“It’s almost scary. It’s a little bit of pressure and I try not to think about it that way, but it’s there…it’s almost part of the excitement of it.
“It’s almost scary. It’s a little bit of pressure and I try not to think about it that way, but it’s there…it’s almost part of the excitement of it. Where if that wasn’t the case then it may get boring. But it never gets boring because of the fact that when you’re starting any song there’s that sliver of a chance, that does happen every once in a while, that it’s going to be a trainwreck…It’s kind of a bit of a rush, like driving fast or something,” said Trampled By Turtles lead vocalist/guitarist, Dave Simonett.
Trampled By Turtles, a bluegrass instrumentation sensation from Duluth, Minnesota has been winning over crowds around the world for over a decade with their enriching, heart-felt lyrics and american roots acoustic style. With gigs like Coachella, Lollapalooza, All Good, Bonnaroo, Telluride Bluegrass Festival and many more, Trampled By Turtles has left their mark in the music industry and has accumulated a hefty and loyal fanbase.
According to Simonett, the band has had nothing but success and each member is grateful for one another.
“We started as a four piece and then we added a fiddle in 2007 I think and our cello player has been with us for about a year now, so it’s grown a little bit…I’d rather add people, myself,” Simonett said. “Unless you have something in mind for one particular song and one of us can switch because most of the guys play more than one instrument, but it’s really fun to add pieces to the puzzle I think.”
“You’re lucky if it works and we’ve been really lucky in that respect because both of the guys we brought in have really worked out musically and, more importantly, on a personal level which is harder to find,” continued Simonett. “There are a lot of great musicians out there, but one that can hop in a touring band that has been around for a bit and is really comfortable and set in their ways to maybe a fault, that’s not really an easy place for that person to come into. But both of the guys who have joined us have been great and they’re just part of the band now.”
Simonett has a recent side project which includes a six-song solo EP released in 2014, called Razor Pony. Produced by Simonett’s own Minneapolis-based record label, Gndwire Records (pronounced “Ground Wire”), Razor Pony includes reworked Trampled By Turtles songs, emotional solo pieces and tracks including a chilling ‘atmospheric’ background that invites a creative imagination. With the help of Gndwire Records, Simonett and co-founder, Mark Gehring, help to shine a spotlight on undiscovered musical geniuses.
“Each of us have at least one other side project to kind of not just get stuck in the same thing,” he said. “To keep it fresh kind of. But we don’t do that much because we’re so busy.”
The band is taking a break from touring this winter and Simonett said he hopes they can pick back up with their projects then.
“We’ve been doing it for twelve years and I think the longest we’ve ever been off the road is five weeks or something and that was to have kids, you know?” he said. “So hopefully it’ll be nice and creatively exciting to do that, like a little breather.”
Another side project is Dead Man Winter, a collaboration of fiddle player, Ryan Young, bassist, Tim Saxhaug, and Simonett. Although Simonett writes the songs for Dead Man Winter, as he does for TBT, the band places emphasis on the fact that Dead Man Winter is it’s own entity and aside from the sub-genres, the two bands are not affiliated.
“I’d like to think that anything is on the table,” he said. “I do all the lyric writing…I work at writing a lot, but I try to let the subject matter come naturally.”
Although ‘free association’ is his most popular method, Simonett said he tends to write experience-specific songs, but vague-proofs them where they go undetected by people Simonett knows personally.
“It might be too specific, you know? I wish I had more guts than that because there is probably a lot of really great stuff that could happen writing like that, but if you enter a song of mine I probably care about you enough, no matter what happened, and I could keep it vague enough,” he said. “I’m not going to throw someone’s name in there or anything…There are definitely times where I sing about specific events…but I try to do it in a respectful way.”
Along with 52 consecutive weeks on the US Billboard Bluegrass chart for their fifth record Palomino, the album’s recognizable album artwork of a cartoon owl is a Simonett original.
“Some of [them] have just been submissions from other people,” Simonett said of the album artwork. “We’ll give them the music and see what they come up with.” “I’ve done a few of them myself and everyone is different.”
Trampled by Turtles’ lyrical references are not the only thing to go undetected by fans. The band takes a cue from Nirvana when it comes to being in front of cameras.
“Our band in front of a camera is one of the most painfully awkward things you’ve ever witnessed and a video is even worse for us usually,” Simonett said. “It’s one thing to be on stage, it’s easier to hop into that character because everyone, I don’t care how honest you are, you have a little bit of a character on stage. It’s easy on a stage in front of a crowd and it’s really weird when you’re trying to force that in a room with a bunch of cameras around, so none of us have ever really enjoyed that too much.”
Simonett added he doesn’t even like to talk between songs on stage.
“It’s not my favorite, but it’s almost required now days because video content goes out with records,” he said. “I don’t do as much as I probably should, I rather just make music. Video, to me, is a separate art form and you can choose to do it or not. There’s always going to be people telling me that I should do that kind of stuff.”
Luckily for Trampled, they met a few fans who have video production connections of their own and helped the band sway their perception of the art.
“We met the adultswim guys in Atlanta,” said Simonett. “Some of them came out to one of our shows years ago and I was kind of toying with the idea of working together in some fashion and we wanted to do a video for a song and we didn’t want to be in it, like we didn’t want to shoot a video.”
The band decided to work with them to put out an animated video.
“We didn’t know it was going to be a Squidbillies thing when we started it, but then they brought that up and thought of making a mini Squidbillies episode out of it and we thought that was pretty funny, so what the hell…how often do you get an opportunity to do that?,” he said.
Trampled By Turtles will hit the stage Sept. 30 at Innsbrook and the nTelos Pavilion in Charlottesville Oct. 2.
