Section House

When the album came out in April 2016, all five were professional players aged thirty or younger. Ramsey and Partin were members of Mountain Heart, where Stargel had also played; Stargel had worked with Sierra Hull and the Lovell Sisters, McDowell was the fiddler in the Claire Lynch Band, and Walker had played with Hull and with Chris Henry & the Hardcore Grass. The band was never meant for touring or regular gigs: it was a group of friends who liked playing together and wanted to record as a unit.

A Collection of Instrumentals mixes fiddle tunes and standards such as “Shakin’ Down the Acorns,” “Dance All Night,” “Snowflake Reel” and “Paddy on the Turnpike” with a “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” recast in G minor, and with the members’ own pieces: Ramsey’s waltz “Veil of Questions,” “A Lost Partner’s Promenade” and “King & Water,” Stargel’s ballad “Pouches,” Walker’s minor-key banjo tune “Rat King,” and “Koopa’s Road,” an arrangement of background music from Nintendo’s Super Mario games. The originals lean toward the jazz-inflected new acoustic music of the late 1970s, with stated melodies followed by improvised solos, and there is no vocal on the record.

Nine years later, in April 2025, Section House came back on Mountain Fever with the same mandolin, fiddle, banjo and guitar players and Gaven Largent, a self-described Ralph Stanley devotee, on resonator guitar and vocals. Their first release was Stanley’s “Long Skinny Lanky Sarah Jane.”