There’s no denying it… Greensky Bluegrass is hot! The band continues to win over new fans on a nightly basis, providing fans with some of the most emotional and energetic performances in the business. With the highly-acclaimed release If Sorrows Swim in 2014, GSBG continues to prove that the (green) sky is the limit for this immensely talented band.

We sat down with the band’s dobro player extraordinaire, Anders Beck, to discuss the band’s work ethic, love of Phish (and seeing them play Dark Side of the Moon in 1998!), performing with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, and so many exciting updates from life on the road. Read on for Rex Thomson’s exclusive interview with Beck below:

L4LM:  Greensky Bluegrass is an old fashioned success story, succeeding through hard work.  Over the last five years, how many shows would you say the band has averaged?

Anders Beck:  I don’t know exactly, I would say about one hundred and fifty per year.  There were times a few years back where we were getting close to two hundred shows a year.  But now we’re easing it back down a bit, I think we’ll be playing one hundred and twenty five shows this year. It equals up to a lot of time on the road, that’s for sure.

L4LM:  That raises a question…how much of the year are you away from home?  

AB:  I don’t know…two thirds of the year?  Maybe almost three quarters of every year.    

L4LM:  I don’t know if people get the real sense of how far you guys go to bring the music to the people.  Over these years on the road, you’ve slowly and surely watched your crowds get bigger.  I’m sure they all blend together a bit, and it happened over time, but were you getting a sense of how many fans were coming into the fold as it happened?

AB:  Yeah, it all does sorta blend together.  I guess so, it seems like the crowds have gotten bigger.  We’ve moved to bigger rooms. It just keeps growing, and from our perspective, it’s really exciting.  Just to kinda hark back to that first question…like I said, we’re out on the road a lot.  

But I wanna make one thing perfectly clear here.  We spend a lot of time on the road, but I am by no means complaining about it. We’re so lucky to get to do what we do.  I’m thankful and continually flabbergasted that this is my job, to play music for people.

This growth thing didn’t happen overnight though…we’re not one hit wonders.  This slowly growing thing is good, it’s natural.  That’s how you stay connected with fans.  I know a surprising amount of people thanks to living this life.  

I know a surprising amount of people out in the crowd when I look.  They’re all there, all the time, it seems, at multiple different shows.  We’re playing all across the country, and we see these faces out there where ever we go…and it’s a very special thing for sure.

L4LM:  It seems like every time around the country you guys have to add another night, or play a bigger place, just to accommodate folks.  But you still have an occasional slow week night.  You recently “punished” some fans for not making it to a show with a set of rarities followed by a set of Grateful Dead tunes.  Can you tell us a little bit about where the inspiration for that and the message you wanted to send?

AB: It was in the middle of a BIG West Coast run where lots of people came to the three California shows…LA and the two San Francisco Halloween shows and in between that and the three night Portland run was that Bend (Oregon) show you’re talking about.  A lot of folks came to all three nights in Portland too and that show got kinda a “Out-Of-The-Way Casual Wednesday” kinda feel to it.  

It was a small room, but it was packed.  And really, we were just tryin’ to have fun.  I think playing the whole Dead set, and all the rarities…we weren’t tryin’ to punish anybody. We were just havin’ a good time and rewarding the people that WERE there.  

Also, we were tryin’ to keep it fun and fresh for us.  We’ve never done anything like that.  We’ve never played a whole set of the Dead…We’ve tried NOT to, especially this year, the fiftieth anniversary and everybody is so focused on it.  We were kinda leery about going down that road but we said “Ehhhh…” We just thought it would be fun.

Greensky Bluegrass Punishes Wednesday Night Slackers With Bust Outs, All Grateful Dead Set

I used to go see Phish a lot, back a long time ago, and they would do what they would call “You SNOOZE, You LOSE” tour.  So there’s be all these shows that were really easy to get to, but then there’d a mid week show somewhere…A perfect example is Salt Lake City in ’98.  I think what is was was after Halloween, Halloween was in Vegas that year, and there was the one show in Salt Lake in between there and Colorado, a multiple night run there.

