| Vida Wakeman and Jeff Burke |
Anyone who happened to catch the Jeff and Vida Band at the Black
Swamp Arts Festival last year might be surprised to know that their performances as a dynamic bluegrass
and Americana quintet on the Main Stage and Acoustic Stage were in essence a debut.
The muscular instrumental prowess, the strong vocal harmonies (led by Vida Wakeman’s dynamic lead) and
the kinetic interplay between the band members made it appear as if they had been performing together
for years, but mandolinist Jeff Burke says otherwise.
"When we played in Bowling Green the last time that was kind of the debut of this band," he
said in a recent telephone interview.
While band leaders Burke and Wakeman (his wife and the band’s primary song writer) have performed as a
duo and in other line-ups together for over a decade, the tight-laced bluegrass ensemble that showed up
to BSAF was in essentially a new iteration, and in some ways a new artistic direction for the band and
their leaders.
Fast forward eight months and the band, with nearly a year of touring and performance under its belt,
returns to Bowling Green for a concert at Grounds For Thought this Saturday. The show starts at 8 p.m.
and is free and open to the public.
Although acoustic bluegrass instrumentation is the foundation of the band’s sound, one listen to
Wakeman’s powerful voice shows that there are two sides to this band, which teeters between bluegrass,
country and Americana in an appealing way.
With a voice that evokes the best of classic country, blues, rockabilly and soul, she breaks from the
more well-known high-lonesome bluegrass sound, creating a niche and putting her own stamp on a genre
that has a growing number of strong female singers.
That is a critical element to the band’s success in a crowded contemporary bluegrass and acoustic music
market, combining straight-ahead bluegrass instrumental talent with the distinctive impact of a unique
lead singer, who also happens to write songs that are just as distinctive.
Her voice, Burke said, "has a lot of range and emotion in it. It is not your standard bluegrass
voice."
The band is coming off of recent performances at Merle Fest and the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival so far, plus anextensive tour across the United Kingdom in early spring.
In addition to Burke on mandolin and vocals and Wakeman on guitar and lead vocals, the band is rounded
out by Nashville session pickers Shad Cobb on violin, Josh McMurray on banjo and Jeremy Darrow on bass.
"We got these guys on board in Nashville, and they are all amazing professional players," Burke
said.
"As you get to play more together, everybody gets to meld together because they know what everyone
else is doing.
"The music really starts to take on a life of its own."
He said the skill level of their side men extends well beyond bluegrass, and helps bring new textures to
Wakeman’s lyrics.
"They are able to throw a million great ideas out about how to present new music," he said.
"We just start to jam on it and innately these guys are playing stuff you want to hear.
"Every time we play it takes on more interesting colors and depth because these guys just do their
thing on it and they know their thing really well."
