JACKSON, Wyo. — Nashville-based supergroup Wood Box Heroes rolled into the intimate Silver Dollar Showroom with the kind of résumé that usually belongs on prominent festival posters. Top-notch players who’ve logged road miles and studio sessions with heavyweights across modern bluegrass and country, including Alison Krauss, George Strait, Mumford & Sons, and Willie Nelson. But Thursday’s sold-out Silver Dollar Showroom Session #19 at the Wort Hotel felt more like a working pickers’ session in our collective living room.
Individually, the string quintet is accustomed to playing big stage sideman/sidewoman roles, or sitting in a writer’s room back in Music City trying to pen the next “cut” to be recorded by bigger artists to keep the bills paid. On this special night, the audience was wowed with tight, unpretentious song delivery from the heart. The music they wanted to play under their own terms. The mix sounded warm and album-ready, “produced” though never overcooked.
Wood Box Heroes lean Southern in the best sense: a little country soul, a taste of roadhouse rockabilly, downhome storytelling, and heaps of bluegrass discipline to keep the wheels from flying off. At times, they were combusting with high-intensity, fast-paced bluegrass reminiscent of Southern pioneers New Grass Revival. Fiery improvisation atop pocket staccato grooves found a more relaxed footing, with micro moments of out-of-the-box dissonance; fluttering any stagnation of hearing one more lightning-fed flatpicking break.
Lead vocalists Jenee Fleenor (fiddle) and Josh Martin (guitar) bring powerhouse tone, with elite songwriting from the entire group. Without the latter, you’d simply have a talented bluegrass band interpreting tradition. Wood Box Heroes played like they were determined to leave a few splinters, and that impressed upon the room a rare Wyoming glimpse of well-produced, modern country-grass fashioning its own barn to burn.
- Barry Bales – bass, vocals
- Jenee Fleenor – fiddle, vocals
- Josh Martin – guitar, vocals
- Matt Menefee – banjo
- Thomas Cassell – mandolin, vocals
Wood Box Heroes Setlist 3/12/26
Cross the Line
Whiskey River
Hard Times
Way of the Whippoorwill
444
Made up My Mind
Do ya?
Promised Land
Remember this Part
Knee Deep
Can’t Let Go
Cannonball
This Train
Between God and Me
Lay it on Me
High Rocks
