There’s a new musical genre called new-grass. It’s like bluegrass but newer. If you haven’t heard it, you’re about to. Let’s begin at the beginning or maybe just a little before.

• Album: Punch
• Artist: Punch Brothers
• Label: Nonesuch
• Release: February 26, 2008
• Artist Website

There’s a new musical genre called new-grass. It’s like bluegrass but newer. If you haven’t heard it, you’re about to. Let’s begin at the beginning or maybe just a little before.

Everything was going quite well for the Grammy winning folk and progressive bluegrass outfit Nickel Creek: working with luminaries like Alison Krauss, Bela Fleck, Dolly Parton and Fiona Apple… okay, not quite a luminary, but… opening for Lyle Lovett, Vince Gill and Amy Grant, the aforementioned Grammy, and of course, critical and commercial success.

But in the summer of 2006, the group decided that after their upcoming tour they would go on an indefinite hiatus. Their seventh month tour, appropriately titled “Farewell (For Now)” began with a note from the band posted on their website explaining “”We wanted to do this in a positive way and take that last lap before our break. We want to see our fans one more time and play with the musicians that have inspired us over the years.”

And with that, it was over… or is it? (Only time will tell and everyone knows, time doesn’t talk about it.)

The first of the Nickel Creek trio to emerge from the ashes is the virtuoso mandolinist Chris Thile who with a super-group of bluegrass players released an album of hillbilly jazz under the moniker Punch Brothers, a name they took from a Mark Twain short story “Punch, Brothers, Punch!”

In the short, Twain becomes so consumed by a jingle that he can no longer do his work, let alone think. (“Punch brothers! Punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare!”) He is finally able to cure himself of this infinite-loop ear-worm by passing it along to another, a preacher no less. Now remember that for trivia night.

The group includes guitarist Chris Eldridge (Infamous Stringdusters, the Seldom Scene,) who Acoustic Guitar magazine has called “the most-talked-about guitarist in the bluegrass world,” bassist Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon,) banjo player Noam Pikelny and violinist Gabe Witcher; the latter two have collaborated with a number of heavyweights including K.D. Lang, Willie Nelson, John Cowan, Randy Newman and believe it or not, Beck.

The Punch Brothers debut “Punch” (Nonesuch) was released in February 2008 and opens with “Punch Bowl,” a swinging hootenanny within a verse-chorus structure. At the album’s other end is “Nothing, Then,” a hope-filled, minor key lament that glides into “It’ll Happen,” a sorrow-filled, folksy dirge.

Between those bookends is Thile’s “The Blind Leaving the Blind”, a 40-minute suite in four movements written after and perhaps as a response to the demise of his marriage. Here lies the bulk of the album. It’s also were Thile is most unconventional. He’s lifted the spirit and spontaneity of bluegrass and set it in the strictures of modern classical, making what we in the business like to call new-grass.

“I had this idea of a long-form composition that was grounded in folk-music,” Thile explained in the album’s bio. “Though much of it reads like a string quintet, there are parts that read like a jazz lead sheet. There is plenty of improvising and lots of stuff that is loosely dictated.”
For staunch bluegrass aficionados, though, this kind of genre bending may not be their cup of sweet tea. For everyone else, the music shows its roots without presenting itself as a museum piece.

In fact, here’s two reasons why the Punch Brothers are not going to be mommy and daddy’s bluegrass band: 1) Thile as innovator and 2) Thile as huge fan of music. Indeed, his sweeping musical tastes are sure to invite a few covers ranging from the not-so-surprising (Gillian Welch, Patsy Cline) to the surprising (the Strokes, Pavement, Radiohead.)

Yup, even in the Bluegrass state, it’s time to make room for new-grass.