Chris Thile has found himself frequently tagged as something of a controversialist in bluegrass circles. As a teen, he was welcomed with open arms by the bluegrass world, who also cherished his role in the early work of Nickel Creek. As that band began to veer away from traditional string music, some saw Thile as a traitor of sorts, a view reinforced by his subsequent fusion of bluegrass instruments with pop and classical themes.

In interviews where he has discussed this - including his interview with Brance for The Bluegrass Blog - you don’t get the impression that he has sought this sort of notoriety, nor sees any reason for people to look at him in this way.

I found another Thile quote this morning in a piece published online in The Hook, an arts and entertainment magazine in Charlottesville, VA where Thile and Punch Brothers are performing this weekend. The article is prefaced on this notion that Chris was once hailed as the incoming saviour of bluegrass, and is now seen as a pariah by some traditionalists among the music’s fans.

At the end, the interviewer, Vijith Assar, suggests that the role of the young ambassador of bluegrass was his if he had wanted it.

“Ever since I was little, I’ve heard people saying that I was bringing bluegrass to the next generation and stuff like that, and I just never really cared. I don’t like the idea of spending my career allying myself so inseparably to something. I certainly get, after shows, young people saying ‘I never really listened to bluegrass until I found your music.’ I tell them, ‘Well, I don’t think you’ve really listened to bluegrass yet.’ I love bluegrass– I hope I don’t sound like I don’t– I’m just not personally concerned with its fate. I think it’ll be fine without me.”

Well said. Read the full interview on The Hook’s site.

Video from a Punch Brothers Concert for Folk Alley has been posted online. The show was recorded on April 2 in Kent, OH and both sets of music can be viewed at FolkAlley.com

The concert contains a complete performance of The Blind Leaving The Blind, split between the two sets. This is Chris Thile’s magnum opus of a string quintet for the bluegrass ensemble in four movements from their recent release, Punch. If you’ve wondered whether they can pull it off live, here’s your chance to find out online.

One aspect that may really strike you is the contrast between the seriousness of the music and the playful personalities of the band - Thile and banjo player Noam Pikelny most particularly.

Watch the full concert on the Folk Alley site.

Our friend Dave Hollender gave us a nice report last month after Chris Thile and Punch Brothers offered a clinic at the Berklee College of Music in Boston on April 7. Dave shared some photos and a nice run down of the event.

This morning (5/5), Berklee has posted a brief account of the clinic on the news section of their web site. The story by Danielle Dreilinger (Berklee’s Office of Communications) is entitled Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes and can be read online.

Dreilinger includes a few additional photos from the clinic, plus a number of brief excerpts from the band’s interaction with the students.

Though the songs were sad, the band seemed relaxed, joking about playing so early in the morning. (The clinic started at 2:00 p.m.) Pikelny asked for the Cubs score; Thile snagged a bottle of water from an audience member.

The attitude spilled over. One fan called out, “How do you get your hair so pretty? Is that just bed head?”

As Thile started to explain, Pikelny interrupted: “You just assume that he’s asking you.”

“How do you get your hair so pretty?” Thile countered.

Pikelny folded his hands. “It’s a gift,” he said.

Was the same true of the band’s spectacularly nimble playing? Pikelny’s fingers barely seemed to move. Still, when an audience member asked about picking technique, the band members self-deprecatingly presented themselves as works in progress.

“I can’t get good tone and play fast, which is something I’m working on,” Eldridge said. “Pick angle is important and so is staying loose, but I can only do it at slow speeds for a bluegrass guy.”

Pikelny warned against letting one-upmanship damage technique. When musicians start trying to outdo each other, “you’re just going to be overplaying.”

Read the full article at berklee.edu.

That’s the title of a clever and revealing post published yesterday on the Punch Brothers blog.

The concept is a “fun facts” sort of thing, providing both musical and personal insights that relate to their recent CD, Punch, and its centerpiece, the lengthy, four movement Chris Thile composition, The Blind Leaving The Blind.

2. The lyrics from Part One of The Blind Leaving the Blind’s first movement come not from the perspective of the story’s main character, but rather from its main character’s departing love interest.

5. During rehearsals, the 2/5 of Punch Brothers who play fret-less instruments repeatedly stated that they would prefer for the C# sections of the third movement to be notated in Db, but they were unable to get that through the thick skull of the 1/5 responsible.

9. At first, the chorale-ish section at the end of Nothing, Then (now instrumental tremelo [sic] and pizzicato) was sung, before the band realized that they didn’t really know how to sing chorale-ish sections.

Inside baseball, to be sure, and only likely to appeal to folks who have followed this band closely - like me. If you are one too, the rest may strike your fancy as well.

This post (and photos) is a contribution from David Hollender, Professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Dave has been a member of the ensemble department for several years, and teaching upright bass. He also teaches banjo for students following the Acoustic String Principal, where banjo, mandolin, acoustic guitar or fiddle players can pursue a degree at Berklee.

The Punch Brothers made a return visit to Berklee College of Music last week (4/7) when they were in Boston to play at The Museum of Fine Arts. About 150 students filled David Friend Recital Hall at Berklee to greet Chris Thile, Chris “Critter” Eldridge, Greg Garrison, Noam Pikelny, Gabe Witcher on their second visit to Berklee during the past twelve months. The acoustics and size of the room allowed the band to play completely acoustically once again. This put the detail and delicacy of the band’s sound in a setting that I wish everyone could experience. Hearing these guys’ 100% pure acoustic tone in a small room is something special.

The band opened things up right away for requests. Along with music from their albums, Punch and How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, they played unrehearsed bluegrass standards – Sittin’ On Top Of The World, Ninety-nine Years, Sled Riding – and tunes from Chris’ solo albums – Song For A Young Queen and Jessamyn’s Reel.

The students asked great questions about the compositional and creative process that went into the recent album and heard highly articulate answers that gave them a good sense of how much careful thought and preparation went into the music the band is playing these days. Other questions focused on instrumental sound and technique. It was amazing and inspiring to hear a player like Chris, who most people would say possesses about the most fluid and musical sound of any mandolin player to have lived, speak in terms that suggest that he still considers his instrumental technique to still be a work-in-progress. Noam and Critter echoed this with their thoughts about tone, volume, speed, etc.

It all added up to a concentrated dose of education and inspiration from a group that is breaking new ground and setting new standards of musicianship for bluegrass-rooted players and composers. I’d like to personally express my appreciation to Chris, Noam, Critter, Gabe and Greg for the generosity they showed by spending their free time visiting Berklee again.

        

        

Fans of Punch Brothers, Chris Thile’s newest venture, will have a chance to catch them today (3/11) on World Cafe, broadcast on NPR stations throughout the US. The show is hosted by David Dye and originates from WXPN at The University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

World Cafe airs live from 2:00-4:00 p.m. (EDT), but many NPR affiliate stations may schedule the show at a different time. Check your local public radio station for air time in your area.

The show can also be heard online via live streaming from XPN.org. Catch it there at 2:00 p.m. and again at 1:00 a.m.

The World Cafe page at NPR.org will have audio from today’s show up by Wednesday morning (3/12).

Our friend Craig Havighurst has gotten in on the media frenzy surrounding the Chris Thile’s new band, Punch Brothers. Craig put together a story about the new band, and the new music for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.

The story is transcribed if you prefer to read it, or you can launch the player at the top of the story and just listen online. The audio includes Craig’s commentary along with quotes from band members Thile, Garrison and Pikelny.

Dobro master as Jerry Douglas weighs in as well.

The musician in me marveled at how well it all went together and how it kept my attention the whole way. And I just thought it was an amazing thing for somebody to do.

The story was NPR’s most emailed music story during the first part of this week. The segment is just over 8 minutes in length. Give it a listen!

We posted last week that Punch Brothers would be appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on 2/29.

The video from that program will be available online for a few more days. The Tonight Show keeps each full show up for web viewing for a week after it airs, so until Saturday, you can catch this one online. I was able to catch the performance live on Friday night, and enjoyed it very much.

Just go to the Tonight Show video page, select the 2/29 program and when it loads, you can click to the final marker in the time line to watch their performance of Punch Bowl. If polyphonic dissonance is hard on your ears, this one might pose a challenge, but give it a chance.

It’s adventurous music, and it struck me as fascinating to watch them pull it off live.

Tonight (2/29), Punch Brothers will be the musical guest on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. No doubt but that they will perform something from their just-released Nonesuch CD,  Punch.

The show airs at 11:30 p.m. (ET) on NBC, and the musical segment is usually the very last before the show concludes at 12:30 a.m. Set your TiVOs if you won’t be at home and be sure to see this exciting ensemble on TV.

This review was written by John McGann, Associate Professor of Strings at the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, MA.

