During any performance by the Infamous Stringdusters, fans can count on at least a few moments where the members of the jam-grass quintet gather near one another and transform into a melodic ball of kinetic energy. It’s a phenomenon that can only exist because of the brotherhood the players have built over 20 years as a band.
“You can’t learn by yourself and you can’t learn in a practice room or in your bedroom,” Chris Pandolfi, banjo, tells Rolling Stone. “There’s only one way to learn, and that’s to get onstage and try stuff.”
Sitting backstage at the Bear Shadow Festival earlier this year in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina, Pandolfi is joined by Dusters guitarist Andy Falco. The rest of the ensemble, including fiddler Jeremy Garrett, dobroist Andy Hall, and standup bassist Travis Book, are tuning up and readying themselves for the gig. They look relaxed, and they are: They find their zen beneath the stage lights.
“Being in a band is like being in a time warp — one day you feel like you’ve been doing this forever, the next day it feels all brand new,” Pandolfi says. “For 20 years, we’ve truly given all of ourselves to this band, but it also feels like we have a lot more to do. And we just put out this new record that I feel is really the best iteration of the Dusters. It’s two sides of the coin.”
That new record, 20/20, is 20 songs for 20 years together. With titles like “Working Man Blues,” “Up From the Bottom,” “To the End of the Line,” and “Hard Times Ain’t That Hard Anymore,” you can draw a through-line from hardscrabble, hard-working origins to marquee success for the Grammy winners.
“Looking back now, what we went through, and seeing how hard it is for bands to get above the fray and make it,” Pandolfi says. “I’m just glad it all worked out for us the way that it did.
The Dusters are an outfit that’s never learned the word “stop.” They’ve been grinding it out on the road and putting in the time since forming in 2006.
“It’s not easy, it’s a sacrifice,” Falco says. “You have to love the people that you’re out on the road doing this with, and that comes from a high, mutual respect everybody has for each other in our group.”
Since their 2007 debut, Fork in the Road, the Dusters have put out an album pretty much every year. It’s an impressive catalog (there’s also four EPs and live releases), but it came about naturally thanks to five songwriters in the group, each with varied musical tastes: jazz-fusion to heavy metal, honky-tonk country to psychedelic rock. The band’s battle cry? “Bluegrass is the new rock & roll.”
“We have so much music to give and the evolution [of the band] is really what allows you to do it for all these years, and plan on continuing to do it for many more,” Falco says. “We’re allowing ourselves space to evolve as artists and together as people, as musicians, and as collaborators.”
“And that’s indicative of the fact that we’re always trying to push the envelope,” Pandolfi says. “Continuing to reinvent and become better as individuals, and as a band — that’s the energy that’s gotten us here, and that’s the energy that’s going to keep us going.”
Pandolfi, Hall, and founding member Chris Eldridge met as students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. After graduation, Hall bolted for Nashville, the other two not far behind. It was there they crossed paths with Garrett, who had already been a professional musician for years, starting out in a family bluegrass band, the Greenhoppers, based in Garrett’s native Idaho. Mandolinist Jesse Cobb also joined (only to depart in 2011). Book was found through a 2005 band audition. By 2007, Eldridge would leave to join the Punch Brothers, so Pandolfi called Falco.
“I actually knew Falco before I knew any of these other guys, and we played in a band together. That’s just the way of the bluegrass community, there’s a lot of cross-pollination,” Pandolfi says. “One thing we had in common was that we wanted to be in our own band. It’s a challenge, but it also presents so much opportunity, in terms of being able to play your own music, be your own boss.”
Back in the early 2000s, when jam-grass was in its third wave, contemporaries like Yonder Mountain String Band, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass were carrying the torch lit decades prior by Old & In the Way, New Grass Revival, and Hot Rize. The turn-of-the-century sonic landscape also included String Cheese Incident and Leftover Salmon, who both dominated the festival circuit, and continue to even today.
“We might have been ahead of the curve in recognizing the appeal of bluegrass, but we’re not alone in recognizing that,” Pandolfi says when asked about bluegrass reaching the arena level with artists like Billy Strings and Sierra Ferrell. “And that includes all those other bands and all those fans who are flocking in the door. It doesn’t matter how you got there, the music is the common thread, and the music is real.”
“You feel good about where the music has evolved to and where it’s going,” Falco adds. “When we meet young bands like Mountain Grass Unit or Shadowgrass, the music is in great hands.”
Getting up from their seats backstage at Bear Shadow, Pandolfi and Falco head over to meet up with the other three Dusters who are plucking a few notes on their instruments under a large maple tree behind the stage. They gather in a small circle and start to jam, their eyes making direct contact with one another. They’re entering into that zen zone once again, happily, and together.
“We trust each other, and there’s nobody else we’d rather be playing music with,” Falco says. “We get to create art together, always reaching deeper into our influences and the musical DNA we share together. As we move through our years together, we’re constantly searching for that.”
