Ron Cody
Ron Cody is a banjo player from the Portland, Maine, area who plays the five-string banjo in a melodic style across bluegrass, old-time, Irish music and jazz. He founded and led the quartet Fretwater, has made several albums under his own name, among them The Cooper Sessions (2016), a set of instrumentals on which his banjo is paired with a series of fiddlers, and writes a column on melodic banjo for Banjo Newsletter.
By 1997 Cody had founded Fretwater, a Portland ensemble that played original jazz built around the five-string banjo, and its album Balance came out in 1999 as Ron Cody & Fretwater. He turned to Irish music on The Talking Rake (2008), a collection of Irish instrumentals for banjo made with nine other string players from the region, among them the cellist Natalie Haas and the mandolin player Joe Walsh, who wrote and played “Bob’s Bucket.” Around the same time he was playing with the Stowaways, a band whose range ran from traditional bluegrass to newgrass. Sprung a Spring followed in 2012 and the single “Jerry’s Breakdown” in 2013.
The fiddlers on The Cooper Sessions (June 2016) include Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Mike Barnett, Darol Anger, Alex Hargreaves, Brittany Haas, Matt Glaser, Bruce Molsky, Jonathan Cooper and Tristan and Tashina Clarridge, and players such as Roland White, Jesse Brock and Grant Gordy fill out the supporting bands. The pieces run from “Amanda’s Reel” and “Golden Eagle Hornpipe” to “Tommy Jarrell’s Bonaparte’s” and “Bonaparte Crossing the Rhine.” That year he was also the banjo player in the Gather Rounders, a Maine quintet with the singer-songwriter Caroline Cotter, the guitarist Lincoln Meyers, the fiddler Eric Lee and the bassist Wendy Cody, and his recordings had been played on All Things Considered, The Thistle and Shamrock and Sirius radio’s bluegrass channel.
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Ron CodyPlayed on recording with Ron Cody
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Three Tall PinesPlayed on recording with Three Tall Pines
