Tuesday, June 18, 2024
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8:00 pm
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8:45 pm
Ask members of Chicken Dinner Road, one of the longest-running bands in Canyon County, to describe their musical style, and you’ll see how hard it is to pin down.
“Americana roots string band with a strong bluegrass background,” bass player John Blakley said. “That’s a lot of words.”
The five-member band has existed for over years, but only mandolin player Dennis Stokes was part of the original lineup.
“We started out as a strict, traditional bluegrass band,” Stokes said. “It’s kind of morphed into what it’s become today.”
Added banjo player Gary Eller, “One foot solidly in tradition and the other one flailing around out there.”
As part-time musicians — most of the members have jobs and families — Chicken Dinner Road plays mostly regionally and on weekends. They play a lot of festivals and private events, and, occasionally, they open for a touring act playing in Boise. They’ve produced six albums to date and won the Battle of the Bluegrass Bands at the National Oldtime Fiddlers Contest in Weiser all three times they’ve competed.
“We’ve got our regular lives, and then the band kind of lets us pursue our passion and get away from things,” Stokes said. “It’s a stress reliever. We are fortunate enough that we get paid for this. It’s pretty cool.”
The band writes mostly original music, which has helped it develop the sound that takes so many words to describe.
“Most of our music we’ve written, so we’ve kind of developed our own sound. We have a habit of, when we do a cover song, stealing songs from all different genres and putting our own little spin on it, using bluegrass instruments,” Stokes said, saying covers of songs by Queen and Ray Charles tend to be surprise crowd-pleasers. “There’s nothing we won’t play if we think it’s cool and can put our own spin on it.”
Almost all of Chicken Dinner Road’s members live in Canyon County: Nampa, Emmett and Middleton. One is from Eagle. The area has had an impact on more than just the band’s name, which Stokes said came about when some of the original members saw the road sign in Caldwell and thought, “That’s kind of a cool name for a band.” The Treasure Valley, they all say, is home to a strong, vibrant, inclusive music scene. More than that, it’s just home.
“I live out on Pickles Butte,” Eller said. “For a true Idahoan, it can’t be beat, because what can you do in a day there? You can go to the dump, you can go out to the shooting range, you can take your four-wheeler out, you can go to Sawtooth Winery, you can go down fishing on the river or Lake Lowell and you can go skiing in one day. I’m telling you, what isn’t there to love about that?”
Added Stokes, “I came in from the Southeast about 15 years ago. This area here is so different from what I was used to back there. I was born in Florida and went to school in Alabama, and I just immediately fell in love with the mountains, the lack of humidity and the people. You’ve heard of southern hospitality, but it’s nothing compared to what we’ve experienced here. People are amazing here.”
And those people are what make playing music in the Treasure Valley so great, they said.
“Creating a positive reaction in the crowd,” Blakley said. “That’s what’s awesome.”
Stokes added, “And specifically, knowing that not everyone out there is necessarily having a perfect day, and knowing that we can get them away from whatever that negative in their life is with just a song. That makes it all worth it.”
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