Music was a different beast entirely in 2002. We’d just seen a new millennium, and no one was quite sure of the shape of things to come, anxious to see what the music would look like in the following years. Enter The Devil Makes Three, a three-piece bluegrass outfit from Santa Cruz, CA; the world didn’t know it yet, but this “newgrass” band would be among the best of this budding genre.

Toting songs about swillin’ whiskey, loose women, and lonely times, this troubadour trio is more afraid of a day without booze than speaking their mind to complete strangers (yes, that means you). Each composition draws from a hodgepodge of influences, from old-time bluegrass to Piedmont blues to the earliest country, all the while maintaining a snarling punk-rock sensibility.

The guitars from Pete Bernhard and Cooper McBean (who doubles on tenor banjo) complete each other like the Wonder Twins, each filling in the gaps of the other seamlessly. There’s no drummer in this impossibly tight group; Lucia Turino’s steady upright bass stylings are more than enough of a rhythm section.

While the songs spanning the group’s three albums are distinct, that’s not the point; each tune fits in like a puzzle piece with zippered edges, comprising an overall sound that’s so much greater than the sum of its parts. Bernhard’s snappy drawl is familiar, yet it can sting like a papercut dipped in rye whiskey, and it fits so perfectly with the ragtime-influenced instrumentals that it seems almost ironic.

The Devil Makes Three drew the line and set so many standards as to where tradition and modernism should meet, in contemporary bluegrass, anyway; clever, raucous, and fun as hell, this group is not to be overlooked or soon forgotten. Sometimes, it doesn’t take a revolution to spark real change; perhaps a return to the basic was all we needed. Cheers to The Devil Makes Three, and after you listen to their first three offerings you can join me in wishing for a fourth.

-Zack Kraimer

currently listening to “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes