Tricky Britches

Portland, Maine quartet Tricky Britches have a brand new album out titled Good Company and for all you folks that like to get up and dance around to your music I highly suggest you check it out. - Ryan Doyon - Music Savage

Look, just because they’re a stringband doesn’t mean they sound like Mumford and Sons. Or the Lumineers. And certainly not Of Monsters and Men. Now that everyone is getting a stringband swerve on, you might as well pay attention to the subtleties of the genre.

Tricky Britches? They lean pretty heavily toward the old-timey end of the spectrum, with a deep and abiding respect for the body of American stringband work, manifesting itself in original songs that are instantly familiar. On their third album, Good Company, they mostly move forward by virtue of simply being better players. This is a band still on the rise. As they write more songs, play more gigs, build more rapport, they establish just where their material uniquely sits on the spectrum.

It’s hard not to hear Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Hard to Love” in the album’s opening “Leave My Troubles Behind,” fronted by often-bassist Jed Bresette. It has a drive to it, melodies that jump into the chorus, and a wishcasting bent: “Put a bullet in my chest.” But that’s backed by Ryan “Bear” Wilkinson’s “Long Day,” which is as much Dick Curless as anything else, with shades of a young Elvis. A classic trucking song, it’s probably the closest thing we’ve had to Diesel Doug and the Long Haul Truckers since they called it a day.

Wilkinson isn’t Curless, of course. That guy’s voice was made of velvet.

Really, Tricky Britches don’t have a transcendent lead vocalist. They make up for it, though, with bench depth. Each of the four band members takes at least one lead turn; the variety and album organization are particular strengths here.

Fiddler Tyler Lienhardt’s best effort is “Creepin’ Up on Me,” where he really finds his wheelhouse. It’s a Django-style piece, at times like you’d hear behind a Scooby Doo bit at a haunted house in the Bayou, with shades of the Hackensaw Boys’ “Oh, Girl.” The bass is percussive, with Besette taking a page out of Kris Day’s book, and Lienhardt delivers the perfect amount of mania: “Yes, I was on the right track/Oh, but now I derailed/There’s no going back.”

Mandolinist Seth Doyle adopts a twang for the Dixified “Brackett St.,” and there’s more Django yet, this time in the style of the Hot Club of Cowtown, especially when Lienhardt gets ripping, and Hot Club’s Elana James can really rip. The New Orleans feel they pull off is testament to Lienhardt’s increasingly adept feel with his bowing. His “Finest Kind” is a playful waltz, too, like the backing to a Lawrence of Arabia on Broadway. It’s also sort of barbershop, though.

Like “Black & White,” not all the songs are predictable. The minor backstep they pull off in the chorus here gives a sour undertone to a devotional that might raise your eyebrows anyway. Sure, the “what I wouldn’t give to be that dress” part seems like high praise, but aren’t those black-and-white stripes the sort of thing a skunk would appreciate? “Monadnock” is an ultra-traditional instrumental in the A part, but then opens up into something far more pop in the B.

There aren’t any curveballs in their “Sally Ann/Rye Straw” traditional medley to close the album, though. This is old-school, like Clayton McMichen on the fiddle in the 1920s. It might get you thinking about the medley with “Sail Away Ladies” at its heart that the Mammals featured late on their excellent Evolver, too. At 3:52 and the kind of pace Tricky Britches drive it, you’re damn near exhausted by its finish. (If you like what they’re up to here, you might want to check out Mark O’Connor’s “New Nashville Cats” while you’re at it.)

Similarly, Besette isn’t far from Merle Travis in his “Fish in the Sea,” which is a mash-up of “Nine Pound Hammer” and “I’m Just a Used-to-Be to You,” the latter of which can be found with Maine’s own Roland White on the front at the Station Inn in Nashville on YouTube. “I’m always in the best company,” Besette sings, and, considering the varied pillars of stringband music these guys call to mind, they’ll get no arguments from me. - The Portland Phoenix

Even if you know nothing about bluegrass, Tricky Britches should convince you that a solid groove is more important than anything else—be it mind-blowing virtuosity, a high-lonesome voice, even an unbelievable head of hair. Hailing from the frigid climes of Portland, ME, the indie string band is doing everything in its power to prove that bluegrass is not just the domain of southerners, and succeeding admirably.

Like their contemporaries the Deadly Gentlemen, whom I wrote about a couple weeks ago,

Tricky Britches have an amiable, boyish vibe and plenty of tight guy-on-guy harmonies. It’s pretty much all you could ask for.

They excel at the kind of no-nonsense bluegrass that’s starting to feel like a rarity these days, writing up-tempo originals which sound like they could have been swiped from Bill Monroe’s discography.

I don’t know about you, but I find it comforting that a faction of traditional bluegrass’ last bastion is straight chillin up in Maine. - The Weekly Dig

Even if you know nothing about bluegrass, Tricky Britches should convince you that a solid groove is more important than anything else—be it mind-blowing virtuosity, a high-lonesome voice, even an unbelievable head of hair. Hailing from the frigid climes of Portland, ME, the indie string band is doing everything in its power to prove that bluegrass is not just the domain of southerners, and succeeding admirably.

Like their contemporaries the Deadly Gentlemen, whom I wrote about a couple weeks ago,

Tricky Britches have an amiable, boyish vibe and plenty of tight guy-on-guy harmonies. It’s pretty much all you could ask for.

They excel at the kind of no-nonsense bluegrass that’s starting to feel like a rarity these days, writing up-tempo originals which sound like they could have been swiped from Bill Monroe’s discography.

I don’t know about you, but I find it comforting that a faction of traditional bluegrass’ last bastion is straight chillin up in Maine. - The Weekly Dig

It's just about impossible to deny talented, old-timey bluegrass troupes. Think of that close-up of Clooney's mug in "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The Soggy Bottom Boys won over fans for sunshiney tunes and infectious good attitude. So it is with the impish Tricky Britches, sprinkling mandolin licks all over New England and beyond. Read what Seth Doyle had to say about his band, then catch the Britches on Friday night outside One Longfellow Square for quality nostalgia and an authentic swell of joy. - Portland Press Herald

Most often, I think, whatever "chemistry" is results from a band playing together like their lives depended on it. If you want to know what the biggest difference is between the Tricky Britches' second album, the brand-new Hard Fought Day, and their debut from last year, Hop on a Train, I'd say it's about 100 days straight of playing stringband music on the streets of Europe, busking for enough money to eat and sleep that night. - The Portland Pheonix