Greensky Bluegrass: Honor, Honesty and Harmonies

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer
The boys of Greensky Bluegrass are bringing their “award winning, genre-bending” sound to The Aquarium Sunday, March 14, as they tour in support of their new double live CD, “All Access: Volume One.” The live CD features 24 of Greensky’s original songs as well as a few surprises, including some Pink Floyd, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. But, for those listeners that know the band, having those covers appear is not surprising at all.

Vocalist/mandolin and main songwriter for Greensky, Paul Hoffman, says the band honors “instrumentation of a bluegrass group really well, being that we have guitar, upright bass, mandolin, banjo and dobro. We use a lot of the original compositions, arrangements and the feel of bluegrass but we also incorporate a lot of our other influences, which might be as simple as rock and roll, some folk.”

“Our show includes a little bit of bluegrass music that’s pretty forward, although I hesitate to say it’s traditional because it’s not like gospel tunes, it’s like some of the bluegrass standards that were written by more modern people. But it also includes a lot of our original material and some covers that are not bluegrass. We incorporate a lot of bluegrass harmonies into our material but a lot of times I think it’s something different, so it’s for each listener to decide how “bluegrassy” we really are.”

Hoffman says the name Greensky Bluegrass has been around for about ten years. “There’s three of us that had been performing and making a name for it [Hoffman, Dave Bruza, guitar; Michael Bont, banjo]. Our bass player [Michael Devol] joined the band in 2004 and that’s when we really started digging in and going out of state. We played the Telluride [Bluegrass Festival Band Competition] contest back then, played it again in ’06 and won. And then in ’07, Anders [Beck, dobro] joined our band. We met him through some other bands and his project was dissolving so we added him and that’s pretty much what we’ve been doing since. He’s on the most recent studio record and then on this new live release, which is nice, so he’s been with us for two full years of touring.”

As far as getting into bluegrass, Hoffman describes Greensky’s approach as backwards. “We discovered bluegrass through other musicians,” he says. “We then started digging deeper for the roots of bluegrass. But as a band we listen to all sorts of different music and I think it all influences what we’re doing. Whether it be just like things that are standard, to forms of other genres of music or chord progressions from jazz standards or chord progressions from bluegrass standards, sometimes we try to borrow them…we play a lot of Grateful Dead songs so it’s pretty hard to deny that that’s been an influence in the way that we take our time sometimes and explore a tune. Sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes it takes ten.”

“I think it’s common because bluegrass follows a standard form in a lot of ways. There’s a lot of tunes that a lot of people know and it’s part of the show. I think all bluegrassesque bands play a few of those tunes in their show, whether it be like two per set or a ton. A lot of the straight ahead bluegrass bands play all standards and people are into that. I think the songwriting within any bluegrass band varies a lot and that’s what makes us all different.”

As is evident on the new live CD, Greensky is known for their song-writing abilities and those same songs explain their appeal to such a wide fan base. “Everybody does a varied amount of writing.” Hoffman says. “For the last couple of years I’ve done most of the writing of the songs we’ve been playing. My process varies and whatever way I achieve the song, I bring the song to the band and the band works on it to arrange it into the best vessel for Greensky Bluegrass. Sometimes I have an idea for the tune that we adjust and sometimes I’m at varied levels of being finished with the tune when I bring it to them.”

” I think that what we’re doing is really approachable for people from a lot of different aspects. People that are into traditional bluegrass, it’s different for them, not what they’re used to, and the same goes for those that are into normal rock and roll. People come see the show and its fun for them. It’s not as country western as they might have thought and they find that they like it a lot. So, from that angle we are able to draw from both sides. I think that we’re also really appealing to a wide spectrum of ages, younger folks like us because we have fun and we’re real honest, so I’ve been told that people latch onto us because they dig the songwriting. That’s really flattering for me…I hope that it’s true.”

Keeping in mind that Greensky is touring in support of “All Access: Volume One” and plan to release more volumes, do they look at themselves as more of a live band, creating music for their live audiences?

“We do now more than we used to.” Hoffman says. “We’re a good studio band as well and we really enjoy it. Our music, what we do even in the live settings, is really honoring of the song itself and we’re not trying to play really long songs for the sake of a long song, so if a song is good at three minutes then that’s what it’s going to be. That’s something that’s especially traditional of bluegrass. If we played all bluegrass songs we would play like three songs in a set, it’s just insane [laughs]. A lot times we’re like ‘Can we make this song a little longer so we don’t have to play two songs?’”

“But some of the new original material has more open sections, and some of the songs on that disc, you’ve got ‘All Four’ and ‘Train Junkie,’ were composed with the idea that live there would be room for open exploration and room for us to have fun with the tune, which can really vary from show to show depending on the energy of the crowd or the sound in the room…all sorts of stuff. But that being said, there’s a studio version of ‘Train Junkie’ that is a more concise version of what the song is. There’s no studio version of ‘All Four’ yet. I look forward to seeing how that’s going to play out because it is pretty long sometimes. I think on the new live disc it’s like sixteen minutes.”

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If You Go

What: Greensky Bluegrass
Where: The Aquarium
When: Sun, March 14, 9 pm
How Much: $8, 21+ID