The Jon Stickley Trio didn’t begin as an instrumental band. What started as an experimental blue and newgrass outfit would feature the guitar-flatpicking efforts of Stickley and the fiddle of Lyndsay Pruett, digging into classic bluegrass, Americana, rock or whatever else they wanted to dig into. But it was the instrumentals that Stickley claimed “felt right,” so they ditched the vocals and focused on instrumental theatrics. That was over a decade ago, and with jazz-trained drummer Hunter Deacon, they’re an acoustic, instrumental powerhouse, where bluegrass meets breakbeats creating a sound that lives somewhere between The Tony Rice Unit and Yes.
The Jon Stickley Trio will perform July 23 in Buckley Park for the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College’s Community Hall at the Park.
“We said, ‘You know what? The things that are coming out naturally are our instrumentals,’ and so we were just going to make a record and said, ‘Hey, for this one, let’s go all instrumental,’” Stickley said. “Maybe it’s our only instrumental record we ever do. So we did that record, and then we went and played our first festival and came out all instrumental, and it was just the most natural feeling. The crowd responded to it more than anything we’ve ever done, and we didn’t have a single person come up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you singing anymore?’ It was just the way it was, and it was totally cool.”
Without lyrics, or a dedicated front person, the trio is 100% focused on the command of their instruments. You make music long enough with the same people, and you’ll likely master nonverbal communication, an ability to know where your bandmates may want to take the song, whether that song be something from the rock ’n’ roll canon or the great bluegrass songbook.
“I’ve heard Miles Davis talk about his quintet at the height of its intimacy and I’ve heard Tony Rice say the same thing about his group, like, ‘Hey, we’ve been doing this so long now, we’re psychic,” Stickley said. “We know exactly what everyone’s going to do. It’s like playing music with family. So yeah, I love playing music with all sorts of people, but this trio is a very intimate unique musical experience that I treasure very much.”
Talk to Stickley long enough and you’ll likely hear him drop a multitude of band names and musicians he’s been digging since he was a teenager. On paper he’s a bluegrass picker with Durango ties, as 20 years back he was a member of the beloved, Durango based band Broke Mountain. But along with name-dropping the aforementioned new-grass and jazz legends, he also digs into punk and indie rock.
“We just keep our ears open and see where it leads us,” he said.
Wherever those open ears leads them to results in a sound that is ripe for a sweaty club show, or a festival where the trio can whip a dance-field into a whirling frenzy. It’s progressive, acoustic music with a rock vibe that lives on the outskirts of the jam world.
“We’re kind of like an accidental fusion band,” Stickley said. “We just do what we do and then people come up to me, and they’ll say, ‘You must have listened to a lot of King Crimson growing up,’ and I’ll say, ‘Dude, I’ve never even heard of them.’ I’ve learned about who these fusion bands are from people telling us what we sound like, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, King Crimson is awesome.’ But you know, we’re just doing our thing.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at [email protected].
