Interview with Twisted Pine:

Kathleen Parks: My father was a professional trumpet player and my mother was a dancer – it was inevitable!

Dan Bui: I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. BEATLEMANIA.

 

Chris Sartori: My 3rd grade teacher played the saxophone and I thought he was really cool. So I started on sax but later switched to bass.

 

Anh Phung: The ballet class was full so I had to pick up the flute instead. (At age 4)

How did you come together as a group and what’s in the name Twisted Pine?

 

The genesis of this group came from the fertile hotbed of bluegrass music in Boston, MA. Ground zero: the Cantab Lounge in Central Square. We started out playing bluegrass music and fine tuning our sound. Meeting each other along the way when we found this particular combination of people, we knew we had found something. The name Twisted Pine goes back to the early days of playing bluegrass dive bars, weddings, and band contests.

Thanks for that! We’re glad you like them. Usually one person will bring a full song or a piece of a song to the band, we’ll sit with it and work it out together until we can find an arrangement or come up with a new part to add to the song. Lyrics are worked on and edited the whole time during this process and a lot of times are finished later. We like to work out these new songs on the road before we head into the studio to record them as we like to see our audience’s reaction to the different arrangements we come up with. So who knows, you just might be part of a funky song experiment without even knowing!

NPR calls your music “an upbeat, poppy, vibe” and the Boston Globe calls your group “boundary jumpers akin to outfits like the Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek, and Crooked Still.” How would you describe your sound to our audience? Who are your musical influences?

 

Although we have roots in bluegrass, our musical tastes go beyond that. Every band member has a plethora of musical influences and all contribute to the sound of the band. We definitely have a funky side to us along with an Americana folk roots side. In our solos we like to push the boundaries and take it to a new place. Our musical influences are Bill Withers, Bela Fleck & The Flecktones, Nina Simone, John Hartford, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, and Stevie Wonder.

Although it’s hard to plan for the future (especially the last two years), as musicians and a touring band, what are your plans moving forward?

We want to continue to be out on the road touring hard. It’s tough out there but it’s the only life for us. We want to start playing jazz festivals, and we want to release a new record of original music.