SloGrass – Bossa Dorado

(Faculty, Alum, and Others Submission)

Theme: Human Connection in a Virtual World

Artist Statement:

SloGrass has been entertaining audiences for 30 years with its unique brand of acoustic Americana bluegrass. While the name implies a strong connection to bluegrass music, we love and play all kinds. When not playing at summer gazebo concerts, coffeehouses, weddings, and professional events we’ve found time and space to record four CD’s and rehearse nearly every Monday night of nearly every year.

The Slo- was initially inspired by our need to slow the tempos of fiddle tunes. Now it inspires us to think of new meanings beyond Sustainable, Local, and Organic. Part of the fun is reaching beyond comfort zones into breakdown tempos. Pushing the envelope sometimes results in spinning out of control. So, we aspire to transform fear of crash-and-burn, into love of opportunity-for-miraculous-recovery. On a good day, when it all comes together, time seems to SLO down, reminding us of the proverbial “candle-in-a-windless-place”. The pandemic temporarily sucked the air out of our place, extinguishing the candle, and diminishing our human connection in this Zoom world. However, it catalyzed us to imagine something new during these challenging times. The result is our first video – not really bluegrass but hopefully enjoyable —