The Earl Brothers return to the Freight for a CD release show featuring a hot night of their trademark "original hillbilly bluegrass music." On their new, eponymous album, and certainly on our stage tonight, the band fuses a traditional sound with innovative songwriting, carving out new-yet-old, difficult-to-pigeonhole songs about rounders, ramblers, and broken-hearted fools.

Blazing their own way within the high lonesome bluegrass tradition, the S.F.-based Earl Brothers combine old-time respect with an avant-garde attitude, offering up original tunes about death, drinking, chasing and losing women—making sure to throw in an occasional honky-tonk gospel to atone for their transgressions. Tonight, Robert Earl Davis (banjo, lead vocals), Danny Morris (guitar, lead vocals), bassist James Touzel, and fiddler Tom Lucas ply their hard-scrabble vocals and tight, dark instrumentation on tunes old and new.

Visit the Earl Brothers' website

Listen to a track from the Earl Brothers: