A few of you out there may know that I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan. While spending a nice Saturday afternoon watching the ball game, I feel an eerily familiar voice during the commercials: It’s Andy Falco. Along with the phenomenon of my two great joys in life merging like no other time since I heard Bill Monroe had a baseball team, it also made me feel pride for simply knowing these incredible musicians who now seem to be making the big time. Of course, the Stringdusters have been on the rise (pun intended) for years now and haven’t shown much signs of slowing down. Along with an appearance in Rolling Stone, they have been near the top of the “jam band” circuit and have a substantial social media following. Despite this growing popularity, I am one to believe that while the dusters have changed their sound, they have continuously shown respect to traditional bluegrass and highlight the roots of the music and how it has influenced them. In fact, Chris Pandolfi and Andy Hall have made a conscious point to raise awareness for the traditional warhorses by implementing a rotational star lineup filled with the likes of Billy Strings and Sam Bush which they have titled the Bluegrass Generals. To make matters better, their concerts are at the same venues and have similar audiences as their jam grass equivalents. Despite this much appreciated homage to the classics before it, I deem ‘Rise Sun’ as the album where the Infamous Stringdusters have not simply “abandoned” bluegrass in terms of musical arrangements and production techniques, but in the subject matter and the desire for a universal message.
Infamous Stringdusters Philosophically Move Further along the Americana Path on Rise Sun
Of course, Bluegrass music is a form of popular music and as such desires to gain as many listeners as possible in order for it to continue to reproduce more products. Yet, the “commercialization” is on such a micro scale compared to the likes of main stream pop, country, or rock music that often times it’s safer to not spread out and simply continue to cater to a smaller, yet more dedicated audience. To paint in broad strokes, bluegrass and many other of these “micro-pop” musics have successfully kept their styles relatively uniform by preaching tradition, mimesis, and extra-musical aspects of the genre that often times personify the listeners as well as many of the performers. In terms of bluegrass, this was instilled by imagining an aloof Appalachian society where notions of modernity were seen as disenfranchising and disenchanting of the “American” experience. Clearly with geographic diversity and Bluegrass’s ability to gain new listeners as a micro-pop genre, the strictly Appalachian experience has become antiquated and often times represents unsavory political beliefs. Yet, the feeling felt by those past Appalachians still resides at the heart and soul of bluegrass music whether made in Japan, California, or Rosine Kentucky. That feeling has been distilled down to one word: lonesome.
In an interview with the Bluegrass Situation, bassist Travis Book and the interviewer Amanda Wicks, in contrast, are discussing the bands collective unconscious as well the brightness that consciously extrudes throughout the project. Of course, in a strictly musical sense, having an innate connection with one’s bandmates is almost a necessity. In contrast, group think in terms of thematic messages narrative style is a death knell in bluegrass except for the special circumstance of gospel, which is possibly a separate style onto itself. For example, would a band that only sung murder ballads, or drinking songs, or cheating be as intellectually stimulating as a group that mixes all of these subjects in order to portray a nuanced and cohesive image of loneliness and anguish?
This clearly stopped being an album review before it even started. I will mention that, not surprisingly, these guys still shred. Book and Garrett are still two of the best singers of any genre out there, and the band has improved their production skills which has resulted in novel and musically invigorating transitions between tracks. What I won’t say is that this is bluegrass. Clearly, the Dusters as a collective have a message they want to send to their listeners. The problem is that instilling a theme such as the persevering one they try to transpire, while admirable, resides somewhere outside of the style of Appalachia nostalgia and lonesomeness that one can trace in the voices and tones of the greats such Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, John Duffey, Dale Anne Bradley, and numerous others.
