This week I welcome back 2019 Rockygrass Dylan McCarthy. Dylan’s band Jake Leg has a brand new album called “No One Lives Here Anymore” (available HERE) that not only features Dylan’s mandolin work but showcases his great songwriting as well!
Dylan’s Links:
Jake Leg’s Links:
Songs featured in this episode:
Except for:
“Billy Gray” by Norman Blake (The Fields of November),
“Church Steeple” by Tim O’Brien and the O’Boys (Oh Boy! Oh Boy)
“Just Like You” by Hot Rize (So Long of a Journey)
As Always a HUGE thank you to all of my sponsor’s that make this podcast possible each week!
Peghead Nation promo code mandolinbeer
String Joy Strings promo code mandolinbeer
Transcript available below
Hey everybody, this is Daniel Patrick, and this is episode number 312 of The Mandolins and Beer Podcast, brought to you in part by my favorite website, The Mandolin Cafe. How’s everybody doing? Just a friendly reminder here, you can support this podcast by going to my Patreon, which is linked in the description below. It’s real, as little as $1 a month, you can support this podcast. Of course, you can support it for free just by sharing it with friends, telling people about it, following me on Instagram, signing up for my email list. That’s a big one, and yeah, and all that other stuff. But thank you for listening. I truly appreciate you. I just want to thank everybody who was at the Northeaster Fest. Tim from DC who came up and said hello, by the way, made a special trip to Northeaster to see full court and in my set, so it was really nice to meet Tim. And the new shirts were a smash. And those will be up on my website Monday. I will have the new merch on the website Monday. And yeah, but thank you to everyone at Northeaster. It was just an absolute blast. I’m going to play there next year. It is the second weekend in June every year. And it was absolutely awesome. I want to special thank you to Jason Denny for learning eight of my original tunes. And Jason is just an absolute monster player, monster mandolin player. That’s always makes me nervous playing mandolin in front of an incredible mandolin player. But I want to thank Jason for spending the time. And he played a ton of sets. I think he had to learn, I’m guessing, 30 to 60 songs. That’s a ballpark. That’s pretty wide in range. And he plays in a great band with Keith Billich from the Picky Fingers podcast called Wilson Thicket. So be sure to check them out. My guest this week, Dylan McCarthy plays in Jake Leg. Just another incredible album that’s come out this year. I’m a big fan. I’ve been a fan of Dylan’s since he put out his EP of All Instrumental Stuff. But what a great songwriter. We’re gonna talk about that. We’re gonna talk about mandolin playing, what he’s working on. We’re gonna talk about mandolins that he’s played on the album and a new mandolin he purchased in Beer. So it’s always great to catch up with Dylan as well. So if you’re in the Colorado area, check out and see if Jake Leg’s playing anywhere near you. Or if you’re at Telluride this weekend, hey, Telluride people, say hey to Dylan. He’s wandering around with the mandolin. Call him into your camp to do some pickin. All right, other than that, I do want to just talk about my Irish dates coming up here. Saturday, the 18th of July at 8 p.m., Ardora at the Beehive. I might be saying that wrong, but it’s called the Beehive and A-R-D-A-R-A. And then Wednesday, the 22nd at 8 p.m., we’re playing at Blake’s in Letterkenny. And Thursday, the 23rd at 8 p.m. in Calduff, we’re playing McGroary’s. And I believe that is the place where people like Towns Van Zandt and Guy Clark and some other legends have played. So I’m super excited to get over there. I hope to meet some listeners from over there as well. So reach out to me. And we’re gonna be staying in Dublin and Galway for a couple days. And then Parts Unknown after the gigs for a couple days. So looking forward to that. So if you’re in Ireland, please swing on by one of those locations. All right, we’re gonna get into the sponsors real quick here. We’ll get into this episode with Dylan McCarthy. Peghead Nation, with Peghead Nation streaming video courses in mandolin, guitar, banjo, fiddle, dobro, ukulele, and bass. You’ll learn bluegrass, old time, and other styles from some of the most talented players and instructors in root music. People like Sharon Gilchrist, Joe K. Walsh, Mike Compton, John Reichman, Aaron Weinstein, Marla Fibers, Chad Manning, Ian Corey, and Ethan Satiyawan. Oh my gosh, that’s so many great players. All the courses include high quality multi-angle video lessons, downloadable notation and tab play along tracks, plenty of tunes and songs to play, and of course the best part, you get your first video course for free one month. Just go to pegheadnation.com and use the promo code mandolinbeer, all one word at checkout. Northfield Mandolins, let’s