Nonesuch Records is to release Punch Brothers’ first self-produced album, All Ashore, on July 20. The record includes nine original songs written by the band. In celebration of its release, Punch Brothers play at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival on June 24 before embarking on a thirty-six-city US tour. A European tour will follow in November, including a UK show (part of the EFG London Jazz Festival) at London’s Barbican on November 16. A video for ‘It’s All Part of the Plan,’ filmed by Alex Chaloff at Nashville’s Layman Drug Company:
All Ashore follows Punch Brothers’ critically acclaimed T Bone Burnett–produced 2015 release, The Phosphorescent Blues, of which NPR said, “Punch Brothers sing of distraction and isolation in the digital age … the sound is all their own.” For All Ashore, the quintet—guitarist Chris Eldridge, bassist Paul Kowert, banjo player Noam Pikelny, mandolinist and lead singer Chris Thile, and fiddler Gabe Witcher—again attempt to make sense of the world around them.
As Thile says, the album is “a meditation on committed relationships in the present day, particularly in the present political climate.” He continues, “We were hoping to create something that would be convincing as a complete thought, in this case as a nine-movement, or nine-piece, thought. Though it’s rangy in what it’s talking about, and in the characters who are doing the talking…”
Punch Brothers returned to the same room at United Recording Studios in Hollywood (formerly Ocean Way) where they had recorded both The Phosphorescent Blues and their 2010 Jon Brion–produced Antifogmatic. Thile says they felt they had “established a rapport” with the space; the same “level of trust and love that breeds confidence” also led them to produce the album themselves, for the first time.
“After four previous experiences we felt like we knew what we wanted. Going in we knew what we needed it to sound like and I think we had a specific enough vision to make the reality match up with that— as opposed to having someone navigate us toward something,” Thile explains. “Also, T Bone last time around, with engineer Mike Piersante, led us to a sonic place where we knew we wanted to be again.”
Listen to Three Dots and a Dash:
All AShore Tracklisting
1. All Ashore
2. The Angel of Doubt
3. Three Dots and a Dash
4. Just Look at This Mess
5. Jumbo
6. The Gardener
7. Jungle Bird
8. It’s All Part of the Plan
9. Like It’s Going Out of Style
European tour dates – November 2018
Nov 5 – Pumpehuset, Copenhagen, Denmark
Nov 6 – Strings of Autumn Festival – Lucerna Grand Hall, Prague, Czech Republic
Nov 7 – Konzerthaus Mozart Saal, Vienna, Austria
Nov 8 – Alhambra, Genève, Switzerland
Nov 9 – Neumünster Kirche, Zürich, Switzerland
Nov 11 – Dashaus, Ludwigshafen, Germany
Nov 12 – THT/Paradiso Noord, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Nov 14 – Philharmonie Luxembourg, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Nov 16 – Barbican Centre, London, England
Nov 17 – Le Trianon, Paris, France
Nov 18 – Elbphilharmonie (Großer Saal), Hamburg, Germany
Nov 19 – National Concert Hall, Dublin, Ireland
All Ashore is available to pre-order now at iTunes, the Punch Brothers Store, and the Nonesuch Store, where the album tracks ‘It’s All Part of the Plan’ and ‘Three Dots and a Dash’ may be downloaded instantly; pre-orders from the Nonesuch store also include a limited-edition signed print.
https://www.punchbrothers.com/
Photo Credit: Josh Goleman