I was on Phish tour then and so many people decided to skip Utah, for whatever reason, and they just wanted to get to Colorado.  So here was this arena that was only about a third full. And I knew better than to miss the show. I was in the seventh row, and there was enough room to spread my arms out completely and be dancing.  And then the second set they came out and played the entire Pink Floyd “Dark Side Of The Moon” album, with no warning out of nowhere.

And that was sort of a hard lesson to fans.  Don’t skip shows.  We have a lot of really great fans.  Obviously not compared to Phish in ’98 where they were playing arenas and all, and I always felt that move was a nod to Phamily.  Like, “If you come to the out of the way shows, you will be rewarded.”  So that set came out of that playbook.  But again, it’s not about “Punishing” more than messing with people and giving them rewards for coming to a really small show.   

L4LM:  Playing between 125-200 shows a year would make anyone want to mix it up…

AB:  We really like to mix it up.  Keeps it fresh for us, keeps it fresh for the fans who come to a lot of shows.  but yeah, for us we gotta keep it fresh and exciting.  It’ll be something like that, or sometimes we’ll do an all request show or a cover show…all kinds of music all across the board.

L4LM:  Do you ever worry about losing the spirit?

AB:  I don’t think so.  It’s nice that we’re doing bigger and bigger shows, and that we can be more comfortable and we can take a little bit more time off and recharge the batteries a little more often.  Just because we pretend we are, we’re not twenty-four anymore, obviously.  But we are now at our best, and we continue to THINK we’re twenty-four still, so I don’t see anymore slowing or stopping in the near future, that’s for sure.            

L4LM:  What do you see your role as in the band, musically, and as a “Locker Room” guy?

AB:  We’re lucky to have great song writers and lyricists in the band.  Musically, my role is to put some musical emotion between those words.  Particularly with the dobro, it’s a very lyrical instrument.  It can really SPEAK, in the right hands.  My job, my role as I see it, is to sorta “Sing,” lyrically, when there’s no words going on.  

And, y’know, a big part of what I do in the band is the musical motivational stuff.  I try and create bigger jams every night that sound like they’re new songs. It relates these moods and moments that are so cool.  A lot of people are taking very serious set notes, and I’ll see them and they’ll have noted “I think Anders was playing something during ‘Don’t Lie,’ but I couldn’t place what song it was.”  

That’s a compliment, in my opinion, because I wasn’t playing something else. I wasn’t covering any kind of song or jam, I was trying to create something in the moment that was put together enough that someone else thought “Maybe that’s something I can’t place.” That it sounds put together enough that it sounds like another song.

That’s kinda my role in the band, as best as I can describe it.   

L4LM:  You’re certainly a very expressive player.  It IS almost like you’re singing with your sounds.  I’m not sure if that’s a question or just a compliment.

AB:  (Laughs)  I’ll take the compliment.  I’m not a very good singer, so I gotta do it somehow, so the dobro works very well for me. I’ll let our lyrical voices do the singing, and I’ll do my part in the moments in between.  Luckily we’ve got other guys who can do it justice.

L4LM:  You guys have Paul (Hoffman) and that guy has a million dollar voice.

AB:  Truth.
        
L4LM:  Do you remember the first time you heard a long bent guitar chord?  Was it one of those “Instant Recognition” moments?

AB:  I DO remember where I heard it the first time.  It’s interesting, we’re at Telluride right now, we just got here.  I was at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, I don’t know, ten or fifteen years ago and I was getting into bluegrass.  I was an electric guitar player, and getting into bluegrass, and playing acoustic and that flat picking guitar style was really hard.

I guess I was still searching for what I was gonna do…what my role in this bluegrass music was gonna be like. I walked by a dobro workshop with Jerry Douglas and some other folks and I heard…I heard…that sound.  It hit me like a ton of bricks.  I was like “There it is.”  

It sounded like the electric guitar of acoustic music.  That’s the kind of way I describe the dobro.  In the bluegrass realm, it just sounds like a different thing. It has that sustain, that sound of an electric guitar.  And that’s where I was coming from.  I bought one the next day and started playing six hours a day.        