build more than a mandolin together. Check out their website at northfieldmandolins.com. Download their app at mandosummit.app for lots of special performance recordings, demonstrations and special workshops. Their Instagram has been on fire lately, by the way. If you don’t follow Northfield on Instagram, follow Northfield on Instagram. They’re putting out some incredible, incredible stuff. Ear Trumpet Labs hand-built microphones from Portland, Oregon. Their mics are beautifully designed to have great feedback rejection for live use. The most natural tone you’ll find for acoustic instruments. You can check them out at eartrumpetlabs.com today. They also have been putting out some great stuff on their Instagram as of late. So just maybe follow all these people on the Instagram, I guess, would be the thing I’m trying to get at. Like Tone Slabs! Get yourself a slab of tone at toneslabs.com. They have all the shapes and sizes you could ever want. If they don’t have what you’re looking for, I’m feeling pretty confident they can make it for you. They can put your name on it. They can put a logo on it. They can do just about everything. toneslabs.com. Get yourself a slab of tone. Tell them Dan Patrick Sentia. Ellis Mandolins, Handcrafted Mandolins, Designed and Built in Austin, Texas. And Elderly Instruments. Elderly Instruments is your trusted source for new, used and vintage fretted and stringed instruments. For the experienced, the beginner player, their vast selection of mandolins, guitars, banjos, ukuleles and did I say mandolins? Includes all of the accessories and books to go with them. All instruments are inspected and set up for easy playability and they’re down to earth and knowledgeable staff are there to help. Heading into their 54th year. Their family owned and operated their award winning. They ship worldwide and you can visit them anytime at elderly.com. For the second time in 312 episodes, I just did all the ads without screwing up. Unbelievable. What a day. Anyway, well, I hope you guys enjoy this podcast with Dylan McCarthy as much as I had talking with him. Great guy, great player, the new album is out now. Again, support your favorite Mandolin players. Go out, buy a copy of it physical, buy a download. Even if you don’t use it and you just stream it, let these artists know that you’re out there supporting them. A new Merch Monday available on the website. Let’s get into this episode with Dylan McCarthy.
Cheers everybody.
Well, man, it’s always a pleasure to catch up with my next guest. He plays in Jake Leg. They have a brand new album. I always call No One Lives Here Anymore. And as you can expect, it’s awesome. Dylan McCarthy is back. How’s it going, Dylan?
Doing great, Daniel. Always a pleasure to be on the podcast. Thanks for having me back.
Yeah, man. Thank you for doing it. First off, you guys just released this. You had your album release show on Saturday.
Yeah, that’s right. We had the album release show on Saturday, June 13th. That was the same day that the album hit all the streaming services. We have it available for sale on the website as well. Yeah, we did the big show in Boulder at E-Town. Same day, music went live worldwide, I suppose.
Oh, that’s great, man. What a cool day.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. We did what we called a festival style album release, which basically means we played a set where we did the whole album plus a couple songs. Then afterwards, we had about an hour and a half still at E-Town where we just opened it up for picking around the whole venue.
Oh man, that sounds fun.
Yeah, it was super fun and we call it festival style because when you’re at the festival, you see all this great music all day, and then at the end of the day, you’re hungry to pick because you saw all these great players that you love and you go back in the campground and you do that. We tried to do a little mini version of that with our album release, and it went great. We had a bunch of pickers and it was a lot of fun.
That’s amazing, man. Now on this album, aside from a co-write with your guitarist, Eric, you wrote all these tunes.
Yeah, I’m kind of the principal songwriter for the band. The whole first album were all tunes that I wrote. And then, yeah, this one, it’s nine songs, er, sorry, ten songs. And then one of them was a co-write between me and our guitar player and lead singer, Eric Wiggs.
Now, which one was that?
That one was, it’s called Hear My Call, and the film I kind of went down, where I had written these lyrics, and I had actually, I had written and rewritten the music for it, like, these two times, maybe three, and I was getting ready to do it a full time, so I just grabbed the music.
And I think it turned out great. It’s one of my favorite songs.
Was there any sort of theme going into this album? I imagine, do you write quite a bit?
I do. I’d say it’s more in spurts. I’ve listened to other songwriters talk about songwriting and stuff, and I feel like it’s not quite this simple, but they tend to fall into two camps, and there’s people who show up at the desk every day and are writing and doing it on a regular basis, and then it seems like a lot of people do it the way that I’ve fallen into as well, where I’ll work on multiple songs at the same time through a period of time, and then there might be a lull where I’m not really working on anything for a little while, and then I come back to it. So that’s the rhythm that I’ve seemed to settle into over time.
Was there one? I always love to ask this because I like to think of, as a songwriter myself, every now and again, I try to write as much as possible. Every now and again, you get one, you’re like, oh, okay, I’ve got to start writing some more. Or this is the one that’s now got me, it’s either time to record or, oh, okay, I’ve got this song. Maybe I should start gathering some things and see if I can have an album here.
Hmm, that’s a good question. Sort of looking at the track list right now. Well, there was one song that sort of surprised me, and this has happened a few times, I guess over the course of our history as a band and just both albums. The song is Yellow Hotel. I brought that song to the band with sort of the caveat, like, hey guys, here’s the song I wrote, like, let’s check it out. If it doesn’t really feel like it’s coming together, I’m not really sure if this is going to work in the acoustic setting, but it’s a song I wrote, and let’s just dig into it and see what happens. And so they were receptive to it immediately, and we’re like, yeah, this is cool, let’s work on it. And it did kind of change shape and form from when I brought it to them to how it ended up being as a Jake Leg song. But even still, when we started playing it, I was like, I don’t know if this is going to really be one of the more popular of our songs. And it turned out to be one that people constantly mentioned to me after the sets. They’re always like, what was that song? That was about the haunted hotel. I’m like, yes, it’s a yellow hotel. They’re like, I love that song. And I think it’s just because it has, well, probably a number of reasons. But it has a different groove and a different flavor to it, certainly than bluegrass songs. But I don’t know if that one necessarily spurred the entire album. But it definitely was when we were starting to get ready to make this album that was going to be one of the big songs that we were going to put on it, for sure.
Do you guys rehearse quite a bit?
Yeah. I mean, we all, not all bands have this luxury, but we all live close to each other. And so we have time to get together. And yeah, it’s, you know, we, I guess we probably do less practicing of existing material than we do working on new stuff. Most of our rehearsals are when there’s a new song that we want to sort of arrange and start figuring out how it’s going to look in the context of Jake Leg.
Yeah, for some reason, like that just it just seems like these songs are arranged really well. And I’m like, I wonder how often they get together and work on them. Because, you know, I mean, it doesn’t sound like an album that was just thrown together at the studio. You know what I mean? I mean, that’s a huge compliment, by the way. I don’t, you know, it doesn’t sound like it was just it’s a great album.
No, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, that is kind of a big focal point of the band is just original music in general. And so we put a lot of I mean, when we play live shows, we certainly throw in like our favorite bluegrass tunes. And we have a couple covers that are outside of bluegrass. But 75 to 80 percent of the set is usually these original tunes. And so we lean heavily on that. And that’s what we spend most of our time doing when we’re when we’re working together.
Did you have any songwriters and or books or anything that kind of or movies, anything that kind of inspired this recent bout of songs or any current ones? I’m always interested to pick up some new some new stuff to check out.
Yeah, I mean, it’s it’s funny that you mentioned movies specifically because I was thinking about it today because I knew that we were going to be talking. And I don’t know if I’ll get to a specific movie or not, but I do get a lot of inspiration for songwriting from outside of music, I find, not necessarily like intentionally, but I’m just a big consumer of all kinds of art. I love movies. I love books. And a lot of the time, especially with the more narrative based songs, the way that I write them is by picturing it more like a movie in my head. And that really like kind of helps. Like it’s a very visual process. And not all the songs are like narrative based, but the ones where a lot of like action and things are happening. I kind of like to think of it like I’m not a filmmaker. So if I have any way of expressing like ideas that I might have for a movie, it’s through a song. So I do find a lot of inspiration that way. And I remember pretty specifically this one time. There’s this great song by Norman Blake called Billy Gray. And this guy came up to me afterwards. And he was a big fan of that song as well. And he said to me, he was like, I love Billy Gray. That song plays out just like a movie. And I just immediately connected with him. I was like, yes, dude, I completely agree. And that’s why I love it so much. And I do find that that kind of informs my songwriting a lot of the time.
Well, it’s funny. I asked that, I think I asked because I think some of the tunes, like especially the narrative star tunes, they do paint a picture. And I think it’s amazing. Like, you know, I’m also not a movie maker by any means. However, I think it’s amazing that you can make a four minute movie. You know what I mean? Like these songs have like a it’s a story. It’s in it would be you only have X amount of time to do it. And you do that really well. It’s really impressive.
Thank you. Yeah, I agree. And I find that part of it so I don’t know, maybe intriguing is the right word. But yeah, I’m always kind of thinking about, especially like the narrative ones again, I’m like, okay, there are three verses like what, because you can leave out so much of the story and still get the entire thing across. And in songwriting, you do, like you’ll talk about one thing that happened and then you’re probably skipping over a lot of things that happened between whatever occurred in the first verse and the second verse. But there’s still a thread there and if you do it right, it tells like a very complete story where the listener kind of like fills in all the spots that you, like, left open, which I find, I don’t know, really special about songwriting. That’s not something that necessarily translates to the other mediums quite as much.
Yeah, I’m a big fan of that as well. And actually, I listen to some comedy podcasts every now and again. And a lot of things they talk about are like when they start with like a premise or a joke or whatever is cutting it down to the trimming the fat, you know, like what doesn’t need to be here. And I find that’s a cool thing in songwriting. Because sometimes, you know, I don’t know how you write, but sometimes I just get a bunch of lines in my head or a bunch of ideas. And I’ll write everything I’m thinking down and then go back and try to like sort out what I just like threw up on the page for lack of a better term, you know, and be like, okay, this was dumb. This was dumb, but it rhymed at the time, you know?
No, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if I’m lucky enough to have ideas flowing like that, yeah, I’m always, again, if I can get in that mode, I write everything down and then I figure out later what what sucks and doesn’t suck because, like, you know, the moment when it’s coming is not really the time to to judge it, like, that’s the time to just let it out. And then you go back later. And that’s when you, like you said, can trim the fat, because again, you’re you’re saying you got four minutes to tell a story, there can’t be a lot of fat, you know, you got to you got to trim away some stuff. Otherwise, you know, you’re getting into a, I don’t know, a rock opera or something like that.
And you guys recorded this with Eric again, Eric Wigg’s guitar player sings, but also killer engineer man.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we did it slightly differently than we did the first record. So the first one, Fire on the Prairie, for people that aren’t familiar. We recorded that at Eric’s studio, and he engineered the session and did the mixing. And then we handed off mastering to Anna Frick, who’s a great mastering engineer. This time around, we actually recorded at E-Town, has its own studio as well as being a music venue. And we went to E-Town to track, and we had James Tuttle engineer the session, who is a great engineer that’s worked for E-Town for a long time. And he does a lot of the engineering for all of their, like live taping radio shows. He’s a super experienced guy and really great to work with. So Eric still brought like a lot of his microphones and kind of had a big hand in setting those up and stuff. But when it came time to hit record, Eric was sort of freed up from that part of it. He could just sit in front of the mics and play guitar and sing. And James was engineering the session. So that was a little bit different than how we had done it the first time. But then once after all the tracking was done, the mixing went to Eric like we had the first time. And so from there it was a more similar process.
Well, you had a new to you instrument on this session as well, right?
That’s right, yeah.
Yeah, let’s talk. Oh yeah.
Well, I was just gonna say there’s actually two mandolins on this record. One of them doesn’t belong to me, but we’ll talk about both of them for sure.
Yeah, well, let’s talk about them. Let’s talk about the gear.
Yeah, definitely. So I am lucky to have a 2021 Gilchrist F5 Spectacular Mandolin. I got it about two years ago, almost. Yeah, it was probably two years ago in July, so almost exactly two years ago. And yeah, I love this mandolin. It’s great. And that’s what I used for eight out of the ten songs on the record. The other two, I was lucky to use our fiddle player is currently the custodian of a 1981 Nugget. And yeah, it’s actually funny enough, our guitar player and our fiddle player both have nuggets. I’m basically the only one in the band that doesn’t have that. So, but you know, Gilchrist, there’s nothing to complain about there. But, but I did use, so Justin is kind of the caretaker of this nugget right now. And we used that one for the two songs were Adeline and Summertime. And they’re both a little bit more on the mellow side, almost have a country feel. And so for the little bit more exposed stuff, I use this nugget, and it’s got this, I mean, you know the nugget thing, but it’s got this really nice woody texture to it that I thought really added a lot to those two tracks. So a couple of different mandolins on this record.
