Photo credit: Kyle Lehman
Them Coulee Boys
As Eau Claire’s Them Coulee Boys stepped onstage to open for Duluth’s Trampled by Turtles earlier this year at the Riverside Theater, they couldn’t help but feel thankful for how their journey had come full circle.
“That was a dream come true,” says singer-songwriter Soren Staff. “I saw The Avett Brothers at the Riverside Theater in 2011 with my little brother in the band, Beau, the banjo player, who’s my best friend. We waited all day in line to get front row seats and kind of said to ourselves, ‘We could do something like this.’ A few years later, we started a band.”
Staff started the band while he was going to school at Marquette University (he graduated with a degree in biomedical engineering). The band’s first shows were on campus.
Another reason for this 360 feeling is that their new album, Die Happy, was produced by Trample’s front man, Dave Simonett. They recorded the album at Pachyderm Studios in Cannon Falls, Minn.
“Dave is someone I’ve looked up to for a really long time, kind of been a songwriting idol of mine,” Staff says. “When he told me that my writing was incredible, it was kind of like one of those moments where you’re like, ‘Holy shit.’ This guy who I’ve dissected and tried to learn from is telling me that I’m doing something right, and I think that was really crazy for me.”
The confidence that Simonett inspired in the sessions “kind of just bled through into takes. He’s made all these great bluegrass records and then made a couple of great rock and roll records with his solo band Dead Man Winter,” says Staff. “We’ve been wanting to straddle that, like halfway between a string band, halfway between a rock band, and it made sense to have someone like him who has made records, of both of those, to try to make this record.”
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Die Happy is the band’s first album since 2016. The past few years have given them a chance to grow musically and become more mature in what they want to say, Staff says.
“We kind of grew into ourselves as a live band. We’ve really made a name for ourselves playing and touring,” he says. “And we wanted to be able to capture that kind of energy in the studio… I think playing everything live in the studio like that hopefully captured a little bit of that energy that we have at shows. We wanted to capture that spirit.”
Thematically, the album often finds the band seeking light in the dark spaces. Death can sometimes be a sad thing and often is a source of anxiety. However, Staff feels we should focus more on living the fullest life.
“It’s going to happen but make sure that you’ve lived a life worth being happy about,” he says. “We kind of wanted to embrace that feeling of yeah, we might be worried about things, but let’s go out and be happy, and let’s go out and make the most of it.”
Many of the album’s songs were inspired by different relationships Staff has had. For example, “Midnight Manifestos” is a “love song that’s kind of like pleading for someone to focus less on that and more on me.”
“That was kind of a feeling in that relationship, in a good way,” Staff says. “I mean, you want to support someone’s art, but sometimes you want to be supported yourself. So, it’s that tension between loving what you do and loving someone, and trying to strike that balance between them.”
“Pray You Don’t Get Lonely” gets further stuck in one’s head, with Staff exploring an inner monologue one might have debating if others are experiencing the same thing. During the song, he sings, “step inside my head for a minute / tell me if you ever find the space / can’t tell if it’s me while I’m in it or if everybody else feels the same.”
“I think that song as an opening to the album is kind of inviting the listener into our space and how we feel and how we think,” Staff says. “There’s an underlying story of a journey to reconcile with someone and reconciling something within yourself at the end.”
As a songwriter, Staff says he’s getting better at writing fully fleshed-out and realized songs. “The attention to detail is something I really cared about on this record,” he says. “There’s a lot of songs that are self-referencing to other songs, and I wanted to make it all connected, and I wanted to make it all cohesive.”
He’s excited to support the album on the band’s longest national tours to date. “We’ve never taken this big of a bite of touring, and we’re excited about it and nervous about it,” Staff says. “But, you know, it’s a good feeling.”
Them Coulee Boys celebrate the release of Die Happy with a release show with opener Joseph Huber at Turner Hall Ballroom on Friday, Aug. 30, at 8 p.m.
