Chris Thile

this is matt and you're listening to bluegrass jam along the podcast for anyone and everyone who loves bluegrass Hey everybody, welcome back to Bluegrass Jamalong, or if you are new here, welcome to Bluegrass Jamalong.

My guest on the podcast this week is Chris Thile, and anybody who has been listening to this podcast for any amount of time will know that I'm very excited about that.

Not only do I love Punch Brothers, I also love instrumental string band music, and Punch Brothers' latest record, The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers, is an all-instrumental record.

Not only that, it is their first all-instrumental record.

I've had most of Punch Brothers on this podcast before.

They've all been on at least once, some of them twice, but I've not had a chance to speak to Chris Thile before, so I was really excited about that, particularly in the context of this record.

And what a joyous conversation.

You know, we chat about... why now was the time for an instrumental Punch Brothers record, but also about Brittany Haas joining the band and what that sort of changed in terms of their dynamic, how they approach an instrumental record, kind of, you know, how they selected the material, how they wrote the material, kind of, you know, the sort of overarching narrative arc this record has, which I was fascinated by and was really... keen to hear a bit about and just so much other stuff it was just a really wonderful conversation as you know anybody who knows Chris knows that he gives a good interview he is you know just passionate and eloquent and excited and exciting and fun to listen to and fun to chat to so this was a real joy I hope you enjoy it too links in the show notes to all the relevant stuff if you want to find other interviews I've done with members of Punch Brothers just go to bluegrassjamalong.com Go to the interviews, you can search, you can sort by various things and you can find there a list of all the things I've done that Punch Brothers related.

Hmm.

Well, I mean, I think kinda like what I said earlier, like even from my high school years of playing bluegrass on the weekends and studying jazz and classical during the week and, and listening to records like Strength in Numbers and Béla Fleck records and, and, um, also, uh, also at this time we should mention too, like there was Nickel Creek and Chris Thile and his, his-

Yeah

... more kinda morphing into solo work and, you know, working on those records as well.

So, uh, you know, it's incredible that you were able to hang in there.

I love it.

Well, you know, and I may be making some of this up or just sort of creating narrative around something that is just there, but, you know, because like you say, I was the youngest guy in the room around those people, but I was also kinda the older guy in the room around Chris Thile and, and Noam Pikelny and-

Yeah

I wouldn't have met these guys if it wasn't for the pandemic.

Thank you, Chris Thile, is what he meant to say.

Thank you.

That's it.

... like, okay, now I'm gonna, I wanna know where that music came from.

You know what I mean? And for me, I, I found that like Chick Corea Electric Band was amazing and athletic and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones had this whole different realm of expression that was like, that was like they're like painting beautiful stuff that's virtuosic and also gorgeous and also tonally radical, you know what I mean? [laughs] Like just like, like big country, fretless bass and harmonica, you know, and, and, and five-string being played in a super specific and nuanced way and, and so then that led me down this route of like, okay, what's, you know, like Punch Brothers.

You know, I started listening to Punch and I started listening to, to, uh, Chris Thile.

I started listening to Bela's other projects and then it was like where does that come from? And then I, I, um, actually, you know, I should say too there's this artist Sam Amidon, who's one of my favorite musicians, uh, in the world, but banjo player, fiddle player-

...

NPR radio show with Chris Thile.

So it was like that performance feels like it was the tipping point from one world to another.

Mm-hmm.