Photo courtesy of Pert Near Sandstone
The anniversary of an album or years together is often a big deal for bands. In 2019, Twin Cities-based Pert Near Sandstone marked their own unique milestone. They celebrated not only their 15th year as a band but also their fifth year of hosting a music festival. The band celebrated the fifth anniversary of Eau Claire-based Blue Ox Music Festival.
“It was really nice to not only have made it that far, but also to be pretty confident that this isn't going anywhere,” says guitarist and singer-songwriter J Lenz. “We've been slowly building. We're not trying to overreach. We're not trying to do too much to change it up or anything too much every year. We just want to do little improvements here and there and just kind of slowly build the audiences up. We're working on it again this year and very much looking forward to it again.”
The band plays an important role in the booking for each year’s festival. “We try and get our two cents in with booking the bands,” says Lenz, who is an Oshkosh native. “There's always more bands that we want to have play, and there's only so much room, which is tough. But we're going to try to get a few more stages opened during the day, maybe, and get a little more music so we can try to get more bands in there.”
The band hopes to release their new album, Rising Tide, in time for the June festival. The album is their seventh and, like previous efforts, engages the talents of the band’s four songwriters.
Joint Effort
“There's at least one song from all four of us,” says Lenz. “Our songwriting is affected by where our personal lives are and what's going on around us in the world. And so that's sort of where our theme comes from. It's a vague theme, but it's kind of a reference to everything getting a little heated around the world and around our communities.”
The band recorded the album with the help of Ryan Young, who has played fiddle occasionally with the band and is a current member of Trampled by Turtles. They recorded at his Twin Cities studio, NeonBrown.
“He is actually one of my oldest friends,” says Lenz. “I've played music with Ryan Young since high school. He and I were in rock bands. We lived together during college, and we were in jazz bands, ska and metal and all kinds of stuff. We still hang out and do some jams here and there.”
“It’s fun working with him because it's a very comfortable place and we know him,” Lenz continues. “It allows us to be ourselves. Pert Near, I think, is first and foremost a live show band; we try and it’s hard to capture that when you're in the recording studio. So, it helps a lot to be in a comfortable place with Ryan. Ryan adds a really nice fun element to it. He can sometimes get weird and do some very interesting fun things too, which I always really like.”
The band’s music honors and builds upon tradition. Their sound tightropes the boundaries between bluegrass, string band and old-time music. Or as Lenz says, “We just call it string band, but it's modern old time, which is kind of an oxymoron.”
“The one thing I think about this genre that's so appealing and makes it fun to continue playing is just the cooperation and collaboration of it,” says Lenz. “There's not many styles of music where you could get three bands together and sit down and they could play for four hours without having one rehearsal. It's a lot more inviting and friendlier, and it's not competitive. It’s a friendly community of bands really wanting to help each other out.”
Lenz has many fond memories of playing Milwaukee, including their very first one. They were opening for Trampled by Turtles at Shank Hall. “That was when we were first kind of getting out and about when we were doing some tours with Trampled by Turtles,” he recalls. “I remember that one was so great. We also had a really fun show.”
Pert Near Sandstone will livestream June 12-13 from the Blue Ox festival grounds in celebration of their new album. Other artists will play as well, some from their homes.
