B-Side Guys

Thirty years into progressive bluegrass being a thing, it’s worth asking what “progressive” even means for a genre that’s already absorbed jazz, rock, and avant-garde improvisation into its DNA. The Infamous Stringdusters have a pretty good answer: it means treating virtuosity as a starting point rather than a destination.

“Up From The Bottom” doesn’t announce itself as anything other than what it is. The banjo, fiddle, and guitar lines interlock with the kind of precision that comes from a band with enough shared mileage to stop thinking about it. Chris Pandolfi’s banjo pushes the rhythm while Jeremy Garrett’s fiddle finds the space above it, and the whole thing rides a lively momentum that earns the song’s title without underlining it too heavily.

The Grammy-winning quintet, who’ve headlined Red Rocks and recently launched their own independent label, Americana Vibes, have always been more interested in feel than flash. That restraint is on full display here. A lesser band plays the same composition and turns it into a showcase. The Stringdusters play it like a conversation, instruments trading ideas rather than solos.

Resilience and renewal are well-worn Americana themes, and “Up From The Bottom” doesn’t reinvent them. What it does is make them feel physical, something in the rhythm section’s momentum and the acoustic picking that suggests actual forward motion rather than a sentiment about it. The optimism doesn’t feel handed to you. It accumulates.