#Trigger Hippy #blues rock #hard rock #Americana #roots rock #Southern rock #ex-Black Crowes #music video
I love bands that bring a melting pot of styles to the table to generate a sound all their own. The Nashville-based band Trigger Hippy exemplifies that aesthetic. This is one of the most anticipated listens (to review) of the year for me. Trigger Hippy is back with “Full Circle & Then Some,” available in your virtual and analog record stores as of Friday, Oct. 11, 2019.
The Trigger Hippy story is unorthodox, but genuine and interesting. The band is the brainchild of longtime Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman, and Nashville-based bass player and songwriting extraordinaire Nick Govrik. When Gorman and Govrik jammed with former Crowes guitarist Audley Freed in the mid-2000s, they all conspired to start a band. Trigger Hippy has had several incarnations over the years, with its lineups including Freed, Jimmy Herring, Joan Osborne, Jackie Greene, Tom Bukovac and Will Kimbrough. Trigger Hippy’s self-titled debut was released in 2014, and featured Greene, Bukovac and Osborne throughout. However, that lineup didn’t last. The new and reformed lineup includes singer/saxophonist Amber Woodhouse and Band of Heathens guitarist and vocalist Ed Jurdi.
The new lineup is excellent, and the results are right in line with the previous album’s efforts, which I already thought might be the best record by a Black Crowes band member in this millennium. Jurdi and Woodhouse scratch all the same itches that Greene and Osborne provided vocally, along with Jurdi’s exceptionally precise guitar playing, coupled with Govrik’s rock ‘n’ soul songwriting and Gorman’s best-of-the-modern-era deep pocket rock backbeat. Jurdi and Woodhouse sound, feel and vibe like Greene and Osborne, but it doesn’t seem like a knock off at all. Still feeling fresh and exuberant, it is a testament to the care taken with these songs, along with the recording and production process — and the new chemistry of the current ensemble. I don’t know of many bands founded by the rhythm section, where the frontline can get switched out and the results are steady-as-she-goes, a continuation of the spirit of the band without missing a beat. From: https://tahoeonstage.com/album-reviews/trigger-hippie-full-circle-then-some/
Music Mecca: So can you talk about the origins of Trigger Hippy and how y’all came together?
Steve Gorman: So Nick Govrik, the bassist and I, started jamming together right when I moved to Nashville in 2004. That fall we put together a weekly jam at a friend’s bar. We would just set up a tip jar and play. It was me, Govrik, and whatever two guitarists were available that night and we called it Hey Hey Hey, originally. It was literally just an excuse to play on Wednesday night somewhere. But right from the jump when I first met Nick, we felt like our playing was right in sync with each other; we were super copacetic. And before long, literally within a few times playing together, we would say, “Man, let’s do something for real,” whatever that meant. That conversation meandered around for years. I would leave and go on tour with The Black Crowes and come back, then Nick and I would hook up and talk about doing stuff. Around 2009, after this sporadic four-year conversation, Kirk West, who works with the Allman Brothers, asked if I wanted to do something in Macon, Georgia to put on a gig for a fundraiser for the Big House Museum (the Allman Brothers museum). And I said “Yeah, let me put a band together for the night and we’ll do it.” So it worked out that Nick and I, along with Jimmy Herring from Widespread Panic and Audley Freed just put together a set list of covers to play. And for that gig, I came up with the name Trigger Hippy. Jimmy and Audley were soloing nonstop and I was like, “We should call the damn thing Trigger Happy with the two of you guys.” (laughs.) And as soon as I said that, I thought, Trigger Hippy was pretty funny. It’s not hippy/peace signs; it’s more hippy get-your-hips-moving. I like the duality of those two words together. So we called that gig Trigger Happy, a one-off/one-night-only thing. It was me, Nick, and a revolving door of other musicians. In 2013, we made a record, and put it out in 2014. That version of the band was more of a weekender band, and we wanted it to be more of a primary band. When that version of Trigger Hippy stopped in 2017, we found Ed [Jurdi] and Amber [Woodhouse] and then here we are.
MM: So Trigger Hippy’s latest album Full Circle and Then Some came out this past fall if I’m not mistaken. Where did you record it and who was involved in production?
SG: The production was me, Nick, and Ed. We did it ourselves. We have a studio here in Nashville that we just built for our purposes. It’s a house on Love Circle: we call it The Treehouse. It’s a rental property that Nick owns and we set up shop and write and record demos there, and ultimately made the record there.
MM: What’s the primary influence and inspiration behind this particular album?
SG: The short answer is all the same stuff we’ve always listened to; which is the gamete of all-American music forms. And all of which are southern music forms: rock n’ roll, jazz, bluegrass, and all of that stuff is in the mix. But one thing we did discuss in this album was that we really wanted a certain groove-thread. Just one of those records where everyone knows it, but they don’t even know they love it. Like Little Feat records, or the Meters. When those records are on at a party, the whole room is just moving, whether they even know it. We wanted this record to have that vibe. You can put the album on at the beginning and go all the way through. There’s a groove and vibe that holds together. So a song like, “Long Lost Friend,” “Butcher’s Daughter,” and “Paving the Road,” they’re all very, very different songs, but they all have a continuity, and it just works in a certain way.
MM: Do you sometimes have certain artists in mind when recording certain songs as maybe kind of an ode to them? Like your song “Goddamn Hurricane” to me is very reminiscent of The Band.
SG: When Nick wrote that song he wasn’t necessarily thinking of writing a Band-type song, but when you write that song and that’s the expression - his vocal approach is somewhere between Levon Helm and Lowell George. Their bastard lovechild would be Nick Govrik. Everything he does is swimming in that end of the pool. But we don’t have to discuss what kind of tune it is, they usually just speak for themselves.
MM: How does the songwriting process work within the band? Do one or two of you do most of it, or is it more of a regimented and group collaboration?
SG: If you look at the liner notes on both Trigger Hippy albums, at least half the songs say Nick Govrik by himself. And if another member contributed just a few lines of the lyric, Govrik would give them credit, but they were pretty much Nick’s tunes. He’s very prolific. There are times when he comes in with a song, and he’s like, “Hey, I got this song! Listen!” And it’s done. Like the song is full circle and done, like “Goddamn Hurricane” was just finished. But then there are songs like “Born to Be Blue,” and it’s just the three of us sitting in the room and throwing ideas at the wall. And we realized, “This should just be a meditative number. Like, this thing should just simmer.” I think, right away, we all could hear something similar.
From: https://musicmecca.org/steve-gorman-talks-new-nashville-supergroup-trigger-hippy-and-more/
