News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Dave Thom will roll into town on November 4 for a show at The Belfry with the band Grateful Bluegrass Boys.
Grateful Bluegrass Boys is a string band that plays traditional bluegrass versions of classic rock favorites from bands such as the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, The Eagles, Rolling Stones and more. These songs, combined with classic bluegrass and country tunes, consistently have audiences singing and dancing along the whole show.
Thom, who fronts the David Thom Band and Vintage Grass, plays mandolin and guitar. He also spent two years working for David "Dawg" Grisman.
And back in the early 1990s, he was half of the duo Tisdel and Thom, playing American music in Slovenia with Brad Tisdel, who is now creative director of Sisters Folk Festival.
Tisdel & Thom will open the show at The Belfry, marking the first time the duo has played together since they were in their 20s and working the bars in Europe.
Tisdel recalled the old days in an interview with The Nugget.
After college, he found himself venturing out into the world, playing his music.
"I played a little bit of the route for a year-and-a-half," he said.
He lived in Missoula, Montana for a bit, playing in a band with Thom and another musician named Cory Haydon. That band broke up and Tisdel played solo for a while before Thom proposed that they work as a duo.
They cut a CD, which drew the attention of a businessman from Slovenia, who booked them for an extended contract to play at his small resort and hotel in that Central European nation.
"He considered us the Simon & Garfunkel duo from 'the Montana,'" Tisdel recalled.
It was a tense time in the region. The Serbo-Croation conflict was raging just 200 kilometers away, in the first full-scale combat in Europe since the end of World War II.
"It was super intense," Tisdel recalled.
After about five months, the duo left Slovenia for Prague in the Czech Republic, where they got a three-week gig playing American tunes in a bar several nights a week.
Tisdel figured the last time the two played together was in 1995. After returning to the States, Thom ended up in California, continuing his musical career, and Tisdel ended up in Sisters, where he was a finalist in the first Sisters Folk Festival songwriting contest. He would soon become involved with the educational outreach of the festival, then come on board to direct the festival's creative development.
Hooking back up with his old musical partner when he rolls into town was an obvious move.
"He's a great guitar-player, a great picker and singer," Tisdel said. "We'll play a half-hour or something. It'll just be the two of us."
Just like it was two decades ago in a corner of Europe...
For more information and to purchase tickets, visit www.belfryevents.com/event/grateful-bluegrass-boys.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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