BRATTLEBORO — Next Stage Arts Project and Twilight Music present Dustbowl Revival, a Venice, Calif.-based roots collective that merges old school bluegrass, gospel, jug-band, swamp blues and the hot swing of the 1930s; plus Nashville-based, progressive acoustic folk duo 10 String Symphony, at The Vermont Jazz Center on Thursday, Sept. 10, at 7:30 p.m.
The Vermont Jazz Center is located at 72 Cotton Mill Hill in Brattleboro. Next Stage Arts Project, winner of a 2014 ArtPlace America grant, is renovating its main performance space at 15 Kimball Hill in Putney. During this time, Next Stage is presenting events at alternative venues in the area.
Known for their inspired live sets, the Dustbowl Revival boldly brings together many styles of traditional American music. Some call it string band-brass band mash up. Imagine Old Crow Medicine Show teaming up with Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens, or Bob Dylan and The Band jamming with Benny Goodman and his orchestra in 1938. It's infectious, joyous music - a youthful take on time-worn American traditions.
Since founder Z. Lupetin came west from Chicago to get the circus started, the group has grown steadily from a small string band playing up and down the West Coast into a traveling mini-orchestra featuring fiddle, mandolin, trombone, clarinet, trumpet, ukulele, drums, tuba, organ, a bass made from a canoe oar, harmonica and plenty of washboard and kazoo for good luck.
After placing several songs on ABC and Fox, and having tunes featured in independent films like “Made In China” (winner of SXSW), winning Americana song of the year from the Independent Music Awards (Tom Waits judging), playing festivals like Outside Lands and Live Oak and opening for bands like Lake Street Dive, Rebirth Brass Band, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, and Trombone Shorty, the band began barnstorming more extensively across the United States.
“With A Lampshade On,” Dustbowl Revival's fourth album, shines a light on the band's strength as a live act. The CD captures a group of road warriors in their element, playing not to an audience, but with an audience. To watch them onstage is to take part in an evolving conversation between an orchestra and audience.
Right at home at the crossroads of American jazz and folk traditions, Dustbowl Revival is participating in the evolution of American roots music, tipping a hat to what's come before while looking ahead to what's on the horizon.