Pinebox Serenade: Press

Musical sprawl

Pinebox puts lots of rock into its folk

Chris Welch said Pinebox Serenade got its start in 2003 as an acoustic trio devoted to bluegrass and American folk.

The band now weighs in with a much meatier sound, thanks to the tastes and influences of seven musicians.

It started with three and grew to seven. Pinebox Serenade, a Denton indie folk-rock band, plays its first gig of 2011 on Friday at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios.
“Over time, we’ve grown into more of a rock band, really,” said Welch, the band’s guitarist and singer. “We mainly have acoustic rock sound. It’s kind of weird, Chris Ott [the band’s lap steel player and cellist] is kind of a metal head. He’s also classically trained on the cello. It might sound strange, but when you think about it, metal and classical music have something in common.”

Pinebox hasn’t had a Denton show in a while. The group performs Friday at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, with West End Motel and Fiend Without a Face.

Pinebox Serenade released its self-titled debut in 2005 on Hot Link Records. Three years later, the band released Let the River Take Them Home on Devil’s Ruin Records. Welch said a third album is being mixed, and the band is shopping for a new label. Welch said the band hasn’t announced a release date for the upcoming record.

“On the latest album, we have a big rock sound. We actually kind of go over the top,” Welch said. “We’re using a bigger arrangement of strings. We’re still writing songs the same way we used to. We’re still writing folk songs.”

Welch said the next album was planned as a more old-fashioned album, a throwback to when bands put music on vinyl.

“We didn’t want it to be a bunch of singles,” he said. “We wanted it to be an album, something that you can listen from start to finish. I love albums. I love experiencing music like that.”

The members of Pinebox Serenade — Welch and Ott, Patrick Newkirk on mandolin and vocals, Holly Manning on violin, Jeff Barnard on drums, Tyler Adams on bass and Nick Foreman on banjo and accordion — are just like other busy Denton bands. The group lends its personnel to other bands, and few of them are folk outfits.

“Pinebox is an amalgamation of all these things we’re involved in,” Welch said. “It’s a little bit of indie rock, a little bit of the blues, a little bit of metal, a little bit of punk. It’s all those things.”

The stage is different from the studio for the band, Welch said. While the studio is a place where musicians can experiment and master the details, live shows are about a give-and-take with the audience, and following the whims of the music as it happens.

“I’ve had fans from other countries e-mail us and tell us that they watched us on YouTube.com, and that they’d love to see us live after hearing our recordings. There’s a difference,” he said.

Details: Doors at Rubber Gloves open at 8 p.m. Friday. Cover is $8 for ages 21 and older, $10 for ages 18 to 20. The venue is located at 411 E. Sycamore St.

—Lucinda Breeding

Denton, Texas’ Pinebox Serenade are on the roster of one of my new favorite labels, Devil’s Ruin Records. Last month they announced that they have begun the process of recording what will be their third, as of yet untitled, album. That announcement coincided with me hearing their second album, Let The River Take Them Home, for the first time.

The Pinebox Serenade are seven musicians; Chris Welch, Patrick Newkirk, Holly Manning, Tyler Adams, Chris Ott, Nick Foreman and Jeff Barnard playing every single instrument you would expect to find in a roots-meets-bluegrass-and-goes-goth band. If I had to describe their music in a single word I would use ‘tense’. Listening to the album doesn’t make you feel tense, but you can tell there is an underlying intensity to these dirges of desperation and despair. While I type that there’s another side to it all. Those same songs are these full, multi-layered beautiful songs that are absolutely perfect for getting my undivided attention during a session with a glass of warm bourbon and a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Had I known of this album last year it would have easily found it’s way onto my year-end top 10 list, and even now I’ve gotta say it’s Essential Listening.

"Let the River Take Them Home" is the second long-player from Texas septet Pinebox Serenade. Fans of alt-country should probably own this already. If they don't they should pick it up right now.

'Serenade mix indie rock (provided you consider a style that can trace its roots back to The Band indie) with real bluegrass/roots music. Overall they remind me of early (and *very* late, think "Rainy Day Music" era) Jayhawks. But only if the Jayhawks had truly immersed themselves into americana instead of just sitting at the shores of roots music.

All of the elements of good roots music are here: instrumentation (guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, accordion), arrangement (clever but not pointlessly complex), themes (alcohol, god, love, death). There is a somber (occasionally morbid) view-point here that typifies contemporary gothic-americana/blackgrass music. I enjoy this but I was raised on 1940s & 50s country music (which fell into two camps: good time dance music and white/dark blues). As such where others hear Leonard Cohen or the Pogues I hear Hank Williams. And that couldn't be a better thing.

