Jason Dennie and Grant Flick collaborate for a night featuring both original music and standards from the bluegrass idiom. This performance will be acoustic in the lounge and a mix of songs and instrumentals. Definitely a show not to be missed for lovers of American roots music in the Ann Arbor area!
Grant Flick is a performer, recording artist, composer, educator, and collaborator currently based in Ann Arbor, MI. He plays many instruments including violin, mandolin, tenor guitar, nyckelharpa, tenor banjo, and viola. Primarily, his interests are new acoustic music, jazz manouche, jazz/swing, bluegrass, and American old-time. His current original music projects, Westbound Situation, Warren & Flick, and Hannah O’Brien and Grant Flick, explore the fusion of chamber music with the influences listed above. In these groups, he writes pieces influenced from many styles that feature the collective spontaneity and imagination of the fellow improvisatory musicians with whom he collaborates.
For the past two decades, Jason Dennie’s varied instrumental gifts and vocals have enriched Michigan’s acoustic and roots music scene in many ways. Dennie grew up with a father who loved Bluegrass and Country Music, and Grandparents who had a family Bluegrass Gospel group, the Scott County Quartet. His Grandfather, Willard Duncan, had a strong tenor and ‘picked it like Lester’, playing his Martin with a thumbpick and finger pick on his index finger. Through Willard’s love and respect for the music over the years, family connections to Bill Monroe (The Father of Bluegrass) and Jimmy Martin (The King of Bluegrass) developed and opened doors to many stories, and an Uncle and Cousin who ended up playing in Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys in the banjo spot over two different stints in Jimmy’s long history.
Dennie cemented his name as both a side man in the Cincinnati area (earning accolades for his lead work with Noah Hunt, who went on to become lead vocalist for the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band), and as a solo acoustic guitarist opening for major artists (think Kansas, Arlo Guthrie, Janis Ian, David Wilcox, Sam Bush, Darrell Scott, Debbie Harry and the Jazz Passengers among many others). After winning multiple awards (think the Gamble Rogers Fingerstyle Championship) and 3 consecutive CAMMY Awards for Best Folk/Bluegrass Instrumentalist, a couple of small Midwest and East Coast tours as the opener for Over The Rhine, led to a broader audience and lending a hand in the move from Cincinnati to Ann Arbor, MI. Playing the Ark in 1997 while touring with Over the Rhine left a mark and living in Ann Arbor seemed like a logical choice. Marriage and raising a family led to sideman work and teaching in order to stay close to home. Today – now equally proficient on mandolin – he is one of the Mitten’s most sought-after musicians. His work with area luminaries including Annie and Rod Capps, Billy Brandt and the Sugarees, Jill Jack, STELLA, John Latini, Dave Boutette, and Chris Buhalis has led to 10 Detroit Music Award nominations.
