Open Road project featuring Jefferson Hamer

It's been a great ride for Open Road's Caleb Roberts, Keith Reed, and Eric Thorin. With two successful CDs on Rounder Records, and three years of touring across the U.S. and Canada with a band revered as one of the great young hopes of bluegrass, they have enjoyed sharing their music with traditional audiences, festival crowds, and young fans.

When lead singer Bradford Folk retired from bluegrass touring in April 2006 to open a honky-tonk venue, Caleb, Keith and Eric weren't ready to hang up their Stetsons. They still longed for following that Open Road as it leads to city concert halls, remote mountain festivals and colorful college towns to play and sing their spirited and honest bluegrass for those hungry to hear it.

And wouldn't you know, they found a compatriot in Open Road's home base of Lyons, CO. Jefferson Hamer, a versatile singer and songwriter who has played with celtic band The Wayfarers, acoustic trio The Single Malt Band, and Vince Herman's Great American Taxi, is a Lyons neighbor of Caleb and Eric. Jefferson has performed at festivals including the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the High Sierra Music Festival, and Rockygrass Festival, and in 2005, he released a well received solo Americana project, Left Wing Sweetheart.

Open Road's 2004 Rounder release In the Life appeared on the Billboard bluegrass charts, spent seven months on the National Bluegrass Survey charts, and garnered widespread radio airplay and critical acclaim from the media (Country Weekly featured the band in a wrap-up of young acts taking bluegrass into a "hip, happening future").

The band celebrated the 2005 Rounder release Lucky Drive with an inaugural performance at the historic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, drawing praise from national press, including the New York Post, which wrote, "The instrumental interplay is terrific, pure and simple," and Music Row, which lauded "you'll be hooked on their picking at first listen." Lucky Drive spent seven months on the National Bluegrass Survey song chart.

Caleb, Keith, and Eric attracted new Open Road fans at festivals including Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival, the Grand Targhee Bluegrass Festival, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the Kluane Mountain Festival in Yukon Territory, California's Strawberry Bluegrass Festival, and Atlanta's Blue Ridge HarvestFest; and they are recognized favorites at hometown festival Rockygrass in Lyons. They have performed with such talented and varied musicians as Old Crow Medicine Show, Ralph Stanley, Yonder Mountain String Band, and Donna The Buffalo. The band also enjoyed a month-long stint in Nashville performing with a number of local and national talents, including members of Blue Highway, the Del McCoury Band, and Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. Open Road was honored to have one of the band's living heroes, Vern Williams, sing harmony on "I'm Lonesome," a track on Lucky Drive that the band learned from a Larry and Happy Smith recording on the Blueridge label.

Audiences will want to follow this new turn in Open Road for a refreshing group of versatile musicians who share a passion for using traditional bluegrass as a language for innovation.

Open Road Performances featuring Jefferson Hamer