Telluride Daily Planet Feature

By Katie Klingsporn

Three men, a banjo, guitar, bass and kick drum. Seems like a modest outfit.

But sometimes, when The Avett Brothers really get going, they wail and
thrash on their instruments and belt out the words so loud and with so much
passion that it feels like they want to take said instruments and start
breaking things with them. Like furniture. Or windows.

It’s this spirit of traditional sounds on the edge of chaos that has gotten
The Avett Brothers noticed — and placed into the category of punkgrass. And
it’s this quality, whatever you want to call it, that makes their music
refreshing, new and intriguing.

The Avett Brothers will take the stage in Town Park today at 2 p.m. In
addition, the trio is playing a Nightgrass gig tonight at the Sheridan Opera
House alongside Crooked Still at 10:45 p.m.

The Avett Brothers music is honest, kind of bare-all in an unselfconscious
and raw way that manages to avoid being maudlin. They aren’t afraid to sing
pleading love songs or songs about lament, loss and shame, but the words
come across as sincere instead of effusive.

The sound is mostly roughshod, back porch Appalachian folk and bluegrass,
but some of the songs are closer to Beatles-style pop. Although tinges of
old-timey course through their songs, they don’t stick to the boundaries of
any single genre.
And regardless of classifications, the real strength in The Avett Brothers
lies in the vocals — Seth and Scott Avett weave beautiful, intuitive
harmonies — the songwriting and the live performances.

Live, it is said, these guys put on an intense, captivating show.

“We do put a lot of energy into our live shows, and I think people really
latch onto that,” said bassist Bob Crawford. “It feels like being in the eye
of the hurricane sometimes. There’s a lot of emotion. It feels like an
athletic event.”

Crawford sort of struggles for these words. It’s hard to describe something
that you just do naturally.

“It’s just kind of always what we’ve done,” he said. “It’s nothing out of
the ordinary for us. We’ve never set out and said we want our live shows to
be like this.”

The North Carolina band, which has been going at it hard for six years,
released its newest album, “Emotionalism,” on May 15, and the band is
suddenly seeing a lot of attention.

They have been nominated for Album of the Year, Duo-Group of the Year and
New and Emerging Artist by the American Music Association. Word of mouth is
buzzing about them, and they recently made an appearance at Wakarusa and on
the Conan O’Brien show. Now they are coming to main stage at Telluride
Bluegrass.

“We’ve been doing it for about six years now, and it feels like we’re kind
of getting the fruits of our labor,” Crawford said. The band has played more
than 200 shows a year for the past three years and has worked hard to make
music and get it out there, he said. “It takes a toll ... you’re doing what
you want to do, but there is a lot of it that is sacrifice.”

With “Emotionalism,” The Avett Brothers have a collection more polished than
any preceding it. The process of songwriting, honing and working through the
songs was more painstaking for this album, Crawford said.

“Every song is very well-crafted, meaning time spent, time put into it,” he
said.

The band formed six years ago, but brothers Seth and Scott Avett have been
playing music together as long as they can remember, and it shows through
their easy interplay and implicit connection.

The siblings started out in rock and roll, and it was in 1998 while they
were in a rock group called Nemo that Scott began hooking up with fellow
flat-pickers once a week in Greenville, N.C., to play acoustic bluegrass and
country. Seth soon joined in, and the brothers really took to this music.

As Nemo disbanded, the brothers dove headlong into acoustic, feeling that
this music was more natural and truthful than anything they’d created
before. Crawford became the third member of the band, and the journey began.
The band since has become a mainstay on the southern touring circuit, and
has been to Bluegrass once before, two years ago, playing a short breakfast
gig in Mountain Village.

They were too pressed for time to do anything in Telluride, but took a
gondola ride so they could survey the town from above. This time, they’ll be
heading to the thick of it in Town Park, and sticking around for a couple
days.