Photo credit: Daniel Ojeda
Of course, Greensky Bluegrass have songs with lyrics. The Kalamazoo, Mich., band with their genre in the name have filled several albums full of them since their formation at the turn of the 2000s. But those songs, however articulately written and emotively and resonantly sung, largely act as anchors grounding some of the most exploratory of improvisations. The band’s first time at The Riverside Theater since March of 2017 drew a near-capacity crowd for two sets of the kind of bluegrass that Bill Monroe could likely never have imagined when he birthed the genre about three-quarters of a century ago.
Bluegrass as the jump-off point for jam acts is nothing new. The Yonder Mountain String Band can fill halls of respectable size in Milwaukee, and Trampled By Turtles will be playing The Riverside come January. But darker and more unorthodoxly nuanced textures informed the journeys on which they took their listeners Saturday night. Adding several of those sonic surfaces outside the realm of standard bluegrass instrumentation—already without fiddle in Greensky’s case—was an electric guitarist not in the band’s usual lineup. He would at least on one occasion conjure rickety, percussive effects from his axe more akin to the abrasive work of Eugene Chadbourne or John Fahey than those associated with more common notions of what constitutes roots music.
That may have been an outré touch for what was once considered a subset of country music, but more subtly, the regular bandmates’ own interactions bucked norms as well. Michael Arlen Bont’s economical, occasionally melodically askew turns on banjo might be more often featured as leads in other ‘grass acts, but here was roughly as prominent as Dave Bruzza’s folk guitar, which was given opportunities for ear-grabbing solos. The upright bass was played with thumping and throbbing aplomb by Mike Devol, while dobroist Anders Beck added metallic twangs at intriguing junctures with no signs of showboating.
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Neither did Paul Hoffman ply his mandolin for the mere sake of virtuosity. As the group’s main lead singer, he discards the protocol of high tenor vocal attack typical of bluegrass singers for something more naturalistic, though lonesome as anything. Hoffman’s wizened weariness adds piquant melancholy to lyrics relating hard luck, disappointment and, less often though perhaps more bitterly, dissatisfaction with spirituality.
For the last few numbers of their first of two sets, Greensky was joined on electronic piano by Holly Bowling of their opening act, Ghost Light. Bowling’s lively, often arpeggiated contributions to the headliners’ walls of jamming lent the music a welcome bumpiness. With her own band, she was a part of what came off as an intermittently jangly permutation of the aesthetic pioneered by the peripatetic forebears of jam rock, The Grateful Dead. Their iteration of the form was a tad bogged in noodliness emanating from the grooves they produced, but a combination of male and female lead vocals was a sweet exception in a scene that is too frequently a dude-dominated domain on stage.
