In Between Days Festival is coming back to Quincy

“We have been very fortunate to play a lot of festivals, some Americana or alternative rock, where I think we’re there as the acoustic palette-cleansers for the audience,” said Erik Berry with a bit of a laugh. “But, it’s fun and we like the fact that we get to play before a lot of crowds that wouldn’t normally hear us.”

Berry plays mandolin with Trampled by Turtles, the Duluth, Minnesota, sextet that is one of the featured bands on the second day of this weekend’s In Between Days Festival at Veterans' Memorial Stadium in Quincy. Most music fans would call the festival’s predominant theme "alternative rock," which means Trampled by Turtles is certainly an outlier. Four of their albums, after all, have reached the No. 1 spot in the Billboard Bluegrass charts, but bluegrass purists – and the band themselves – would resist calling them a bluegrass band.

(The schedule of bands appearing this Saturday and Sunday is available at InBetweenDaysFestival.com, and tickets are also available there, ranging from $105-$230 for single-day admission, and $175.50-$400 for both days.)

A purely acoustic band

Trampled by Turtles has no drummer, and most of its music is surely acoustic, with mandolin, banjo, fiddle and cello joining the fun, while guitarist/singer Dave Simonett’s songs are most often introspective, impressionistic and wistful. But it all adds up to a heady blend when the sextet delivers their music with elan, in a style as much rock dynamics as traditional bluegrass fire.

Trampled by Turtles’ latest record, “Alpenglow,” produced by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, was released in October 2022, their 10th album overall, and another fine example of how they re-interpret bluegrass and folk styles to come up with a concoction that can feel right at home at a rock festival. Besides Simonett on guitar and lead vocals, and Berry on mandolin, Trampled by Turtles includes Tim Saxhaug on bass, Dave Carroll on banjo, Ryan Young on fiddle and Eamonn McLain on cello. Since they began in 2003, their music has landed on the soundtrack of TV shows like “Deadliest Catch,” and “Ray Donovan,” as well as in the movie “The Way Way Back,” and the video game "Far Cry 5."

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We caught up with Berry before the band played a show in Asheville, North Carolina, last week. The latest album has a handful of striking videos, none more so than “It’s So Hard to Hold On,” a ballad about the need to enjoy every minute, with fan-submitted video segments showing how broad the band’s reach is, and how much their music means to people. “Starting Over” depicts the joy a touring musician finds at returning home, while “Burlesque Desert Window” is a surreal romp populated by people in bizarre owl costumes.  But “A Lifetime to Find Out” is a truly affecting ballad about finding purpose and meaning, “a life like the one you had in mind.”

Fan-submitted videos made impact

“Those fan-submitted videos for “It’s So Hard to Hold On” went far beyond what we expected,” said Berry. “People would send them in with stories of how our music meant so much to them, and it was humbling. There’s a couple of our videos with those owl characters, and we have to thank Eamonn for coming up with that. It kind of allows the rest of us to sit back while he gets out in public in that costume, and they film people’s reactions and so on.”

With 10 albums and now 20 years of performing, Trampled by Turtles has plenty of its own material, but the band's skill at transforming covers is also undeniable – check out their gorgeous take on Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers.” Can fans in Quincy expect any setlist surprises?

“In our last tour – Colorado-Utah-Montana – we took turns making setlists,” said Berry. “It was a good lesson learned for most of us. You want to do three songs off each album, but we can’t do 27 or 30 songs. There’s a lot of our old songs people want to hear, and not the new ones they don’t know yet. There are certain songs we have to play every night, but we have no standard plan for festivals, so we’ll have to see what we come up with for the In Between Days festival.”

Evolving songs

Trampled by Turtles songs evolve over time as they are played night after night in concert.

“'Starting Over’ from the last record is kind of an interesting case,” Berry pointed out. “It has been slightly re-arranged, and on the record it is actually in a different key. Playing it live we had to make a few changes to make it work better. The version of that song we did in November-December last year is very different from what it is now.”

“We don’t perform “It’s So Hard to Hold On’ every night,” Berry noted. “With a new record, the tendency is to want to play all of the songs, but it has to be a process. Some become frequent on the setlist, and some middling, and some becomes rarities. My relationship to them is just as mandolinist, but some may be challenging for the vocalist, and to sing and play at the same time difficult to re-create as well as the record has it, so those factors are part of what songs are frequently played.”

Bluegrass or not?

So, is Trampled by Turtles a bluegrass band, in their own view?

“Bluegrass has always featured harmony vocals but not in the way pop bands do,” said Berry. “I don’t participate in the vocals but hearing it every night is awesome. It is cool to see how the guys all come up with their vocal parts, try stuff that doesn’t work, and hone their vocal arrangements. The question seems to me to be that we use bluegrass instruments and techniques, so to say we’re not bluegrass you’d have to listen to a lot of bluegrass and be able to explain how we don’t fit. We do not play traditional bluegrass, but it is amazing how many different ways people can hear our music, what is seems like to them.”

