker B:It's going incredibly well.
Speaker B:It's exciting for all of us.
Speaker B:And I think that thinking back on that moment when I was trying to like figure out, wow, I have to join a band, what band should I join?
Speaker B:Trying to figure out what to do, you know, because statistically, most bands absolutely fail.
Speaker B:Fail to be something bigger than whatever they are.
Speaker B:Even bands that fail, quote unquote, might still put out some great albums, I think.
Speaker B:Fails, probably the wrong.
Speaker A:When we first started talking off the air, I was asking you a question about Handguns.
Speaker A:I saw that you all have an amazing heavy duty vinyl that's out of this record.
Speaker A:The record's a couple of years old.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:About a year after we released the album.
Speaker B:Decided that it really should come out on vinyl as well.
Speaker B:Partially because there's that resurgence in people that actually want vinyl, but also because, son, we really thought it would sound really good on record, on wax.
Speaker B:When we recorded the album Handguns, we really used a lot of the older type methods and recorded tape as much as possible, and used a lot of old analog type stuff as opposed to going all digital.
Speaker B:And lots of old weird microphones.
Speaker B:And the mixing board that we recorded the album to back the original Muscle Shoals board, that board recorded Freebird.
Speaker B:That's one out of thousand hits that that board recorded.
Speaker B:So there's, like, some mojo in that, which is interesting to think about.
Speaker B:You know, talk about personification of something onto inanimate objects.
Speaker B:How can a soundboard have any mojo?
Speaker A:But it does.
Speaker B:So we really wanted to make a particularly, like, analog record.
Speaker A:Where did y' all record that?
Speaker B:We recorded it in Lansing, Michigan.
Speaker B:There's a guy named Glenn Brown as the engineer.
Speaker B:The guy just a wizard.
Speaker B:I mean, I can't speak highly enough of him.
Speaker B:I've never met anybody who has as much knowledge of the recording process and music in general as this guy.
Speaker B:And we're definitely recording our next album with him as well, because when we started talking about it, nobody could see doing it without him.
Speaker B:You know, he's amazing and really just a true wizard of things.
Speaker B:Sound cool.
Speaker B:He's just one of those guys that respects the gear and started grabbing everything up at the right time.
Speaker B:And let's see what this will sound like on vinyl.
Speaker B:And the way they do it is they send you a test print.
Speaker B:And Matt, our manager, got the test printing, and he was like, oh, man, you just wait.
Speaker B:Wait till you hear it.
Speaker B:He's like.
Speaker B:Basically said, wait till you hear it, but you don't have to wait till you hear it, you know, kind of thing.
Speaker B:And so we were out in California at his house, and he put the record on, and I got to sit sort of right in between the speakers.
Speaker B:And we're all big fans.
Speaker B:We're actually all Big fans of that album, Handguns.
Speaker B:We made a good one sitting between those speakers the entire way that we recorded everything we did and the way we produced it and everything.
Speaker B:It was like this validation when you heard it coming through the speakers on, which is really cool for me as sort of a music head.
Speaker B:Good albums are what are gonna stand the test of time beyond anything else.
Speaker B:And you think about the really good albums, and those are the ones that got me on wax a long time ago.
Speaker B:And so to hear this album that way, I was like, well, alright, if all the computers in the world crash, this record will still be out there somehow.
Speaker B:Side note, I'll be honest, I think I'm like relatively smart and I know how a lot of things work and try and pay attention to physics of lots of of things and the science behind it, but I have absolutely no freaking clue how when you put a needle down in the ridges of a record and spin it around at a certain speed, I have absolutely no clue how the sergeant Peppers comes out or whatever.
Speaker B:That will never, ever make sense to me.
Speaker B:And I've even tried to read about it.
Speaker B:I'm just like, no, this isn't going to work for me.
Speaker B:Will not compute.
Speaker B:Hey, this is Anders Beck from Green Sky Bluegrass.
Speaker B:If you want to buy handguns, our most recent album, or any of the other ones, probably the best way to do it is either green sky bluegrass.com or the old itunes.
Speaker A:Your recording process then lent itself to making something that's going to sound good on vinyl as well.
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker B:We wanted something to be going into the studio to record that album that we wanted, something kind of gritty.
Speaker B:This was the first album that we produced ourselves, which is certainly worth noting.
Speaker B:Last two Green sky records were produced by a violin player, Tim Carbone, who plays with band Rail Order.
Speaker B:And we learned a ton from him about how to produce records, how to try and make that magic.
Speaker B:And then we decided, well, let's try it ourselves.
Speaker B:We talked a lot about trying to get some big time producer and see what that would sound like, or, you know, get Jack White to produce it.
Speaker B:You know, something like that.
Speaker B:Then we just sort of realized that that was going to be hard.
Speaker B:We sort of figured, well, we're the five guys that know this music the best and have really been dedicating our lives to it for years.
Speaker B:Let's see what happens if we try and be the ones that are really making all the hard decisions about making the definitive versions of these songs that we all love.
Speaker B:And I firmly believe that it really could have gone either way with that decision.
Speaker B:And we could have just blown up and, you know, not made the record because we would have all been so each other.
Speaker B:You know, about these minor things.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker B:Oh, you're solo.
Speaker B:And that song or whatever little things, power trip issues.
Speaker B:It could have gone that way or it could have gone perfectly.
Speaker B:And we all work really collaboratively and creatively together.
Speaker B:Lucky for that's the way it went.
Speaker B:It was really awesome.
Speaker B:You know, luckily we all had sort of the same vision of the album, which is something that's cool, but, you know, weird enough.
Speaker B:Weird enough.
Speaker B:At the same time, it's not weird.
Speaker B:And, you know, trying to make sure there's still a sense of humor on it.
Speaker B:We want it to feel really live for us.
Speaker B:We're all extremely proud of that record.
Speaker B:I'm definitely my own.
Speaker B:And we probably all are some of our harshest critics.
Speaker B:And we all actually still, whatever it is, a year and a half later, really, really enjoy that album.
Speaker A:These vinyls are like super limited edition.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think we made 500 of them.
Speaker B:I know there's some left.
Speaker B:So if you happen to be listening and really like vinyl, you know, it's worth checking out.
Speaker A:Yeah, definitely.
Speaker A:Anders, I really appreciate your time.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker A:Take it easy.
Speaker A:Really great to talk with you.
Speaker B:All right, take care.
Speaker B:Alrighty.
Speaker B:Bye.
Speaker B:Bye.
Speaker B:If you want to know more about the music of Green sky bluegrass or buy it, you can do that at our website, greenskybluegrass.com you can always buy our music on itunes.
Speaker B:Probably a wealth of other place too.
Speaker A:Country Fried Rock.
Speaker A:Find the full playlist from this episode on countryfridrock.org check us out on itunes.
Speaker A:No music, just talk.
Speaker A:Our theme music is from the Full tones.
Speaker A:Our Country Fried Rock stinger is from Steve Soto in the Twisted hearts.
Speaker A:Country fried rock.
Speaker A: Copyright: Speaker A:All rights reserved.
