By DAN ARMONAITIS
Mike Savino laughs when he thinks about a moment of youthful indiscretion he experienced in the early 1990s.
“I got arrested for shoplifting when I was 16 because I wanted an Alice in Chains CD,” said Savino, who grew up in Long Island, N.Y. “My mom was so embarrassed, but that’s how bad I wanted to hear it.”
Savino’s point of bringing up that episode was to illustrate how lucky music lovers of all ages now have it during an era when online streaming services put almost the entirety of recorded music at our fingertips.
“The things you’d do for music back then,” Savino said. “I mean, that’s how much value it had. Now, it’s kind of devalued in a way — to have it all. But there’s something to be said for that, too. I’m amazed by it. I go down constant rabbit holes, discovering new music every day. I’ll get obsessed with things for a while, and then I’ll make a left turn and get obsessed with something else.”
Savino, who has resided in Asheville, N.C. for the past six years, uses his unbridled enthusiasm for an eclectic array of music to create unique, atmospheric soundscapes of his own under the moniker Tall Tall Trees.
A skilled multi-instrumentalist best known for his innovative work on banjo, Savino captivates audiences with his loop-based one-man shows, as well as alongside frequent collaborator, Kishi Bashi. He’ll be on his own when he takes the stage on Thursday, Feb. 10 at The Radio Room in Greenville. (Click here for tickets.)
“I’m looking forward to it, because this was one of the shows I was supposed to do right before Covid hit,” said Savino, who recently performed at Fall For Greenville. “It’s just a hop, skip and a jump away (from Asheville), so I’m trying to make new friends in these surrounding towns here. It’s been great so far, and I’ve heard great things about The Radio Room.”
The most recent Tall Tall Trees album, “A Wave of Golden Things,” was released just before the pandemic hit in early 2020 and features a swirling mix of psychedelic-flavored music that blends everything from indie rock to bluegrass and jazz.
“It’s strange how that record kind of spoke to this whole situation we’ve been going through,” Savino said. “All of those songs were just kind of in line with the times although I’d recorded them, weirdly, before (Covid-19).”
Savino said he’s currently working on a new Tall Tall Trees album, having spent much of the pandemic building a home studio.
While primarily known for his work on a custom-built instrument/equipment set-up he’s dubbed the “Banjotron 5000,” Savino began his music pursuits on bass, studying jazz at a conservatory in New York where his classmates included such renowned contemporary musicians as pianist Robert Glasper and trumpeter Keyon Harrold.
“It’s all part of my journey,” Savino said. “I studied all that music when I was a bass player, but then I realized that something inside of me was like, ‘I really want to write songs and sing.’ I wasn’t great at it — and I still don’t consider myself great at it — but it was just something that I needed to chase, and the more and more I did it, the more I realized, ‘oh, this is a quicker way for me to express myself fully, rather than just playing bass.'”
Savino started playing banjo after being given one during his college days.
“It was something kind of fun to mess around with, and I realized that, in my early days, I had been in love with a lot of records that had banjo on them,” he said. “Particuarly the first Eagles record. And I also had a Flying Burrito Brothers tape, which I don’t know how I ended up with that as a 10-year-old, but I just loved the shit out of it. So, I guess I’ve always been attracted to
the sound (of banjo).”
Savino started Tall Tall Trees as a full band while living in New York in 2009, taking the name from the title of a song written by country music icons George Jones and Roger Miller, the latter of whom was a huge influence.
“I wanted something that sounded organic and natural, and at the time, I was — and still am — obsessed with Roger Miller,” Savino said. “I was really into country music, but not in a way that you grew up with it. For me, it was more like an alien thing I had never seen before, and I dove into it, especially with a lot of Hank Williams and stuff like that. But Roger Miller, I thought he was such a great songwriter, singer, everything, because he could be silly but he could also just break your heart.
“I was like, ‘how can this guy do this?’ He was like a jazz musician; that guy could sing like scat, which piqued my ear. … But I just loved the sound of (the phrase Tall Tall Trees), and it felt right to me. I had no idea that Alan Jackson did a super famous cover until the band was already named. Oh, well.”