String Tied has a passion for playing music.  If you add up the time they’ve put in noodling around with strings, you’d have over 150 years of folk, surf, Hawaiian, rock, swing, dance, show bands, big band, jazz, country, blues and bluegrass.  What attracts them to the music is the friendship it has helped them find, the commitment to playing their best to support each other, the draw of heartfelt harmonies & melodies, and the fun of playing.  It is their goal for the joy they feel in playing to be experienced by their audiences.

Ken started playing acoustic guitar at 17 in the Black Hills. As with many bluegrass musicians, he found that when he played the guitar, women could not resist him. At 20 his brother Al gave him a mandolin, and is widely credited with infecting Ken with the dreaded Hillbilly Pickin' Fever.  Ken quickly found it was a lot easier to get rides hitchhiking with a mandolin than a guitar, so it seldom left his side. Ken blazed through Dylan, Jethro Tull, Doc Watson and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in about a year’s time, turning his feverous infection into a malignant growth. Ken played with the Nutso Butso Express and the Dollar Short And A Day Late bands until he married a very tolerant woman and moved to Ft. Collins, Colorado, chasing work. There he played bass in the county band Rounder for a few years, before taking a 16 year break to raise two great kids.  Ken got back into the bluegrass jam scene in 1998, joined the North Fork band on guitar, and played mandolin with Fossil Creek.  Now he's back in the Black Hills playing bluegrass again.  Thanks to jams, Brother Al, and picking buddies old and new, his veins still got that Hillbilly Pickin’ Fever running through. Ken says, “Thank you, Lord, for this great ride I’m on.”

Allen began playing guitar in the Black Hills around the age of 13 and hammered away in a garage band while in high school. He has been influenced musically by the Ventures, Buddy Holly, The Birds, The Doors . . . and of course Hot Rize and the Beatles. While growing up in Rapid City the most easily heard music was western music and it was “good stuff”.  The first bluegrass tune he remembers hearing was one out of his mother’s 78 collection called ‘To Old to Cut the Mustard’. Allen started playing bluegrass banjo while living in Nebraska in the late 70’s. The real draw to the music came when his banjo teacher invited him to a jam of bluegrass players: that night he was born again into bluegrass. He had never seen or heard anything like it: people who didn’t even know each other, getting together and playing terrific music!  He was hooked and has loved bluegrass jams ever since. Allen played in the Colorado band Rough Cut for 19 years and ended up as the only original member. It was a fun ride and they recorded one CD which contained 8 originals and 4 covers.

Marianne plays bass, mandolin and piano.  Hank plays banjo, guitar, dobro, and bass. Marianne and Hank are active songwriters, and in addition to playing together as a duo, have played bluegrass with Fast Larry and the Whiners, the Oral Taste Buddies, Yardlight and the Big Dogs, and the Mountain Music Show.  For more about their music go to www.hankandmarianne.com.