The bluegrass is greener these days for Tennessee Boltsmokers

The Tennessee Boltsmokers: (From left) Eric Lewis, Mark McKinney and David Pierce.

Following a triumphant appearance at the 2008 South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, local bluegrass super group the Tennessee Boltsmokers just seemed to disappear for more than a year. With their third full-length release languishing in the mixing and mastering stage, the band members felt the pull of their personal and professional lives tearing them away from the lonesome highway.

“I want to say it was about a 15 month gap when everybody got sidetracked and busy doing something, and we were also waiting for the record to get finished,” says banjo player and guitarist Louis Meyers, whose day job is head of the Memphis-based music organization Folk Alliance. “It was a little hard to feel like a band during that time just because we weren’t really a band during that time.”

Photo by By Laura Hajar

The Tennessee Boltsmokers: (From left) Eric Lewis, Craig Yarbrough, Mark McKinney, David Pierce, Louis Jay Meyers.

Last summer the band, which performs Saturday at Otherlands, re-emerged from its hiatus and in November finally released Vintage All American Dream, a collection frontman Mark McKinney calls the most accomplished of the group’s three efforts.

“If you were to put this record up against the first two you can really hear that it’s much tighter,” says McKinney, who first came to prominence in the ’90s as a member of the roots rock outfit the Pawtuckets. “Vintage isn’t just my writing and then coming up and saying, ‘Hey, you guys, do this.’ It was more of a band effort in that, because of all the rehearsing and picking sessions that we had in the creative process, everybody go to put in their two cents.”

Among those chiming in are mandolin player David Pierce, who makes his recording debut with the group on Vintage and contributed the breakneck instrumental “Jumpstop” to the album. The son of a bluegrass Dobro player who has picked around in area bands and hootenannies for years, Pierce joined the band in 2007, replacing founding member Andy Ratliff.

“David, arguably, has more bluegrass background than any of us do,” McKinney says of the “new guy.” “The more I play with him, the more I’m in awe of what he can do. Andy was great, but they’re two totally different styles.”

Vintage is also the first Boltsmokers release Meyers has gotten to be a part of from start to finish. The Texas native signed on in 2005 and overdubbed parts on their 2006 release, Hydroradio. But he got to put his full imprint on the new record, penning the song “Black Soda Gazette” and shaking up the sound in more profound ways.

“Louis just changed our band with his banjo playing,” says McKinney, citing his driving lines on the band’s signature cover of Eddie Rabbit’s “Driving My Life Away,” which is included on the new collection. “I was just like everybody else: There’s only so much you can do with a banjo. Even Bella Fleck, as great as he is, I can’t listen to for more than 5, 10 minutes, which is one song. But Louis has just got this great take on the banjo. I never get tired of hearing him play.”

The original plan for the Vintage recording session was to enlist a producer who had never made a bluegrass record. The band drew up a wish list of local producers, including lo-fi indie rockers, old school soul names like Willie Mitchell, and even some rap helmers. Ultimately, they went with a familiar presence, Grammy winner Paul Ebersold (Three Doors Down, Green River Ordinance, Skillet) whom McKinney had worked with on the Pawtuckets albums.

“Paul is just such a good ol’ boy; I’d always assumed he’d done that kind of record before, but he hadn’t. He’d only done rock, so it was new ground for him,” says McKinney. “He also really got the approach we were doing, that we wanted to do it all live. And his rock-and-roll background made for a really aggressive mix, so everything’s pretty hot.”

The Tennessee Boltsmokers

Saturday at Otherlands, 641 S. Cooper. Doors open 7 p.m. Admission: $7. For more information, call 278-4994 or visit myspace.com/otherlands.

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