Pert’ Near Sandstone

By Jeannette Madden
Staff Writer

Minneapolis’s own Pert’ Near Sandstone will be playing the first-ever High Plains Festival the evening of July 2 at the Soo Pass Ranch. Pert’ Near Sandstone is an American Stringband whose members turned a Tuesday night jam session into has been called a “blazing hot freekgrass movement” and the Reader had the opportunity to speak with Kevin Kneibel, clawhammer banjo, about the band and what’s been happening in their neck of the woods.
HIGH PLAINS READER: How’d you come up with the name Pert’ Near Sandstone?

KEVIN KNIEBEL: The shortest answer is we had to come up with a name the night before the week of our first gig. We always just intended to be like a coffee shop kind of band. We didn’t know that we were going to end up touring the country and playing for as long as we’ve been playing. We were doing a lot of traditional music that had the old time vibe and we needed to come up with a name that represented that. Everybody in the band at that time had a parent that had grown up on a farm, so we were all some type of first generation city kids. Pert’ Near was a phrase that our grandparents often said and Sandstone is a just kind of an abstract reference to the Mississippi River.

HPR:  How about a history? How did you guys all get together?

KK:  Well, J [Lenz – acoustic guitar] and Ryan Young [Trampled By Turtles – fiddle], those guys have been in bands and played together since probably way, way back. Ryan, Nate [Sipe – fiddle and mandolin] and I all went to school together so we’re friends since way those days. [Not mentioned, Andy Lambert – clogs and washboard]. Ended up living at a house with J and he and I and Ryan started playing some music and its kind of a thing that’s happened organically over the years. It started out as a once-a-week Tuesday night jam session and turned into a band.

HPR:  Can you tell me about your music?

KK: Yeah, we’re an American stringband. We take our influences obviously from every type of music we listen to, anything in terms of jazz, rock, those kind of things. Obviously the more traditional sources. As far as traditional music is concerned, we’re more of an old-time band than we are a bluegrass band. There is a distinction there, although not one that most people pick up on. Nate, our mandolin player, brought a lot of the source material that eventually we gleamed on to develop our sound. The old time material that he brought with really fit with what we were doing with our original music as well, which took on that old-time sound. We do play some bluegrass music as well, but its a pretty good balance between the original music and the old time string music.

HPR:  What’s your writing process for your original songs?

KK: There’s three songwriters in the band and we all like to collaborate together but for the most part we work independently and we’ve gotten to a place where it can be interesting to hear where it all fits with the band. We bring it to each other and help shape that.

HPR:  How did you get involved with doing ‘I Am The Walrus’ [Minnesota Beatles Project Vol. 2 Compilation].

KK: It’s kind of interesting. It’s a song that we played a long time ago when Ryan was traveling with us full time, something that we would pull out once in awhile just for fun, a different sort of thing to hear, the acoustic instrumentation. The first volume of Minnesota Beatles Project we really wanted to be involved with because we’d been doing a lot of work with Vega Productions for years and are good friends with them and really support what they do to help public music education in Minnesota. So, we really wanted to be part of the first volume, but we were on the road during most of the recording. This time around we were able to figure it out and get Ryan in the studio with us and crank out that version of ‘I Am The Walrus.’ It was really fun.

HPR:  Tell me about your live shows. What can fans expect?

KK: I think our live shows are probably most characterized by the energy on the stage. We really interact around a single microphone in the old-time style. Gathered around that microphone, kind of linked in, a really good chemistry onstage. Just hard driving with subtle melodies and old time music. It seems to sit really well with that fan base, anyway.

HPR: When did you release ‘Out On A Spree’?

KK: It was either fall of ‘09 or spring of ‘10.

HPR: What type of venue is your favorite to play?

KK: We’re pretty comfortable in all settings. We play acoustically sometimes around a single mic in the old traditional theatres. We play some of those venues. We play rock clubs and being able to get outside in Minnesota and play those summer festivals, that’s the real treat. We wait all year to get outside and play at those festivals. It’s just beautiful to do that.

You can check out Pert’ Near Sandstone and their performance on The Current 89.3 Minnesota Public Radio’s The Local Show including the songs “Rocky Raccoon,” “Misery” and “I Am The Walrus” at this link: http://tiny.cc/pertnear.

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