L4LM:  For the record, what do YOU call your type of instrument?

AB:  (Laughs)  Well, it’s called the dobro, or the resonator guitar.  Those are the real names for it, but somewhere along the lines…the drop steel thing kinda…I’ll just tell you the story.  You know that lap steel and pedal steel…those are kinda slide guitars right?  We always joked around about all the names people say when they refer to my instrument.  

Myself, Robin Davis, Travis Book and maybe Benny Galloway were playing a gig at the Mishawaka and the sound guy didn’t know what to call my instrument during sound check.  And he was like, into the stage mic…”Let me hear that…uh…slide guitar or whatever.”  And we were just looking at him like ‘What the hell are you talking about?”  Finally he said “Why don’t you just go ahead and play that “Drop Steel” for me?”  And we just started cracking up! Because that’s not the name of any instrument.    

So from that moment, my buddies and I decided “Lo, it shall be called the “Drop Steel.”  It just kinda stuck, and now I put it on the album credit, even though it’s not a real thing.  Somehow it’s become the code for my kinda dobro playing.  All because of one funny moment when somebody didn’t know what to call the weird instrument I played. 

Anders with The Infamous Stringdusters and Allie Kral playing Wild Bill Jones

L4LM:  You seem to enjoy watching the crowd as much as they enjoy watching you.  What’s the view like from up there?

AB:  Sometimes it’s really dark, sometimes it’s really light.  (Chuckles)  I think it goes back to what I said before…I’m incredibly lucky to get to do what I get to do.  It’s fun to make music people are gettin’ down to, or dancing or feeling emotions.

The other night in Missoula we opened with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken“… we don’t usually play that song, I just thought it’d be kinda fun…and this lady in the front…she just started bawling.  As much fun as it is to make make people dance and have a good time, I’m not saying I want to make people cry at our shows all the time, watching that lady react like that reminded me of the power of music.  That power, that kind of emotion…that’s one of my favorite things to see.  

It’s good for us. Seeing the love we give cross over into the audience, usually in the form of everybody bogeying down, don’t get me wrong but it can be amazing.

L4LM:  You seem to be watching folks in the crowd sometimes, sort of vibe-ing off them…watching them go off into and come back from space.

AB:  I connect pretty well with people in the audience, I think.  I find people I connect with, and I keep tabs on them. And I’m completely guilty of trying to flatten people.  It’s cool to connect with people on a musical, emotional level…and when I do I keep tabs on them for sure.  Guilty!  (Laughs)     

L4LM:  You guys play a wide variety of covers, all in so many different directions. Do you feel any obligation to keep some songs, like say “Working On A Building” more traditional, or is any tune fair game for a complete reworking?

AB:  Y’Know…I do feel a certain responsibility to keep the old tunes really traditional, but they’re all fair game really.  In the end though, we like to write our own tunes.

Watch Greensky Bluegrass Embrace Their Roots With A Special Star Studded Set From The Northwest String Summit

L4LM:  Your band goes a different direction with your stage presentation than most jam grass bands, giving the crowd a full-on light show.  Was it a conscious decision by the band to go for that level of production?

AB:  Absolutely a conscious decision. We have probably one of the best sound engineers in the business in Greg Burns and one of the best up and coming lighting designers, our guy Lincoln.  They’re both doing great things with our sound and lights. I’m always gonna want it to get bigger.

That’s always been the goal, to grow. It’s stunning, from note one, the way it sounds the way it looks.  It took a while to get here, and we’re still evolving….getting bigger, getting better.   I’m always gonna want it to sound as good as it can, and look as cool as it can.  Those guys kill it for us.  I love it.  It’s a big part of the music for me.

It’s like…there’s only so much you can take of staring at five dumb asses on a stage…But if we can give them something visually stunning to look at then…(Laughs)  Yes.  It was definitely a conscious decision.

L4LM:  You’re back living in Colorado, where you lived a long time previously.  Can you tell me what it was like for you back then, and what it’s like now?

