For a band with little more than a year under its belt together, Vancouver-based bluegrass outfit The High Bar Gang has certainly made its presence known.
Since its September 2011 inception, HBG has opened for Blue Rodeo, played in San Francisco with John Reischman a renowned mandolin player hosted at the BCCMA Hall Of Fame Awards, and performed sold-out shows all over B.C. including Brackendale, Gabriola and Bowen islands, and Whistler.
The band is also almost finishing its first CD with two more already in the works.
But it is hardly surprising the new group seems to know exactly what it's doing considering it was formed by Legendary Hearts guitarist Colin Nairne and features a roster of veteran musicians including former Legendary Hearts bandmate Barney Bentall and Shari Ulrich, just to name a couple.
But despite all the musical experience in the seven-piece band, Nairne said there's always something new to learn.
We've been learning the mechanics of recording a traditional bluegrass album, he said. We started recording in late January at Barney's house on Bowen Island.
To record the album, Nairne and the gang have completely taken over Bentall's living room.
Barney was sweet and let us use his place on Bowen, Nairne said. He took all the furniture out of the living room and we set up everything right there. It's a nice, quiet place to record compared to recording in a city somewhere.
But it took some time to get the room set up exactly right.
We built up the room over two consecutive weekends, he said. But after trying out some songs, Eric Reed, our mandolin player and sound engineer, had us change our seating. His ears are just tuned that way to know where to put things.
And that's what we've been learning with this traditional album. We're using a very simple microphone and recording setup, but it sounds huge, so when a certain instrument can't be heard well, we have to start all over again and that person has to stand closer to the microphone. There are no faders to play with you are the fader!
The CD, to be completed in the near future, is chock full of bluegrass/gospel standouts, some supplied by legendary musician Ry Cooder.
Ry emails me song titles to research and his intuition on what songs to do has been dead on, Nairne said. Being able to find really good gospel songs for the album was the big thing, but Ry has really been a champion for us.
When not playing bluegrass, Nairne also works at Macklam Feldman Management, a music management company that represents names like Cooder, James Taylor, Elvis Costello, Dianna Krall and the Chieftains.
The band played the Brackendale Art Gallery last year to much acclaim, and they return on Saturday (April 7) at 8 p.m.
Tickets are $20 and available at Xocolatl and BAG.
For more on the band, go to highbargang.com.