A wise friend of mine once observed that “people spend a lot of energy looking for what something isn’t, rather than what something is.” Punch is an adventurous listener’s paradise and an acoustic music lover’s dream. Led by composer/mandolinist/lead vocalist Chris Thile with Chris Eldridge (guitar/vocal), Noam Pikelny (banjo/vocal), Gabe Wichter (fiddle/vocal) and Greg Garrison (bass/vocal), the Punch Brothers deliver an astonishing range of styles and moods with relaxed virtuosity across three songs, an instrumental, and an innovative 40 minute four movement suite.

The touchstones of established styles on this recording span many genres: a classical range of tone colors and dynamics, from quiet filigree to ominous thunder; a jazz sense of adventure, harmonic daring and “sound of surprise;” the blue grass drive and commitment to the groove; the pop songwriter’s flare for melody, and the progressive rock musician’s restless penchant for shifting textures and colors. While echoes of the above styles combine with and extend the groundbreaking New Acoustic work of the Trischka-Grisman-Flecktones-Newgrass vectors, it is fair to say that the band is breaking new ground and creating its own unique idiom. It is not merely “chamber music” played with bluegrass instrumentation, but music conceived to take advantage of the traditional bluegrass band instrumentation as presented to the world by Bill Monroe in 1945, albeit in ways Mr. Monroe may never have imagined.

Compositionally, there are definite parallels with classical music in the “through composed” long form style of composition (particularly in the four movement suite The Blind Leaving The Blind) rather than the more typical verse/chorus song form’s repeated sections. The creative use of counterpoint and counter melodies as well as contrasts and combinations of instrumental colors between musical lines are more the stuff of the classical orchestrator, rather than the bluegrass arranger. Independent rhythmic interplay creates clockwork-like textures at various times that mesh like a bluegrass band, dixieland group, and chamber orchestra (and sometimes all three at once!). Of course, along with the carefully composed mosaics of counter lines, we find improvisational passages that depend on the unique personalities of each band member to be realized, much in the way that jazz legend Duke Ellington relied on his stable of players to create the music’s character. (more…)

Today (2/26) marks the widely-anticipated release of Punch, the debut recording of Chris Thile’s touring band, Punch Brothers. Of course he recorded once before with this same unit on his How To Grow A Woman From The Ground CD, but they were then known as How To Grow A Band.

With Punch, the band has a new name, a new label (Nonesuch) and a new raison d’être, to wit, Chris’ lengthy composition in four movements, The Blind Leaving The Blind, which forms the major portion of this new project.

We’ve written a good bit about this project on The Bluegrass Blog, including Brance’s recent three part interview with both Chris Thile and guitarist Chris Eldridge. Today, we celebrate the release of Punch in an interview with banjoist Noam Pikelny. Noam talks some more about the recording process and about performing this challenging material live.

You can hear two full pieces from Punch on the Nonesuch web site, audio samples from all 8 tracks on iTunes, and extended selections from each of the four movements of The Blind Leaving The Blind on Thile’s MySpace page. Chris and the Brothers will also be appearing on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Friday (2/29).

Here’s Noam on recording this CD…

We recorded at Legacy studio A509 in Manhattan. Our producer Steve Epstein suggested the room for the project. Once he signed on to the project he felt very strongly about having us in that room. And looking back on it all, I can see why. It’s absolutely beautiful. It’s quite large, but has amazing natural reverb and is a big part of the overall sound of Punch.We sat in a horse shoe type of shape, with [fiddler] Gabe [Wichter] and I opposite Critter [Chris Eldridge] and Thile, with [bassist] Greg [Garrison]at the bass of the “U”. We used no headphones and relied mainly on a 3 microphone tree about 10 feet above us. There were spot mics on each vocal and instrument that were used for balancing out the mix.

We recorded for about 5-6 days, from noon to 8 pm. We did multiple takes of everything on the record, but no overdubs. We played everything live in the room with no headphones. Typically we’d play a movement 5 or 6 times until Steve and the rest of us were confident we had everything we needed. At times we’d isolate certain sections and do several takes of them. (more…)

Here’s Part 3 of our interview with Chris Thile and Chris Eldridge (a.k.a. Critter) of the Punch Brothers. In this third, and final, installment, we’ll be discussing the actual process of recording the new Punch Brothers CD, Punch, and in particular the major composition, The Blind Leaving The Blind.

Brance: Your last CD, How To Grow A Woman From The Ground, was recorded live with only two microphones. How about Punch?

Chris:

We recorded live again on this record. It’s my favorite way to record. This time around we did multi-track, but in a minimal way.

