Music

Big Bluegrass

Posted at August 02, 2006 15:39

At a Big Smith concert, you see college girls wearing cowboy hats and dancing next to people clad in John Deere gear. You see nicely dressed middle-aged folks hootin’ and hollerin’ along with young neo-hippies. The music is eclectic too, despite the down-home attitude that holds it together.

Big Smith, the self-proclaimed ‘hillbilly band’ from Springfield, moves easily from traditional bluegrass songs to acoustic blues and electric rockers. Sometimes band members sing in a spirit of conservationist protest; songs such as ‘Barrel Springs’ and ‘Quarry Anthem’ bemoan the loss of good land to development. Other times, as on ‘12 Inch 3 Speed Oscillating Fan,’ they cut loose with comical, hoedown-style abandon.

In between songs, band members banter back and forth, calling each other brother and cousin. They mean that literally. The band consists of five cousins: brothers Mark (acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica) and Jody Bilyeu (mandolin, keyboards, guitar), brothers Jay (drums, percussion) and Mike (electric and acoustic bass, sousaphone, mouth bow) Williamson, and cousin Rik Thomas (mandolin and guitar,). “We’ve been making music together at family get-togethers since we were little,” Mark says.

Big Smith officially came together in late 1996. Since then, the band has released two studio albums, one live gospel album, and, most recently, a double-disc album that captures its impressive live performance. Big Smith tours regionally, with regular gigs in Missouri and nearby states, and the band has opened for bluegrass heavy hitters such as Doc Watson and Emmylou Harris.

Now, with their own record label, MayApple, based in Springfield, and with plans to tour Colorado and the West Coast, band members are primed to take their native Missouri sound to the rest of the country.

“If we do our job,” Mark says, “by the end of the night, we’ve got ‘em.”

For information, visit www.bigsmithband.com. -Chris Blose

Email this Article