Tall Tall Trees Immerses Fete Music Hall with Experimental & Psychedelic Sounds
In any artform, there are the creators who walk along the fridge while expanding the horizons of their craft. In music, this is usually done through improvisation and experimentation with the artist letting their imagination run wild, but in a cohesive way. A prime example of this is Tall Tall Trees, which is the moniker of the Asheville, North Carolina musician Mike Savino. Through utilizing the banjo, he makes a brand of psychedelic music that’s conveyed through rhythmic looping and unique arrangements. As part of a tour with Griffin William Sherry from the Portland, Maine Americana act The Ghost of Paul Revere, Savino is going to be performing in the lounge of Fete Music Hall on 103 Dike Street in Providence on October 12 with the doors opening at 7pm.
We had a talk ahead of the show about a couple releases he’s had so far this year, his approach to making music and his thoughts on coming back to play in Providence.
This year, you’ve released two albums with your most recent one being Stick to the Musical I that came out on September 8th. You collaborated with drummer and vocalist Josiah Wolf from the alternative hip hop act Why? during the songwriting and recording process, so how did you both form a cohesive vision for the album with each of you coming from different musical backgrounds?
Actually, our musical backgrounds are kind of similar. We’ve intersected a few times in this lifetime and Josiah is an old buddy of mine who I met around the turn of the century in New York City when we were both aspiring jazz musicians. We had a mutual friend that introduced us, and we started playing jazz together every Monday and on other nights for a couple years, it was right around the time of 9/11. Since that time, we had both kind of gone off to work on non-jazz-oriented projects. Josiah started working with his brother Yoni on Why? in Oakland back in those days and I diverted to start Tall Tall Trees.
Those paths crossed a few times over the years, I’ve toured with them in several capacities, and we’ve always been really great friends. He’s always been one of my favorite creative musicians, so it was only natural for us to finally get together and collaborate on something.
The other album you released this year is Ponder Machine, which came out on June 30th with JD Pinkus, who used to play bass with both the Butthole Surfers and the Melvins. How did you both link up with this particular project? Have you both known each other for a while in a similar way like you and Josiah?
Someone had sent me JD’s music on Instagram, or vice versa. We kind of knew about each other because JD not only plays bass, but he’s also a great banjo player and makes this psychedelic kind of music. Someone naturally sent some of his stuff to me and we started messaging each other back and forth in mutual respect and whatnot. Fast forward a couple of years later, right at the beginning of the pandemic I got a message from JD asking if I still lived in Asheville. I replied “Yes”, and he told me that he just moved from Austin, Texas and he wanted to get together to play some banjo.
He sent me his address and he literally lived three minutes up the hill, so it was kind of a pandemic blessing in retrospect. When the weather started getting nice and you still couldn’t see anybody, he had this really nice back deck overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains. I would go over there once a week or so to just hang out, play some banjo and listen to stories about his various escapades in the music business. We became fast friends and that lead to us making a record in my studio, which I had also built during the pandemic. There’s also some mutual coincidence that was involved.
JD releases his records on Shimmy-Disc Records, which is owned by this legendary producer named Kramer, and I release records through Joyful Noise Recordings out of Indianapolis. Joyful Noise actually revived the Shimmy-Disc label from obscurity a few years ago to help with distribution and all that stuff. Kramer and Joyful Noise have been in cahoots with JD and I also being in cahoots, so it’s all kind of like this happy family of music weirdos putting out music for the small populace.
That’s awesome, that’s great.
Yeah, it is.
When it comes to the experiences from making both of these albums, do they share any similarities in terms of approach or the overall vibe?
Yes, there’s definitely some spillover. Ponder Machine was one of the first records that we made in my studio and Kramer actually came up from Miami to record us. The way that he worked was very influential on how I approached making Stick to the Musical I because he is very much an old school guy. Kramer has recorded Daniel Johnston, Ween and Low, he’s really been involved in a lot of amazing DIY music and his approach comes from using tapes where if it’s no good then you just delete it. You don’t save it in case you need it, he just deletes everything, and he’s very much involved in the spontaneity of music.
Ponder Machine was made in this sort of haphazard way where there was a lot of improvising and a lot of us just going for it. That really inspired me during the making of Stick to the Musical I because I like to sit, compose and think things out. I had prepared to do that for this record, but Josiah is an amazing improviser and I also love to improvise so that’s where we went. We went into these improvisations, and when we got excited, we knew that we had a song and that’s kind of how we made this album. It was very spontaneous, there was nothing that was pre-prepared.
We would come up with something and if we really liked it, we’d work on it for a while. Then we go take a walk, I’d try to write some lyrics and a lot of them were done so fast, which is unusual for me. It was also exciting, and I feel like that energy is within the music, we would discover a weird sound and just go with it.
It seems like both experiences were natural due to that approach. With playing the banjo, you really push the limits of both the sound and structure of the instrument by including experimental and psychedelic elements. What do you consider to be the catalyst that made you realize that you could make music this way?
It’s been an entire life leading up to it, but I’ve always had a very eclectic musical taste. I love bluegrass and I love traditional banjo music, but I never really wanted to be a traditionalist. Most of it has evolved naturally, when I started Tall Tall Trees, it was a band with three other guys and I wanted to be able to play with a drummer, so I learned how to electrify it. That led to me messing with pedals and that led me to further refine how I could get a good electric sound out of a banjo without it feeding back. After a while, I started doing more loop-based shows because the band was very difficult to tour with due to cost, availability and other things.
It was expensive and just really tough to do, so as I started using more loops in my shows, I began to learn that I could play drums on them. That opened up an entire possibility with me being able to make a full band with just one instrument. Then it became a challenge with how far I could push it, I don’t use any guitars on my albums. It’s really just banjo through the pedals from my rig, drums, bass and a little Casio keyboard. I try to hear the banjo in as many places as I can without making it sound too much like a banjo.
That’s a really cool vision to have for your music. What are your thoughts on coming back to Providence to play Fete Music Hall? I remember seeing you play at AS220 a few years ago.
I’m excited to come back. I love Providence, it’s such a cool town, and I just love the Northeast, especially in the fall. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Fete, so I’m excited to reconnect with some folks up there. Josiah and I are going to be coming through and it’s going to be a very fun show. We’ve been really jamming a lot of these tunes out on our shows while getting into some uncharted territory so it should be pretty exciting.
