Mile Twelve playing Caffe Lena Friday 

Mile Twelve, playing Caffe Lena for the fifth time this Friday, (Jan. 26) is not your granddaddy’s Oldsmobile. The pandemic accelerated some changes in the band that pushed them into a sound that’s defined better by the words “String band” than “bluegrass.” 

“The most recent album (“Close Enough to Hear”) is more into the progressive realm of bluegrass and focusing more on songwriting,” explains Evan Murphy, guitarist and songwriter in the group. “We’re at chord progressions that are a little outside (those of) bluegrass. The previous album may have slightly more traditional or mainstream bluegrass sound.” 

“Close Enough to Hear” is the third album by this International Bluegrass Music Association multiple award-winning group and the first one to be recorded in Maine. The first two were done in Nashville. “Recording in Maine I just feel like was a very retreat style experience. When we recorded in Nashville it just felt very plugged into that music scene, the mainstream commercial Nashville kind of music scene which was awesome and really exciting.  

“Our second album that was recorded in Nashville was recorded by Brian Sutton who is like the greatest bluegrass guitar player ever, but he also records all his session work with other famous artists. So, the week after he was producing our record, he was going into the studio to cut a Blake Shelton record, like a mega mega main stream country pop star guy. So, recording in Nashville had that feeling of like very whoa! We’re in it. We’re in this scene. We’re like in this very polished like commercial music scene. 

“Being in Maine is like the opposite. We’re out in the middle of the woods up in New England doing this weird songwriter-focused album that’s a little quieter and softer and slower than the stuff we’ve done before.  He didn’t produce, but the guy who engineered the album was named Sam Kassierer, and Sam is a longtime keyboard player for Josh Ritter and produced a couple of Josh Ritter’s big albums. So, recording with Sam Kassierer was a totally different thing. It was like he’s not even a bluegrass guy. His world is like songwriter music, and stuff like that. So, it was very meditative. It was very retreat styled. It was pretty cool.” 

The pandemic set off changes in the band that precipitated the change in recording venue and the replacement of two band members. “The two members of the band Dave Benedict and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes left before Covid started. They had relocated, David to South Carolina and Bronwyn to Nashville. Before Covid, we were kind of touring like crazy. So, it didn’t even make much of a difference that they had moved. We would just see them all the time on the road. People would ask us how do you rehearse and stuff in all different states, but it was like we were together all the time. It didn’t matter, but when Covid came, it just changed everything.  

“At first, everyone thought it was going to be for a few weeks. Then, it ended up us never seeing each other, never practicing, never writing and never together … . When we all started getting back together again, this is all into the summer of 2021. So (we had) a long time off. The pandemic started. It just started to become clear it wasn’t gonna be practical anymore. None of us lived near each other. That was the point we realized we had to make a change and have two new people join the group: Korey Brodsky and Ella Jordan. In some ways it almost felt like a new band because it was definitely a new sound to it. It brought in the sound of the album that they recorded was so different from the last one. They were great.” 

I asked Evan if the Appalachian sound I heard in college was still around. “Yeah, and that’s interesting that you say that because in some of the ways the more polished southern like radio bluegrass has gotten away from some of that really rough and ready traditional Appalachian sound. You listen to Ralph Stanley, and it’s not polished. It’s like mountain music. It’s very rough, but it’s very soulful. There’s probably some people still doing that.” 

They’re calling themselves a string band now. “We’re not gonna cut to a metronome. We’re not gonna time the vocals. There’s nothing wrong with any of that.  We’re just gracefully bowing out of that game, and we’re gonna focus on what the Northeast does pretty well which is the more songwriter approach to it. There’s something about recording in Maine that was like we’re just doing things a little bit differently than the last album.” 

Mile 12 plays Caffe Lena, Friday, Jan. 26 at 8 p.m. The Caffe Lena is located at 47 Phila St. in Saratoga Springs.