{"id":12123,"date":"2017-01-31T05:30:28","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T10:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=12123"},"modified":"2016-12-13T11:51:11","modified_gmt":"2016-12-13T16:51:11","slug":"trampled-by-turtles-two-daves-take-it-slow-and-steady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2017\/01\/31\/trampled-by-turtles-two-daves-take-it-slow-and-steady\/","title":{"rendered":"Trampled By Turtles’ Two Daves Take it Slow and Steady"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trampled By Turtles<\/strong> is a darling of the Americana scene and the festival circuit. And while the Minneapolis-based group played a number of shows this summer \u2013 including sold-out performances at Red Rocks \u2013 they’re currently on hiatus, and their future is uncertain. All five members are busy with other musical projects, and two members \u2013 guitarist Dave Simonett<\/strong> and banjo player Dave Carroll<\/strong> \u2013 scheduled eight December shows in Colorado.<\/p>\n

Carroll describes the duo format as a \u201cstripped down version\u201d of what they do as Trampled By Turtles. \u201cWhat makes it nice for us is that it’s simple,\u201d he says. \u201cThere’s a lot of space to have fun with.\u201d Some of the set list was planned out at rehearsals. \u201cWe do a mixture of TBT songs and some of Dave [Simonett]’s songs from his other band, Dead Man Winter<\/strong>. So far it’s just been guitar and banjo, but we might include some other things in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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That minimalist approach has several advantages. \u201cIt’s a lot easier to travel, and it’s really simple to set up,\u201d Carroll says. \u201cWe just fuel up, plug in, make sure everything works, and then \u2026 we just go.\u201d The first time Carroll and Simonett performed as a duo was after last year’s Red Rocks show. Carroll \u2013 who relocated to Colorado a couple of years ago \u2013 suggested the idea. \u201cWe had some time off, and it just came together,\u201d Carroll recalls. \u201cOur agents found some shows for us to do, and it worked. We discovered that it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tone of the duo shows is quite different from a Trampled By Turtles show. \u201cIt’s a little less of a raucous show \u2026 a lot<\/i> less, actually,\u201d laughs Carroll. \u201cIt’s mellow, for the most part.\u201d That quieter, understated approach opens up their music to a slightly different audience. \u201cSometimes I hear people say, ‘I used to love those days when we’d be the only people in the bar.’ And maybe some of those people are getting a chance to come see us, sit a little closer and hear a little better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to do a lot of shows in smaller venues with smaller crowds when Trampled By Turtles were in their early years,\u201d Carroll says. \u201cAnd now we’re coming back to some of those venues that we played, but it’s just Dave and me. These are more listening type crowds. I think we have some of our fans from Turtles, and maybe they’ll bring somebody who hasn’t heard us but who is just into a more mellow show.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quieter audiences are a double-edged sword, Carroll admits. On one hand, the smaller-scale gigs offer less pressure. \u201cBut when it’s a sit-down crowd, they can definitely hear a wrong note. So there’s a different sort of pressure put on.\u201d Carroll believes that the versatility of acoustic instrumentation accounts for some of Americana’s crossover appeal. \u201cYou can always have an acoustic instrument in a band, whether it be a rock band or an Americana band,\u201d he says. \u201cEven a fiddle can go with any kind of genre; It stays there within the relativity of the music.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what does this tour \u2013 and Simonett’s dates with Dead Man Winter \u2013 mean for the future of Trampled By Turtles? \u201cIt’s sort of up in the air right now,\u201d admits Carroll. Dead Man Winter (which also includes TBT’s bassist Tim Saxhaug<\/strong>) will release their second album in January. \u201cErik Berry<\/strong> has a mandolin project; our fiddle player Ryan<\/strong> [Young<\/strong>] is busy with many different bands in the Minneapolis area, and he has his own recording studio.\u201d Carroll plays in a couple of other bands as well. \u201cSo for the foreseeable future, Turtles is up in the air,\u201d Carroll says. \u201cI believe at some point \u2013 maybe next year \u2013 we’ll get together and talk about it and figure out what the next plan is.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trampled By Turtles is a darling of the Americana scene and the festival circuit. And while the Minneapolis-based group played a number of shows this summer \u2013 including sold-out performances […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41],"tags":[2953,2952],"class_list":["post-12123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-americana","category-interview","tag-dave-carroll","tag-trampled-by-turtles","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12123"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12125,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12123\/revisions\/12125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}