Trampled By Turtles

 88.1 KDHX Presents:

Sunday, October 3 • Doors 7pm • Show 8pm • $10 Advance • $12 Day of Show • All Ages • $2 Minor Surcharge • Buy Tickets

w/ These United States

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“Shooting sparks in the face of folk traditionalism, the quintet approaches the banjo and mandolin with a level of brash recklessness hardly heard since the now-mythical reign of Uncle Tupelo. Bill Monroe and Joe Strummer would both be proud.”  - SF BAY GUARDIAN 

“One of very few bands in America that are hipster-approved but could heave a room of strangers into a hoe-down at any time…” – CITY PAGES  (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 

With four self-released albums to their credit and a word-of-mouth reputation that draws legions of diehard fans to their must-see-to-believe live shows, northern roots music hybrid Trampled by Turtles are set to release Palomino, their first album through Thirty Tigers/RED, on April 13th, 2010.  With a sound that’s a bracing hybrid of classic American songwriting, bluegrass and folk, this is forceful acoustic music from the land of ice and snow – of dark winters, isolation and numbing cold – delivered at breakneck pace with the fervor of religion. 

The five members of what would become Trampled by Turtles formed in 2003 in Duluth, Minnesota, the Great Lakes port town that had spawned slowcore pioneers Low a decade earlier. Down in the “The Cities” (Minneapolis and St. Paul to the rest of the world), such fabled Minnesota brethren as Dylan through to the Jayhawks had raised the bar pretty damn high, songcraft-wise. Within this contained music scene, the future members of TxT did their time in punk and rock and roll bands, brandishing their electricity proudly, before going “organic” with acoustic instruments.

While they never set out to be a “bluegrass” band, the band employs the same time-honored tools of the trade – guitar, acoustic bass, banjo, mandolin and fiddle – as their ‘grass-fed country cousins. But their soul-deep differences in influences, attitude and attack, from their quicksilver, deadly accurate picking to their lonesome, hauntingly spare ballads, make for a very different musical beast indeed. 

The result of this pan-genre spot-welding is a sort of North Country & Mid-Western Blue-collar ’grass meets Basement Tapes-era The Band (unplugged!) with a fistful of gunpowder tossed into the wood-burning stove, all of which is permeated by a poignant, seductive desolation that hails from the likes of Townes Van Zandt (a favorite of Simonett’s) on up through current artists such as the Avett Brothers, Blitzen Trapper, Bill Callahan and Justin Vernon. 

Without press or radio support or a national release until now, TxT continue to play to sold-out venues nationwide; with 2010 bringing the band for the first time to SxSW, Stagecoach Fest, High Sierra Fest, Wakarusa, DelFest (Bluegrass legend Del McCourey’s festival) and more. They’re even getting their own star at legendary Minneapolis club First Avenue, where they can regularly sell out two consecutive nights at the 1600-capacity venue. With Palomino, TxT have harnessed their considerable power and are ready to share it with the world.

These United States

One part Rolling Thunder Revue, one part banged-and-bruised balladeering, two parts just plain strange, These United States have their sights set on a rock-and-roll reformation. Taking their cues as much from Walt Whitman as from Wilco, Jesse Elliott and co. walk the thin line between the coffeehouse and the roadhouse spinning something fiercely, unapologetically positive out of the sinking reality of an empire gone Titanic. 

After releasing 2 albums and playing 200 shows in 2008, the DC-Kentucky- psych-folklit- pop rockers are rumbling surely towards the next benchmarks in a long string of critical acclaim, including several Best of 2008 mentions for Three of Us… Voice, Brooklyn Vegan, Daytrotter, My Old Kentucky Blog, The Onion, Jambase, KEXP, WOXY, Crimes and A Picture of the, and features on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Paste, Filter, Village and KCRW.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 9:30 pm and is filed under Concerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.