May 12, 2024 | 8:04 AM

WITF Music: Tanner Bingaman’s Pretty Big Garden

Big backyard, small group vibes.

• Joe Ulrich

  Joe has been excited about audio and music since he was a child. What began as a fascination together with his dad and mom’ vinyl records and cassette tapes became a love of each performing and recording. He grew up in Elizabethtown, Pa. and moved to Pittsburgh in 1999 the place he majored in Photography on the University of Pittsburgh.

  In 2004, he attended the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences in Tempe, AZ. He returned to Pittsburgh to work at a recording studio.

  In 2008, Joe arrived at WITF, the place his expertise have discovered an excellent house as an on-air host, audio engineer and producer of WITF Music. In 2016, Joe earned a National Edward R. Murrow award for Best Use of Sound.

 Joe Ulrich / WITF

Tanner Bingaman performs for WITF Music on October 9, 2023. (Joe Ulrich – WITF)

Joe Ulrich: Tell me in regards to the identify Pretty Big Garden.

Tanner Bingaman: I wrote a tune final 12 months known as Repotting Plants. There’s a line in it that’s, “if all of it works out the way in which we wish it, I believe we’ll find yourself with a reasonably large backyard”. And it felt identical to one of many first issues I’ve written that, to me, would really feel cool to construct a bit aesthetic round.

I labored for six years or in order a farmhand in numerous settings and capacities. I’ve had my arms within the small farm scene fairly a bit. And the entire aesthetic I believe may be very becoming for those who know me.

Joe Ulrich: Small farming. Like what sort of measurement?

Tanner Bingaman: Most of the farms I’ve labored on and helped handle through the years had been like seven acres and smaller. Like actually into permaculture practices and doing direct to market stuff in small group farmers markets. Very cool grassroots methods to learn to be the most effective homesteader on the block.

I discover that plenty of my pursuits are like this. It looks like plenty of issues I get into are small, very group oriented, careers, hobbies, existence, no matter. And I believe there’s plenty of overlap between the farming group and the music group. They have an identical power about them whenever you get plugged right into a small group of individuals making an attempt to do the identical factor.

Joe Ulrich: Did you develop up with that mindset or was that one thing you found afterward in your life?

Tanner Bingaman: I grew up in a small city, however I believe I by no means actually felt a way of group. And it was one thing that, you allow your hometown and type of work out the place you’re missing and the issues that you simply want had been elements of your character. And you pursue them and develop them. I acquired actually into taking part in and writing and studying and simply being concerned in music once I was 14 or 15. And I believe that was my first expertise with being concerned in one thing exterior of organized sports activities that was very group oriented. It was in a very completely different method you possibly can’t get from center faculty or highschool sports activities crew.

Music at its finest is just supportive and empathetic and there’s not competitors.

Joe Ulrich / WITF

Tanner Bingaman performs for WITF Music on October 9, 2023. (Joe Ulrich – WITF)

Joe Ulrich:  “Like Mike.” Describe that tune for me.

Tanner Bingaman: “Like Mike” is devoted to my buddy Mike Piccaro. We went to varsity collectively and performed gigs. Mike got here from the jazz world fairly heavy, so he would throw these tunes at me that I’d actually had no enterprise taking part in. When I wrote “Like Mike”, I despatched it to him and he was like, that’s candy. I don’t suppose it’s accomplished but, however that’s actually cool.

And then I despatched him the completed factor and he was very enthusiastic about it. So I made a decision to call it after him.

Joe Ulrich: It’s gypsy jazz, proper?

Tanner Bingaman: Yeah. I like all of the Django jazz stuff, and I faux my method by way of very small quantities of it. So I’m an excellent heavy jazz listener, however I don’t know notice for notice a single normal, however I positively have loads of tunes of mine that, if somebody from the jazz world hears, they’re clearly like, that’s a jazz tune.

Joe Ulrich: It is fascinating how you’re an amalgamation of all the things you’ve ever heard.

