Credit- Ty Helbach Photography
For Andy Hall, it’s all about the sustain.
The sustaining property of his instrument--the dobro--is its defining characteristic.
“It's more like an electric guitar, like a lead instrument in a lot of ways,” he says. “You can milk the notes. It makes sense sonically to me because the electric guitar has that same type of sustain.”
Hall’s band, The Infamous Stringdusters (he’s a charter member), has sustained a reputation for 20 years as an energetic, innovative ensemble that blends bluegrass credibility and metal show savvy. It continues to pack arenas and large halls with enthusiastic fans.
“Even after all this time, we still love being together and playing music together,” Hall says. “So we're going to put the pedal to the metal and just give it a good push in our 20th year.”
In addition to extensive touring and nine albums with the band, Hall also tours and records solo and with other artists. Let the Steel Sing is a spirited album-length collaboration with sacred steel guitarist Roosevelt Collier. In 2020, he recorded 12 Bluegrass Classics for Resophonic Guitar, a solo pandemic project. His latest album, Squareneck Soul, allowed him to collaborate with bluegrass virtuosos such as Sierra Hull, Billy Strings, and Wes Corbett.
That’s a lot of bluegrass for an upstate New York kid who came to the music pretty late.
“Growing up, I was into very heavy music and kind of angsty teenage boy stuff,” Hall explains. “But I was extremely interested in playing guitar, and literally the first day I got a guitar, I was playing it hours a day. It was very much a release for me and an escape.”
Hall got a little exposure to country and bluegrass on visits to his father’s family in Nashville.
“And then one day, I just got curious enough that I asked for a Bill Monroe box set of CDs, and it just blew my mind instantly. And it had that rustic old recorded sound which made it even kind of more mysterious to me somehow. I had always listened to pristine recordings of modern music.
And here you had this old, kind of scratchy sound of these guys just shredding. And to me, it didn't sound that different from heavy metal. It sounded like acoustic heavy metal. It was exciting.”
Hall attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. His infatuation with the burgeoning roots music scene there and his enthusiasm for the guitar led to a bad case of tendonitis in his hand.
“The only thing I could really play was lap-style slide guitar that didn't aggravate it,” he recalls. “Using the bar and the slide was very easy for my left hand, which had been injured from overuse. And all these things kind of came together to get me just super fired-up to play dobro.”
Hall’s bluegrass apprenticeship included stints with bands in Boston and Nashville. The Infamous Stringdusters came together after an impromptu jam. Hall says that as soon as band members listened to a recording of that session, they realized they had a unique sound.
“Chris Pandolfi (banjo) and I didn't even start as bluegrass musicians. We had all these different influences, but we had really put in the work in the bluegrass foundations. And that combination at the time I felt was unique. There were other jammy bluegrass bands, but they hadn't really done the bluegrass thing. Or there were bluegrass bands who played traditional bluegrass but had never listened to Grateful Dead or Phish or anything like that. I mean, there was the New Grass Revival. They certainly had that. But at the time, we were the only band doing that, as far as I can tell.”
Today, the band consists of Hall, Pandolfi, Andy Falco (guitar), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle) and Travis Book (double bass).
The band’s approach is part of their “secret sauce, " leading to them playing arenas and large venues when other bluegrass bands are playing at smaller clubs and festivals.
“We designed our live show to be able to hit hard like in a rock club,” Hall explains. “And that has to do with the sound and how we plug in. There's a whole craft in trying to get acoustic instruments to sound good through a rock PA and be loud. That helps get your music across to a wider range of people. For most people--unless they grew up in folk music clubs and listening rooms--their first show was usually an arena show or something. And that's the type of experience we were going for.” Hall says a 2011 tour opening for the Yonder Mountain String Band helped them figure out their live sound.
Hall says that musical collaborations continue to sustain him, whether it’s with a marquee band beginning its 20th year or with great artists on a solo project.
“That’s one of the great joys of playing music. I like learning. And one of the best ways to learn is to get with another musician who is really good at what they do and interact with them musically. That's good for the brain and good for the soul.”
Comments