Look out bluegrass fans; there’s a new string band in Tahoe. We’re called Worn Out Welcome, and we’re picking at a venue near you.
For anyone unfamiliar with bluegrass music, you ought to take a listen, and you ought to do it live. This is not a knock on the genre’s many fine studio albums, but the essence and energy of the music can only be truly appreciated in a live performance setting.
String band music affords its fans a wealth of wonderful qualities. It is nature’s music, close in its origins to the land, to the forests, to the mountains. It is peoples’ music, telling stories of the working folk, their trials, tribulations and joys. It is dancers’ music, madness-inducing in its breakneck speeds, dreamily captivating in its wandering waltzes. It is musicians’ music, where just about everyone onstage has to be able to pick like Chet Atkins, fiddle like Charlie Daniels, or harmonize like the Kingston Trio. No delay, no distortion, no bullshit.
Formed in South Lake Tahoe in the summer of 2014, Worn Out Welcome is four lads from varying music backgrounds, joined together to play grass-based music in and beyond the Lake Tahoe basin. The band is Chris Cooney (mandolin, fiddle, vocals), Ryan Cassidy (resonator guitar, vocals), Aaron Craig (upright bass, vocals), and myself, Josh Sweigert (guitar, vocals).
While the paint is still drying, you’ll primarily hear us playing cover tunes whipsawed over to a bluegrass beat, but we are hard at work on a variety of original tunes, and hope to release our debut album within the year. Chris and I are steeped in bluegrass tradition, having grown up intimately with the style (and others!), while Ryan and Aaron have musical backgrounds spanning funk, metal, soul, punk, and much more.
