Alert: New York-based Steam Powered Hour to Host "Battle of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Bands," January 10

Matt Diffee, New Yorker magazine cartoonist and host of the Steam Powered Hour has announced that Bluegrassy bands will battle it out for cash and prizes, during a special Steam Powered Hour event, January 10. Judges will be Norm Parenteau of Slipshod Management in Nashville, Dawn Holliday of The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Rita Houston, music director of WFUV, and Dave Godowsky, Director of A&R at Rounder Records. The winning band gets a slot in next year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and other prizes.

New York, NY (PRWEB) December 23, 2009

Matt Diffee, New Yorker magazine cartoonist and host of the Steam Powered Hour has announced that Bluegrassy bands will battle it out for cash and prizes, during a special Steam Powered Hour event, January 10.

Judges will be Norm Parenteau of Slipshod Management in Nashville, who represents The Felice Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show, Dawn Holliday of The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, Rita Houston, music director of WFUV, and Dave Godowsky, Director of A&R at Rounder Records. The winning band gets a slot in next year’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival and other prizes.

Bands interested in entering must meet the following requirements:

"First off, you must be at least two people to be considered a band. One man bands are wonderful, but this isn’t the place. Maybe we’ll do that another time. To be in the realm of “bluegrassy,” you must have either a banjo or a fiddle (no violins), and the only electrified instruments allowed are bass, if you must. But all you electric bassists will have to use the amp we provide. And it will be sucky. Kidding. If you have percussion, that’s fine, but you have to be able to carry it on and off with you with no set up time. Be warned, if you get too “world musicy” we might make fun of you. Along those same lines, no vests or hammer pants. You really shouldn’t have any horns or keyboards. Things should be mostly string-based. If you have questionable instrumentation, just get in touch with us and we’ll use our human abilities to reason and make the call."

Bands interested in being considered as combatants, should contact battle(at)steampoweredhour(dot)com.

The battle will take place January 10 from 8 - 11 pm at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, 236 East 3rd Street, New York, NY. Tickets are available online at http://www.nuyorican.org

The Steam Powered Hour is a monthly variety show in New York’s East Village featuring the best in acoustic music and comedy. Past performers have included Gillian Welch, Tony Trischka, Michael Daves,, Pork Chop Willie, The Steep Canyon Rangers, Demetri Martin, Steve Martin, Jessi Klein, Patrick Borelli, James Braly, Jeff Sumerel, Adam Wade, Val Kappa, DJ Hazard, Stuckey & Murray and many, many more.

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