Jens Kruger

He was born on 18 November 1962 in Rothrist, Switzerland, a year after his brother Uwe; the family had moved there from Germany. He played harmonica at five, was taken with the banjo at seven, and at ten got his first instrument, a tenor banjo, playing his first show two weeks later. The family’s records of Chet Atkins, Doc Watson and Bill Monroe drew the brothers in, and they gave their first public show together in 1973. At twelve Jens was playing in a band with Uwe and recording for Swiss National Radio, and in 1976 a Flatt & Scruggs album, Strictly Instrumental, turned them toward bluegrass. At seventeen the brothers were busking across Europe, and with the Galfano Brothers of New York they formed Rocky Road, which CBS Records signed in 1981.

The brothers then went separate ways, Uwe into country music and Jens toward bluegrass, working on the railways to save for a trip to the United States. There, in 1982, he met Bill Monroe, played with him at the Bean Blossom festival and appeared with him on the Grand Ole Opry, the first European banjo player on that stage. Back in Switzerland he studied music, played electric guitar in several bands and taught.

In 1987 he and Uwe reunited for an acoustic group of guitar, banjo and bass, signing with Canaris Records and touring central Europe, and in 1989 Swiss National Radio gave them a program of their own, The Kruger Brothers Radio Show. That year they met Joel Landsberg, a New York-born bassist; in 1991 Jens released a solo banjo album, Days in the Field; and by 1993 they were officially the Kruger Brothers, with three albums for K-tel. After a large stage production in 1996 he gave all his time to the band and co-founded Double Time Music, the label on which the trio has issued its records since, among them Travel the Gravel (1998), Up 18 North (2002), Choices (2004), Forever and a Day (2010) and Remembering Doc Watson (2013), and on which he released two solo albums. He has recorded, mixed and engineered all of the band’s releases.

The trio played MerleFest in North Carolina in 1997, were asked back every year after, and began touring the United States that autumn. In 2003 Jens moved his family to North Carolina and became director of research and development at Deering, where he designed his own tone ring and helped develop the Tenbrooks and Eagle series; he has also worked with Remo and Gotoh on banjo parts. He received a Green Card under the Extraordinary Ability program in 2005. He has published two banjo tutors, The Banjo Techniques of Jens Kruger (2006) and Jens Kruger’s Banjo Method for Beginners (2009), and has taught as a guest professor at colleges including Berklee.

His longer compositions began with Music from the Spring, which he performed in Washington in 2006 with support from the National Endowment for the Arts; that June an American flag was flown over the Capitol in his honor, and in 2007 the NEA gave the Bangor Symphony Orchestra and the Kruger Brothers an award for Artistic Excellence for the work. Appalachian Concerto (2011), Spirit of the Rockies (2014), Lucid Dreamer (2015, recorded with the Kontras Quartet), Roan Mountain Suite (2017) and Moonshine Sonata (2023) followed. On 27 September 2013 the trio played his “Jack of the Wood” on the Late Show with David Letterman with the Kontras Quartet and Steve Martin, and he was presented with the Steve Martin Prize. The Kruger Brothers made their Grand Ole Opry debut as a trio on 6 August 2024.

• 2011: Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame (Regional Musician)
• 2013: Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass Music
• 2020: Wilkes County Hall of Fame (with the Kruger Brothers)
• 2021: American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame (5-String Performance)
• International Banjo Hall of Fame and American Folk Music Hall of Fame (years not given)