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Groanbox are set to stomp into town
CLAWHAMMER banjo playing, beer-top percussion and stompy folk, meet Groanbox, the cosmopolitan swamp songsters.
The band's mixture of rootsy folk and accordion-led ditties references a plethora of influences, from old time tunes to pre-electric blues. Later albums even nod to African folk music.
"We're from New York, Connecticut and Canada, this is city music, it's symptomatic of American society – it's all in there," says accordion player Michael Ward-Beregman.
Among accordion, banjo and guitar are instruments that the band have invented themselves, such as the 'Freedom Boot,' a stick-like percussive device, as Ward-Beregman explains: "Cory (banjo player) and I built the Freedom Boot, it's actually inspired by Morris dancing. The Freedom Boot's a massive broomhandle with bottle tops nailed into it."
"There are 420 bottles tops given to us by Freedom Beer organic lager makers – people think it's an American name about freedom but it's not."
But while Groanbox's music has evolved to encompass stompy folk influences from across the globe, the band originally started playing simple blues. "We started by playing in a lot of blues clubs and Cory is an expert at playing pre-electric blues so we were influenced by music from that period."
"But now we have all our influences from the past in addition to newer influences such as African music – we're like a big flaming snowball."
Next week, the band plays at The Shakespeare on Wednesday.
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Weather for Sheffield
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
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Temperature: 11 C to 24 C
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