Tag: string band

ANNOUNCING: WinterWonderGrass Returns to Colorado, California, and Vermont in 2020

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Today, the WinterWonderGrass Music & Brew Festival shares the 2020 lineup across all three of their flagship events. Taking place in Colorado from February 21-23, California from March 27-29, and Vermont from April 10-11, the traveling music festival will welcome performances from some of the hottest names currently thriving in today’s bluegrass and Americana scenes.

“It’s with a mountain of intention, huge hearts, humility, and a commitment to delivering the hottest and sweetest artists that we present to you the 2020 WinterWonderGrass landscape,” says festival founder Scotty Stoughton in a press release. “Each year, the hardest thing to do is not heed our desire to return to each and every band — and by virtue of that, friends to WWG — year in and year out. It is our sincere desire you’ll find new lifetime favorites on this lineup, have the chance to be reunited with old loves and step out of your comfort zone with open arms to new experiences.”

“WinterWonderGrass has become a home for artists, fans, staff, locals, businesses, skiers, riders, their families and all of the like,” adds festival Director of Marketing & Ticketing, Ariel Rosemberg. “We pride ourselves on creating a sustainable, safe and receptive environment, bound by the marriage of the best in bluegrass, folk and Americana, and the undefeated nature of American ski culture.”

BGS has partnered with WWG for the past two years and we are excited to once again join forces with WinterWonderGrass to create and share unforgettable experiences and world-class music across our communities and across the country.

Returning to Colorado for its eighth consecutive year, and its fourth year located in the pristine ski town of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, WinterWonderGrass presents headlining performances from Greensky Bluegrass, Billy Strings, and Margo Price over its three days this coming February.

Additional artists on the bill include: Keller & the Keels, Della Mae, Travelin’ McCourys, Nikki Lane, Molly Tuttle, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades, Bluegrass Generals (Chris Pandolfi & Andy Hall of The Infamous Stringdusters), ALO, Lindsay Lou, a collaborative set from the WinterWonderWomen, Pickin’ on the Dead, Che Apalache, Cris Jacobs, Twisted Pine, Jon Stickley Trio, Meadow Mountain, Jay Roemer Band, Buffalo Commons, and Bowregard, as well as special guests Andy Thorn, Jennifer Hartswick, Bridget Law, Pappy Biondo, and Will Mosheim.

Over March 27-29, WinterWonderGrass makes its way to the Tahoe region of California for its sixth consecutive year presenting three days of music at the base of Squaw Valley Ski Resort. Headliners for this festival stop include The Devil Makes Three, The Infamous Stringdusters, and two sets by Billy Strings.

Also joining the bill: Peter Rowan, Fruition, Keller and the Keels, The War and Treaty, The Lil Smokies, Brothers Comatose, Della Mae, Larry Keel Experience, Kitchen Dwellers, Andy Falco & Travis Book Perform Jerry Garcia, Cris Jacobs, Trout Steak Revival, Midnight North, Town Mountain, Pickin’ on the Dead, Pixie and the Partygrass Boys, Old Salt Union, TK & the Holy Know-Nothings, Rapidgrass, and Twisted Pine. As well as special guests Lindsay Lou, Bridget Law, Will Mosheim and a collaborative WinterWonderWomen set.

A Mountaintop Dinner with Keller Williams, co-presented by BGS, will kick off the festivities in both locations on Thursday, February 20, and Thursday, March 26, respectively. These events will include a ride up the gondola in Steamboat and the Tram at Squaw, a multi-course meal complete with locally-sourced ingredients from each respective region, wine and beer samplings, plus two sets by Williams during each event.

The Vermont stop of the festival takes place over April 10 and 11 at Stratton Mountain Resort in Stratton, Vermont. Previously held in December, this year’s festival stop in Vermont was scheduled to coincide with the ski resort’s closing weekend. Headliners for this iteration of the festival, billed as WonderGrass Presents: Sugar & Strings, include The Infamous Stringdusters, Cabinet, Della Mae, and Molly Tuttle.

Additional artists on the two-day lineup include: Kitchen Dwellers, Andy Falco & Travis Book Perform Jerry Garcia, Twisted Pine, Che Apalache, a special WinterWonderWomen collaboration, Saints and Liars, Dead Winter Carpenters and Damn Tall Buildings, as well as special guests Jennifer Hartswick, Bridget Law, Pappy Biondo, Will Mosheim and more.

