Wood and Wire

Kamel, who grew up in Houston, came to bluegrass through the jam bands he loved and studied music at the University of Texas; he began playing with the mandolinist Matt Slusher in 2010. With Fisher, a bass player trained in jazz, they formed Wood & Wire as a trio in 2011, and Smith, a banjo player who had played with Green Mountain Grass and the Asylum Street Spankers, joined a few months later. The four met through the Old Settler’s Music Festival in nearby Driftwood and a Monday night bluegrass gig in downtown Austin, and the band later became the core of the Monday bluegrass residency at Radio Coffee & Beer.

Their first album, Wood & Wire, released by the band in February 2013, was thirteen original songs written and arranged together, among them the prison-escape song “Mexico,” with Brittany Haas as guest fiddler. For the second, The Coast (February 2015), Kamel, Fisher and Smith went to Nashville to record with the producer Erick Jaskowiak; every song was written within the band, and Jason Carter and Andy Leftwich played fiddle. By the time it came out Bright, from El Paso, who had played and recorded with Peter Rowan and Tony Rice and belonged to the Two High String Band, had joined on mandolin. The band put out The Woodshed Sessions, Vol. 1, an EP, in December 2014, and a live album, Live at the Historic Scoot Inn, in 2016.

North of Despair, the first studio album with Bright, was recorded at The Zone in Dripping Springs and released by Blue Corn Music in April 2018, after a second Woodshed Sessions EP late in 2017. In December 2018 it was nominated for Best Bluegrass Album at the 61st Grammy Awards, alongside the Travelin’ McCourys, Mike Barnett, Sister Sadie and the Special Consensus. A remix of its “Just Don’t Make ’Em” with Danny Barnes followed in January 2019. The band went back to The Zone, with Pat Manske co-producing and engineering, for No Matter Where It Goes from Here, released by Blue Corn in August 2020. Its nine songs include “Pigs,” a song about money and exploitation, Geoff Union’s “Spirit of ’94,” about the Whiskey Rebellion, Bright’s instrumental “Clamp’s Chute,” a tribute to Vassar Clements played on the mandolin he had used with Clements, and Smith’s instrumental “Roadie’s Circles,” with Peter Rowan yodelling on one track.