“Jeff Tweedy took a new approach for our last record, with no preconceived notions,” Berry added. “It worked out very well, and Jeff would rip apart what we came in with and put it back together really differently. In our 20 years, we’d never done it that way, or with an outside producer, but we felt like ‘Why not?’ And it worked out really well.”

Cowboy Mouth shines in Massachusetts return

New Orleans quartet Cowboy Mouth hadn’t played in Massachusetts for four years before last weekend, but if their torrid 90-minute show Friday at The Narrows Center was any indication, they’ll be back soon. The quartet had played a soldout show at City Winery last Thursday, and was slated to perform at Cape Cod’s Bands for Badges benefit on Saturday.  With the boisterous geniality of frontman/drummer Fred LeBlanc the foursome charged through 15 songs that all had the 200 people in the audience up and dancing throughout. Cowboy Mouth roared through tunes from all their albums, as well as some nifty covers. “Tell the Girl” was an early highlight, and LeBlanc was especially passionate singing “I Believe (In the Power of Rock ‘n’ Roll).” The 10-year old “When God Made Rain” was almost a ballad, although surely a power ballad, and the sequence of “This Much Fun” and the cover “Stand By Me” morphing into “Take Me Back to New Orleans” was incendiary. And who doesn’t love to hear a pell-mell version of Greg Kihn’s 1981 hit “The Breakup Song.”  The band saluted guitarist John Thomas Griffith’s ex-bandmate in the Red Rockers, Darren Hill, who was on hand, by playing the Red Rockers’ best-known tune, “China.”  They also announced there will be a Red Rockers reunion show at the legendary Tipitina’s in New Orleans on Nov. 11. Fittingly, one of the night’s last tunes was the traditional, and absurdly infectious Crescent City anthem, “Iko Iko.”

America coming to Plymouth

THURSDAY:  One of the brightest stars in the younger generation of jazz talents is Brookline’s Grace Kelly, who headlines the Spire Center. The harmonies of The Dales at City Winery. The Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band at The Narrows Center. The Jennifer Tefft Band lights up The Fallout Shelter. Rockers Train conclude their run at Cape Cod Melody Tent. Munk Duane performs at The Rivershed in Scituate.

FRIDAY: The band America returns to Memorial Hall in Plymouth, with local songsmith Jay Psaros opening. Make what you will of Toronzo Cannon’s last album title, “The Preacher, The Politician or The Pimp,” but he’s making some of the most electrifying modern rock ’n’ blues, at The Spire Center. The Harbormen rock The C-Note. Local country-rockers Dalton & The Sheriffs perform at The House of Blues, through Saturday. Reed Foehl and Stewart Lewis, from Acoustic Junction, play at Club Passim. The All-American Rejects rock MGM Music Hall. Co-pilot and the Blue Light Bandits shake Brighton Music Hall. The R&B sounds of Tas Cru at Soundcheck Studios. Gov’t Mule’s "Dark Side of the Mule" Tour at Leader Bank Pavilion. Comic Bob Marley is doing three shows this weekend at Cape Cod Melody Tent (two shows Saturday). The Honey Island Swamp Band grooves at The Narrows Center. Road trip: Mary Chapin Carpenter at The Cabot Theater.

SATURDAY: Face to Face, a show combining the music of Elton John and Billy Joel, at the South Shore Music Circus. Mother of a Comedy Show, domestic hilarity featuring Easton’s Kerri Louise, with Christine Hurley and others, takes over Memorial Hall in Plymouth. Pablo Cruise became famous in 1975 but their grooves are so irresistible they’re still burning it up, at The Spire Center. The Pousette-Dart Band’s folk-rock at The Narrows Center.  Soul queen Toni Lynn Washington always has a great band, at The C-Note. Bebel Gilberto, daughter of the famed Joao, brings Brazilian heat to City Winery. Bagful of Blues plays at Mia Regazza. The Brothers Project – a tribute to the Allman Brothers Band – gets down at Brighton Music Hall.

SUNDAY AND BEYOND: Sunday, the Hayley Reardon Trio plays at City Winery; while Mastodon and Gojira form a metal double-bill at MGM Music Hall. Monday night country star James Bay is at The House of Blues. Tuesday, Lalah Hathaway returns to City Winery. Aug. 24 finds country thrush Gabby Barrett at Cape Cod Melody Tent; while alt-rockers Jimmy Eat World hit MGM Music Hall. Aug. 25 look for songsmith Griffin House at The Spire Center. Two songwriters who can rightfully also be called poets, Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore swing through the area next week, performing at City Winery on Aug. 25, and at the Narrows Center Aug. 26.

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Trampled by Turtles bringing their unique sound to Quincy this weekend