About That Song: Nate Sipe of Pert Near Sandstone
About That Song #58
In our special series, singer-songwriter Sarah Morris interviews artists about the songs that shaped them.
Hi! I’m Sarah Morris. I’m wildly in love with songs and the people who write them. There have been a few songs in my life that have been total gamechangers—songs that made me want to be a songwriter and songs I’ve written that made me feel like I am a songwriter. About That Song is a space where I can learn more about those pivotal songs in other writers’ lives.
In the 58th edition of this series, I connected with Nate Sipe, a founding member of the iconic Midwest bluegrass band Pert Near Sandstone! Having just heard their cover of another legendary Midwest band’s song, I wanted to learn more about the music that’s had an impact on Nate’s songwriting.
Pert Near Sandstone (Nate Sipe, right). Photo credit: Tony Nelson.
Sarah: Hello Nate Sipe! For the past two decades, you have been foundational in developing the Americana/roots music scene in Minnesota as part of Pert Near Sandstone, so it is an absolute thrill to have you stop by to talk a little about songwriting with me today. Congrats on the recent release of your eighth studio album, Waiting Days! Even more recently, you released a live cover of a tune by The Replacements, “Can’t Hardly Wait”—one iconic Minnesota band covering another. In celebration of this new single, I’d love to talk to you about the songs that have been instrumental in the Pert Near Sandstone songwriting journey.
Do you remember the song that you heard that made you want to be a songwriter? Tell us about that song.
Nate: This is a tricky one to narrow down to a specific song. I think I can pick an album, but I’d also like to explain how and why it was impactful to me.
Sarah: Please do!
Nate: When I became interested in folk music, blues, and roots, I simultaneously discovered how musical genres are related. It became evident that ideas were borrowed, developed, appropriated, or passed on from one source to another. I came to recognize that much of the rock and metal I grew up listening to had a lineage tracing through Led Zeppelin, for example, the Beatles, and back even farther to Robert Johnson and Woody Guthrie, and so on.
Composing music became less mystifying when the building blocks were recognized and understood. I still get excited to trace connections between musical forms or artists, such as recognizing that Dick Dale, who was of Lebanese descent, used Middle Eastern influence to form his surf sound; or how Hawaiian steel guitar players influenced the sound of early country-western and country blues music!
When I was 16 years old, in a garage band but reassessing the direction I wanted to pursue musically, I found a cassette tape in my parents’ collection. It was dubbed from an LP and so I only knew it was called Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan. I’d heard several of his nasally radio hits before and sort of disregarded him for the easier listening albums we owned, like Simon and Garfunkel or John Lennon.
But what I heard on that cassette forever changed how I thought about songwriting and lyrical storytelling. So many of those songs had purity of word choice that still gives me chills, almost like nursery rhymes that were floating in the air until someone attuned enough finally heard the whispers in the wind.
I think of that album like a story, a northern noir, tender and heart-wrenching but at times also cruel and bleak. Each song is like a letter to someone, pinned to a door or left held down by a stone on the side of the road. I was thrilled to later discover that the album was partially recorded in Minneapolis by musicians that were sourced at The Podium, a guitar shop where I would later work for several years. Of course, that album opened up all of Dylan’s other work for me, and the lineage of folk music that I followed back from him, and also poets like Rimbaud and Dylan Thomas!
Sarah: What a special kind of full-circle moment to find yourself working at a guitar shop that was so instrumental in creating an album that impacted you in such a pivotal manner.
Once you began writing, did you feel like a writer immediately? It took me a few years of writing before I believed it—was there a song that gave you that “a-HA! I AM a songwriter!” moment? Tell us about that song.
Nate: My early notebooks started filling up with folk songs I was learning, collected in hopes to one day play with yet-unidentified friends I knew must be out there who were also interested in that bag. Before long I started getting my own lyrical ideas and tried working them into folk forms, new words to old songs and new songs to old words, or a mashup of “floating lyrics” and original folk-couplet ideas. I was inspired by the idea that songs are something that can create a world of its own accord. Songs can be anything, the simplest form, the silliest words—even gibberish! A song can change from day to day, or just become a new song. It can get pissed and curse or love everything. It can be as private or public as you wish.
I slowly became more confident and looked into the notebooks of poetry I’d written over the years. Song and poetry for me have always been different crafts, different avenues of expression. I was already identifying as a writer, but learned how to be a writer of song. I still struggle to marry those voices, but occasionally a nicely poetic thing occurs in a more lyrical form, or I can tease it into a meter and rhyme scheme. One song in particular that I think worked well at being harvested from a long rambling road poem was my song “Paradise Hop.”
Sarah: I appreciate the liveliness you attribute to songs—that they can themselves be as fluid and changing as a human. Do you remember the first song you wrote as a band, or that a member brought to the group, which made you feel a sense of having formed/found a distinctive band voice?
