What's Americana?

By Americana we mean music based on American folk music traditions. These traditions include ragtime and blues (in its various incarnations); hymns, spirituals, gospel, soul, and funk; and old-timey music, from Appalachia through its evolution to various country styles. Americana means all this and more: the various derivatives that led to Dixieland jazz, jug band music, marching band music, rock-and-roll, and beyond. Americana means all the ethnic music carried here by immigrants and transformed by the melting pot. Americana means contemporary music that can't hide its roots.

Though we don't specialize in any one of these traditions, we find them infiltrating everything we play, whether it's a traditional barrelhouse blues or a folk song one of our friends wrote yesterday. We think an important part of these traditions is creative and heartfelt interpretation, and to that end we try to let our music be shaped by our imagination, and by our affection for these traditions.

• For more on what we play, go here.
• For more on where we play, go here.
• For a sample setlist, go here.