The Wake

When the band coming onstage includes a guy wearing a pointy hat, a floral blouse, black and yellow striped tights and red sneakers, you know you’re in for a good time. If he can play the cello like a fiddle while doing a mild head bang, well … it doesn’t get much better than that.

The antics of cellist Rushad Eggleston are just one of the highlights of a live concert by Crooked Still. On March 9th, this bluegrass band from the east coast played a lively and entertaining set to a sold-out crowd at the Cedar Cultural Center.

It’s not just Eggleston that will send you reeling. Dr. Gregory Liszt (yes, he has a Ph.D. in biology from MIT) has been called “the Jimmy Page of the banjo,” and the sultry Aoife O’Donovan is a slightly edgier version of Alison Krauss. Corey DiMario, double bass, keeps a steady background beat with an impeccable sense of rhythm.

Together, their stage presence is undeniable and their chemistry is electric. While the combination of bass, cello and banjo is not typical for a bluegrass band, members of Crooked Still hold nonconformist attitudes in their music as well as in their personalities.

At the Cedar, Crooked Still evoked a fun and laid back atmosphere, starting off their set with a new song, “Aggravates My Soul.” This ditty successfully got the audience ready for the impressive cello riffs and lighting fast finger picking on that were to follow throughout the performance.

The rest of the set was full of tunes off their latest release “Shaken By a Low Sound,” including “Mountain Jumper,” which features the lyric for which the album was named.

Aoife preluded the sad and melancholy “Wind and Rain,” by jokingly describing the lyrics as a story about “murder, fiddles and love; three things that are often seen together.” After teaching the repeated phrases to the audience, a soulful sing-a-long brought the pace back down to the ground.

The set as a whole was well executed with great variety between fast and slow, peppered in between with anecdotes and jokes. Liszt told of a time when he accidentally blew out all the circuit breakers in the police station in the town where the group was performing, causing momentary anarchy, and Eggleston told a knock-knock joke about a horse’s ass. DiMario was simply excited to be in the same city where Prince is from, and O’Donovan admitted that it was her first time in Minnesota. When she learned in the middle of the show that Bob Dylan was a local as well, she admitted “Well, see? Shows you how much I know about Minnesota.”

The opening act for Crooked Still, an Irish instrumental group called Flook, was equally as impressive. Flook, featuring two flautists, a guitarist and a bodhran player (a bodhran is an Irish drum), gave a remarkable performance full of dynamic percussion and lively melodies.

The two groups joined together for the encores, playing somewhat off-the-cuff, and closing with the most incredible rendition of “Orphan Girl” (a song off of Crooked Still’s first release) that I’ve ever heard. The combination of instruments was unexpected, but the two groups made it work.

Crooked Still is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to the bluegrass scene. Their music is completely unique, but still contains the slightest bit of traditionalism.

Eggleston, who has a very unique way of playing the cello (as far as technique goes) said that he got to a point in his musical career where he didn’t want to be boxed in by classical music. He wanted to play something more original. As he puts it, he went to the dark side and sold his soul to the devil. This is something that, in a way, all the members have done in order to find their original styles.

But, as he puts it, “You can’t expect to reap Satan’s benefits if you can’t be a part of his team.”

“Oooh write that down – that’s good. Seriously. Write that down,” exclaimed Liszt when we talked after the show.

Crooked Still can continue to be “crooked” in persona, but their music is right on track.