Trampled By Turtles / The Devil Makes Three

"There is something generous about the way they play. They make room for each other, they serve the song, yet at times seem to ride the chaotic edge of stringed oblivion. It is the sound of joy; the kind of joy that the truth gives you, even when it's a hard thing to hear."
– Alan Sparhawk, Producer

"There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive."
– Jack London

Dave Simonett (guitar/lead vocals)
Tim Saxhaug (bass/harmony vocals)
Dave Carroll (banjo, harmony vocals)
Erik Berry (mandolin)
Ryan Young (fiddle/harmony vocals)

On Wild Animals, Trampled by Turtles' seventh studio album, themes of impermanence run deep, both lyrically and sonically. The quintet's hybrid folk sound continues its evolution pushing the band further into the grey area between genres that defies pigeonholing.

Trampled By Turtles formed in 2003 in Duluth, Minnesota. From their beginnings on the Midwestern festival circuit, they have reached new heights with each album. The release of 2012's Stars And Satellites saw the band play to more fans than ever, sell close to 100,000 albums, make their first national television appearance on The Late Show With David Letterman, and have their first concert feature, Live at First Avenue, broadcast on Palladia. This year will see the band headline Red Rocks Ampitheatre for the first time and the kickoff of their own festival, Festival Palomino, which will take place September 20, 2014 outside Minneapolis.

Lead songwriter Dave Simonett has been especially affected by change over the last few years. He relocated from Duluth to the city of Minneapolis. "When I lived in Duluth, I think I took connection with uncivilized nature for granted. There, I had to drive 20 minutes and I was in the middle of nowhere, and I did this almost daily," says Simonett. "This was a very important ritual for me. Solitary time in a nearly untouched landscape is my version of church, so I think there is a bit of loss of religion in a lot of my work these days. I've always been a little obsessed with our struggle to stay connected to our simple animal side, the part of our nature that lived off the earth, hunted live game, worshipped trees and mountains. I believe a lot of sadness is caused by feeling disconnected with the rest of nature. A lot of what is instinctual for us is beaten down and frowned upon in modern society. It has to be confusing for the subconscious."

Wild Animals found Trampled by Turtles working with a producer for the first time in four studio records. The band placed themselves in the capable hands of longtime Duluth, MN compatriot Alan Sparhawk of the band Low and engineer B.J. Burton (Poliça, Megafaun, Volcano Choir) who crafted a sonic landscape that was spatial and new at Cannon Falls, MN's Pachyderm Studio (Nirvana, The Jayhawks).

Says Simonett on working with Sparhawk: "Alan is one of the most musically courageous people I know and that's exactly the attitude we were looking for. He's great at taking a song from its false conclusion all the way down to its very core and then building it back in new and interesting ways."

And on Burton's contributions: "He has an exciting way of looking at sound. He shares Alan's courage in music in that he's ready to take organic sounds and push them to new places. He's extremely technically skilled but not tied to any recording dogma."

The band's signature harmonies are intact, although the contributions that Sparhawk and Burton added created a new depth. Tim Saxhaug, the band member who has traditionally done much of the vocal arrangement says, "The production team pushed the band to consider new ways of approaching harmony, and the result 'opened our ears.' I wasn't sure that recording could feel new after six studio albums, but that went away on the first day. Making this album was the most creative I've ever felt in my life."

When asked about themes in his writing, Simonett says, "I've always felt they're just various ways humans have attempted to explain the unexplainable. To keep the fear of the darkness that waits for all of us at bay. The death of a loved one, the parting of friends, the changing leaves, the loss of love. All the little parts that come and go. In a way it's refreshing because the knowledge that nothing will ever stay the same offers innumerable opportunities for rebirth."

Sparhawk adds about the band's relationship, "The sound that caught my ear was there from the beginning and stands to this day: I call it the 'wall of strings.' Taking instruments we have heard for generations, the Turtles dive in with post-punk energy and selflessness. Everyone has a part in the arrangement that leans on and enhances the others, always serving the song. The message is not about individuals – it's about what can be done when people get together, apply their heart and soul, and make a little room for each other. Music has always had that potential, but it's rare when it actually happens."

Erik Berry says of the band's chemistry, "From the earliest times we started playing, there has always been a real hard-to-define quality about our chemistry, something special. It's been a treat to find that more than ten years in we still can turn new corners, at least new-to-us corners, together in the way we approach a song or a sound and still with that quality. That something that makes us, us."

Wild Animals is the sound of a band at the peak of their potential, strengthened from a decade together, winning some and losing some, but growing none-the-less. The album captures the intense nature that goes with being alive, melding the universal and the personal.


