A Conversation with Trampled By Turtles’ Dave Simonett – HuffPost 4.13.12
Mike Ragogna: Dave, Trampled By Turtles has released quite a few albums up to this point — Songs from a Ghost Town, Blue Sky and the Devil, Trouble, Duluth, Palomino, and now Stars and Satellites. You’re classified as “bluegrass,” but the sound goes beyond that, and your songwriting has the depth of classic artists like Jackson Browne. What inspires the style for Trampled by Turtles?
Dave Simonett: Directly, I don’t know how to add to that concisely. On a broader scale, all of us are influenced by such a variety of music. We know everybody in our band listens to a lot of stuff. We’ve all been in rock bands, some of us have been in hip-hop bands, everybody has a pretty diverse musical background, and I think when we brought all of that stuff to this instrumentation, that’s what influenced us the most
MR: How did you Turtles get together?
DS: It was in 2003, and we started as sort of a hodgepodge. The four of us that started the band were in different rock bands in Duluth, Minnesota, and we started this as an acoustic project to have on the side, play once in a while, play small venues, side shows, and just to do something besides the rock band format. Slowly, all of our other bands broke up and left, and we decided to try to this full time.
MR: Why did you title the new album Stars and Satellites?
DS: The title came about because of where we recorded the record. We did it at this log home on the north shore of Lake Superior, out in the boonies, and it was just a really beautiful, calm recording experience. It was in September so it was the most beautiful time of year up there, and everybody felt really relaxed. I think the songs take that tone, it’s a relaxed record for us.
MR: I was going to say, there isn’t a lot of hip-hop on this one.
DS: Yeah, which is a departure for us. (laughs) I think it fit, where we did it, what the music is, the lyrics and songs all fit together.
MR: What was the creative process like?
DS: Well, most of it was me writing the songs, I had this cache of songs, and we wanted to record a record and we had this little window of time that we could do it. So we got together and recorded, and most of the stuff we had never played together before. We arranged everything on the spot, got a real, fresh, off-the-cuff recording session, which for our band works pretty well.
MR: What inspires your writing?
DS: Oh man, everything. I think that most songwriters probably have a hard time thinking specific things. I think it’s just daily life, everything that happens to you in the course of the day, work, relationships, death, love, all of that stuff soaks into you. Once in a while, a song comes out of it. Very few of my songs are a specific instance or specific theme. I think they just come out as descriptions of broader times of my life.
MR: Not a lot of love songs on this project.
DS: It’s kind of a poor subject for that because I’ve been married since 2005 and been in a relationship for a really long time, so I’m lucky enough to not have a ton of heartbreak on my record. I have to dig way back, but when that stuff comes in, it’s maybe trying to visualize that through somebody else, or through another situation, but I do try to stay away from a lovey-dovey love song.
MR: You just don’t go there.
DS: It’s not because I don’t like that stuff, but it’s because it doesn’t come naturally to me. I just try to be honest.
MR: One of your songs is “Walt Whitman.” Are you a fan of his work?
DS: Yeah, he was a big influence. I don’t want to say he was a big influence on my writing because it gives me too much credit, but he was a big influence on my life. He was one of my favorite authors, and an exercise that I have when I’m stumped, when I have writer’s block, is to take words from different books and try to put them together in a different form, to make a poem, a song, something, just a total writing exercise. For a lot of the time, before this record came out, I was using Leaves of Grass, so I figured I’d give him a little credit.
MR: Who are some your other favorite writers?
DS: Jack London… John Steinbeck is way the hell up there. Mark Twain. I really like the late 1800s, early 1900s American ethnic writers. I seem to gravitate towards them.
MR: Do they influence you?
DS: Absolutely.
MR: Are there any contemporaries that you admire?
DS: I don’t know. You mean bands that have the similar instrumentation as us or something like that?
MR: Kind of, and I don’t mean to throw them into your interview, but maybe acts like the Punch Brothers or groups like them?
DS: Yeah, those guys are great, I saw them. I have a hard time saying it because I don’t want to put myself with these bands because so many of them I look up to. I don’t want to say, “Hey Mumford & Sons,” because they are this huge thing. But I just think that there’s so much great music happening, I think a lot of people get bummed out about modern music in general, but especially if you come to a place like this. You see that there is so much passionate, beautiful music happening in the world and I just try to soak up as much as I can. (Note: This interview was recorded at SXSW.)
MR: Dave, got any advice might you have for new artists?
DS: I think, to keep it short, be true to yourself and music. I think if you start to gain momentum as a band, you’re going to have all sorts of people telling you what you’re doing wrong, how you can change to become more popular, or for whatever the reason. I think as long as you do exactly the music that you want to do and how you want to do it, you can be very proud of what you’re up to.
MR: Has that been your story, do people jump in every once in a while and say, “Hey, here’s what you should do… ”
DS: Oh yeah. Man, there’s no shortage of people that are willing to give you free advice, not even in just this line of work, but any. I’m sure in yours too.
MR: Well, the thing that I’ve noticed is, especially these days, is it’s really hard to give advice to anyone. There’s no one answer. This question gets many answers, and one of the major ones is to thoroughly use the social networks. I imagine Trampled By Turtles uses all of them — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube …
DS: Absolutely, as well as I can. Obviously, the things you mentioned are great tools to use. If you’re going to do anything for not only your living, life in music is all about something that you really like to do. It’s not just your living. On the career side of it, you have to learn how to do it right, you have to learn the tools that are available. But on the creative side of it, don’t forget that that’s the most creative part. You can tweet until the cows come home, but you have to remember that the focus should be on your music, your songs, and that is the passion. The other stuff is just work.
MR: What is the future like for Trampled By Turtles?
DS: To just keep plugging away. We’re in a great spot, we’re completely independent of any label obligations or really anything out of our own. We’re really lucky because we’re able to do whatever we want. Really, we’ve already achieved our biggest goal in that sense, so we just like to keep going with that and tour as much as we want to do it, and make music like we want to do it, and just keep going as we’re going and have a great time.
MR: One last thing, your name, Trampled By Turtles. Does it mean slow and steady wins the race, and look out, you’re going to get trampled by these Turtles?
DS: (laughs) Well, that’s become our philosophy in the musical world — keep plugging away and keep your focus where it needs to be and keep going. But the name came as a bit of a joke. Like I said, we started as a side project, we had a couple of shows booked and we didn’t have a name. We went through all these lists of what everybody came up with. Nobody could agree on anything, and our mandolin player, Eric, just threw that out and it was the first thing that nobody hated, so we just thought alright, let’s just put it on the flier, we’re going to play three shows in our lifetime and that’s it. But then it stuck.
MR: I’ve been asking a lot of artists lately for their words of wisdom.
DS: Drink a lot of water.
Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger