Bourbon & Beyond 2026 - Line 14 (Sierra Hull, Kitchen Dwellers, Nine Days, The Verve Pipe, Congress the Band, Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country)

Sierra Hull

One Liner: Bluegrass wunderkind all grown up now
Wikipedia Genre: bluegrass
Home: Byrdstown, TN
Day: Thursday

Thoughts:  The main reason that I remember her name was because she was so dang young when she rose to fame.  She signed to Rounder Records (home of other luminaries in bluegrass like Alison Krauss, Ricky Skaggs, Billy Strings, and Sarah Jarosz) at the age of 13, with her first album released when she was only 10.  And her fingers can freaking fly on a mandolin.  She has been dominant at winning Best Mandolin Player from the International Bluegrass Music Association - 2025, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2018, 2017, 2016 - seven out of the last nine years is pretty damn good.

If you are a fan of the Alison Krauss sound, then this is right up in your alley.  She sounds very much like that style.  Probably in part because Krauss produced her first few albums, and they featured some of the players and background singers from Union Station.  2011's Daybreak is an excellent album (her second), and 2016's Weighted Mind (produced by Bela Fleck) is even better.  I like it better because it feels like she figured out her own thing now - she sounds less like Krauss and more like her own thing (and sort of like Nickel Creek, who I love).

The fascinating thing, and maybe it is just me, is how low her stream counts are.  You would think that the best mandolin player on the planet would get some listens even if she isn't collaborating with Rihanna, but apparently not.  Only four total songs that crack a million streams.  This is "Bombshell" from the 2011 album, with 2.6 million streams.

Live version inside of a damn Telluride gondola, but allows you to see her fingers doing the insane stuff as she digs into that little mandolin.  The fact that she can make a face and yell along with the tiny crowd, as she continues to pluck notes at eight hundred miles an hour, is freaking insane.  I don't think I would want her rocking back and forth while in that gondola.  I have ridden in those gondolas many a time and when they rock near the top it makes the soles of my feet ache.  Anyway, she is badass and I would go watch this show.

Kitchen Dwellers

One Liner: Bluegrass jam grooves
Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, their own bio calls it progressive roots music, "blending bluegrass, folk, and psychedelic grit"  Suuuuure. (they meant to say this is a bluegrass jam band)
Home: Bozeman, MT
Day: Friday

Thoughts:  I was curious if this was some sort of a feminist reactionary name for the band, like this would be made up of three ladies who put down their aprons and hit the road to make music and left that domestic BS behind.  Instead, their banner photo on Spotify looks like four dudes who help fit skis at the Ski Hut in Pagosa Springs and drop by the dispensary on their lunch hour.

Missed their home state by a smidge, as they are actually from Bozeman, MT.  Their web bio doesn't explain much about how they came together or where their name came from (oh, maybe they all worked in the kitchen at a stoner sandwich shop?), but explains that they have played major festivals like Bonnaroo and even got to headline a night at Red Rocks and one at the Ryman in Nashville.  So, this isn't just some little upstart with no bona fides.  But it is a pretty classic bluegrass sound with mandolin, banjo, upright bass, and acoustic guitar.

I looked up the name, and it's not nearly as fun as either of my guesses.  The band formed at Montana State University in Bozeman, with all four members coming there from some other state.  But the band was born in the kitchen of the mandolin player's rented house, because it was the biggest room in the house and the only one that could fit their picking circles.  So, there you go.  Kitchen Dwellers.

Funny, that some of these articles seem to assume they are a jam band, but they just sound like bluegrass to me.  I guess bluegrass frequently involves a jam-style component of banjo or mandolin solos, but these don't feel like the expansive, loose noodle-fests you get from true jam.  And then, I played their new three song EP - there it is.  "Katabatic," the title track, is some kind of heavy-handed jam smearing.  I like that a lot less than the older stuff.  But their most streamed tunes come from the 2017 debut called Ghost in the Bottle.  This is "Gypsy," with just over 4 million streams.

