Special Consensus

Greg Cahill has kept Special Consensus running out of Chicago for close to fifty years, playing three-finger banjo at the center of a rotating cast. Alison Brown and Josh Williams both spent time in the band early on, and the alumni list has grown long enough that the group functions as a kind of apprenticeship for young players. The sound stays close to the hard-driving side of the music: tight vocal trios, fiddle and mandolin breaks, tempos that rarely sag. Cahill has also spent years on the administrative side of bluegrass, working with the International Bluegrass Music Association.