Album Notes

Formed in 2005, Spare Rib & The Bluegrass Sauce brings it\'s own special blend of Groove-Grass to the Pacific NorthWest. Playing a wide range of Traditional, Old Timey, Classic Rock, and Original music that merges Bluegrass with marathon Jams, the Bluegrass Sauce will get you hootin\', hollerin\' and stompin\' all night long!

4 Star Album Review by Seattle\'s #1 Weekly Newspaper - The Stranger!

SPARE RIB & THE BLUEGRASS SAUCE

Mountain Air Waves

(Self-released)

* * * * (4 stars)

According to Wikipedia (user generated, sure, but still probably very accurate in this case), bluegrass music started sometime in the 1940s—\"sometime after World War II, but no earlier.\" The genre has had decades and no less than three \"waves\" to shift and morph, yet most modern bluegrass maintains a classic, string-heavy, harmonious sound; it is, perhaps, one of the purest genres in modern music (read: boys with bad haircuts and styled-to-death outfits have not turned it into watered-down drivel).

For example, local [Seattle, WA] group Spare Rib & the Bluegrass Sauce\'s Mountain Air Waves, an album of original material and one wonderfully odd cover of Guns N\' Roses\' \"Sweet Child o\' Mine.\" Even though it\'s 2008, the quintet—Sean \"Rib\" Horst, Hunter Hendrickson, Emmitt Prichard, Alice Boytz, and John Brown—delightfully capture all the same vibrancy that made their finger-pluckin\' forefathers classic.

The percussionless sound is familiar, but Spare Rib & Co. do it well—playful layers of fiddle, banjo, and mandolin are heightened by memorable choruses that burst with three-, four-, even five-person harmonies.

And as for that Guns N\' Roses cover, well, there are fiddles instead of guitars, straw hats instead of do-rags, and denim overalls instead of leather pants. I can honestly say I\'ve never heard anything like it, and I mean that as the highest compliment. MEGAN SELING


by Megan Seling @ The Stranger - 1/23/2008 issue