The band began playing in 2000 anywhere they could between Richmond and Charlottesville, VA. Some shows were strictly Bluegrass while other shows were full on electric rock with the bands country and bluegrass sensibilities weaving through their songs.
As they adopted their name, they also began to hone their sound. Just as their namesake comes from a cross breeding of a horse and a donkey, the music of the Wrinkle Neck Mules is a unique hybrid of rock and Bluegrass. Influences run the gamut Andy explains, �For me, I�d say that at the baseline there�s a main vein of classic country � Don Williams, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings, etc. � jumbled up with the things I listened to growing up: Led Zeppelin, R.E.M., Ralph Stanley, Widespread Panic � folks like that. Mason grew up on reggae and Led Zeppelin.� Tongue firmly planted in cheek, he continues, �and Chase, being from Orlando, heavily draws from New Kids on the Block, Menudo and El Debarge.�
In 2002, guitarist Mason Brent moved to Jackson Hole, Wyoming while vocalist, bassist and banjo player Chase Heard headed for Austin, TX leaving Stepanian and drummer Blake Gayle in Richmond. But the band continued to write despite the distance and released their debut, Minor Enough, in early 2004.
Shortly after the albums release, the band members all moved back to Richmond to give it a go as a fulltime unit and Brian Gregory joined the band as bass player allowing Heard to concentrate on vocals and banjo work. The band continued to tour and in early 2005 entered the studio to begin recording their sophomore release, Pull The Brake, which was released April 4. �It�s really been finished since May 2005, but it took a long time for us to shop it around and get comfortable with who was going to release it,� says Stepanain. The band chose to go with Atlanta-based Shut Eye Records to release the album.
Chris Kress, who has works extensively as an engineer with Dave Matthews band, co-produced Pull The Brake with the Mules. �Chris helped us out with Minor Enough, which we recorded and produced on our own and then searched high and low for someone to clean up the mess we made. Chris was the only taker. We became fast friends and after the smoke cleared there was all of this talk about going to a real studio with more than one microphone and trying to clean up the mule a little bit,� Stepanian states, �So, we landed at Haunted Hollow � which is the Dave Matthews Band�s tremendous private facility with many, many $10,000 mics and acoustically perfect sound chambers � and did most of the tracking there along with various houses and holes around Charlottesville.�
Pull the Brake is filled with strong songs which tell vivid stories. The lead track �Liza� is the tale of a man whose girlfriends� family would rather he left her alone. After a confrontation with her father and the shooting of her brother the two run off together. The Mules follow it up with the buoyant �Okachobee� which is about a man choosing his home over his woman � �She said I had to choose/Bet she never thought she�d lose.�
Stepanian and Heard are the group�s primary songwriters drawing from experience and observation to craft their songs. �For me, basic human experience and family play a big roll. My mother�s people hail from the southern part of Virginia and farmed tobacco and a lot of the things I got to see and do down there show up in my songs,� Stepanian relates, �And you can�t rule out blatant fiction. Sometimes I will come across a single turn of phrase in a book or elsewhere that will give rise to an entire song concept.�
Another highlight of the disc is �Lowlight� which features strings from Anne Marie Simpson-Calhoun , formerly of Old School Freight Train, and a guest vocal from Bonnie �Prince� Billy. The song talks of longing and leads directly into the instrumental track �Stranger/Sojourners.�
With possibilities expanding and a strong sophomore effort to build on, Wrinkle Neck Mule will continue to tour and grow their following throughout the South with an eye to expanding their territory. �We do have a few long runs coming up in the summer – one out to the Midwest and another with Jesse Dayton and his band that will span from Texas to New York. Pull the Brake just got picked up by the European distributor Sonic, so hopefully that will lead to another European tour in the Fall or late summer.�
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