SloGrass

BAND / MUSICIAN BIOS

The seeds of SloGrass were sewn in the summer of 1989 when Dave, Mark and Fran started getting together once a week to play fiddle tunes for fun and a musical challenge. In the summer of 1993, Bob officially joined the band as its heartbeat on the standup bass.

SloGrass plays a mix of vocal and instrumental songs, drawing on various traditions including Bluegrass, Blues, Jazz, Folk, American Songbook, Americana, World Music and a few originals. While the name implies a strong connection to Bluegrass music, we love all kinds. Roughly three quarters of our repertoire comes from outside of Bluegrass.

Over the past 20 years, SloGrass has performed at the Old Vienna Coffeehouse, John Henry's Hammer Coffeehouse, the Vanilla Bean Coffeehouse, the Grassroots Coffeehouse, Rotman's Club Fantastique, Hezekiah Stone's Coffeehouse, First Night Worcester, weddings, professional events, and many New England summer town gazebo concerts.

The SLO was initially inspired by our need to slow the tempos of fiddle tunes, in order to learn to play them. Now the SLO inspires us to think of new meanings. Part of the fun is reaching beyond comfort zones into breakdown tempos. Pushing the envelope sometimes results in spinning out of control on a curve. So, we aspire to transform fear of crash-burn-and-die, into love of opportunity-for-miraculous-recovery. On a good day, when it all comes together, time seems to SLO down, reminding us of the proverbial "candle-in-a-windless-place".

Coincidentally, SLO is an acronym for Sustainable - Local - Organic.