Bluegrass forms converge at Aggie Theatre

By KELLI LACKETT

Originally published Thursday, December 11, 2003
Fort Collins Coloradoan

When Open Road Bluegrass Band, Hit & Run Bluegrass and Uncle Earl take the stage Saturday at the Aggie Theatre,
audiences will be treated to an aural history of Old Time and bluegrass music.

"It's an interesting group to play together," Abby Washburn, banjo player and vocalist for Uncle Earl, said Tuesday.
"Hit & Run has a progressive bluegrass show. ... Open Road takes a step back, trying to recreate the older bluegrass
sound. They're more of a traditional bluegrass band. Uncle Earl is what came before that."

Open Road Bluegrass Band, which signed with Rounder Records in 2002, has played a number of shows at Avogadro's
Number and the Aggie since the band was created in 1998, as has Boulder-based Hit & Run in recent months. Fort Collins
audiences might be less familiar with Uncle Earl's old-time string-music sound.

But the Lyons-based band promises to set the stage for the other two, treating audiences to a form of American music
derived from Scottish, Irish and African elements that thrived in rural communities from Appalachia to Mississippi for
centuries. Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs drew from this "country music," as well as blues and gospel,
when they developed the distinctive hard-driving bluegrass sound in the 1940s.

"Old Time music tends not to have a lot of soloing," Washburn said. "The structure is more like everyone plays the
melody together. ... The slight variations are just a change in the groove. It's not based on each person's virtuosity or soloing."

With members from Lyons, Asheville, N.C. and Nashville, Tenn., Uncle Earl draws some of its material from source
recordings from the 1920s and 1930s. Guitar player and vocalist KC Groves, fiddle player and vocalist Rayna Gellert
and Washburn also write original material, some of it drawing from other musical traditions.

"Bluegrass traditionally has a high lonesome sound, and that's often a male tenor voice. That's a quality that makes bluegrass
what it is," Washburn said. "(Old Time music) is a comfortable place for women to be."

Another difference between Old Time music and bluegrass is the banjo playing, Washburn said. An Old Time banjo has
an open back and is often played in a rhythmic clawhammer style, while a bluegrass banjo has a reverberator on the back
and is usually fingerpicked in the three-finger style popularized by Earl Scruggs.

Uncle Earl's offerings, Washburn said, are very danceable. In fact, the band has invited Appalachian-style clogger Kristin
Andreassen from Baltimore to show off some of her moves at the show Saturday.

Headlining will be the Open Road Bluegrass Band, which is enjoying the success of its 2002 CD, "Cold Wind." The CD,
produced by Sally Van Meter, spent nine months on the Bluegrass Unlimited National Bluegrass Survey Album chart.
Open Road's second CD with Rounder is due out April 1.

"We have a lot more miles under our belt now," said mandolin player and vocalist Caleb Roberts Tuesday from Los
Angeles, where he was mixing the new CD. "I think it's a better representation of what the band sounds like today."

The new CD features more tunes written by guitarist, vocalist and Fort Collins resident Bradford Lee Folk, such as
"Southern Track" and "I'm not Perfect."

Rounding out the show is Hit & Run Bluegrass, which made its name by winning band competitions at the Rocky Grass
bluegrass festival in Lyons in 2002 and at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in 2003. The band calls its approach to bluegrass
"authentic but modern."

"We have a contemporary strain of traditional music. We have our own identifiable sound," said Rebecca Hoggan, guitarist
and lead vocalist for the band, in a July interview. "Part of it is the instrumentation ... and the resister of the voice. We are
not a real high-singing band."