Nate: The first original song Pert Near recorded was one I wrote called “Rounder’s Blues.” This is a perfect example of borrowing folk lyric ideas and mixing them with my own. The “sugar for sugar and salt for salt” verse was mostly lifted from Jimmie Rodgers, I think it was, and used as a solid reference point for the traditional voice. That song fit well with the old-time and bluegrass material that we were performing at the time. I was also inspired by the challenge to purposefully write songs in a style that might be mistaken for old traditionals.
The first song we wrote as a band collaboratively was “Summer Skies.” It came about while J [guitarist J Lenz] was playing a fingerstyle guitar progression and Kevin [banjo player Kevin Kniebel] tried some lyrics he had been working on. It seemed to fit together well, so we arranged it and recorded it in that same basement not long afterward for our Up & Down The River album. That song was uniquely in a modern voice for us at the time, as in not trying to pass as traditional or bluegrass. It’s really a pretty song we still love to perform in the right setting.
Pert Near Sandstone. Photo courtesy of the artists.
Sarah: Your eighth album, Waiting Days, came out late last year—congratulations! The album hit me like a road album—ready to be listened to on a long road trip, and also like it’s an offering from hearts that’ve lived plenty of days on the road. With the title track we hear “the moon is high on the Western Plains, shining like it’s got something to say”—oh, I loved that lyric—I like a conversational moon! Can you tell us about that song?
Nate: The original concept for this album was to make a collection of either travel songs or story songs; it ended up being a mix of both and tells a good story throughout the album. I think much of what inspires my songwriting is traveling and experiences in the between, which is where I find myself often since I live out of state from the others. I’ve alluded to the moon in a few songs as a point of comfort and familiarity that I can always find no matter where I am. In this particular lyric the moon is a friend, showing itself loudly as a guide or beacon that requires self-interpretation to “find my own way.”
“Waiting Days” is a road song, and it had quite a journey itself before finally being released. It inadvertently also has a prophetic title. I wrote it years ago, then altered it from its original form to be an opening song in a play that I scored and performed in called Ishmael, based on Melville’s Moby Dick; I turned it into a kind of sea-shanty! It was returned to its original form and recorded for the last album but ultimately didn’t fit that project and was set aside. With this project it was further rearranged and became a connective thread between the songs, which is why it’s the title track of the album. “Waiting Days” is my favorite song on the new album to perform these days, largely because of that history.
Sarah: Your current single is a fantastic cover of The Replacements’ “Can’t Hardly Wait.” I read that the impetus to record it came from having performed the cover at First Ave for the Waiting Days release show. Essentially, it could not be more Minnesota! Excellent. Tell us about that song.
Nate: Yes, I heard that song randomly one day, which sent me into a journey through The Replacements’ catalog and re-appreciation of that band and their sound. I’m not one to search for cover songs, but “Can’t Hardly Wait” struck me as an interesting song to interpret for a string band and also a fun opportunity to work horns into our performance. We arranged it, rehearsed it in the greenroom with the full ensemble, and then let it rip on stage. It went really well and felt great to commemorate such an impactful Minneapolis band on the hometown stage they used to play.
I knew we had to capture that again as soon as we could all assemble. We thought it potent and timely enough to wrap it into a single release with a video of us recording it live-in-studio. I think we have some newfound confidence to try other interesting covers and I’m excited to see what we might try next. As a string melody instrumentalist, it’s great to jam with horns on stage and I hope for more of that!
Sarah: As much as I love writing songs, finding my own interpretations of others’ songs can be nearly as engaging of a process, and as a listener, I love hearing artists cover other artists. We’ll look forward to these maybe-future covers! Thank you so much for stopping by About That Song, Nate!
Nate: Yes! I love digging into the process of songwriting which I do by cornering friends at music festivals as often as possible.
Sarah: I’ve been known to do that music festival cornering as well!
Nate: I also try to steer into this arena with each of our “Road To Blue Ox” podcast interviews. The method to this affliction is as varied as it is inspiring. Thanks to you for instigating the conversation with all the other crafters of songs!
Sarah: Absolutely! Let’s keep having these conversations.
Listen to “Can’t Hardly Wait”
“Can’t Hardly Wait” Single Credits
(Live cover of The Replacements)
Arrangement by Pert Near Sandstone
Recorded and mixed by Ryan Young at NeonBrown Recording Studio
Cover artwork by Nate Sipe
Video recorded and edited by Matt Hussey
Lead vocals, bass: Justin Bruhn
Banjo: Kevin Kniebel
Guitar: J Lenz
Mandolin: Nate Sipe
Fiddle: Chris Forsberg
Saxophone: Max Felsheim
Trumpet: Bobby Jay
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Morris. Photo credit: Tom Smouse.
Sarah Morris is a superfan of songs and the people who write them, and a believer that certain songs can change your life. A singer-songwriter / mama / bread maker / coffee drinker who recently released her fifth album of original material, she’s been known to joyfully sing with people in her Big Green Bathroom.
