For those of you in the LA area, perennial favorite and friends of The Sitch, the PUNCH BROTHERS, make their return to our fair city this Saturday, December 1 at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex at Cal State’s LA campus, marking their third appearance in the city this year (including our own LA Bluegrass Situation festival this past May). It’s been a busy year for the band. After releasing their latest album ‘Who’s Feeling Young Now’ last February, the guys have been on the road almost nonstop throughout 2012.
As they begin to wrap up the fall leg of their tour, The Sitch spoke with PB bass player Paul Kowert about life on the road, favorite moments, and upcoming dates…..
‘We’ve been touring ‘Who’s Feeling Young Now?’ since January, and from the outset we noticed a more favorable response than we’ve seen for previous albums. We played in
Europe quite a bit this year for the first time, which was hard, slow work since we’re pretty new there.
Some of my highlights from the year include playing Whelan’s in Dublin, because it was my first time to Ireland, and the people were very welcoming, enthusiastic, and gave me many pints; Boone, North Carolina, where we played our largest indoor headlining show to date, and The Roskilde Festival in Denmark, where we truly felt like rock stars. Memories of great coffee, food, and bars in places like Copenhagen, Melbourne, and London flood my mind when I think of the nearly full year of touring behind us on this record. Also, memories of the inside of a Sprinter van, all of us acting like idiots or insane people, and turkey sandwiches made from ingredients on the rider every day (load on the hot sauce, it fixes everything).
After some [recently announced] February dates in 2013, we’ll be taking some much needed time off to be at home and do other things (I’ll be touring with Jordan Tice and Brittany Haas for a bit, and working on music at home somehow). And we’ll continue getting together monthly to write the next Punch Brothers record.’
Want to see the PUNCH BROTHERS for free this weekend? Simply email [email protected] and tell us the song you can’t wait to hear them play live, and a pair of tickets could be yours.
Opening for the band are phenomenally talented LA-natives The Milk Carton Kids. Tickets are still available for purchase here. With such a lineup, Saturday’s show is sure to be a memorable one.
You can learn more about Paul and the rest of the band at punchbrothers.com.
