This week, I had the pleasure of speaking to Chris Pandolfi, banjo player for The Infamous Stringdusters who will be playing the High Noon Saloon in just a few short hours. The Infamous Stringdusters are an innovative bluegrass band with an eclectic background that comes together to create a genuine and one-of-a-kind sound. I was dying to pick his brain about their new album Silver Sky, their writing process, and life on the road, and he had some very interesting things to tell me.
Tynan: “How long have you guys been out on the road for this tour?”
Chris Pandolfi: “We’ve been out for a couple weeks now for this tour. We started in Colorado, made our way to Southern California, all the way up to Seattle and now we’re doing the upper midwest markets for the last part of this stretch.”
T: “And how has the tour been for you guys?”
CP: “Aw man, it’s been amazing. We have a new record out, and a lot of interesting things going on, and a lot more awareness about the band now more than ever before so the crowds have been great and the weather’s been beautiful. There’s been exploring, you know, there’s been surfing. We hiked Angels Landing in the Zion and all kinds of cool stuff so it’s been a great run.”
T: “So is there a ‘normal’ day for you guys when you’re out on tour or do you sort of just take each day as it comes?”
CP: “Show days all have some similarity. The crew loads in between 3pm and 6pm and we show up at 6 for sound check, so that’s most of your day right there, but every day is a little bit different. Some places we’ve been to before, some we haven’t and you don’t know exactly what to expect. But we try to take as much advantage of our days off as we can and we have a fair amount of free time on our show days as well so we can explore the town that we’re in.”
T: “I know you guys play a lot of different types of venues. High Noon Saloon here in Madison is one of my favorite places to see a live show because it’s not too big, it’s not too small and there’s a lot of beer. Do you guys find that you have a type of venue that you prefer, from the super small venues to the bigger festival settings?”
CP: “It depends. We’ve had great shows in all types of different venues ranging from small, kind of frenzied sold out crowds to bigger rooms and bigger markets. We recently sold out the 9:30 Club in DC which is like 1,200 people. We don’t do those kinds of numbers in every market but it’s just whatever creates the best environment for the music to come to life. We do certainly play a lot of festivals, but we just try to lay it out there when we go on stage and get the crowd involved and that’s usually what makes for the best result.”
T: “In terms of the bigger venues versus the smaller, do you find that the crowd’s energy can be different, or does it depend more on the location and the night?”
CP: “It’s a little different every night. The energy of the crowd forms to the way the band plays, but small crowds can provide that and big crowds can provide that in an even more exciting fashion, but I think great shows, great music and great vibes can be achieved in every room.”
T: “You released your first album in 2007 and Silver Sky just came out, which by the way is a great record. Congratulations on that. I think its wild. How do you think your sound has changed over the last five years?”
CP: “I think more than anything, it’s just become more uniquely us. With a lot of bands, there’s a lot of talk about adventurous recordings, but in some ways, our band has really stayed the same. We’re unique in that we all each play one instrument and we’ve got that locked in, There’s some deviation from that when recording and some deviation from that down the road, but I think the sound has developed a lot and really just become more uniquely our own. We’ve learned to play together and we’ve learned to take our influences, our really wide ranging eclectic pool of influences, and over the years as we get to know each other better as musicians and also as people, all of that is coalescing into one cohesive band sound. The sound of the band, the music that we write together, the arranging that we do together, but I think more than anything we become sort of more uniquely our own style, based in bluegrass but definitely something that’s our own.”
T: “Sure, sure. And that actually leads me to another question that I had for you. I’ve heard you say before that each of you has a very eclectic background within music. Can you explain what one or two of those backgrounds might be that are so different than bluegrass and how they come together to make your sound even more unique?”
CP: “Well I didn’t even know what bluegrass was when I got my first banjo at 18 years old, so my influences are obviously outside that genre. And I think if you look at our guitar player, Andy Falco, he was an electric blues player and a Grateful Dead fan. And I was into the Grateful Dead and John Scofield and Frank Zappa, and anything that was really different—anything that was unique. And we had, among those influences, we had a musical understanding of something a little more free, something a little more improvised than bluegrass. So even though we learned stylistically to play the bluegrass instruments in a more classic style, we bring, I think, more than anything, knowledge of how free music can be, how open it can be. We don’t think of ourselves as a jam band per se, but there is something very amazing when a group of musicians get to know each other well and can improvise on stage and I think that’s something that we all learned. I’ve been to a few Dead shows before they were done, and all these various types of influences that teach you how open music can be, so we’ve tried to bring that sort of thing and I think it’s successfully entered our sound over the years.”
