Biography

Contact: Audrey Molsky
audrey@brucemolsky.com
(914) 489-9961

All tunes Traditional, arranged by Molsky’s Mountain Drifters
Publishing & PRO Dielectric Music / ASCAP

The band:
Fiddle: Bruce Molsky
Banjo: Allison de Groot
Guitar: Stash Wyslouch
Vocals: Bruce Molsky, Stash Wyslouch & Allison de Groot

Laser-tight trio with an ear for lovely, lilting traditional melodies, Molsky’s Mountain Drifters brings tradition steeped in possibility. The grace and wisdom of longtime fiddle player and multi-instrumentalist Bruce Molsky, Berklee College of Music’s Visiting Scholar in the American Roots Program, described as “an absolute master” (No Depression) melds with the electricity of guitarist Stash Wyslouch, “a brilliant and free-thinking mind” (Chris Eldridge, Punch Brothers) and banjo player Allison de Groot’s “exquisite tone, timing, and taste” (Tony Trishka) to bring new ideas to traditional music. The Mountain Drifters are delighted announce the release of their 2nd album, Closing the Gap (Allison's original composition for banjo & band).

Closing The Gap is the Mountain Drifters in their natural and instinctual state; raw, playful and free, the way the music is meant to be. The music is hopeful and optimistic and comes from the heart, and the recording starts with “There’s a bright side somewhere, ain’t gonna rest until I find it.”

The title track, Allison de Groot's “Closing the Gap” feels like a race. Each note tries to catch up with the next, narrowing the gap and steadily propelling the tune from one section to the next. . . [p]

"Bruce Molsky has long been one of my musical heroes, and it is such a joy to hear him in this configuration with the Molsky Mountain Drifters, featuring two of my good friends — Stash Wyslouch and Allison de Groot — accompanying him seamlessly on guitar and banjo. Together, they are a force to be reckoned with and are creating some of the most soul-stirring music out there today. It's hard to believe they are a new trio since the sounds they create together instantly feel so at home. The effortlessness and ease with which Bruce plays and sings has always been something I've deeply admired, and that is only highlighted alongside Stash and Allison. It is a rarity to hear music that lacks ego and puts soulfulness and a respect for tradition at the forefront. Bruce is simply one of the greatest musicians there is, period." — Sarah Jarosz / I’m with Her


Closing the Gap
Recorded - Dan Cardinal Dimension Sounds
Mixed - Dave Sinko, Nashville, TN
Mastered - David Glasser Airshow Studios
Produced - Bruce Molsky
Graphics - Randall Martin Designs, Photography - Susan Wilson Photography

:The tunes:
1. There’s A Bright Side Somewhere (3:03) Featured Track
Optimism is a major motivation for us in dark times, and music is one strong vehicle to connect us all in the belief that things will get better. We were all moved by the unrelenting message of Reverend Gary Davis’ There’s A Bright Side Somewhere. Putting it at the top of Closing The Gap sets the message and the mood for us on this recording. We all get to sing it as we’re lifted up by the reverend’s words.

2. Grey Eagle (2:32)
Grey Eagle works better than a laugh track. And the melody falling deeper into a heated discussion between fiddle and guitar (with the banjo standing by going “WTF!”) takes us and Cauley & Howard’s already eerie 1920s rendition of the old standard to a new elsewhere.

3. The Little Carpenter (3:26)
Everything comes from somewhere. You don’t hear much “jig time” (6/8) in southern old time music, but Jim Howard of Kentucky did it in the 1930s with humor, and accompanying himself with nothing but a fiddle on The Little Carpenter. This is our fleshed-out take on Mr. Howard’s take on a funny old English ballad that can’t decide if it’s about love, lust or religion.

4. Fortune (2:11)
The sort-of-sad, sort-of-nonsense lyrics of Fortune belie its dance heritage around North Carolina, There, you hear it played by most everyone who plays an instrument in some way or another. Allison delivers the story line, not meant to advise, but would you just please go and have a good time! Pay the bills later.

