Three Tall Pines

an acoustic co-op that relays the emotion of early American rural life through the sounds of impassioned harmonies and progressive instrumentation

 

HOME        BIO        TOUR       PHOTOS        MUSIC        CONTACT      PRESS      MYSPACE

 
Press Photo
High Resolution Photo for Press

 

Photo by John Hames, 2008

Download (4MB)

 

 

Three Tall Pines, 2009

Download (2MB)

 

Press Page

Two Page Adobe PDF Press Flyer

 

 

 

Tour Poster

Adobe PDF 11X17 Tour Poster

 

 

 

Short Bio

Three Tall Pines is an acoustic quartet in demand throughout the Northeast.  Their original songwriting, which tells heartfelt stories of rural America, has been described as both lyrical and exuberant.  The Pines’ impassioned melodies and vivid lyrics are complemented by creative arrangements for guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and upright bass, which deliver colorful textures while retaining a rich, traditional acoustic sound.

 

Recent Awards:

 

-Performing Songwriter Magazine DIY Top 12 Picks: December 2008

-Regional Finalist in NPR Mountain Stage’s Newsong 08 Contest

-Finalist in the 08 Lyric Writer Awards Songwriting Contest
-Third Place in the 08 Ossipee Valley Songwriting Contest
-#1 ranking in Ourstage.com contest (Bluegrass Category, July 2008)

Reviews

 

"Boston-based Americana quartet Three Tall Pines have made a bluegrass-savvy, roots-inspired statement with their debut. Like any down-home record, this CD is full of mandolin, fiddle, banjo, dobro and finely layered vocal harmonies on tunes about love, heartache, women and whiskey.

“Stillhouse Road” starts things off upbeat (“Girl don’t you wear that diamond ring / Don’t you wear that thing”). “Gotta Get Paid” maintains the pace, exorting, “Gotta get paid, Mama / Or we ain’t paying the rent.” Slowing the proceedings, the beautifully arranged “Black Maria” is a sober look at a coal miner who fears dying before his son grows up. In the long run, Short While Ago is a fresh approach an enduring genre. "

—BW, Performing Songwriter, December 2008

"What a wonderfully vibrant piece of work this one is!! 'Short While Ago' by Boston country folksters Three Tall Pines puts the genre firmly back into contention with a blazing album of America's finest!

Stunningly produced to deliver maximum separation whilst retaining that special feeling of instrumental unity, 'Short While Ago' is bubbly, cheery and a joy to behold. It aint all up-lifting stuff though; in true country tradition the songs feel real and heartfelt so that the emotions are tested while the senses are swayed and soothed. Three Tall Pines are a four-piece outfit that play very much as one; with guitars, mandolin, dobro, fiddle and viola being the mainstay of their strung armoury and with four distinct voices to lead and harmonise, the permutations are many and varied and Three Tall Pines make the most of their musical talents to ply their trade as an amazingly robust but gentle sounding combo.

The songs here are as good as it gets, think Steve Earle quality but slightly more mountainous home-town and saw-dusty than the great man. Without doubt Three Tall Pines have a massive talent with words and emotion. Their individual and combined instrumental dexterity and maturity ensure that the words are aptly embellished with fine string-driven deft touch and empathetic feel. From mournful through to celebratory, Three Tall Pines produce the goods and draw the listener into their other-worldly musical tapestry of wash-tubs, car tyres, barking dogs and pine needles - I feel as though I've been teleported into the heart of their world and actually joined in with their 'party' - and I aint about to spoil it here!!

'Short While Ago' by the excellent Three Tall Pines is country heaven; a superbly entertaining and rewarding musical interlude that I didn't want to end! One thing's for definite, with bands like Three Tall Pines, country music and all its sub-genre is gonna be just fine in the future - like it or loathe it, 'country' folk music has been around for too long to be discarded simply cuz it aint quite musically pc. 'Short While Ago' by Three Tall Pines proves the point and long may these four country-ites continue to uphold their musical heritage with music and recordings of this quality and depth. Anyway, I defy anyone to keep their feet from tappin' along to this little beauty!  Mutt's nut man, the mutt's nuts!"

- Peter J. Brown, music reviewer, UK.

 

"The good ol’ boy tunes of “O’ Brother Where Art thou?” distilled into perfect band form…
 

Three Tall pines is one big breath of fresh air in an industry struggling to find any soul in an increasingly copycat scene, full of poseurs, wannabes and hacks.

There “Good Ol’ timey” music, a mixture of bluegrass and traditional American folk, is a beautiful mixture of heart, soul and curiosity.
In this album is more emotional jolt than in a thousand chickflicks, more heart than a million Bambi’s and more soul than the Devils secret soul cupboard.

This is an album of unadulterated love – love between the four band members and love for the genre.

If you liked the Soggy Bottom Boys, or even the songs from the Coen Brothers instant classic, you will adore Three Tall Pines forever…
They are the real deal, and no mistake…"


-Andi J Chamberlain, music reviewer, UK.



"The Three Tall Pines are from Boston, and they are a quartet featuring Dan Bourdeau (guitar & vocals), Joe Lurgio (mandolin & vocals), Gian Pangaro (bass, dobro & vocals), Emily Rideout (fiddle, viola & vocals) plus Chris Hersch playing banjo on three tracks.

Very much hoedown Americana, this is their first full length record which has received many favourable reviews and the band was voted regional finalist in the Mountain Stage’s Newsong Contest 2008 and were placed third on the Ossipee Valley Songwriting Competition.