T: “Sort of along those lines, is there anything that you guys are listening to right now that is influencing your sound that might surprise your audience? I sort of picture you guys getting off stage, and then secretly bumping Ludacris in the tour bus. While I’m sure that doesn’t happen, is there anything that has made its way in and influenced your sound at all?”
CP: [laughs] “Well, I think if you listen to Silver Sky, there’s a great horn section on a couple of songs, [from] the guys and gal from Rubblebucket. They are a band that we all sort of fell in love with at the same time and brought them to The Festy, our festival in North Virginia in the fall. And they were really into that. And we asked them to play on our album. They’ve got that young sort of ambitious feel. So we’ve been influenced by them, they’re a new band, and there’s also the classics, sort of rotating group of older influences but in terms of new stuff that’s certainly something significant in the past year.”
T: “I really, really like your sound, and I feel like it’s unique because there’s this momentum throughout all of Silver Sky that just carries the whole thing. Lyrically and sonically I feel like it’s just the truth. That’s the only way I can describe it. There’s just so much to your sound and it’s so well-rounded and clean the whole way through. How you keep that energy up night after night? In all the footage of you guys playing live that I’ve seen, you completely shut it down.
CP: “You know, that’s a tough question, but that’s kind of the magic of it. Part of it is finding the musical synergy of the band, but also a lot of it is getting ourselves on the track of shows and events and trying to figure out where is the best environment for the Stringdusters and really devoting ourselves to creating one and making sure that’s part of the equation every night. For example: a great market, great people in Madison, the right venue, you roll in with the right crew and create this thing, this environment, this energy, this crowd that allows you to really bring it every night. Our band, we love to play music, we played music every day before we met each other. Now we’re touring with the band. We play 130 shows a year or whatever it is. We just have a crew that really cares about music, so really figuring out how to put our best foot forward in our albums and our shows is just the most important thing to us. So, just setting the crowd free and creating our best and most creative environment, hopefully that allows us to put our best foot forward every time whether that’s a show, an album, radio, whatever. “
T: “You guys have released almost an album a year since 2007, which I think is huge. I hate it when I fall in love with a band and then they disappear for three or four years. What motivates you guys to write so much? Are you frequently writing or does it come in stages? Is it a constant thing?”
CP: “It’s a constant thing, the writing process is a constant thing. New music is introduced in bursts to the band when we’re freed up to do preproduction and rehearsing, but like I said, the payoff for the guys in our band is musical, so we’re all writing all the time. We’re all practicing all the time, trying to figure out ways to improve as individuals in the band, so that part of the process is very natural. We do need a little bit of discipline to make sure we get all the hard work done, but in terms of inspiration and material, I think it’s always flowing for us.”
T: “Last, I know you guys are touring pretty consistently. You mentioned around 130 shows a year. What’s it like being on the road so much? How do you keep yourself sane? I know you mentioned that you have down time, but is there any way to keep a sense of normalcy when you’re on the road so much?”
CP: “It takes a little effort once you develop a routine that keeps you healthy and keeps you happy. But I think the key is striving to best understand and be as honest as possible with the other guys in the band and trying to develop friendships and relationships that are real. If we enjoy being around each other the vast majority of the time—which I think we do—that, more than any other piece of music or downtime is what makes being on the road pleasurable. So hopefully that’s the thing that allows us to enjoy ourselves and allows us to make good music. It’s hard. It’s like a five-way marriage. We’ve gotta figure out how to just all be cool, but I think that by-and-large everyone really appreciates how much work that is and really works on it and it also comes pretty naturally. We came together first as musicians and realized later that we had a great synergy as people despite many various differences, so we just got along well and still do, and I think that that is really the most important thing.”
The Infamous Stringdusters are performing tonight at the High Noon Saloon. Click here for tickets.
—interview by Tynan Sinks
Filed under: Bluegrass, Interviews, Music Shows This Week in Madison Tagged: | Chris Pandolfi, High Noon Saloon, Interview, Madison WI concerts, madison wi music, The Infamous Stringdusters
