Roots rock is, by its nature, a limiting genre. There are only so many ways you can mix and remix the same ingredients—harmonica, pedal steel, acoustic guitar, a barn-raising rhythm section, lyrics about whiskey and broken dreams—into something satisfying. To avoid recycling the same ideas, artists must willfully toss out the cookbook.
Blitzen Trapper attempted just that last year when they collaborated with local theater company Portland Center Stage to create Wild and Reckless, a musical that combined frontman Eric Earley’s semi-autobiographical tales of old Portland and a troubled relationship with an ill-fitting post-apocalyptic narrative. It was a valiant effort, but one that still had the marks of a rough draft.