When songs appear like a dream you better have a pen and paper nearby or they'll vanish; be gone just like that.  From those that have remained are songs about old movies, ghost towns, prospectors, wanderers, mountain men, dreamers, seers, desert rats, lawn chair adventurers and doomsayers; like so many cans, bottles and cigarette butts that get discarded, tossed out the window of a speeding car, moving along at 70 mph;  things that wind up on the low side of the road; songs nobody else wanted.

I love roots music, that is, Americana, blues, gospel, folk, hillbilly, cowboy, all stitched together like your grandma's quilt; ballads and songs that have seeped into the American psyche for the past century and a half like blood into sand. I love songs that are cut from old remnants of America: frayed and tattered at the edges; songs about people hell bent and furious living in places far off and incomparable.

The John Trollmann Band 2009-2011

"You guys sound like Neil Diamond meets The Grateful Dead," said Chuck Herman, one of the dynamic duo, along with his brother Matt, round out The Midnight Screening. I laughed. Myself, I think we sound like Crazy Horse, Neil Young's band, all chunky chords and rhythm, a rootsy blend of country, blues, folk, pop, and rock. 

We got together serendipitously. In the summer of 2008, Gil Dabney was producing Ray's Last Stand, and asked the Rusty Picken's Band bass player Grant McCormick to lay down the bass tracks. It wasn't until after Ray's Last Stand was released that I got the opportunity to play some live shows in the Long Beach/OC area. I was still playing solo shows with my acoustic Santa Cruz 000, but wanted to take a fatter sound on the road. With Gil on the Strat or the Thunderbird (the guitar, not the wine) and Grant on bass, we asked Lewis Tintut and Christopher Bright to do the heavy lifting on drums. 

Discography