The Devil Makes Three, in case you’re unfamiliar, is a Santa Cruz-based trio (guitar, banjo, bass) whose music spans pretty much anything that can justifiably hang under the roots music umbrella – country, ragtime, bluegrass, blues…all with a punk rock spirit. Their latest release, Do Wrong Right (buy from Amazon) leans decidedly more toward classic-style country music than any of their previous efforts – a fact which, guitarist/singer Peter Bernhard was careful to note, was purely unintentional. Lending a moment from his day to our preview of the upcoming Bumbershoot festival, Bernhard was kind enough to give us the following Q&A (bonus video at the end):
What’s the difference for you between playing festivals or clubs? Do you have a preference?
I like both. I don’t know, there is a difference for sure. Festivals…there’s so much going on it can be harder to get people’s attention than a club show when everyone’s packed in and there’s nowhere to go. There’s not much competition then. [laughs] But I like doing both. They’re both very fun, just very different.
There is that 15-minute attention span at festivals. Do you feel that from the crowd?
Yeah, sure. I think everybody just wants to see everything. They check things out for as long as they’re scheduled to do so. I think with our band oftentimes, depending on the festival, there’s not too many bands who sound like us at a rock festival. So that helps. If we’re playing at a bluegrass festival, then you don’t get much mileage out of that. We’ve been to indie [rock] festivals before where we were the only band who didn’t have a drummer, so that holds people’s attention longer.
Is there [a song] you know you can always pull out to get the crowd?
We try to keep our whole show pretty high energy so that doesn’t happen. We do that no matter what, though. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a festival or a club show. We try to keep it moving at a high energy. If people don’t want to listen, there’s nothing you can do to make them. We just do our best to put on a great show.
What are you listening to on the road?
To be totally honest, I haven’t been listening to that much music at all. I’ve been trying to write music. I have been listening to friends of mine that nobody’s probably ever heard of.
So you don’t listen to music to get inspired when you’re writing? You try to shut out other people’s work?
I do sometimes, but I don’t really listen to music to get inspired to write music.
What do you do to get there, or does it just come?
I don’t really do anything. I just play guitar and sit there with a notebook. It doesn’t sound very exciting, but that’s how I go about it. I just play a lot, and hopefully something sticks.
How do you think your music has changed over the years?
A lot of people have been saying this album is a lot more country and a lot more traditional than our other records, but that was kind of an accident. We didn’t really plan for that to happen. In my eyes, we’ve become a tighter band. I think we play together better than we ever did before. We’ve introduced some new instruments. I play slide guitar now and there’s five-string banjo, which we didn’t do on the other records. We play tenor banjo now…basically we’ve learned to play more instruments instead of adding more people to the group. I think we’re just more comfortable playing together.
But it’s not a conscious thing…
No I don’t really do that. For the most part, whatever songs I think are good enough for the record are the songs that make it on. I don’t do a lot of thinking about the last record. The last record is in the past and hopefully I’m growing as a songwriter, and therefore the songs will be different.
Is there anything you won’t play live?
Oh yeah, there’s a lot of stuff we won’t play live. Some of it just doesn’t translate. It either has extra instrumentation – we had some friends in the studio – or it’s really, really slow. We don’t really play “For My Family” – it’s basically just me and a guitar and doesn’t make much sense in a live show. There are a couple of other songs we don’t play live. We don’t play a couple of songs that Cooper sings because it was written in such a low register that he has trouble projecting them live. “Ten Feet Tall” we don’t really do live for that reason. We have…some stuff that doesn’t come across as well [live], but then when people buy the record, it sounds really great on there.
What are your three favorite records of all time?
That’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m more of an artist person than [someone who loves] a certain record. I don’t really have a record I love, but I have songwriters I love. I love Townes Van Zadnt – he’s a big one. His record Live at the Old Quarter (download from Amazon) is a pretty awesome record. I love Willy Dixon – he wrote songs for Howlin Wolf and Little Walter and a bunch of great Chicago blues guys. I listen to a lot of different types of music and usually get more into the person than the record itself.
What is it about Townes Van Zandt, do you think?
I think his songwriting is just really simple, but kind of like poetry. He doesn’t use too many words to say things that are hard to say. If I was writing it, I’d probably write a lot more, but he doesn’t have to. I think he’s just very controlled and powerful. When I listen to his songs, I want to write more songs like that. They’re an inspiration.
So when you sit down to write, are you consciously thinking “I’m going to try to restrain a bit more”?
I do, definitely. It’s harder to write less, at least for me. So if I can get the point across with less words then I’ve succeeded in some way.
In addition to their stop at Bumbershoot, the Devil Makes Three will be touring the West Coast in October. Check their website for dates. Here’s a taste of what you might see at the shows:
