Bruce Blair prefers playing and singing with people rather than to an audience.
The St. Albert resident is a fiddling champion and one-quarter of Restless Lester, a bluegrass band that will perform at the Northern Bluegrass Circle Music Society series this coming Saturday at Taylor College and Seminary.
“The thing that's different about bluegrass is that a number of people in the audience will be players. It's not uncommon after a show to put up a circle of chairs, mingle and jam. We're all down-to-earth people. We like good simple music, old-style traditional acoustic music,” says Blair.
Restless Lester has been knocking around Western Canada and the U.S. Pacific Northwest for about eight years, refining a sound that was once dubbed old time mountain hillbilly music.
Back in 2004, Restless Lester released their first and only album Endless Skies and gained a boost from the media attention. But with a revolving player line-up — Blair and Steve Fisher are the only originals left — coupled with the challenges of living in different cities across the province, a second album never materialized.
“The chemistry of how people get along is very important and we don't want to sacrifice that philosophy. There's a lot of respect in the band.”
But as new band members have come to add their special imprint, so too has the sound Restless Lester adapted. “We started by trying to be bluegrass, however we've pulled in other songs from different generations and do it our way.”
Part of their diversified set list might include that old rock and roll favourite The Weight by The Band or the early 1900s swing tune Down in San Antonio.
Restless Lester has performed at the Northern Bluegrass series for about four years relying on an acoustic flavour that reproduces sounds without frills. “I like the challenge of bluegrass. It's not easy to play. We're a unit without drums and drums set up the rhythm. We improvise and set up the rhythm with fiddle or banjo.”
Opening for the foursome is the Calgary-based June Bugs, a harmony based quartet that sings everything from upbeat gospels and saucy bluegrass to traditional folk songs and reflective originals.
