East Nash Grass to grace Hall of Fame

Feb. 4—Nashville-based six-piece bluegrass band East Nash Grass will break in the new Owensboro Health Lobby Stage at Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The band is made up of banjo player Cory Walker, bassist Geoff Saunders, former mandolin player and now guitarist James Kee, fiddle player Maddie Denton, former guitarist and now mandolin player Harry Clark, and Dobro player Gaven Largent.

Though each of the members have their own respective careers and have played and collaborated with a number of established artists such as Bobby McFerrin, Dan Tyminski Band, Keith Urban and The SteelDrivers, and some playing in Owensboro before, this will be the group's official debut.

"I think we're all pretty excited about it," Kee said. "...Bluegrass is such a niche genre that all of us certainly growing up around it (and) being able to play there is definitely one of the more special venues to us just because it's so much part of our history ...."

The band was also recently announced as one of the acts at this year's ROMP Fest in June.

The group began back at the end of summer of 2017 when Kee was looking for players to join him at Dee's Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, which the group has continued to play at every Monday night for over four years.

"Dee's was a fairly new bar and so they kind of took a chance on having bluegrass there and ended up really working out," Kee said.

Kee said that he and Clark were the original members of the group before Walker came on board while Denton and Largent joined not too long after.

At first, Kee was trying to head in a different direction musically but felt a great "musical chemistry" with the other members, which took about a year or two to get the lineup "dialed in."

"I just recently moved to town and that was my first gig in town," Kee said. "Honestly, I moved here to do music other than bluegrass. I've done bluegrass my whole life and once I got here, all the real work that I could find initially was playing (bluegrass) because that's all I really knew. And just the folks that I played with ... here in town, being now members of East Nash Grass, were just so damn good that it kind of reignited my love for bluegrass and made me want to keep doing that."

Within the first year together, the group was able to expand their opportunities and booked other venues such as Station Inn in Nashville, which has been graced by acts such as Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton and Randy Travis.

In July 2021, East Nash Grass released its first 14-track self-titled debut album despite noting that the group is considered to be a side project outside their own individual careers.

However, Kee feels that it's in line with tradition with this type of music and already has plans to get started on a second record.

"Some of the great bluegrass albums of all time have been side projects for folks," Kee said. "It seemed like the right thing to do to make a recording and releasing music."

Kee also feels that the record was a way for the members to create their own vision of the music they wanted to put out to the masses.

"...This project gave us an opportunity to step out as a group and do stuff that we wrote and basically speak with our own voice when we're all fairly young in our careers and really haven't had that opportunity to do so," Kee said.

The band will play a number of songs off their record on Saturday while Kee shares that they may go off script for good reason.

"We kind of intentionally keep things a little bit loose ... because I think it adds more excitement to what we're doing," Kee said. "(It also) gives us the ability to maybe cater to the crowd a little bit."

But he assures the audience will be in good hands.

"I want people to know that they're going to have a fun time," Kee said. "If you like music, I feel like you would enjoy our show because we really try to keep upbeat. ...The focus would be to have a good time because I think that's what music is about."

Tickets are on sale now at bluegrasshall.org.