Trampled by Turtles going 'fully analog' with surprise album dropping next week
Published in Entertainment News
MINNEAPOLIS — Never one to bill itself as an old-timey string band, Trampled by Turtles is taking a decidedly old-school approach with a record set to drop next week.
The Minnesota acoustic sextet surprised fans Tuesday with news it has a new LP, titled “Good Dogs,” ready for release Nov. 20. More surprising than when it’s coming out is how.
The album is getting a “fully analog” release, only to be available on vinyl or cassette for the first two months of its release. What’s more, songs are being sent only to public radio stations for airing. They will not be available on streaming platforms until January.
“We’re gonna slow down and listen on the radio or on a turntable [or] cassette deck,” the band wrote in its announcement post.
Putting its banjo and fiddle where its mouth is, Trampled took a slower, trickier and pricier all-analog approach to recording “Good Dogs.” Songs were captured on reel-to-reel tape instead of the long-modernized approach of digital recording.
In a separate note to go with the record, Trampled front man Dave Simonett expounded on why and how the band was so intent on an analog approach.
“The making of our new album came about as a response to, in my humble opinion, an excess of modernity in recording,” the singer/guitarist wrote, going on to pinpoint the exact recording location: his living room in Minneapolis.
“Easily my favorite recording experience,” he added.
“We like to record while playing live right next to each other... . Call it a creative limitation, but, for me, the real reason is that playing music with friends is the best part about any of this. And I mean playing and singing right next to them in the same space and time, not overdubbing my tedious lyrics on top of their music days after they made it.”
The first hint of the new album came on Oct. 28, Public Radio Music Day, when the band partnered with the noncomMUSIC Alliance to premiere the LP’s title track on public radio stations around the country. Trampled also gave home-turf fans an early listen to “Good Dogs” when it performed the song at the Minnesota Country Club festival in July.
Now, the avid Minnesota TbT audience will get first dibs on hearing more of the record played live after its release. Tuesday’s album-release announcement included new “evening with” concert dates around the country through spring. The first one will be an underplay gig at a not-yet-disclosed Twin Cities location on Nov. 22.
The band is set to play a free 3 p.m. in-store gig at the Electric Fetus on Nov. 21. Preorders of “Good Dogs” are being taken at electricfetus.com. The first 150 customers to order the album there will get a pass to the Nov. 21 gig.
Not counting last year’s album for Sub Pop Records, “Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles” — though that collaboration with the Low bandleader certainly should not be overlooked by Trampled fans — “Good Dogs” will be the 10th full-length studio LP in the TbT discography. The last one was 2022’s Jeff Tweedy-produced “Alpenglow.” The group also dropped a five-song EP in 2024, “Always Here,” a companion to an EP of the same songs recorded by Simonett’s rockier side project Dead Man Winter.
While the vinyl-only initial approach to releasing “Good Dogs” is new to Trampled, it has been employed by artists including Sturgill Simpson, Jack White and the always-analog-hyping Neil Young.
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