It’s a true country record, borne out of the roots with titles such as "Bring The Wagon Home", "Stillhouse Road", "Gospel Plough" & "Pinewood Box" you can feel and the hear the sagebrush blowing across these tracks.

It’s a record that would be right at home on Bob Harris Country, a mix of Nicklecreek and the Dhuks, which are no bad reference points. This is a lively and warm record with much to enjoy with banjo, fiddle & the excellent vocals combining beautifully.

Dan Bourdeau & Joe Lurgio share most of the song writing duties and have absorbed the history of their roots on this admirable debut."


-Americana-UK.

 

 

"Sweet, dirty music...I will listen till the shine rubs off this disc!"

 

- Kent Gustavson, composer and bluegrass musician, New York, NY
 

"On their debut album, Short While Ago, Dan Bourdeau and Joe Lurgio of Three Tall Pines don’t sing like guys from New England. In the way that they adopt the sun-soaked melancholy of a pitched southern twang, their music is more of a restoration than a new construction. It’s not Americana, it’s not country and it’s not bluegrass: it’s more a mood and an attitude than it is any aisle in any music store. They are restoring to the process of making music something rural and agrarian that was long ago appropriated by a machine that turns every vernacular into a trend and every trend into a profit. They are rescuing country music, and music itself, from the instruments to the accent, from Toby Keith and Big & Rich; from Sony and Columbia; from Metallica’s struggle against the proliferation of digital media; from $130.00 Bob Dylan boxed sets. On Short While Ago, the times have indeed a’ changed, and not for the better.

The disc opens with a banjo playing a rich minor key vamp, courtesy of the deft right hand of Chris Hersch, before settling into the warm bluegrass groove of Stillhouse Road, before things get more serious with Stone Wall, where there’s clearly more going on than urban sprawl:

“…Times have changed since my young life and I never thought I’d see the day/There’s houses in the corn field around a fallen down barn/And the old dirt road is paved…”

Ultimately the song offers no resolution, just Emily Rideout’s fiddle growing more and more mournful. Lurgio’s mandolin, a little lower in the mix, is rain hesitating to fall on what’s left of rusty aluminum roofs, padding around looking for anything organic, finding nothing.

On Jenny Mule, even the beasts of burden are rebelling:

“Pull up on those reins boy, hold on tight/
That Jenny Mule’s as fresh as the morning dew “

Carolina opens with Gian Pangaro’s stand-up bass playing a beautifully bent triplet behind a 4/4 beat, wayward, through the verse, before it finds its direction in a plaintive refrain:

“Carolina, I'm coming home to you.”

It is literally and figuratively where Three Tall Pines are going, but where are they coming from?

“New York lights and Boston town/From Rome to Houston I've traveled all around…”

That return is not certain:

“Left you down in Tennessee/Down by the willow tree…I hope you’re still there, waiting on me.”

This ends more hopefully than does Stone Wall. Rideout carries the band into a redemptive chorus before a final, joyful phrase on Lurgio’s mandolin ends the song.

The mood stays upbeat on the next two tracks, Bring the Wagon Home John and Gotta Get Paid, both gentle stompers with which you can’t help but sing along. The big city is lurking, however, alien and foreboding:

“It’s a rare trip to town when you don’t lose a bushel of corn…”

But there are no alternatives. The work has already been done, as in the similar tune by the Staple Singers. The crops have been raised, the music has been made, and all that’s left is to get paid. In that, however are traps, even a plague, as in the drop-dead gorgeous Black Maria:

“…Going down that dusty mine/Work a long hard day for a nickel and a dime/Singing a song about a poor man’s life/And pray Black Maria pass by our house tonight.”

Here the resignation is made intimate by using a familiar one-four-five progression in a major key, while Pangaro shines on the Dobro. Wisely not opting for ostentatious solos, he lets the strings ring continuously behind the song, carrying cars of coal back and forth and ultimately up to brief glimpses of Lurgio’s mandolin that disappear as quickly as a miner can turn back into the tunnel.

Little Suzie inverts the sentiment of Stone Wall and Carolina: The pleasant myths of hearth and home remain, but the love has moved on, to a city of fluorescent lives and vanishing identities:

“…Those hazy fluorescent lights/Can blind you of yourself at times.”

There is no return and no reunion:

“These times, they’ve changed my mind/From leaving here.”

Everywhere on Short While Ago are lives changed irrevocably by the ceaseless march of time, by a world that is simultaneously becoming broader and more crowded. Lives are tugged along by rapidly deteriorating values, are governed and nearly torn by the diverging poles of material success and a very terrestrial set of traditions and values. These Three Tall Pines don’t let the wind blow them one way or another: their roots are too strong. They’ll take the gold from the muddy river, but they’re ready for the Pinewood Box, as well. They remain in the center, report and feel. What they have made is the most intimate, most democratic form of art: something that doesn’t govern too strongly the visceral reaction a listener will have, but rather allows the listener to feel along with it. "

 

- G. W. Mercure, Motif Magazine
 

"Eyes closed, Bourdeau and Lurgio drew the audience in...[they] had all of us tapping our feet together, breathing in rhythm with every song.  The fiddle swirled gently...mandolin and guitar notes wove their way...the bass, strong and heart-wrenching, travelled up from the floor, supporting the whole band.  They sang with wisdom, introspection, and emotion of octogenerians looking wistfully on their world...“

- Sarah Bidinger (fan), The Cowl, November 2008
 
 
Webpage by Three Tall Pines | copyright 2008