Rushad Eggleston and His Wild Band of Snee--coming to Elderly Free!

Wednesday, June 29, 2005
05:30 pm
Location: Elderly Instruments
in-store performance (free)

Rushad Eggleston and His Wild Band of Snee is one band that you really won't want to miss, if you like excellent cello-playing, sonorous vocals that ring with unsurpassed clarity, a unique mix of cello, keyboard, double-bass, percussion and voice, and a sound that can't be described with acknowledged musical genres.

In fact, Rushad himself can hardly define the sound of "Snee." It's "...a wild band of Snee indeed, but just what does that mean?" he queries.

"Imagine," the nimble cellist then explains, "that you fell through a hole into a strange but friendly dimension. Hundreds of excited horned, snouted, and feathered beasts such as snorblebees, grumblefish, and h-hosquiadors [sic] are milling around anxiously in the glowing moonlight... You look up and follow the tarmibly trees.... Suddenly some sounds alight.... spinning out melodies on their great grumbling gricktaphones, joined soon by vast barkobeest mooing orchestras of grenter- hoably zoabwinoan!" [Author's note: there are no typos in this paragraph.]

Straight from Alice in Wonderland? No, but you're close: Northeast Performer Magazine offers bold praise for Rushad Eggleston: "Eggleston's compositions are complexly harmonic Lewis Carrol fantasias influenced by hip-hop and jazz...and a mind that eats music theory for breakfast."

We first met Rushad Eggleston and his vocalist bandmate Aoife [pronounced EE'fuh] O'Donovan when we invited them to play Elderly's 2004 Folk Alliance showcase in San Diego. Their performances were amazing, and we're glad to have them take the "stage" at Elderly. Fresh from their appearance at the New Directions Cello Festival in Wisconsin, the band features the "sneaky original melodic" wild goblinesque music from Snee, with cellist/guitarist/composer Eggleston, the acclaimed vocals of O'Donovan, Jed Wilson on keyboards, Jacob Silver on double-bass, and percussionist Robin MacMillan. Interestingly, O'Donovan has her own band of traditional old-time artists, called Aoife O'Donovan and Crooked Still., recently back from touring Ireland.

"His cello is so vivid, whether swaggering merrily, like a drunken bear, or pumping dark, threatening drones.... He is inventing a new way of hearing and playing cello." - Boston Globe

"...[A] band so talented and original that they need their own genre. The world needs more Snee." - Matt Smith, director of the world-renown folk venue Club Passim, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Besides touring regularly with Darol Anger and Crooked Still, Rushad has been a guest musician with such artists as Mark O'Connor and Tim O'Brien. He has played Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center and has made frequent appearances on national radio, including Prairie Home Companion.... Aoife has cut a figure in the Boston folk scene when she's not traveling with Crooked Still or Rushad's Wild Band of Snee.

Wacky, zany, one-of-a-kind, inventive, unfettered, sensitive.... these are just a few of the words in the blurbs. The Wild Band of Snee can't be beat--come see for yourself.

Check out recordings we carry featuring Rushad Eggleston; Aoife O'Donovan