AB:  Yeah, I’m in Denver now, when I used to live in Durango.  Denver’s always been a really big city but Durango was more of a small town back in those days.  I’d actually love to be in Durango, but being close to the airport trumps anything else at this time.  Denver’s close to the mountains, but not IN the mountains, like Durango was. Denver’s a great city.  It’s got a great music scene.   

L4LM:  I’ve seen you play with Benny “Burle” Galloway a couple of times, and you have referred to him as almost a mentor.  Could you tell me about your musical and personal history together?

AB:  We were in a band called The Wayw0rd Sons before I was in Greensky. Livin’ in Durango, it was myself, Burle was there, Travis from The Infamous Stringdusters was down here, and this was before Broke Mountain which was Andy Thorn, John Stickley, Robin and Travis. Burle served as a mentor on one level because he wanted to be playing music at all tiomes.  It was awesome!  I would just go to his house and play music, and write songs and see what everyone was doing.

From a music side, that’s how I learned to appreciate good music.  And that’s how I ended up joining Greensky when I did.  Coming from working with Burle, I probably could have joined a bunch of different bands, but Greensky had the songs, they had damn good songs. With Burle, I learned there were either good songs or crappy songs.  And we don’t like crappy songs. So he really influenced me a lot as far as learning what a great song is and the word “Bad” is not a word attributed to Greensky much.

So that’s the musical side.  On the personal side, he was always really encouraging me to play music.  We spent a lot of time driving around in a van talking shit together…so y’know…(Chuckles)…it’s just one of those things.

L4LM:  This has been the 50th Anniversary celebration of The Grateful Dead all year.  Greensky even played in Chicago during the celebration.  You’ve played with the surviving members on occasion.  Can you tell me a little about what the Grateful Dead’s music has meant to you?

AB: Yeah!  The Dead is how I started to get into music, into improvisational, jam band music with really good lyrics. When I was a kid, I started listening to a lot of the Dead because of a friend’s older brother.  And once we moved to Philadelphia my parents were crazy enough to let me go see Dead shows when I was like fifteen or sixteen.  

My mom would let me go to like three night runs of the Grateful Dead at The Spectrum, like, on school nights!  Which is crazy!  Somehow I convinced her that it was about the music.  I was playing guitar at the time and I convinced her how it was important to go see this band every night because something magical might happen.  So I got to go see these shows when I was maybe too young to really appreciate them. I saw like thirty three real Grateful Dead shows, like, with Jerry, before he died.    

So the band means a lot to me, as they served as my introduction to the music and the world we’re part of now.  As far as playing with the guys…we had Billy and Mickey play with us at the Hoxeyville Music Festival.  We did “China>Rider” with those two guys playing drums on Greensky’s stage.  It was a ridiculously powerful moment for me.  

Emotionally, it was incredible.  Billy was like “Yeah, let’s play together!”  Their stuff was gettin’ set up behind us because they were playing next on the stage and I was introduced to Billy and he wanted to play with us and I was like “Really?”  I got kinda emotional.  Playing with a guy from a band that I loved so much. Then I saw him looking back and saw Mickey (Hart) peeking from behind the curtain…and Mickey was like “Hey! Can I play too?”  

I just stared at him.  I think it was because I was in shock. I was like “What?!”  And I think he took my stare as a  “Uh…maybe not?” but I was like “No no dude!  C’Mon Get your ass up here!  You can play too!  Yes.  You’re allowed to do that.” So all of a sudden we have BOTH of them onstage, and we rip into “China Cat” and the power of those two drummers, and they were just raging.  We’re like an acoustic band most nights…it was just incredibly powerful, emotionally powerful…physically powerful.  It was like a freight train onstage with us.  

I remember looking back to hear that part of “I Know You Rider,” where the jam goes into “I Know You Rider” and it goes (Hums intro to “I Know You Rider”) and the look on Billy’s face was comical.  Like, “Oh yeah, I know where we’re going dude, don’t worry.”  When you’re in a band you look to each other for cues, right?  And here were these two guys who had played these songs a billion times…and they were like “Dude, don’t worry…we gotcha.” so…that was pretty awesome.

