“If you’re thinking, you’re stinking” was just one of the many nuggets of wisdom Clayton Eisberg shared with his bandmates in dadweed on their first tour of the Mountain West. That internalization of music is what is so often needed for both traditional picking and also improvisation.
The band’s name is a reference to cannabis and a tongue-in-cheek reminder to appreciate the “intrinsic value of things regardless of their shininess.”
The band’s sound blends traditional bluegrass with elements of jazz, R＆B and pop, reflecting a wide spectrum of American music. Guitarist Keenan Dorn and bassist Ian Lindsay both agree that bluegrass is more accessible now than ever, with the genre’s hillbilly stigma shifting towards a reputation of inclusiveness because of popular artists like Billy Strings and Greensky Bluegrass. Groups that have embraced all walks of life.
The trio stopped by KHOL to discuss their tour following stops in Salt Lake City, Moab and Boulder, jamming in the parking lot of festivals and the future of bluegrass to come.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. -Ed.
Support for this arts and cultural coverage comes from the Wyoming Arts Council.
Evan Ballew/KHOL: How did the band first come together?
Keenan Dorn: We all moved up to Portland right out of COVID and we’ve all been hanging out, playing, gigging and working. Eventually, Ian was like, ‘Man, I got to get an upright bass and I got to start joining y’all in some of these picking circles.’ I work at a music store in Portland and as he texts me this, I just look right up from the counter and there’s a used upright bass with a pickup and a case and all of the bells and whistles. Right there for a pretty good stinking deal so he got that and the rest is kind of history
EB: Where did the name come from? Who came up with that?
Ian Lindsay: Believe it or not, it’s the least stupid name we could think of.
Clayton Eisberg: A lot of people look very deeply into the name dadweed, and I really do think for us it was like, these are two words together that are nice and funny and we’re like, ‘let’s go with it.’ We had gigs already, we need a name, bam, let’s just do it.
IL: I feel like now it’s taking on the meaning that we really like this like the more technical side of music. We love jazz and stuff, we also love real honest ‘three chords in the truth’ music too.
KD: There’s some traditional bluegrass, but then there’s a lot of rethinking, reimagining and straight-up R&B, straight-up blues, straight-up pop – not bluegrass at all on our sets. We pride ourselves on representing a wide spectrum within the folk/Americana [genre].
IL: Yeah, I associate that with an intrinsic value of things regardless of their shininess.
EB: The finer things in life.
IL: Yeah. They’re fine because you’re experiencing them as opposed to them being really expensive.
KD: Not everything has to be super fast, shreddy, and not everything has to be slow and pretty. It’s the best of both worlds.
EB: You guys are on this tour right now through the Mountain West. Could you tell me a little bit more about how it’s been going so far? What’s been your favorite stop?
CE: I loved Salt Lake City, Utah. I didn’t expect to think of it as the city that it is. There’s a really cool community there called the Trash Moon Collective. They’re a folk collective out there that throws house concerts and jams and it’s really bringing folks together. We got to play a really great house concert there and met some awesome people. I really like it out there. It’s gorgeous.
IL: I’m going with Bolinas, California, on the other side of the San Andreas fault. It reminded me of an Oregon coast town. It’s really small, it’s really cute, there’s people just picking guitars outside on the front porches of places.
KD: Moab was really cool, too. We’ve gone to places that a lot us have never been. We’ve been experiencing crazy weather in all different forms.
IL: We got hail, we got thunder, we have wind for sure. Snow, sun, hot sun. I got depressed halfway through the tour and I was like, ‘oh the sun’s even trying to kill me.’
KD: This is kind of our first big tour outside of the West Coast. This was the first one where we’re like, we want to get to the Rockies and back and start introducing ourselves to new markets in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, because we hear there’s a lot of great music and a great scene out here.
EB: Do you ever achieve a flow state while you’re playing?
CE: That’s the goal. We play a lot and it’s different for everyone. Keenan, for example, I’ve told him this many times, I think it’s his superpower as a musician. It’s inspiring to see someone who can always access that deeper part of them[selves]. Keenan will be playing at 100% ability and eyes closed at a rehearsal or on stage. It’s always the same. It’s funny, some of the best gigs and the best I’ve played have been [while] sick on stage, like I’m gonna need to go to the bathroom and throw up. I’m so out of my head because I’m sick and thinking about something else that I’m just going on autopilot, accessing that deep part of my mind that knows what to do. That’s the magic. It’s kind of an extreme way to put it because we can always achieve that without it. But some guy said, ‘if you’re thinking you’re stinking,’ if you think about what to play, I’m going to do this next or whatever. No you don’t want to think. You want to play the stuff you know because that’s who you are.
