While Chuck Sitero has been fronting High Lonesome in various iterations for a while, the bluegrass band’s self-titled first album came together as the band itself gelled. Hailing from outside Atlanta, Sitero and his wife headed to Colorado during the beginning of Covid. “We realized we were not going to be working for a while, so we went camping,” said Sitero. They spent a couple of months in Durango in the San Juan National Forest, then moved on a hotel in Boulder. They made good friends there and decided to get their belongings out of storage and make the move official.
Sitero attended local shows and bluegrass picks, he said, “to find my people.” He met dobro player Dylan Kober and mandolinist Josh Bergmann at shows and started building the band. When they were looking for a fiddler, Kober introduced him to Neva Wilder, who came over for rehearsal and hit it off with the band. She left that day, she says, hoping she had the job; she joined High Lonesome at the end of 2023.
“I’ve had confidence in Neva since I met her,” said Sitero. “She’s grown so much as a musician and a performer in the short time.”
“I wasn’t really part of [the Colorado Bluegrass community] until I joined High Lonesome,” said Wilder. A classically trained violinist, starting at eight, she says she “had a huge falling out” with classical music. She took a two-year break from playing, after which she was drawn to fiddling. She began playing old-time music and Scottish fiddle music, as well as taking part in the Western Stock Show each year before moving on to bluegrass.
“I’d been in other bands but none that gigs quite as much as High Lonesome,” she said. A full-time college student in her last year studying digital design, Wilder created the artwork for the album cover. She also works part time in security as Red Rocks and, as Sitero points out, has a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
For the first single from the album, released in advance, they chose “Old Familiar Song,” written by veteran bluegrass songwriter Louisa Branscomb. Long acquainted with Branscomb, Sitero recalled meeting her first more than thirty years ago when she played with Frances Mooney in the band Indian Summer in North Georgia. About a year in, he said, “I realized she wrote ‘Steel Rails.’ There’s so much talent from that area. North Georgia has Jeff Autry, Scott Vestal, Russell Moore—so many great players.”
Prior to the pandemic, Sitero attended one of Branscomb’s Woodsong Songwriter Retreats. He had not written a song before, but he spent time listening to songwriters, he says, “learning through osmosis.”
While High Lonesome was working on their debut album, Branscomb saw a YouTube video of Wilder singing “Steel Rails” and reached out to Sitero, telling him, “I’d love for her to sing one of my songs.” From the songs she sent, Wilder selected “Old Familiar Song,” which the band released as their first single, supported by a music video.
True to the title, the single has an infectious melody that feels both fresh and familiar with the declaration, “This lonesome highway is my home.” Wilder’s clear vocals strike a balance between the wistful and hopeful images of the road “as the sun is coming over the horizon, and the moon is going down behind the trees.” The song showcases the band’s instrumentals as well, with Wilder on fiddle and Kober covering harmony vocals as well as mandolin.
In addition to the band’s original songs, the album also includes the Delmore Brothers’ classic “Nashville Blues” and “As the Crow Flies” written by the late Walter Hyatt.
Despite Kober being the only Colorado native in the band, elements of the album have a Southwestern sound, particularly Bergmann’s two tracks, “Burning Bridges” and “Worn Out Shoes.” After his move, Sitero admits, “I came here not expecting Colorado to have a deep talent pool that I enjoyed in North Georgia, but there are so many great players here, so many great bluegrass bands.” However, he feels High Lonesome is unique, one of the few bands “playing drive bluegrass on the front range.”
On the album, the members share lead vocals, and on stage, the band shares leadership, as Sitero explained: “There’s not really a band leader. I think everybody expects me to be the leader, but we push each other too on stage. We all take creative solos.”
All the band members have songwriting credits on the album as well. Sitero wrote four of the tracks, including the opening number “We Hit the Road,” with a more traditional bluegrass sound, and the darker “Savage Sundown” with its “nightmare inside a dream.” The sole instrumental on the album “Jubilee,” written by Kober, features him on dobro as well. Wilder opens on fiddle and sings lead on “Trust My Hands,” which she wrote. The band members sharing lead vocals gives the album texture, and their harmonies are tight but delivered with a light touch.
The album release is scheduled for November 2 at Swallow Hill Music, a favorite folk songwriter spot, and they have several regional shows lined up in listening rooms such as the Chautauqua Community House in Boulder and a rowdier show at Oskar Blues in Lyons, Sitero’s hometown.
As momentum builds, the band looks forward to hitting the road and bringing their flavor of High Lonesome bluegrass to a broader audience across the US.