Playing with Phil Lesh at Terrapin Crossroads was incredibly special. What he did, what he does…it’s incredible. He’s still playing so well.  The idea was we wanted to play some Dead songs, but he wanted to play some of our songs too.  So we wanted to kinda twist them in and out of each other…that was amazing.  Just walking around and seeing Phil’s bass rig set up next to my dobro rig…I was like “Okay, this is crazy.”

At sound check we played a bunch of stuff…and Phil, he had written charts of songs we had written.  It was realy interesting to hear what he did over songs we had made.  We did “All Four” and we did “Don’t Lie” with him…and to hear what did…I mean, it’s one thing to play “Eyes Of The World” and hear Phil do what Phil does and it’s incredibly special and super cool.  But to hear what he does, how he sounds on our original songs…it just really made it magical.  

He’s a great, great musician.  He’s seventy-five and he’s still just unbelievable.  That was…probably one of the most special musical nights of my life.  I don’t know what would really top it.  To play with a musician you love, and have him love playing our music and be excited about it…a lot of the older guys don’t seem to be as excited about new, original music.  

But he really, truly was excited about it.  The vibe was amazing.  He’s a musicologist on many levels, and for him to be so excited about playing our stuff…it was just amazing.  That was my big takeaway from that, other than just “Holy shit! I was just in on a sit in with Phil!” So yeah.  Theres that.  (Chuckles)              

L4LM:  How ready are you for Jam Cruise?

AB:  For Jam Cruise?  I’m always ready for Jam Cruise!  Man, you’re asking me about all my favorite stuff…It’s gonna sound like I love everything, which is okay I guess.  Jam Cruise…it’s kinda hard to put into words.  It’s bad ass.  It’s the most fun you can have.  Musically, people wise…it’s just great.  I like to say I’d been training my whole life for something, but I just didn’t know what it was.  Then I found Jam Cruise and I knew.

Will we see you at “The Spot” with Nathan Moore and the crew?

AB:  Hell yes.  Absolutely.  I love it there.

L4LM:  Do you have time for a fan question or two?

AB:  Sure!

L4LM:  Any chance of some sort of a Brokeback…err.. Broke Mountain reunion show?

AB:  Brokeback Mountain was the gay cowboy movie, Broke Mountain was the band that should have taken over the world, but we got sidetracked.  Yeah man, that movie came out right when we all decided to go separate directions. Which is good, because it would have been hard. We chose a cool name, but then that movie came out. Livin’ in Durango, in the mountains, and being broke, “Broke Mountain,” was perfect. Living in Durango, a bunch of hippies playing bluegrass, it was perfect.  

But we all went our separate ways.  Travis (Book) went to the Stringdusters, Andy (Thorn) went to Larry Keel’s band, I was going to Greensky.  Yeah, the answer is YES.  There will be a reunion.  

L4LM:  There are some people who will be excited about that.

AB:  I don’t know where, I don’t know when, but yes.  Absolutely.  We continue to talk about it.  But planning this with five people’s schedules is an adventure, that’s for sure.  

L4LM: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

AB:  I have no idea!  (Laughs)  Playing music with Greensky Bluegrass, that’s for sure!  We’re not going anywhere.

L4LM:  Good answer!  We also would have accepted “Finishing my first “Iron Man Triathalon.”

AB:  Well..maybe my first. I might need about ten years of training from where I am right now. My real goal for ten years from now is to continue to be incredibly happy with my life. I’m so happy with where I am right now.  It’s fabulous.   

L4LM:  Does yelling out a request ever work?

AB:  Yeah!  Sometimes.  Not often.  I really like it when someone yells out a song that just happens to be the next song on the set list.  (Laughs)  they feel like they got their request.

L4LM:  Full disclosure.  If I am close enough to get a peek at the set list, sometimes I like to yell for the next song on the list.

AB:  (Laughs)  Often times, it’s a really obscure song or something we played last night.  Yeah, sure, yell anything you want.  You might get lucky!

L4LM:  Well, thanks for spending this time sharing stories sir.  Good luck out there on the road and have a good day!

AB:  Thanks to you too. See ya!