Punch Brothers orchestrate, improvise on stage and off
Punch Brothers Chris Thile, mandolin; Noam Pikelny, banjo; Chris Eldridge, guitar; Gabe Witcher, violin; and Paul Kowert, bass. Photo by Cassandra Jenkins.
First, a confession: Before they went on indefinite hiatus, I saw bluegrass-newgrass-contemporary folk band Nickel Creek 10 times. You might call me a fan girl; I won’t argue. I’ve caught multiple shows featuring mandolin player Chris Thile: his 2006 performance at Vulcan AfterTunes, with Edgar Meyer in Tuscaloosa and with the How to Grow a Band at WorkPlay in May 2007.
That 2007 performance in particular blew me away. Nickel Creek had already announced its impending break, and Thile had revealed that his new band would be the same guys who joined him on the album How to Grow a Woman from the Ground. That night, they proved why each band member has received so many accolades. The show far exceeded my expectations and hopes.
The band is now known as Punch Brothers and has recently been joined by Paul Kowert on bass. Punch Brothers released debut album Punch in early 2008 and will perform at the Alys Stephens Center beginning at 8 p.m. Saturday night. Birmingham Box Set spoke with guitarist Chris Eldridge about what to expect and what’s ahead for this astonishingly talented group of young musicians.
BBS: I saw y’all when you played in Birmingham nearly two years ago—when you were still billed as Chris Thile and the How to Grow a Band, long before Punch was released. How has the show changed over time?
CE: I actually wasn’t at the previous show. Brian Sutton was playing guitar for that. In a general sense between then and now … We’ve released a record as the Punch Brothers called Punch. That music is a lot more involved. It’s music we worked a lot harder on and it’s a lot more—for lack of a better word—composed, really thought out. Each note is really thought out.
We’ve got new material that’s a little bit more reflective of our aspirations. That being said, we still play a lot of those old songs and still really love playing—love improvising and being spontaneous musicians.
We still like to go a lot of places we went in that old show but have really discovered this new side of ourselves, playing more ensemble work and arrangements and getting out our favorite notes that we want to play every night.
BBS: What should concert goers expect? The band has one formal album, but y’all played on Chris [Thile]’s How to Grow A Woman from the Ground as well. Will we hear selections from both?
CE: The centerpiece of Punch is a composition of Chris’s called “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” which is four of the eight tracks and about 40 minutes of the music on the record. That’s a through composed of piece, meaning he basically considered every moment of the music from the very beginning to the very end.
In “Blind,” there are sections, probably about 30 percent of it, the notes aren’t written out specifically. There are directions. There may be chord changes or spots where it says “improvise a solo here, guitar.” So even within “Blind,” there’s a pretty good amount of improvising and kind of just spontaneous creation that goes on every night. That kind of changes.
It’s just fun playing that music live, too. We’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with it as we’ve been really playing it for a year now. I like to think that it’s become a little bit more organic and natural and not quite so intimidating. For us, which I think helps the music to breathe more. When we first saw that, when we first got the score for “Blind,” it seemed like such a massive undertaking.
BBS: I’m especially interested to hear how that plays out, what with “The Blind Leaving the Blind” dominating the album. Will that piece be played in its entirety?
CE: Most likely. Most nights, we play the whole piece. Sometimes if we’re playing in more of a club-type environment, we’ll adjust to suit the environment. But if we’re in a nice room we almost always play the whole piece from start to finish. Sometimes if you’re in a club, the second movement, it’s just not quite the right context.
BBS: Obviously fans down here can’t check this out, but tell me more about this p-Bingo Night y’all will be holding on Thursdays at the Living Room in New York City. [Note to readers: When they’re not on tour elsewhere, the band will perform new material, covers and more at this NYC venue.] How will that reflect the band’s creative process? How will it affect it?
CE: We’re all really, really excited about that. That’s something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time, have a musical situation where we can try things out and kind of get back to trying to create more. When you’re on the road, a lot of times, you want to be sure that the show is good so you end up doing a lot of the same. You have a limited well of material. You don’t want to have any train wrecks on the road. It’s not the time for experimenting.
… We’re going to try lots of new stuff and hope it all works. I think the description is pretty accurate, it’s our creative process on display. Are you familiar with D’Angelo? He’s a hip-hop/soul artist. D’angelo is amazing … Anyway, we’re trying to tackle a D’Angelo song and not have it be a caricature for that.
BBS: What’s next for y’all?
CE: We’re working on writing new music as we speak. We’ve got a few songs down. We’ve got a number of starts. We’ve got three that are almost done at this point. We’re working on music for our next record and we’re probably going to record that in May. We’re just really trying to get prepared for that. That’s the next thing. Other than that we’ll be doing the bingo nights and playing shows and just generally trying to get better and enjoy ourselves in the process.
BBS: Will the bingo nights influence that process?
CE: Absolutely. That whole thing with the bingo nights is we just wanted something that would kind of kick start our creative side. With that, we just have pretty limited rehearsal time each week. We have a handful of days and a handful of hours each day between shows. So rather than just being able to rehearse and rehearse until we get something to the place where it’s really good, we’re going to have to rely on our musicianship and our spontaneous side a little more.
I just think it’s a good exercise for being a good musician. And also, we need to come up with new stuff every week in case people keep coming back, so even that is going to force us to have new material each week. Whereas in the past … we could have one new song every six months. When you’re on tour the daily grind is really intense.
Tickets are still available to the Punch Brothers show at the Alys Stephens Center. Purchase tickets online at alysstephenscenter.org or by calling 975-2787. Tickets range from $25 to $45 and cost $20 for students. Stick around after the show; an after party will feature music from Birmingham mandolinist Jason Bailey and drink specials. Learn more about Bailey on the ASC’s blog. Listen to the Punch Brothers online at punchbrothers.com.
