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Grant Farm is bluegrass meets Bakersfield

Colorado remains a hotbed for musicians in the ever-popular newgrass genre.

That’s fertile territory for armchair music fans and critics. While less-informed music lovers tend to throw everything with some twang or banjo into the bluegrass category, throwing a lot of great musicians under the bus, these barroom critics ignore the fact that many Colorado virtuosos playing Colorado roots music can whip their way around an instrument as well as anyone.

Tyler Grant is much more than a bluegrass musician. He’s a flat-picking champion and guitar virtuoso capable of delivering leads such as Tony Rice and Clarence White, but he also is a songwriter and bandleader.

Grant can pen songs for a festival set list just as much as he can lead a country-rock band with a rich Telecaster sound, ripe to play above a sawdust-covered dance floor.

His band, Grant Farm, will perform Saturday at the Balcony Backstage. Grant, who sings and plays guitar, is joined by Adrian Engfer on bass and vocals, Sean Macaulay on drums and vocals and Kevin McHugh on keyboards and vocals.

Their sound is what Grant describes as “bluegrass meets Bakersfield.” Bluegrass music has honed his flat-picking skills, which add to the technical playing when you’re leading a country-rock band in jam-band territory.

He’s bringing together two similar worlds, melding genres that aren’t far apart from each other.

“Being in Colorado, I see a real division between the roots, country, honky-tonk and outlaw scene and the jam-band scene. To me, I see us as a bridge between those two worlds. Our core following is jam band, people who knew me from Emmitt-Nershi Band days. But also, the more we get in front of these country and outlaw-country and roots-rock kind of audiences, I think there’s a following there for us,” Grant said in a recent phone interview. “Colorado is an interesting place; I have a feeling if we were in Austin, we’d be latching on to the red-dirt country kind of thing. Since we’re in Colorado, we attract more the jam-band crowd.”

The electric band was formed out of a necessity to stand out. Grant dabbles in both acoustic and electric music and does so with equal satisfaction and personal enjoyment. Yet, there’s no need to add another bluegrass band to the fertile bluegrass town of Boulder.

“I do enjoy playing acoustic music quite a bit. If we’re playing at a place like the Balcony, I generally prefer to plug in and play my electric guitar,” Grant said. “That’s one of the reasons we went electric. The other is I figured the bluegrass is pretty much covered around here. There are so many bluegrass bands happening around Colorado. I thought, how original and different that we start a rock ’n’ roll band.”

Liggett_b@fortlewis.edu. Bryant Liggett is a freelance writer and KDUR station manager.

Bryant’s best

Saturday: Country with Nashville Chicks with Hits, 7:30 p.m., $18/$20/$28. Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive, 247-7657.

Saturday: Country rock with Tyler Grant and Grant Farm, 9 p.m., $5. The Balcony Backstage, upstairs at 600 Main Ave., 764-4083.



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