Kip Beacco - Mandolin, Fiddle, Parlor Guitar and Voice.
Teddy Weber - Guitar, National Steel Guitar and Voice.
Matt Downing - String Bass, and the occasional yelp.
Adam Tanner (filled in for Kip in 2007) - Fiddle, Mandolin, Guitar and Vocal
Influences
The Country, its Music and its People. 78 rpm records, Brother Style Duets, Early-Authentic Country Swing and Early Jazz. Naysayers, disbelievers, those that doubt, lack credit, and refuse to acknowledge....but better yet, the fans, the lovers and musicians from the road....you are all remembered and very much appreciated. This is where the music comes from.
Sounds Like
Well, we can never make up our mind. But these are some of the things "THEY" say we sound like:
"The Hunger Mountain Boys blow right past 1960's pop revival and kick it even older-school with sweet pieces of twangy, acoustic Americana that has a '30's and '40's feel."
-Boston Globe
"The group's sound is very resolutely old-school, but it's also resolutely eclectic. "Hiccup Remedy Blues" sounds like 1930's hot jazz, while "I've Got The Blues Mary" is more countryish with brother-duo harmonies and some startlingly virtuosic bottleneck slide guitar, and "Departure Day" sounds like an early Monroe Brothers tune with lickety-split guitar/mandolin interplay and tight sweet vocal harmonies. And that's just the first three songs on the album! Very highly recommended."
-Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine Dec 2006
“These boys from The Berkshires are a little too melodic to be old-time and a little too rough hewn to be bluegrass.... The album careens from blisteringly fast to cheerfully rambling….Their compositions are indistinguishable in quality and tone from the older tunes covered.”
-Dirty Linen Magazine Feb/March 2007
"It's hillbilly touched with hokum and ragtime, with Appalachian folk always looming somewhere, close or distant, in the background. The result is a kind of rural vaudeville music. It's easy, of course, to do this uninterestingly. After all, there's no shortage these days of reissue CDs documenting the good old days of brother duets, obviously the HMBs' proximate influence. It's hard to persuade experienced listeners that they might have a reason to tear themselves away from the Monroe Brothers, the Delmore Brothers or the Blue Sky Boys when they're available -- at least as recorded voices -- to remind us of some of the greatest country music ever preserved on wax.
Happily, the HMBs don't really sound like any of them. For all their looking backward, they're too smart to indulge themselves in stale, needless duplication and repetition. They're good, they're having loads of fun and they choose solid material from both source recordings and their own in-the-tradition compositions.... If you aren't careful, the HMBs will get you to believe in time travel.
-Jerome Clark
Rambles.NET
28 October 2006
"These are some nimble-fingered, barn-burnin country boys . . . or theyre time-travelers, one or the other."
-Kevan Breitinger
indie-music.com / 2005
The Hunger Mountain Boys (Kip Beacco, Teddy Weber and Matt Downing) have just cracked the half-decade mark of their touring and recording career. In that short time, they have released four full-length albums and one vinyl single on their own record label, toured from coast to coast, Canada, Europe and the UK, and have garnered a collection of accolades from USA Today to Bluegrass Unlimited.
Fulfilling invitations to open for such Americana icons as Taj Mahal, Doc Watson, Iris Dement and Ralph Stanley, among others, The Hunger Mountain Boys have directly absorbed musical influences from a broad reaching transection of American music. Merging these contemporary influences with their own eclectic upbringings and infatuation with the 1920’s, 30’s, and 40’s western swing, country jazz and early bluegrass, The Hunger Mountain Boys embody these musical traditions while revealing their own voices. Their music resonates from an unoccupied niche in the resurgence of today’s acoustic string bands. The Hunger Mountain Boys show no sign of slowing down.
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4
Hey Guys,the new stuff sounds really great...However,I feel a little sad about not hearing some licks from one of the the best mandolin operators on the planet...Mr.K.B.Have fun in the UK,A.T.
Well, after Homestead we came back to Sacramento for a few weeks of training then South Dakota for about 4 weeks of chainsawing and piling tree limbs. Now I'm back in Sac on the weekends and at the Placerville Ranger District Office (US Forest Service) Monday-Thursday. We train hard and pretend to be wildland firefighters, but they have yet to send us out on one! Hopefully someday soon!
