About Me
How does a bluegrass band come together…big bang…divine intervention…or both? Here’s one version of the story.
In the beginning there was sound. Now roll forward a few trillion years to the mid 1980’s in California and picture a crafty, third-place California picking champion and carpenter living in the foothills near Yosemite National Park. After days spent hanging doors, ripping 2x4’s and chinking logs, he goes home to his cabin on Lewis Creek and picks a dreadnought guitar through the buggy evenings of summer with his banjo playing brother.
Meanwhile, nearly 200 miles away, two idealistic Berkeley grads who like finger picking guitars and jamming on third world drums are living independently, here and there, in the folds of Northern California’s coastal mountains. They are growing wild manes of hair and trying to save the world and themselves through teaching children the ways of the woods.
Then there’s this business-minded gentleman, a Californian out in Anywhere, U.S.A, playing jazz piano and keyboard for various cover bands. He’s “making it†as a musician, flipping charts, taking the hard knocks and developing the seasoned manner of a skilled artist.
Finally, somewhere in Southern California a young student who had been a fiddle champion as a child is hitting the books hard, storing her axe in the closet until further notice, so she can prepare for a law degree and a future career dedicated to navigating the rough waves of California water politics.
Now, take all these disparate lives and add a few years, pathways crossed, loves lost and gained, built and sold houses, babies, wrinkles, band incarnations, backpacking trips, music festivals, mortgages, and mix it all up with an unyielding passion for music, and you get Smiley Mountain: our own true Bear Flag Republic style of bluegrass that has become known for both originality and tradition in the Southern Yosemite area.
Smiley Mountain is a geographical feature in our own mountain community of North Fork, CA. It is nothing huge or prominent; nothing to write Ma about; just a simple little forested mountain at the edge of the Sierra Foothills covered in pine, old oaks and a few seasonal creeks. We named our band after this mountain (hill?) not only because of its humble, down-to-earth quality, but also because we like its name; it has a ring to it. There are plenty of things to get upset and depressed about in this life if you want to (just listen to a few traditional bluegrass songs to see what I mean) but we don’t want to forget about all the goodness in the world.With the release of our third CD, we have plenty to smile about. First off, with this recording we introduce our newest band member, Samantha Olson, that fiddle champion child gone lawyer. We started jamming with her at Strawberry Music Festival back in 2004 and from there begged her to start doing gigs with us. Now that she’s a regular “Smiley†she’s gone and made us dependent on her wild fiddle and her rich bluesy voice. Thanks a lot Sam!Also, we’ve grown a lot as individual players, as a band, and maybe even as human beings. Jeff’s banjo playing is even more tantalizing, hard-driving and mystical, Ed’s signature licks have taken on a gypsy swing, Gary is holding down the bass (the lowest form of music) with more exclamation. And me? It’s amazing I have time to play mandolin at all with three small kids, nine acres of weeds, and a full-time teaching job, but somehow I keep picking my life away.
