Monday, October 25, 2010

The Punch Brothers

Being the country boy I am, I've always had a lot of respect for bluegrass music. As a young kid I used to really enjoy hearing my uncles play guitar, banjo and fiddle. I have no doubt they are the reason I picked up a guitar at the age of eleven and started playing.

In the early '90's I was bitten by the "Seattle" bug and got really into Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Nirvana, etc. Outside of the Seattle music scene, however, there was a new band called Radiohead that I fell in love with immediately. I've been hooked since the very first time I saw the "Creep" video on MTV (do you remember when MTV used to play videos?).

Now let's fast-forward to a few months ago... My buddy Clay introduced me to this very talented bluegrass group called The Punch Brothers. I was immediately blown away by their talent and songwriting. While they could be classified as bluegrass, I would go a step further and label them "alt-bluegrass". It's bluegrass, but not your grandfather's bluegrass... maybe "new-grass"?

After hearing a few albums and researching them more and more, I discovered one really cool thing about The Punch Brothers - they usually play a different Radiohead cover during each of their live shows.

So here are a few videos I found of The Punch Brothers performing Radiohead tunes. If you don't like these, you suck...

Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box:



2+2=5:



...and just for good measure, here's a Punch Brothers original called "Rye Whiskey". I really like this song for some reason (wink, wink):

Goose Creek Symphony - "The Same Thing Again"

While surfing the 'net tonight, I found this cool video of Goose Creek Symphony performing an acoustic version of "The Same Thing Again" at Grimey's Music in Nashville. I am a huge GCS fan and this version is just beautiful.