Trampled By Turtles

TBT + WI = September Sept 1 - New Munster, WI - Labor of Love Music Fest Just Live, Inc. Sept 13 - Sheboygan, WI - Weill Center for the Performing Arts Sept 14 - Bayfield, WI - Lake Superior Big Top Chautauqua Tix on sale now. Photo: Kimbo Explores Photography

#TBT Bayfront Park - Duluth, MN - July 2019 We have a couple more Minnesota shows left this year... Aug 29 - Moorhead - Sister Cities Smokeout w/ Nathaniel Rateliff Sept 21 - Red Wing - Treasure Island Amphitheater w/ The Avett Brothers (SOLD OUT) Nov 14 - St. Cloud - Rivers Edge Conv. Center Nov 15 - Bemidji - Sanford Center Nov 16 - Mankato Civic Center 📸: Ellipsis

Congrats to Duluth 709 Baseball on a great season! Well done gents. 🙌 📸: Derek Montgomery Photography

Excited to play in this beautiful place with The Avett Brothers + Lake Street Dive tonight... see you soon.

Thanks for an amazing tour Friends. Last week was a blast. We appreciate each and every one of you and will see you again down the road. Next up - Edmonton Folk Music Festival on 8/8 and The Gorge with The Avett Brothers + Lake Street Dive on 8/10! # 📸: Kimbo Explores Photography

July 24, 2019 Photo: Ryan Cutler

Its a beautiful day in Missoula! See you tonight at KettleHouse Amphitheater with Hayes Carll. Tix avail at the door too. PS- Limited edition posters by Pumpernickel avail at the merch booth while supplies last.

We survived the Stanley Hotel. We love you Colorado. Thanks for having us and see you next time. We’re off to Salt Lake City for another show with The Dead South. Sold out- thank you! And see you tomorrow in Missoula at KettleHouse Amphitheater with Hayes Carll. Tix avail online and at the door.

You gave us one epic night Red Rocks. Thank you!

Cant wait to see you all at Red Rocks this evening. Some tix were just released so grab them at the door or online here: http://bit.ly/2vmJqAI The Dead South take the stage at 7pm so dont be late. See you tonight!

We're back in MN in November with our good friend Frankie Lee. Hope you can join us. St. Cloud tix are onsale NOW -use code TBT2019. Thur, Nov 14 – St. Cloud, MN St. Cloud River's Edge Convention Center Tix: http://bit.ly/30KNZSO Fri, Nov 15 - Bemidji, MN The Sanford Center Tix: http://bit.ly/2OapH3b Sat, Nov 16 - Mankato, MN Mankato Civic Center Tix: http://bit.ly/2Z4Q6jW

Hey hey... 📸: A.E.Landes Photography

LOW TICKET ALERT - Red Rocks tix on 7/24 are moving fast. Nudge a friend and/or grab yours here before they are gone: bit.ly/2vmJqAI See you next week with Deer Tick + The Dead South !

Listen to yourselves sing Duluth... what a crowd! # #waitsolong # 📸: @DarinKamnetz

We cant wait to be back at the beautiful KettleHouse Amphitheater in Missoula on Saturday July 27th. Hayes Carll is joining us and so should you! Tix on sale here: http://bit.ly/2GdASSy Photo: Neubauer Media

July 6, 2019 Photo: Darin Kamnetz

You’re beautiful Duluth. What a day. Thank you! 📸: @darin_k_

The best backstage view there is... good morning Duluth! Tix are also avail at the door for tonight’s show. Doors are at 3pm. See you soon...

Duluth Friends - limited edition, silk screen show posters designed by The Medium Control + Nick Wroblewski will be avail at the merch booth on Saturday. If still need tix for the show, click here: http://bit.ly/2KYrVzB See you tomorrow!

Happy 4th everyone! See some of you here on Saturday...

5 more sleeps till Duluth...

