Punch Brothers’ adventures continue at Center Theater – JH News&Guide
Punch Brothers has a new album with a track titled “New Bike” spotlighting the quintet’s newest member, Brittany Haas.
“It’s the first track on the album, to introduce our new fiddler,” Paul Kowert, the band’s bassist since 2008, said from Terrytown, New York, where all five were hosting the fourth annual Acousticamp. “It’s got a big fiddle solo.”
The Grand Teton Music Festival brings Punch Brothers to the Center Theater on Monday. Led by mandolin genius Chris Thile, the band — Kowert, Haas, banjo player Noam Pikelny and guitarist Chris Eldridge — will play from the new Nonesuch release, “The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers,” which hits stands Friday, as well as selections from its six previous albums (eight if you count two made before the combo took the name Punch Brothers).
It’s been four and a half years since their last recording, “Hell on Church Street.” Making an album, Kowert said, is a “multiyear plan that evolves as it goes on. … When we decide we want to make a record, it’s like renewing your vows.”
“Unsung Adventures” grew out of a podcast Punch Brothers made over the 2023-24 winter called “Energy Curfew Music Hour.” The podcast is set in a future when energy is so scarce the power is turned off all across America for 24 hours each week. The Music Hour plays right before the lights go off. A second season was released the following winter.
“The plan was to make … a musical variety show with guests” — such as James Taylor, Jason Isbell, Norah Jones, Jon Batiste and Kacey Musgrove — “and we were the house band.”
Each show premiered a new composition, as on Thile’s “Prairie Home Companion” spinoff, “Live From Here.”
“Via making these two seasons over the course of two years, we ended up having most of an album written,” Kowert said.
This event is sold out. To join the waitlist, please call the Box Office at 307.733.1128.
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