The Farewell Drifters: Echo Boom
The music of The Farewell Drifters is lodged in my brain. There must be some special part of the brain designated to take insanely catchy music and store it away in a section with a giant repeat button that can be activated from that point until eternity. That section has been on overdrive for me since I heard this band several weeks ago for the first time. And while this might drive me right to the straightjacket had it been many other bands, with The Farewell Drifters I don’t even care.
The quintet played at Iota Club and Café outside of Washington D.C. while on tour promoting the release of the group’s latest album, Echo Boom. They opened with exactly the type of insanely catchy song mentioned above, We Go Together. Acoustic instruments have never exhibited such energy. Clad in their now trademark Members Only jackets, the group introduced D.C. to the sound that caused their album to debut at #6 on Billboard’s bluegrass charts. Despite the name of the chart, The Farewell Drifters created a sound on Echo Boom that brilliantly melds the genres of indie pop and their traditional bluegrass roots. We Go Together opens with the kind of tight harmony and hand-clapping that calls to mind pop of the 1960’s, yet the album certainly does not stay there. The last tune on the album, Common Ties, is straight from bluegrass/folk, but if you start at the first track, you might be hard pressed to identify a bluegrass influence in the indie pop until halfway through the song.
The audience in D.C. did not particularly care what genre The Farewell Drifters were playing, but simply enjoyed great music. The members of the band were clearly doing the same. In instrumental breaks, lead vocalist Zach Bevill would turn with his guitar to violinist Christian Sedelmyer or Joshua Britt on mandolin and was guaranteed to be met with energy equal to or even greater than his own. And the enthusiasm did not let up. The Farewell Drifters ended this particular show with two broken guitar strings and one shredded violin bow. I have a feeling that this may not even be a record for them. During the brief rest and retuning between songs, Britt offered hilariously dry observations and comments, one being that after a previous show, a ten year old boy had described the Drifters as “a cross between Napoleon Dynamite and The Wizard of Oz.” I hope they gave him a free CD or something because that kid was pretty insightful.
All of this on-stage enthusiasm was more than validated by the talent of the band members. Memorable hooks were woven tastefully into song structures and instrumental solos made the technical talent of the musicians clear. Also refreshing were the thoughtful, intelligent lyrics written mainly by Joshua Britt and Bevill. The album jacket explains its title, Echo Boom, as the name of the generation following the baby boomers. Echo Boomers were born in the 1980s and into the 1990s. It is as members of this generation themselves that The Farewell Drifters ponder their place in the world, where they have come from, and where they are going.
Despite the broken strings and injured bow, the audience in D.C. demanded an encore and The Farewell Drifters delivered. There are plenty more festivals and venues to catch them at this summer. So go dig out your old Members Only jacket and prepare to enjoy some great music. And you might also prepare for the fact that these songs will be playing in your head for the rest of your life. But don’t worry, you won’t regret it.