F-style or A-style on the, well, I guess I should, for people who haven’t seen you play your Gilchrist, I know a Gilchrist is an F, was the nugget an A or an F?
Yeah, the Gilchrist is an F, the nugget is an A.
Okay, cool. Yeah, those nuggets are something else, man.
Yeah, they really are. And this one, I know the year is 1981, and I wanna say the number is 83. It’s in the 80s as well, so it’s in the first 100 of them. And yeah, it’s just a really cool mandolin, man. I’ve never played a nugget that I didn’t like, so.
Yeah, I was just talking about that this weekend at that festival. I’m like, you know, there’s like so many, oh, you know, people ask all the times like about mandolins that I’ve been able to play and stuff like that. But I’ve never played a nugget where I wasn’t ever just like, wow, this thing is awesome. Do you remember what type of mics and setup that you had in the studio?
I know for me, it was the same setup as before or on the first record, two Neumann KM84s.
Sounds killer.
Yeah, thanks. I mean, you know, I kind of sort of trust Eric and James and people in the audio world to handle that part of it, but I’ve never been displeased with that setup. And I’m sure there’s more nuance to it than this, but they’re essentially sort of just pointed, you know, one at one F-hole and one at the other, and seems to capture a really nice full sound.
You also got, you’ve purchased another mandolin, A-style for yourself.
Yes, that’s right. Yeah, we were chatting about this a little before. This mandolin didn’t show up until after we had already done the session, so didn’t make an appearance on the record, but late last year I got a brand new build from very talented luthier, Tyler White.
Yeah.
Which I understand you also, you have a Tyler White as well.
I do, I do. I freaking love it.
Yeah, yeah, me too, man. Yeah, so I got it, I want to say, in December, end of 2025, and it’s really killer. It’s in A-style as well, which I have the F-style Gilchrist, but I have a soft spot in my heart for A’s, something about them, I think. I don’t know. I’m drawn to them as well. I wanted to go on the other side of the tonal spectrum. With the Gilchrist, it’s Adirondack and maple back and sides. So when I had Tyler do this one, we did an Engelman top for it. So a little bit of a different flavor there and it’s great. I love it.
Man, he is, yeah. It’s so cool too because the first thing that attracted me to his mandolins on Instagram were the images. Because his Finnish work is killer and his photography work, I mean, it’s killer too. And boy, oh boy, none of that matters if they don’t sound good. And he just, that thing sounds, I mean, you know, I love mine. It sounds so great.
Yeah, I 100% agree. I kind of came at it the other direction. I think I first saw a video of Jake Howard playing his Tyler White. And I was like, man, that thing sounds great, especially it. He had just gotten it, so it was very green, but it didn’t sound that way at all. And I was like, that’s amazing. And so then I went to his website and I was like, oh man, because you’re, I mean, you’re 100%, right? His finish work in person is impeccable, but his photography is kind of outstanding. So.
Right, right, yeah. Oh, that’s killer, man. I’m glad that you also got one.
Yeah, I’ve been really enjoying it. It’s actually, we were talking about this earlier this week, but I’m headed off to Telluride Bluegrass Festival tomorrow and Batmanland is coming with me. Yeah.
Oh, sweet. Are you guys playing or are you just going to hang out?
No, I’m not going to play. I’m going to be a Festivarian, which I’m very excited to do. I’ve been on sort of a, I don’t know what you would call it, a kick, but I’ve sort of prioritized lately staying closely in touch with like all of the reasons and the music that got me inspired to become a musician and do this to begin with. And Telluride was actually a huge part of that. So I’m really looking forward to going and experiencing sort of the magic of what first drew me to this genre in general. Again, so I’m very excited to that.
Yeah, are you camping?
Yeah, I’ll be doing town park like I normally do and swinging by all the institutions there, the run-em-up camp and wandering and all those good folks.
Oh, that’s going to be great, man.
Yeah, be a lot of fun.
One of the things you were doing a bit last year as you were doing some pretty cool transcriptions of like some 90s tunes, which I thought was really fun to watch, man.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I kind of need to pick that back up again. But yeah, that’s actually, I mean, that’s not unrelated to what I was just saying, which I was at that time and then still kind of revisiting a lot of music that really inspired me as like, you know, a kid, like a teenager, the things that really got me like excited about music before I even came to Bluegrass and a lot of that was that 90s stuff. Um, jeez, I’m trying to think, I think I did like a Chili Peppers riff and something from Primus. And so, yeah, that’s really, it’s kind of similarly related to just getting in touch with these things that really lit the fire for me early on and just trying to stay close to that because I think that’s really important.
