John Mailander Takes Inspiration From Col. Bruce to Forecast the Future
photo: Michael Weintrob
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“To me, the reason to learn more and get better at music is to gain additional skills to connect with people,” John Mailander offers. “You’re increasing your vocabulary, which means you can have deeper conversations with your collaborators, regardless of genre. That’s really what propels me to keep trying to grow as a musician.”
Mailander’s eloquence on the fiddle has facilitated his dialogue with numerous accomplished players over the years, including Billy Strings, Noah Kahan, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Peter Rowan, and since 2018, as a member of Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers.
He started out playing traditional string music as a San Diego preteen in the early 2000s. “The reason I got into bluegrass was the community,” Mailander recalls. “It was an easy world to step into because there’s all this common repertoire. There was a weekly jam I grew up going to and it was less about the music and more about the connection and human experience of it, and the people I was meeting. That’s still a big part of my intention and joy with playing music.”
After attending the Berklee College of Music, he relocated to Nashville in 2015. There, his spirit and prowess soon facilitated the musical kinship so important to him. He increasingly received invitations to color the work of others in the studio and on tour. All the while, the fiddler contemplated the proper outlet and form for a personal statement reflecting his burgeoning artistic perspective.
He finally realized this goal in 2019 with the release of Forecast, which soon yielded a band of the same name. That album drew on bluegrass elements along with some of Mailander’s other touch points, such as psychedelic folk, John Zorn’s Naked City record, Trey Anastasio, Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band, Pat Metheny, Bill Frissell and the good ol’ Grateful Dead.
John Mailander’s Forecast was not designed to become a project in its own right, yet the group has just released an ambitious and arresting new album, Let the World In, which is the follow-up to 2021’s Look Closer. The band’s identity revealed itself, as if through kismet, when Mailander selected a few like-minded players to join him for his record release show at The Basement in Nashville on Jan. 5, 2019.
“The first record was a deeply personal statement of trying to stretch into these other worlds but not fully understanding how to do that. I think that’s part of what makes it unique,” he remarks. “I was kind of reaching for something and exploring something new, even though I didn’t really know what that was. Then when we played the first show with that instrumentation, it all jelled in this way that made me realize we accidentally started a band through the process of making that record and discovering that instrumentation with the woodwinds, pedal steel, fiddle, acoustic guitar and bass drums.”
Mailander also credits a musical encounter with Col. Bruce Hampton in March 2017, less than two months prior to Hampton’s death, as an inspiration. “I wanted to meet him and my friend Nick [DiSebastian] was playing with him and Jeff Mosier, so I made the drive from Nashville,” he remembers. “Bruce had a weekly gig in Atlanta, and they made the introduction. I played with him on a Thursday and then he was like, ‘Are you working Saturday?’ I was going to drive home the next day, but I stayed another couple of days and played at this place in Georgia called Good Ol’ Days. That second show is when it all clicked for me. I feel like my musical life really started after that. It was almost like getting permission for the first time to be myself. He just changed everything for me.”
Look Closer, the first album credited to John Mailander’s Forecast, was a contemplative offering, reflecting its genesis during the solitude of COVID. Let the World In is more open and wide-ranging, with ample room for individual and collective expression. Mailander contributes fiddle, keys and electronics, alongside Ethan Jodziewicz (bass), Chris Lippincott (pedal steel guitar, piano), Mark Raudabaugh (drums), Jake Stargel (guitar) and David Williford (woodwinds).
The new album is designed to be received as a single piece of music. It includes four Mailander originals, a cover of Nick Drake’s “Road” and a series of interstitial improvisatory sequences that pull it all together.
Mailander’s description of the title track reflects the album’s multihued tones and intentions. “It’s tricky to get the right vibe because it’s a balance of dark and light,” he explains. “There’s some heavy, darker harmony in that song, but there’s also a lightness and humor to it at the same time, especially the outro, which is gospel-inspired. So it’s a tough balance. If you lean too far in one direction, it can overtake the whole song, but that’s part of the point of that song. It’s meant to encompass a lot of different emotions and themes that are all equal, especially some of those gray-area emotions that I think only music can really express— some of those emotions that are really hard to articulate.”
As for the group improvisations, he notes, “We ended every day with a free improv and set a timer to try and keep it around one to two minutes long. We did the same thing with the last record, and I released those as a separate EP. The initial intent was to do that again, but in post-production, I realized that these improvs really work as a connective tissue between the songs. They’re actually an important part of the story.”
That story includes a version of “Road,” which Mailander sings. “That song fits the overall themes of the record,” he affirms. “The lyrics have gotten me through some personal stuff in the last couple of years and kind of felt like a mantra in a way. They’re also somewhat vague and open, which I really value with that being the one song with vocals on an instrumental record. I didn’t want the lyrics to be so heavy handed that it would detract from the overall vision of the record. It’s also something we’ve worked into our live sets from time to time, so it made sense to have a real jam vehicle that we do live represented on the record.”
When it comes to future live performances and recordings from these otherwise active players, Mailander maintains, “It’s something I want to work with for a long time and I want it to be something special. I don’t necessarily envision us going out on a monthlong tour anytime soon, but I do foresee doing weekend runs a few times a year when we’re all available. I think there’s a lot of room to keep growing as a band.”
