On the Road with Fred

HOT BUTTERED RUM STRING BAND
Playing, and Driving, a Well-Oiled Machine

California's Hot Buttered Rum is riding a big wave of success after a very successful 2005, when their summer tour schedule had the band performing at many premiere festivals, sharing stages with big names and gaining mass exposure to legions of new fans.

What these new fans found is a band whose music seems to transcend time. A combination of hook laden melodies, filled with contemporary content, and an instrumentation style that pushes the boundaries of traditional bluegrass, Hot Buttered Rum is a taste of something old and something new; something that sure feels good.

With one foot in the door of traditional bluegrass and other adventuring into vast possibilities of where their music can go, this is a band that sounds familiar, something you've heard since childhood, all the while sounding vital and fresh, blending elements of rock, reggae, folk blue grass, and many other genres to form vibrant new music that shows the promise of much more to come.

The band's second CD, "Well-Oiled Machine," featuring a title track that references the band's custom converted tour bus that is powered by recycled vegetable oil and biodiesel, is actually one of the band's most interesting stories. The bus gets the band to all of their shows, and is a moving testament to Hot Buttered Rum's commitment to using alternative fuels and lightening their impact on the environment. Armed with this conscious conviction, their addictive musical sound, and a seeming mission to spread social and conscious changes, the time could well be at hand for the emergence of Hot Buttered Rum to the national forefront.

A band that disregards, yet still respects, the restrictions of traditional blue grass music, Hot Buttered Rum also blends contemporary lyrics to create a hybrid sound that has an old time feel, yet is down right danceable. With the help of such luminaries as Peter Rowan, Mike Marshall and Darol Anger, the band brings forth their very best on "Well-Oiled Machine," showcasing the band's superior instrumental prowess, an innovative roots-based music steeped in traditional Appalachian blue grass, blended beautifully with a dose of the High Sierra mountains and lyrics for the ages.

** First published in HONEST TUNE magazine, Winter 2006

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