The Infamous Stringdusters' shows at The National have been postponed to December 2022. (Photo courtesy The Infamous Stringdusters)
An acoustic collective known for captivating live shows and a musical prowess that crosses genres, The Infamous Stringdusters were set to sweep into town for a multinight residency at The National on Dec. 30, with guest appearances from mandolinist Sam Bush and Virginia-based jam artist Keller Williams. Due to the pandemic, however, the pickin’ good time has been postponed to December 2022. Before that announcement, we caught up with bassist Travis Book (pictured above at left with his bandmates) to discuss life on the road, a recent Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album and the band’s forthcoming release.
Richmond magazine: When was the last time you played in Richmond, and how does it feel to return with a three-night run?
Travis Book: I think it’s been a few years [2019] since we played in Richmond. There’s always an important question for us as far as where we are going to celebrate New Year’s. It’s a big weekend for music lovers and for bands. Virginia is like a second home for us, and we used to have our music festival [The Festy Experience] in Nelson County and always had really great shows in Virginia and felt connected to the people and the music scene there. The National in particular is such a great room, and Richmond’s proximity to the Carolinas and D.C. area and on up the coast makes it an ideal and comfortable place to settle in for three nights and really get down to the business of playing a bunch of music. We’ve got a couple guests coming in [Sam Bush on Dec. 30 and Keller Williams on Jan. 1], and for New Year's we’re playing three sets, and it will be a big weekend jam-packed with as much music as we can fit in there.
RM: How did the band use the downtime away from touring and performing?
Book: We got right back to work and made three albums over the first 12 months of the pandemic, and the whole band was really focused on continuing to grow and being productive; everyone in the band put out a solo record. At first we said, "Maybe we won’t play as much as we were," but when we started playing shows again, that went out the window. The pandemic was a highly productive time for us, we were writing and recording and inventing new things. I started a livestream, and we kept really busy, but it’s a relief to get back to the seemingly normal thing for a band like ours, which is to tour and play shows.
RM: The new album will be released on Feb. 18. Is there a particular song you are excited to share, and on the flip side, is there a track you think fans will be excited about?
Book: I wrote a tune that basically started as this song on my Instagram live feed. I was kind of working on it and getting input from people who were watching, including my friend Paul Hoffman from Greensky Bluegrass. It’s called “I’m Not Alone.” It was a cathartic thing to write, and I think it will be the next single out in January. The track that we just put out is called “Hard Line.” Fans seem to be really psyched about it, and it has a really pointed message and doesn’t mix metaphors. It’s a really direct, clear statement sort of about the predicament we’re in of people being really attached to their ideas of how things should be and also people’s sort of blindspots and the resistance people have to new ideas or self-reflection or admitting that maybe there are some things about themselves or about how they perceive other people or move through the world that they don’t necessarily realize, and that’s a real struggle for us as a culture, to own our s--- and to admit there are things we don’t know and listen, and “Hard Line” seems to resonate with fans that way. The narrative of that song, I think, really sprung from, first, the Me Too movement, and then the Black Lives Matter movement.
RM: The band’s 2021 album “A Tribute to Bill Monroe” was recently nominated for a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album. How did that project come about?
Book: We had already kind of talked about doing a series of tribute records to the originators and luminaries of bluegrass music, so the logic was we would start with the father of bluegrass music, Bill Monroe. It was a really, really cool process for deciding which songs to record and arranging them. We don’t have a mandolin in the band, and Bill was a mandolin player, so automatically it's not going to sound like his bluegrass, but we hit this really sweet spot of sounding like traditional music and the most fundamental, basic, earthy arrangement of these songs, while sounding distinctly Stringdusters. I was stunned it was nominated for a Grammy, but I think is a testament to the power of Bill’s music and his legacy he has, not just in bluegrass but the foundations of rock and roll and Americana.
RM: I’m the food editor here at the magazine; is there something the band seeks out food-wise when visiting different cities?
Book: Yes, there is a place in Salt Lake City, The Red Iguana, that is legendary. I can get really fixated on Asian food, and we’ll seek out really good Thai. I have an obsession with pho, and the band tends to kind of be into ramen. Mondays are usually our day off on tour, and we like to go out and take the crew and do a big sushi experience somewhere; it’s a bit of a ritual for us. One thing we learned is to do our best and trust the culinary wisdom of where we’re at, which happens on a city and regional level. … That’s a real art to traveling and eating while moving about the country.
RM: How do you feel the band and its audience have evolved over 15 years of playing music?
Book: Growth and evolution and sort of an exploration of what we’re capable of doing with these five acoustic instruments has always been a main goal. We aren’t crafting a distinct sound, we’re chasing new possibilities endlessly and following every idea down every little road and seeing what we can do with these instruments and what musical styles we can incorporate from jam to rock to jazz to country to reggae, blues and pop. Our fans early on were into that, and part of why they liked us, not because it sounded like this thing they liked, but music that was endlessly challenging and surprising. We play a distinctively different set list every night, and when we go on a tour and do 10 days, we’ll probably play 150 songs, and our fans have always been into that and kind of grown right along with us. We have so much more music to make. Fifteen years, I feel like we’re just getting started.
