The Weirdest Band at the Festival Comes Home.
Trampled by Turtles showcases Alpenglow at the Armory.
In 1993 a band out of Belleville, Illinois called Uncle Tupelo, following three albums on Rockville records, released its major-label debut Anodyne on Sire. After touring to support it, they broke up. But the impact of their brief catalog-- Jay Farrar, Jeff Tweedy and Mike Heidron’s band was in many ways the genesis of alternative country music-- cannot be overstated. Combining its own interpretation of roots and Americana with straight rock ‘n’ roll and an unmistakable punk energy, it stands tall in the annals of purely “American” music.
Tweedy’s multi Grammy-winning band Wilco (along with Fararr’s band Son Volt) rose from the Uncle Tupelo ashes, and he has spent the last few decades creating a catalog of music second to none. In the fall of 2021, Wilco played a series of gigs with Duluth bluegrass sextet Trampled by Turtles, and Tweedy agreed to produce TBTs new record and record it at The Loft in Chicago—the studio which has been described as Wilco’s hideout, clubhouse, or batcave.
Album Cover: Alpenglow by Trampled by Turtles.
Alpenglow, TBTs tenth album (BanjoDad records) dropped October 28 following a COVID-forced hiatus and is their first release in four years. It is a warm, spacious, and sometimes hopeful record; a Ponderosa tour through soaring-to-the-rafters string arrangements that seem to echo off of vaulted ceilings (Starting Over, and All the Good Times are Gone) as it walks new territory for TBT with Tweedy in the room, on guitar and on production.
Good Times starts with a smoke-risin’-in-the-holler intro, and ends up sounding like it would fit nicely on Golden Smog’s Last of the Old Mainstream. For more Tweedy fingerprints on Aplenglow, look no further than the lazy river of We’re Alright, the hurried half-waltz Quitting is Rough, and A Lifetime to Find (a conversation with death, that somehow still carries some optimism—“it takes a lifetime to find/ the life like the life you had in mind”) which also appears on Wilco’s Cruel Country, released earlier this year. Here is Wilco’s twangy version:
Other highlights include the pop-sensible, almost radio-friendly Burlesque Desert Window, and Central Hillside Blues, which pays homage to the band’s home town and the “extinct” Voyageur Motel (“Drinks are spilling /On a floor in a town I love/So far from here/They ripped up the streets in old Duluth/A violent reminder of an older truth”).
As front-man Dave Simonett has acknowledged, the band clearly had loads of fun making this record. Although they are a bluegrass band, as is the case with other acts placed in that genre for lack of a better landing spot (Nickel Creek, Crooked Still) sometimes with TBT it feels like bluegrass is just what happens to be for dinner at a really great party—but it’s the conversation and the experience that might be more relevant and memorable. Simonett recently told Rolling Stone that that TBT has always aspired to be “the weirdest band at the festival.” Here is one of my favorites, Ain’t No Use in Tryin’, from 2004’s Songs from a Ghost Town:
There’s some heavy-metal fury there, hiding right behind the banjo, and about 8,000 of us showed up to see it last Saturday with Duluth-based bluesman Charlie Parr opening.
It was my first show at the Armory. I had my tickets before John King had his…which I consider an accomplishment. To be fair, I think he still is in a Zach Bryan haze, or blizzard. Check out Zach at Red Rocks in early November, White as Snow (literally):
Ok, ok, we will shut up about Zach Bryan for a bit. Although that’s hard to do.
The events drop-down on the Armory’s website lists a range of diverse shows. Yung Gravy (profiled here at Pulltab earlier this year by Caitlyn Garrity as “the rapper you don’t want your mom around”) played there the night before the TBT/Parr show.
I think I could still smell blueberry muffins. Well, at least I could smell something, (or someone) baking. It brought back memories of the Jethro Tull concert I attended as a tenth grader. Or, these days, the parking lot outside any Chipotle.
A week earlier, the building where NBA Hall of Famer George Mikan once played for the Minneapolis Lakers--after blocking so many shots during his college career that the NCAA had to invent the goaltending rule-- hosted a Hmong Nouveau Fashion Show and Concert, called “Legends in Paradise.”
