Listen above for KHOL’s full conversation and live performance with The Balsamroots.
The Balsamroots are a four-member band based in Victor, Idaho that, since forming in 2018, has been playing in and around the Tetons. They came into the KHOL studio with Music Director Evan Ballew in advance of their biggest show to date at Music on Main.
Evan Ballew: Musically, how would you describe your sound to somebody who’s never heard you before?
Becky Hendricks: There’s probably a lot of different ways to describe our music. I venture towards the words “folksy” and “old time-y.” On the fiddle and the banjo you can kind of hear that old time you sound a little bit more. So it’s a little more organic or rustic maybe?
Mary Neil: When we’re amplified, we’re going to put out pretty much exactly what we sound like as if we were just playing.
BH: I’d say we have a lot of traditional songs we play. We play several originals written by Mary – Mary’s a great songwriter. So I say we have our own interpretation of traditional music.
EB: Any surprising influences on your music, maybe outside of that Americana or bluegrass genre?
MN: In the 90s, when I started songwriting, I was listening to a lot of alternative music of that era. And so I think that that comes through in my songwriting a little bit.
EB: Who are some of those bands?
MN: Silly, but my son will appreciate this, like Green Day and like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Yeah, and then we pull a lot from John Prine, Dolly Parton.
BH: We have Kate Wolf in the mix, Gillian Welch. Sage and I were discussing this on the drive over to Jackson this morning, but I will be rocking out to Chappell Roan. I will listen to pop music and we’ve acquired a U2 song recently into our repertoire.
MN: I keep listening to a lot of this alternative rock kind of stuff that my son’s been listening to. I’m like, ooh, I can make that bluegrass. And he’s like, ‘Stop. Stop stealing my music.’
EB: Is it fair to say there’s a lot of connections between your band, The Balsamroots, and Music on Main?
MN: Yeah, we love being involved in our community, and we always are very excited to play Music on Main, and we bring our families there, and it’s just such an important community event.
BH: Music on Main always has a local band that opens. It’s a cool mix where they host bands from other places. There was an awesome West African band there recently. We love seeing who’s gonna come next and we’re really excited to open for Kelsey Waldon. And Music on Main, too, I will say when I first moved out here and I heard about it, I thought it was gonna be smaller. I thought it was gonna be a little podunk, a little sparsely attended and it’s huge. It really speaks to how much it means to people and how enjoyable it is for everyone that goes.
EB: At Music on Main, you’ve got pretty much every walk of life that’s there. You’ve got toddlers dancing around. You’ve folks coming straight from work. You’ve got old timers just hanging out in their lawn chairs. How does that multi-generational energy shape the way you perform?
BH: We always want to bring good energy to Music on Main. It’s a very energetic performance space and the sound there is also great as a musician. Also, I think the music we play, one of the reasons I appreciate the folk, old time bluegrass genres, is that they’re timeless in a lot of ways. So I think it really reaches a universal audience pretty well.
EB: Community shows like Music on Main are often where future musicians can get inspired. Was there a concert like that growing up for any of y’all?
SH: I started playing at the Hootenanny here in Jackson with my husband like 20 years ago and that was really inspiring for a place for people who didn’t maybe grow up playing music to have an opportunity to play .
BH: I would go up to the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco. That’s a giant free bluegrass festival. It attracted amazing musicians. They had Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. Just a bunch of the old Bluegrass legends would play there. They have seven stages now. It is a monstrous festival, but it’s free. It’s like Music on Main, like a huge free community music event, and I think going there you could see the collective energy in the crowd, everyone just enjoying the music.
EB: What else is on the horizon for The Balsamroots, creatively or just as friends making music together?
MN: I think the great thing about our band is that, what we’re doing, we could do forever. There’s no end to it. It’s music that people play forever in their lives. So I think that we are just going to keep doing what we are doing. And we do aim to record.
BH: Yeah, we do have plans to record. We three, three of us here, we will all be at the Targhee Music Camp in August. That’s something we love to participate in. So we’re not performing or teaching, but we’re up there enjoying the atmosphere. We’re taking classes from awesome musicians and then jamming and playing with other people. And I think that a huge part of the music we play is the community aspect. You get better by playing with others but also that’s the purpose is to make music with other people.
Opportunities to catch The Balsamroots locally:
- Music on Main – Victor, ID – July 17
- Tributary – Driggs, ID – Aug. 1*
- Teton Valley Resort – Victor, ID – Aug. 23*
- Tributary – Driggs, ID – Sept. 5*
- National Museum of Wildlife Art – Jackson, WY – Sept. 11
- Tetonia Club – Tetonia, ID – Sept. 19
*Mary & Becky Duo
Music On Main continues every Thursday in Victor City Park:
- Kelsey Waldon with The Balsamroots – July 17
- Object Heavy with Henry Pepin & The Moguls – July 24
- Fruition with Mama Magnolia – July 31
- Lindsay Lou with Lonesome Ace Stringband – Aug. 7
- Hornbread with Sunday Killers – Aug. 14
More information at TetonValleyFoundation.org.
