Provided by Neil Salsich, with permission
There’s a moment Neil Salsich describes that tells you everything about who he is: He was 23, recently back from college, standing in the crowd at The Gramophone in St. Louis watching a band called Danger Muffin play. They’re not superstars. They’re just a band trying to make it. And something clicked.
“I remember saying to myself right then and there: I know I could do what they’re doing on stage,” Salsich recalled recently on the Load Out Music Podcast. “I knew if those guys can do it, and they’re a super talented band, that was accessible to me.”
More than a decade later, Salsich finds himself as the founding member and frontman for the popular St. Louis-based band The Mighty Pines, a soul-inspired roots rock band that has toured nationally, opened for the likes of JJ Grey & Mofro, The Dead South, Railroad Earth, and Sam Bush, launched their own festival (Pines Fest), and Salsich himself earned a four-chair turn on Season 23 of NBC’s The Voice. The band’s new album—“Good Luck Nice to Meet You,” produced by Los Lobos’ Steve Berlin—drops July 31st. Not bad for a kid who once failed his music minor in college.
Salsich (pronounced Sal-sek) opened Season 23 of The Voice with a rendition of Hank Williams’ “Honky Tonk Blues” that stopped all four coaches (Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, Chance the Rapper, and Niall Horan) and earned him one of the show’s rare four-chair turns. Ultimately choosing Shelton’s team, the experience lasted nearly a year from audition to broadcast, created real fanfare in St. Louis, and gave Salsich something he describes as a permanent calling card.
“I can pretty much flash that card anywhere and sort of get in the building,” he said. “I’ll have that with me forever.”
But Salsich is disarmingly honest about the limits of that spotlight. Outside of St. Louis, the recognition didn’t travel the way he might have hoped. And the show itself, for all its production value and genuine excitement, ultimately functions like a wave: It lifts you, carries you forward, and then recedes.
“The wave brought us up, dropped us at another level, and then it went away,” he said. “But we were able to resurface on a higher level.”
The Voice also gave Salsich something unexpected: a crash course in performance. He’s candid about the fact that he’s a natural musician long before he’s a natural entertainer.
“I’m a natural singer,” he said, “But it took me a long time to feel comfortable on stage.”
The show literally took his guitar away and handed him basic choreography.
“I was like, how do I do this? I’ve always had a guitar.”
That discomfort, he now acknowledges, was growth in disguise.
The Mighty Pines’ forthcoming album, which is their second with producer Steve Berlin of Los Lobos, is called Good Luck Nice to Meet You, with lead single “The Longest Night” already out. Salsich doesn’t mince words about it.
“I happen to think it’s a fucking bomb record.”
He’s equally direct about the band’s evolution: The new album isn’t a radical stylistic departure from their previous work, Late Last Night. It’s just better, with more assured songwriting, stronger performances, and cleaner arrangements.
via The Might Pines, with permission
Working with Berlin, who records with Los Lobos at the Hollywood Bowl one week and is back in St. Louis at Sawhorse Studios in Dutchtown the next, has been a lesson in what a great producer actually does.
“If you want to take your recordings to the next level, work with a producer,” Salsich told us. “They’re going to bring a set of ears to the table that you don’t have.”
He described the process as adding a fifth voice to the band’s four. It’s one that arrives without baggage, hearing things you’ve perhaps stopped listening to, and sometimes suggests that one overdubbed keyboard line that makes everything click. The tension, of course, is knowing when to hold your ground.
“What’s the line between what you need to preserve with your own artistic intuition, and what you need to give up?” asked Salsich. “I still don’t really know the answer. I’ll probably search for that truth for the rest of my life.”
Salsich is 37, sharp, and not particularly interested in telling you what you want to hear about the music industry. The Mighty Pines are, by any reasonable measure, doing well: National touring, a growing fanbase, a celebrated new record. They’re also, by his own admission, basically broke, reinvesting everything into digital marketing, promotion, and the machinery of releasing music in 2025.
“Money comes in and you spend it on promotion,” he said with a laugh. “Welcome to artistry.”
He’s equally blunt about the streaming era and shrinking attention spans. But his frustration isn’t really with the music being made. Through The Voice, he reconnected with contemporary pop and found himself genuinely moved by artists like Billie Eilish and Harry Styles. What bothers him is the consumption: The phone speakers, the 14-second scroll, the “Instagramification” of music.
“People’s attention spans can’t even make it past 14 seconds,” Salich told us, “which is such a cop-out. Things are only the way they are because we just let our standards go.”
He also offered a surprisingly generous defense of cover bands, a position that might seem counterintuitive for a serious original songwriter (but he does play a variety of tribute shows with other bands in St. Louis regularly). In Salsich’s view, jazz and classical musicians have always played covers, and as the titans of rock and soul continue to leave us, the musicians who keep that music alive on a live stage are doing something genuinely meaningful.
“I think it’s important work,” he said. “Keeping the canon alive.”
For all his ambitions and the taste of global stardom he experienced through The Voice, Salsich remains rooted in St. Louis. It’s a city he has described in previous interviews as so vast and rich, that he feels he could spend a lifetime and never fully discover it.
Certainly, The Mighty Pines are “big dogs” in The 314, he acknowledges, and the city’s affordability has made it possible for him to pursue music full-time. He also performs with the Playadors and Sean Canan’s Voodoo Players, and had taught at the Folk School of the former KDHX radio, a reminder that his investment in this city’s musical life runs deeper than any single band.
Good Luck Nice to Meet You drops July 31st. In the meantime, The Mighty Pines are on the road all summer, building their audience one room at a time the way it’s always been done.
“At the end of the day, if you’re working for yourself and playing music,” Salsich said, “there’s just nothing like it.”
Enjoy a terrific new episode of The Load Out Music podcast with the exceptional Neil Salsich of The Mighty Pines.
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