EB: Y’all have this unconventional instrumentation for a bluegrass trio with the two guitars and an upright bass. Does that lineup feel limiting at all or is it another creative tool?
KD: It’s both, for sure. When you’ve got a lot more people at the dinner table…
IL: You gotta pass the gravy!
KD: The way me and Clay think about it is we try to do different capo placements, some high, some low, and get a lot of separation of voicings and registers. Then we mimic the bluegrass band instrumentation. We mimic the mandolin chops, so does Ian on the bass.
CE: It took us a while to figure out how to do it well. It’s a different attack. A bluegrass band mixes itself so well because it’s just these perfect instruments and roles coming together to create this thing, which is the magic of bluegrass. When you get a mandolin player, a bass player, guitar player and banjo player all doing the right thing, it just fits like a glove.
IL: What do I do?
CE: You just, you know, stay out of the way.
KD: Not anymore, but that’s the thing about how we treat bass in this genre that I’m pretty sure most bluegrass bands are not doing and it’s from a jazz perspective. We’re doing all sorts of chord inversions, substitutions, doing thirds and fifths instead of just the root notes and Ian leads the charge on that.
EB: What is it about the genre of bluegrass that you think keeps it so relevant in modern times?
CE: Specifically within bluegrass lyrics, you can apply them to all walks of life, which is interesting to me. ‘I’m so lonesome. I could cry’ type of stuff in these overarching themes and sorrow, heartbreak, happiness, love. It’s a superhuman genre. It’s such a great way to play music and connect with people. Playing music around a campfire is my favorite thing in the entire world, and it’s so grounding and it can be with anyone.
KD: I like the camaraderie of it. I think me and Ian, we come from a more jazz background and they’re just like two peas in a pod. I love the spectrum of it and like Clay said, it’s an emotional, lyrical kind of art. It’s just so evocative.
IL: How many jazz festivals have people jamming in the parking lot? That’s the thing for me, is, it is the community. And it’s also this primal [feeling], like you just want to spin around in circles like a kid. I think there is something that is not yet identified that makes it awesome and otherworldly.
CE: There’s bluegrass pride and stuff like that. Again, with these lyrics that can be applied to anything, I think there’s been this awesome human experience that you can apply to everything. I have a bunch of queer friends who love bluegrass and can use these templates to apply to their own struggles in their life. It’s really accepting. For the longest time I think people have had this conception through the Deliverance movie and stuff that it’s this hillbilly genre, but there’s been this full reclamation of it being an American genre that can be applied to all human experiences, not just coal miners and stuff like that.
KD: The accessibility is awesome. Jazz, let’s be honest, it’s a harder genre because of the skill level.
IL: I think it’s a steep barrier to entry as far as improvising or playing the chords right.
KD: Yeah, but like you can you can be a part of a bluegrass jam by playing the chords, you don’t have to solo, you can just sing the song.
IL: You can just stand there, you can just pass the bottle around and do whatever, man.
KD: The jazz jam is just harder to access and feel ‘satisfied’ with.
IL: Yeah, I didn’t mean by my statement to put down jazz festivals or anything. I think they’re super sick, but it’s super unique to the bluegrass festivals. The picking in the parking lot to me is as important, if not more than, seeing the actual show. The fact that there’s standards and these conventions, they share a lot of stuff. They’re both American, modern genres and they’re both relatively young as far as music goes, too. Bluegrass is not that old, which is very fun. That’s why it’s changing so fast, same with jazz.
EB: Where do you think the future of bluegrass is going?
IL: Keytar.
CE: I think, just as Ian said, it’s an ever-evolving thing, and bluegrass has always kind of been reimagined through these lenses of different aspects of pop music.
KD: The music’s more accessible than ever in a lot of ways, and people are pushing the envelope. A lot of great bluegrass artists right now are featuring people from other genres and other worlds, so I think it’s going in a great direction.
Listen above for KHOL’s live performance and full conversation with dadweed.
