Leaning into a single microphone for a three-part harmony, stepping back to make room for a burning banjo break or skirting around the upright bass, the Grassy Knoll Boys look exactly like what they started out as – five musicians who loved bluegrass enough to learn how to nail the hot picking and tight harmony singing that virtuosic style requires. A closer listen, however, reveals a band with much more on its mind than just reproducing the music of an earlier era.
From the outset, the Grassy Knoll Boys have been more interested in thinking like Flatt and Scruggs or Bill Monroe than in imitating them. In practise, this has meant writing original material and scouring the lost corners of American music for songs the band could make its own, and their debut CD, Buckeyed Rabbit, reveals the success of this approach. From the sly minstrel lyrics of the title cut to to the blazing banjo breakdown “Panther’s Bluff,” from Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” to the a capella work song “Old Hannah,” the Boys cut a wide swath through the roots of southern music while putting their own, decidedly individual stamp on all of it.
The band’s name plays on bluegrass history in a self-deprecating way – Flatt and Scruggs had their Foggy Mountain Boys, the Stanley Brothers the Clinch Mountain boys, while the Texas Hill Country surrounding their hometown only offers these Austin musicians the occasional knoll. At the same time, the reference to events just up the road in Dallas situates the band squarely both in the modern era and their home state, and hints at the band’s dry sense of humor onstage.
The Grassy Knoll Boys was begun by Will Walden, a Texas native, and David Hamburger, a recent immigrant from the deepest Northeast. When Hamburger left behind a successful session and sideman career in Brooklyn, New York to move to Austin, he expected to shelve his dobro for a while and concentrate on just playing some guitar and writing a few songs. Meeting lead vocalist and guitarist Will Walden changed all that. With the dissolution of his successful Austin-based indie rock band, the Barkers, Walden was ready for a return to acoustic music, and he convinced Hamburger to join him in the search for three more like-minded musicians. Soon mandolist/tenor vocalist Alex Rueb and banjo player Mark Cavage were on board, and bassist Vance Hazen signed on after Hamburger and Walden spotted him playing a honky-tonk gig at Austin’s legendary Continental Club.
After a handful of early gigs, the band caught the ear of Austin Lounge Lizard Tom Pittman, who admired the band’s emphasis on songs and singing. He gave them airplay on KUT-FM, brought friends and fellow musicians out to shows and invited the band to play the Austin Friends of Traditional Music’s winter concert, where their electrifying performance resulted in the band’s opening for the Del McCoury Band’s Austin shows in 2004 and 2005.
Over the next year, the Grassy Knoll Boys continued expand their fan base, headlining shows across the state while gigging steadily in Austin and making their first appearances in the Northeast. In the summer of 2005 they appeared at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival and headlined at the Kerrville Wine and Music Festival, where their combination of superlative musicianship and creative song choices appealed to folk audiences and bluegrass fans alike.
Currently, the Grassy Knoll Boys are expanding their range even further, both musically and geographically, while holding down a popular weekly residency at Jovita’s in South Austin. As Buckeyed Rabbit continues getting airplay around the country,the band is performing more and more original material and arranging songs from sources as diverse as Beck, Buck Owens and Nick Drake in preparation for making their next record this winter. Whether contemporary or traditional, it’s all filtered through their identity as a bluegrass-inspired, vocal-driven group. When you see them dodge and weave around the microphone in a kind of choreography that goes back to the first days of bluegrass, you realize that the exhilarating tug between tradition and innovation is alive and well in the sound of the Grassy Knoll Boys .
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