True the vocals are gruffer than the old country greats, think Mark Lanegan with bits of Eddie Vedder. But not only does the style work perfectly for the music it's acts as a nice sign post that this isn't the bland, safe contemporary pop music that's been masquerading as country music.

When it comes to the songs my personal preferences lead me prefer the circus swirl of "Darkness Falls" and the rough wildness of "The Lash". Though "Bottle and Rusty Blade", "Sons of Soil" and "Witch on the Mountain" all hold their own.

PS: I LOVE this album cover.

Pinebox Serenade are seven Texans who are somehow connected to Devil's Ruin Records, a musical label operating in Leo, Indiana. I think there's an underground railroad for wayward musicians, but my sources haven't been able to bring me any concrete proof. Yet. Anyway, Pinebox are showering the world with love in their second full-length album, Let The River Take Them Home, hereafter referred to as LTRTTH, or LeatherTooth for short. Contained within the microscopic pits of the silvery platter are 12 old-timey songs that are dark and organic. "Gothic Americana" they call it.



To make their own special "Gothic Americana" moonshine Pinebox Serenade start with traditional folk instruments like an acoustic guitar, mandolin, fiddle, banjo, accordion, lap-steel and ciddle (a cello in the field-roughened hands of a folk musician). Then they play original mountain music and bluegrassy dirges and smoky campfire songs, music that is formed from the dirt of despair, songs of love and rejection, life and death, daily pleasures and hourly pains.

The songs are surprisingly sophisticated without betraying their rural origins. The instrumental "Sons of Soil" begins with a mournful accordion that weeps into a dark lamentation that will leave a hollow ache in your chest. "The Plains" is hypnotic shoegazer folk full of eerie sounds and droning woodwinds and is driven painfully home by a perfect and passionate performance. If it's a mandolin solo you want, look no further than "The Faithful", an uncharacteristically upbeat song where the upright bass and fiddle form an unbeatable alliance. "Isabelle" soberly finds that "Midnight is a mask that covers me" leading to the rowdy Celtic romp "The Lash", where angry and aggressive vocals pelt the listener with missives of "Who wants to live to a ripe old age?" I can't help but thinking that our own Lee Miles would enjoy this band.

Folks, you just don't get music like that created by Pinebox Serenade from the radio. You can't churn it out according to a computer-generated formula. No, you've got to live a rough life (or at least read a lot about people living rough lives) and then use your music to work through the pain. But for such a sorrowful album, Let The River Take Them Home, er, LeatherTooth is a joy for the ears and the soul. (Jason Hoffman)

The prospect of hell and the potential for redemption provide the tension for Pinebox Serenade's excellent "Let The River Take Them Home." Call it Gothic-roots-country or Gothic-rock-grass. Touchstones for Pinebox Serenade might be a harrowed Johnny Cash, The Pogues but replace the Irish with American, and Richard Buckner at his most morose. There is a dreamy dark energy to the band's music that presents something pleasant on the surface only to discover that discontent lurks below. Pinebox Serenade take you on a dark, glorious journey. -- Jeff Weiss, Miles of Music (Devil's Ruin)

What if Leonard Cohen fronted a bluegrass ensemble? Denton's Pinebox Serenade can give you a pretty good answer, somewhere in the middle of their seven-piece medley featuring, among other things, mandolin, fiddle and cello. Serenade has become a ubiquitous favorite in area dives over the past year or two, their fare ranging from dark, smoky minor-chord numbers to old-timey, piston-driven whiplash romps, to Slobberbone-ish whiskey narratives about the other side of the tracks. Not surprisingly, Slobberbone's Brent Best recorded last year's debut and is working with them on this one as well.

This busy group of Denton musicians take some time out of their busy touring schedule to make a fairly rare appearance in Dallas tonight. The strength of this band is in the arrangements which are sophisticated without being too busy or thrown in just to have them there. If you're going to have accordion in a song, you better know how to use it. Thankfully, they do.

Texas collective known as Pinebox Serenade present their self-titled debut of gothic Americana. It`s a loose array of dirgey mountain folk, dark ballads and gypsy tales, all graced with bluegrass elements and bedeviled with the irreverence of alt. country. The seven members, four of whom sing, fill out their rough-hewn rural arrangements with mandolin, fiddle, cello, lap-steel, banjo, guitar, bass and drums. Their songs speak of such notable members of society such as the town drunk, the local gravedigger, the marginally insane, the lovelorn and the doomed. Recorded and produced by Slobberbone`s Brent Best, in his Denton home studio. The 11 songs on this acoustic hootenanny with its dark lyrics but sprightly music reveal a band who understands the power of contrast. (Hot Link)