The Bourbon Boys

The Bourbon Boys continue to celebrate the release of their new CD, "Whiskey Road," with shows across southern New England this summer. For information or to purchase a CD, send us a message here or at [email protected]. . . .Born in High Hat, Kentucky, in 1917, Lou Bourbon, Sr., had become a well-known fiddle player and philatelist by his twelfth birthday. In the late 1930s he briefly joined the Monroe Brothers, recording several unissued sides for the Dry Branch label, including the now legendary original Bourbon composition, “Whose Dang Liquor?” In 1946 he joined the Stanley Brothers, touring the southern United States and Indonesia before leaving the band after a dispute over a laundry bill. Returning to Kentucky, Bourbon eventually married Louisa Capet, his high school sweetheart and a prominent meteorologist. In the hills of eastern Kentucky, the Bourbons reared four boys, all named “Louis” and one daughter, Lucinda. Once asked why he had named all his sons “Louis,” Bourbon is said to have spit and replied, “Hell, if that name’s good enough for all them fancy-assed Frog kings, I guess it’s damn sure good enough for these here no-account boys.” Since their father played fiddle, the boys naturally took up the other instruments of the bluegrass panoply. A prodigy banjo picker and fashion designer, Lou Bourbon, Jr., appeared on the Martha White Radio Hour with Flatt and Scruggs when he was only six years old and infamously asked Flatt why he didn’t wear a shinier suit and bigger hat. After a brief tour with the Kentucky Colonels and a flirtation with electric banjo that led to a short stint in Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (briefly renamed, “E.L.P.B.”), Bourbon returned to Kentucky and formed a band with his younger brothers, who had themselves opened a successful chain of authentic Cambodian restaurants. Meanwhile, their young sister Lucinda had taken up the classical violin, and toured briefly with Yo-Yo Ma and Parliament Funkadelic before joining her brothers’ band. Transplanted to Rhode Island by their love of fried dough and baseball, the Bourbon Boys now form a unique and somewhat incongruent feature on New England’s musical landscape. (Excerpted from the All Music Guide to Bluegrass.)