Railroad Earth, the Jersey-born jam band, bring their genre-defying sonic masterwork of “bluegrass soul and rock and roll” to the White Eagle Hall in Jersey City on May 26.
Bassist Andrew Altman sat down with Pop Break to discuss the band’s latest album All for the Song — an album described “as a ten-song collection filled with tales of biblical road-trip rainstorms, Louisiana getaways, and losing their brother too soon. ” Altman also speaks about being a jam band in the pandemic era and so much more.
It didn’t take long for us to dive right into how COVID had affected things. It’s been a wild few years for all of us, and Altman had this to say: “You know, it was pretty difficult being labeled unessential. I mean obviously you don’t physically need music to live, it’s not food or anything, it can’t sustain you with nutrients, but still, to have people act like we were not needed was pretty hard. It definitely affected my motivation for a while, because how could it not?”
Altman had a bit more to say on the subject as well: “Art might not be physically essential, but what we do is spiritually and emotionally necessary. Humans need escape sometimes, and they turn to artists for that; music, movies, books, TV, games, art is what keeps people going in troubled times. It might not sustain your actual life force, but I would argue music and all forms of art are absolutely essential for emotional health.”
We eventually meandered into some new conversation territory: the new Railroad Earth album which dropped on April 22nd. The name of the record, All For the Song, evokes Townes Van Zandt, which couldn’t be more appropriate. There’s a tinge of hopeful melancholy as Altman says:
“As you may know, we lost a band member [multi-instrumentalist Andy Goessling] to cancer in 2018. Obviously nobody can replace him. However, there are tracks on this new record that he was working on with some of us, so some of his playing is actually here on this album. So even though calling it quits after Andy passed wasn’t ever an option, this was just a sign that we really had to put this music out there, not only because it’s what Andy would’ve wanted, but because it’s his last studio work with us. It is absolutely true that Andy would’ve wanted us to continue, and if it had been any of us in his place we would’ve wanted the same thing.”
Speaking of the new record, what can we expect? Altman explained, “Y’know we sort of live in the jam band scene, so a fair amount of these songs have been played live already, but with the pandemic throwing our touring schedule off and cancelling things left and right, we just took any opportunity to play them that we could. So really, there are only a couple of tracks here that haven’t already seen the light of day, and we’re looking forward to getting them in some ears out on the road.”
As our conversation came to a close, we sort of circled back to the beginning. When I asked what might be different about the life of a touring musician now vs. three years ago, Altman had an interesting answer: “Y’know, I can only speak for myself here, but for a while there was a little bit of draining of motivation. It was just hard to see things the same way as the before time; things are definitely different now. There is this feeling that it’s not necessarily simply for the joy of music that we’re doing this. I mean obviously we need to make a living as well, but with music and most forms of art, the joy of creating it comes first, because if you’re not having fun it’s really obvious. But it’s also not like things are going back to whatever normal used to be, so we’re going to keep pushing forward. Things might be different but that doesn’t mean they have to be bad.”
Bringing music back into our lives, especially in a live setting, is so important I really can’t even find the words to describe it. Thankfully there are musicians like Andrew Altman and groups like Railroad Earth who are ready and willing to get back out there on the road to sing our pain away.
