First Friday BBQ & Bluegrass with Brushfire Stankgrass

Brushfire Stankgrass is an Asheville-based bluegrass fusion group featuring brothers Ben & Will Saylor (banjo/guitar/vocals), Micah Thomas (drums) and Daniel Iannucci (bass.) The band, now in their tenth year with its current lineup, has released four studio albums to date, and has two more albums currently underway, tracked at Asheville’s famed Echo Mountain Studios.

Exciting live shows and cutting edge studio material is at the forefront of their musical product. “The Rich Cache” was released in 2021 and is just that, a collection of buried tunes that the band has performed on stages great and small for over a decade, and finally, lovingly, self produced into a full length album. Featuring fan favorites like “Appalachian Snow “ and “The Party Suite” the album evokes a true sense of the group’s history and evolution, and is a celebration of some of their most unique and lasting creations. From traditional acoustic mastery to deep space synth vibes, their entire range is on full display.

Tracked at Echo Mountain Studios in 2018, “City of a Thousand Hills” is the culmination of countless hours of practice and collaboration, consternation and celebration. It is a rueful love letter to their mountain home, as well as a fervent call to action, continuing the band’s urgent message of preservation and conservancy in “Pretty Ass Blue Ridge Mountain Shit” that began with 2013’s Microclimates. With contributions from much loved local talents and the engineering mastery of the good folks at Echo Mountain, the album represents the groups greatest achievement to date, both creatively and technologically.