Feature

When I spoke with bassist Ben Kaufman, he displayed pure excitement and confidence for Yonder Mountain’s latest self-titled album. This release exhibits the passion this band has for taking a traditional bluegrass sound and plunging it into the realm of the alternative. With producer Tom Rothrock (James Blunt, Foo Fighters, Beck) heading this project, Yonder Mountain is taking their music to the next level and will become an inspiration for up-and-coming musicians. This new sound is working for their fans, and Yonder Mountain plans on continuing this trend.

SC: You’re getting ready to head out on your Cabin Fever tour.

BK: That’s right!

SC: How do you prepare yourself for a major tour?

BK: Well, I spend some time playing the bass for longer periods of time. I try to get my calluses back into shape. My recurring problem is that my skin gets kinda soft, and if I am under water for any length of time, my calluses will come off. At the end of a gig on the first week of shows, I’ve really done some pretty good damage to my fingers. So, I have to be really careful about that. Otherwise, you have to tape your hands, and you can’t play anywhere near how you want to. On one level, I have to spend some time on the instruments playing hard and for longer periods of time. Then for the rest of it, it’s really just a mental thing. You have to get prepared to be gone from home a month at a time, which has its challenges. Leaving family for that duration is hard. So, spending some time with people that you care about is important too.

SC: I know that everyone likes to put labels on music. Y’all are classified as Newgrass or Urban Bluegrass as are several other bands. Some of these bands such as Nickel Creek really don’t like that term. What are your feelings on it? Do you like that label?

BK: Well, not so much. You know, labeling is really for record stores. You’re either rock/pop or country or bluegrass or hip-hop or electronica. There’s only a handful of labels that are used. On the one hand, I would rather have people be sort of trained to look for our music in a record store in rock/pop instead of bluegrass. On the other hand, when we put this band together nine years ago and we wanted to play this music, we got together because we loved bluegrass music. We want to get together and play bluegrass songs. If I really have to give an answer, I don’t think that we’re a bluegrass band. Everyone in the band, potentially we’re Yankees. No one grew up to the music. We came into, loved it, studied it and obsessed over it, but we didn’t grow up with it. I’ve never really been able to invent a buzzword that describes us. I like ‘Alternative Bluegrass.’ There’s Alt-Country; we could be Alt-Bluegrass. I think there’s a lot of rock and roll elements in our new record that we very consciously wanted to have in there because it feels like it fills in the pieces of the puzzle of who we are.

SC: How did the songwriting process change when you were trying to create this new alternative sound on your new album? Did someone come up with an unusual riff and the rest of the band take it from there?

BK: Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly how it went. We had an unlimited amount of studio time. We were going to be working on the record until it was done as opposed to having 7 days to record every song that we could think of, which is how we operated in the past. We had the budget and spent that money to have time. Our intention was to go in without anything written, sit down together and be steered by our producer. I would have a chord progression or Jeff (Austin) would come up with a lick just by having all these different instruments around and tuning differently. We were trying to find that piece of information. Everyone was around, and we had all these different brains processing an idea and responding to it. With this last record, we realized in an unconscious way until it became very clear that we have an obligation that if we’re going to keep making music together, then we need to really define our sound a little more and express ourselves more authentic. If we just went out there and played ‘Little Girl of Mine from Tennessee’ and ‘Rocky Top,’ then it would be false.

SC: You mentioned your producer Tom Rothrock, and he’s used to working with alternative bands like Beck and Foo Fighters. Did you seek him out for this project, did he seek you out?

BK: We sought him out. The intention of making this record is thinking outside the box and working with someone who could express things in a way that’s more correct to us. We needed someone who knew acoustic material and traditional material and was respectful of that and also understood that some of the ideas behind rock and roll is to break out of boundaries and to experiment with established ideas. We asked Tom if he was interested and would he come to a show or two. So, he came out to a show we did in Nashville of all places, and it turned out to be a really good show. Afterwards, you could really see the gears turning in his head imagining what kind of record that we were wanting to make and how he could help with that. He saw a couple of shows and then said, ‘Yeah, I can tell that the record is there. We still have to write it, but I can see what we should be doing,’ which was great. I’m sure we were one of the smaller acts that he’s worked with. He’s got another record that’s up for Album of the Year with the James Blunt record. That’s up for Song of the Year and Album of the Year. In the same way, I think it recharges him to work with a band like us where the process has to be quite a bit different.

SC: Just from talking to you and seeing you on this positive tangent with your music, what kind of sound can we expect off of your next album?

BK: I’m kicking around ideas. When you get good ideas, the tendency is to want to work them up right away and play them because we come from the short attention-span generation. It’s hard to stay focused on something unless you take the pill that they’re trying to sell you. Over the past couple of months that we’ve had off, we’ve come up with ideas and recording ideas. We’re trying to keep the ideas together and keep them collected, and when we all gather again in the studio to share these ideas and let everyone else get their hands on them. It’s going to be more of the same. It’s going to be continuing this process. We’ll definitely work with another rock and roll producer. It was such a good experience for us, and we’ll continue along that path.

Stephen Centanni is Lagniappe music editor. Contact him at scentanni@lagniappemobile.com.

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