Additionally, the Grass After Dark Series will return for post-festival programming with more details coming soon.

Tickets for all three festivals are on sale now: Colorado | California | Vermont.

The Show On The Road – The Lone Bellow

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. Lupetin speaks to the founding trio of one the most respected and sought after folk-rock bands in the country, The Lone Bellow.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3

Their hedonistically heavenly harmonies have lifted them from playing tiny bars around their founding home base of Brooklyn, New York to adoring audiences at venerable venues like Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the Apollo, and The Ryman Auditorium, in their new home of Nashville, Tennessee. The Lone Bellow have a rapport that is intimate, hilarious, and — when it calls for it — deadly serious. The band is full of so much heart and genuine insight that you can’t help but lean in and listen.

Artist of the Month: Old Crow Medicine Show

Posted on by Editor

From their earliest days of busking and playing to capacity crowds at the Station Inn, Old Crow Medicine Show has shown they know how to pull in a crowd. Now they’ve captured that raucous, captivating energy in their newest release, Live From the Ryman, recorded during the group’s numerous headlining performances at the landmark Nashville venue.

The band has seen its share of setbacks and lineup changes over the years, but their catalog is surprisingly limber. In other words, the songs from Eutaw and O.C.M.S. blend seamlessly with tracks from newer releases like Remedy and Volunteer.

It’s a testament to the vision of band founder Ketch Secor, who tells BGS, “If they had tried to stop us a long time ago, they probably would have been able to, but they never tried. We were never curtailed. We were asked to be quiet and to clean up, but nobody ever said ‘no’ enough times for us to pay attention.”

Look for a two-part interview with Old Crow Medicine Show coming up on BGS this month, and enjoy our Essentials playlist.

Photo credit: Crackerfarm; (L-R): Charlie Worsham, Cory Younts, Critter Fuqua, Ketch Secor, Joe Andrews, Morgan Jahnig

WATCH: The Quebe Sisters, “Pierce the Blue”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Quebe Sisters
Hometown: Dallas, Texas
Song: “Pierce the Blue”
Album: The Quebe Sisters
Release Date: September 20, 2019

In Their Words: “This album represents several ‘firsts’ for us, and it captures a new phase and the start of a new direction for our sound. In many ways the process of making this album felt like starting over; deconstructing what we knew about music and then trying to put it back together again. Making and producing this album was a very collaborative effort where we sought to diversify our sound using our same instrumentation. It features solos from everyone in the band as well as originals, including ‘Pierce the Blue.’ This song has two parallel themes running through it. It’s about a difficult season of our lives we went through, and it’s also about universal pain we all feel that brings about our longing for reconciliation, change, and a better tomorrow.” — The Quebe Sisters

Photo Credit: Katherine Chiu + Bill Stipp

Che Apalache, “24 de marzo (Día de la Memoria)”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Though it’s largely viewed as a music by and for Appalachian and southern white Americans, bluegrass is a genre born of a much more complicated, harlequin heritage — as is the case for most American cultural touchstones. The U.S.A. is a melting pot country and bluegrass is melting pot music. As such, it takes on touches, overtones, and undertones of many other folk traditions with ease. Musicmakers from around the world, from Eastern Europe to Japan to South America, have for many years fashioned string bands that begin with the skeletal structure of American roots music — banjos, fiddles, mandolins, and so on — and expand into incredibly imaginative realms informed by their own cultures, backgrounds, stories, sights, and sounds.

One such band helping to further this global potential for bluegrass is Che Apalache. An Argentina-based bluegrass and old-time quartet, the group (with members from Mexico, North Carolina, and Argentina) covers a vast musical space that includes barn-burning picking, soulful, gospel-tinged vocals, and composed, cinematic arrangements with touches of chamber music and the virtuosity of formal training. One standout song from their brand new, Béla Fleck-produced album, Rearrange My Heart, is “24 de marzo (Día de la Memoria),” an instrumental tango written by fiddler Joe Troop based on experiences of banjo player Pau Barjau’s family members.

