Wildflowers · Life Is Good on the Open Road

Trampled by Turtles started in Duluth, Minnesota, in 2003 as a side project of Dave Simonett’s. His musical equipment had been stolen, and with only an acoustic guitar left he turned to acoustic music. He was joined by Tim Saxhaug on bass, Dave Carroll on banjo, Erik Berry on mandolin and Ryan Young on fiddle. The first album, Songs from a Ghost Town, came out in October 2004 under the band’s own name. From Blue Sky and the Devil (2005) on, their records have been issued by their own label, BanjoDad.

The band’s chart runs have been with albums. Duluth (October 2008) was the first to chart, reaching No. 8 on Billboard’s bluegrass chart. Palomino (April 2010) went to No. 1 on that chart and stayed in its top ten for 52 weeks straight. Stars and Satellites was recorded in the fall of 2011 in a log home outside Duluth. It came out in April 2012, went to No. 1 on the bluegrass chart and reached No. 32 on the Billboard 200. BanjoDad singles from these years include a 2011 cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind?” and “Alone” (2012). The band played “Alone” on its network television debut, the Late Show with David Letterman, in April 2012, and the song was later used at the end of the 2013 film The Way Way Back. Cellist Eamonn McLain joined in 2014, the year of Wild Animals.

After Wild Animals the band stopped for nearly four years. They came back in December 2017 to record Life Is Good on the Open Road at Pachyderm Studio in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, and BanjoDad released it on 4 May 2018. Two weeks earlier, on Record Store Day, 21 April 2018, BanjoDad had put out a limited 7-inch single of 1,500 copies. It paired the band’s version of Tom Petty’s “Wildflowers,” the title song of Petty’s 1994 album, with the album’s title track. The Petty cover was also recorded at Pachyderm, mixed by Nick Tveitbakk and mastered by Huntley Miller. The band shared it online that July.

Later releases include the EP Sigourney Fever (2019), the single “A Lifetime to Find” (2022), and Alpenglow, which came out on 28 October 2022 and went to No. 1 on the bluegrass chart. In 2025 BanjoDad released the single “For Emma,” featuring Sumbuck, and Sub Pop released a full album the band made with Alan Sparhawk.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.