The Dirty Grass Players with BigForestFire at The Vanguard

Name: The Dirty Grass Players with BigForestFire at The Vanguard
Start: 2025-04-04T20:00:00-04:00
Location: The Vanguard Brewpub & Distillery

Schedule

Fri, 04 Apr, 2025 at 08:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

The Vanguard Brewpub & Distillery | Hampton, VA

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 oldtime 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 with 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 and
they solidified around the addition of bassist Connor
Murray. In 2024, Sam Guthridge joined on banjo and the
band reemerged as a powerful four-piece.
Since then they have released two albums, 2020’s
Beneath the Woodpile and 2023 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.