The Austin McCutchen Interview

“Skinny Dennis” In my early teens I started to fiddle around with lyrics and thought that being a musician was something I could do or wanted to do. I got into that around the time I started playing guitar. I’ve always leaned on being a singer/song writer than being able to shred. I’m fascinated with the old world tradition (Europe) because those songs were traded by traveling musicians. They didn’t have recordings, records and the internet so they traded them in person and that’s how it spread. I found folk music in my early teens and than became obsessed with acoustic music and melodies play out in a song. The content and the landscape is really interesting to me. I come from the Midwest so folk music has always felt like home to me. My thing hasn’t been as much of a studio project, it’s been more of a live thing. I lived in New York for five years and started putting together bands out there. We’d get these residencies going where we’d just play every week. I’m in situations where I’m writing songs and playing my songs. In the classic folk tradition I’m learning and playing songs by Merle Haggard, Waylon and Willie. That’s how I’ve been able to let my material breath - play the songs out live, find a place to do it, put together a band and just keep doing it. There was this place that opened right before I moved out of New York, it was a country bar called Skinny Dennis, which is a homage to Waylon’s bass player from the 1970’s. We were playing there every week and it’s sort of a set crew, with a little bit of a rotating aspect to it. That kind of thing keeps you on your toes, that uncertainty or different vibe coming into the picture forces your music to be more fluid. There’s a certain sort of joy and levity from doing that stuff. In the residency style just being a band leader causes this heightened awareness of the people around you and organizing this stuff. I got to a point where I was constantly putting these shows together; getting material together, getting people in the same place. Plus you sing every week so you’re just cranking after awhile. You get to a point where you can just sing your ass off - it keeps you sharp.