cadillac sky

"Original", "innovative", "fearless", "ambitious", "propulsive", "a marvel of emotion and razor sharp focus"....these are the words of those that have had a chance to hear the sound that for the past several years has been reverberating out of Texas from one of American music's most compelling bands, Cadillac Sky. Their music has been coined everything from "experimental acoustic music" to "psychobilly bluegrass" but they themselves, simply hope they just make "good" music. With an admitted dose of naivety, they simply choose to believe that there should be only two categories in which music should be placed: good and bad. "We try to make music we believe in and would like to listen to".

Belying their bluegrass instrumentation that imitates that of the original "Bluegrass Boys", their music looks as much to Radiohead and the Beatles for inspiration as it does to Bill Monroe. The 14 original songs, all written by the band, on their stellar sophomore release for Skaggs Family Records, "Gravity's Our Enemy", embody this ideal. Take for example a song like “My Precious Waltz/I Hate How Happy She Is.” It begins with long mournful notes from the emotional violin of Ross Holmes accompanied by the eery whistle of a musical saw, sounding almost like Andrew Bird or gypsy-punkers DeVotchKa, before the virtuositic banjo-picking of Matt Menefee suddenly kicks in and the passionate wail of lead singer Bryan Simpson begins heaping scorn on an ex-lover as the merciless groove supplied by Andy "The Panda" Moritz's upright bass leads everyone around. But somehow even though they draw inspiration from many far-reaching corners of creativity they manage to create a sound that is completely Cadillac Sky. A sound that rejects the straitjacket of labeling and instead looks to make transcendent music and ultimately to paint its masterpiece.

But that being said, the boys ever-increasing following solemnly attests to the fact that the ferocity and grace that are the staples of Cadillac Sky are best understood when witnessed first hand. Folkwax wrote about a recent live performance " they completely blew me away, they were jogging around on the top of their strings, sniffing out new territory with rampant curiosity." Obviously, the relationship between artist and audience can change from night to night. But it does not take even the most lethargic of audiences long to be propelled to their feet with enthusiasm once they start to feel the transfer of honest energy that occurs everytime Cadillac Sky takes the stage. "We try to have every show be it's own entity. We want every show to be live, literally. We want the audience to see the show breathing in front of their eyes. So although we use a lot of detailed arrangements, we leave plenty of room in our songs for improvisation. I think early on in each show the audience recognizes their witnessing something that may never happen again, and that's pretty cool." And with recent addition, David Mayfield, whose guitar playing and vocals have shared the stage with such musical luminaries as The Avett Brothers and The Black Keys, and whose stage persona is perhaps quantified best as a poetic-demolition derby, the band has pushed past the boiling point.

The five sincere young men that make up Cadillac Sky, Bryan, Matt, Ross, Panda, and David, realize that people remember moments...when they look back on their life, they will not remember the days, but the moments in their life. Cadillac Sky is a musical unit that strives with every note recorded, every show performed, to create moments that will be remembered and music that will last.