The Dirty Grass Players on stage with Katie Powderly opening

With a nod to the past and glance to the future the Dirty Grass Players are keeping alive the long history of bluegrass while pushing the traditional genre into the next generation.

The Dirty Grass Players are an energetic explosion of old-time pickin’, coloured with an inventive, newgrass hand, that is given lyrical life by their soaring vocal harmonies that exist on an ethereal plain. They live at the crossroads between the traditional, which is the backbone of what they do, and the progressive with their innovative forward-thinking approach. The Dirty Grass Players, with their steady, workman-like precision and loose adventurous spirit are a band that can both confound Bill Monroe and cause him to smile uncontrollably. Their music is progressive, traditional, experimental, imaginative, and at its core, Dirty.

The Dirty Grass Players formed in 2015 around banjo-picker Alex Berman, guitarist Ben Kolakowski, and mandolinist Ryan Rogers at a series of informal picking-sessions in the Baltimore area. The band quickly started to garner attention in the area, culminating in them winning the competitive Charm City Bluegrass Festival Battle of the Bands in 2017. The band’s original bassist and fiddler left shortly after andt they solidified around the addition of bassist Connor Murray and reemerged as a powerful four-piece.

Since then they have released two albums, 2020’s Beneath the Woodpile and 2023's Shiny Side Up and established themselves as one of the most exciting young bluegrass bands around. With their high-octane shows they have become a mainstay on the festival circuit, being invited to play at some of the the most prestigious gatherings from coast to coast including Delfest, Grey Fox, Kingman Island, Hot August Music Festival, Dark Star Jubilee, Ramble Fest, First Class Music Fest, and many others.

Their latest album Shiny Side Up, produced by The Travelin’ McCourys’ Coldy Kilby, continues to further the evolution of bluegrass with its hard-driving sound that showcases the progressive, darkside of bluegrass with its forward-looking, non-traditional playing and songwriting. In its praise of the album, Bluegrass Unlimited says, “Shiny Side Up validates the arrival of the Dirty Grass Players onto the scene and shows bluegrass is in good hands going forward.

Katie is an award-winning musician and songwriter, who has performed live on PBS & NPR stations, and has toured from New York to Colorado, Texas to Tennessee.

She has shared bills with Tony Rice, Del McCoury Band, Yonder Mountain String Band, The Steel Wheels, The Black Lillies, Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim, The David Mayfield Parade, and many others.

Her singing and harmonies have been compared to Emmylou Harris (The Alternate Root Magazine), Gillian Welch (Isthmus, Madison, WI) Aiofe O’Donovan (Americana UK) and Gram Parsons (City Paper, Rochester, NY.)

She was also voted “Best Country/Bluegrass Performer” in her former home of Madison, Wisconsin, in the Madison Area Music Awards.

She recently released her sophomore album, Live by the Song, Die by the Song, (Red-Winged Blackbird Records) which is a stripped-down, intimate recording of acoustic Appalachian ballads Powderly wrote one summer while splashing in the Shenandoah River, falling in and out of “love.”

This folky, bluegrass-adjacent recording serves as a contrast to her first album, Slips of the Tongue, a fully-produced Americana album featuring a smoking-hot electrified and electrifying band including such luminaries as Josh Oliver (Watchhouse/Mandolin Orange), Bryn Davies (Tony Rice, Guy Clark, Jack White), Tom Pryor (The Black Lillies), and Jill Andrews (the everybodyfields) and was recorded by Mike Zirkel at Butch Vig's famed Smart Studios in Madison, WI, with significant help from Scott Minor (Sparklehorse.)

When Katie is not on the road sharing her solo musical experiences with audiences across the nation, she is performing with her electric Americana band, The Unconditional Lovers, whose first album will be released this year (2024).

She recently stepped away from her position on the bluegrass bass, playing and singing in hard-driving PA bluegrass band, Dead Horse Revival, which features former members of Mountain Ride.

During Katie’s tenure in the band, Dead Horse Revival recorded and released a 7-track EP of original songs entitled All Hat No Saddle available on streaming platforms everywhere, and won “Best Bluegrass Band” in the Central Pennsylvania Music Hall of Fame Awards.

In the past Katie has acted as bluegrass bass sideman for such acts as The David Mayfield Parade and Woody Pines.
-Thanks to Taran Smith for the bio.

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