Game-changing Kalamazoo, MI road warriors Greensky Bluegrass are prepping the album Stress Dreams for Jan. 21 in the new year. Tomorrow the band releases “Absence of Reason,” its third single from the project, and WMOT was offered an early listen and the chance to share it with you today, here and on the air.
Propelled by a rising banjo riff from Michael Arlen Bont and fuzz-toned dobro from Anders Beck, the song makes a misty minor harmonic base for mandolinist Paul Hoffman to sing about the power of instinct, about the path to being a better man being guided by a deeper calling than mere logic.
“Songs like this always become surprise favorites for me,” Hoffman says. “Somehow, free from emotional attachment, they become quintessential Greensky. This song feels like an example of an idea defined by a band.” And Beck calls it “a great example of how we like to mix up acoustic and electric tones. Psychedelic whale noises and J.J. Cale chicken-pickin licks on the same dobro on the same song? That's what I live for. Don't let the casual delivery of the verses let some of those great lyrical twists slide by.”
Recorded in Vermont and North Carolina, Stress Dreams took advantage of 2020 down time for focused writing and rehearsal. It will follow on 2019’s All For Money, a Billboard Bluegrass chart-topper. The band is looking forward to two shows celebrating the new year in St. Louis and a debut at North Carolina’s Merlefest in the spring. Find out more here.
