A bluegrass evolution

Fruition started out as a bluegrass band in Portland in 2008, but its sound has evolved to the point that label no longer really applies.

"In music you don't always fit into a box," Jay Cobb Anderson, a guitarist with the group, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Monroe, Utah, where the band was preparing to play a show that night at Mystic Hot Springs. "The evolution of music is the blending of genres."

The band will perform Friday at John's Alley Tavern in Moscow.

Anderson, who was born and raised in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley, played rock music for many years with fellow valley resident Simon Tucker. After he stopped performing with Tucker, he decided to try to write "short, simple sweet songs" and began getting into folk music.

It wasn't until he moved to Portland in 2008 that he became involved in bluegrass when he was introduced to it by bandmate Mimi Naja.

It's probably safe to say the evolution of the band's sound began almost immediately, because Anderson admits he doesn't really have the expertise to play bluegrass the way it traditionally is played.

"It's a technical and difficult type of music," he said, referring mainly to the constant and blazing speed at which good bluegrass musicians play the tunes.

"All my roots are in blues and rock 'n' roll," he said. "So I play (bluegrass) like rock 'n' roll. It's a style I have a chance to make my own."

The band's changing sound has confused audiences who came to hear traditional bluegrass, Anderson said. That's because the group often still is referred to as a string band or bluegrass band.

"People would come to shows and say things like, 'Where's the banjo?' and 'Why are your songs so slow?' " he said.

The band's first CD, "Hawthorne Hoedown," was released in 2008, "Fruition" came out in 2010, and their most recent recording was the 2011 EP "It Won't Be Long."

The band's next full-length CD - which will be called "Just One of Them Nights" - is scheduled to be released in June.

Anderson said the band is pleased with the recording.

"I'm really excited about it," he said. "It definitely represents a lot of the evolution we've had in the band."

Next month the band will head out on its first national tour, which will take them all the way to the East Coast and back. Anderson said the band - which along with Naja, also includes Kellen Asebroek and former Lewiston-area residents Tyler Thompson and Keith Simon - is excited about the tour and eager to find out if they really do have fans all across the country as messages on their Facebook page seem to indicate.

"It's still kind of tricky," he said. "You never really know what your fan base will be like in a place you've never been."

Solan can be contacted at (208) 882-5561, ext. 235 or asolan@inland360.com.