Festival Closing Night

Performing driving dance tunes and haunting ballads with an amazing array of vintage and eclectic instruments, The Crooked Jades are modern innovators in the old-time Americana world, creating a cinematic sound based on Americana roots infused with the diverse musical influences of Europe and Africa. On a mission to reinvent old world music, they bring their soulful performances (brilliantly surprising arrangements of obscure old tunes mixed with beautiful original compositions) to clubs, concert halls, and festivals around the United States and Europe. The exciting lineup for tonight’s show is Jeff Kazor (vocals, guitar, ukulele), Lisa Berman (vocals, Hawaiian slide, banjo, harmonium), Erik Pearson (banjo, ukulele, harmonium), and Elise Engelberg (fiddle).

The Deadly Gentlemen started out a couple of years ago as an experimental spoken word bluegrass band, but things have changed. Now they mostly play epic folk and grasscore. Instead of having a lead singer, DG use a nonstop orchestration of somewhat unconventional vocals, with everybody in the band doing everything they can. Expect a lot of three-part harmony singing, group shouting, really dense rhymes and an almost rap-like phrasing. The songs have kind of a rock ‘n’ roll feel, despite the acoustic bluegrass instrumentation. The melodies tend toward the anthemic side, and the upright bass is usually pretty in-your-face. A lot of their lyrics started out as miniature epic poems based on folk songs. That’s where the term “epic folk” comes from. The grasscore songs are the ones where everybody in the band throws caution to the wind and goes completely berserk. Kind of the punk or hardcore mentality, but applied to bluegrass. Um…just one more thing: they emphatically are not a boy band! There are five band members: Greg Liszt, banjo and vocals; Stash Wyslouch, guitar and vocals; Mike Barnett, fiddle and vocals; Dominick Leslie, mandolin and vocals; and Sam Grisman, double bass and vocals.