The main tracks were recorded with a setup borrowed from orchestral recording called a Decca Tree. We just gathered around that setup in a semi-circle and and recorded totally live. But we didn’t want Noam and Gabe to have to lay back too much, we wanted them to be able to play dynamically they way they normally would, so we did set up some spot mics so we could give a little boost here and there when needed.

A Decca Tree is a method of recording that combines three microphones positioned spatially in a “T” shape. It is most often used with omni-directional microphones. Chris told me they used three Neumann mics for their set up. The Tree is positioned above the assembled musicians and provides a pleasant sounding stereo recording.

Brance: Using a set up like that requires a bit of room. What size space where you in?

Chris:

We cut the tracks in New York City, in a large orchestra room with a very nice natural room sound.

Brance: Recording a CD live is hard enough, how did you handle recording such long compositions?

Chris:

Well, we didn’t record it all in one day! We tracked one movement, or two songs per day on average. The music is fairly intense, and recording has an intensity of its own, so it takes it out of you to record something like this live. We went in to the studio knowing the music was hard to play, but our goal was to make it sound easier than it is!

Considering Chris’ statements about combining classical composition disciplines with the vibrancy of bluegrass songwriting, keeping the music intense and engaging, and making it sound easier than it is, I’d say they guys did a fantastic job with this recording.

Punch is released this coming Tuesday, February 26, 2008. I’m sure we’ll have a post or two with some comments on the music itself by then, but I’ll go ahead and give you my recommendation. Go get it!

Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 of this interview.

When we left our dynamic duo yesterday, at the end of Part 1 of this interview, they had just engaged in a small snowball battle. Having concluded that brief engagement, we returned to the interview.

Brance: What about the other four songs on the CD?

Chris:

We basically co-wrote those tunes as a band. Those four tracks actually contribute to the overall presentation of The Blind Leaving The Blind. We introduced them in that particular order purposefully.

But you know, we’re really just getting warmed up on the mutual creative process. Looking ahead to the future with this band is pretty exciting.

Brance: What is the context for presenting this new material live in a show? What other material is being performed alongside these new compositions?

Chris:

We’re still performing material from How To Grow in the shows. We’re also doing some tunes from my various solo recordings as well.

Critter:

We do a few interesting covers as well. And the show is really different each night. We try to mix it up so that if a person comes to more than one show, they’re going to hear something different each time.

Brance: Chris you mentioned earlier that the composition of The Blind Leaving The Blind was colored by the players. (more…)

With the release of the new Punch Brothers CD only a week away, Chris Thile fans are eagerly awaiting the latest entry in his musical diary. This one has been a long time coming.

I had the opportunity to speak with Chris, along with guitarist Chris Eldridge (a.k.a. Critter), last week and ask them about the new CD. We spoke in the early morning hours (11 AM) the day after a show in Vermont. The pair were on their way to Starbucks for a cup of java while we chatted.

The new CD coincides with the new band name, Punch Brothers, and is named simply, Punch. Scheduled to be released next Tuesday, February 26, 2008, the recording is centered around a Thile composition over a year and half in the making, The Blind Leaving The Blind. The work is presented in four movements, each a separate track on the CD.

Brance: Chris, tell us about the composition of The Blind Leaving The Blind. It seems quite an ambitious project to write something that large in scope, for performance by a bluegrass band.

Chris:

Yeah, it’s big. I spent a year and a half writing it. Not that I worked on it every day, but I probably spent about two and half months worth of days in actual composition, over the course of that year and a half. I worked with a music composition software called Finale.

The finished piece is about a 70/30 mix, through composed material vs. something that looks more like a jazz lead sheet or a written out fiddle tune. My goal was to fuse the formal disciplines of jazz or classical composition with the vibrancy of bluegrass or folk music song writing.

When I started composing, we were still doing the Nickel Creek thing. I was having trouble with certain aspects of the work because I didn’t know at the time who would be playing it with me. So parts of it had to be put on hold until I had put the current band together. The composition is absolutely colored by the players.

Brance: The finished work is in four movements totaling over 42 minutes of music. Do you perform it as one continuous piece of music, or do you take breaks in between the movements?

Chris: (more…)

Chris Thile has been touring in the UK this week with his band, Punch Brothers, in tow. They did several shows during Glasgow’s Celtic Connections festival, which runs for two and a half weeks in January of each year. Shows, workshops, dances and talks are held at 14 venues in Glasgow, with more than 300 events taking place over 19 days.

The Mike Harding Show on BBC Radio 2 will be broadcasting live from the festival today (1/23), with Thile and his brothers scheduled to appear. The show airs from 7:00-8:00 p.m. local time, which puts it at 2:00 p.m. eastern US time.

