Avett Brothers

The Avett Brothers came out of Concord, North Carolina, after Seth and Scott Avett's old rock band, Nemo, ran its course, and they kept the punk energy while swapping the amplifiers for banjo and acoustic guitar. Scott plays banjo, piano and kick drum and sings lead; Seth plays guitar, piano and hi-hat and sings lead too; Bob Crawford handles the double bass and more, and Joe Kwon's cello adds a mournful ache. The result is a front-porch pileup of bluegrass, country, folk, honky tonk, ragtime and rock and roll, played with the ragged urgency of a garage band and sung in brotherly harmonies that could split a barn door.

Emotionalism arrived in 2007, the year the Americana Awards named them both Emerging Act and Duo/Group of the Year, and The Second Gleam EP followed in 2008 with "Murder In The City". Then came I and Love and You in 2009, a bigger, more polished record that trades some of the hollering for piano and space: the title track is a slow, aching ballad, while "Kick Drum Heart" bounces like a heartbeat on a sugar high and "January Wedding" is as sweet as its title. More Duo/Group of the Year awards followed in 2010 and 2011.

The Carpenter in 2012 brought "Live and Die", Magpie and the Dandelion followed in 2013, and True Sadness, in 2016, gave them "Ain't No Man", a stomping, strutting sermon of a song.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.