Get past the murder ballads and songs of drinking, cheating, loneliness and desperation, and bluegrass is good-time music.
It’s played by a bunch of people not afraid of a social atmosphere, ready to tip back a couple cold ones or take a nip or two of liquor from a bottle or Mason jar while singing about hard times. I am not talking about glitzed-out pop bluegrass like Allison Kraus with a backstage rider of bottled water and sushi singing about lovers and sunsets. Bluegrass done right is hardcore stories celebratory of the good and bad of life, told by fun-loving musicians out for a good time – or at least it should be.
Asheville, N.C., is home to numerous bands that fit that bill, like Town Mountain; a five-piece that has gained legions of fans in the West ever since it won the band competition at Rockygrass in 2005. It has played Durango a handful of times before, including four stellar sets at the Durango Bluegrass Meltdown in 2010. It will return tonight at the Durango Arts Center in a Durango Acoustic Music production. Opening the show will be Wild Mountain – try not to confuse the two.
Town Mountain is Jesse Langlais on banjo, Robert Greer on guitar and vocals, Bobby Britt on fiddle, Phil Barker on mandolin and Jon Stickley on bass. Stickley is the newest addition to the band, and was at one time a member of local band Broke Mountain. Town Mountain is still touring in support of the release “Steady Operator” that came out last May.
The band’s formation and victory at Rockygrass began as a summer trip with a different incarnation of the band.
“We started our career in Colorado,” Langlais said last week by phone from North Carolina. “We put a band together, myself and Robert, and headed out West and did a five-week tour that had six or seven gigs. We ended up at Rockygrass and won the band competition and decided we had something that we could work with. We came back home and started playing more music as Town Mountain.”
Although very much a bluegrass band with nationwide bluegrass festival appearances and the reverence of traditional bluegrass lovers on both coasts, Town Mountain at times resembles an acoustic hard-folk band, favoring covers by Bruce Springsteen and Sun Volt over a heavy set list with names like Bill Monroe or Ralph Stanley.
“Putting labels on music is always pretty hard, but I take it as a compliment when someone says ‘Your music is appealing to me because I don’t like bluegrass but I like your music.’ That happens all the time,” Langlais said. “We’re an acoustic band, and we all pull from different musical backgrounds. We weren’t all born and bred bluegrass from the days we started listening to music.”
Being labeled bluegrass, but also recognized as something else, is a badge of honor.
“Acoustic roots rock, Town Mountain,” he said. “I like that. I take that as a compliment.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
