2012 Best Bluegrass Band In St. Louis To Visit Cape Girardeau At Port Cape On 1/11/13

Port Cape proudly presents Elemental Shakedown, who recently was named St. Louis's Best Bluegrass band by the Riverfront Times. Doors will be open at 8:00 PM on Friday, January 11th.

Cape Girardeau, MO (I-Newswire) December 8, 2012 - On Saturday, January 11th, Cape Girardeau's Port Cape will host the first of three winter concerts with one of the hottest new bluegrass groups on the Midwestern map. Elemental Shakedown is a dazzling 5-piece outfit utilizing traditional bluegrass instrumentation and tight harmonies to get you up and moving and wanting more. This is the first of 3 shows this winter. Subsequent performances are on 2/16/13 and 4/13/13. The shows will be held at Port Cape River City Yacht Club in the upstairs venue.

Converging from all corners of the country and now somehow ending up in St. Louis, this truly insane group of musicians brings their own brand of bluegrass and jamming to the table! You will hear very traditional and very not so traditional breakdowns, buskings and jams of all the old time & new school faves! And find yourselves strangely endeared to the shenanigans along the way.

The tradition of bluegrass may be as old as St. Louis itself, but Elemental Shakedown isn't content to be a museum piece. The five members of the band come from across different corners of the country and have backgrounds in music about as diverse. They give the Midwest bluegrass scene — which often pits purists against progressives — a much-needed burst of creative energy. After a couple of years of playing pop songs arranged as bluegrass, guitarist Chris Helmick, bassist Matt Flory and funky fiddler Alyssa Avery brought on two long-time music vets to take the helm on staple bluegrass instruments. They struck gold, with Bob Stuckey of Indiana on banjo and St. Louis native Bryan Ranney on mandolin. Last year, Elemental Shakedown began performing original compositions that kick up against bluegrass' sometimes-rigid boundaries, exploring subgenres like jazz-grass, jam-grass, avant-garde-grass and, perhaps most wonderfully, funk-grass. To them, it's all booty-shaking, foot-stomping fun.