Hot Summer Nights: The High Hawks

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The word supergroup gets overused to describe side musical projects, but it’s apt and well-earned when it comes to The High Hawks. With nearly 150 years of collective touring and playing between them, Vince Herman (Leftover Salmon), Tim Carbone (Railroad Earth, Blue Sparks From Hell), Chad Staehly (Hard Working Americans), Adam Greuel (Horseshoes & Hand Grenades), Brian Adams (DeadPhish Orchestra) and Will Trask (Great American Taxi) have maintained a generation-spanning presence at the forefront of the roots music scene for over two decades.

But talk to the band members, and you’ll find that their reasons for getting together were much more down to earth.

“Sometimes you meet somebody and you hit it off, and you feel like, ‘Man, I don’t want to just look at the cover, I want to read that book,’” says guitarist Adam Greuel with a laugh. “It’s a tight-knit music community in our Americana-bluegrass-jam band world. Over the years, we all kept bumping into one another and realizing there was a deep sense of fellowship and kindred spirit. The main impetus to form The High Hawks was really a curiosity about one another, both musically and personally. This band came out of a yearning to hang out.”

“And the reason I think it worked so well is that we’d known each other for so long,” agrees multi-instrumentalist fiddler Tim Carbone. “I’ve sat in with Adam’s band. I produced two Great American Taxi records. I’ve worked with Chad in super creative situations. I’ve known the guys in Leftover Salmon for over twenty years. It’s one big happy family. It’s kind of the perfect situation. You have a group of guys who know and love each other. And oh yeah, by the way, we get to play these cool original songs too.”

But two years ago, when they first convened at guitarist-singer Vince Herman’s house in the Rockies, there was no clear road map for where they might go. Greuel says, “We had a run of shows booked in Colorado, and we didn’t know what kind of music we were really going to make. Everybody brought a few song ideas along. It was two days before our first show, and that’s when a lot of the songs came together and our whole vibe as a band came together. We have shared influences, shared musical vocabulary, but even with that, there was a kind of telepathy that was like, ‘Holy moly, not only should we be playing some shows, but let’s cut a record too!’”

“We went in with zero expectations,” says Carbone. “Once we got together and played the songs we had in mind, it was like, ‘Wow, there’s something going on here! This is not just a bunch of guys playing some songs. This is a band.’”

Learn more at artists.teamwass.com/music/the-high-hawks/

TICKETING

This is a non-ticketed event. Entry is FREE to all.

Gates open at 5:30pm, show starts at 6:30pm.

Moe’s Original BBQ Hot Summer Nights is brought to you by the nonprofit Vail Valley Foundation.