Wake Up To Greensky Bluegrass’ Stress Dreams

The new album Stress Dreams by the Michigan-based band Greensky Bluegrass, released on January 21, 2022, via Thirty Tigers/Big Blue Zoo Records, opens with a whoosh and then some banjo. The distinctive sound of the banjo signals the Bluegrass part of Greensky but it’s the whoosh and the echo on Paul Hoffman’s lead vocals that lets you know that it’s more than bluegrass, or a retro celebration of American Roots. Greensky Bluegrass is a band that uses dobro, mandolin, and upright bass in a way that is more rock and roll than Americana.

To set this in context, some fifty years ago, The Grateful Dead, the ur-jam band, released their two most commercial studio albums Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. The albums took folk, bluegrass, jug band, blues and fused them into a deeply American sound that showed its roots but that could fly to unexpected heights taking the listener along for the journey. This is the target Greensky circles in songs such as Until I Sing, with its deep harmonies, strong lyrics, and the band’s inventive strumming and picking.

The connection to the Dead is one the band has made in the past, performing with Phil Lesh and Bob Kreutzmann but in concert they have displayed wider references and have been known to perform covers of Prince’s “When Doves Cry,” Phish’s ‘Chalkdust Torture’, and Traffic’s “Light up or Leave Me Alone.” Greensky Bluegrass has been around for almost two decades, and like The Dead in their heyday, Greeensky Bluegrass are known to their fans for their enthusiastic live shows and steady touring.

Stress Dreams, the title track of their eighth studio album, is a beautiful song that would feel right at home on a playlist with the Avett Brothers, The Lumineers and Dawes. Starting to get the picture? It’s not just a sound but more an almost artisanal quality to the vocals and musical instrumentation of the tracks. So, for example, the concluding track, “Reasons to Stay” is an almost seven-minute song that morphs a little more than halfway from acoustic to electric with a flourish of electric drum kit and electric organ – as if to say – you think you can pigeonhole us? Think again.

On some songs, like Give a Shit, the musicianship overwhelms the lyrics, but it’s hard not to pay attention to the virtuoso musical riffs searing between lyric stanzas. Other songs like Streetlight sound like Country Standards in the making. Worry for You  or the high energy ‘New & Improved,’ fit in snugly pegged as Americana or Roots.

It’s easy to get lost in Hoffman’s deep voice and rich vocals which remain consistent from song to song. Every so often, however, the lyrics catch you off guard, such as the refrain in “Grow Together”: “We can grow old together… if we can find the time,” which is a haunting indictment of modern life bathed in a mix of instrumentation and beautiful guitar solos.

What’s remarkable about Stress Dreams, as produced by Dominic Davis and Glenn Brown, is that while each song can be labeled solidly in one musical category over another, each uniquely identifies as a Greensky Bluegrass song. It would be going too far to say, with a nod to Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan, that they contain multitudes; but despite it being human nature (and that of a critic) to categorize, Greensky Bluegrass is more than any one style or label – they represent a unique, and always-evolving fusion of musical styles made their own, that is entirely Greensky Bluegrass.

If you are a fan, or if you are just waking up to Greensky Bluegrass, their new album Stress Dreams is your ticket to exploring a progressive bluegrass that knows no bounds.