Stringdusters article

BLUEGRASS
Music Profiles

THE INFAMOUS STRINGDUSTERS

By Steve Romanoski

Andy Hall had honed his skills on the Dobro in Boston after graduating from the prestigious Berklee School of Music, arrived at the decision that his future as a musician would require relocation to Nashville and quickly became a mainstay on the Nashville jamming circuit. Hall found himself among the new breed of bluegrass musicians in Nashville and began to find himself as a sought-after sideman for studio sessions and in bands fronted by Ronnie Bowman and Harley Allen. But his star really appeared in the southern skies when he joined with mandolinist Jesse Cobb, fiddler Jeremy Garrett, guitarist Chris Eldridge, banjo phoneme Chris Pandolfi, and later Andy Falco (replacing Eldridge), to form The Infamous Stringdusters.

The Stringdusters began to take the bluegrass world by storm through a vigorous touring schedule and a debut recording, Fork In The Road (Sugar Hill) that was honored as Album of the Year for 2007 at the IBMA convention in October. Additionally, on the same night, the boys captured IBMA honors for Emerging Artist of the Year and Song of the Year for the title cut of the project.

The Stringduster experience is really captured in Craig Haverhurst’s documentary Four Days Of Infamy (String Theory Media), which follows the band through an early Colorado tour and is available on YouTube. It’s easy to see that The Infamous Stringdusters are deeply rooted in the essence of the bluegrass culture. They believe that the direct contact with an audience is essential from both a musical connection from the stage as well as individuals to shake hands with after the show.

The Infamous Stringdusters are in the process of developing their sophomore project and, while they admit to having a wide range of material available, Hall is really looking forward to witnessing the actual direction the project will take.

BMP: Andy, tell me about how The Stringdusters came to be?

ANDY: I guess Nashville is the crux of The Stringdusters really getting together. I had met Chris Pandolfi and Chris Eldridge through some friends in Boston. They moved to Nashville with the idea of getting a band together. I had also been playing with Jeremy Garrett and Jesse Cobb in Ronnie Bowman’s band. We just started picking together. Everyone had been doing side gigs for a while and had decided that it was time to do a band. I think that all of us have always felt that being in a band where everyone is an equal partner and doing original music was the ultimate goal. We all had that dream in common, so we decided to go for it.

BMP: Give me your observations on The Stringdusters. Start with Jesse Cobb.

ANDY: Jesse is the first guy in the band that I met and he always struck me as one of the best mandolin players that I ever heard. He had an amazing command of the instrument; amazing technical ability, but he also had a real groove and plays with a lot of volume. He has the dexterity that a lot of the modern mandolin plays have but he (also) had that funky groovyness that Sam Bush has and has always impressed me in that light as a real powerful musician. The first time that I saw Jeremy (Garrett) he was singing and playing with The Grasshoppers. I remember remarking to the people that I was standing with about what a great singer and fiddle player he was. Being in Boston, there weren’t a lot of great bluegrass singers (around). When I was at IBMA and heard Jeremy sing I just thought, wow, that’s the real deal! He’s real nice to be around. I really felt that I had a lot in common with Chris Pandolfi from the first time that I met him. He’s a little bit like me. We’re both from New England and didn’t grow up with bluegrass the way Jesse and Jeremy did. We were coming to it a little later in life. He was a very innovative banjo player that had a melodic style that I had never heard before and we jelled really quickly.

The Infamous Stringdusters' four page interview is in the current issue of BMP.
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Additional interview questions included in the Infamous Stringdusters' article:

-Chris Pandolfi was the first student accepted at the Berklee School of Music as a banjo principal. How did he talk them into that?
-Talk about Critter first, and then Andy.
-Was the first project recorded before the group became The Stringdusters?
-You shopped the demo around IBMA?
-Did Sugar Hill ever tell you why they were interested in a band with no track record?
-Was there any stress created when Critter went with Chris Thile?
-How many people were on your short list?
-Does the fact that more than half of the band began their musical journey in fields other than bluegrass add to the Infamous Stringdusters?
-Tell me about the new project.
-What's the difference between Tim O'Brien and your first producer, Tim Stafford?
-What process do you guys so through in the studio?
-Does Sugar Hill dictate the duration between releases.
-Anything radically different coming on the new project?
-How many instrumentals do you plan to include?
-You've got a stash of instrumental material on tape?
-Does the band still do studio gigs?
-Has the band developed a spiritual connection on stage?
-Do you rehearse?
-Is the band further developing it's live presence?
-Tell Me about Four Days Of Infamy?
-Can independent marketing, that is now available, remove the importance of record companies?
-Is the bluegrass audience expanding?
-Where are The Stringdusters headed?