Performed on March 23rd, 2018 at Fort Collins’ Aggie Theatre, WhiteWater Ramble takes the classic rock band’s psychedelic tunes with a bluegrass instrumentation of dance, jam and improv influences. Each track stays true to the band’s jamgrass roots but includes a special collaboration of Denver’s Jessica Jones for powerful vocals. The band will release one cover a day throughout the month of May on their Facebook page at 12 p.m. MT, creating a full playlist set to be released on May 28th.
Full tribute shows are nothing new to the band, having played tributes throughout the years to Paul Simon, Bob Marley, Best of the 90’s, Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, The Police and a Tribute to Woodstock.
“One cool thing about Zeppelin is that they have an acoustic side and a rock side. The acoustic side involves quite a bit of mandolin so those were our obvious song choices but we also wanted to play some of the more obscure cuts like ‘The Crunge’ which is really a sort of homage to James Brown according to our guitarist Damon Wood who played in the James Brown Band for 8+ years in the 2000’s. When we were putting together the tributes, everyone had input had veto power if they simply weren’t digging a particular song or we weren’t able to come up with some fashion to mold it into our dancegrass approach,” band leader Patrick Sites said.
Along with their new releases, WhiteWater Ramble was also just awarded Best Music Video at the Indie Short Film Fest in April 2019 for their musical-trio of “A Band Widow’s Lament,” touching on issues of gun and domestic violence in our society today. The 18-minute short film consists of the band’s bluegrass songs of “It Don’t Matter,” featuring vocalists Jessica Jones and Adam Lufkin, “Hollow,” featuring Chris Pandolfi of The Infamous Stringdusters, which also won “Best Dramatic Video” and “Best Music Video” at the L.A. Music Video Awards and “Kentucky Windage.” You can watch the full short film here.
The band is set to play Denver’s Bluegrass Bash on June 1st, along with Aspen's T-Lazy-7 Ranch with Jessica Jones on June 8th. The band will play Emporium Chicago on July 17th before heading to Moon Dance Music Festival on July 19th. You can view the band’s full list of upcoming tour dates here.
