The Gourds / Brave Combo

Whether you think The Gourds non-sequitur loving n’er-do-wells or post-modern lyrical geniuses, their mandala-like musical vignettes and gulps of down-home authenticity can not be denied. Musical lifers and road dogs to the end, Kevin ‘Shinyribs’ Russell, Jimmy Smith, Max Johnston, Keith Langford and Claude Bernard remain at once roots music’s envelope pushers and its torch bearers, its purveyors of Joyce-ian density and nickel novelgroove – its Jekyll and its Hyde. With their latest release, Haymaker, the band celebrates 15 years in music and the journey that has taken them
through the outer reaches of popular music… and back again.

For more than 25 years, Brave Combo has been America's premier contemporary polka band, and a Grammy winning one at that. Brave Combo is also a groundbreaking world music act, a hot jazz quintet, a rollicking rock'n'roll bar band, a Tex-Mex conjunto, a sizzling blues band, a saucy cocktail combo, a deadly serious novelty act, a Latin orchestra, and one of America's dance bands par excellence.