30 Years of Bluegrass with Dry Branch Fire Squad

Dry Branch Fire Squad At Coffee Gallery Backstage Monday, Jan. 23Whether creeping up the damp hills of festival grounds, surging through a concert hall, or echoing from an LP, CD, or whatever latest tune-spewing digital device one prefers, the clarion clamor of the Dry Branch Fire Squad is instantly recognizable. But instantly recognizable does not equal easily defined. For in the capable hands of Dry Branch, a brand new tune may take on the weight and intensity of a timeless traditional lament, while something old and almost forgotten will be granted an urgency that immediately reawakens the song to its modem surroundings.

Their landscape may continue to shift, but the Dry Branch Fire Squad still attracts the finest of recruits, amassing a compelling and surprisingly coherent legacy under the leadership of singer, mandolin-picker, and raconteur Ron Thomason.

Thomason is one of the very few musicians active today with direct ties to a major first-generation bluegrass band, having played with Ralph Stanley’s Clinch Mountain Boys right out of college. His musical experiences with Stanley and his own formative experiences - Thomason grew up in Russell County, Virginia, in the core of Stanley country - bring a rich sense of tradition to Dry Branch Fire Squad, which he founded nearly 30 years ago. Since that time, he has brought to the band a repertoire unique among bluegrass bands today and has created and developed an entertaining and intellectually provocative onstage persona. The present Dry Branch line-up is one of the strongest ever, and certainly the one with the strongest commitment to bluegrass.

Currently accompanying Thomason on stage and in the studio is a Dry Branch incarnation that ranks among the group’s very finest, all hailing from the transplanted bluegrass heartland of central Ohio. Covering guitar, mandolin, and harmony vocals, Brian Aldridge is as selfless as they come, choosing to support and illuminate the songs rather than undermine them with needless noodling. Though he’s equally adept at the impossible-to-master pedal steel, Dan Russell generally plays banjo when performing with Dry Branch - but when needed he pitches in on bass and guitar. The band’s full-time bassman, Andy West, is also a fine vocalist with a range twice as big as the furrows he plows on his family’s farm.

Their new album, the two CD Live at the Newburyport Fire House, perfectly encapsulates all the elements of the Dry Branch Fire Squad that have endeared it to the bluegrass community for so long. The band’s freewheeling, hard-driving music is perfectly interspersed with Ron’s hilarious and poignant (and hilariously poignant) inter-song commentary. The bands carefully, ingeniously constructed repertoire draws from both contemporary songwriters such as Gillian Welch and Utah Phillips and the timeless voices of carter Stanley, Bill Monroe, and Merle Haggard. From gospel shakers to straight-ahead bluegrass stomps to rural metaphysics, Live at the Newburyport Firehouse is the definitive Dry Branch Fire.

* For ticket information call 626-398-7917 or go to www.coffeegallery.com The Coffee Gallery Backstage is located at 2029 N. Lake Ave., Altadena.