TRANSCRIPT 🔗
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It's show with everyone's special tomorrow night out at the adult center face for the release date for this.
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It's out release celebration tomorrow night adult setup.
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Joining me is Travis's father, Jerry with Cathy.
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Jerry, how are you?
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I'm good today, Harry.
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Thank you for chatting about this.
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This is a project that clearly uh comes from the heart that you've been working on for a bit.
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And for people that aren't familiar, can you tell me a little bit about uh your son Travis and also where this album came from?
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Because this was was essentially almost completed by him.
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We uh Travis was a you know an aspiring singer-songwriter uh who had been having uh a bit of success, uh most tangibly in the form of uh having co-written some songs with Andy Falco of the infamous String Dusters, uh one of which was included on their Grammy winning Laws of Gravity album, and then also the one that was the title track of their subsequent album, Toward the Fray, which was nominated for Bluegrass Album of the Year, uh in the year that it was released.
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And so uh the pandemic had you know taken uh a bit of an axe to some of uh those things, it really slowed a lot of stuff down in people's careers.
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And uh we were just about to, you know, put things back together, get into the studio and record these songs, and we had a very, you know, a really successful performance at the Fiddling Folk Festival in Satocket, uh opening up for the uh iconic folk singer Chris Smither.
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And uh we were all very excited and ready to get going, and then we lost Travis four days later.
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Wow.
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My my condolences, and and it's been interesting to see you rebuild on this the story and the music over the past few years with the famous Dr.
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Scanlon band.
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I know you're performing tomorrow night at the Bolton Center.
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When you you think about Travis as a songwriter, what's kind of the first thing that comes to your mind about his his voice and his really unique storytelling?
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Yeah, and I think that that was it.
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It was uh he he found people uh very interesting.
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He had a large capacity for empathy, and uh he loved songwriters who who were able to do that in their writing.
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Well, there it was, you know, going from you know Jackson Brown through John Hyatt and Rodney Crowell and all great Americana writers to Leonard Cohen and and so on.
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And uh I think that his writing really reflects all of those influences in some way.
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Well, he grew up watching you perform, if I'm not mistaken, and listening to folk music.
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How how early did you know that he had he had such talent?
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Uh well, you know, of course, all fathers uh you know think that their kids are are exceptional or whatever.
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But uh the funny story was that uh I had a guitar laying on my bed.
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Uh he was maybe two and a half, maybe three years old, and he strummed the open strings in a particular rhythm, and he said, uh, Dad, that's that's from the Don Henley song.
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And uh and I realized that it was the precise rhythm of the introduction to a song called The Last Worthless Evening.
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Oh wow on uh on Don Hanley's um you know uh End of the Innocence album.
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And you know, he's just like, You're kidding me.
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And I began to realize that he had that kind of ear for detail and he was that attentive to that sort of thing.
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So um, yeah, so that's pretty early on.
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The album out today is from Dublin to Duluth.
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Uh this album was Travis's blueprints.
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He'd mapped out arrangements, instrumentation for it.
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What was it like trying to honor those instructions from almost from your memory, too?
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Yeah, um well, one of the surprising things was that uh, you know, we never found like a notebook of lyrics.
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So um, you know, we luckily we had recording and we had heard the you know, like, you know, rough recordings and we could uh do all of that.
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But for both me and Pete Mancini, who uh we share the lead vocals and uh also with some help from our friend Cassandra House, uh our wonderful friend Cassandra House to take on the challenge of singing the songs because for all of us they belonged to to Travis's voice.
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You know.
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But they you know the rest of it it was it was fun.
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We we all loved working together.
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Um it was challenging because we all loved Travis and all continue to grieve his loss, but um that was the most challenging part was the the vocals.
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I would imagine too.
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I mean the band raised ten thousand dollars to finish the record.
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What did that mean to you uh as a family and as a group?
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Because just such a great support from the from the community.
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It was overwhelming.
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It really was.
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Um the way that the the community came through for us in that period uh and throughout the last, you know, five years, uh it's just very humbling.
