The lineage isn’t hard to figure out: Dylan/Beatles/Byrds/Dillard & Clark/NGDB/Circle Album, and so on. All brought to you by the fading signal of 102.3 FM, WHFS, Bethesda, MD. How else would four suburban adolescents from the soulless, mid-60’s-built, housing developments of Annandale and Springfield, VA, grasp onto the folk, country and bluegrass strains of popular music that colored the cultural landscape in the early 1970’s? After all, this was the time of Led Zeppelin, The Who, J. Geils, Grand Funk, and countless other Rock and Roll acts capturing the hearts and souls of 14-year olds across the country. Guys like Jimmy Martin, Ralph Stanley, Bill Monroe, and The Country Gentlemen may have meant something to older, more progressively-minded liberal arts majors, but they typically didn’t resonate with your average Fairfax County 9 th grader. Dan Mead, John Lowe, Mark Rogers and Tony Stephan, saw and heard it differently.

This is the story of a truly unknown, undiscovered, and nearly-forgotten band that evolved from it’s rock roots and explored, emulated and in some ways pioneered a blending of acoustic beatle-ish songs with bluegrass and country music. Similar to the dumb-luck ways of Forrest Gump, this young band found itself in pivotal and somewhat significant settings. For example, in 1973 they played on the very first stage of the Birchmere, just as the club was beginning to gather steam and eventually become one of the premiere east coast venues for live acoustic music. In 1974 they opened up for the highly influential Washington-based bluegrass band, The Seldom Scene, at a Burke, VA high school gymnasium. A year later, they found themselves playing and singing Salty Dog Blues on the main stage of the original Filene Center at Wolf Trap Farm Park. All three of those gigs were non-paid. Somebody, somewhere just thought these guys would enjoy the experience and in-turn, maybe the people who did pay to be there, might enjoy it as well.