The South Austin Jug Band made its latest album, Strange Invitation, at the Hotel Chelsea.
"It was better than my wildest dreams," singer and guitarist James Hyland said. "I was scared we'd go up there and end up sitting in a room looking at each other. It's hard not to be inspired there. If you can't get it going in New York, you should just cut it off. It's difficult to not be moved by that city."
Hyland temporarily moved the band out of Austin, Texas, to make everyone work hard and find inspiration.
"Our surroundings were getting stale, and we needed something fresh to make good music," he said. "We stayed there for a week and wrote and wrote and wrote. We came home and went to Willie Nelson's studio. It's a studio that he owns and makes records in. I've never actually met the man."
Now the band is on tour and will come to the El Rey Theater on Friday at 8 p.m.
Local group the Saltine Ramblers will open.
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Fiddle and mandolin player Brian Beken said the town saw them as a bluegrass band, which unsettled their artistic dreams, so they went in search of more musical avenues. While they dug bluegrass plenty, they'd been listening to a more modern selection of music.
"We were listening to Beck and Nine Inch Nails and other things that got our blood flowing a little faster than bluegrass," Beken said.
The three-piece band hired a drummer and bassist for the tour. There's also mandolin, fiddle and electric guitar. Hyland, with a background in screenwriting, writes all the song lyrics.
"I wanted to be a screenwriter, but I bought a guitar," Hyland said. "The one thing I liked is the idea of writing songs that told stories. What got me into music, at first, was a lot of old country songs have some of the best stories. I like the idea I'm still getting to tell stories and more of them in a shorter time."
He said the band wants to put out enough good music to counter the overplayed tunes on FM stations.
"There are a lot of people shoveling garbage, and people are shoveling it over the radio," he said. "There are a lot of people out there that don't listen to that stuff and are smart enough to go out and look for music on their own. We're one of those bands that a lot of them are easy to find out there. It's an alternative to this attack on our collective consciousness."
South Austin Jug Band
w/ the Saltine Ramblers
El Rey Theater
Saturday, 8:30 p.m.
$13 in advance
$16 at the door
