The Stillhouse Junkies played to a packed house at the Cache Bar in Logan on Oct. 15. They are (from left) Fred Kosak on guitar, Alissa Wolf on fiddler and Cody Tinnin on upright bass (Image courtesy of Facebook).
LOGAN – The Stillhouse Junkies played to a packed house on Oct. 15 at the Cache Bar in Logan.
The vibe was casual, the music was mostly bluegrass and the hip Cache Valley crowd ate it up.
The band’s return to Logan was courtesy of the Bridger Folk Music Society.
The Stillhouse Junkies had previously performed here as part of the Stokes Nature Center’s Canyon Jams summer concert series, but guitarist Fred Kosak quipped that this was the first chance that the musicians from Durango, CO had got to play indoors here.
The nightclub setting of the Cache Bar was perfect for the event, demonstrating that Cache Valley residents will turn out for the right type of entertainment, even on a Sunday evening.
One of the best numbers of the evening was a bluegrass cover version of a Fleetwood Mac song from their 1977 “Rumors” album called “Never Going Back Again.”
Composed by a broken-hearted Lindsey Buckingham, the song has simple lyrics but complex instrumentation that seemed tailor-made for bluegrass improvisation and the catchy chorus of “ … Been down one time, been down two times, I’m never going back again.”
That song – from their recent album “Small Towns” — was an outlier, however. The Stillhouse Junkies were in Logan mainly to play their own original music and play it they did.
Although the band as only three members – Kosak on guitar, Alissa Wolf on fiddle and Cody Tinnin, a musical magician on the upright bass – they often manage to sound like a bigger ensemble.
While their style is traditional bluegrass – which is hard to do without a banjo — the talented band members also deliver a genre-blurring vibe that is a subtly inventive blend of music that ranges from blues, to classical, to Texas Swing.
With all three band members trading vocal and songwriting duties, their original compositions in the Logan nightclub revealed the trio’s roots are in very different musical backgrounds that somehow mesh into a rich and unique sound.
Formed in 2017, the Stillhouse Junkie have been molded by a longstanding residency at a local Durango distillery. They have not only become familiar to audiences throughout Colorado and the Four Corners region of the Southwest, but are also widely seen as a national touring act.
In addition to the band’s standout performance at the Cache Bar on Sunday evening, Alissa Wolf has offered to lead a fiddle workshop for local fiddlers while the Stillhouse Junkies are in town.
That workshop will be held Monday, Oct. 16 from 7 to 8:15 p.m. All interested fiddlers are welcome, although some prior experience is recommended.
The cost for the fiddle workshop will be $20 for adults and $10 for youngsters. If that cost is prohibitive for an interested fiddler, the Bridger Folk Music Society will consider scholarship opportunities.
Interested fiddlers are advised to contact Melanie Ballard to sign up for the workshop at [email protected]
The Bridger Folk Music Society is a non-profit, all-volunteer organization based in Logan.
Membership in the BFMS is free, but donations to support the group’s mission in Cache Valley are appreciated.