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“Beautiful and wild, there are no boundaries here. Something I have never heard before.” – Jerry Douglas
When you look at Damien & Ron’s backgrounds, they’ve followed similar trajectories. Both began playing at a young age, immersed in their local scenes: Ron in Southern California and Damien in Coleraine, Northern Ireland.
They’ve both played fundamental roles in bands. Ron’s big gig came in 1991, when he joined the mighty force of Alison Krauss’ band, for whom Grammy and Bluegrass Awards have rained down plentifully over the years.
Damien played with Irish/Anglo supergroup Flook among others, before joining Kate Rusby’s band in 2008 (before exchanging wedding bands in 2010). He’s also been nominated twice at BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and hailed by none other than Jo Whiley as a ‘sonic architect.’ Co-incidentally it is through Rusby that the two met and quickly became brothers. Take two people who know their scenes, traditional Irish and Bluegrass respectively, AND their instruments inside-out, put them in a studio, plunk them on a stage and add a heady dose of bromance, and you get a crossover of Irish banjo and bluegrass banjo that has never quite been offered before.