Bluegrass band Trampled by Turtles, fresh from LeAnn Rimes team-up, plays Lexington

Rewind the last two years as a performance and recording project and you might come to think of Trampled by Turtles as a band that thrives on collaboration. The acoustic-savvy ensemble has cut an album with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, rocked a home state (Minnesota) arena show co-billed with the Avett Brothers and wound up 2024 with an EP project that enlisted, of all people, LeAnn Rimes.

But for a troupe that employs bluegrass instrumentation for music that reveals, at best, only modest accents of the genre, such a guest list can be deceiving.

Much of the two decade-plus career of this Duluth band has, in fact, unfolded in happenstance fashion. Trampled by Turtles has longed worked at its own pace, working independently of major record labels to develop acoustic music that, even at its most melancholy moments (as on, for example, “Central Hillside Blues” from its 2022 album, “Alpenglow”), revels in warm folk reflection. The collaborators simply help Trampled by Turtles battle any notion of complacency.

“We’ve been around for 22 years almost,” said Trampled by Turtles founder, frontman, guitarist, vocalist and chief songwriter Dave Simonett. “A lot of the collaborations we’re talking about here ... in my mind, they just have a lot to do with trying new things, to put it simply. We’ve done a lot. We’ve recorded a lot of songs. We’ve played a lot of shows. It’s like, ‘How do we keep it interesting? How do we find new ways to do that?’

“For me as a songwriter, that’s always my biggest challenge. How do I find something that I don’t feel like I’ve done before? In a lot of ways, I feel like our band has been a little bit individualist in a way, where we’ve just kind of done our own thing forever. Which is great. We’ve never had a record label. We’ve tried really hard not define ourselves too rigidly.

“We started Trampled by Turtles because none of us could think of another band in town that was playing acoustic instruments like we were. The whole point was not to sound like anybody else. Looking back, that became such a bedrock of my kind of artistic ethos, maybe. We’re all connected in so many ways that it’s hard to be very, very original. But to search for that, I think, is important in any kind of art. It’s like, ‘What can I make what didn’t exist before?’ But now, in our advanced age, we’ve really found people that we like to work with. It’s opened up all these new creative pathways, which I think is the biggest reward.”

Enlisting Tweedy as producer for “Alpenglow” began an especially fruitful wave of collaborative projects for Trampled by Turtles, one that began at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Man, working with Jeff was so cool,” Simonett said. “That was kind of a funny happenstance, too, because we had this whole record that we were going to go record in Texas in 2020. Well, COVID knocked that out. It was the first time we had a setback like that. We usually steamroll things, like, ‘Oh, I’ve got some songs. Let’s get into the studio. Let’s put it out.’ So we ended up with some time to think about it. We kind of came up with a whole different approach. It was like, ‘Well, maybe we should look for someone to work with, a producer.’ I love Wilco and Jeff’s writing. I have since I was in high school. I really preferred to work with a songwriter, so Jeff was at the top of the list. We thought, ‘Maybe he’ll say yes.’ And he did.

“My favorite part of the experience was working with Jeff on the songs. I had songs, but I had gotten bored with them. I wanted some guidance on some interesting things we could try, and he was awesome about it. I mean, none of those songs on the record sounded like that on my demos. He helped me with arranging and even some lyrics. Working with one of the guys that I’ve always looked up to in that world was really great.”

Fast forward to this October when Trampled by Turtles found itself at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul for an arena concert on home state turf with the Avett Brothers that helped raise funds and awareness for Sportsmen for the Boundary Waters, a conservation/wildlife advocacy group whose board of directors includes Simonett.

“We did our first Minnesota arena show. It was at the place where I watched hockey games when I was younger, so it was kind of surreal to be in there. I saw my first arena concert, Bob Dylan (also a Duluth native), at that place, years and years ago. So, it was really cool for us. It was kind of cool for my kids, too. I don’t know that we’ll ever be what you call an arena band, per se, but it was a fun experience to be able to build a big production for that show. It was also the only place we could pull something like that off, to be honest with you.”

This fall also saw the release of a novel EP recording where Simonett recorded five songs with two different bands — Trampled by Turtles and a second group, Dead Man Winter, he has worked with intermittently over the last decade.

“Because the last thing I had done was a Trampled record, I was thinking about making an album with my other band, Dead Man Winter. As I was working on the songs at home, they started to feel like they fit really well with Trampled, so I couldn’t really decide what to do. I just thought, ‘Well, I’ll try recording them with both.’ I’ve done that before with the two bands playing each other’s songs. They’re all kind of my songs anyway, I guess, because I wrote them. So it’s interesting to hear different musicians’ takes on the same material. Thankfully, everybody in both bands was open to the idea.”

How they teamed up with LeAnn Rimes

Simonett wound up with some assistance, again unplanned, for the Trampled by Turtles half of the recording. Joining the band was country/pop star Rimes. Think such a teaming was, well, unexpected? You’re not alone.

“I had another vague idea with these songs. I thought, ‘Man, it would be cool to have a duet or at least a female voice on a song or two. We were just throwing around names, like friends and people we know, either here in Minnesota or people we’ve played with.”

Turns out both Trampled by Turtles and Rimes work with the global music distribution/management organization, Thirty Tigers. Representatives from both artists convened and Rimes agreed to sing on two songs from the EP, “Out of Time” and “On My Way Back Home.”

Was one of the most popular artists of the ’90s and early ’00s even familiar with Trampled by Turtles’ music?

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Simonett said. “That being said, she was super open to doing it, which was really cool. I sent her all the music. Trampled had recorded our versions with the other guys singing all the harmony vocals. I just said, ‘Listen, if you find something that you want to do, you sing whatever you want. We can take anything of ours back off. Just knock yourself out.’ She came back with pretty much with what came out on the recording. I don’t think we changed anything. She just took it and ran with it.

“I mean having LeAnn record with us was so far out from what was in my head, but it sounded incredible. I’m 44, so that name carries a lot of weight with me.”

Trampled by Turtles

When: Dec. 11, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Manchester Music Hall, 899 Manchester St.

Tickets: $45-$150 through manchestermusichall.com.

This story was originally published December 10, 2024 at 4:55 AM.