Greensky Bluegrass | Live at Bell’sEmpty Bottle Evenings

Mar162015March 16, 2015March 16, 20151 Commentby Bake

Greensky Bluegrass | Live at Bell’s

Posted in Music

When preparing to write about Springsteen last week I ended up watching several covers of “Atlantic City” on youtube, the most interesting from Greensky Bluegrass. This lead me down an internet rabbit hole that ended up with me watching this band play a live 15 minute bluegrass cover of “When the Doves Cry”. Needless to say I needed to see what else this band was getting themselves into. While there were a few more covers, this bands writes their own music, not just being a gimmicky band, but a real bluegrass band that puts on a great live show, in their words: “We play acoustic instruments, but we put on a rock’n’roll show.” While I haven’t been to one of their concerts in the week or so since I knew they existed, Live at Bell’s should serve as the recorded proof of these impressive live performances.

Greensky Bluegrass isn’t exactly traditional bluegrass but it does keep a lot of the classic melodies and instrumentation. The bands consists of five guys playing guitar, banjo, mandolin, dobro, and upright bass, and while mandolin player Paul Hoffman is the lead vocalists there a lot of key vocal harmonizing with his band mates throughout the live album. I know it’s a staple of any bluegrass player worth his salt but I’m always impressed by how fast these guys pick it. Songs like “Send Me Your Address from Heaven”, “Runnin’ the Briars”, and “Airmail Special” show off that impressive speed bluegrass.

Some of their slower songs like “Bottle Dry”,“My Sally” and “Can’t Make Time” are equally impressive, not just as bluegrass music really, but as well crafted songs. It’s an easy jump for me to listen to a new bluegrass band as there is a lot of crossover between that and the alt-country & americana stuff that I have been into lately, but I think everyone should check this band out. Maybe an experimental cover of Prince that goes on for 15 minutes is too much, but try their version of the Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere” from Live at Bell’s and maybe that will sound cool enough to get you to check out the rest of these pretty awesome songs.