AGNR is Folk, Acoustic, Bluegrass.

I'm here at the Legend Brewing company about to see a great local bluegrass act call “A Good Natured Riot.” They're a six-piece all-acoustic band working hard to present their own unique form of bluegrass. For most of the songs, they have a standard bluegrass line-up: banjo, mandolin, guitar, fiddle, and string bass, with the addition of a percussionist who plays a wide variety of instruments, including the washboard, and the cajón, which is a large, wooden box with a hole cut in one side, which sounds a lot like a bass drum. Later in the set, they switched things up quite a bit. Sometimes the banjo-player would play a guitar instead, or the percussionist would sing.

I asked the band how they came up with their sound, which is bluegrass, but with an original twist that wouldn't be found at the more straight-laced bluegrass festivals. Jeslyn Vaughan, the band's guitar player and primary vocalist, told me that The Duhks were a major influence on the band, especially when they were starting out, and also mentioned Tim O'Brien and Gilian Welch as other major influences. “We liked bluegrass, and grew up around bluegrass, we just wanted to have a twist on it,” Summer Gentry, the band's percussionist and co-founder told me, when I asked her about her goals founding the band. “Each person has their own influences,” Jeslyn told me. They both agreed that one of the band's major strengths lay in this diversity of talent background. Jeslyn herself studied operatic vocal performance in college, and David Andrew Lamb, the newest addition to the band, played classical violin for years before he started playing bluegrass. The band's other members are Andy Burns, their mandolin player, Nick Harlow, their banjo player, and Mr. John Dacy, the band's bass player, who plays upright exclusively, and actually teaches at the high school which Summer and Jeslyn attended.

I wanted to know how songwriting worked in such a diverse group of musicians. Jeslyn told me that they don't have a set system for writing songs, and added ruefully that they often come to her when she's “in the shower or driving.” She then added, on a more serious note, that she thinks about a story when she writes her songs. This narrative and fluid creative process is the cornerstone of A Good Natured Riot's powerful song-writing. Of course, they do fall back on a few tropes of classic bluegrass. “There's a lot of death,” Summer told me, only half joking, “bluegass is all about people dying and being on a train to somewhere.” Summer and Jeslyn, who have been friends since childhood and founded the band together, write a lot of the band's lyrics, but the effort is often collaborative. “Andy [the mandolin player] writes these amazing instrumentals,” they told me. After hearing the show, I would have to agree.

“So how did you get your name?” I asked. Summer and Jeslyn both smiled. They told me that when they first formed, with a slightly different membership, the band was scrambling for a name, when the band's former guitarist found a book about the Grand Ole Opry entitled A Good Natured Riot, after a comment a stagehand had made about the impending crowds. The band contacted the author of the book, a now-deceased Tennessee professor, and he was delighted that the band should be named after his book. I must say, of all the places I thought the name might come from, the title of an old book, had not made the top of the list.

I had some other questions for the band, but before I get to those, I want to spend some time talking about the show itself. The first thing that struck me about A Good Natured Riot was how well they all play together. Everyone in the band is a well-trained and experienced musician, but I was still impressed by how well they blended their sound into a coherent and beautiful mix. Even at the characteristic breakneck speeds of classic bluegrass, everyone stayed together and kept their dynamics well balanced. The other thing which really impressed me about their show was the variety of songs they could produce. They played songs all along the spectrum from blazing instrumentals with impossibly fast mandolin and banjo leads to slow, syncopated and soulful songs about love, death and ghost towns, with Jeslyn's beautiful, clear voice lilting over the soothing and almost sorrowful rhythms of Summer's cajón and Mr. John Dacy's bass. The only real criticism I had of the live performance was that the fiddle player, David, was hard to hear at times.

The quality of the songs which A Good Natured Riot performed was very high. They played some covers, especially Tim O'Brien and Gilian Welch, but their originals were what really struck me. The band has a way of telling a story with their songs. The songs don't just grab you on an abstract, cerebral level, but actually make you feel the pain and joy of the characters whose stories are told. “Carrie Brown,” (not to be confused with the Steve Earle song of the same name), is a ballad the band wrote about the young wife of a preacher in old Appalachia. The song struck me as particularly well done, and representative of the band's talents. The story, not to give anything away, is sad and moving. Jeslyn's clear, sad voice carries through the song, and the other voices join her on the choruses in a beautiful harmony. After hearing the band's play, and then scouring their MySpace for any more of their music, “Carrie Brown” stayed stuck in my head for a few days, and I found it so moving I even had to sit down at a piano and try to hash out a chorus or two just to wrap my head around it.

The music is bluegrass, but it's not only bluegrass. Jeslyn and Summer told me that the band is very conscious of creating its own sound, and I think they have succeeded. They have incorporated a lot of musical elements, especially rhythms, which are not found in more traditional, straight-laced bluegrass. Kimie, the photographer who came with me, wanted to know if this uniqueness posed any special challenges for the band. “For sure,” they told us, “it opens some doors and it closes some doors.” They went on to tell us that many of the more traditional bluegrass festivals don't approve of A Good Natured Riot's innovations. A few other festivals, too, have trouble deciding what to do with the band's unique sound. Summer said that some festivals will say, “We can't really put a button on you, so we don't really have a stage for you.”

Despite these challenges, the band presses on, and whatever the festival owners and booking agents say, the people, at least the people I've seen, all seem to love the music. When asked if he had any closing remarks after the show, Mr. Dacy just said, “Woohoo!” And I think that about sums it up.

 

 

By Will Murphy.  Photos by Kimie James.

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Comments(1):

1. Thank you!

   Great article Will and Kimi! We appreciate you coming out and covering us- hopefully you'll come see us at the Battle of the Bands at Babes Oct 22nd! :)

   Tuesday, October 06, 2009 Summer