Live version from Red Rocks, but I think that gets us to what they will sound like in person in a few months, right?  Lead singer got some Adam Duritz vibes, and he seems to be having trouble tuning that banjo on the fly.  Also, haha, nevermind, this is definitely a jam band.

I might go watch it.  I like me some bluegrass and I like me some jam.  Maybe they can wax my skis while I'm there.

Nine Days

One Liner: Generic pop rock the 00's with one big hit
Wikipedia Genre: alternative rock, pop rock
Home: Long Island, NY
Day: Thursday

Thoughts:  I had absolutely zero recollection of this band name - no bells at all - but their top song is definitely one that you have heard before (and I'm not saying that is a good thing).  "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" has 183.8 million streams.

I definitely recall that song - I wonder if it was on some soundtrack like American Pie 4 or something.  It was apparently used in a Super Bowl commercial in 2024 to advertise the state of South Dakota (weird) and was used in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

"All My Reasons" sounds like they are trying to copy Dave Matthews Band.  "Obsolete" from their 2016 album, is awful.  Like, a plodding country/alt-rock mashup that makes me cringe to even listen along.  I just had to skip the rest of it because it was hurting me.  The y apparently recorded their debut in nine days, and thus the name for the band.  Their first three albums did nothing, but then the hit above was released to labels and they blew up.  I've tried it, and I don't much care for it.  Although, as I listen, I feel like this could have been something I loved just as easily as Vertical Horizon or Matchbox 20, but I just have no history with these songs at all.

The Verve Pipe

One Liner: Generic pop rock from the 90's with one big hit
Wikipedia Genre: alternative rock, post-grunge
Home: East Lansing, MI
Day: Sunday

Thoughts:  Oh hey, speaking of generic pop rock one hit wonders!  Wait, this isn't the Verve. I was pumped for this to be the Bittersweet Symphony guys.  Dammit.  This is the "Freshmen" guys. As I listen, I now remember that I never understood the second line.  I thought it was a person's name - "Shia Popparelli never took advice" - but now that I can use the Internet and know such things, it was actually "And she, a punk who rarely ever took advice."  Hmmm.  The next two lines also make no fuckin' sense.  "Now I'm guilt-stricken, sobbin', with my head on the floor / Stoppin' baby's breath and a shoe full of rice, now."  Did he kill a baby and then get married after he cried a lot?  Both of those lines involve the word "now" so they both should be in the present tense, but that seems hard to reconcile.  132 million streams.

SHIA POPPARELLI NEVER TOOK ADVICE!!  I was hoping for a good story on the band name, but it was apparently just thrown in by a former member of the band at 2am when they were trying to finalize the cover of their first album.  The band formed from members of two other Michigan bands with unfortunate names - Johnny with an Eye and Water for the Pool.  So, maybe it makes sense that they chose a crappy name in the end.  Their first two albums are pretty well forgotten, it was their third, 1996's Villains, that blew up.  I don't think I ever owned that album, the rest of the disc doesn't sound very familiar.  Well, "Photograph" sounds familiar, although I don't know that I realized that was this band... But the album went platinum and they were on their way.  Their way to mediocrity.  They have still been releasing music pretty frequently - 11 total albums over the years - but nothing on any of those albums has really broken out.  Like, no song on their 2021 album has more than 51k streams.  Their 2025 album has fared even worse with the top streamed song at 35k.

So, they are back to play the shit out of their one hit and blow everyone's minds.  If only that one big hit was "Bittersweet Symphony," because that song rules.

Congress the Band

One Liner: Lo-fi college rock band
Wikipedia Genre: No Wikipedia, but this is southern rock with some soul tinge
Home: Charleston, SC
Day: Thursday

Thoughts:  Gotta say, their band name is terrible.  When I hear the word Congress, it makes me think of assholes and people stealing my money and destroying our country for their own benefit.  But these dudes absolutely look like they were Fijis at USC who decided to take their front porch jam sessions public.  Two of them apparently lived together in a house on Congress Street and used that for the name.

