Photo credit: Ross Monagle
Chicken Wire Empire
After a couple years supporting their 2016 self-titled debut, Milwaukee’s Chicken Wire Empire came to the realization that the album no longer accurately represented their current sound.
Bass player Jordan Kroeger, who founded the band with mandolin player Ryan Ogburn, suspects that the addition of two members to their lineup—fiddle player Ernest Brusubardis IV and guitarist Greg Brundage—led to a more progressive sound.
“It’s still a good album, and we still play those songs off of our first one, but adding two new members of the band, we were like, ‘We really need to get into the studio and record with these guys so what we’re selling is actually what we sound like live,’” Kroeger says.
The band’s return to the studio is documented in their latest album, What Moves Mountains, which was released earlier this year. Unlike their first album, which had a very traditional bluegrass sound, Mountains finds the band taking a more contemporary and modern twist on the genre.
“We just wanted to record a hi-fi sound for a bluegrass album,” Kroeger says. “We wanted to record kind of an ‘in your face’ sound, a little more aggressive than your traditional bluegrass album.”
Sound engineer Vinny Millevolte, who works for Axis Studios, helped them achieved this goal. Most of the album was recorded at The Exchange Recording Complex in Milwaukee.
“He went above and beyond what we had asked him to do initially,” Kroeger says. “A lot of the stuff on the album was recorded live and then he went and did this post productions stuff, where he did re-amping. So, he ran some of the prerecorded sounds, just natural, like a fiddle sound, and then he re-amped it. He ran it through an old Fender amp to make it sound a little more dirty.”
For example, the fiddle sounds on “Lumpy, Beanpole, and Dirt” are “really aggressive.”
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While Millevolte didn’t have prior experience with bluegrass, his knowledge of the ins and out of the studio were much appreciated by the band.
“If they really know their way around a studio and they know how to get good tones out of the instruments, that’s more important than somebody who just listens to a lot of bluegrass,” Kroeger says. “I would rather work with somebody who is a little bit more open to it. Let’s be honest, we’re a bluegrass band from Milwaukee, we’re not from Kentucky or Tennessee.”
It helped that they had already worked on some of the tunes. On their 2017 film All It Takes, which was recorded by filmmaker Ross Monegal, they had the opportunity to test out some of their newer material in the live setting. The film features a mixture of band interviews and performances at Wisconsin venues such as the Riverside Theater.
“It was a blueprint for how we were gonna record some of the stuff in the studio,” Kroeger says.
He admits that his studio experience was still a “little nerve racking,” due to the challenge of finding the right energy for the songs.
“When you’re recording in a studio, it just feels so permanent. It’s not just another gig, it’s not just a live show thing,” Kroeger says. “We tried to capture the energy of our live show and make a studio record at the same time. It’s a balancing act, really.”
In the same vein, they’ve challenged themselves to find a natural balance between traditional bluegrass and progressive sounds. For example, the band used a more progressive arrangement in their cover of Bill Monroe’s “Old Dangerfield.”
“We like to push ourselves to constantly be getting better and growing,” Kroeger says. “We’re a band that can play traditional bluegrass, and we sometimes do still, but…we like to push the boundaries. A lot of it is just taking the traditional stuff and seeing how far you can push the boundaries of it without completely bastardizing the music.”
They plan to keep their momentum going strong this year with frequent performances and more time in the studio. Next month, they’ll release a new song called “Milwaukee” to celebrate Milwaukee Day. They also hope to release a series of EPs of traditional bluegrass songs.
Says Kroeger, “Our goal is to keep on plucking away. Literally and figuratively.”
Chicken Wire Empire will play a “414 Live” session for 88.9 Radio Milwaukee on Thursday, March 21 at 5 p.m. and play The Cooperage on Friday, March 29, with The MilBillies at 8 p.m.