The tune commemorates victims of an Argentinian dictatorship that was backed by the United States. Día de la Memoria por la Verdad y la Justicia is a holiday observed each year in Argentina on March 24, the anniversary of the coup of 1976. The bluegrass instrumentation doesn’t feel clunky or out of place utilizing the musical vocabularies of Central and South America in this context. Rather, it reinforces the fact that our communities — musical and otherwise — are strengthened by the experiences of others. And, it reminds us that there are so many more stories ready to be told by bluegrass bands, if we’re ready to hear them.

LISTEN: Songs from the Road Band, “Any Highway”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Songs from the Road Band
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Any Highway”
Album: Waiting on a Ride
Release Date: July 31, 2019
Label: Lucks Dumpy Toad Records

In Their Words: “‘Any Highway’ is a song about the one that got away! It’s set out west in a desert town. Its relevancy is timeless. It was written by Darren Nicholson of Balsam Range fame and Charles R Humphrey III. We made it the first track on our new album because it introduces the themes of change, transition, travel, and nostalgia. Those threads are woven throughout the album and seem to tie this batch of songs together as one cohesive project.” — Songs from the Road Band

Photo credit: Keith Wright

LISTEN: Che Apalache, “Rearrange My Heart”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Che Apalache
Hometown: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Song: “Rearrange My Heart”
Album: Rearrange My Heart
Release Date: August 9, 2019
Label: Free Dirt Records

In Their Words: “The first part of this song is the result of attending a Moravian church as a child and singing Bach chorales. Just fiddle and voices is a cool concept, reminds me of the organ. I wrote the second part at a late-night party in Buenos Aires, singing as I banged on a doumbek. Turns out it is in 9/8. This song has a ton of influences: Rajasthani folk, British Isles ballad singing, bluegrass, pop. It’s the kind of mystical world music I feel directly results from a deep respect for all folk music traditions while using one as your guiding light, in our case bluegrass.” — Joe Troop, Che Apalache

Photo credit: Mauro Milanich and Andrés Corbo

The Show On The Road – The Slocan Ramblers

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

This week, Z. speaks with The Slocan Ramblers. This fearless, fleet-fingered string band is adventurously advancing the high lonesome sound of bluegrass to great acclaim, and not from the states where it’s known best, but in a lakeside folk hotbed that has become a cosmopolitan music mecca of Canada — Toronto.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTS • MP3

Their newest string odyssey, Queen City Jubilee — featuring a lovable zombie on its painted cover — was recently nominated for a Juno Award for traditional roots album. Make sure you stick around to hear the band doing a musical experiment where Z. asks them to each musically respond to a slightly offensive Cards Against Humanity prompt.

LISTEN: Lisa Bastoni, “Walk a Little Closer” (Feat. Lula Wiles)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Lisa Bastoni
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Walk a Little Closer” (featuring Lula Wiles)
Album: How We Want to Live
Release Date: September 20, 2019

In Their Words: “One day a couple of winters ago, Sean Staples (How We Want to Live‘s producer) and I were writing at my kitchen table and he said, ‘Well, maybe they don’t all have to be devastating.’ Which I thought was an excellent point. We wrote this in 45 minutes, based on a Lynda Barry-inspired writing exercise around the word ‘adore.’ It was refreshing to write something so lighthearted, just a simple bluegrass song that tells the story of a first date. The first time I played it out was at a little bar in Cambridge, with Isa Burke on fiddle and harmony. That was the seed of the new album — to record locally, with some of my favorite musicians and people. I’m so happy to have Isa, as well as Eleanor Buckland and Mali Obomsawin (aka Lula Wiles) playing on this track!
— Lisa Bastoni

Photo credit: Love and Perry Photography and Film

Blue Ox Music Festival 2019 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

String bands of all sorts from all across the country descended upon Blue Ox Music Festival and Eau Claire, Wisconsin last week for three days of music in the backwoods — and the rain! BGS partnered with Blue Ox and Jamgrass TV to broadcast nearly 20 sets from the festival’s main stage online for thousands of fans around the world. But, if you did not have the good fortune to be on site for the goings-on and if you didn’t get a chance to tune in to the livestreams, don’t fret. You can check out what you missed with our photo recap — while you make plans to join us in 2020!

Lede photo: Ty Helbach