Two themes — Montana and mental health — dominate the Kitchen Dwellers’ new album Wise River, produced by solo artist and Vulfpeck collaborator Cory Wong.
“Montana is always a pivotal theme in our music, but, with this record, it does seem to hit home more,” Kitchen Dwellers’ banjoist and lead singer Torrin Daniels tells me. “This is a result of the album being written and conceived during the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of touring and doing our thing, we were very much confined to our home state. When there’s nothing to do in Montana, you look to the outdoors to occupy your mind. We spent a good amount of the past two years outside — hunting, fishing, hiking, camping, skiing — and those realities and inspirations certainly wove their way into our music during that time.”
Wise River is a small Montana town on the confluence of the Wise and Big Hole rivers.
“It was once a prominent mining community but has since turned over to the beef and fly fishing industry which faces a bust as climate change leaves these rivers without enough water,” says Shawn Swain, the Kitchen Dwellers’ mandolinist. “There is a certain melancholy there and an acceptance in things that we cannot change — things already set into motion. The album Wise River is a collection of tales from our lives that read like a script of memories, many of which come from our experiences in Montana. It is the first record we truly made an effort to put the song and the story it’s trying to tell first.”
Many songs involve mental health issues.
“If the pandemic did one good thing for humanity, it helped us look inward and examine ourselves,” Daniels says. “People have been through the ringer in the past few years, and many songs were written with that reality in mind. We were forced to slow down and handle things that some of us had maybe been pushing aside or burying with the busyness of day-to-day life. That process wasn’t pretty for a lot of people. The writing on Wise River reflects that.”
The Kitchen Dwellers formed at Montana State University in Bozeman where Daniels and Swain met bassist Joe Funk and guitarist Max Davies. All four members were born outside Montana, but Daniels, who was born in Wyoming, was raised in southwest Montana.
Swain was born and raised in Telluride, Colorado, the home of the long-running Telluride Bluegrass Festival.
“I draw most of my influence from my upbringing around the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and my parents’ love for the Grateful Dead,” he says.
Davies, who was born and raised in Crystal Lake, Illinois, also goes back to the Grateful Dead’s era for his musical influences.
“Music of the ‘60s and ‘70s had a big influence on me growing up — everything from the Beatles to Frank Zappa. Eventually, acoustic/bluegrass music came into the fold. Tony Rice just blew my mind.”
How did the band come up with the name Kitchen Dwellers?
“We would all get together in college at Swain’s house where he lived with Joe’s girlfriend at the time, so it was a natural spot for us to hang out,” says Daniels, who sings the lead on most Wise River songs. “The kitchen was the only room in the house large enough to host a picking circle. It kinda just went on from there.”
The Kitchen Dwellers are looking forward to playing in September at one of the country’s most scenic venues, Red Rocks Amphitheatre outside Denver, warming up for their friends, Greensky Bluegrass. Daniels fondly remembers the group’s first appearance at the renowned venue in May 2019 on a bill with Twiddle and Pigeons Playing Ping Pong.
“It was an amazing experience,” Daniels says. “We had thousands of fans, friends and family members in one place celebrating together, and we couldn’t be more grateful for experiences like that. It’s like one big, beautiful park that just runs off of feelings of exhilaration and happy tears. It’s pretty crazy.”
I ask the Kitchen Dwellers which concerts were the best ones they ever witnessed.
“One of my favorite shows was an incredible jazz band called the Bad Plus at the Emerson Cultural Center back home in Bozeman,” Daniels responds. “Their playing was transcendental, and they knew exactly how to command a crowd. Phenomenal performance.”
Davies cites a show by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Marcus Amphitheater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. “I was a senior in high school,” he says, “and sang along to every song with a crowd of 15,000 people.”
Is it possible to identify the best album ever listened to?
“I don’t know about best, because that’s such a subjective term when it comes to music,” Daniels says. “But I can tell you my current favorite. Ian Noe’s new album River Fools and Mountain Saints is a modern-day songwriting masterpiece. The whole album is golden — front to back — and I think it really does display him as one of the greatest songwriters of our time.”