Springfield, Missouri, band The HillBenders will be heading into town Thursday, when they’ll perform “Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry” at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College.

“Tommy,” the iconic 1969 rock opera by The Who, tells the story of a deaf, mute and blind boy and the life and relationship challenges he faces. In 2015, The HillBenders released a version of their own, reimagining the music as bluegrass.

I caught up with Jim Rea, guitarist for the band, who talked about the secret to keeping a band together longer than a lot of marriages, where the idea of a bluegrass “Tommy” came from and what’s next for The HillBenders.

Q: I saw your quote, “To keep the band together this long with its original members is something special”: How have you guys done it? It seems like bands are coming and going, or people are leaving with maybe one core member left … you must like each other.

A: To keep a band together this long takes a lot of Xanax, marriage counseling and a lot of whiskey … I’m teasing. I think the real key to it is separate hotel rooms … obviously, it’s like being married – everybody’s got their quirks and they’re not going to change, but in the end, we like hanging out with each other, we like performing on stage with each other.

We all kind of have the same mindset when it comes to being on the road, and it’s a tough thing to be out here, but the “Tommy” project has allowed us to elevate the way that we travel. Our schedule’s so busy now that we have to do a lot of flying, so eliminating 12-, 15-, 20-hour days in the van, that goes a long way, too.

And also, this particular project, it was a vision of our friend Louis Meyers; he actually passed away a year ago, and so it’s also now become a legacy piece. We want to keep his vision alive and try to reach as many people with his vision of this project as possible.

We’re in it for the long game, and not burning ourselves out, either: We’re not out there grinding by on club dates and stuff like that.

Q: How long have you guys been together?

A: This is nine years in April. All the original members, and actually, four of those members were in a band before that for five years.

Q: Why “Tommy”? Was it difficult?

A: It’s a big project, so obviously it took a lot of work. I just mentioned Louis Meyers – it was his idea. He started South by Southwest years ago, he’s been an instrumental part of the Folk Alliance Movement in America, and that’s an international movement as well. So he’s been in the industry and is very well-respected, and he just started to appear at these different conferences … he’d pop in and you’d see his head peek around the corner at a showcase here or there, and we just kind of became friends. You know, friends in this industry is you get to see each other once or twice, three times a year at these different festivals or events; that’s what friends are in this business.

One day, he came to us and said, “I’m getting ready to wrap up my stint as director of Folk Alliance, and I’ve had an idea for about 20, 25 years of doing The Who’s ‘Tommy’ as a bluegrass record.”

He’s a banjo player and a steel guitar player – he used to play with a band called Killbilly and they would sound-check with some of these tunes and just have fun with it because they liked the record, they liked The Who. But he started to find out that these songs worked: each one, one after the other.

He came to us and said, “What do you guys think about it? I’ve been looking for the right band for almost 20 years, and you guys have enough bluegrass and enough rock ’n’ roll to make it happen. Are you interested?”

I knew the record; I got the record and saw the production when I was a young kid 12, 13 years old, and so I was immediately on board, signed on as musical director, and the other guys, you know, we all had faith in Louis because he obviously had a great track record, and we said, “Let’s do a few demos.” And we sent him the demos … and I got an email right back saying, “This is exactly what we’re looking for. Let’s meet and hammer out the details.”

Q: How long did it take to get it together?

A: I arranged it for probably three or four months, and we had a couple of guys in California that we were sending tracks to practice to back and forth via the internet. And then when we did get together, everybody had their charts and we would practice when we could. I’d say it was about three to six months to actually come to full visualization and full execution in the studio. We went to 2-inch tape, just like in the old days, and in 2015, we debuted at Folk Alliance and South by Southwest.

Q: It seems like you pride yourselves on being an accessible bluegrass band, bridging the gap between super-hardcore bluegrass fans and maybe people who aren’t so much. How do you do that? What do you think the secret is?

A: I think just being yourselves. We’re not big traditional bluegrass players. We all enjoy bluegrass music and we all enjoy rock ’n’ roll music, but individually, we all have our own tastes as well.

Probably the most seasoned traditional bluegrass player we have is our dobro player Chad Graves.

The rest of us, everything from rap to opera to jam-band music, reggae, so we’re just kind of being ourselves, and I think that kind of opens the door. Now, it also kind of closes the door in the fact that some traditional players aren’t necessarily as interested in it, which is OK. We enjoy standard and traditional bluegrass music and always will, and we play it as well. We open a lot of our shows with our own music or a few selections of bluegrass standards, but in the end, I think we’re just being ourselves, and there’s something about bluegrass music that we all love.

There’s a big newgrass, progressive bluegrass movement going on, and we just lean more into that than the traditional side of things.

Q: Your version of “Tommy” came out in 2015. What are you working on now?

A: People ask us what’s next, and we all have different ideas, and our fans have different ideas. You hear the die-hard Who fans come up and say, “When are you guys going to do ‘Quadrophenia’ next?” I don’t think that’s a horizon for us.

We have talked about the “Whograss” thing where we continue to do Who music as bluegrass, maybe tell the story of The Who’s career, so start early with “I Can’t Explain,” “My Generation,” lead through both rock operas and into their final records, and maybe even some solo work. And we’d kind of tell the whole story that way.

Some people say we should do other legendary records, like Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” or “Abbey Road,” but of course, we’ve got probably two albums worth of original music that we haven’t recorded yet, either. We’re an original band – that’s how we started – so there’s thought of following it up with an original record. There’s even been talk of trying to do our own rock opera, but we’re not going to commit to anything quite yet.

katie@durangoherald.com

If you go

What: The HillBenders present “The Who’s Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry” with special guest La La Bones.

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Where: Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College.

Tickets: $21.60/$34. Available online at www.durangoconcerttix.com or by phone at 247-7657.

The dance floor will be open.