Yeah, I’ve been also oddly going through the same sort of thing as far as like started getting back into vinyl. I was in it a few years ago. Then I just like, I don’t have any time to listen to it. And so I just sold it all to a guy open in a store. And then I got back into it a few years ago. But one of the things I noticed, you know, is like some of that 90s stuff. I just still love listening to like like Soundgarden and like Temple of the Dog and oh, yeah, Pearl Jam and all that stuff. And I have I have a high register. Not that I think I sound like Chris Cornell by any means, but that is in my like wheelhouse of vocalist stuff. So it’s sometimes fun to scream along with some of that stuff when you’re driving around.
Totally, dude. Yeah, no, I’ve heard you sing. You can get up there. That isn’t that isn’t within my wheelhouse whatsoever. But I still scream to it when I’m in the car.
Yeah, me and my duo partner, we did Hunger Strike a few weeks ago. I somebody actually requested it and I was like, oh, hang on me. It was like a brunch gig. But man, I got up there. I was feeling pretty good about it when it was a pretty slow day too. So I’m like, this is going to be loud.
But yeah, man, people like it.
Hunger Strike, that’s a tall order for sure.
Yeah, that’s up there, man. So what other stuff you working on? So you’re a killer mandolin player too. That’s what I mean. There’s tons of great mandolin playing obviously on this record along with the songwriting. I really want to talk about the songwriting but I think people already know you’re a great mandolin player. They’re going to hear the record and hear the mandolin playing and go, yeah, yeah, yeah, he’s awesome obviously. But I also want you to get credit for the songwriting too because I think you’re a great songwriter. But what stuff, thank you. Oh, you’re welcome. What stuff musically have you been working on?
Yeah, that’s a good question. Yeah, for sure. No, I’ve kind of, I mean, one thing that comes to mind is I’ve been a little bit, which this isn’t unusual but it’s just been maybe a little more focused lately, a little bit in like the Tim O’Brien world lately, which is a great world to be in because it’s just, I mean, yeah, I don’t need to tell the people that listen to this podcast about Tim O’Brien. But it was sort of spurred by a few months ago, I guess maybe it was back in March. Jake Leg was involved, so the whole band was involved in this project that our good friend and actually my next door neighbor, Lucy Moore, approached us about. She wanted to do a show basically just for fun, covering all of Red on Blonde.
Oh, sweet.
She was going to sing a lot of the songs and she asked if we wanted to basically be like the house band for it. We are all massive fans of Tim O’Brien in general, but particularly that record. So we were immediately like, yes. But just like digging really deeply into that record and just like learning all the parts and figuring it out, was super inspiring. Those types of projects always work really well for me in terms of just getting me engaged and motivated to work on stuff. And so we did all that, but once it was over, I wasn’t done with Tim O’Brien. I’ve still been in that mode. I actually owe my Patreon people a transcription. And I guess if I say it, I probably have to follow through with it. But the one I have on the docket is a Tim O’Brien solo. I think it’s, I should know this. I think it’s just called, it’s either the Church Steeple or the Old Church Steeple. But it’s off of Boy, Oh Boy, which is the Tim O’Brien and the Oh Boy’s record.
Yeah. Oh, great record.
Yeah, man. And so I have the solo from the Old Church Steeple. I have it transcribed. I just said I don’t have it worked out yet, so. But that’s all to say that, you know, what’s kind of been motivating me lately is, is digging more into Tim O’Brien’s stuff, man. He is just kind of a mystifying player to me, because the things that just come so naturally to him are just like so far away from what comes naturally to me. So it’s always really challenging to step into those shoes, but it’s also very, it’s cool. It kind of opens up some new possibilities every time I do it. So it’s a lot of fun.
Yeah. He’s one of those guys, like his playing is obviously killer. And but he’s always he’s like one of those guys that like his solos are so good. And it’s exactly what I would never think to do. Like you said, you’re just like 100 percent. Wow. What? There’s a song off of, oh, I got to know. I got to try to find the album. It’s called Just Like You. It’s off of Untold Stories. And there’s just like this double stop tremolo thing he does in there that’s so freaking good and so cool. And just the way he plays it, I listen to it every now and again, and it’s like that one in Old Train with Sam Bush. Those two double stop things are the ones I go to when I feel like I need to really push myself and be like, okay, sometimes my playing feels a little, you know, I’m like, I’m in a rut, and I can listen to both of those and be like, oh, here we go. It’s a reminder of, you know, other people doing it in such cool ways that I love.
