Band members from the local groups Strumbucket, Sghetti, Rude Noodle, Lonesome Gold and The Stagecoach Band have joined together to create a new supergroup called The Stallion, covering the best of the alt-rock band Ween.
The Stallion will be the featured entertainment for Highpoint Cider’s Summer Series Kick-Off Event in Victor on Friday, May 27, a night of live music, food trucks and Highpoint’s craft cider. All donations collected at the door will support the Teton Valley Foundation.
In advance of the event, musicians Alex Blackwelder and Grove Miller of The Stallion and co-founder of Highpoint Cider Alex Perez joined us to chat in the KHOL studios.
The following interview transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity. This conversation was recorded on Tuesday, May 24.
JACK CATLIN/KHOL: You guys are playing with a lot of local musicians from various projects. How did you all come together and agree to form this supergroup?
GROVE MILLER/THE STALLION: I guess the core of The Stallion started with my friend Thomas and I. Thomas is an ex-KHOL DJ of the show “The Jelly Donut.” I have some pretty specific memories of driving back from camping trips late at night and listening to Thomas play a bunch of Ween. I also had a roommate, Lillie Lauterbach, who had a Sunday night metal show and she’d humor me with Ween a lot on the radio, so thanks to KHOL for supporting that. But yeah, so, Thomas and I have been kicking around the idea of doing a Ween cover band.
The name didn’t really come to us until last summer. We played this Miazga’s show. And then, of course, Strumbucket… Ween’s been a staple in our repertoire for a while, so I kind of just recruited a couple of people from our other friends’ bands, [like] Rude Noodle. We had our buddy JP from Lonesome Gold [set to play], but he couldn’t get his shift changed in time. So, that’s on the poster, that Lonesome Gold’s going to be represented, but we’ll get them next time. Yeah, it’ll be our buddies from Strumbucket, Adam from Sghetti will play a little guitar with us, and then we’ve got two of my other bandmates from Tasha and the Goodfellows and Major Zephyr. And Stagecoach Band–long time, much longer than us residents over there in Victor–Ted Wells and Derrik Hufsmith will come and play to kind of cement the country Ween aspect. It won’t be a full country show, but we’re going to mix in the entire spectrum of Ween and give it a little bit of a pedal steel country twist.
ALEX BLACKWELDER/THE STALLION: And I think everybody’s commitment to the group is just out of a curiosity and desire to play something entirely different and new to the valley. Ween’s music catalog is just so dense and eclectic and so it’s really neat to see. Of course, some of us guys from more of the funkier, rock ‘n’ roll side of things are pumped about playing that but the Stagecoach guys are excited to kind of break from the normal setlist and jump in with us and humor us on our song selection.
KHOL: How important is that sense of community, where you can collaborate with all sorts of different musicians and local businesses like Highpoint Cider to create these special events?
ALEX PEREZ/HIGHPOINT CIDER: You know, at Highpoint we’ve got this great taproom, and we love having a bunch of different people and organizations there and providing a space for people to come together and share ideas and raise some money for some really impactful nonprofits in the area and just create a space for people to come and share ideas and have a good time together.
Listen above for KHOL’s full conversation with The Stallion and Alex Perez from Highpoint Cider.
This coverage is funded in part with an Arts For All grant provided by the Town of Jackson and Teton County.
