Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles
do we make the music or does the music make us
In 2005 Trampled by Turtles wanted to hit the road. We had been playing shows around Minnesota and Wisconsin, and had even taken one trip as far away as Colorado. But, as many intrepid American explorers before us, we wanted to go to the West Coast. We had the courage, the desire, and the van, but we didn’t have a booking agent or any friends out there, so getting shows was challenging. This process consisted of me looking around on the very rudimentary internet for bars that hosted live music all the way from Bellingham to San Diego. I would call them and ask to talk to a manager. Out of the dozen or so places I called, I was able to wrangle up exactly two shows. One at a sports bar in Eugene, and I don’t remember the other one (which is probably saying something). These two shows were nowhere near enough to cover the expenses to get out there and back, but we were hell bent on adventure and we had resigned to make the trip regardless. We loved to camp while on the road back then so we viewed the tour as kind of a working vacation.
As the trip neared, I got a phone call from Alan Sparhawk. Alan, if you are unfamiliar, is 1/3 of the band Low. When we were starting out, Low was easily the most well known band from Duluth. They were the only people I knew that had actually been on tour and they made the coolest, darkest, most beautiful music. In fact, their 2002 or 2003 show (my memory is fuzzy) in Duluth celebrating the release of their album, Trust, still remains one of the pivotal musical experiences of my life. They were international indie rock royalty who had even been on tour with Radiohead. Legends! All this is to say, though we were in the same town, we didn’t cross musical paths all that often back then. Back to the telephone: Alan told me he had heard through the small Duluth music scene grapevine that we were heading west and that we didn’t have a lot of shows to fill our time out there. He said Low was also going to be on the West Coast over the very same dates doing some co-bill shows with Pedro the Lion. He asked if we’d be interested in hopping on a couple of those shows in the space we had between ours. We, of course, said yes. I want to note here that Alan had nothing in the whole wide music business to gain from inviting us to play these shows. If anything he was probably risking something. We had zero fans on the west coast and were (and still are) a press nightmare. He only knew that another Duluth band was giving it a go on the road and that fact alone was enough for him to extend his hospitality. Alan is a good egg.
If TBT and Low seem like an odd pairing now, you should’ve seen us in 2005. We looked like we came right off the Grateful Dead’s tour bus when we pulled up to the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco. We were used to setting up our own minimal PA system and playing on the floors of bars and we had never seen anything like that beautiful venue (at least not from the stage). We were slated to play a short set as first of the three acts on the bill. Trampled by Turtles was not listed on the poster and I honestly don’t know if Alan had even told Pedro the Lion that we were going to be there. There wasn't really any social media back then either, so imagine the crowd’s surprise when the lights went down and we waddled on stage instead of the expected Pedro the Lion. Accustomed to hippy bluegrass festivals and drunken bars, we were suddenly in front of the quietest, most stoic group of humans I had ever seen. Crickets.
The funny thing is…it worked. Mostly. I think we were just weird enough in that space to draw more curiosity than ire. We had several people after the set ask us what our instruments were called. We were like world music. We had a great time and I had people in California for years after tell me that they first heard of us specifically, and string bands in general, at that show. We also played two nights with the tour at Neumo’s in Seattle.
The main lesson I took from this experience was that Alan Sparhawk doesn’t give a fuck. That isn’t to say he doesn’t care about what he’s doing. He cares deeply about his work. What I mean is that he does, artistically, exactly what he wants to do when he wants to do it. From knowing him now for 25 years or so, I don’t think I’ve met anyone as artistically courageous as Al. He has always followed his muse exactly as he interprets it and that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. In music there are plenty of people who will tell you what they think you should do, who they imagine you should be. He’ll have none of it. Alan has shown me, through watching him work and through working alongside him, that the dream is still out there and it is worth chasing. He has shown me that sometimes challenging your audience is the greatest way to show them your respect.
Almost three years ago, Alan’s wife and the other half of Low, Mimi Parker, passed away. I know I said thirds earlier, but just trust me. She was a beautiful human, a matriarch of the Duluth music scene, and a friend. Her voice was paramount. Low is family to us and her death was the loss of family. Al and Mim were husband and wife, parents, and musical partners for most of their lives. I can’t imagine the space left behind for Alan when she made her journey. I don’t want to imagine it.
In the months after Mim’s passing, our banjo player, Dave Carroll, asked the rest of the band if we’d be cool inviting Alan to come out on the road with us that summer. Not to open for us or anything, just to come along for the ride. We had recently played a show at the Armory in Minneapolis celebrating the release of our record, Alpenglow, and Alan joined us on stage. It was his first time on stage since Mimi passed and together we played the Low classic, When I Go Deaf. Our whole band was crying. In inviting him on tour, we thought we’d get him out of town and just spend some time together in a swirl of music and travel. Change of venue. He accepted and ended up performing with us every night, blessing us with vocals and electric guitar. We played one of my favorite Low songs, Days Like These, and he added beautiful textures to our songs, Wild Animals and Alone. We all loved having Al on the road and on stage and I feel like what began as us thinking we were helping him out a little turned into him injecting a new artistic energy into our tour. A poignant memory from that run was when we had the honor of being on Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Tour. On those shows we played early and short, full daylight. We were at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin and Alan joined us on stage. We rolled into the opening of Days Like These and I noticed the enormous crowd slowly take notice of Alan’s voice and before long you could’ve heard a pin drop. I don’t know the size of the crossover between Low fans and Willie Nelson fans, but that didn’t matter. Alan’s force onstage is undeniable and with it he showed that crowd, and all the other crowds that trip, something unique and special. Through many late night chats on the bus, we decided we should record something together someday.
Click here to see a video of Alan sitting in with us at The Armory
A little bit down the line and without much further discussion, we received some demos from Alan. We all listened and learned these songs he recorded on his phone. He introduced each song by listing the chord changes and form. We decided to add an extra day to a recording session we already had booked at Pachyderm, and try the songs as a group. The band set up in a circle in the live room and played through the songs together with Alan strumming his guitar and singing with us in the same room. As we began to dive into these songs, the full weight of the material began to finally sink in. As you might expect, a lot of the lyrics explore the grief he experienced after Mim’s passing. Real heavy stuff. I remember one particular moment during the tracking of Screaming Song, where Al was singing about how he thought he’d never stop screaming, and I had tears rolling down my cheeks like salty boulders. I looked over at Banjo and he was in the same state. I have never been so moved while recording a song. I can’t speak about whether or not recording this material was cathartic for Alan, but I can say that I was surprised at how cathartic it was for me. We had no expectations of what we were making. An album? A single? No one knew or cared. Throughout the experience even the faintest hints of the music business fell away for me; the session was more resonant than that. Group therapy.
Some months after the tracking, Alan and mixing engineer Nat Harvie set to unpacking the pile of music we recorded. They mixed, overdubbed, and fine tuned the songs into the music you’ll hear tomorrow when this record is released (if you are inclined to listen). The album is called, appropriately, With Trampled by Turtles. Recording this project is and will always be one of the highlights of my life, musical or otherwise. We explored a perhaps unlikely creative bond that has existed for 20 years now. I am honored to have been there.
I can’t thank Alan enough for the years of guidance and friendship he has given me and our band. From that first invite 20 years ago to the advice I get from him to this very day. He has been mentor, friend, bandmate, producer, and a reminder that the joy of art is in its creation. We are proud of this new record and I can’t wait for it to be released unto the world tomorrow (May 30). As a special thank you to those of you who pay for this rag, below is a sneak peak at the aforementioned Screaming Song.