Best of What's Next: The Infamous Stringdusters

Hometown: Nashville, Tenn.
Album: Things That Fly
Band Members: Andy Falco (guitar, organ), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), Andy Hall (dobro), Travis Book (upright bass), Chris Pandolfi (banjo), Jesse Cobb (mandolin)
For Fans Of: Nickel Creek, Old Crow Medicine Show, Dierks Bentley

Not one of the six members of The Infamous Stringdusters is originally from Nashville, but about ten years ago, they began moving to town one by one. “It’s an interesting place to call home as a musician, because there are so many of us here that it’s not really like being a hometown band from Charlottesville, Va., or Madison, Wisc. or something like that. It’s a hotbed of bands,” says Stringdusters banjoist Chris Pandolfi. “But there are definitely things that feel like home, and Nashville’s been really good to us.”

The band’s country/folk/bluegrass hybrid fuses equal parts contemporary song-structures and relatable lyrics with traditional instrumental and vocal styles, and it’s all on display on the band’s third album, Things That Fly (out now).

It’s hard to think of a more appropriate home for this band than modern-day Nashville; much like the city, the Stringdusters aren’t entirely modern, but aren’t quite old-timey, either. Some of the guys played in family bands while growing up, while others picked up their instruments much later; Pandolfi first strummed a banjo at age 18, but admits even then he had no idea what bluegrass was. “That’s one of our defining features as a band,” he says, “is the really eclectic range of influences and backgrounds among the members and the constant challenge to take all those musical aesthetics and try and piece them into one cohesive sound.”

The Stringdusters have played hushed concert halls in Europe and rowdy club shows in the States, and though the band recently returned from tour to find their adopted hometown under waters of a 500-year flood, the band is out on the road again for most of the summer. To join other Nashvillians in helping the city recover from the recent flood, click here.