Folk shift came easily to Twin Forks

Twin Forks with the Treasures

When: Monday, 9 p.m. (doors at 8)

Where: Club 9one9

Tickets: $15.50 at Lyle’s Place, Ditch Records, the Strathcona Hotel and ticketweb.ca

At this point, the popular thinking is that Chris Carrabba is a Zen-like master of managing stress on the road.

Rarely does the 38-year-old come across as anything other than at-ease with himself. Constantly smiling, with more than a few minutes for his fans prior to and immediately after a performance, he’s accommodating to a fault. The closed-door reality, however, is much more complicated, according to the Twin Forks frontman.

“The whole day is mitigating stress,” Carrabba said Wednesday from his Winnipeg hotel room. “And I’m in the thick of mitigation, I guess. This is how I sound as I mitigate.”

It’s a bit of a shock to know that the Florida-based singer-songwriter has yet to develop a stress-release game plan. Carrabba has been on the road, in one group or another, for the better part of 15 years, including an in-progress run fronting Dashboard Confessional, one of the most fanatically followed bands of the past decade.

Carrabba turned left earlier this year and began to make roots music in Twin Forks, one of his three bands (the others, Dashboard Confessional and Further Seems Forever, a group he joined in 1998, are on the backburner for the time being.)

Carrabba said the natural ebb and flow of making music led to the formation of the Americana quartet, which blends the folk and bluegrass he loved growing up. When he was writing a batch of new songs, he asked longtime friends Jonathan Clark (bass) and Ben Homola (drums) for input. Before long, they were jamming informally as a trio. Once mandolin player Suzie Zeldin was added to the mix, Twin Forks became a reality.

“I wanted every aspect of it to be an enjoyable experience,” Carrabba said. “There was no goal of ‘Let’s do a record, let’s be a band.’ It was just, ‘Let’s do these songs as I write them.’ ”

When the songs started coming out, Carrabba said, they were quite dissimilar in sound to the powerful pop-rock of Dashboard Confessional and Further Seems Forever. Following the September release of the band’s self-titled EP, Carrabba’s longtime fans were in shock.

Carrabba, meanwhile, barely took note of the sonic shift.

“I am heavily influenced by folk and bluegrass, and I think there is a parallel between those worlds and rock, especially with the ethos. It you go back to your [Pete] Seegers and Woody Guthries and Dylan, it’s not dissimilar from your Minor Threats and your Fugazis. It’s part of the culture, whether it’s on the sleeve or somewhere deep inside.”

Carrabba blames his wide-ranging tastes on his upbringing. He has spent most of his life in Florida, a musical melting pot that sees little separation between soul, rock ‘n’ roll, blues and bluegrass. That mentality fit in especially well with the “rule of no-rules band” that he envisioned Twin Forks as being from the beginning.

“It’s the Southern way. I don’t know if it is specific to Florida, but it is all-encompassing. There is no division. People in Florida like music — period.”

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