Erik Berry

The singer and guitarist Dave Simonett started Trampled by Turtles in 2003 as a side project, after most of his equipment was stolen and he was left with an acoustic guitar. None of the players he gathered had played bluegrass before: Berry on mandolin, Tim Saxhaug on bass, Dave Carroll on banjo and Ryan Young on fiddle. Berry plays mandolin and sings harmony, and he has said his early guitar studies shaped the way he plays the mandolin.

The band’s albums include its debut, Songs from a Ghost Town (2004), Duluth (2008), which has the traditional “Shenandoah,” and the four that reached No. 1 on Billboard’s bluegrass albums chart: Palomino (2010), Stars and Satellites (2012), Life Is Good on the Open Road (2018) and Alpenglow (2022). He was still the band’s mandolinist in 2019, after the group returned from a break with Life Is Good on the Open Road and the 2018 single “Wildflowers.”