{"id":2453845,"date":"2020-01-28T02:00:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T09:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=319973"},"modified":"2020-01-28T02:00:55","modified_gmt":"2020-01-28T09:00:55","slug":"aspen-times-qa-with-railroad-earths-john-skehan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/aspen-times-qa-with-railroad-earths-john-skehan\/","title":{"rendered":"Aspen Times Q&A with Railroad Earth\u2019s John Skehan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Skehan of Railroad Earth. (Aspen Times file)<\/strong>
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The members of Railroad Earth had only played a handful of live shows around their native New Jersey and recorded five demo songs before they improbably landed a gig at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2001.<\/p>\n

That show introduced the band to Colorado, and soon to the masses of passionate followers of string music and improvisation. Railroad Earth\u2019s rocking approach to bluegrass and their freewheeling concerts have made them the kind of band that music lovers orient their lives around.<\/p>\n

The band returns to Aspen for a two-night run at Belly Up on Jan. 28 and 29. I spoke to Railroad Earth mandolin player John Skehan during one of the band\u2019s previous wintertime multi-night runs in Aspen:<\/p>\n

ANDREW TRAVERS: You do a lot of these multi-night runs, and some hardcore fans are sure to hit all the Colorado shows. How do you craft the arc of performances over multiple days?<\/p>\n

JOHN SKEHAN: You do end up in a mindset, where rather than a first set and second set you\u2019re looking at Friday, Saturday, Sunday and the overall arc. We change things up night to night, as much to keep ourselves on our toes as to keep the audience interested.<\/p>\n

AT: The Railroad Earth connection with fans and audiences is uniquely intimate and personal. Is that something you guys consciously wanted to cultivate? Or did it just kind of happen on the road?<\/p>\n

JS: It just kind of happens. We\u2019re very blessed to have that kind of audience that really wants to be with you and see where you\u2019re going to go. It keep us from doing the same thing night after night. They want to take the ride with us. And this scene that we\u2019re in, and that we share with so many of our other brother bands out there, you\u2019re blessed because you have a segment of fans that make live music a big part of their lives. It\u2019s not, \u201cOK, I\u2019m going to go to the Enormodome to see Sting once a year.\u201d They plan their vacations, their lives, their weddings, around going to hear live music. They make it a sacrament of their lives. We\u2019re lucky to share that with them.<\/p>\n

AT: Your song \u201cColorado,\u201d from the first album, where did it come from and what inspired it?<\/p>\n

JS: Colorado has been an interesting recurring theme throughout our existence. That came from a banjo riff that Andy [Goessling] had, and it kind of began to come together as we were first trying to figure this thing out. We recorded a short disc of demos that got passed around and we got enough positive feedback on that that we were able to go out and buy a crappy beat up old red van and tour, which led us to go, \u201cLet\u2019s take these five or six songs and add five more so we have something to tour with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of that initial tour was this big and scary thing that happened: we got a slot at Telluride. So of course one of the lyrics is, \u201cDown the rocks run the cool rushing waters,\u201d thinking about being on that stage in Telluride and looking out to the one end of town where the canyon ends and there\u2019s that beautiful stream running down it. So it was just, well, I guess we\u2019re bound for Colorado.<\/p>\n

AT: That first show in Telluride gets talked about like it was really the genesis of Railroad Earth as we know it. Coming out of that show did the band find its identity?<\/p>\n

JS: No. I don\u2019t think we had any idea. We were just swept up in something, saying, \u201cWhat is this thing?\u201d It\u2019s one thing to go in a studio and do some local shows to tune things up and experiment with songs. In that first year and beyond we were just learning what this thing is.<\/p>\n

AT: Your progressive bluegrass style fit in with the tradition of Colorado bluegrass \u2014 New Grass Revival and Leftover Salmon and company. Do you approach a Colorado show any differently than elsewhere?<\/p>\n

JS: I think we\u2019ve always just done what we do. Colorado is receptive to it. Especially in the early days, we didn\u2019t set out to be a bluegrass band or a rock band with bluegrass instruments \u2014 we were just working with this body of songs that Todd [Scheaffer] had come up with and that we had contributed to. We were just lucky that Colorado is a place you can come out with bluegrass instruments, put drums behind you, and do some more exploratory improvisation in that context and nobody looks at it as completely bizarre or anything.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Skehan of Railroad Earth. (Aspen Times file) The members of Railroad Earth had only played a handful of live shows around their native New Jersey and recorded five demo songs before they improbably landed a gig at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2001. That show introduced the band to Colorado, and soon to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-18 18:40:45","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}