Four more years! Of bluegrass!

Kick it and pick it...

So it's been four years since I've written anything on here, which is a shame, because I really did enjoy regularly posting stuff to here and trying (mostly in vain) to shine a light on cool music that you're unlikely to hear on the radio. Although I do have to say, my local FM station WYEP 91.3 really does bring a wide array of great music across the sonic spectrum. And I'm not just saying that because resident DJ Bruce Mountjoy occasionally plays my band on the Sunday-night bluegrass show.

A big part of the reason I haven't been updating this regularly is that things have gotten awfully busy, band-wise. Since the last post I've become part of two more bluegrass groups, the Wolf Tones and Dead & In the Way. Both are the brainchild of my homie Joe Dep from the Shelf Life String Band. His brain and mine seem to function on the same wavelength when it comes to the jammier elements of music and using dynamics and improv to push and pull a song in new directions. Even within the fairly strict confines of bluegrass, we've worked our way through some cool little jams and transitions between songs.

But the true busy-ness has come via the Sweaty Already String Band. Since the last time I was putting regular SASB updates on here, our bassist Trish has joined in on a lot more vocals, and it leveled us up very quickly. We were also lucky enough to work with former Johnson Mountain Boys member David McLaughlin, something Trish has done several times, and his approach to working out harmonies has benefited us big-time.

The other change is the addition of former Mon River Rambler member Jim Kuzemka on mandolin and vocals. There's nothing better than adding a member who wants to do some main vocals, and Jim is the man in that regard. Bringing him on board has let us add some classic male-trio harmonies into our shows, great stuff like "Take This Hammer" and "East Virginia Blues."

Obviously, the pandemic slowed us down, and it's canceled two years' worth of our favorite winter bluegrass festival, the January Ice Jam up in Butler, but we kept going with livestreams and we were back to semi-regular performances by the summer of 2020, and damn near back to normal by spring of 2021.

Bluegrass has been really good to me, I gotta say. The community here in the greater Pittsburgh region isn't huge but it's very supportive. If one of us isn't able to make a gig, we have a great stable of pickin' pals we can call on. Over the summer, various permutations of Jim, Pete and I played some gigs with our buddy Vaughn Neill on bass while Trish was doing some gigs with the Jakob's Ferry Stragglers.

And while we were sad to lose our original mando player Danny Rectenwald, he's been busy with his solo guitar work, and as a matter of fact he's gonna be joining us on guitar
for a 2/6/21 show at Whisper Nest in Millvale!