About

We are a 5 piece bluegrass band of guitar, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, and standup base from Carbondale Colorado.  Our music is rooted in traditional and contemporary bluegrass but also, due to a wide range of musical backgrounds in the band, influenced and inspired by rock, blues, and pop.  We also write and perform quite a bit of our own music.

In addition to playing locations throughout the Roaring Fork Valley and beyond, we are available for weddings and private parties.

The Band:

Shannon Meyer is a classically trained violinist who began her musical journey at an early age and somewhere along the line learned to instantaneously translate a melody to her fiddle fingerboard.  It wasn’t long before she felt the pull of old timey music and began adding bluegrass, old time, and Irish fiddle tunes to her repetoire.  She moved to Carbondale in 1999 and has been playing fiddle and singing (and valiantly putting up with 4 guys) in the Hell Roaring String Band ever since.

Brett Nelson grew up in Iowa and found himself as the bass player of the professional and touring rock band The Nadas for 5 years.  While he has traded the full time musician life for that of a teacher, his musical foundation, deft skills, and soulful and humble approach make him an extraordinary asset to any band.  We thank our lucky stars every time we play with him that we were the band to get him!

Kayo Ogilby fell in love with the sound of the banjo as he would fall asleep as a child to his dad practicing it in the evenings in the family log cabin in the Vail valley.  After spending his highschool years learning to play guitar he began taking banjo lessons at the Evergreen State College.  On a tropical ecology course in Costa Rica during his Junior year, where he had brought along his banjo, he ran into Mark Sumera, who happen to have his guitar, and the first baby steps of their bluegrass journey were etched out of the mist of the cloud forests of Monteverde. 

Mark Sumera originally hails from the great state of Wisconsin where his musical journey  on the guitar was born (as well as his love of cheese) in the form of blues and rock and roll.  Mark’s love for these genres, his crafty and ingenious brain, and an all encompassing ability with his hands with any tool manifest themselves in music in marvelous ways.  He is truly at home with a guitar in hands and his leads are clean, rich, and full of blues and rock and roll influences.

Ted Frisbie, who grew up in Minnesota, is an amazing vocalist, song writer, and guitar player who added mandolin to his musical resume when we found ourselves in need of a mandolin player early in the band’s history.  Ted’s vocal range, harmonies, and mandolin playing have allowed us to follow all sorts of musical pathways over the years.