Formed in 2006, the Punch Brothers features Chris Thile (mandolin, vocals), Noam Pikelny (banjo, vocals), Chris Ethridge (guitar, vocals), Paul Kowert (bass, vocals) and Brittany Haas (fiddle). Haas, who is a member of the band Crooked Still, joined Punch Brothers in 2023 and, according to Thile, has created new possibilities within the band’s sound.
The most recent album from the quintet is 2022’s “Hell on Church Street,” a reimagining of Tony Rice’s 1983 album “Church Street Blues.” Featuring songs penned by Tom Paxton (“The Last Thing on My Mind”), Gordon Lightfoot (“Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”) and Bob Dylan (“One More Night”), “Hell on Church Street” demonstrates the group’s knack for rendering the familiar new, bringing classic material into the present and beyond.
Thile, speaking with KMUW over Zoom, says that the group is less concerned with its past than the current moment. He adds that he’s eager to explore the musical possibilities that Haas brings with her to the band and remains confident that Punch Brothers will continue to break new ground on its current summer tour.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
I love the album “Hell on Church Street,” not only because I’m a fan of Tony Rice but also because of the way that you took the music and reimagined it.
We were all sort of mired in lockdown and trying to figure out a way that we could be together and make some music. We hit around a few ideas and the thing that stuck was trying to reimagine “Church Street Blues” as a record. That’s a record that means a lot to all of us. I think there was an element of wanting to commune with something comforting. I think that’s a record we associate with our childhoods and trying to become good musicians and admiring the work of Tony Rice, who was a spectacular musician and someone who was so good at finding songs that he could recontextualize. He was still very much alive when we started the project. It wasn’t meant to be in memoriam, it was just meant to be a tribute. We thought the best way to pay tribute to his greatness was to reimagine his reimagining’s of these songs.
Can you talk a little bit about the approach that you take with interpreting someone else’s material and how it differs from something that you might have written?
Debussy said something I consider to be very, very profound. I think at the time he was teaching at the Conservatoire de Paris and was sort of accosted by a fellow professor who was frustrated by what he considered to be Debussy’s compositional lawlessness. He asked, “By what rules are you governed, sir?” Debussy replied, “My own pleasure.” In Punch Brothers, we strive to operate thusly. We are governed by the pursuit of our own pleasure. I feel that it’s very important for musicians to start there.
A friend of mine took me aside once, maybe intuiting that I was a little bit overly concerned about the opinions of others, maybe in my early 20s. He said, “Thile, you’ve got to be true to your audience of one.” That really stuck with me. Punch Brothers, I think, is first and foremost true to its audience of five. We have to love it. We have to love it or there’s no point in us trying to show anyone else the thing that we’ve done.
We’re in the midst of conceptualizing Punch Brothers Version 2.0 with a new member in Brittany Haas, so it’s an opportunity to take stock of the hopes and dreams of a new audience of five and starting to work on what that sounds like in our dreams and go to work on making that a reality.
When you’re thinking about a new set of dates or a long tour, are there conversations about how that run of shows will be different from the last time?
I think it’s important as a band to not have to get into that place that you’re describing: “What are we going to do to make it different than last time?” If you’ve got to worry about that, you’re lacking reason to be out and about. I think we’re out and about because we feel like there is a newness to the project. It is a crackling, stimulating feeling to be a member of Punch Brothers right now. Brittany’s injected all kinds of different energy into the fold. It’s an exciting time.
I would imagine something happens to your choices when you bring in a new player. They bring their wealth of experience and, suddenly, you start thinking, “I hadn’t considered this choice before, but now it’s here. I can pursue it.”
Yeah. That’s it exactly it. It’s just like in any friend group. If you have a group of friends together, the way that friend group functions is entirely different depending on which five friends are there. The way that everybody interacts with each other is all changing. It’s very, very exciting. There was nothing acrimonious with our departing member Gabe [Witcher], who we love dearly. It was just time for him to enter into a different phase of his creative life. We wish him all the best.
Can you talk a little bit about the importance of risk in composition and music making?
It’s everything. You have to take risks. That’s the only way that we got the music that we loved. Of course, there is worth in giving people what they already know they want. There’s great value in that. Life is hard, and we use music as a balm. But sometimes we also use music as a stimulant or as a means of growth; we challenge ourselves with it, too.
I would argue that that’s where the music we view as a warm blanket [starts]. It was the thing that once challenged us. The music that comes after that or pays homage to it is ultimately less satisfying music; the music that really gets deep into the fabric of human life is the result of risk-taking. Getting yourself out there, way out there, on a limb and then just jumping off, chasing sounds that you hear in your head. They don’t exist in a vacuum.
There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are combinations that you can dream of as a human being, [and] you can assemble the materials in front of you in a way that no one has ever heard before. But it takes some guts, and you’ll piss some people off along the way. That’s justifying. Ultimately, there will be more good music than there would have been if you’re willing to take some risks. Otherwise, you’re just celebrating the great music that currently exists and, again, there’s nothing wrong with that. But you’re not adding to the greater music that exists unless you take risks.
I would imagine that when you’re taking risks there are inevitably times when you come up with something that falls short of what you envisioned. But I would suspect that there’s also some satisfaction in that. “Maybe I didn’t hit it this time, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying.”
There’s a feeling you can get as a musician who’s really striving that you’re banging your head against the wall sometimes. I actually took a break from some writing I’m doing to do this call, and I’m right in the middle of having that sense of banging my head against the wall. But, eventually, one of those bangs is gonna break the damn wall. [Laughs.]
You’re not sure which one it was. It wasn’t one of them that did it. It wasn’t the last one that did it. It was all of them. Yeah, there’ll be some stuff that falls flat on its face, [but] you don’t have to show that to people. That’s not the stuff that we’re going to show you. We’ll only show you the stuff that we feel is the result of the wall having fallen down, but there’s lots of those moments [when] you’re sitting there in the writing room [and you] can’t get anything going but you’re working. You’ve gotta throw clay on the wheel before you can make anything that’ll hold life. It can be frustrating, but it can also be the most rewarding thing.
