Driftless Revelers
Nate Bett
Three bearded individuals leaning on a stone wall.
The Driftless Revelers
media release: $20.
THE DRIFTLESS REVELERS formed in the second spring of the first global pandemic of the 21st century, with one ear turned toward the shellac platters and Victrola virtuosos of the early to mid 20th century, and the other ear glued to the soundscapes of the 1960s & 1970s American freak-folk scene.
Featuring the original songwriting of Ben Nelson, Matthew R. Sayles, and Jerod Kaszynski, the Driftless Revelers will pleasure a crowd with plectral banjo tones, the mournful wailing of resophonic steel guitars, and the up-right bass bellows of an era that can’t quite be defined, but revels in the timeless ephemera of weird old-time American music.
With influences as varied and eccentric as a proper musty smelling thrift store record collection, the band grooves merrily through early roots blues and jazz music, to hillbilly and string band howlers, all the way into the not-quite folk but not-quite psychedelic realms of their own creation.
A Driftless Revelers show will lure you in with their joy–keep you dancing with their search for the cosmic groove in the confines of stringed instruments–and will send you on your way with flashbacks of the Driftless Revelery found only in the essence of the intangible reaches of notes once played– that then fall silent.