Totally, man. I mean, yeah, those are high water marks for sure. Every time I’ve ever been on a gig where old train comes up, I always attempt and usually mess up those double stops. Sam Bush does, but it’s the only right way to play that solo, man. Any other way doesn’t sound nearly as cool.
I usually get the double stops is that lick that when he goes back up and I’m like, dang, I just eat it every time.
Well, I’ve eaten it hard just on the double stops before, so it’s happened.
Now, you guys, you have the album release show. Are you guys going to be doing like some touring? What’s that looking like for you guys?
We’re staying mostly pretty close to home this year. We did the album release show. We put a little bit of a perimeter around that. We have the next couple of weeks essentially off. Then it picks back up in July, but it’s mostly stuff around Colorado. There’s a festival that we haven’t been a part of, but it’s been going for a few years now. I think it’s just called South Park Bluegrass Festival. But it’s over 4th of July weekend, so we’ll be doing that. Then beginning of August, there’s Keystone Bluegrass and Beer Festival up in the mountains, which is one that we’ve done a few times. We’ll be back at that. So we’ll be doing some steady stuff around Colorado, but it’s mostly around home for this year.
Yeah, that’s traveling, man. It’s so expensive. I just got back from Michigan, and just some gas prices in certain states, like you’re in one state and it’s one thing, and you’re like, oh, gas and a couple more hours, and you get to the next state, it’s like 70 cents more a gallon. You’re like, what? It’s just, yeah, it’s eating everything, hotels, all of that. It’s tough, man.
It is totally. Yeah. Traveling can be real hard on the wallet. And yeah, I agree. I was just, well, I guess this was a few months ago, but didn’t drive there, flew out to California for a couple of shows, and just driving around looking at the gas prices out there, my head wanted to explode. I was like, I can’t believe people are paying this much for gas out here.
So I’m about to play in Ireland and we rented a vehicle, and I can’t even imagine how much gas costs in Ireland.
Yeah, well, I guess you’ll find out, but that’s exciting, man.
Yeah, I’m super excited. So that’ll be a blast. But it was wild watching tickets. I’m glad we ended up buying them when we did, but they were still hundreds of dollars a piece more than they were like when I initially looked at them. And then just all the fuel stuff, they were blowing up. And now, I mean, I mean, oh, it’s getting close. It’d be expensive anyway, but whew. Like, well, this will be fun anyway.
Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, it’ll be a good time.
So, excuse me, anything else exciting going on? Any, you listen to any music? Well, I guess Tim O’Brien, we talked about that. How about beers? Are you, any new beers in your orbit?
Well, Daniel, I have in front of me, since this is Mandolins and Beer, I have just an Odell IPA, but that’s sort of a mainstay for me, being a Colorado person. And being still sort of an IPA guy since the first time I was on Mandolins and Beer, not much has changed there.
Right on. Yeah.
But yeah, I’m enjoying an Odell IPA right now. But I wish I could maybe shout out a specific one, but one isn’t really coming to mind. But there is this great brewery called Outer Range. And they’re sort of based up in Frisco, which is sort of up in the mountains. But they do like a wide range of beers, but they sort of specialize in lots of different types of IPAs. And not unlike our nugget conversation, I’ve never had a Outer Range that I didn’t really like. So yeah, I’ve been enjoying those. But yeah, you know, there’s no shortage of all kinds of good stuff like that out here. There’s new ones popping up all the time.
Well, buddy, man, it is always great to catch up with you, Dylan. The new album is called No One Lives Here Anymore. There’s a store on your website. I’ll leave links to that. I’ll leave links to your Instagram for the band and for you. Links to your Patreon. I really love your songwriting, man. Obviously, I love your playing, but I was stoked to finally get to hear this album. And it’s great.
Thanks very much, Daniel. And I really appreciate all the kind words about the album. And always a real treat to be on Mandolins and Beer. I really love what you’re doing on this podcast, so keep it up.
Thank you so much, man.
Yeah, man.
All right. Thank you to Dylan for doing the podcast. Again, there’s links below where you can go and pick up a copy of this album. Support your favorite Mandolin players, everybody. Thank you for listening. Have a fantastic week. Cheers, everybody.