ABOUT US

About 15 miles northeast out of Louisville, Kentucky, following the Ohio River upstream on Highway 42, you pass the Goshen Country Store and eventually come to Buckeye Lane.  It borders a grade school Joe and I attended in the early 70s, “in the fields,” mostly surrounded by horse farms back then, and it took us about a half hour by school bus to get there.  The school was new and it introduced an experimental, experiential, project-based method of teaching in which individual expression was prized, and there were very few (if any) text books, desks or classrooms. Beanbag chairs and cooperative projects were instead used to teach the basics of reading, writing, math, history, science…….and music.

 

Joe, two years older, was introducing me to music at home as well: the Stones, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, the B-52’s, the Cars, Bowie, the Specials … likewise of course, in a highly experimental stage of the art that supported a seemingly boundless variety of expression, somehow all sharing the same experience of being different.   And eventually leading us both to the holy grail of our cumulative musical influences – vintage American blues. 
 
But back to Buckeye Lane.  The gravel lane, shaded by a canopy of mostly buckeye and walnut trees, was a mystical oasis in the blissful quiet of the pristine bluegrass countryside.  It was out there just a bit beyond the horizon from the view of the school property bounds.   And so sought pubescent souls to adventure.   A round trip trek to that dark side – out there beyond where you were not supposed to go- was the perpetual dare during recess, and required a willful and scheming mind.  And for some of us, that allure to go beyond the safety of the known remains a heedless call – to travel, to experiment, to celebrate life.  

 

And so Buckeye Lane takes us back, but with the benefit of adding all that life experience from other roads we’ve traveled, together and separately. Like the project-based method of education that tied variety together with the basics, we have undertaken this ‘project’ to see what our own music, grounded in the same influences but varied by our own combined and individual expressions, might sound like – not surprisingly based in blues/rock, but also allowing whatever influences to wander in from our bluegrass stardust.   From primitive roots to Appalachian work songs to sounds of the ancient celtic motherland – we enjoy and embrace it all.  Welcome to our current musical, mystical trek to the unknown – we hope you enjoy it as much as we do.  

 

-Chris Whelan