When Jon Stickley first picked up a guitar, he saw himself becoming a rocker. Luckily for the world, he found the music of the mountains and hasn’t looked back, exploring the far edges of classical, jazz, and bluegrass in ways he never could have imagined. Blazing his own path with his bandmates fiddle player Lyndsay Pruett and drummer Patrick Armitage, the Jon Stickley Trio has become a force of musical exploration and innovation. As their recent performances as part of the Suwannee Summer Clusterpluck showed, these three eclectic musicians can tear up any kind of picking party. Our own Rex Thomson caught up with the fiery fretboard wizard in between shows and quizzed him about the evolution of his sound, the importance of communication in music, and the inherent difficulty in directing bluegrass musicians. Enjoy!
Live For Live Music: The Jon Stickley Trio has an incredibly eclectic sound. You leap from classical to Americana to jazz in a split second. How do you describe your music to folks?
Jon Stickley: It really is a challenge, isn’t it? I’d say you got a good start there—like neoclassical jazz with elements of bluegrass and southern revival. And with the heavy groove of the drums, we get a little hip-hop in there. Electro-harmonic-jazz-grass? Something like that.
L4LM: Speaking of defying descriptions, you merge the flat-picking styles used for classical with the more bluegrass variations to a spectacular effect. For those unfamiliar with the term, can you help us understand the concept of the “Flat Pick?”
JS: In traditional American music, before a certain point of time, guitars were used primarily as a rhythm instrument with a pick or for melodies, using classical guitars with fingers. It wasn’t until Doc Watson and his generation started playing lead and melody lines with a pick on acoustic guitars that they needed to come up with a name for that style. And so they came up with the term “Flat Picking.” It’s just basically playing leads, melodies, and rhythms with the flat of the pick instead of strumming with it. It’s a mentality to embrace as much as a physical style.
L4LM: How did you come to embrace this approach for yourself?
JS: I would say I got into bluegrass in high school. Before that, I was all about the rock and roll electric guitars with the amplifiers and even took some classical guitar lessons. But then a good friend of mine, Andy Thorn, introduced me to the music of David Grisman and Bela Fleck and I just fell in love with the sound of the mandolin. Andy lent me a mandolin, and I worked and worked. I wanted to play like Sam Bush and Grisman, so I worked really hard at that for awhile. Then I went off to college, and there was a band that I really wanted to join but they already had a mandolinist. They also had a rhythm guitarist who sang. So I said, “Hey, why don’t you let me be the lead guitarist in the band?”
L4LM: Why start at the bottom?
JS: Right? So that’s when I started really working on playing the guitar. I joined the band, and we played a few nights a week all four years I was in school. Those four years, I really focused on playing lead acoustic guitar, and I never looked back.
L4LM: Your third full-length album, Maybe Believe, came out a few weeks ago. How’s the reception to it been for you?
Jon Stickley: It’s been really good, thankfully. Reviewers from publications across the spectrum have been saying great things. This album is very different. It’s representative of all the work we have put in on the road. It’s very cohesive and representative of the style we’ve developed as a unit. The songs on Maybe Believe were written more as a band, with our three players in mind as we went. The songs weren’t just arranged for us, they were written with us specifically in mind.
L4LM: Do you view your records as collections of the best songs you can write, or is there an overall thematic point you are trying to make?
JS: As the band moves forward, we are definitely headed more towards the thematic side of the equation. It’s taken us a while to figure out our identity. I would say Lost At Last, our previous album had some fiddle tunes and covers, but there wasn’t an overall theme. On Maybe Believe, we have more original material, more little tunes that can act as intros to longer pieces, more of a true picture of us as a band. It reflects our ideas and our heart. Of course, we do slip one traditional bluegrass cover. . . . You gotta pay tribute.
L4LM: Your upcoming tour schedule has you hitting all four corners of the country and tons of points between. Do you see your music getting received differently in different areas of the country, or is your sound so diverse that you can find fans everywhere?
