You Can’t Pigeonhole the Punch Brothers

We chat with these bluegrass innovators about songwriting, preshow rituals, and MacArthur grants.

In the photo: Banjoist Noam Pikelny and Guitarist Chris Eldridge (CC: Dana Liebelson)

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Bluegrass hipsters the Punch Brothers are singing about how rye whiskey “makes your baby cuter” when it starts to pour. The clouds bust open, turning the Austin City Limits grounds into a mudpit. At other stages, people make a run for it—but fans of these charming acoustic rockers don’t move. Instead, they kick up their heels and dance through the thunderstorm.

The band is at home playing in the great outdoors, but thanks to their rapid rise to global fame (Chris Thile, the band’s founder, was awarded a $500,000 MacArthur “genius grant” in October) they are bringing their unique brand of prodiguous folk everywhere from European art houses to swanky New York City dance halls.

I caught up with banjoist Noam Pikelny and guitarist Chris Eldridge in Austin, and bassist Paul Kowert and violinist Gabe Witcher over the phone in Pheonix—Thile, whom MoJo’s Maddie Oatman has spoken with in the past, couldn’t be reached—to discuss spicy fried chicken, why their music is hard to categorize, and why they’ll be going into hiding this summer.

Mother Jones: According to, um, Wikipedia, your style of music is “bluegrass instrumentation and spontaneity in the strictures of modern classical.” What do you think about that?

“We became branded as this kind of country-classical band, but now when I hear that term, it seems so off the mark.”

Noam Pikelny: The band came together as Thile’s brain child and he wrote this piece called the Blind Leaving the Blind, which was really a string quintet written for bluegrass, that had sections for improvisions. There was a score for it, like an other classical piece, and that’s what we came out of the gates playing. In The New York Times, we became branded as this kind of country-classical band, but now when I hear that term, it seems so off the mark. We’ve since evolved into something that much more collaborative—and the material exists much more in standard song form.

Paul Kowert: Our fan base has shifted, we’re playing different venues, like standing-room rock clubs, and for a younger audience than we used to. We’ve had to start playing louder as a result…but we’ve always listened to all kinds of stuff, and there’s nothing really that’s off limits. We love Radiohead and the Strokes and Dr. Dre, R & B stuff, total pop from the early-’90s. There’s just tons.

MJ: Even though you’ve moved away from strictly bluegrass, there’s still a fair amount of improvisation at your shows, right?

Chris Eldridge: We all grew up playing bluegrass, and that’s a tradition in which improvisation plays a really important role, so there are songs where everybody will get a chance to take a solo. We try to have opportunities for the music to go new places. You’re never going to hear the same show.

MJ: Speaking of shows, do you have any preshow rituals?

Eldridge: The one thing we always do no matter what is we are led in a completely a-religious prayer.

“When it’s time to write, anything is fair game; any of the five of us might bring a seed.”

Pikelny: There’s no burning of sage or any ritual sacrifices. We already have our instruments and our in-ear monitors and we’re essentially just wishing each other good luck. It’s also an opportunity make fun of Paul, our bass player—who can take it because he’s really talented.

MJ: So, has band-life changed since Chris Thile was named a genius?

Kowert: We make fun of him always. It’s our duty.

Gabe Witcher: Every little bit of anything helps, and that’s a pretty big thing. But to be honest, it’s kind of hard to tell [whether Thile’s MacArthur has raised the band’s profile], especially when we’re out here traveling. You don’t get a lot of feedback about that kind of stuff, you just do you show and move on to the next town.

MJ: Your last album was an EP (Ahoy!) of material left over from the Who’s Feeling Young Now recording sessions. What’s your recording/songwriting process like?

Eldridge: When it’s time to write, anything is fair game; any of the five of us might bring a seed. It could be a melody, a set of chords, a rhythm, or something some guy on his own has turned into a verse. But whatever it is, it gets put in front of the band’s collective consciousness. It’s a pretty mecurial process and every song comes to life a little differently.

Pikelny: It’s surprising sometimes how the ideas you’re least proud of are often times the things that people are attracted to. There are times where you’ll be warming up in the dressing room next door and someone else will come and say, “Wait what were you playing? That was great!” And you were just fucking around. So we’ll catch each other doing something stream of conscience.

Witcher: Also, when we’re recording, right around 4:30 in the evening we start making cocktails.

Kowert: There was also that time we decided to indulge in some hot chicken and it was really, really hot. All of our noses were dripping and we were all red-faced and loving every second of it.

MJ: What have you got planned for this spring?

Kowert: After the February tour ends, we’re going to drop off the map and get together on a regular basis and write the next record over a longer period of time, longer than we’ve ever taken before. We’re going to use the rest of 2013 to write, and we really don’t know when we’ll be done. But we’ll get new tunes out as soon as we can!

Click here for more music coverage from Mother Jones.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with The Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate