On The Fringe
Bands Blurring the Lines of Bluegrass
For Pixie & the Partygrass Boys, one of the most important pillars of bluegrass is what drives the band. “Community is everything for us,” says Zach Downes. “It’s the reason we sit in a van for hours each day. To be able to connect with fans and different bands is why we keep doing what we do.” For a band that was started by a group of ski-bums in the unlikely locale of Salt Lake City, Utah, community and the ability to connect with fans and other musicians is at the core of what they do.
That connection took root when the band formed in 2015, as Downes (bass), Andrew Nelson (guitar), Katia “Pixie” Racine (vocals, ukulele) and Ben Weiss (mandolin) were in between musical projects and hungering for something fresh and different from anything they had done before. “We wanted to do something acoustic that was high energy, kinda like punk rock, with lots of high speed improvisation, kinda like bluegrass, where we could stretch out creatively while still providing something people would dance to,” says Weiss. None of them had been brought up in the bluegrass tradition and they were searching for their sound and identity when Amanda B. Grapes joined the band on fiddle. Grapes had learned fiddle growing up in Kentucky and brought a more tempered, traditional approach the others had felt was lacking. Weiss sums up her addition simply saying she brings, “barn burning bluegrass tunes to the table.” With Grapes in the band they finally found their sound and began to let it grow. It’s a sound that can be hard to pin down. “It’s acoustic, for sure,” says Weiss. “It’s fast, fun, and high energy, designed to fuel the party, hence the name Partygrass. I’ve heard it called jamgrass, but I don’t think anyone in the band has ever called it that or reached for that sound intentionally.”
Like many other young bluegrass bands who have sprouted up in nontraditional locations, Pixie & the Partygrass Boys took a few years of building locally before they got the opportunity to venture out of state. For guidance they looked to bands who were similarly bluegrass inclined, but who also harbored an adventurous willingness to explore the possibilities that exist in bluegrass. They learned from bands like Leftover Salmon and Railroad Earth, who blazed trails that are now well trodden by a new generation. “It’s inspiring to see the way they foster communities around their success and what they do to keep things fresh, both for their fans and their own personal creativity so they don’t get burned out,” says Weiss of those bands that have inspired Pixie & the Partygrass Boys. “The beautiful thing about this community is that the inspiration comes from everywhere, in all shapes and sizes.”
The band found early success at the WinterWonderGrass festival, which featured many bands that, like Pixie & the Partygrass Boys, lived outside the normal box of bluegrass expectations. This helped them to begin to establish a name for themselves in the national bluegrass community. “We are consistently awed by the community’s devotion to the music and the support shown to our little band,” says Weiss. This acceptance is due in part to the ever expanding understanding of what is and what can be bluegrass. “Every new generation is bringing more outside influence into the acoustic band setting,” explains Weiss. “The genres are starting to overlap more and more and it’s less exclusive. Bands like Fruition, for instance, who are pretty much a rock band—you’ll see them at bluegrass festivals. So now you have bluegrass-minded folk being exposed to a rock band, and liking it, as well as folks who might be more rock minded finding themselves at a bluegrass festival and getting their minds blown in a whole new way. There’s really not much that’s off limits for a string band to do these days. For us it’s lovely, because we can pull from all of our influences and fuse them together. It feels like discovering new colors, sometimes. We’re always trying to expand our horizons and find new
sounds, while also expanding our roots in the tradition of American string music. There’s so much to be learned from the past and it always enriches whatever we’re creating in the present moment.”
Pixie & the Partygrass Boys’ nontraditional approach is evident in their songwriting and playing, which flies with the loose soul of musical experimentation while singing about seemingly non-bluegrass topics such as skiing and partying. Their latest release Chicken Coop Vol 1 takes that step even further. The album gathers cover songs the band has been playing since their earliest days together. “When we started as a band, the boys had all been playing in corporate bands and already knew lots of the same tunes,” says Downes. “Katia, as it turns out, is a walking jukebox, so we started gigging right away playing the repertoire we knew from the corporate gigs. So this album is an ode to our beginnings, playing pop tunes in a string band setting.” The album runs the gamut from The Rolling Stones classic, “Gimme Shelter,” to “We Like To Party” by the Dutch Eurodance group The Vengaboys, to A-ha’s eighties standard, “Take on Me,” to Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” Downes explains the band’s song selections, “Katia always says ‘We take our music seriously, but not ourselves,’ and I think the 11 songs we chose reflect that. There are silly songs, ‘We Like To Party’ and ‘The Bad Touch,’ and there are more involved songs like ‘I2I’ and ‘Gimme Shelter.’ I think the track that best represents the band is ‘I2I’ from the 1995 classic Goofy Movie.’ It’s a very silly song but is rather tricky musically and sums up our silly/serious dichotomy well.” This schizophrenic mix of songs and styles could feel disjointed for some bands, but for a band like Pixie & the Partygrass Boys, with their anything-goes approach, this fits them like a glove, as they mold each song into their own. Continuing the theme of community, the album features guest appearances from the Infamous Stringdusters’ Andy Hall and Jeremy Garrett, Twisted Pine’s Anh Phung, and the Lil Smokies’ Sam Armstrong-Zickefoose.
Chicken Coop Vol 1 demonstrates just how much bluegrass has grown and expanded since Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys first hit the stage. What seemed unthinkable then, seems commonplace now. “Bluegrass has grown so much, even in the time since we became a band,” says Downes. “I’d like to think we are having a positive impact on the genre and are expanding it while paying homage to the current and past greats. At the end of the day we can only try to be true to ourselves musically. We all come from different musical backgrounds and have played in all sorts of bands. We bring that experience to our band and our sound, and hope people enjoy it. I think bluegrass is having a moment right now, both in terms of popularity and musicality. Every time we go to a festival, we hear different approaches and adaptations of the genre, and it’s really exciting to be a part of it.”
