MUSIC
STRANGER STRINGS How Chuck Sitero of Longmont’s High Lonesome ditched Georgia to find the heart of bluegrass in Colorado BY JOHN LEHNDORFF
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You Come Out ith a twangy lineup of manTonight),’” he says. dolin, dobro, guitar and Left to right: Chuck Sitero, Liz Patton, Dylan Kober, Carson McHaney “Dad had a big bass, Longmont’s High and Joshua Bergmann of High Lonesome. Credit: Lily Sitero Photography record collection, Lonesome looks a lot like your typical from the early bluegrass quartet. But lead singer Beatles to the Allman Brothers and Chuck Sitero insists the band’s music THEY GOT OFF IN COLORADO Buddy Holly.” is “bluegrass-ish.” High Lonesome is named after Sitero’s One of Sitero’s seminal experiences If you watch the band pick its way love of singing harmony. The original was seeing Willie Nelson in concert as through an original tune like Sitero’s iteration of the band launched in 2018 a 5-year-old. “Savage Sundown,” you can hear in Georgia when Sitero and his wife “It was everything to me,” he says. “I Lily, band manager and photographer, exactly what he means. Bassist Liz remember exactly where I was sitting, Patton bows a low minor-key drone as were working on TV series and films. what Willie sang and what he was Dylan Kober adds a weepy dobro He dressed sets and she costumed wearing. When I was 6, I got a smallecho propelled by Joshua Bergmann’s actors. scale guitar for Christmas and learned mandolin chops. Strumming his guitar, According to the Siteros, their life at three chords.” Sitero moans a haunting chorus the time consisted of working on proaddressed to those ductions like Jumanji: responsible for Colorado’s Welcome to the Jungle, Sand Creek Massacre, Stranger Things and The when more than 230 Haunting of Hill House by day Cheyenne and Arapaho and bluegrass by night in tribal members were killed small Atlanta-area venues. by the U.S. military near “When the pandemic startFort Lyon in 1864: “John, ed, we decided to go on a what have you done / camping trip for a month,” you’re the savage, not the Sitero says. “We were going native son.” to go on to Oregon from With its two-part harmoColorado but there was a nies and precise instrubunch of forest fires, so we mental solos, High stayed here.” Lonesome’s sound clearly Their decision to make owes as much to folk, Colorado home birthed the rock and blues as it does new High Lonesome, filled out High Lonesome frontman Chuck Sitero calls his band’s music ‘blueto the Stanley Brothers. with a murderer’s row of Front grass-ish.’ Credit: Lily Sitero Photography “Bluegrass is a little limRange musicians. The band iting,” Sitero says. “How many blueis definitely not Chuck Sitero and his As a 15-year-old Aerosmith fan, he grass tunes have the same chord probackup players. Each member is an encountered Boulder’s self-described gression? It’s the same tune with difessential element in the band’s obvious “polyethnic Cajun slamgrass” band ferent words to it.” chemistry as a live act. and the musicians who launched the You can hear Bergmann’s mandolin “newgrass” revolution. influences, ranging from Jesse “When I saw Vince Herman and WILLIE, VINCE AND THE BOYS McReynolds’ cross-picking to Sam Leftover Salmon, a light went on,” Bluegrass was just one ingredient of Bush-style rhythmic chops. With a deep Sitero says. “I saw there was another the sonic stew in which Sitero simbaritone voice, Bergman provides spotkind of bluegrass that was more intermered as a self-described “military rat” on harmonies and grabs lead vocals on esting. [Then] I heard Bela Fleck and coming of age in New York City. his original tunes. Texas-raised bassist the Flecktones with Sam Bush, and I “The first song I remember hearing Patton studied jazz in college before was like, ‘What is that?’” my Dad sing was ‘Buffalo Girls (Won’t 14
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turning to progressive bluegrass. She provides the inventive bedrock groove behind a hard-driving unit that always forces its audiences to dance. Sitero calls rising dobro star Kober “our special secret weapon.” He adds a signature voice to the mix with chiming runs, jaunty Latin accents and banjo-like rolls. A highly regarded young jazz guitarist, he only started playing the dobro a few years ago while studying at the University of Colorado in Denver. “He makes me sound great,” Sitero says. For its next shows, High Lonesome will be joined by a longtime collaborator, classically trained violinist-fiddler Carson McHaney.
‘A CLASSIC COLORADO STORY’
As High Lonesome’s gregarious storyteller-in-chief, Sitero admits to a low boredom threshold. “One thing I bring to the band as a Deadhead is that I don’t want to play the same shit the same way in the same order night after night,” he says. High Lonesome’s next performances will showcase songs the band is polishing for their debut album. They plan to record in January with Kober as producer, Sitero says. The album will include Sitero’s originals, some co-written with Patton, plus Bergmann’s tunes, Kober’s jazz-inflected instrumentals and “obscure public domain fiddle jams,” he says. High Lonesome’s building bluegrass buzz in Colorado is an unexpected delight for a musician now three decades into an up-and-down career. “There was no future for High Lonesome in Georgia. It’s just not the same music vibe there that you find here with a sophisticated audience,” Sitero says. “For us, coming here is the greatest thing ever — a classic Colorado story.”
ON THE BILL: High
Lonesome. 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1, Chautauqua Community House, 301 Morning Glory Drive, Boulder. Sold out. More local dates at highlonesomenewgrass.com.
BOULDER WEEKLY
