When The Devil Makes Three got its start 10 years ago playing old-timey country folk with the intense live show energy and DIY philosophy of a punk band, it was ahead of its time. Since then, acoustic bands with a punk ethos have sprouted up all over Santa Cruz, giving banjos and tattoos common cause.
It’s not just here, either. Folk has been shacking up with punk all over the country for the last decade. “It just kind of happened around us,” says DM3 frontman Pete Bernhard. “I don’t know if we’ve influenced it or if we’re more just a part of it.”
The band that took Santa Cruz by storm in the early Aughts left here years ago. Bernhard and bassist Lucia Turino live in Vermont, while guitarist and banjo player Cooper McBean makes his home in Texas. They still come here to rehearse and kick off tours, though. Says Bernhard, “Santa Cruz is still our home.”
The band is stronger than ever. Devil Makes Three made the leap into full-time touring in 2005 and built a fan base across the country made up of punks, country fans, bikers, folk enthusiasts and hippies. Asked why DM3 draws such a diverse crowd, Bernhard points to their live concerts.
“We encourage people to have fun and dance,” he says. “It’s not a sit-down bluegrass thing. At first it was hard to get a crowd to dance without drums. We figured it out now and it seems pretty easy. Now it would be hard for us to play with drums.”
Their music is not simply an homage to early Americana. They apply the same modern lens to 1930s rural tunes that Tom Waits applies to the smoke-filled jazzy bar sound. There’s a distant, almost cinematic quality to it, even as it carries the simple sincerity of old-timey music.
As in a lot of traditional folk (and Waits, for that matter), the songs are often about characters and tell short stories.
“A good story makes a great song,” says Bernhard. “All the country and blues songs that I grew up listening to were based in that way. We try to base our songs off of true stories and things that we’ve done. Sometimes they’re character–written, but for the most part they’re true stories that we’ve experienced but embellished.”
In 2007, DM3 signed to Milan Records, a label that specializes in TV and film soundtracks. There was some talk initially of getting their music into TV and films, which made sense considering the cinematic tone of their songs. That never happened, but Milan has turned out to be a good label for them anyway, letting the band take the lead on album output and direction.
DM3 is now spending a lot of time on the road, opening for stars the likes of Merle Haggard and Dwight Yoakam. The busy touring schedule has come at a cost, however. Turino, for instance, dropped out of veterinarian school for the band.
“Being a bass player and vet just were not possible to make happen at the same time. She decided that she wanted to play in a band more than she wanted to go to school for animal science,” Bernhard says.
That decision, which essentially kept the band together, has made a lot of people happy. Here in Santa Cruz, where the Catalyst is gearing up for a two-night run, hundreds of fans are waiting to welcome back the three folk punks and the devil that made them do it.
THE DEVIL MAKES THREE
At the Catalyst
Friday and Saturday 8:30pm
Friday $20 adv/$25 door; Saturday $35 adv/$40 door (with Brothers Comatose and Miss Lonely Hearts)