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And it it really taught us what Travis meant to people.
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And one of the most uh you know, just most humbling things is to discover how many people he made time for to help out in some way in their own lives.
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Uh which is, you know, and knowing he had his own struggles and even, you know, the unfortunate circumstances of his passing, but that many people came up to us and said, You have no idea how much he helped me with, you know, through this difficult period after my divorce, or, you know, uh getting out of an abusive marriage or fighting uh, you know, an addiction.
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But it it really is what has buoyed us through these years, you know.
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No, that made that makes a lot of sense.
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You sang lead on, you mentioned with Pete Mancini and and split some of the songs.
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What's it like performing songs that Travis originally intended to sing himself, uh as his father?
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Uh what's that been like for you?
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I always want to do them justice.
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So it is a challenge, but it has also made me kind of step up and uh and get it done.
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You know, it's like uh, well, there's a job to do here, and I'm doing this for him, and I'm doing this to help keep the music alive.
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And I do have to say, you know, uh Pete Mancini does some very fine singing on the record, as does Cassandra House.
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Uh and working with them is also just a joy and and an education.
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I would I would imagine uh everyone in the band knew Travis so well.
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It's the famous Dr.
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Scanlon band performing tomorrow night at the Bolton Center in Bayshore for this album release from Dublin to Duluth.
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How did what was it like in the studio?
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Um, I guess the energy and also the decisions you had to make about this record.
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I'd imagine you guys knew Travis so well.
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Um, what was it like to kind of make those decisions together?
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Uh it generally went pretty smoothly because I think that uh his vision uh that that's part of the tragedy, I is like his vision was quite clear.
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We had been rehearsing, we had gone out and performed some of the songs, we really had a good sense of what he was liking to bring, you know, what he was looking to bring across.
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So, you
know, it was merely a matter of remaining true to that.
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And uh for that reason that went fairly smoothly.
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Yeah.
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Uh tell me about the band's name, uh, from I believe from One Flu of the Cuckoo's Nest.
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So where did that come from?
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Uh what was that was so meaningful to Travis about that name?
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Well, uh how it came about was that uh we had been using another name uh that Travis came up with called the Orchard Thieves, you know, in a very early uh incarnation of the band.
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And then we discovered that there was another band using that name.
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And uh Travis, of course, loved the uh the film of One Who of the Cuckoo's Nest and the scene where the inmates of the the mental institution are stealing a boat for the day, and uh Jack Nicholson points to one man and says, Well, Dr.
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Scanlon here, the the famous Dr.
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Scanlon.
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And so very quickly uh we just sort of brainstormed and said, Okay, the famous Dr.
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Scanlon band, which at times gets shortened to just Scanlon, you know, uh, but that's what the origin of it was.
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You've I've talked about in different interviews about how uh the show Saturday night described as kind of an uplifting celebration.
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I'm curious, what do you want the audience to to walk away with after watching the performance and hearing these songs?
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Uh well, first of all, they I want them to be, you know, to enjoy the songs, and I I'm sure that they will.
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And uh I think that if if Travis wanted above all else to accomplish something with his music, it would be to you know to bring people together to make people feel uh less alone in the world and to to foster connection between people.
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And I I think that even his own story uh it it it facilitates that as well insofar as uh we all have lost somebody, we all have lost something, we're all you know, we all have some pain and uh and that we can work with music and being together and kind of ease that burden for each other and have fun at the same time.
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Uh so that's uh it's a tall order, but that's what I would be looking for it to do.
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Yeah.
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Well, Jerry McKevney, thank you very much for your time.
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Parietal Records and the famous Dr.
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Scanlon Band present from Dublin to Duluth by Travis McKevney.
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It's out today, uh, all on the different platforms, and then tomorrow night, Saturday, October 3rd, uh they're performing it live at the Bolton Center in Bait Story.
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You can grip tickets at boltoncenter.org.
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And get all the details.
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Of course, the famous Dr.
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Scanlon Band is on social media.
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Jerry, thank you so much for your time.
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I really appreciate it.
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Hey, thank you.