MADRID, SPAIN – FEBRUARY 12: Vocalist and guitarist Dustin Kensrue of Thrice performs on stage at … [+] Sala La Paqui on February 12, 2024 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images)
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Most fans know Dustin Kensrue as the frontman for the hard-rocking, furiously paced band Thrice. However, Kensrue, like so many great artists, is multi-faceted. He is also an accomplished singer/songwriter, as he shows on his stunning new collection, the gorgeous Desert Dreaming.
A love song to the Southwestern part of the U.S. and his romantic view of the desert life and landscape, Desert Dreaming melds country and Americana to paint a glorious picture of that habitat and the impact it has had on Kensrue’s life and perspective.
I spoke to him recently over Zoom about the new record, the impact artists like Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline had on him when he found their music as a teenager, his definition of a musical outlaw and how environment affects songwriting.
Steve Baltin: How is it for you getting to go between these two very different worlds of the intensity of Thrice and the beauty of this singer/songwriter album?
Dustin Kensrue: The show definitely has a very different vibe. Thrice just kind of rolls through songs. We just make transitions. There’s something that we like about just moving through. We don’t have any stage banter, which is terrible. But when it’s just me, it feels a little more relaxed and so I feel like I can connect better with everyone. It’s not an athletic event either, when I’m doing the solo stripped-down stuff. There’s a very different joy about it, but they’re both very fun.
Baltin: As an artist do you feel like this allows you to explore all sides of your work?
Kensrue: Yeah, the through line here, I guess, is that with Thrice or on my own, like, you’ve got the song brewing and you’ve got to get it out first onto tape. Then I feel like the completion of that is sharing it live. So, I feel very similar in that sense between Thrice and the solo stuff. Right now, this record was the stuff that was brewing and had to get out there. So it is that aspect of sharing it, and people finally getting to hear the record soon and then out on the road is definitely the completion of the creation act as far as I’m concerned.
Baltin: Talk about the diversity of this record. There are songs on here that are straight country and then there’s songs that would definitely be Americana.
Kensrue: There’s a very blurry line at times. I think a lot of the records are inspired by some of the more western vibes of the country-western situation. But I think all these songs can get stripped down to just a guitar. I love so many different vibes and feels, especially like ’50s, ’60s country. I guess I just like diversity in general, but I wanted to find an older track that I like, the way that it moves or something. I would be like, “Okay, I don’t want every song that’s not the same. What would be a good anchor song for me to think about as I make or start arranging this song. because It could go a bunch of different directions?” So, whether it’s the way the beat kind of moves or the way the instruments are layered. I just went through and there’d be like one or two songs for each of my songs that would influence which way I would take it.
Baltin: Do you have a history with this music?
Kensrue: The hard thing about this situation is that I didn’t grow up listening to almost any of this because I didn’t know anyone that listened to any good country. I just heard the pop stuff on the radio in the late ’80s and ’90s and it didn’t resonate with me at all. I found my own way slowly into stuff like Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, Gene Autry. But there was no streaming whatever. I had nothing to go off. It was just like, “There’s something here that I like, but I don’t know how to find more of it.” I had no one to even talk to about it. So, it was slow going and getting all country stuff in the late ’90s, found some stuff there. Then it’s only been in the past six years maybe that I’ve been really diving in and finding a lot more stuff. So there’s not a lot of attachment to these songs from my own childhood.
Baltin: When you first got into it, was there one artist or one song that you heard that really stuck out to you? You mentioned Johnny Cash, who was as punk rock as anybody who ever lived.
Kensrue: I definitely was connecting to that stuff when I was 16, listening to Johnny Cash and being like, “This is as punk as all the punk that I was listening to at that time.” I don’t even remember why or how I found Patsy Cline, but that was the first time that I really fell in love with her because there’s not a lot of pedal steel or anything on a lot of Johnny Cash stuff. It’s a different setup. All those songs, there’s a lot of lushness there, but it’s not overproduced and there’s a thick environment that emanates from them and pulls you in. I remember feeling like there’s something going on here. Also, it’s a combination of some of the pedal steel, her voice, that stuff. But I really love the vibe of a lot of things from the kind of late ’50s, early ’60s. There’s a magic there that she’s really pulling together. I would say that was definitely a touchstone thing, even though I didn’t know how to unpack a lot of it or where it would take me later. It was a very special thing. It was like, “I’m going to listen to this a lot and it’s connecting.” It was great to have my wife listening to it. It created a different atmosphere when we put those records on. That’s something that I’m chasing with this record. There’s a song I left off the record because it’s too dark. I want this whole record to be listened to through its own environment and not have this weird left turn that’s going to take you somewhere else, even though I really liked that song.
Baltin: What was the song you left off and is it something that you would release later?
Kensrue: Yeah, I’m probably going to release it as some kind of single later, maybe with another track. I think it’s called “Sins of My Father.” It’s really dark and it’s great though. But it just was not going to fit well on this record if I wanted it to be this immersive space and not take you out of that.
Baltin: It’s interesting that you say you wanted to create atmosphere. What is the atmosphere that this creates for you?
