Discover Your New Jamgrass Obsession With Shadowgrass

Growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountain area, the members of Shadowgrass soaked up a healthy dose of old-time music during their formative years. The aspiring roots musicians began attending bluegrass festivals and fiddler's conventions at a young age, and over time, they've artfully expanded the scope of their sound to include a broader range of material.

Guitarist Kyser George was just nine years old when he started playing with banjoist Clay Russell and mandolinist/vocalist Luke Morris at the Grayson County Fiddler's Convention in Virginia, according to Madison Morris, Luke's wife, who began lending her fiddle and vocal skills to Shadowgrass a few years ago. The band also includes bassist Evan Campfield, who joined in 2022.

The members hail from the states of Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, where they were raised on the "traditional side of bluegrass," Madison says. "I grew up going to the conventions, and so I grew up around all of them, but I didn't join the group until 2021. They first came together to compete at some of those events, which is when they named themselves Shadowgrass."

As the bandmates began to develop their chops, Shadowgrass started to take in new influences and cultivate a more expansive approach.

"We started listening to more progressive and jam-oriented stuff, which really influenced our direction," Madison explains. "We played around with different approaches and eventually found our sound. It's all morphed into what we do now, which is more of a jamgrass thing. The demographic of our audiences are pretty similar wherever we play. We might get a few more traditional bluegrass music listeners at a show here in Tennessee, but we also get jamgrass hippies and Grateful Dead fans. We say that we're 'bluegrass music with internet noises.' We have a lot of originals, and we like to include selective covers, which is always fun. We enjoy putting a bluegrass spin on songs that weren't originally in that genre."

Audiences at a Shadowgrass show can expect anything from bluegrass-infused original tunes to a cover of a Doc Watson or a Grateful Dead classic, and even a high-lonesome take on Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy."
"I'm a fan of groups such as the Infamous Stringdusters," Madison says. "They were one of the more progressively influenced bluegrass bands that I listened to, and they influenced me to start branching out. We get a lot of songs from the traditional well, but we get them from newer bands, too. We picked up a lot of classic tunes at the festivals and conventions by sitting around and picking. You jam on those tunes and they tend to stick with you."

The band's sophomore offering, All That Will, drops on Friday, October 4; Shadowgrass will celebrate with a release show at the Aggie Theatre in Fort Collins that same night, followed by a concert at Cervantes' in Denver on Saturday, October 5. According to Madison, who wrote most of the album's songs with her husband, the latest material breaks fresh ground for the group and tells an emotional tale that draws from the day-to-day reality of the members' lives.

"This album tells a story — it offers something that people can connect to," she says. "The themes on the album address some of the fears and anxieties that you experience in your early twenties, as well as seasonal changes and the depression that can come with that. It's about navigating the world during early adulthood."

The bandmembers' ages range from nineteen to 28. The Morrises, who live in Johnson City, Tennessee, met at a bluegrass festival in North Carolina in 2017, where Madison, who is 22, was performing solo, and Luke, now 24, was playing with an earlier version of Shadowgrass. They both went on to graduate from East Tennessee State University and earned degrees in music. Madison notes that Denver feels like a second home for the band, which performs regularly on the Front Range. "I feel like we're in Colorado about every month," she says.

The talented singer and fiddler estimates that the band has performed approximately 75 to 100 shows so far this year, and says the group is looking forward to its return to the Centennial State for its upcoming record release.

"We've done a lot more traveling than ever before," Madison says. "I've seen the insides of the Charlotte Airport and the Denver Airport more than I'd like to admit. We've definitely been getting out. Denver is a hot spot for us. We get great energy there, and it's been really vital in our journey as a band. We couldn't think of a better place to celebrate the launch of this album."

Shadowgrass plays the Aggie Theatre, 204 South College Avenue, Fort Collins, on Friday, October 4, and Cervantes' Masterpiece Ballroom, 2637 Welton Street, on Saturday, October 5.