The second annual Peach Music Festival boasted an all-star cast of headliners including the Allman Brother’s Band, Ratdog featuring Bobby Weir, Grace Potter and Rusted Root among other veteran jammers, but one of the most memorable highlights appeared further down the lineup. Despite killer performances by the established names, the red hot sets came from Scranton’s favorite sons, the unstoppably hot pickers of the six piece blue-grass outfit known as Cabinet.
Not to undermine the impressive efforts this crew has put together in the studio, Cabinet is by all means a live band. If you didn’t catch the feverish stomp that propels them forward at Peach Fest, you’ll have to step on down to The Blockley on November 21st for an unforgettable night of musical mayhem.
Cabinet’s organic blossoming commenced in 2006, when guitarist Mickey Coviello began writing music and hitting open mics with his childhood friend, mandolin player JP Biondo. JP enlisted the help of his cousin, Pappy, who left Cleveland to hot pick his way through the Electric City on the five string banjo. The band began playing regularly at the River Street Jazz Cafe in Wilkes-Barre, where they linked up with then sound technician Dylan Skursky. Skursky regularly sat in with groups playing the cafe, but Cabinet lured him into a full time gig on the double or sometimes electric bass. Todd Kopec was then introduced to the group by Skursky, and his effort on the fiddle keeps this band merrily floating above other modern bluegrass outfits that lack a full time fiddle. The final necessary piece to the new-grass band puzzle was percussionist Jami Novak, who Skursky claims, “everybody knows”, and who, “showed up one day and never left”.
Tom Moran, talent booker for the Jazz Cafe, liked what he saw from the energetic pickers and helped make the Cafe a home for the boys of Cabinet where they could hone and refine their skills. This is the fool-proof model for the successful jam band proven by acts ranging from Phish to Pigeons Playing PingPong; form a band, find a home, hone your act, get on the road playing every bar, small theater and festival you can find, and make a name for yourself.
Playing to an audience of pub-crawlers and festival heads forces you to expand your library. Cabinet can throw down on songs ranging from old-timey bluegrass numbers like, “Old Home Place” and “Sharecropper’s Son”, to original tunes like, “Heavy Rain”, and “The Tower”, plus a completely cacophonous range of jam-friendly covers. Most notably they TEAR UP an often 20 minute version of the Grisman-Garcia, “Shady Grove”, which slowly creeps in, riding a haunting little mando-rift until the full six piece outfit climbs aboard to ride this D-minor jam vehicle into outer space. They don’t limit their library to bluegrass tunes, listen to the ten minute and change Sublime melody that glides behind tight reggae drums and rapped out verses of 54-46 Was My Number and Garden Grove. Superb versions of the Sublime jam and Shady Grove can be heard from their sets at Peach Fest this year.
Attending a live performance is without a doubt the best way to fall in love with Cabinet, but it wouldn’t hurt to introduce yourself to their library through their studio albums. Cabinet released their self-titled, debut record independently in 2008. Plenty of the tunes featured here have become fantastic staples of their live repertoire, most notably, “The Tower“, which features J.P. on lead vocals, and I ain’t going as far as to say its poppy, but it is extremely approachable for those weary of bluegrass. “Elizabeth” is another live staple from the record, and it brings us way closer to a traditional sounding bluegrass tune as Pappy lays into a frantic, Scruggs style banjo rift and takes off on lead vocals. Not only does he have a good range vocally, but proves to be an incredible story teller- very relatable, very honest.
Two years later, they took the next logical step in releasing a live record titled, “This is Cabinet, Set I”. A good introduction to the band’s live energy, “This is Cabinet”, also exemplifies their love affair with Northeastern Pennsylvania, with songs like “Coalminers”, “Long Journey Home”, and “Old Farmers Mill”. 2011 saw the free release, available for download through the band site, of “This is Cabinet, Covers”, where Cabinet tackles some traditional bluegrass numbers like “Pig in a Pen” along with some Paul Simon covers thrown in for good measure. “Eleven” was released in 2012, a live CD/DVD recorded at the Abbey Bar in Harrisburg and released through Ropeadope Records. “Eleven” offers fans a way to not only hear, but see Cabinet in HD, soundboard quality glory from the comfort of their home.
The most recent and arguably most ambitious release to date was Leap, which was recorded live over three days in September of 2012 at the Windmill Agency in Mount Cobb, PA. The fast picking highlighted during “Susquehanna Breakdown” provides proof Cabinet can not only keep up with the competition, but can also compose their own traditional bluegrass tunes. “Wine and Shine” got heavy festival play over the summer and certainly evokes the knee slapping, toe-tapping, whiskey fueled dance party that is a Cabinet show. Pappy belts out the chorus of the tune, “we got drunk on wine and moon shine”, with absolute gleeful energy, and though I don’t much care for moonshine, I’m high as hell on Pennsylvania Bluegrass! Speaking of high on bluegrass, my favorite Cabinet jam at the moment also came from “Leap”. “Heavy Rain” just begs the crowd to start a high-stepping, unified stomp as a heavy drum and bass thump behind the leaps and calls of the mandolin, banjo and guitar. With a loud, gleeful chorus, high powered fiddle action and boundless energy this song will quickly become an encore worthy fan favorite.
I see big things on the horizon for these Scranton boys, there climbing the festival circuit with freakish speed; their crowd visibly grew at Peach Fest from 2012 to 2013, as did their repertoire of tunes. They have an amazing chemistry, with room for full time percussions and fiddle, able to seamlessly switch gears, laying off, rising up, blending in; very natural interaction between all the instruments. They not only have a ton of covers, but totally original tunes that can really put a crowd into full swing, even during a mid-day festival spot, which usually brings enough temperature heat to keep crowds subdued. The “Shady Grove” jam with saxophone accompaniment must have had at least 5000 of us Peach Festers stepping like mad at 2:30 in the afternoon. I heard great things about recent sets in Ardmore and State College, so look for Cabinet to lay on the throttle and blow the roof of The Blockley.
Article written by Drew Russin
Photography by Mia Jester
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