Music of the Mountains Flashback Episode: Treeline String Band

This week, we're flashing back to the very first segment of Music of the Mountains to celebrate the five-year anniversary of journalist and host Jamie Lammers writing for the column. This first interview features bassist Dolores Berbaum talking about her group Treeline String Band after their first performance.

Our theme song is courtesy of singer-songwriter Brittney Wagner. Stream her record Better off Dead here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:19

I celebrated five years of writing music of the mountains for the mountaineer. For the very first time I wrote for Music of the Mountains. This was the first ever Music of the Mountains segment on the Mountain Air Podcast, where I interviewed a three-line stringman after a show they performed at the head general. We'll have a quick word from our doctor, and then we'll get right into the flashback episode. Be sure to subscribe to the Mountain Air Podcast today. And be sure to head to the mtnair.com and subscribe to the physical or digital edition of the Mountain Air newspaper. Thank you so much for listening. Since 1932, Central City Opera has been one of Colorado's favorite arts traditions, bringing world-class talent to a 19th-century opera house in historic Central City. This summer, CCO is celebrating the 70th anniversary of our world premiere of The Ballad of Baby Doe. The show tells the scandalous historical love story of silver baron Horace Tabor, who left his wife Augusta for Baby Doe, a performance which rocked Denver society and today remains a staple of Colorado history. You can also catch the Marriage of Figaro, Masterclass, and CCO in a concert this season. With a cast featuring talent from the Met, San Francisco Opera, and beyond. Tickets start at $32. And seats are going fast, so don't miss out. The festival runs June 27th through August 2nd.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Newly formed band called Tree Line, Stringland at a Boulder.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

How newly formed is it, by the way?

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Good question. Well, we've all known each other for a long time, and we've all played with each other in various other groups, but this was our very first performance with just the six of us. We've been playing together pretty much every Wednesday from since the beginning of the pandemic. We kind of did a lot of stuff virtually, and we shared a lot of music through Spotify and other like you know technological ways. But as far as playing the six of us playing together in person, it's been about two months.

SPEAKER_04 3:43

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

Of crap. Mm-hmm. Like I was in a band with Annie, who's the mandolin player, and Tom, angel player. The music community, it's a small community, Jamie, and and people, but there's a lot of overlap. And so I played in a group with them, and then I've also played with Steve in another group, Steve and Katie in another group. So we're all it just kind of felt together in a really beautiful, organic way. I've run a bluegrass jam down at the Boulder Adventure Lodge for probably four or five years now. And what that was, every week I would show up with my base and invite whoever wanted to come and play to play. And it was really fun. We decided that if we just kept it small, we could continue to play. So in the beginning of the pandemic, we did play together a few times outside, down at the A Lodge, and we really just loved it. Like we all were really grateful for each other and feeling like playing with a small group was actually a lot more fun than playing with a big, wild, open group. So then when things really shut down and we couldn't be in person anymore, we just kept in touch with each other very tightly you know, through last connectivity.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

And I know you mentioned in the live show that you guys did these kind of pandemic jam sessions. So can you explain a little more about what that entailed?

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Sure. It was really fun because um you know I'm not very technologically savvy, but a couple of people in the group are and kind of all just help each other. And there are some amazing um things that you can tap into to help. And one of them was well, Spotify, we would share playlists with each other and say, hey, there's this really great song I want to learn, and take a listen to it. So one guy created he called it the pandemic pickers practice list, I think, or something like that. Pandemic pickers practice list. And so we would all listen to the same version of a song, and so we could practice it on our own so that when we came back together and played live with each other, uh you know, we were all familiar with the same version. Because very often there are many different versions of one song and played in different keys, so so it's it's important to have the consistency uh up front that so that we're all playing the same thing. Um so we used Spotify, and then there was this other great tool called Strum Machine, which is like a um it's an app you can get and it um plays a song, but it just plays the beat, and you can pick your instruments. It's got mandolin, bass, and guitar. And so as a bass player, I would I would shut off the bass. And so I would just be listening to the guitar of the mandolin, and I would just play along on my bass with it on my computer.

SPEAKER_04 6:42

That's my practice.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

And other people were doing the same thing, you know. So so it was really effective, Jamie, because then we had like a beautiful Saturday in February, I think it was, and we're like, hey, let's get together in person for the first time. And we did, and it was amazing how easy it all felt. And I credit that to the technological pieces that we were able to use when we couldn't play with each other live.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

And it just Yeah, it was cool. It was very cool. So strum machine, and there was one other thing we were using.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

So you said that this basically this band basically formed really organically because of the friendship you've had over the years.

