As the front man and guitarist The Devil Makes Three, Pete Bernhard spins yarns of gamblers, murderers and the devil in all of us, using the raw material of folk, blues and bluegrass as his guide. On his solo efforts, Bernhard takes inspiration from the second and third waves of country music that followed, with songs that shuffle, songs that stomp, and those that simply lay back and drink in the California sunshine. Just last month, Benhard released his second solo effort, Straight Line, a record that is earning him much-deserved accolades among critics and country fans alike. Bernhard spoke to The Voice of Energy from his home in Davis, California.
What inspired you to want to make another solo album?
I don’t know exactly. I’d say I wasn’t necessarily inspired to make a solo record. I just had a bunch of songs that I liked and they became a record accidentally. I had wanted to make another solo record since the last one. It was in the cards, I guess. I got together with some friends to try them out and when I played songs with drums they sounded great. And I had the time to do it. I don’t usually have a lot of free time to so I took advantage of it.
How about the songs themselves? What inspired those?
Inspired by the stuff I’ve been listening to all along. I love the roots of the music that we play in The Devil Makes Three, electric blues stuff like Little Walter and Howlin’ Wolf and stuff that takes a more standard approach: oldies and pop sounding stuff. I guess, it’s more of a combination of those things that I listen to and those things that don’t work in an old time bluegrass set up. That cut time beat that just doesn’t work without a drummer.
How do you go about writing a song? Do you map things out pretty clearly or do you just jam with your friends and pound a song into shape?
I think it’s a little bit of both. The songs are mostly done by the time I start playing them with my band, but things change in the writing as well. For this record, half of them are songs that are finished and half songs that were written on the fly. I kind of like trying to write stuff under pressure. “Pray For Rain” was definitely written under pressure. I had the idea but didn’t have the song finished, so we finished it as we recorded it. Things don’t end up exactly as I imagine them to but it’s not like I’m aiming for perfection.
You play primarily electric guitar on this album. Are there things you like about playing one versus the other?
Electric guitar is a lot easier to fingerpick on. A lot people don’t do that and if they do, they use picks on their fingers, metal picks on each finger. I don’t do that so it tends to be really quiet. In Devil Makes Three, you often have to be loud enough to get all the songs across. The electric guitar cuts through a lot more without me having to be screaming loud. And in DMT, I’m rhythm guitar and singer. In this solo thing, I can be a lot more complicated with my finger picking and can be carried by the drums. It can be more complicated. With DMT, an acoustic feels more appropriate because all the stuff that inspired us was all acoustic. This stuff is a little different and it needs to be a little louder. And having a drummer there, the electric guitar is the tool for the job
Who did you work with on the album?
Jason Chase is a drummer that I know here locally, from the Sacramento area. Max Hart is another local friend and he also produced the record. He’s multi instrumentalist and plays pedal steel keyboard and bass and sings on the record. Keith Kerry loaned us a lot of instruments. He has this amazing collection of stuff like this B-3 organ that I played. There were a lot of people involved it was a fun record to make.
Was it an easy record to make?
It was. I mean, it’s not like there wasn’t work. We ran through stuff a lot and sometimes it just didn’t work. In my experience when I make records, it’s a lot of work. It’s hard. We worked and there were some long days, but it was fun. I was having a good time and everyone involved was having fun. All the songs came out better than I expected.
You covered a Townes Van Zandt song on this album and I know you’re a big fan of his. What attracts you to his work?
He has one of the best songwriters. He’s a poet, I think. And a great one, at that. And I love his singing and love the way he phrases a song and the simplicity of the songs. You can tell he put a lot of work into it, a lot of time and effort into trying to say what he’s trying to say.
Why did you choose to record “Mr. Mudd and Mr. Gold”?
It’s one of my favorite songs that he does. It’s such an epic song. The way he does it much more like a talking blues thing. There’s no break really, no rise and fall, no chorus, just a couple of short instrumental breaks. I figured if I was going to do a cover, you might as well do it differently. This one was the one I thought I could do most different than his version. It may make some Townes Van Zandt fans mad but who cares? It’s still a form of praise.
How did you end up moving from Vermont to California?
My mom lives out here and has for a long time. She was in Southern California the first time I came out. I stayed with her for a while, but eventually moved to the North Bay, to Sonoma County. So I was brought out here partially because my family was out here, but also because it was so far away. I wanted to go on a cross-country trip after high school and California was the destination end of the road.
What do you think it is about California that inspires so many country artists?
California itself has a great tradition of country music with Buck Owens and Merle Haggard and Gram Parsons even though he wasn’t from California. And it has that whole Western feel, but it’s definitely not Texas, you know? We breed a different kind of country music. That thing has become popular. Some people in California, though, look at country with some disdain. I remember, even I as a kid I wouldn’t listen to country music. I think that’s starting to change though, especially with young people.
