Love Canon
PROJECTS:
Sprouting from the musical foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Charlottesville, Virginia’s LOVE CANON bring their own raucous blend of bluegrass to the masses. Their most recent release, Cover Story debuted at #1 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart with its ingenious acoustic renditions of classic hits from the 80s and 90s from the likes of Peter Gabriel, Billy Joel, Depeche Mode, and Paul Simon. Style Weekly writes, “LOVE CANON doesn’t cover the music of the 80s as much as kidnap it and take it on a bluegrass-tinged joyride…refreshing and extending the originals with affectionate humor and effortless virtuosity.” The songs in Cover Story become a vehicle for the band to demonstrate their prowess through impressive translations of electric-tinged pop tunes into modern day acoustic music. Using bluegrass instrumentation to imitate processed electronic sounds, they’ve achieved a sonic effect that is somehow new and different, but yet still satisfyingly similar to the songs we know and love.
LOVE CANON features the wide-ranging vocal stylings of lead singer and guitarist Jesse Harper and Darrell Muller holding down the low-end on standup bass (both former members of Old School Freight Train), matched with banjo master Adam Larrabee, mandolin pickin’ by Andy Thacker, and the slick sounds of resonator guitar king Jay Starling on the Beard MA-6. The group and its individual members have shared the stage and studio with many notable artists over the years including Keb Mo, Jason Mraz, Bruce Hornsby, Warren Haynes, Josh Ritter, Ricky Skaggs, Merle Haggard, David Grisman, KD Lang, Emmylou Harris, Sara Bareilles, John C. Reilly, Madeleine Peyroux, Colbie Caillat, and many others
PRESS QUOTES:
Charlottesville’s Love Canon takes ’80s hits and spins them into funky bluegrass tunes full of peppy mandolin and singing fiddles.
The Washington Post
[Love Canon] takes the original recordings seriously, and produce a high-quality product that combines the fun of hearing a former hit song, with the novelty of a bluegrass arrangement.
Bluegrass Today
Gathering a clutch of pop or rock classics and rendering them bluegrass-style has been done a time or two, but Love Canon’s iteration comes across as more serious in purpose.
The Boston Globe
Love Canon’s Cover Story brings acoustic instruments and creative spirit to 1980s hits
Charlottesville New Advance
Whether people are drawn to Love Canon by the nostalgia of the songs or the perplexing bluegrass interpretation they’re presented in one thing is for certain’“the group has people’s attention.
Big Blue Tunes
