John Reischman & the Jaybirds

The Butte Folk Music Society recently brought Canadian bluegrass group John Reischman & the Jaybirds to Moxie’s, and if you weren’t one of us lucky ones who got to hear their excellent show, check out their new CD, The Road West. A number of the songs mandolinist Reischman & his ’birds performed that night are on this CD, with singer/bass player Trisha Gagnon’s pretty “Blackberry Bramble”—inspired by waking as a child to the sweet smell of her grandma Nona’s “blackberry stew”—among them. Guitarist/singer Jim Nunally has a voice in the vein of tenor “twang-grasser” Vern Williams (one of the band’s heroes), and shows it off nicely on his original, “Travelin’ the Road West,” inspired in part by John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath: “Travelin’ the road west/ It’s a dry, hot, dusty road/ Well, you ain’t a gonna get no rest…”