A Night at the Opry With the Avetts
By Mark Jordan
Last week The Avett Brothers, a decidedly nontraditional bluegrass group from North Carolina that co-headlines this weekend’s Double Decker Festival in Oxford, Miss., snuck into the high temple of country.
Friday, the quartet, which includes a cello player and two brothers who look more at home with Widespread Panic than with Little Jimmy Dickens, performed two songs on the legendary Grand Ole Opry broadcast on Nashville’s WSM 650 AM.
“It was wonderful,” says Avett Brothers bassist Bob Crawford of the slightly surreal experience. “It’s run like clockwork. You literally get in line. There’s a rope line; one for people going on and one for people coming off. And it’s over before you can blink an eye. But being up there was the greatest thing. We were received incredibly well, but the greatest satisfaction I have, looking back on it, is that we brought our own thing there. We gave the Opry what we do.”
That is quite an accomplishment given The Avett Brothers are quite unlike anything else you’ve ever heard, and the Opry is not exactly known for embracing the new and different. Playing distinctly contemporary, original material with mostly traditional country and bluegrass instrumentation, the group has forged its own sound that has variously been described as “post-Civil War modern rock” and “grungegrass.”
Whatever you call it, the sound has won the band some enthusiastic fans. After spending much of the past three years on the road, the group emerged last year as alternative music’s favorite country band. Their fifth full-length studio album, Emotionalism, was released to raves. The band’s summer tour was suddenly studded with curiously titled high-profile gigs like Coachella and Bonnaroo. And last November they won Duo/Group of the Year and New/Emerging Artist of the Year honors at the annual American Music Awards in Nashville.
The recent use of one of their songs on the NBC drama “Friday Night Lights” has enabled the band to ditch the old Dooley pickup they used on their first tour in 2001 in favor of an honest-to- goodness tour bus.
Their success caught even Crawford off guard, but he sees it increasingly as a result of the iPod shuffle effect, where the very nature of how people hear music forces genres to clash against each other.
“We can’t say that we’re a country group or a bluegrass group because we really don’t see ourselves that way,” says Crawford. “To be honest with you, I think we’ve always leaned more towards rock. But we’re not running from country.”
The Avett Brothers grew out of Nemo, an earlier rock band of Concord, N.C., natives Seth and Scott Avett.
Around 2000, the brothers began an acoustic band on the side, originally titled the Back Porch Project, in which they paired heavy metal with the traditional sounds their musician father had taught them.
“They were just playing songs they had learned from their father,” says Crawford. “He did a lot of old Hank Williams and old country stuff.”
Following the release of a 2000 EP titled The Avett Brothers, Nemo broke up, and Scott and Seth began pursuing their country project more purposely. Following a 25-minute audition in a Charlotte parking lot, the jazz-trained Crawford was recruited to play bass and sing. The most recent addition to the group is cellist Joe Kwon, whose instrument adds to the antiquated etherealness of the music.
As the group has evolved the group’s sound, already twisted and convoluted, has become more so. The material on Emotionalism, which like all the group’s songs, emanates from the two brothers and is shaped by the ensemble as a whole, merges country and indie-rock elements. And the soundscape is greatly expanded with the addition of strings, piano and drums.
“I think we’ve come full circle at this point,” says Crawford. “The songs were very different, but now we’re almost at Nemo again, adding years for maturity and skill on the instruments, which comes naturally with time. But we’ve added the drums and now we’ve got piano and electric bass and electric guitar. We’re touching a rock band. We’re in that gray area. There are times I feel like we’re The Who.”
Oxford’s 13th Double Decker Festival, held around the town’s historic town square, includes a lineup of regional music on two stages.
Other features of the event are a barbecue cook-off, a 10K run and a 5K walk, a charity bike ride, food and art vendors, a storytelling festival, and a children’s Square Fair with magic shows, clowns, jugglers and a petting zoo.
Visit doubledeckerfestival.com.
——————–
Double Decker Music Lineup
Budweiser North Stage:
10 a.m. – Oxford Community Band 11 a.m. – Tricia Walker 12:30 p.m. – Balance 1:50 p.m. – Artist Awards 2:30 p.m. – Afrissippi 4 p.m. – Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele 5:15 p.m. – Colour Revolt 6:30 p.m. – Dirty Dozen Brass Band
AT&T South Stage
12:15 p.m. – Avenue Hearts 1:30 p.m. – Aaron Hall Band 3 p.m. – The Damnwells 4:45 p.m. – Hill Country Blues Revue (Cody Dickinson, Garry Burnside, Chris Chew) 6:15 p.m. – Inner Visions 7:45 p.m. – Blue Mountain 9 p.m. – The Avett Brothers
——————–
Originally published by Mark Jordan Special to The Commercial Appeal .
(c) 2008 Commercial Appeal, The. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.