Minnesota contemporary bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles is enjoying national success for its unique mix of Americana songwriting.
The Star Tribune‘s Chris Riemenschneider spent six days on the road with Northern Minnesota’s own Trampled by Turtles last month, with the full feature and photo package running in the Sunday edition.
Hardly the salacious, sordid, soggy adventure that a Replacements tour would have been 30 years ago — although these guys are no choirboys — a Trampled by Turtles tour nonetheless proved disorienting and crazed in a whole other way.
The insanity comes simply from the ping-pongy schedule, hitting two cities in one day and waking up in a third city whose name you’ve forgotten. It comes from days dictated by the bus driver’s legally stipulated sleep schedule, and such sign-of-the-times music industry to-dos as a Reddit Q&A and Billboard’s newly invented Twitter chart.
It was easy to see why many bands wind up hating the rigmarole, and one another. It was also easy to see why this particular band thrives on the road.
You can read the whole story here.
The story kind of reminds me of that movie “Almost Famous,” where a young writer tags along with a lesser-known rock band as they seek to break big on the national scene. As Lester Bangs (Philip Seymour Hoffman) would say: “It’s a think piece about a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom.”
Meantime, Trampled by Turtles’ first self-hosted Festival Palomino will be held Sept. 20 in Shakopee.
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