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Artist
Songs From The Road Band
12+ albums
bluegrasscountryamericanaUSA
about
It might not be there quite yet, but Asheville, NC is starting to look a lot like the new Nashville, at least when it comes to bluegrass music’s roots and branches. Leading the way is the Songs From The Road Band, an aggregation of some of the area’s hottest songwriters, singers and pickers named for the project that first brought them together—a 2006 solo release by Steep Canyon Rangers bass player and songwriter Charles Humphrey III that came out just weeks before the Rangers were handed the IBMA’s Emerging Artist of the Year trophy. Now, with the release of As The Crow Flies, the Songs From The Road Band is serving notice that they’re more than a one-time get-together. “This time we wanted to make it clear that this is an actual band,” says Humphrey, who again wrote or co-wrote all of the album’s material. And indeed, where Songs From The Road offered an engaging set that left listeners feeling like they’d listened in on an easygoing jam session, this time around there’s a higher purpose—or, more precisely, a theme—in mind. “We were looking for what you might call outlaw-themed songs,” Humphrey notes. “We’ve got no taxes, no war, no music industry—all kinds of edgy or political stuff. And this time, I was wanting to cross the bluegrass with some of the Gram Parsons kind of sound—what he called Cosmic American Music, with drums, and some old country steel guitar. So we wound up writing songs especially for the album, and that made it fun, trying to give it some unity from