SPEAKER_01 7:21

Annie and I have known each other for twenty plus years. Annie and Tom knew each other for twenty plus years. Tom used to own the acoustic coffee house, which was up in Netherlands where he's had the temporary cat manager now.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

He used to run a jam up there many years ago before I even knew him. I met him probably five years ago. Steve and Katie were in a band together. They've known each other a long time. I've known Steve. So probably all of us between five and twenty years, we've known each other in various arrangements.

SPEAKER_03 7:56

Wow. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Two years. Two years. We were at Rocky Grass together two years ago and we all camped together and had a ball.

SPEAKER_03 8:04

Gotcha. How long has your personal interest in music been a part of your life?

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Um before kindergarten. Always loved music, always been drawn to it, but never had the means to really study it seriously until um you know, I picked up a guitar when I was in seventh grade, a very cheap one, uh, that I bought at a yard sale, I think. And I honestly was as good on the guitar ten years ago as I was in seventh grade. I don't feel like I've I made any progress, but I had a great time. I mean a guitar is pretty it's a pretty simple instrument. You can you can get pretty good at it pretty quickly, and it's more of an accompanying instrument. I was never I didn't really understand it techno technically, but I could play chords and sing, and that's what I like to do. And then I picked up the bass. Um I think it's been forget, I think it's been eight or ten years. Um and that was a that was a life changer for me. I was for it was ten years ago. Ten years ago I picked up the bass. Um kind of spontaneously, I had an opportunity to take some bass lessons from somebody, and I just latched onto that, and I haven't picked up anything since really. It just fit well for me and my personality.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

From the show, you guys are also all pretty experienced singers. How long have you guys been interested in singing?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Singing my whole life. Annie singing her whole life. Annie and I both started singing in our and playing guitar in our church folk masses when we were teenagers. So we had we have similar backgrounds, even though we didn't know each other until later. And then Steve, who's the mandolin player, is a singer-songwriter. He's written some amazing songs. He played one of them on the show, but he's he's got a library of ridiculous songs. He said he wrote over twenty songs during the pandemic. Good songs. Good songs and fun songs to play.

SPEAKER_04 10:16

Right.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, Katie Tom Scott, I don't know about those guys. I think there are, you know, everybody everybody does like to sing though. It's fun. So we sing in the low harmony. And in this one, we we scramble them all up. I don't know if you noticed, but we each we each sang probably the same number of songs as each other.

SPEAKER_04 10:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

And then whoever knew the song and wanted to jump in and try a harmony fell into place. Like that's that was something that's been kind of new to me. Like I used to teach evolved singing songs, and this group really focused on um learning uh so a fiddle tune is something that doesn't meant words, no lyrics. They're just very often old timey songs, uh tunes, and you just have to learn the melody. Um so there are no lyrics involved at all. And those are that was all kind of nervous, but I really enjoy playing those. So we're we're we're throwing a lot of those into the mix as well as our singing songs.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Were you drawn to to focus primarily on bluegrass for your genre?

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Good question. Um well, bluegrass is very social in that a lot of the songs are relatively simple and very logical chord progressions, so they're easy to learn and they're easy, it's easy to anticipate what's going to come next if you're learning a new song, because a lot of them really do have very simple and logical structure that um makes it fun and not very complicated and therefore you can focus on companies, like the indicators itself to uh really think like harmonies obviously I like to do. Um you know, that that that actually roots itself in a lot of um you know from Appalachia where a lot of Irish music, a lot of Irish musicians settled back in the 1800s. So it it's it's an evolution of music, I guess. That is interesting to me.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

And they feel familiar.

SPEAKER_03 13:21

They just feel really relaxing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Yeah, even if you've never heard them before, they feel familiar, kind of like that. That's a comfortable feeling, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:33

Sweet. Um, so where can we catch your band performing next?

SPEAKER_01 13:40

We don't have anything, but it's funny, because this is this was really like a one-time thing, and after the show this woman gave up and said, Oh, can you I'm running this thing, can you play? None of us could do it because it it conflicts with a festival weekend that we're all gonna be attending. But um we do play casually almost every Wednesday night at the adventure lodge on the corner of Four Mill Canyon and Bulgar Canyon, but that's not really we don't like to think of that as a performance. We're really just kind of sitting around the fire and guests or sometimes joining in, even sitting with us. Occasionally, somebody will even pick up an instrument and join us. Um but as far as a performance like that, uh we don't have anything else booked yet, but we're all kind of like, wow, that was really fun. We'd like to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:29

Thank you for for doing this interview with me. This was awesome.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Thank you for taking the time to take an interest in our thing. Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Thank you, Jamie and Dolores.