Tanner Bingaman: Yeah. And plenty of my favourite gamers are jazz musicians and plenty of conceptual issues from the jazz world too. I improvise on a regular basis. This complete venture is predicated on improvising. We don’t rehearse actually. It’s all pals that I’m shut with and are superb gamers. So I do know if now we have a gig, they will present up and I can ship them a set listing beforehand and so they’ll say, Oh yeah, I’ll pay attention on the way in which.

Tanner Bingaman’s Pretty Big Garden performs for WITF Music on October 9, 2023. (Joe Ulrich – WITF)

Joe Ulrich: On your web site, you described loosely the music as mountain music.

Tanner Bingaman: I discover genres very unusual usually, particularly as a author. Like the tunes we did at this time, they’re all three very completely different. “Bottle’s” a straight up trash grass, desert trash music tune. “Like Mike” could possibly be in any swing band. And then, “Sweet Mary Ann” I really feel may be very straight up what individuals name folks, storyteller.

They solely can sound a bit bit cohesive as a result of it’s all accomplished on acoustic devices, however so far as pinning it to a style and making issues marketable and that kind of factor, it’s, I’ve all the time been weirded out by labeling and genres usually as a result of I believe it’s largely derived from individuals simply making an attempt to make a buck.

And mountain music is simply my little snarky method of skirting round all that as a result of there’s plenty of mountains on the market.

Joe Ulrich: In a social media publish you had talked about doing much less and fewer on social media and doing extra with a e-newsletter. Tell me about why you needed to get away from social media.

Tanner Bingaman: I haven’t needed to be on social media for lots of years now and I do know my psychological well being is best once I’m not on it. So I keep on it to have interaction with the music group roughly, and use the promotional features of it. And it’s a good way to get the phrase out about occasions. But I seen this factor the previous few years the place it appeared like there’s like all the time trolls and naysayers and like those that. You get this sense of, why are you maintaining with what I’m doing anyway? A e-newsletter looks like the way in which to have interaction with individuals immediately that basically need the most effective model of what you’re placing out and so they need to sustain with each time you launch a brand new tune.

And it’s been night time and day. Since I began that e-newsletter, I’ve but to expertise somebody that has simply mainly gone out of their approach to be imply. I simply I don’t like participating in social media that a lot. It modifications on a regular basis and creators give a lot of themselves away on social media. And our tradition proper now has this bizarre expectation that there’s not mysticism round artwork.

Joe Ulrich: What do you imply by that precisely?

Tanner Bingaman: Before the web age, I assume it was largely written media and radio interviews and stuff. But these had been remoted eventualities. And the social media world, it looks like the pattern is,it’s an on a regular basis factor and it’s one thing individuals interact with.

There’s nearly a bizarre expectation of comedians and songwriters and painters to present away each little bit of all the things that you simply’re doing for the sake of hoping that you simply garner a large enough following to make a sustainable profession out of what you’re doing.

I prefer to not need to know all the things about that individual’s life. And so the e-newsletter factor, it’s my method of conserving near myself a few of some elements of what I do. We’re working an experiment as we converse with all of our psychological well being. And the end result doesn’t look nice up to now.

Joe Ulrich: Do you might have a favourite telephone app? One that you simply’re all the time utilizing?

Tanner Bingaman:  I used to make use of Mountain Project lots. That’s a rock climbers discussion board, roughly. If you go to Yosemite to rock climb, there’s dozens of guidebooks with routes and what’s known as beta, simply details about the best way to do the climbs. And it’s consumer generated beta for mountain climbing and mountaineering.

Shout out to Jah Chimney. It’s a rock climb that my buddy Dan and I acquired the primary ascent of. It’s in Moab, Utah. I summited it very late at night time and that identify simply popped in my head. So we known as it Jah Chimney.

Joe Ulrich: The skies should have been superb. You nearly get like dizzy taking a look at that.

Tanner Bingaman: There’s plenty of actually cool, timeless concepts that come out of that kind of expertise of trying up and feeling a way of awe. And there’s some sense [that] this might finish at any second. Things are far more fragile and I’m far more small than I understand myself to be in my daily existence.

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