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[Audio] Jon Stickley of the Jon Stickley Trio, Performing Friday at LowerTown Festival

Jon Stickley Trio, Facebook

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.

Tracy started working for WKMS in 1994 while attending Murray State University. After receiving his Bachelors and Masters degrees from MSU he was hired as Operations/Web/Sports Director in 2000. Tracy hosted All Things Considered from 2004-2012 and has served as host/producer of several music shows including Cafe Jazz, and Jazz Horizons. In 2001, Tracy revived Beyond The Edge, a legacy alternative music program that had been on hiatus for several years. Tracy was named Program Director in 2011 and created the midday music and conversation program Sounds Good in 2012 which he hosts Monday-Thursday. Tracy lives in Murray with his wife, son and daughter.
A proud native of Murray, Kentucky, Allison grew up roaming the forests of western Kentucky and visiting national parks across the country. She graduated in 2014 from Murray State University where she studied Environmental Sustainability, Television Production, and Spanish. She loves meeting new people, questioning everything, and dancing through the sun and the rain. She hopes to make a positive impact in this world several endeavors at a time.
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