The Down Hill Strugglers
| Shows at the Purple Fiddle |
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Visit The Down Hill Strugglers on the web!
“The Down Hill Strugglers are, to my ears, the very best interpreters of traditional material presently going.”
– Amanda Petrusich, The New Yorker
The Down Hill Strugglers are reaching for new musical highs, and they play the kind of music I want to hear.”
– John Cohen, New Lost City Ramblers.
“Here’s three of my favorite people to play and sing with ever, kicking musical ass all over the landscape. If you like your trad/roots benter and hotter than normal, you’ll love this!”
– Peter Stampfel, Holy Modal Rounders and Fugs.
“These guys are a first rate string band! Walker, Jackson and Eli have absorbed the old tradition, and the songs and tunes they wrote for this album are outstanding.”
– Tony Garnier
The Down Hill Strugglers is an old time string band. They have released albums on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and Jalopy Records and are featured on the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers film, “Inside Llewyn Davis” produced by T-Bone Burnett as well as other films and video games.
The band formed while hanging out at the home of their mutual friend Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, where they also met bandmate and mentor John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers. Their music reflects and extends the strong feeling and diversity of sounds found on old commercial and field recordings from as early as the 1920s and 1930s. The Down Hill Strugglers carry forward the sounds of the old, rural America.
The Down Hill Strugglers are:
Walker Shepard – fiddle, banjo, guitar, harmonica, voice
Jackson Lynch – fiddle, banjo, guitar, voice
Eli Smith – banjo, guitar, mandolin, harmonica, Jews harp, pump organ, voice
The band was co-founded by John Cohen (1932-2019)