Colorado is the leading dealer in the sounds of upbeat and stretched-out bluegrass. The past five decades have seen dozens of string bands rear their sounds from the Centennial State, everyone from Hot Rize to The Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon to Elephant Revival, bands all digging into traditional roots music while also doing what they can to turn these tunes on their head.
If you go
WHAT: High Country Hustle and The Pickpockets
WHEN: 8 p.m. Dec. 31.
WHERE: Animas City Theatre, 128 E. College Drive
TICKETS: $30/$35
MORE INFORMATION: Visit www.animascitytheatre.com
Durango’s High Country Hustle is ripe for canonization into that sturdy collection of musicians, as they’re a Durango-born string band unafraid, and more than capable of tackling the traditional bluegrass songbook, contributing their own bluegrass tunes to the repertoire, and digging into covers they’ll punch up while nodding to their influence.
High Country Hustle will perform on New Year’s Eve at Animas City Theatre; opening the show are The Pickpockets from Salt Lake City.
High Country Hustle are Seth Yokel on mandolin, Chuck Hank on bass, Andy Gallen on guitar and David Delaney on fiddle; all four sing. The New Year’s show will find Dennon Jones (a founding member of the band) sitting in on fiddle for an absent Delaney, along with Brendan Shafer on banjo.
They’ve nailed that solid balance between traditional bluegrass and exploratory jam; willing to get out there musically while knowing when they should zip things back in. They’re a band digging into all the musical traditions and traits of Colorado jam-grass.
“If you ask me, I think we’re solidly in the jam-grass genre,” Hank said. “And so our most of our contemporaries.”
“A lot of the music that we write, and if you listen to the albums, they’re going to be a little less of the traditional side, but if you come to a show, you’re going to get a traditional song here and there,” Yokel said. “So you know, we like to play into every bit of it. Whether it is a trad-grass song, or we do more of a jam-grass thing. Or if we play a rock song and make it bluegrass or something, whatever it is, it’s just the blend. It is a lot of a Colorado, bluegrass thing.”
The “Colorado bluegrass thing” is a result of an absorption of the canon of all things roots, rock or twang, as they’re just as likely to drop a “Molly and Tenbrooks” as they are something from a 21st century, Canadien, indie singer-songwriter with a load of tunes about drugs and trains. It’s all done with a front-porch vibe that’s beautifully rough around the edges.
Next year will see the band drop their third record (recorded locally at Scooter’s Place with Scott “Scooter” Smith), following 2019’s self-titled debut, and “Weather the Storm” from 2022.
Their albums are ripe for any roots-rock playlist, a record that could rub elbows with Monroe or Watson on left of the dial bluegrass radio, and rock sensible enough to blend with a Laurel Canyon of 40, 14 or four years ago.
Alongside the originals of their releases, you’ll also find the band digging on covers: We’ve all been next to that one person at a concert who loses their mind because the band dropped a bluegrass-ified rock song. High Country Hustle digs on connecting with those audience members.
“If you come to our show, you’re going to hear something you know. You might not know the traditional stuff, but you might know that obscure cover from the Eagles or whatever that we’ll throw in,” Yokel said. “I think we always try and do that, just so that everybody feels like they’re part of it.”
Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager. Reach him at liggett_b@fortlewis.edu.
