Grace Van’t Hof, one of our past (and hopefully future) correspondents for Bluegrass Today, tells us that she has started pre-production work on a new solo project.
She is a free-lance banjo picker and graphic artist in Boston who helped cover IBMA 2010 for us, and also created the cover image for our new theme song, The Speed Of Bluegrass. Until just recently, she also played with Della Mae, an all-female Beantown-based band who have decided to move ahead sans banjo.
Like a number of independent musicians working without a label, Grace is using Kickstarter.com to help generate financing for the project. The site is one of several that makes crowdsourcing for starving artists a manageable task. To date, she has raised almost half of her target goal, and hopes to get into the studio soon.
We asked Grace to share a few details about the album…
“Some of the folks on the record will include Todd Livingston on Dobro, Tony Watt on guitar, and an array of very talented Berklee students (hopefully including Dominic Leslie on mandolin and John Mailander on fiddle.) It’s being produced by Laura Cortese, one of the founding members of Della Mae, and former bassist with Uncle Earl.
The material will be four original songs penned by me, and 4 covers (a couple traditional, and a couple songwritery things). It will be very bluegrassy in nature, but there are going to be some departures. I’ll be playing a little clawhammer and tenor banjo on the project, as well as adding some percussion. There will be a couple old time style and country tunes with pedal steel and electric guitar.”
Van’t Hof says that she will be singing lead on all the tracks.
New Englanders can see Grace working from Boston with Tony Watt and Southeast Expressway, Flatt Rabbit, and the Sinner Friends. She anticipates putting her own group together to support the as-yet unnamed solo CD as well.
