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Dead Petty Keller Grass
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With each project, Keller Williams’ goal is to create music that sounds unlike anything else, seamlessly crossing genre boundaries. The end product is music that encompasses rock, jazz, funk, and bluegrass, keeping the audience on their feet. With Dead Petty Keller Grass, Williams presents bluegrass versions of Grateful Dead, Tom Petty, and reimagined iterations of his own discography, adding in harmonious singalongs with a hint of psychedelia. When performing alone, Williams will accompany himself on acoustic guitar, bass, guitar synthesizer, and drum samples – a technique known as “looping.” The resulting sound becomes a hybrid of alternative folk and groovy electronica, a genre Williams jokingly calls “ADM” or “Acoustic Dance Music.”
Joining Williams on the Dead Petty Keller Grass tour are The HillBenders, a quintet of talented pickers who first made their name as a band with strong instrumental skills and original songs that merged rock and country with a respect for bluegrass traditions.
Formed by longtime friends, Lynn Nicholson and Jon Swain, Debutants have evolved into a formidable string band with eclectic influences ranging from traditional folk, bluegrass, and Irish music, to classic and indie rock, rockabilly, jam bands, and anything else they feel like playing. Regardless of genre, what always manages to come through loud and clear, whether in-studio or on stage, is the amount of fun they’re having playing together, and the vibrant life breathed into their music. Nicholson and Swain share the role of lead singer/songwriter for the group, with much collaboration in each song’s development. On their 2021 debut release, Indiana Newgrass – EP, Debutants went into the studio with banjoist Michael Earl Newsome, fiddle player Sean Hoffman (Goldmine Pickers, The Goat’s Beards, Soltré), and bassist/vocalist Colin Taylor (Uncle Muscle, Hillbilly Casino). Also highly instrumental in capturing their original sound, was recording engineer and producer Tyler Thompson (Fruition, TK & The Holy Know-Nothings, Jay Cobb Anderson) at his Studio 110 in Pittsburgh, PA. For their 2022 sophomore release, Nobody Knows – EP, the band unquestionably returned to Thompson’s Studio 110, this time bringing Lauren Blair on fiddle/vocals, and Ellen Coplin on cello/vocals. Their songwriting growth became evident on titles such as Nicholson’s ‘Hard to Say’, along with increases in tempos and instrumental prowess demonstrated on pieces like Swain’s ‘Never Thought I’d Be the One’.
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