Railroad Earth in “Bluegrass on the Grass” at the Quad City Botanical Center -- August 16.
Sunday, August 16, 6 p.m.
Quad City Botanical Center, 2525 Fourth Avenue, Rock Island IL
Transforming its gardens into one of the region's most memorable concert experiences, Rock Island's Quad City Botanical Center will host a special "Bluegrass on the Grass" music event on August 16, allowing guests, as surrounded by blooms, trees, and fellow music lovers, to experience an unforgettable night with the artists of Railroad Earth and Yonder Mountain String Band.
Railroad Earth is a bluegrass-influenced Americana band formed in Stillwater, New Jersey in 2001. With the outfit currently composed of Todd Sheaffer, Tim Carbone, John Skehan, Carey Harmon, Dave Speranza, Mike Robinson, and Matt Slocum, their music combines elements of progressive bluegrass, folk, rock, country, jazz, Celtic and other Americana influences. For more than two decades, Railroad Earth has captivated audiences with gleefully unpredictable live shows and eloquent and elevated studio output. The group introduced its signature sound on 2001’s The Black Bear Sessions.
Between selling out hallowed venues such as Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO, they’ve been responsible for launching signature festivals Hangtown Music Festival in Placerville, California and Hillberry: The Harvest Moon Festival in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Sought after by legends, the John Denver Estate tapped them to put lyrics penned by the late John Denver to music on the 2019 vinyl EP, Railroad Earth: The John Denver Letters. Beyond tallying tens of millions of streams, the collective have earned widespread critical acclaim from David Fricke of Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Glide Magazine, and NPR, the latter of which assured, “Well-versed in rambling around, as you might expect from a band named after a Jack Kerouac poem, the New Jersey-built jam-grass engine Railroad Earth has let no moss grow under its rustic wheels.”
Their ensemble boasting Dave Johnston, Ben Kaufmann, Adam Aijala, Coleman Smith, and Nick Piccininni, the progressive bluegrass artists of Yonder Mountain String Band had their first Billboard hit with 2002's Mountain Tracks: Volume 2, which made it to number 11 on the Bluegrass chart and led to honors such as the musicians' inclusion on the 2005 album This Bird Has Flown – A 40th Anniversary Tribute to the Beatles' Rubber Soul and a performance at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. The group also boasted three consecutive albums – Yonder Mountain String Band, Mountain Tracks: Volume 5, and The Show – that landed at number three on the Billboard Bluegrass chart. A similar top-three hit landed with 2018's Love. Ain't Love, praised by Live for Live Music as a work in which the chart-topping group “finds plenty of new twists on the way to making a stellar record," while Get Yourself Outside was hailed by Americana Highways for the “interplay between guitar, banjo, and fiddle" that "seduces the listener while mandolin and bass push the train ever onward.”
The Quad City Botanical Center's “Bluegrass on the Grass” concert with Railroad Earth and Yonder Mountain String Band takes place on August 16, and opens with a 7 p.m. set by guest artists Logan Springer & the Wonderfully Wild. For more information and tickets, call (309)794-0991 and visit QCGardens.com.
