bluegrass · newgrass

The Infamous Stringdusters

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Progressive bluegrass played by a band happy to jam a traditional tune well past its natural length — Grammy-winning chops, festival stamina.

The band's roots trace to Boston, where banjo player Chris Pandolfi, dobro player Andy Hall and guitarist Chris Eldridge met as students at Berklee College of Music. Pandolfi and Eldridge followed Hall to Nashville, where they connected with fiddler Jeremy Garrett and mandolinist Jesse Cobb through Hall's other band, the Ronnie Bowman Committee. Bassist Travis Book, then living in Durango, Colorado, won an audition for the role in late 2005, and the group came together as The Infamous Stringdusters in 2006.

Eldridge left in 2007 to join Chris Thile's Punch Brothers and was replaced by guitarist Andy Falco. Jesse Cobb departed the mandolin chair in 2011, citing mental and physical stress, leaving the current five-piece of Hall, Pandolfi, Falco, Garrett and Book.

They work from traditional bluegrass instrumentation and tight vocal harmony, but arrange in a looser, improvisational way, trading extended solos and building instrumentals that stretch well beyond the standard three minutes, a style rooted in their years playing together in Nashville.

Their 2007 debut album, Fork in the Road, released on Sugar Hill Records, won Album of the Year at that year's International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, tying with J.D. Crowe and the New South, while the band itself was named Emerging Artist of the Year and the title track took Song of the Year.

Further recognition followed: a Grammy nomination in 2011 for the instrumental "Magic No. 9," the Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2018 for Laws of Gravity, and another nomination in 2021 for A Tribute to Bill Monroe. The band has since become a fixture of the string-band and jam circuit, where the format rewards their willingness to let a tune run.

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