Critical Grass is a collection of San Francisco East Bay musicians who discovered each other by accident at a Berkeley restaurant.
We dig all forms of bluegrass, all of bluegrass’s cousins, and great songwriters. We do Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs, but we also play John Prine, Norman Blake, and John Hartford. We love women songwriters – Kathy Kallick, Martha Scanlon, and Hazel Dickens are in our setlist.
On guitar and vocals is Chris Quale, who comes from a musical family – two of his sons are professional musicians. Jeremy Reinhard is on banjo, vocals, and bird identification. Leah Wollenberg sings and plays fiddle. In a previous 19th century life, she was an itinerant fiddle player in County Clare, Ireland. Leah’s fellow D&D nerd John Haupert plays mandolin and sings. Lee Jones plays bass and wrangles the band.
We celebrate our obligation to share and perpetuate music. Leah is a full-time fiddle teacher at Manning Music in Berkeley, and we’ve had her students come up and play a tune with us at gigs.
Like the D&D-inspired avatars on our band t-shirt, Critical Grass is on a campaign to spread joy and peace through music. We hope you’ll join us.