Kensrue: I tried to make the actual settings in the record almost the main character. I was conscious about trying to have diversity in that too. I think places from at least six different southwestern states are mentioned. I want the songs to evoke those environments. At the same time, when you evoke those environments, they pull themselves into the song as well. So it feels a push pull in that relationship. I was trying to think about this the other day. There’s something interesting happening in the way that we think about environments externally and over time people have imbued those environments with a certain feeling through art, through music, things like that. So, the way that I look at a desert now is influenced, and the way I feel about it is influenced by the songs that I’ve heard about it before. There’s a lore that builds up and then I pull from that, and I put back into it. It’s never just the thing itself. It’s what you bring to it.
Baltin: Do you find that there is a slightly idealized version of these places in this album?
Kensrue: Yeah, I think that’s right. I think especially by pulling from the sounds and influences of that era, it is definitely doing some idealizing. It’s almost like the feeling of an old mid-century painting of a desert and a cowboy going through there. There’s a bit of a dreaminess to it. But I don’t think that’s all idealizing or dreaming about what it would be like. It’s funny because the record in a lot of ways is about pulling off the filters that we have in front of our vision all the time and seeing the world as it is. But at the same time, there’s a way that you can imbue your surroundings with something internal. I don’t think that that’s false. I think that you can look at a desert and find absolutely nothing beautiful about it, or it can overwhelm you with its beauty. That’s because the story you tell yourself about what you’re seeing matters in some sense.
Baltin: Are there songs off this record you’re particularly looking forward to doing live? If you’re doing a song about Sedona or Santa Fe people have been there, or if you’re doing them in these places it has that hometown feel. So, the song takes on so many different meanings for the audiences.
Kensrue: Yeah, I’m really excited that I’m bringing a band out to actually play the songs like the record cause I feel like I waited and was like, “I would definitely come home with more money if I just went on my own.” But this record is very much about the way that the songs are actually constructed. I think they hold up if you strip them down, but there’s a reason I have pedal steel on every song in the record. I freaking love it and I need to have that there. So, I feel like I’m looking forward to playing stuff like “Leaving Tonight for Santa Fe.” It’s the most kind of honky tonk one on there and just seems like it’ll be a blast. I feel like “High Scalers” will be fun. It’s good energy. “Lift Your Eyes,” I think will be cool as well. “Heart of Sedona.” I feel like that’s an interesting one thinking about the way that the environment plays into fictional story. When I went to Sedona, I was not expecting it to be as amazing as it was. It gets talked up a lot and it seemed a bit commercialized. When I got there, I was just blown away by how beautiful it was and [lost] any skepticism I had about the vortexes. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a magical place. It made me think about that as micro cause imagine growing up there, it’s such a beautiful place, and leaving it and in some way, you left it because you couldn’t see what was there. In some ways that mimics the way that I think I lost my perspective on the desert and just felt like everything was brown when I was growing up. Coming back from living in Seattle for a bit, re-falling in love with it. But also as a way of looking at how I saw the world; when you see the world as a kid, it’s absolutely magical and you don’t have a framework that you’re imposing on it. Then you build up all these things and you lose sight of it. If you’re lucky, you find a way back to seeing it with those fresh eyes again. So trying to loop all that into the song, along with bits of my own journey spiritually. There’s a lot packed in there, but it’s all birthed out of the experience I had of seeing that place with my own eyes.
Baltin: Are there artists you would really love to tour with because of the way they straddle the lines between country and rock?
Kensrue: Yes, I feel like someone who’s doing that currently is Jason Isbell. It’s very much like some of those songs would be, “That’s just kind of a rock song. It’s got a little bit of a twang in there.” If you talk about fantastic songwriting, it’s in another league. There are so many great smaller bands that I’ve been digging that blows my mind that aren’t just a lot bigger. But I know that I really have no understanding of the scene or as it were in the country kind of world. It seems like there are multiple camps and some people that squeeze between them or whatever. The Deslondes are really great. Seen them twice now and they’re just fantastic. It’d be fun to play with them. Oh, Calexico is an interesting one because as far as just bridging weird gaps and things, that’s a band that I found when I was a teenager as well, that definitely had influence into especially like “Lift Your Eyes,” on this record, would be very much influenced by them. I don’t know.
Baltin: There’s an amazing tour this year. The Outlaw Tour, which Willie Nelson is doing dates with Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. There’s like one or two openers on there. Who would be on your Outlaw Tour?
Kensrue: Isbell would be a great headliner for an outlaw tour. That guy is definitely not afraid to let people know what he thinks about a lot of different things and is kind of carving his own space, even though he’s not fully embraced by the Nashville machine. And I might throw Hermanos Gutierrez on there. Been digging them a lot. I’d put The Deslondes on there. That band’s freaking great. Have you heard the Countryside of Harmonica Sam? It’s fantastic. It’s a Swedish honky-tonk band that I feel sometimes for whatever reason, the Swedes just look at something and dissect it and like I can do that and just execute it perfectly. That’s what they do. It’s just the perfect honky-tonk band. It sounds incredible.
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