Jon Stickley: Even in areas where the people are known for having a finely tuned bluegrass ear, we are getting well received. What we do is so out of the box that it doesn’t really compare. Purists are upset with us for not sticking close enough to one genre or another. Everyone seems to recognize we are doing our own thing. People don’t have the expectations you might find in other genres. In other areas not so bluegrass heavy, they aren’t worried about any of that. They just want to hear good music. Hopefully, we are giving them that.
L4LM: With so many elements to feature, it seems like you have built a sound for yourself that can almost infinitely expand without repeating yourselves.
JS: That’s good that you feel that way, because that is one of my worries—repeating myself. With just three of us, it’s kinda limited. But we can do so many things stylistically, so the well has not run dry yet.
L4LM: Being in a trio, you have a lot more leeway in how much space you can allow each other. How much thought is put into the balance between the three musical voices?
JS: We work very hard on making sure our parts are complimentary. At times, it seems like there is almost too much space. I have watched clips of us play and thought that it could maybe stand to sound a little more full. Performance wise, it is really fun and challenging to make the music sound as dense as we can. A lot of the time, there is no bass. With less going on behind, say, a solo, you have to work harder to keep that solo rooted enough in the song so that it doesn’t lose focus but expansive enough to say something melodic without going into the stratosphere. Musically, we all like going off into space, but you gotta stay close to the groove, at least a bit, so you hold onto the people. Without that standard bass and cymbal backbone, it is more challenging, but it doesn’t get boring.
L4LM: In a trio, trust is that much more important since there are only three of you. Do you feel like you have that in your band?
JS: Yes, completely. It is a very intimate relationship, and everything each person does can completely affect the music. We can do everything from totally support or completely fuck with each other if we want to. If one of us feels the song is dragging or rushing, you can put your foot down and state very clearly what you want the song to be doing. We can all hear each other so well. Everyone adjusts accordingly. It’s very conversational.
L4LM: I hear a lot of musicians say that playing together is like having a conversation.
Jon Stickley: That is exactly how it is with us. That gets more into the jazzy side of us. We leave a lot of room for improvisation in our songs so we can take things in new directions if we feel the need.
L4LM: The Jon Stickley Trio was one of the main elements at the recent Suwannee Summer Clusterpluck that was just held at Spirit of The Suwannee Music Park, which turned into a pretty incredible picking party. I understand you had a hand in putting together the Saturday evening portion of the craziness. How did you end up helping herd those cats?
JS: Well, we knew we were gonna have our own thirty-minute set before everyone came out for the big finale. So I took it upon myself to make sure we had some kind of plan. We knew everyone involved and, given some of the artists involved, I felt pretty honored to be involved. Everyone was okay with taking the lead for a song. So we came up with a rough setlist and figured out what the finale and a possible encore could be. We kinda built the songs so people could come and go if they wanted, but then we managed to get everyone out at once. I do want to say Julianne, my manager and now wife, was extremely helpful in wrangling all the different players up when it was their time.
L4LM: That is impressive. Directing Vince Herman alone is probably a full-time job.
JS: Exactly!
L4LM: It looks like you and your bandmates are quite fond of the Spirit Of The Suwannee Music Park, as you end up playing there two or three times a year. Does that place have some sort of hold on you?
JS: Oh yes! It’s the best venue I’ve ever played. Ever since my first trip in 2006, it has completely changed my life. I hope to be playing there for the rest of my days. If we can, we like to stay the whole weekend, set up shop at the Bill Monroe shrine, and play and pick the night away.
L4LM: Do you have any distinct memories from the late night after parties where you played ’til dawn?
JS: So many. My favorites are the ones that people have told me about that I don’t quite remember for some reason—stories of me coming out of the darkness to join a jam and playing the craziest, most confusing solos and then just fading away. I feel motivated and moved more there than most anywhere in the world. We traditionally pick over near the shrine, but we make sure to visit the other circles.
L4LM: Well, thanks for taking the time to chat with us and for trying to take the music somewhere new. We always need more of that in our lives!
JS: Our pleasure. See you out there!