[footsteps on rocks]
[Adam strums guitar]
- Adam: Well... - Tim: Let's play that new song.
- One, two, a one, two, three, four.
? ? [Tim joins in with banjo]
- ? I been looking for a new emotion ?
? Can't seem to find the time ?
? Running about out of options, girl ?
? When the wind blows back in time ?
? We got a beautiful situation ?
? ?
- Adam Stariha: Musically, I would describe ourselves
rock and roll mixed with acoustic music,
whether it be
country music or bluegrass music or folk music.
And then, yeah,
spread a funky bit bass player on top of that
and gives us our own flare there.
I grew up just outside of Superior,
the city of Superior in the town of Superior
on the Black River.
- Tim Leutgeb: I grew up in Duluth,
opposite of Adam;
same class in high school, different side of the bridge.
We grew up fishing, canoeing, camping, playing in the woods,
swimming in the lake, swimming in the rivers.
Doing just about anything you could do outside.
- Adam: Yeah. - Tim: ...is a big part
of how we grew up and what we did,
even though we grew up on opposite sides of the bridge.
- ? Prettiest girl I ever knew ?
- Adam: Bluegrass has the perfect relationship
with that outdoor feel
because you can do it anywhere.
You don't need to be plugged in anywhere
and what better place to play your guitar
than around a campfire
or just outside, wherever?
- Tim: You know, there's hardliner traditional bluegrass purists
that believe it should be played a certain way.
You know, I grew up playing Suzuki method violin
and every note had to be played exactly right.
And the idea of doing that again with bluegrass, kind of,
I don't want to do that.
I just want to play and have fun
and play how I want to play.
- We have taken so many influences from rock and roll,
country music, bluegrass music, funk, soul, R&B,
among other genres.
- Tim: We play songs that other bands play,
but we play them a little bit differently
because we learned them a little bit different
and that's--
bluegrass has this tradition of passing things down aurally.
Like, you sit around a campfire,
and you learn a song from somebody.
Then you learn it the way they know it;
not the way they learned it maybe,
it changes.
- Adam: And these songs have been traded off, you know,
for decades and decades and passed down.
? ?
When I first start a song, my creative process,
it usually starts with me sitting down
just noodling away on my guitar,
whether it be just playing with some chord changes,
or sometimes I'll have words or lyrics pop into my head
and just kind of go from there.
Once I've got the shell of a song, you know,
some verses and a chorus,
I usually bring it to--
whether it be one of the guys or the entire band--
and they kind of just, they fill in all the cracks,
and just sweeten the whole thing up.
? ?
- Tim: We've got some instrumental songs that we play
that follow, like, a fiddle tune format,
which is A-A-B-B.
So, it's like an A part and a B part
are the two different parts.
But a lot of the songs Adam writes follow kind of
the verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus.
You know, classic rock singer-songwriter structure.
- Adam: The music that we play
is definitely part of our identity.
I mean, singing songs about the Black River,
where I grew up or singing about lakes that we live around
or just different life experiences that we've had.
One of the greatest things about music is that
it brings people from all over,
all different walks of life together.
- Tim: Music allows you
to travel the world without ever leaving home.
I've played music that was written hundreds of years ago.
When you sit down and read somebody's lyrics
or read somebody's sheet music
you kind of get inside of their mind a little bit,
and you can kind of wonder, "Like, what were they thinking?
Why did they write this?"
or "Why did they write that?"
or "What were they trying to say or express?"
So, that's, that's a super fun kind of bridge
that music opens up.