The Pegwinders

Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Pegwinders

There are music lovers who would almost rather gnaw off an arm than endure yet another photocopied, overmixed, overproduced discount-store sound. And one can understand – country-and-western music is at present sodden with derivative hat-acts and three-chord commandos whose music is as lacking in creativity as their publicity stills.

And yet there are always a few rebels who don’t simply follow and imitate, but who with talent, discipline, and respect for their audience take an artistic tradition and make some seriously new noise with it. One group making a wonderful new contribution to folk culture is The Pegwinders.

Sure, they continue a musical tradition, but it’s a good old tradition born of pine trees, river bottoms, sawmills, farms, oil wells, machine shops, dirt roads, bare feet, some dogs in the front yard, church on Sunday, and knowing where you came from.

The fusion of blues, folk, rock, and hillbilly did not begin with Nashville in the 1950s; it originated much earlier in Kirbyville, Texas with Ivory Joe Hunter, who needs no adjectives. Nor is this an ossified tradition; East Texas is rich with young musicians whose hands are as skilled with wrench, saw, and plow as they are with fretboard, capo, and pick, with truck scales as well as musical scales. Blessed with formal instruction in church, school, or in private lessons, and informal pickup sessions at home and, yes, in that famous garage, fresh voices celebrate the culture given to them by mastering it and then pushing it forward in bold new ways.

Thus it is with The Pegwinders.

Sarah Rose Fusell is the brains, the beauty, and the voice – or The Voice – of The Pegwinders. When you hear that sweet, powerful, disciplined delivery, well, sure, the guys are great, but Sarah is the heart of the set.

Steve Fussell, the concussionist, can make the drums and cymbals sing as smoothly as a V-8 engine, for this master mechanic knows his way around all of them.

Cory Horton is the bass man, as in, yeah, that’s a BASS, man!

Colby Tharp is a triple threat with voice, guitar, and the harmonica, an underrated little instrument often relegated to a cliché background noise in prison movies. In the hands of this master, the harmonica sings like the winds through the pine tops on an autumn day.

Brady Barnett is a keyboardist who can gentle from the keys the softness of a spring morning and then make them stand up and howl like nobody’s Nashville business.

Sarah, Steve, Cory, Colby, and Brady are hardworking artists who as The Pegwinders make music, make happiness, and make history.

Yeah, they’re that good.

You can hear The Pegwinders at the Jasper Lions’ Club Rodeo on Thursday night, May 8th. Someday you can say with pride “I knew them when….”

http://www.reverbnation.com/thepegwinders

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/jasper/news/article/The-Pegwinders-will-perform-May-8th-at-the-Jasper-5438938.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF7ckZczvK0

http://kreenewsdaily.tumblr.com/post/84244427954

http://www.jasperlionsrodeo.com/

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