Uncle Earl

Band · Active 2000–present · Lyons
Old-Time (Contemporary)

Uncle Earl is an old-time string band of women, started in 2000 by KC Groves and Jo Serrapère. Its best-known lineup, from late 2003 to 2010, was Groves, Kristin Andreassen, Rayna Gellert and Abigail Washburn, all sharing the singing, and it made two albums for Rounder, She Waits for Night (2005), produced by Dirk Powell, and Waterloo, Tennessee (2007), produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin.

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Groves and Serrapère, both songwriters and multi-instrumentalists, had not set out to form a band: they put together a temporary lineup to play a few shows promoting a CD of traditional material they had recorded, and when those went well the group stayed together. The name was meant as a joke for an all-women band, though Groves has said they were fans of Earl Scruggs, Steve Earle and Uncle Tupelo. The early lineup changed several times, with Tahmineh Gueramy on fiddle, Casey Henry on banjo and Amanda Kowalski and Sally Truitt on bass among its members, and in 2002 the band released its first album, She Went Upstairs.

Serrapère left in 2003, and by the end of that year the lineup was Groves on mandolin and guitar, Washburn on banjo, Gellert on fiddle and Andreassen on guitar, fiddle and clogging, with a series of bass players rather than a permanent one. In 2004 the band released two EPs, Going to the Western Slope and Raise a Ruckus, the second with Sharon Gilchrist on bass, and that summer, at a six-hour gig at Oskar Blues in Lyons, Colorado, during the RockyGrass festival, they met John Paul Jones when Chris Thile and Jones joined them on stage.

National touring and the EPs brought the band to Rounder, which released She Waits for Night in 2005. Dirk Powell produced it, Dan Rose played bass, and its songs included “Sugar Babe,” “Ida Red” and “Booth Shot Lincoln”; its packaging won the IBMA’s graphic design award in 2006. Jones produced Waterloo, Tennessee (Rounder, 2007), with Erin Coats Youngberg and Eric Thorin on bass, and at the Folk Alliance awards in Memphis in February 2008 it was named Album of the Year, while Uncle Earl shared the Traditional Artist award with David Bromberg. Touring for the album took them from the BBC to Bonnaroo.

In late 2009 the band called off a tour, citing trouble coordinating its members’ schedules, and in 2010 it announced that Gellert and Washburn had left on good terms. Andreassen and Groves carried on with Stephanie Coleman on fiddle, Paula Bradley on banjo, banjo ukulele and clogging, and Rachel Eddy on banjo, fiddle and bass, touring Europe and Australia in 2010, and have since reconvened the band from time to time. In 2016 the Andreassen, Gellert, Groves and Washburn lineup reunited for a handful of shows.

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