The Open Road - Biography
Open Road is a Rocky Mountain neo-traditionalist bluegrass band that prides itself on staying true to the classic American canon dating back to the earliest innovators of the style, The Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe. Open Road’s brand of bluegrass is happily derivative of those acts, though the loyalties don’t stop there, as there’s plenty of Del McCoury, Hank Williams, Vern Williams, Flatt & Scruggs and Mac Martin in their freewheeling hayride, too.
Formed in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1999, the high-energy back-porch band began when cattle-rancher Bradford Lee Folk met up with the bespectacled former Slim Cessna’s Auto Club member, Caleb Roberts, and discovered a shared enthusiasm for bluegrass purism. In Folk, Roberts had found everything he was hoping for in beginning a revivalist bluegrass band to update those deeply-ingrained traditions—here was a high tenor like Del McCoury and Folk’s guitar-picking ability was described as “a classic style that favors tremoloed double-stops over fast runs and deep feeling rather than flash” by Vintage Guitar. The two formed the foundation for Open Road—so named after a type of Stetson hat, worn by sharp-looking bluegrass players. Since becoming a five-piece outfit and self-releasing their debut album Bluegrass Music (2000), Open Road has released three full-length albums on Rounder Records, each chock full of standards, innovative covers and originals. They’ve also toured across America and performed showcase gigs at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Through the years, the roster has changed for Open Road. For the first album, Bluegrass Music, renowned dobro player Sally Van Meter produced the final vintage sounding, one microphone work. The players at that time were Ben O’Connor (bass), Jean Ballhorn (fiddle) and Mark Leslie (banjo). The album was strongly perceived regionally around the Rocky Mountains for its authentic take on bluegrass, and—to go along with the band’s throwback stage shows—was nominated for “Emerging Artist of the Year” by the International Bluegrass Music Association.
In 2002, Open Road—now with Jim Runnels on banjo and Dan Mitchell deftly handling the fiddle—put out its first album on the Rounder label, entitled Cold Wind. Among the tracks included on the disc were a Hank Williams cover (“How Can You Refuse Him Now?”), traditional songs such as “Who’s Going Down to Town,” some Folk originals (notably the twangy opening track, “Cold Wind [On Fletcher Hill]”) and down-home instrumentals, such as “Kanesville.” Again Sally Van Meter produced, and dutifully contributed her dobro talents to “Some Things Does, Some Things Don’t.”
By 2004, Open Road was considered one of the best contemporary bluegrass bands going. Keith Reed took over banjo duties a year earlier, bringing his Idaho-raised bluegrass traditions and idiosyncrasies, which fit right in. Their In the Life (2004 Rounder) helped perpetuate the sentiment, as plenty of dust was kicked up from the Louvin Brothers’ cover tune “Bald Knob Arkansas” all the way to the end track, “Mountain Laurel.” More than in previous records, songwriter Folk contributed originals such as the candid “I’m Not Perfect” and “Sinkin’ Man.” In The Life prompted the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News to name them “Top Bluegrass Band” in the Rockies. The band was even asked to play the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
As of 2005, Open Road released its fourth album, Lucky Drive (Rounder). The title track was tailor-made for Folk’s high tenor, as new upright bassist Eric Thorin and fiddler Paul Lee, along with mandolinist Roberts, brought things back to late-1950s Flatt & Scruggs. Amidst a host of ballads, they also welcomed one of their icons, tenor Vern Williams, to cameo on the track “I’m Lonesome.”
