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By Christian Wagner
The “Menlo-Atherton Bears Alumni Bluegrass Band” made up of banjoist Ryan Breen, guitarist Henry Warde, double bassist Kyle McCabe and mandolinist Andy O’Brien will perform Saturday, July 15, at Club Fox in Redwood City.
Doors open at 8 p.m. with a 9 p.m. showtime. Tickets can be purchased online for $10 in advance or for $15 at the door, with a $5 discount for M-A alumni. A lineup of musical guests, exclusively M-A alumni, will accompany the band.
“We’re really excited about getting together,” Ryan Breen said. In the years since the musicians graduated from M-A in 2004 and 2005, they have formed two highly respected Bay Area bluegrass bands, Windy Hill and Steep Ravine.
“There were a few years when we were playing full time … touring and making ends meet,” Mr. Breen said, but since then each band member has taken on full-time jobs, everything from farming in Santa Cruz to marketing in San Francisco.
Even so, he describes a “musical chemistry” within the band that he looks forward to feeling on stage.
The band is really made up of Windy Hill members, he said. Since he and Mr. Warde started Windy Hill in 2008, it has thrived in the Bay Area, he said. “Kyle and Andy and I are all currently in Windy Hill,” he said.
From their discussions in woodshop class at M-A and by gaining exposure to bluegrass through the High Sierra Music Festival, the band members grew to appreciate “the authentic style of music” and “the accessibility and face value” that bluegrass brings to the table, he said.
With a completely acoustic instrumentation, as Mr. Breen put it, “the music sounds the same on and off the stage.”
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