With me and my music, people say they feel calm and at home. Songs tell stories about what it's like to live life and why what happens to us matters.
My sound is like "Bill Monroe met Woody Guthrie on the Appalachian Trail, then Kasey Chambers met up with them and started singing." --Greg White, SG Studios
Meet our 2023 lineup -
Becca Maxwell, (upright bass, harmony vocal), M.A. in bass performance
Rachel Yeatts, (mandolin, lead vocal) bandleader, and songwriter
Simeon Davis (fiddle), M.A. in composition from UNT
Daniel Gussman, award-winning fingerpicking guitarist
"...digging your old timey timeless sound - beautiful, fragile and determined at once." --Karen Morand, Canadian singer/songwriter
I started the Blue GrassFire band in 2014 and have played around the Denton, Texas and DFW area at the Denton Arts & Jazz, Denton Folk Festival, The House of Blues, Coyote Drive-In, Six Springs Tavern, Ft. Worth Mayfest, DFW Love Field Airport, Pilot Point Coffee House, and more.
My love for the music from American hills and hollows shows in original songs and in traditional songs rendered anew. Poetry and creative writing have long been part of my life, and I spent fifteen years teaching in the English Department at the University of North Texas until I stepped more deeply into the songwriting I do now.
Whether playing solo mandolin and clawhammer banjo or duos and trios with upright bass and guitar, it’s a high-lonesome front porch music that brings you to a down-home, good place to be.
Projects
Trouble Ain’t Ours to Keep, 02 May 2022, my third album of original songs, and my first two co-writes, one with Louisa Branscomb, and another with Josie Bisto and Meagan Allen. The album was recorded at Eastwood Studio in Cana, Virginia; Producer, Johnny Williams. Sound Engineer, Wes Easter.
Look Up from the Bottom of a Dream, December 2017; Producer Greg White, SG Studios, Fort Worth, Texas
Paradise Mountain, July 2014, Producer Harvey Gerst, Indian Trail Studios, Sanger, Texas