By the way, have you ever toured the University of South Carolina?  I was shocked by how jenky it was.  If you have toured other SEC schools - A&M, Auburn, Tennessee, etc. - and then go wander around the Cocks campus, it is truly shocking how old and tired it seemed.  Like, the library there reminded me of my school (non complimentary) and yet the enrollments for those two schools have a 45 thousand student delta.  I thought it was very odd.

No albums, just seven singles, so listening to them gets pretty repetitive.  And one is an Amy Winehouse cover.  But, at least they are a new band and not a one hit wonder!  Their top single is their first single, 2024's "Out the Door," with 3.9 million streams.

"she's talkin' out that BIG OL MOUTH of hers, and man that shit hurts."  Deep bro.  I bet he spent a lot of time in the South Carolina library to come up with that prose.  I kid, this is a pretty good song.  This band sort of reminds me of the one from ACL last year called West 22nd, which was a group of UT students that put together a band and named it after a street.  They were pretty good.  These guys feel pretty raw and unpolished, but it might be fun to see them do it.

Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country

One Liner: Hippie combination of Americana and jam band tunes
Wikipedia Genre: progressive country, country rock, jam band
Home: Nashville
Day: Sunday

Thoughts:  Unclear as to why the name of the band is this - per Spotify, there is just a Daniel Donato, who has an album called Cosmic County & Western Songs, but there is not a special artist just called Daniel Donato's Cosmic Country.  Maybe he is going to play his album start to finish?  There is a Spotify playlist called Cosmic Country, but just no band with that name.  Odd.

Anyway, my dude is a guitar slinger who also happens to do country with a psych bent.  It is pretty fun.  Good backstory too - born in New Jersey, family moved to Nashville area, and he began playing guitar after inspiration from Guitar Hero video game.  When he was fourteen, he started busking on the streets of Nashville, making the money to buy more guitars and amps and whatnot.  But he also used that money to bribe local bands to allow him to join them onstage for a few songs of their set.  Genius.  At 17, he was able to score a permanent spot at the legendary Robert's Western World as a member of the Don Kelly Band.  He went on to play a billion sets with them, until he saw Sturgill at the Ryman in 2015, which made him realize the potential inside of him.  So, he set out to combine a love for the Grateful Dead with a love for classic country, calling it Cosmic Country and blending in roadhouse twang, crunchy rock and roll, improvisational fireworks, and psychedelia.  Sweet brah.  Some of those joinings are more explicit than others - like the cover of "Fire on the Mountain" that is a pretty exact cover - from 2020's A Young Man's Country.  Others are close, but not quite, like "Valhalla," from the 2025 Horizons album, that sort of starts to sound like "Franklin's Tower."  That Dead cover is his top streamer, unfortunately, so I will give you the top song that is an original - "Dance in the Desert," from Reflector, with 1.4 million streams.

Wikipedia says this about the band, and I mainly wanted to copy it so that you could see the nicknames of the band members, which make me very happy: "As of 2024, the members of Cosmic Country are Daniel Donato (guitar/vocals), Will "Mustang" McGee (bass, vocals), Nathan "Sugarleg" Aronowitz (keyboards, guitar, vocals), and Will "Bronco" Clark (drums, vocals).  I need a cool nickname like Sugarleg.

Four albums - 2020's A Young Man's Country, 2021's Cosmic Country & Western Songs, 2023's Reflector, and 2025's Horizons.  Reflector was the hit, spending 29 weeks on the Americana album charts.  But apparently people claim that it is the live show where he really shines and shows off the improvisational chops that make his tunes.  The tunes are honestly really good - I like Americana and I like jam, so this is right up in there.  I think I would enjoy this show.