The Devil Makes Three maps out its Redemption & Ruin

The Devil Makes Three’s raucous performances have made the trio popular at folk and bluegrass festivals the world over. Those performances have attracted a number of special guests on the band’s albums, and that level of outside interest both challenges and complements the trio’s punk-rock take on classic Americana.

I spoke by phone with the Devil Makes Three’s guitarist and singer, Pete Bernhard, about the band’s live shows and its upcoming album, Redemption & Ruin, on New West Records.

The Pitch: The live albums the Devil Makes Three has released are a total contrast to the live videos that you post online. Are those chill videos just a matter of what circumstances allow?

Bernhard: It’s funny that you mentioned that, because we are going to put out a concert-footage DVD with a bunch of live material. We recorded our last three tours, I think, and we’re going to go through them and find the best tracks. Then, hopefully, on our next tour, we’re going to bring some people out to film some shows and we’re going to release that. It’s just something we haven’t gotten around to, but it’s in the plans.

I like the fact that you’re going to bring some people out to film you, because it seems like you’re always bringing people out to play with you as well.

There’s always the core trio, but there’s always these other folks you bring with you.We almost always bring people with us these days. The tour before last, we had fiddle and cello, and the tour after that, we had a percussionist and a different fiddle player. And this tour, we have a dobro player, a steel player. The Devil Makes Three is the three of us, but we like to do different stuff for different tours. Give the people something new to listen to, and it’s fun for us, creatively.

One thing I considered with this live-video thing was doing that on purpose and bringing out all kinds of different people for the tours, so that when we did the live video, there would be different people playing on each song, which would be really fun for us.

That would be really visually interesting.

Yeah, definitely. We just recorded a new album, and we had a lot of really great people play on it. So, if we could get some of those people to come and sit in for a live performance, that would be really fun.

I know musicians are always wanting to evolve their music, but it seems like the Devil Makes Three is really never content to let a song be, especially when you bring in another musician. You really let them lend their interpretation to the music.

Oh, yeah, definitely. We did that a lot on our last record, too, and we’re doing it on the one we haven’t put out yet. We had a lot of people come and play on the songs. In a way, they kind of co-produced the song, you know? Like, we had Jerry Douglas come and play dobro on a bunch of stuff, and he had ideas. If he has ideas, that’s cool. That’s the way the song will go.

We definitely leave things up for interpretation, and that’s part of playing live. It keeps it interesting for us, creatively, and hopefully for the listener, too. If someone wants to come to the show and hear the song exactly the way it was on the album, that’s not going to happen. [laughs] That’s one of the things I like about going to see a live show: You always see something different.

If you’re adding a dobro or pedal-steel player on different tours, then people have a good reason to come out every time you come through, since they don’t know what they’ll get.

And it’s fun for us, too. We’ve got to learn how to play with that person, and learn the way that they play, and listen — maybe change the way that we play our songs, maybe even change the parts to accommodate the person that’s playing, which is really fun.We want them to put their fingerprints on it. That’s why we bring in people we think are great. It’s like a collaborative process, where they join the band. We don’t want to get a session person. We want to get somebody who really likes their sound already and have a collaborative, happening thing.

What can you tell me about this new album, Redemption & Ruin?

It’s going to be coming out in late summer or early fall. Most of the people on it are people that are heroes of ours, people we’ve met on the road. We got Tim O’Brien, Jerry Douglas, Darrell Scott, Mickey Raphael — who plays harmonica in Willie Nelson’s band — one of the dudes from Old Crow Medicine Show, Chance [McCoy]. It’s really just a bunch of people we’ve toured with and think are great musicians.Since we made the record in Nashville, they were all there, which was amazing. It’s really hard to catch people when they’re not on the road, but thanks to the stars aligning, we were able to get them all in the studio at the same time, which was really great. We recorded most of the tracks live with them.

The concept of the album is like two sides of a vinyl record. The “Ruin” side is songs that are some traditional old blues songs — songs about drinking, drugs and screwing your life up. The other side is gospel tunes. So, it starts off with Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters — some deeply

depressing blues songs, you know? High energy, but just dark subject matter. Then, the other side is gospel tunes. We did some Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe and Doc Watson, and some traditional stuff. The hope is — fingers crossed — to have one side of the vinyl black and the other white. It works as a concept, and maybe actually encourages people to buy something!

The Devil Makes Three
with Zach Schmidt
Tuesday, May 24
Knuckleheads Saloon
2715 Rochester