Session Americana Talk About The Scene

By Ed Burns

Session Americana have been grabbing audiences for years with their unique shows. Playing your shows sitting down around a small table is certainly different, and Boston Music News caught up with Ry Cavanaugh, Billy Beard and the group’s newest member John Bistline to talk about how they started performing like this, how they’ve grown, and what it’s like being a part of the vibrant Cambridge/Somerville music scene.

Boston Music News: How did you get started playing around the table?

Billy Beard: There were two bands playing a residency at Toad. We played our set and tore everything down, but the other band never showed and there were like two hours left before the bar closed, so Ry looks at me and says “I got an idea,” so he pulls three microphones off the stands and we sat down at this little table at the front of the stage. He just taped the mics down to the table like spokes on a wheel and we just sang anything we could thing of. It was this amazing transformative moment at the bar where it was loud and rowdy and all of a sudden it’s like everyone leaned in close. It was like this magical thing.

BMN: How do crowds respond to this sort of thing?

Ry Cavanaugh: It’s slightly voyeuristic and people love that, but on the other hand it’s compelling. It’s sort of the human side of music to see people interacting in real time. One of the things I think people love about this band is its spontaneity. It’s almost this spiritual thing where you’re connecting through sound.

BB: What happens inside that circle when we’re playing, there’s a genuine love of what we’re playing, but there’s also a genuine love for each other and I think people see that.

John Bistline: That’s what I always loved about the band when I was a fan. It’s so inclusive. It’s about community and its always changing and growing and I always loved that.

BMN: How did the band grow from those beginnings to where it is now?

RC: It started as a group that was completely casual. There was absolutely no pretense to it. But there was a moment where we thought ‘wouldn’t it be fun to put something down.’ Recording became such a community event and we grew into such a symbiotic relationship with the studio and the places we played.

JB: I remember when I first came on I was incredibly psyched about it because I used to go see them every Sunday night at Toad when it was just this great thing. It was just these guys, not even a band, who just played because they want to. Then it moved from Toad to Lizard Lounge. The it really became a hang – like it was a hang before, but when people were forced to pay and it was still a hang, that’s when you knew it was something.

BMN: How have the records been doing during this time?

RC: They’re flying out of the suitcase [laughs]. We never make tons of money but there’s always something in the bank to make the next record. The individual tracks, if you shuffle every record, there are songs that sound like I would say Session Americana sound. But the records themselves don’t try to approximate what our live shows are.

BMN: What’s it like being part of the Cambridge/Somerville music scene, and Boston as a whole?

BB: New York and L.A. and Nashville have an industry to it that is not here, but it’s a corporate one, and so not having that may actually advance what is here. There’s no pretense about it.

RC: In that context of being a small town, the level that people strive to express themselves artistically is so high. People here really are chasing after this artistic vision in a way that a lot of places can’t allow.

JB: It’s such a Mecca for independent music. There are hundreds of great musicians that probably could be out touring with any act but people just come here and they like and they stay here.