Live Music Alert:  CD Release Party, Sunday March 15, 2010, the Aquarium, Fargo ND, 10:30 pm $8, 21+

There is no doubt in my mind that Greensky Bluegrass can please die-hard traditional bluegrass fans and jam fans who have come to expect bluegrass instrumentation to be turned into organic musical landscapes. Heralding from Michigan, Greensky Bluegrass has been winning fans all across this great land for a couple of years now, even earning them a slot on the Main Stage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2006 as the winners of a band contest. But more so, they were invited back by the festival two years later in a regular slot as a successful touring band.

Greensky Bluegrass has played shows with Tony Rice and Peter Rowan, Sam Bush, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Railroad Earth. And, they were one of the few local bands invited to play the very first Rothbury Festival. 

Part of the reason for Greensky Bluegrass’ popularity has been is uncommon approach to the idiom. Only one of the members was raised on this kind of music, and the rest all come from vastly different backgrounds.

One of the founding members, Dave Bruzza, who grew up listening to bluegrass and country, really started his musical life as a drummer, something unheard of in traditional bluegrass, but soon gravitated to guitar. He claims his strong rhythm guitar skills come from his years as a drummer. He also is an innovative lead guitar player. Dave still plays drums in the psychedelic-folk-rock band Airborne or Aquatic and plays acoustic, electric and steel guitar in many other Michigan-based bands.

The banjo player, Michael Bont, also a founding member, discovered his love of the banjo in 1998 after years of playing as jazz guitarist. Today Bont also builds banjos and does delicate inlay work for Robinson Guitars.

The third unusual player is Mike Devol, the standup bass player. Mike joined Greensky in 2004 after moving to Kalamazoo, Michigan to study classical cello with Bruce Uchimura at Western Michigan University.

The other members of Greensky Bluegrass are founder Paul Hoffman, a guitarist turned mandolin player in 2000, and Anders Beck, their dobro player. Anders was a drummer and electric guitar player. “I sort of stumbled upon bluegrass and wasn’t a very good bluegrass guitar player. I found flat picking to be pretty hard,” Anders says. “I stumbled upon the dobro at a workshop at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. It sort of made sense to me because it’s kind of like the electric guitar of acoustic music world.”

Previously Anders played with Broke Mountain, for him his playing and songwriting helped shoot the band into the spotlight when they won the 2003 Rockygrass Band Contest only two months after the band was formed. “Broke Mountain was similar to Greensky,” Anders says. “It was guys who were learning to play bluegrass music together. It’s surely an interesting way to approach it, sort of learning on the job.”

When member scattered to do separate projects, Anders was recruited by friend and songwriter extraordinaire, Benny “Burle” Galloway, of Yonder Mountain String Band fame to help create a band to showcase Benny’s songs. The Wayword Sons was formed with a unique lineup of acoustic guitar, dobro, piano, and bass). They produced one critically acclaimed album and toured heavily.

Anders has also played in solo projects with Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon) and Jeff Austin (Yonder Mountain String Band) and sat in with The Drew Emmit Band, The Emmitt Nershi Band (Leftover Salmon and String Cheese Incident), New Monsoon, and Railroad Earth.
In 2008, Anders climbed aboard Greensky Bluegrass and hasn’t looked back. But his finding the band is also unusual.

Greensky Bluegrass had been around as an open-mike band in Michigan for about eight or nine years. “Greensky started as a way for Paul, Mike, and Dave to learn how to play bluegrass,” Anders says. “They all kind of realized that they liked the same kind of music and got the group together and started playing…We started actually doing what we do now—touring and playing almost 200 dates a year. That sort of has only been going on for a couple of years.”

The band has dug in and written enough material for four albums. The last on, Five Interstates, was produced by Tim Carbone, the fiddle player for Railroad Earth. “He produced the last two Greensky studio records that we made,” Anders says. “Tim as musician and a producer has his hand on a lot of what we do. We think he’s just got a great ear for music in general. In getting him to produce our records has been really helpful to us as far as having that extra ear.”

And the freshness in the mix does have more of a Railroad Earth feel than Yonder Mountain. But it is the songs that sell the band and not just their instrumental chops. Every member of the band dips his hand into the songwriting pool. “Paul Hoffman, our mandolin player, is the most prolific most of the time,” says Anders. “Like a lot of different art forms, it comes and goes. All of a sudden, you have too many songs and then two weeks later you have no songs…. With us, the songwriting varies so much. When we start writing, we write songs that could be done by a bluegrass band or rock band or anything. And we sort of take that and translate it into our own sound, which is something we have been really working hard on doing. If the song should be a traditional bluegrass sounding son, then that’s what it is. If it sounds like it should be an extended improvisational song because that’s what will serve the song best, then that’s the way it’s going to be. We try to take things outside of the box as much as we can as far as not saying we are a bluegrass band and everything has to sound exactly like bluegrass.”

There live shows are energetic and a mixed bag. “We really try and focus on original music as much as possible,” Anders says. “We also play a fair amount of traditional bluegrass and a fair amount of covers from outside the genre, representing our influences.”

Greensky Bluegrass is a smorgasbord for the ear. On any given night, you are likely to hear Jimmy Martin’s traditional “Freeborn Man” along side of a bluegrass cranked version of a Jimi Hendrix jam or a twisted Talking Heads song or even Bob Marley twanged up. So, when Greensky is in your region, you owe it to yourself to go see them live.

They are currently touring in support of their first 2-CD live set in a series of limited-edition called All Access: Volume 1. Along with two dozen original tunes, the group also expands the genre’s limits with exciting covers of tunes by such outside-the-bluegrass-norm acts like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Pink Floyd.  Not to be missed!!!

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.