Sometimes your day job gives way to more artistic endeavors.
Take, for example, the formation of a band. Perhaps you’re a teacher, and you host an afternoon string club for students. It’s an effort to teach the kids about music by putting instruments in their hands, showing them how to make chords on a guitar or banjo, and giving them the experience of playing in a band.
On Fridays, maybe you and some other teachers get to school early to chug coffee and pick bluegrass tunes before the school week ends. And maybe, if things click among the pickers, those Friday-morning jam sessions give way to a band.
That’s how it went for local bluegrass band Running out of Road, whose members came together through those very same Friday-morning jam sessions last year. Four of the five band members are teachers at Escalante Middle School.
They’ll be opening for The Grascals on Saturday night at the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College.
Running Out of Road includes Ian Lennox on guitar and vocals, Michelle Fletcher on bass and vocals, Duane Tucker on banjo and vocals, Jeff Moorehead on dobro and vocals, and Rusty Charpentier on fiddle and vocals.
It was Lennox who rounded out these informal picks with his singing and guitar playing, adding something that was missing.
“Some of the teachers mentioned they had a jam every Friday morning but didn’t have a guitar player or singer,” Lennox said during an interview in the KDUR studios. “That never happens in bluegrass jams. So we started playing, and here we are now a year later.”
“We were blown away by his steady bluegrass voice and his flat-picking,” Moorehead said. “We looked at each other and said ‘Let’s do this.’”
Late in 2013, the band went into a Boulder studio to record its debut, a project that features the band’s songwriting talents. All of the tracks were written by Lennox and Tucker, with one credited to Moorehead. The self-titled release was recorded live. Musicians were not sequestered to different rooms in a studio playing tracks individually; the musicians played as if they were on stage, or standing around a festival campfire.
“We wanted to capture the live part of that, and get it done quick and dirty because really more intense studio projects can drag on for months,” Moorehead said.
The prolific members of the band have plans, and enough material to let this first release be the impetus for a more proper studio record that could come in the future.
Headlining act The Grascals remain major players in the world of bluegrass. Now a decade old, an early version of the band came to prominence in 2004 as Dolly Parton’s opening act and backing band.
After parting ways with Parton after a year, the band was awarded The International Bluegrass Music Association’s “Emerging Artist” and “Song of the Year” awards in 2005. The Grascals then claimed “Entertainer of the Year” in 2006 and 2007. Banjo player Kristen Scott Benson was IBMA’s banjo player of the year for four years running, from 2008 through 2011.
Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.
Bryant’s Best
Saturday: The Ben Gibson Band will play rock music, 8 p.m., no cover, Derailed Pour House, 725 Main Ave., 247-5440.
Saturday: The Grascals and Running out of Road will play bluegrass, 7 p.m., $18/$24, Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 247-7657.
