Produced by October for Founders Brewing Co. On the penultimate night of the Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival, Horseshoes and Hand Grenades took the stage at Chop Shop for a rousing, toe-tapping performance. According to guitarist Adam Greuel, “We’re a progressive old time-y bluegrass rock type band from Wisconsin.” But they are more than that. They are beer-lovers, friends and have acted as a gateway for a new audience to discover the unapologetic joy of bluegrass music. October caught up with Greuel before the show over a round of beers at nearby Estelle’s. Have you played at the Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival before? We’ve played a fair amount in Chicago, everywhere from the Vic Theater to Evanston Space to Lincoln Hall. We’ve played at Chop Shop a couple times before, but we’ve never played this festival. I have a good feeling about it. It took us a little bit to build a scene here, but it’s now to the point where you start recognizing faces. We always prided ourselves at having a community behind the music. The Grateful Dead have that kind of feel—we’ve always appreciated that and looked up to it. So, what is a ‘progressive old time-y bluegrass rock type band’? At our core, we’re best friends. Our band didn’t start with the intent of being a band. We were all friends who played acoustic instruments. From that, people started randomly booking us. We were all in college at the time, and the next thing we knew, we all were graduated. Instead of pursuing what we thought we were going to be doing with our lives, we thought maybe we should take this leap and tour around with our best friends for a while and have a shit-ton of fun. That’s what happened and I think our sound has always been this juxtaposition of the five individuals that make up the band. When you’re close friends, you have respect for one another. It was never like, we’re going to be a bluegrass band, we’re just going to make the music we make that feels right, that feels fun. I think, over time, after being together for eight years, you get better at being yourself. With this last record, I think we’ve gotten better at embracing our musical curiosities—our freaky side. Tell me a little about this record. The Ode just came out. It’s produced by our buddy Dave Simonett from Trampled by Turtles–awesome dude, awesome friend. The Infamous Stringdusters just started a new label called Tape Time Records and we’re the first release on that label, which is super exciting. We’ve never done the label route before, so that was really cool. But for the record, how we go about that process, we’ve got five songwriters in the band and we just kinda sit down in one of our living rooms with a case of beer and play all of our songs for one another. By the end of a couple nights, we kinda know what’s going to work the best and that’s how we know what to put on the record. It’s an organic way of looking at it. The best record-making times are when everyone is super comfortable. There’s a thing you can hear in the music—you can hear when the vibe was really good in the studio and that’s how this record was for us.

Victoria Sanders, @veesanders

How do you describe the atmosphere at your shows? I’ve always been conscious about being a conduit to having people be able to be themselves. I think our goofiness on stage, at times, it comes across as a lack of professionalism. But I think we found that it makes people comfortable…Being relaxed on stage then, potentially, helps people do the same. I like to think that our shows are just a conduit to a really good time, where you can actually stop worrying about all the other shit that’s going on in your life. I think that’s true for music in general, but we definitely try to foster that. Is there a trick to creating that more relaxed, fun atmosphere when you are performing? It’s just about listening and being super open-minded. The five of us have that because we’re such good friends. If somebody’s having a hard time with various things in life, everybody’s there and supportive of it and we just put it all out on stage. Music has that tendency to relieve stress and heal. For some people, to save. I think, for me personally, it’s hard to imagine my life without playing music. What drew five guys from Wisconsin to bluegrass music? I think it’s different for every guy in the band. There’s a longstanding tradition in Wisconsin, believe it or not, of Bluegrass music. There’s this festival called Mole Lake Bluegrass that laid the groundwork. All the bluegrass greats, from Bill Monroe to Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to New Grass Revival and John Hartford, they all played at this festival. For us, I think it’s just the simplicity of not having to lug around amps and being able to whip out our instruments in our living room and start messing around. When we were in college, we would be picking everywhere, whenever we felt like it, from friends’ house parties to the front lawn of campus. I remember one time, I probably downed a 30-rack of Pabst and strapped antlers to my head—we were just trying to play bluegrass Christmas songs a couple days before holiday break in the front of our dorm room. We got in trouble, because a ton of people came and it turned into a total ruckus. It was a great time. But, I think we just naturally gravitated towards it. That’s the thing with out band: Being natural and going with he flow, so to speak.

Jenny Fontaine