The Dead South

Hilts and Kenyon, who had played together in a short-lived grunge band, came up with the idea of a stomping bluegrass band in 2012, and Crawford and Pringle, learning banjo and mandolin respectively, joined them. The band sold copies of its first EP, The Ocean Went Mad and We Were to Blame (2013), at shows, and its first album, Good Company, came out in 2014 on the German label Devil Duck Records, leading to long tours in Canada and Europe. In 2015 Crawford left and the studio musician Eliza Mary Doyle took over the banjo; for a time Erik Mehlsen also filled in on cello.

A video for “In Hell I’ll Be in Good Company,” from Good Company, released in October 2016, drew an audience to the band’s earlier record well after its release, and by 2019 it had passed 130 million views. Illusion & Doubt (2016) reached number five on the Billboard bluegrass chart and won the 2018 Juno for Traditional Roots Album of the Year, the same year the band was nominated for Breakthrough Group of the Year. Crawford returned in mid-2018. The band then traveled to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to make Sugar & Joy with the producer Jimmy Nutt; Six Shooter Records released it in 2019, and it won the band’s second Juno for Traditional Roots Album of the Year in 2020. The band also recorded for a tribute album to Roger Miller and sang duets with the Saskatchewan singer Colter Wall, and a live album, Served Live, followed in 2020.

Kenyon left the band in August 2020 and rejoined in June 2021. In March 2022 Six Shooter released two EPs of covers, Easy Listening for Jerks, Pt. 1, with bluegrass and old-time songs such as “You Are My Sunshine,” “Keep on the Sunny Side” and the Country Gentlemen’s “Matterhorn,” and Pt. 2, drawn from the band’s pre-show playlist, with songs by the Doors, System of a Down and the Misfits; all four members take turns singing lead. The band’s fourth album, Chains & Stakes, was recorded in May 2023 at Panoram Studio in Mexico City, again with Jimmy Nutt, and Six Shooter released it on 9 February 2024.