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ASPEN — Even in Colorado — home of the Telluride Bluegrass and Rockygrass festivals, birthplace of Leftover Salmon and Hot Rize, breeding grounds for 1,352 pickers of mandolins and banjos — it's apparently not the most productive thing to up and announce, “Hey, let's form a bluegrass band!”
No, Adam Kinghorn took the subtler route. As a freshman at Colorado State, back in 2003, Kinghorn instead simply invited a few fellow freshmen together to learn some tunes. He didn't tip his hand by choosing only a certain type of player: Mike Chappell came from a punk background; Matt Loewen had played in orchestras and jazz bands; Joe Lessard was a violinist, not a fiddler.
“He hadn't really talked about making a bluegrass band,” Lessard says of Kinghorn's actions seven years ago. “I don't think we realized he had a vision for this. It seemed like it more or less fell into our laps.”
A few years after those song sessions, Kinghorn let slip in an interview that he knew all along where this had been headed from the start. By then it was too late. The foursome of Chappell, Loewen, Lessard and Kinghorn had become the string quartet Head for the Hills.
Looking back, Lessard thinks Kinghorn's approach was a wise one. Lessard had had some early brushes with the idea that bluegrass was serious music; in particular, he had seen, as a kid, a performance by fiddler extraordinaire Mark O'Connor. “That showed me, there's no way this is just hillbilly music,” he said. “Because it took extreme virtuosity to pull that off.”
Still, the prospect of joining a bluegrass band probably would not have made Lessard and his mates jump to attention.
“We might not have been as receptive if Adam had said, ‘OK, we're going to be a traditional bluegrass band.' We might have said, ‘Oh, are we now?'” the 25-year-old Lessard said from his home near Boulder. “I think I had a predisposition that was just like everybody else's surface judgment — that it was really hillbilly music.”
Eventually, it did dawn on Lessard that he was, in fact, a member of a bluegrass band. Head for the Hills has, after all, played at the Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival and the Northwest String Summit, and has shared stages with Peter Rowan, Sam Bush and David Grisman. Part of what has kept him interested is the discovery that jazz, swing and Celtic fiddle music fit well into the modern idea of a bluegrass band. But he has also found that in Colorado, people tend not to turn and run when a group of young men start pulling out banjos and mandolins.
“It's been such a hotbed for this music for so long; it's at the forefront of a lot of people's minds,” he said of the ties between Colorado and bluegrass. “Cultivating a scene around this is kind of easy to do. There's no reason to move to Los Angeles; you don't have to uproot yourself.”
Head for the Hills has worked its way into the upper reaches of Colorado's bluegrass community. Their most recent album, a self-titled effort released a year ago, was produced by Leftover Salmon's Drew Emmitt, and recorded in the studio run by String Cheese Incident's Billy Nershi. The band headlines Thursday at Belly Up Aspen, kicking off a mountain-town tour with stops in Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs, Park City and Jackson.
“It took us all growing with bluegrass a little bit, to understand what bluegrass and acoustic music is all about,” Lessard said.
stewart@aspentimes.com
No, Adam Kinghorn took the subtler route. As a freshman at Colorado State, back in 2003, Kinghorn instead simply invited a few fellow freshmen together to learn some tunes. He didn't tip his hand by choosing only a certain type of player: Mike Chappell came from a punk background; Matt Loewen had played in orchestras and jazz bands; Joe Lessard was a violinist, not a fiddler.
“He hadn't really talked about making a bluegrass band,” Lessard says of Kinghorn's actions seven years ago. “I don't think we realized he had a vision for this. It seemed like it more or less fell into our laps.”
A few years after those song sessions, Kinghorn let slip in an interview that he knew all along where this had been headed from the start. By then it was too late. The foursome of Chappell, Loewen, Lessard and Kinghorn had become the string quartet Head for the Hills.
Looking back, Lessard thinks Kinghorn's approach was a wise one. Lessard had had some early brushes with the idea that bluegrass was serious music; in particular, he had seen, as a kid, a performance by fiddler extraordinaire Mark O'Connor. “That showed me, there's no way this is just hillbilly music,” he said. “Because it took extreme virtuosity to pull that off.”
Still, the prospect of joining a bluegrass band probably would not have made Lessard and his mates jump to attention.
“We might not have been as receptive if Adam had said, ‘OK, we're going to be a traditional bluegrass band.' We might have said, ‘Oh, are we now?'” the 25-year-old Lessard said from his home near Boulder. “I think I had a predisposition that was just like everybody else's surface judgment — that it was really hillbilly music.”
Eventually, it did dawn on Lessard that he was, in fact, a member of a bluegrass band. Head for the Hills has, after all, played at the Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival and the Northwest String Summit, and has shared stages with Peter Rowan, Sam Bush and David Grisman. Part of what has kept him interested is the discovery that jazz, swing and Celtic fiddle music fit well into the modern idea of a bluegrass band. But he has also found that in Colorado, people tend not to turn and run when a group of young men start pulling out banjos and mandolins.
“It's been such a hotbed for this music for so long; it's at the forefront of a lot of people's minds,” he said of the ties between Colorado and bluegrass. “Cultivating a scene around this is kind of easy to do. There's no reason to move to Los Angeles; you don't have to uproot yourself.”
Head for the Hills has worked its way into the upper reaches of Colorado's bluegrass community. Their most recent album, a self-titled effort released a year ago, was produced by Leftover Salmon's Drew Emmitt, and recorded in the studio run by String Cheese Incident's Billy Nershi. The band headlines Thursday at Belly Up Aspen, kicking off a mountain-town tour with stops in Breckenridge, Steamboat Springs, Park City and Jackson.
“It took us all growing with bluegrass a little bit, to understand what bluegrass and acoustic music is all about,” Lessard said.
stewart@aspentimes.com
