89.3 The Current presents TRAMPLED BY TURTLES
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The new Trampled By Turtled album, Stars and Satellites (out April 10), is now streaming at Paste Magazine
TRAMPLED BY TURTLES
On April 10, 2012 Thirty Tigers/RED will release Trampled by Turtles’ highly anticipated album Stars and Satellites. The band’s 2010 release Palomino (Thirty Tigers) garnered critical acclaim from NPR Music who praised both the band’s “impeccable dexterity” and “charm and melody to the songs.” AOL Spinner called the record “hard-charging music…infectiously raucous,” while Paste Magazine admired the band’s “punk ethos” as well as “virtuosity and energy” while naming the band as one of the Top 25 Live Acts of 2011. The band will support the new album with a North American tour this spring.
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Since forming in Duluth, Minnesota in 2003, Trampled by Turtles always felt they were able to attain an energy on stage that can’t be found in the studio. They were so comfortable playing on the road that they treated their previous albums’ recording processes like tours. For Stars and Satellites, however, Trampled by Turtles didn’t want to simply try to recreate a live show. “We wanted to make a record that breathes,” explains Dave Simonett (guitar/vocals), “musically we wanted to step out of our comfort zone.” “This record is all about going inward,” Erik Berry (mandolin, vocals) adds, “building a focused bond as players and friends, and bringing a different mindset to the sounds Trampled by Turtles can make.” With the help of engineer Tom Herbers (Low, Jayhawks) the band moved into “Soleil Pines,” a log home outside of Duluth, to record. “You know how sometimes they say ‘less is more,’” notes Berry, “that’s what Stars and Satellites is about. “
Trampled by Turtles is Dave Simonett, Tim Saxhaug (bass, vocals), Dave Carroll (banjo, vocals), Erik Berry and Ryan Young (fiddle). Within the contained music scene of Duluth, the members of the band did their own time in punk and rock bands, brandishing their electricity proudly before switching to acoustic instruments. While they never set out to be a “bluegrass” band, Trampled by Turtles employs many of the same traditional techniques of the genre, but their differences in influences, attitude and attack make for their unique sound.
THESE UNITED STATES
These United States surrender themselves to unbridled rock and roll exuberance: ringing guitars, thundering drums, desperate yearning bordering on hope. By turns larger-than-life and disarmingly intimate, this is folk in the truest sense – a record of the moment, of the cultural and emotional forces that animate everyday existence somewhere down below the headlines. (But never apart from them.) And These United States play it the way folk was meant to be played: hard, fast, big, slow, long, loud, loose, at last unburdened. They play like they mean it.
ERIK KOSKINEN
Smokin' guitarist Erik Koskinen has been playing and recording his own style of roots-rockin' blues and American music since he was 14 years old. Best known as an ace guitarist for artists like Molly Maher, Randy Weeks, Koskinen is son of a Houghton College professor and grew up along Lake Superior on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. His parents took him to a lot of bluegrass and old country music festivals, and he became a fan of artists like Dave Von Ronk, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Dave Moore, Spider John Koerner, The Red Clay Ramblers.
