Sugar Loaf fest to feature bluegrass concert

Sugar Loaf —Big Spike Bluegrass will perform at the Lycian on Saturday, May 19 as part of the Sugar Loaf Street Painting Festival on Saturday, May 19. Based in northern Vermont, the band plays hard-driving traditional bluegrass, with an emphasis on 3- and 4-part harmonies. They feature twin fiddles and solid original material in the traditional style. Its members are long-time mainstays of the New England bluegrass scene. Members of the group are alumni of some of the most well-known regional and national bands, including Three Wheel Drive, Smokin’ Grass, The David Bromberg Band, The Spark Gap Wonder Boys, Two Chord Jones, and Bob Yellin & The Joint Chiefs Of Bluegrass. It’s natural to associate country music and bluegrass mainly with the southeast, since many of the most popular artists were based and recorded there. But New England has country music roots which are just as deep and strong and long-lived. In fact, swings through Vermont, Maine, upstate New York and southern Canada were the mainstay of many country acts during the 40s and 50s. The band aims to recreate a sound that is long gone from country music, a sound closer to the honky tonk and early bluegrass sound of the 50s than it is to what’s played in Nashville today. With two fiddle players in the band, they often revert to the full, twin fiddle sound that was an integral part of early country. They set themselves apart from many newer bands by their love for the songs of an earlier era, especially the sounds of the classic “brother duets” of the thirties, forties and fifties. To a repertoire that draws from the Louvins and the Delmore Brothers, the Blue Sky Boys, Flatt and Scruggs, Red Allen, Bill Monroe and the Stanley Brothers, they add their own classic-sounding original songs, written by Pete Langdell and Neil Rossi. Big Spike Bluegrass took their name from the classic bluegrass song, “Big Spike Hammer,” by the Osborne Brothers. The performance will be at 8 p.m., at The Pavilion at the Lycian Center, Kings Highway, Sugar Loaf. Admission is $20. For reservations call 258-3019. Tickets can be purchased at Village Music, 31 Main Street, Warwick (988-5225) or at Van Gelder Music, 562 Route 17M, Monroe (774-7224). For more information about the band, visit www.bigspikebluegrass.com. For more information about the Artist Street Painting Festival, visit www.sugarloafmusic.org.