Music from the Front Porch host Mike Gowen speaks with Lowertown's Friday headliner Jon Stickley of the Jon Stickley Trio, self-described as hip-hop jazz-grass. The band just released it’s latest album, Maybe Believe.
Lindsay Pruett on violin and Patrick Armitage on drums join Stickley on guitar to make up the trio. Together, the musicians have crossed genres to create their unique sound, taking an improvisational approach to live performances. Stickley says he considers himself both a songwriter and composer. Though he doesn’t write many lyrics, he tries to keep a lyrical quality to his music.
Stickley started into professional music through standard bluegrass tunes and jamming with friends. He was part of Broke Mountain Bluegrass in Colorado for a few years playing traditional bluegrass. But when he started the trio, he started to take composing seriously and realized he needed to look at other musical influences from his life.
“The first thing I really loved growing up was grunge, I was a huge Nirvana fan, and then it just kind of went from there,” Stickley said. “So I started looking back at some of that stuff and being like, ‘Okay, how can we incorporate some of this energy into the trio’s music and still stick with the parts of bluegrass that I like so much,’ the precision, the timing, the real attnetion to detail and also the kind of rootsiness of it and the organic, jamming with each other kind of vibe.”
Stickley says the band is bringing a high energy, experimental, improvisational experience to Lowertown’s main stage beginning Friday at 8:00 p.m.