5. Spring of ’65 (3:24)
Songs should bespeak some amount of theater, and The Spring of ’65 sure sets a stage. Four jolly plowboys on a tear, dancing who-knows-how to The Crippled Kingfisher, a great old tune that probably doesn’t even exist. When it’s over, they disappear back behind their plows at sunup. We follow it with Allison’s stealthy and brilliant Closing The Gap, which might could be called The Crippled Kingfisher in this instance.

6. Closing The Gap (2:12)
By: Allison de Groot (SOCAN)
Allison titled this exhilarating lead banjo piece & our title track Closing the Gap as it sounds like a race. Each note tries to catch up with the next, narrowing the gap and steadily propelling the tune from one section to the next. . .

7. The Graf Spee (3:13)
Some kinds of tunes paint a visual image, some with hard, jagged edges, and some with softer transitions between parts and moods. The Graf Spee feels like the latter of these, climbing just a little higher in pitch and intensity with each part before finally settling back down again at the top. It’s one of those melodies that just feels good to play, and consequently is hard to get out of at the end, if there really is an end.

8. Sweet Bride (2:58)
By: Kate Rusby, (PRS)
Sweet Bride, from the gorgeous singing of Kate Rusby, is our attempt at making her new song into an old ballad. The sweet and very romantic message in the lyrics just takes us to a place that’s nice to hang in for a little while, under the sea in our gold silken sheets.

9. Hog Trough Reel (2:27)
A tune can be a skeleton calling for meat (on it’s bones), or blanks to be filled in with anything musical. Stash bring some heavy metal meat and bones enhancement to the old Hog Trough Reel, proving once and for all that that there are many ways to skin a cat, er, hog.

10. Cumberland Gap (2:18)
If you’re a mountain music aficionado, then a computer search of Cumberland Gap in your digital library will reveal many pages to scroll through, and so many interpretations that it must be one strong-**** essence of a melody to hang together through all of that. When George Marion Reece of North Carolina recorded this for the Library of Congress in the 1930’s, it sounded as if someone wrote the tune all down in sheet music, cut the paper into little pieces, threw them into the air and then played what he saw when they all landed. And it was still Cumberland Gap, soulful and intact even in that crazy configuration. We added a few chords but tried not to mess with a good thing.

11. All Gone Now (3:01)
[indent]Forty-nine years between The Georgia Yellow Hammers (1927) and the Plank Road String Band (1976) and another forty-three to Closing The Gap (2019) really shows how far back a generation really goes. Two musical generations can send you back well over 100 years. But the “lost-it-all” comic sentiment of All Gone Now with Stash’s plaintive but funny rendition could be from anytime. Some things don’t change.

12. Shooting Creek (2:38)
Lost somewhere among the boxes in the corner of Bruce’s office was a cassette of The Original Orchard Grass rocking it on Shooting Creek, with Rhoda Kemp on banjo and Bill Canady on fiddle. Allison met Ms. Kemp not long ago and they continue to be in touch. Bruce finally found the cassette, and the tune sticks hard when he and Allison play it now, no less powerful with just a fiddle and a banjo than the original full-tilt mountain orchestra.

13. Let Me Fall (3:36)
We don’t mean to fixate on drinking songs, but Let Me Fall is one of the best, especially at a speed that sends all the scenery whizzing past in a blur. The bullet train of fiddle tunes is passed on the left only by I Get My Whisky From Rockingham. Both have a love interest, too. What does that tell you?

14. KC Moan (3:08)
K.C. Moan is a story of a slow-moving train that you hear blowing in some distant haze. You miss someone who might be riding, yet you’re not even sure they’re on board at all. Still, that train just might just bring them back. And if it does, you’ll love your baby like they’ve never been loved before. Ahh.

15. Whiskey from Rockingham (3:45)
We don’t mean to fixate on drinking songs, but Let Me Fall is one of the best, especially at a speed that sends all the scenery whizzing past in a blur. The bullet train of fiddle tunes is passed on the left only by I Get My Whisky From Rockingham. Both have a love interest, too. What does that tell you?

16. Greenback Dollar (2:51)
Greenback Dollar is simply one of our musical heartbeats to dance to, punctuated by a lyric line that wishes for money and a ‘sweet little mama.’ Another old-time mantra that’s just hard to crawl out of.