From our mandolin player, Erik Berry. R.I.P Jeff Austin. Link to donate to his family is below "Words have been hard to come by. Lots of them have been swirling in my head since the news came and it's hard to know where to start or end so I'll just jump in and then go until I have nothing left to say. I'm so sorry Jeff is gone, and I'm not sure why it's hitting me so hard. My relationship with his public persona has been complicated; I never established a personal or professional relationship with him and in the last 30 days I had three opportunities, including a missed one that will haunt me for years. I started playing mandolin in 1998 and pretty much only listened to the Grisman-Garcia records for a year. When I moved to Duluth in 2001 I kinda quit playing mando because I was playing bass with bands. I won't recount the whole Erik/mando/Duluth/TBT story here, but suffice to say Trampled had played our first gig and recorded our first demo CD before I started seriously listening to mandolin players again. I went to the Electric Fetus and told them I was in a bluegrass band now and didn't know what I should listen to. They had two recommendations: Bill Monroe's Greatest Hits and Yonder Mountain String Band Mountain Tracks Vol. 2. "This is where it started and this is where it is now," I was told (A+ recommendations, btw). The Monroe really captured my attention (and still does) but YMSB was a revelation. This band existed right now; this band could freakin' jam; this seemed like something I could do; and "Raleigh and Spencer" is possibly the greatest bluegrass song I've ever heard! I bought more of those guys' discs. I used to walk around Duluth listening hard, especially to the mandolin playing. They had a few tunes I really, really liked (Half Moon Rising and Sorrow is a Highway, to name names) but I kept coming back to Raleigh. But the reality is that Trampled has never really jammed out like Yonder. Things were a little stretchier in the early days but if we weren't playing three hour shows at Luce every other week I wonder if we would have been more concise. However we always focused on original material (our first demo had an original of mine with me singing because we didn't have enough Dave originals and we didn't want another cover). And as we started playing out we would get called a jamgrass band. Which we weren't. It's hard to articulate how annoyed we were about this because now it seems quaint, but we were just getting started, we were just finding our sound and our identity and people kept comparing us to Yonder Mountain, and not always favorably at that: you guys don't jam, your sets are too short, haven't you ever heard these guys? Why don't you play like that? Ironically, TBT's first really big break (and one of our first gigs after Dave moved away from Duluth, which encouraged us to kept going even though we didn't live in the same town) was opening for Jeff and Chris Castino at the Cabooze for their Songs from the Tin Shed tour. Obviously I paid as much attention as I could to Jeff's set up and routine and all that. And he even indulged all us Trampled guys in a spontaneous Q&A about the business, the road, the life. That is also the only time I ever talked to him outside of a "hey" at Blue Ox a mere eleven days ago. So on the one hand you got me being a fan of his playing and on the other you have my professional aspirations, which involve being separate from "jamgrass." Whatever that is, Trampled is not that. As a band with minimal improvisation, we are simply not a jamgrass band. So the professional walls went up. We made an effort to avoid jamband and bluegrass festivals in favor of our own shows or more esoteric events. We made sure to distance ourselves from Yonder Mountain String Band in particular, because they were the titans of the scene. And except for Raleigh and Spencer I quit listening. Trampled never really crossed paths with the Jeff Yonder. To this day the members I know best are his replacements Allie and Jacob, because Trampled did play shows with Cornmeal and Joy Kills Sorrow. Sometime around the release of Wild Animals we felt as though we'd established our own identity enough that we could go back into the jam community without people expecting a Minnesota Yonder. But that time frame coincides with his leaving YMSB. And for whatever reason, we didn't cross paths with the Jeff Austin Band. Until this last May. Now I think I've explained at length that there is complication in this business with perception. Well another thing that's kinda strange about this business is checking out music at festivals you yourself are playing at. In short, it's easy to hear backstage if you don't mind distractions and muddy sound but if you really want to check it out you have to go out there and watch it. And if you do that you are not eating/warming up/napping/talking with your friends and colleagues backstage. Anyway, I saw Jeff plenty backstage at Bluegrass in the Bottoms, somewhat at River City Bluegrass Festival but he was warming up or in the only private dressing room in the half hour before his set, and then extremely briefly at Blue Ox (where we said hey). I listened backstage at the first two; I went out at Blue Ox, where I was blown away by his guitarist Julian Davis. It will be Bluegrass at the Bottoms that I'll think about for the rest of my life. I was back in catering by myself eating. There were a few volunteers commiserating about their