Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

The Railsplitters will bring bluegrass to the Bluebird

Arts Filler

The Bluebird Nightclub’s January lineup will include the addition of music that falls under the category of bluegrass and beyond.

Yonder Mountain String Band will perform at 8 p.m. Thursday in the Bluebird, and the band’s openers, the Railsplitters, will visit as part of their first-ever Bloomington performance.

Leslie Ziegler, the Railsplitters’ bassist who also sings harmony, said the band — made up of Ziegler, Lauren Stovall, Dusty Rider, Joe D’Esposito and Peter Sharpe — is approaching its fifth year of performing together after meeting in Colorado back in 2012.

“We all met at jams around the area of Boulder,” Ziegler said. “Lauren, our lead singer, got a show that was just supposed to be a solo show, and she asked myself, Dusty and Pete if we wanted to do the show with her. We had so much fun we thought, ‘Hey let’s keep this going, do some more shows and see what happens.’”

Ziegler, a classically trained musician, said she moved out to Colorado for another job but found herself moving toward the bluegrass music scene once she arrived.

Now all five members of the band have committed themselves to the group, which required Sharpe and Ziegler to quit their full-time jobs in 2015.

“The majority of the band were already full-time musicians — myself and Peter, our mandolin player, were the only ones that still had our day jobs,” Ziegler said. “We decided to take the leap at that point in time.”

The Railsplitters’ sound is one Ziegler said is hard to define, though right now they have at least a temporary label.

“The best that we know of yet, our music is ‘unconventional bluegrass,’” Ziegler said. “It’s not traditional bluegrass by any means — we use bluegrass instrumentation — we definitely take influence from those bluegrass roots and also from many other genres as well.”

The instruments included in the Railsplitters’ collection include upright bass, mandolin, banjo, fiddle and more.

Rider writes the songs, and Stovall provides the main vocals.

The band recently released its latest record, “The Faster it Goes.”

Ziegler said the band has been touring solo and had stops in Des Moines, Iowa, and Winona, Minnesota, and will perform in Chicago Wednesday before joining up with Yonder Mountain String Band for the Bloomington show.

“This tour with Yonder is really giving us an opportunity to get in front of audiences we’ve never seen and that have never seen us before,” Ziegler said. “We’re really just excited to get in front of new audiences.”

Yonder Mountain String Band, made up of musicians Adam Aijala, Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Allie Kral and Jacob Jolliff, has also redefined bluegrass in its own way during its almost 18 years together.

Yonder and the Railsplitters performed together recently, and Ziegler said the experience was enjoyable for both groups.

“We have opened for them one time. They invited us to open for them on the first night of their New Year’s Eve shows in Boulder, which was really fun,” Ziegler said.

The best part of any show is being able to form bonds with listeners, Ziegler said.

“One thing that stands out for me is the connection you can make with the audience, how your songs affect different people and really the reactions from them — dancing, smiling, clapping or even in some cases tears from being so moved — one of my favorite things about performing is the impact you have on the audience,” Ziegler said.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe