Photo Credit: Dom Kegel
It’s funny how many country musicians grew up with no particular fondness for the genre. Many performers find that country is an acquired taste, something they have to spend years around before they realize their love for it. And so it was with brothers Jon and Ryan Knudson of the Driveway Thriftdwellers, who grew up on a steady diet of popular country music thanks to their father.
“Our dad was really into the country music that was on the radio in the ’80s and ’90s,” Ryan says. “Anytime we were in the car, it was Travis Tritt or whoever was big at the time, so we grew up hearing that, and really not really liking it that much. But there were certain elements of that sound that hit a nerve, especially the twangy, crying sound of the pedal steel, and it always stuck with me. I guess somewhere between those Sunday morning drives home from church with my dad listening to the radio, then going home and listening to Black Flag and The Circle Jerks, something hit.”
The Knudson Brothers each independently discovered artists like Gram Parsons, The Byrds and Merle Haggard, and by adulthood they were playing Flying Burrito Brothers songs and other country covers together at bars in Northern Wisconsin.
“We called ourselves the Driveway Thriftdwellers, but I wouldn’t say we were a real band at the time,” Jon says. “Ryan and I played with one other guitar player, just two acoustic guitars and pedal steel, and we played almost exclusively at the Minocqua Brewing Company, because we loved going up there and making a weekend out of it.
“Eventually, we began writing our own tunes, which was pretty liberating,” he continues. “At first, it was really fun just to play whatever songs we were listening to, but that gets a little old after a while. Now, instead of having people saying to us, ‘I love the way you were playing that old Merle Haggard tune,’ they’re complementing us on something we wrote, which is much more satisfying.”
It’s also been vindicating for the brothers’ dad, watching his kids embrace the music he always knew was great. “It’s an ‘I told you so’ thing for him,” Jon says. “He’s like, ‘That’s the music I played for you as kids and you hated it!’”
After a few years of members coming and going, Driveway Thriftdwellers settled into a five-piece lineup, with the Milwaukee-based Knudson Brothers joined by a trio of musicians from Madison. “There’s a group up there called the Five Points Jazz Collective, and we poached a few of those guys,” Ryan says. “Our lead guitarist has a weekly gig where he plays trombone with the Five Points.
Where Driveway Thriftdwellers’ 2016 debut album Cutover Country aimed for a raw, live sound, the group’s new self-titled sophomore album takes a slicker, more studio-centric approach. Recorded by Ian Olvera at Wauwatosa’s Wire & Vice studios and mixed by Daniel Holter, it’s hookier and more direct than its predecessor, playing up the group’s pop sensibilities. It’s still plenty country—“This Might Hurt a Little Bit” is an old-school weeper, and “Grandpa’s Tattoos” draws from the autobiographical songwriting tradition of staples like Loretta Lynn and Waylon Jennings—but tracks like “King of Milwaukee” and “Bad News” skirt nostalgia in favor of crisp, modern production.
Despite the album’s studio polish, Jon says the band hasn’t lost touch with its roots as a live band with nothing to prove. They still gig often, and they still throw a few covers into their set, even if they’re more selective about them now.
“I think it makes us have a little more fun on stage, because the way this band started was four or five bands on stage drinking beer and having fun and playing whatever we want to play,” Jon says. “We didn’t care if somebody tried to do some crazy solo and screwed it up. Now we rein it in a little bit more, but we’re not afraid to play a song, whether it’s one that we wrote or a favorite we’re covering, and just take it in a totally new direction.”
Driveway Thriftdwellers play a vinyl release show with Coyote Brother (featuring songwriters J. Hardin and Hayward Williams) at Anodyne Coffee on Friday, Jan. 18, at 8 p.m.
