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The Devil Makes Three
Bell’s Eccentric Café; Kalamazoo
Aug. 12; 7 p.m. (doors), 8 p.m. (show)
$15 adv / $18 day of
21+; bellsbeer.com, (269) 382-2332
The Devil Makes Three is no stranger to the road.
Over the last decade, the rowdy acoustic trio has felt at home going from city to city, bringing in new fans with every boisterous barroom sing-a-long and high-profile festival appearance, including Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza and the Austin City Limits Music Festival.
“We came from the punk approach to music, which was you don’t need anybody to do it for you,” vocalist/guitarist Pete Bernhard told Recoil about his early years, coming up in the punk rock scene alongside TDM3 banjoist/guitarist Cooper McBean.
“People we knew were starting record labels, and starting bands, and going on tour, and gaining fans, and touring in different countries, and we thought, ‘Man, we can do that too! I think that, really, if we hadn’t had that introduction to punk and DIY culture, I don’t think we’d be where we are now, because initially, really no one helped us at all.”
Their latest album, I’m A Stranger Here, released last fall on New West Records, marks their first with the label and first with a producer after having self-funded/recorded their first three studio albums. The band recorded the set live at Dan Auerbach’s (of The Black Keys) Easy Eye Sound Studio in Nashville, with producer Buddy Miller.
“We all were a little apprehensive because we’ve always been a three-piece with no drums, except for like the first year of our group,” Bernhard said. “But Buddy just had this great group of musicians around us and it just clicked. It was incredibly easy. We came in and we rehearsed the songs in the studio with the guys [and] we just played a few takes, and picked the best ones, and that’s the album.”
Growing up in a musical family in rural Vermont, Bernhard lived in Nashville with his musician brother before meeting back up with McBean and starting TDM3 with bassist/vocalist Lucia Turino in Santa Cruz, California in 2002.
“Nashville has changed a lot since I lived there,” Bernhard said about coming back to the legendary music town. “When I lived there, it was pretty much only pop country, because that’s what was selling; and so at the time, it was not the place for me to be. It’s changed now, and I’m still not a fan of pop country music at all, but I think Nashville is opening its doors to a lot of different kinds of music.”
Raised on the time-tested traditions of the blues, bluegrass, folk and country, Bernhard misses the storytelling element those genres had, and brings that to his own lyrics with TDM3.
“One of my favorite things about country and folk music is that there is a lot of darkness to it,” he said. “And I feel like that has somewhat gotten lost. Traditionally with blues and folk and country there’s a lot of dark subject matter in there, and a lot of it’s about death and loss and heartbreak and murder and all the things that go wrong in life. …Modern country music has sort of abandoned it because they don’t want to sing about anything that isn’t fun or pleasing.”
Fresh off touring in Europe, where their distinctly American sound went over phenomenally well, and following up tours with influential icons like Willie Nelson, Allison Krauss and Emmylou Harris earlier this year, TDM3 have plans for both a new live album and new studio album in the near future.
“I think, for us, our live show is really what we’re all about,” Bernhard said, referencing the band’s two previous live records. “We really want to capture that, and we keep trying, but we never quite do it. There’s something about pressing record that just ruins it, but I think what we’re gonna try to do is record an entire tour — which will be a pretty big undertaking — and then go back from that and come out with an album from it.” — Eric Mitts
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