The show will be available live wherever BBC Radio 2 can be heard, and is also streamed live from their web site. There is also an audio archive of previous shows on the Mike Harding site.

We’ve posted repeatedly about Punch Brothers, the most recent permutation of Chris Thile’s supremely talented band of acoustic superpickers.

Their debut release on Nonesuch Records is due on 2/28/08 built around Thile’s composition, The Blind Leaving The Blind - a magnum opus by the standards of the acoustic string world from which he sprang. The piece is written in four movements, mixing voice with banjo, mandolin, fiddle, guitar and bass in an orchestrated amalgam of Thile’s imagination.

You can get a taste of the music from the upcoming CD on Reverb Nation where one track, Punchbowl, can be previewed online. It is not as complex a piece as Blind, but does offer a taste of the direction the band is taking.

It isn’t clear whether Punch Brothers live shows will all feature a complete performance of The Blind Leaving The Blind, something that may offer a challenge to Thile’s many fans from his freewheeling Nickel Creek shows, and his more recent followers attracted to the sound of his How To Grow A Woman From The Ground CD.

This evening, November 23, will find The Infamous Stringdusters on the stage of The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, making their debut performance on the venerable radio broadcast.

They will be featured in the 8:30 to 9:00 p.m. segment (EST), which airs in the Nashville market on WSM AM 650, and simulcast via online streaming at wsmonline.com.

For many fans of the band, this could be your first chance to sample the ‘Dusters with new guitarist, Andy Falco, who stepped in when founding member Chris Eldridge left to work with Chris Thile.

Also on tonight’s Opry broadcast is Ricky Skaggs, appearing in the 9:30 - 10:00 p.m. slot.

A new batch of tour dates has been posted for Punch Brothers, Chris Thile’s recently renamed band of musical brothers. They’ll do a UK tour in January ‘08, after which they will be doing concert and club shows all over the US, with new stops being added regularly.

The band consists of Thile on mandolin and vocals, with Noam Pikelny on banjo, Chris Eldridge on guitar, Gabe Wichter on fiddle and Greg Garrison on bass. This is the group that recorded Chris’ How To Grow A Woman From The Ground CD, and also toured with him in support of that project as How To Grow A Band. They performed briefly as Tensions Mountain Boys, and have morphed nominally into Punch Brothers.

They are currently finishing up a debut CD as Punch Brothers, which is expected to be released in early ‘08 on Nonesuch Records.

You can keep up with their schedule on Chris’ MySpace page.

Last night Nickel Creek played here in Roanoke, Virginia, as one of the stops on their Farewell (For Now) Tour. It was a late addition to the tour and tickets sold out quickly. The concert took place in a nice theater environment at the Jefferson Center, where Chris, Sara and Sean, joined by Mark Schatz on the bass, put on a great show.

The show is everything you’d expect from this youthful bunch of seasoned pickers. They performed their hits, starting with the newest ones and working their way backward towards The Fox, intermingled with newer material. As a fan of the band, it was great to get to hear them perform these songs live one more time, but the fun came from the newer material.

It’s not uncommon for rock, pop, or country bands to espouse political views from the stage, but it’s somewhat unheard of at a bluegrass show. I guess the freedom Nickel Creek enjoys from not having the bluegrass label firmly affixed, gave them the liberty to venture into that realm. They firmly stated their pro-progress stance, Chris was very firm about it, and addressed an issue of national concern to all, the state of our National Policy on Breakups. (more…)

We had posted back in August when Chris Thile and his merry band of super pickers announced a three day string of shows at Nashville’s fabled Station Inn. They were, at the time of that posting, billed as The Tensions Mountain Boys, but within a few weeks their rebirth as The Punch Brothers had been disclosed.

The Station Inn dates were scheduled in large part as a live rehearsal before the band headed into the studio to start work on their debut CD for Nonesuch Records. Some preliminary recording was done in late September in Nashville, with the bulk being completed in New York City.

A number of YouTube videos have surfaced from the Station Inn shows. These were shot by audience members, so video and audio isn’t pro quality.

The performances are nevertheless inspired, and range from bluegrass classics like Don’t Give Your Heart To A Rambler and Ocean Of Diamonds to banjo picker Noam Pikelny’s Manchicken.  Songs from Thile’s How To Grow A Woman From The Ground are also represented with The Beekeeper, and one from a Thile solo project in Song For A Young Queen - with Jerry Douglas providing comic relief.