Wednesday 28 January 2015

The Punch Brothers Celtic Connections 2015

The Punch Bothers were received with warm applause by fans at the Glasgow concert hall on Friday night. They are a hip and modern, suit-and-tie old time bluegrass band with pure-toned melodic harmonies, foot-tapping banjo and melody strumming mandolin rhythms. They describe themselves as acoustic folk/progressive bluegrass.
They consist of Chris Thile (mandolin), Gabe Witcher (fiddle/violin), Noam Pikelny (banjo), Chris Eldridge (guitar), and Paul Kowert (bass).They performed tracks from their upcoming release , 27th January 2014 - The Phosphorescent Blues including singles I Blew It Off, Julep,

The band play subtle acoustic song stories, unaccompanied singing, instrumentals, spirituals and sing with strong falsettos and harmony. They kept the tempo up with plenty of variety in tone, dynamics, rhythms, strong harmonies and of style. The celtic crowd clearly enjoyed the boys show and they played a welcome encore. I hope they return soon! Recommend.

The band wrote the song Dark Days for the movie Hunger Games 2012, and also performed on the songs The Last Thing on My Mind (Tom Paxton) and Ewan MacColl's The Shoals of Herring on the Coen Brothers 2013 film Inside LLewyn Davis.
Chris Thile (mandolin) is from California and is known for his work with the acoustic band Nickel Creek, an American Grammy award winning progressive acoustic music trio (2002 Best Contemporary Folk Album)