Pete Bernhard – vocals/guitar
Cooper McBean – guitar/banjo
Lucia Turino – upright bass

"There's a road that goes out of every town. All you've got to do is get on it," Pete Bernhard says.

The guitarist/singer and his cohorts in the raw and raucous trio The Devil Makes Three have found their way onto that road numerous times since they first left their picaresque rural hometown of Brattleboro, Vermont. Back then, they had no idea it would lead them to such auspicious destinations as the Newport Folk and Austin City Limits Festivals, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, and on tours with Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell and Trampled By Turtles. Along the way, they drew numerous accolades from a growing fan base and press alike.

TDM3's travels and travails serve as inspiration for their fourth album and their New West Records debut, I'm a Stranger Here, produced by Buddy Miller and recorded at Dan Auerbach's (Black Keys) Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville.

With upright bassist Lucia Turino and guitarist Cooper McBean, Bernhard crafted a dozen tunes, part road songs, part heartbreak songs and part barnburners. While most bands are propelled from behind by a drummer, TDM3 builds exuberant rhythms from the inside out, wrapping finger-picked strings and upsurging harmonies around chugging acoustic guitar and bass, plying an ever-growing audience onto its feet to jump, shake and waltz.

TDM3's sound is garage-y ragtime, punkified blues, old n' new timey without settling upon a particular era, inspired as much by mountain music as by Preservation Hall jazz. "We bend genres pretty hard," Bernhard says.

The combination could only have happened via the circuitous route each of them took to forming the band. As kids in Vermont, "all raised by sort of hippie parents" who exposed them to folk, blues and jugbands, Bernhard says, they blazed a path to nearby Boston, Massachusetts in search of punk rock shows. They found venerable venues like The Rat and The Middle East, drawn to east coast bands like the Dropkick Murphys and Aus-Rotten.

"It would be like 6 bucks for 13 bands, everyone playing for 20 minutes," Bernhard says. "I had so much fun going to shows like that. The energy coming off the stage makes a circle with the crowd and comes back. We were really attracted to that energy."

Bernhard and McBean, a multi-instrumentalist who plays banjo, musical saw and bass, forged a particular bond. Unlike most of their mutual friends, they both liked to play acoustic music, with McBean showing Bernhard the wonders of Hank Williams and Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. They kept in touch after high school, when nearly everyone in their clique relocated to the west coast like the characters in Delbert McClinton's song "Two More Bottles of Wine."

"It was a mass exodus of kids who went out to start bands and be creative, searching for the unknown, dreaming of something different," Bernhard says. "We wanted to get away from where we were from, as many kids do, and California was the farthest we could get." Eventually they landed in sunny Santa Cruz, California, where TDM3 took shape in 2001. Their early gigs were house concerts, then small bars, punk shows, bigger rock clubs and theaters and festivals, all the while defying genre and delighting whomever turned up to listen.

Turino learned bass to join the band, but her unremitting sense of rhythm comes naturally from being raised by parents who were dance teachers, and from her own dance background. Attacking the strings of her upright, she understands how to infuse songs with the force it takes to get a crowd moving.

And the songs on I'm a Stranger Here tell the rest of the story, with the music often joyously juxtaposed against lyric darkness…the rootless nature of being in a touring band, traveling from town to town with little sense of community, represented by a devil-like character ("Stranger")...thorny transitions into adulthood…struggling with relationships ("Worse or Better"), watching friends succumb to addiction ("Mr. Midnight"), coming to terms with mortality ("Dead Body Moving"), nostalgic notions of childhood ("Spinning Like a Top"). Bernhard even considers the destruction of changing weather patterns, inspired in part by Hurricane Katrina as well as a flood that wreaked havoc in Brattleboro ("Forty Days," a gospel rave-up recorded with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band).

Bernhard wrote more than 20 songs for the album and turned them over to producer Buddy Miller, who gravitated toward the darker material but insured that the recording was lit up by the band's innate ebullience. It was Miller's idea to record at Easy Eye rather than his renowned home studio. "Easy Eye is like Sun Records," Bernhard says. "There's one live tracking room filled with amazing gear, and that defines the kind of record you're going to make. That was exactly the record we wanted to make, and we knew Buddy was the one who could capture us playing together like we do."

For a band that made its bones with dynamic performances, recording an album is almost like coaxing lightning into a bottle, but Miller and TDM3 succeed on I'm a Stranger Here. Now they're continuing the journey that began when they found their way to the road that led them out of Vermont. "I can't wait to get onstage, I love it," Bernhard says. "Playing music for a living is a blessing and a curse, but for us there's no other option."