My first job after college basically paid me in beans, but they did send all 150-ish recent college graduates working across the country out to Aspen for a week-long vacation. So there I was in December 2009 with a 3-day lift ticket but 7 days to hang around the beautiful mountain town. On one of those days, December 16th, bluegrass/folk-rock group Trampled by Turtles was slated to play The Belly Up with Ben Sollee as the opening support.

In June 2013, seventeen young musicians piled into two vans and drove from their hometown of Austin to a brownstone in Queens, where they took up residency for a month. It was Mother Falcon’s first trip outside of Texas and another turning point in a very unlikely story. 

 Years before,...