Interview: Jacob Tilove (The Lonesome Trio)

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The Lonesome Trio are set to release their self-titled debut album, after twenty years of playing small shows together, on June 16th with Sugar Hill Records. Made up of friends Ian Riggs (vocals, bass), Ed Helms (vocals, guitar, banjo) and Jacob Tilove (vocals, mandolin), you can catch the talented trio in local US shows this summer or performing at the Bluegrass Situation Superjam; a part of the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Los Angeles in October. The album required no outside musical help and features the three guys playing an enormous range of instruments that has all gone towards perfecting the final masterpiece. Here at Indiependent, we caught up with vocalist and mandolin player Jacob Tilove.

THE INDIEPENDENT: Since you’ve been making music together for over 20 years, what made now the right time to release something?

J: It just kind of happened that way.  With such a stretched out timeline of playing together—and with each of us occupied by our “normal” lives—there was never a pressing need to make an album. We’ve been more or less content with the handful of performances we have each year and the loyal but small group of fans we’ve cultivated.  We’d get really excited about recording at times and build some momentum but then schedules would go haywire and the idea would be shelved. Going way back, our vision of an album was a kind of home-recorded mix tape to give to family and friends around holiday time. As the years wore on and we grew to really believe in the songs, we started thinking about getting them down properly to share with a broader audience.  Also, as a band, you just have to record in order to keep moving.  Once we committed to that, it was a matter of schedules: when can we find two weeks to rehearse and record, when can we gather for a small tour and release?  That process only took about 6 years….

THE INDIEPENDENT: The debut album features you guys playing a crazy amount of instruments together. That’s really cool but did it feel like a lot of pressure, playing all of those instruments yourselves without eliciting help from any other musicians?

J: Not at all!  We were just having fun using whatever instruments we had thought to bring or were on hand.  We borrowed an accordion from a friend of the studio, there was a vibraphone sitting around, Ed shipped a saxophone, I bought an electric mandolin the day before going to Asheville.  The two songs that feature the electric mando also represent my first 10 or so minutes of ever playing one.  It didn’t feel pressured, though.  We were having a great time.  When we felt a song needed a specific sound, we sought it out–we rented an autoharp and we went to a nearby studio to track the Hammond organ you hear on a couple of songs. The idea was to have this first album reflect the three of us who have been together for so long.  We’ve got a wonderful extended family of musicians and we have always had friends join us on stage, but for this album we thought we would keep it tight and close—of course now there’s no one else to blame.

THE INDIEPENDENT: What tracks on the record are you most proud of and most looking forward to people hearing? Why?

J: That’s a tough one.  I can’t limit it, I’m equal parts excited and nervous for people to hear them all.  With the exception of two recently written ones, we’ve been playing these songs for a decade or more and they’ve acquired their own significance in our lives.  It’s cathartic to have them “finished.”  The exact renditions on this album are a function of the time and place and mood we were in during the sessions.  Several sound quite different when we play them live.  But I love how the album turned out and unexpectedly, we all made strong imprints on each other’s songs, more so than when we play live.  The solos on ‘Rising Tide of Love’, one of my songs, are really defined by Ed and Ian’s playing—the interplay between their piano and electric guitar parts and then by Ed’s trumpet lines at the end—and I love it.  Whereas there’s a triple mandolin solo on Ian’s song, ‘River in the Gutter’, that I’m proud of myself.  So I’m excited about all of them.

THE INDIEPENDENT: Growing up did you have any inspirations that you feel have had an impact on your music today?

J: More than I can name! I was always humming as a little kid. Pretty quiet otherwise but always humming. It never seemed odd to me at the time, though people would remark on it. Now I understand it was a little unusual because I don’t see kids just walking around humming tunes constantly.  So I guess I was fixated early on and I just listened to so much growing up—’80s pop on my record player during the ’80s, then classic rock and the hippie stuff going into the early 90s, which is when I decided to play mandolin.  My older brother brought home the album Grateful Dawg, by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, and from the first few notes, that cool sounding instrument, whatever it was, got in my head and I decided I had to play it.  My old step-dad turned me onto David Bromberg, who was my obsession for many years and remains a true inspiration.  Then the mandolinist Frank Wakefield captured my imagination and inspired me in that department.

THE INDIEPENDENT: The recording process you went through seems quite hectic – was it two weeks straight in the studio? Can you tell us a bit about the daily routine and how you got things done?

J: It was less hectic than it sounds! We convened in Asheville, North Carolina, the trio and our producer and our engineer, and began recording the next morning.  We wanted to be in a town where none of us lived so we could avoid the distractions of daily life.  We stayed together in a house a minute from the studio and aside from getting coffee we didn’t do much else than go back and forth to the studio for…I think it was 12 days.  The studio was like a casino in that there were no windows and no sense of time or the temperature outside.  At some point each day, once we had gotten a lot done, we’d start drinking whiskey and especially beer—Asheville has 14 or so microbreweries—and keep on working into the night, till between 10 and midnight.    The process was revelatory for me.  We didn’t have a clear sense going in whether we’d track live or in isolation, using a click or not.  We ended up deciding on a song-by-song basis what would work.  And a couple times we changed course midstream.  I learned a lot. I wish I knew at the beginning of the process what I know now.  I was pretty green.   About 6 months later we went to Nashville for a couple of days to tweak and add a few things.  It was a delight all the way through.  The recording studio was an absolute playground for us.

THE INDIEPENDENT: You’re playing a bunch of US shows this summer, what about these shows are you most excited for?

J: I’m just excited to get out on the road and play our songs for new audiences.  We’ve been performing mainly for friends and family for our whole history.  The handful of shows we’ve played for big festival audiences have been really well-received.  I think our music is different from anything else out there and if people are willing to just hear it for what it is—which is unpretentious, honest, and listenable songs played by three longtime friends—I think they’ll get on board.

Make sure to pre-order The Lonesome Trio’s self-titled debut album at thelonesometrio.com/music and receive an instant download of ‘Appalachia Apologia’.

Words by Zara Rowden
@zaraannecharlie

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