Grass Hounds
Jeff Adams, Sonny White, Brandon Lee, Bird Snider, Pete Adamson. photo by Cindy Steele
~ by Mark Blackwell
I
was in Nashville the other Saturday. The air was crisp and the sun was shining with just a few clouds. The wind was a bit gusty, but all in all, it was a perfect autumn day in
Brown County.
I headed over to the Salt Creek Winery tasting room to hear some music. The tasting room is a great little venue tucked away back in an alley.
The band I had planned on seeing calls themselves the“ Grass Hounds.” I thought to myself, I’ ll have to remember to ask the boys how they came up with the name.
When I arrived, there wasn’ t a band, just one feller tuning a banjo. This set me back a bit, for I was sure that I was acquainted with the banjo picker. This was some other guy.
I marched over and introduced myself. He shook my hand and introduced himself back to me. He said his name was Sonny, he was the bass player, and he was just tuning up the banjo whilst he waited for the real banjo slinger to arrive. Then a couple of other fellers showed up— Jeff the dobro player, and Brandon, the mandolin player— but for that afternoon he was playing guitar.
The guy tuning the banjo was the bass player, the mandolin player was playing the guitar, Pete, the guitar
56 Our Brown County • Nov./ Dec. 2018 picker, wasn’ t able to appear that day, and we were all waiting on the banjo player. I asked the boys how long they had been together. Things got murky again— three different band mates and three different answers. One said that they had been playing off and on together for couple of years. Another said he and the banjo player had been friends since grade school but had just started playing together about a year ago. The dobroist said he played in another band with the late Bird Snider— not that he’ s deceased, he was just late. Then the consensus was that as the“ Grass Hounds” they have been playing together since the spring of the year.
As I talked to Brandon, the mandolin / guitar picker, I thought he looked very familiar. I used to run into a Bluegrass band back about ten or twelve years ago called the New Old Cavalry and Brandon played with them. I asked him what happened to that band and he said most of the members grew up. I have heard that maturity is a leading cause of bands breaking up.
About that time, Bird showed up, and we got reacquainted while he shouldered his banjo. Bird and I used to live near each other, on different ridges. And I knew Bird through his other band, the“ White Lightning Boys.”