There also was a boxing match there in early November involving a fighter named Yerbossynuly. I haven’t followed boxing since about 1991. But “Yerbossynuly” sounds (and looks) like someone who could be recording with Yung Gravy soon.
Y-Bossy certainly appears to be someone you don’t want around your mother. So, at the Old Armory, there is a little something for everyone. Welcome to Minneapolis… or welcome back, Minneapolis. Apparently, rumors of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.
I last wrote here about Charlie Parr and his latest release Last of the Better Days Ahead a few months ago. I missed him in January at the Turf Club, so this was catch-up time, and he did not disappoint, opening with the feel-good 817 Oakland Avenue from that record. His guitar hero Spider John Koerner was in attendance. I hoped John would take the stage, but no such luck.
Parr didn’t play the heirloom Gretsch guitar John gave him a few months back, instead opting for a National, with only his compadre Mikkel Beckman brushing and popping on the “washing machine” as accompaniment while wearing a Becky Kapell In It to Win It (2022, Fat Six Records) t-shirt.
Do yourself a favor and check out Becky, who won’t be a well-kept secret much longer, doing great things after the age of 50 here:
Good luck not tapping your toes to Idle Down.
Parr took the stage early, a few minutes before 8 PM, quickly dipped back ten years following 817 for his classic liquor-store lament Cheap Wine, then soon put the slide on his finger for the duration, including for Dog (“when a soul, is a soul, is a soul”) and the working-class anxious Over the Red Cedar. After announcing that he’d be at the Turf Club again this January every Sunday night, he just about knocked the walls down with an acapella version of this:
It was a family-friendly atmosphere for the most part, as what looked like the young children of TBT members or their road crew assisted on stage pre-show, importantly placing set lists and instruments with two-way radios on their hips and credentials around their necks. Ten feet in front of us a 6-year old blond-braided Rapunzel rode her dad’s hip stage side…until she had to visit the little ladies room about half way through. Of course, we all let them back up front. There was a shining sea of 16 oz. Nordeast and Grain Belt cans, gripped by earnest looking guys with big beards, wearing snap-backs and flannels.
‘Sota-smiles were happening all around during this homecoming for TBT. It was sort of like being at a Turf Club, 400 Bar or Fine Line show--only the bar held 8,000 people. I will say, general admission standing room on concrete for three hours is a younger man’s game (I should have worn my Hokas). But sometimes we go to any lengths.
The youngsters scurried to the wings and TBT took the stage six mikes across; Simonett on lead vocals and guitar, Ryan Young on fiddle, Dave Carroll on banjo, Tim Saxhaug on acoustic bass, Eamonn McLain on cello, and Erik Berry on mandolin.
Opening with It’s so Hard to Hold On, Alpenglow track #1, they set the tone for a show that was really a show-case. As Simonett said a little later—“thanks for letting us play our new music for you for 20 years.”
And they did, playing every single track. All sounded stellar, but in particular, On the Highway pushed to a new level of energy live, and Burlesque Desert was rollicking great fun that blew the doors off. I was not quite sure what they were doing during that song….but it wasn’t bluegrass. It was almost like hearing REM do Me in Honey —pure acoustic roots-pop pleasure.
The band also played long-time favorites. Burn for Free went through the looking glass a bit, as a band of demons joined Ryan Young on the fiddle with smog and neon bursting through ornate metal sculptures on stage. Wait so Long amped up a few saturated crowd members who breached the family-friendly compact briefly in their enthusiasm (no, there’s no mosh pit here buddy—see Rapunzel over there with her folks?). The beautiful, anthemic Alone served as the first encore (after Low’s Alan Sparhawk, husband of the sadly and recently departed Mimi Parker, joined the band for When I Go Deaf) , before TBT saw us off with a heartfelt, genuine cover of Tom Waits’ Old Shoes, before a grand-finale bluegrass blitz sent us back into the Minneapolis night.
As in Old Shoes, TBT says: “Goodbye, so long, the road calls me dear.” They are off to play the Buckhead in Atlanta next Thursday and then out on the road into 2023. Safe travels and thanks to them, and Charlie, for a great night at the Old Armory.
Concert photos courtesy of Ms. Cheryl Ness.
