Interview: Sour Mash String Band strike a ferociously hot iron

There’s no greater thrill than winding up craggy mountain ranges and letting the sun-kissed breeze careen across your fluttering eyelids. Top down, motor running, your mind wanders, too, and present troubles simply fade from view. The hardened, cracked yellow and white lines dart around lanky bends and frame the tree-lined countryside. Out of the Ohio River Valley, finger-pickin’ five-piece Sour Mash String Band feel the rush of adrenaline cast a cherry-red hue upon their cheeks, as they pack up and hit the open highway. A new song called “Drive” mines many emotions, most of all the yearning to just get away from the modern world. “I want to drive like nobody’s watching,” vocalist Marianne Barnett sings. Her voice is decorated with a slight rasp, warm and lush, yet there’s a dreadfully heavy melancholy that soaks through to her bones.

“I started working a job that, between travel time and actual work on the job, I was putting almost 180 hours in every two weeks,” bandmate Cody Nutter (vocals and on mandolin) writes to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “Pulled into work one Monday morning, I stopped and pondered for a while. I fought the urge to open my door; I didn’t want go inside. Just thought how nice it would be just to drive away with full tank of gas and forget about it all. Long story short, I got out and went to work. Every Monday morning is like the movie ‘Groundhog’ day.”

Another new cut called “Roll Me Away,” which was originally written and recorded by Gary Hensley, throbs in the throat. Harvesting bluegrass and honky-tonk, as well as Appalachian tradition, the band strikes upon a ferociously inescapable vigor that thickens and smolders the air. “I wanted to make this one full of energy and ‘bluegrass drive.’ I wanted to make sure that it was a hard hitting song that also had some dynamics to it,” says Nutter. “Gary had a couple different ways of performing the song, but I stuck to a faster version of the way he performed it because I thought it fit our style a little better. I changed what key we played the song out of compared to his, as well, because I thought it fit my voice better.”

Soon after the song’s two-minute mark there’s a considerable shift, a pull-back that permits the band to inject a bit of a more bluesy, front-porch tilt. He explains, “In the song, he is talking about being in St. Louis and playing the blues. Gary did that in his version, too, and I thought it was pretty cool and wanted to keep that in our version.”

Recently fresh out of the studio, the band ⏤ also made of Josh Moody (guitar, vocals), Patsy Brookover (upright bass, vocals) and Greg Settle (banjo, vocals) ⏤ evoke the richness, as much as the the grit, of the American songbook. Their new album, Roll Me Away, stitches together “river songs, songs about heartache, songs that are lighthearted and fun, driving bluegrass songs and songs that are groovy and make you want to dance,” Nutter teases. Throughout the set, which includes a few unexpected covers, Nutter, Barnett and Moody all exchange lead vocals, allowing each song to thrive on their own.

Below, Nutter gives a proper introduction to a band that’s absolutely exhilarating in both approach and performance.

Considering everyone hails from a different city or town, how did you come to collaborate?

Josh and I first got together and started playing as a duo at various “Open Mic’s” around the Parkersburg, WV and Marietta, OH area. We were getting good feedback from the audiences, and one day we were asked to play a show and if we had a full band. We said “yeah,” even though we actually didn’t really have a full band yet! [laughs] So, we called up a couple people who we knew to see if they wanted to play the show with us. Greg had played with both me and Josh before in other bands, and Josh got ahold of Patsy to play bass for us. After that first show, we had got asked to play other shows, and we had so much fun that we just decided to keep on going. Marianne had sung in a previous band with Josh and Greg and she joined us shortly after those first couple shows. Now here we all are today!

You released your debut album, Down the Highway, in 2016. What has your creative headspace been since then?

I feel like we have grown tremendously as a band since then. We had just formed in 2015. I had only been playing mandolin for close to a year when we recorded the album, and we had only been playing music together as a band for only a few months. Josh had been songwriting for years prior, but I was pretty fresh at the concept so we only used some of Josh’s songs on that album. I feel that since then the doors have been wide open for creativity, and we are continuing to work on trying new things every time we get together. I’m getting more comfortable as a songwriter, and we are putting out more original material. We have been playing a lot of shows together, and we know what each member is able to bring to the table. That has helped in knowing what we are truly capable of as a band, as well as what we are able to do with certain songs.

Musically, you’d never tell that you weren’t in the same city. How has that creative synergy influenced you over the years? How have you grown together?

Since the beginning, we have all “meshed” together very well. Each member brings their own style to everything we do, and that makes us who we are as a band. Being from different places, both physically and musically, helps to create a unique creative atmosphere when we get together to work on new material. It does make it hard at times to practice together since everyone has full time jobs and families, and we are also gigging almost every Friday and Saturday. Since we have spent so much time together over the last couple years, it has done nothing but brought us closer together. Everyone in the band is great friends who are now more like family.

What does each member bring to the band, and how do you each come together to make such a vibrant whole?

Each member brings their own unique style to what we do. It’s kind of a “Yin-Yang” type of thing at times. Sometimes we are on opposite ends of the spectrum, as far as style and influence are concerned, but we still come together and make it work. I don’t know exactly how sometimes, but it just does.

Who would you call your direct musical contemporaries?

I would say that the bands in the Progressive Bluegrass scene would be the bands that we would be similar to.

Who would you cite as your biggest influences?

I think that question would derive a different answer from each band member. For me, I have always enjoyed bands such as Trampled By Turtles, Greensky Bluegrass, Old Crow Medicine Show.

How do these two new songs fit together with the album, as a whole? Speaking of which, when is the new album coming?

I think that both songs fit very well with this album. I’m really excited about this one, because the majority of the songs on it are original songs that either Josh or I wrote. I think there are a lot of different sounding songs on this record, and we have put a lot more thought and time into this one than we did the first one. We have grown so much as a band and as musicians, even since we started recording this newest album. It has allowed us to be more creative and push each other’s boundaries a bit. This album should reflect that a little, and I feel that we are still just at the beginning of our creative limits, and I look forward to what is next already.

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