shifts and there was Jeff and John Skehan from Railroad Earth talking. Talking about personal stuff. Talking about Jeff's personal stuff. Now I know John a little bit, though at the exact moment I'm talking about it was a lot less, since John and my best and longest hang was still to come after Trampled's set that day. Suffice to say, I didn't feel that I should interrupt Jeff, who was having an emotional moment, to reintroduce myself to John so he could reintroduce me to Jeff Austin, whom I had met way back in 2004. Backstage is funny: we all have the same laminate and we all work the same job but if you're uncomfortable introducing yourself to someone at a party (as I am) you're uncomfortable introducing yourself at the casualness that is backstage. Anyway, there was a moment for three mandolinists to chat but I didn't make it happen. I'm not comfortable sharing what I overheard except to say that Jeff was having an existential moment about the fragility of life and I learned he had at least one child, who was very young and had recently been ill. The first news came on Saturday: the word was he had died. That changed. Now it's changed back and he's gone. During those few days I read all the news I could, whichiwasn't much. I have heard nothing from anyone I know in the business. I read a rumor on Facebook from a guy whose Dead & Company rumors usually turn out to be true. I won't repeat it, but I believe it. Since Saturday I've learned things about Jeff I didn't know. He was born in 1974 like me. If we'd attended the same school we would have been in the same grade. He's from a Chicago suburb, I'm from a Madison suburb--we probably would have laughed over Wisconsin-Illinois crap. We both started playing mandolin relatively late: him at 22, me at 24. We both got our starts in the bands that worked out fairly quickly after starting the instrument: him after two years, me four years but with a two year gap in there. He's a father of three; I have two. I don't know but I imagine at all the festivals we were both at we would have been the only two 1974-born working mandolin playing fathers from the Midwest who haven't done much else professionally with their lives on the bills. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't interrupt. My first selfish reaction is that I'm sorry I never really met him, never told him what his playing meant to me regardless of whatever professional bullshit he may or may not have heard. But I think I'm more upset that I didn't just talk to him as a person. He had a nice talk with John at Bottoms, but maybe he and I would have had one at River City. Maybe a good visit with someone his age with a similar life story would have been good for him. For us. Certainly it wouldn't have hurt anything. I have a fair amount of detachment to life; I believe much of it is out of our hands and while you must make the best of it, terrible things happen to people who don't deserve it and terrible people get away with their evil and the world turns no matter what we do. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose and sometimes it rains, to quote a movie. I do not feel guilt or responsibility for Jeff Austin. But I sure feel something. Something like regret and self-recrimation, wishing I were a different sort of person than I am because a different person would have done something different. But a different person would have lived his life differently and probably wouldn't be in the position I'm in, because the position I'm in is mine because of the person I am. There's a Zen lesson for you. Anyway, he's gone. I've listened to a bit of Yonder and JAB since yesterday but I have listened to Raleigh and Spencer a ton. To my ears, it's everything that guy will be remembered for: chops beyond compare, a wonderful sense of melody and a knack for repeating it within his improvisations, imaginative and propulsive rhythms (probably his biggest influence on me as a mandolinist), exuberant vocals and a freeform vocal improv style which is arguably his trademark. It was the first song I listened to after hearing the news, just simply streamed off YouTube as I stood in my garage taking a break from yardwork and I'd never realized how much the song is about dying and being gone: "I'll never get to heaven when I die...I'll drink it down then I'll die…"but then…"you can stomp down the flowers that grow around my grave but they'll rise and bloom again! Yes they'll rise and bloom agaaaiiiinn!" And I'm okay saying I burst into tears there in my garage, holding my phone listening to the same Yonder song I've listened to 100s of time. They'll rise and bloom again! Rest easy Jeff Austin. The next one's on me, but I'll be sharing it with the musician I've had the courage to approach and introduce myself to. In my mind, you'll be there making sure it'll be okay. Thanks for reading. Be well." https://sweetrelief.org/jeff-austin-fund/

Three new shows with The Avett Brothers! Oct 24 - Southaven, MS Landers Center Oct 25 - Birmingham, AL Oak Mountain Amphitheatre Oct 27 - Knoxville, TN Thompson-Boling Arena Ticket info at www.trampledbyturtles.com

Our east coast shows with Deer Tick start tomorrow! Tix are avail for all except Raleigh which just sold out (thank you NC!). Wed - Dewey Beach, DE Bottle & Cork tix: bit.ly/2ZAmLxL Thu - Vienna, VA Wolf Trap tix: bit.ly/2XVxjXZ Fri - Richmond, VA Music at Maymont tix: bit.ly/2XVxjXZ Sat - Raleigh, NC SOLD OUT

Thank you Bonnaroo!