Biographies
“Stunning instrumental and vocal virtuosity."
– Relix Magazine
“Few things rejuvenate the soul like a warm fireside drink after an exhausting day in the snow. Hot Buttered Rum has that effect. Their original songs are instantly familiar and inviting, and their easygoing versions of timeless classics (the Beatles, Hank Williams) belie the intricacy of the arrangements.” –San Francisco Chronicle
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Initially formed as an acoustic string band, seven years of constant touring has transformed Hot Buttered Rum into a plugged-in, percussive powerhouse that wows critics and fans alike. Their left-coast rock reveals an access to jazz, country, and world music that few groups can match. While the band's music belies simple categorization, its songwriting and stage chemistry delights listeners at every turn.
Hot Buttered Rum’s story is one of evolution. The “high altitude bluegrass” era captured on their first studio album, In These Parts, found the band enjoying success at such diverse stages as the Newport Folk Festival, Bonnaroo, Grey Fox, High Sierra, Wakarusa, and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Along the way, the group shared the stage with some of today's most accomplished artists, including Phil Lesh, Bela Fleck, Ben Harper, and Nickel Creek’s Chris Thile. In 2006, acoustic pioneer Mike Marshall produced Hot Buttered Rum’s second studio album, Well-Oiled Machine, and captured the sound of a hard-touring band charting its course along the highways and byways of American music.
The continued expansion of Hot Buttered Rum’s sound and writing found a home in Live in the Northeast. More electric pickups made their way to the stage, along with an increased focus on songwriting. As the band developed a heavier sound, fans and press began to describe them as a rock band with acoustic instruments. It therefore came as no surprise when, following the departure of mandolinist Zac Matthews, the other founding members Aaron Redner (fiddle and mandolin), Bryan Horne (upright bass), Nat Keefe (guitar), and Erik Yates (banjo, guitar, woodwinds, and resophonic guitar) joined forces with Everyone Orchestra conductor and drummer Matt Butler.
The new lineup has recently emerged from San Francisco’s Mission Bells Studios, where they recorded Limbs Akimbo under the watchful eye of producer Tim Bluhm (The Mother Hips). Featuring guest appearances by Jackie Greene (Skinny Singers, Phil Lesh and Friends) and Zach Gill (ALO, Jack Johnson), the album marks the beginning of a new creative phase. Limbs Akimbo now signals the arrival of a highly matured, impressively listenable, stirringly rocking, and pleasantly poppy sound. Proving himself a forceful producer, Bluhm has struck an impressive balance between highlighting the multi-instrumental, cross-genre elements of the band’s sound while avoiding the contemporary trappings of music that is complex and different merely for the sake of complexity and difference. The result is beautifully paradoxical: a tremendous, minimalist pop album full of hints, teases, and cameos of the band’s complex musical personality. In “Something New,” Keefe recites the familiar wedding adage “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” And right there, in a nutshell, is Limbs Akimbo: an album that is both an elegy and reincarnation of Hot Buttered Rum’s past sound, that borrows heavily from the rock pantheon while sprinkling in just a little of everything else. Limbs Akimbo is an album that evidences the acoustic string band of yesteryear while unapologetically propelling into the scene a mature left-coast, drum-driven, pop-rock band. |
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Aaron Rednerfiddle, acoustic and electric mandolins & vocals
Aaron grew up in a musical household. A diverse array of music was a part of his environment throughout childhood. Aaron started playing the guitar at a young age and then switched to the piano. Formal lessons were rejected and sports took over his interest. Violin training began at the age of 10 but soon ended. Serious study of music didn't begin until Aaron turned 16. Since that time, performance degrees were earned from the University of California at Irvine and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Aaron bounced around the country until settling down in his beloved California where he met and joined Hot Buttered Rum. He enjoys the fact that the band gives him a medium to explore many genres of music. His hopes his music and songwriting will help open hearts and minds across the world.
Aaron feels blessed to have shared the stage with many of his musical heroes including: Bela Fleck, Chris Thile, Darol Anger, Peter Rowan, Tony Rice, Mike Marshall, and many more.
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Bryan Hornedouble bass & vocals
Bryan began his musical adventure at age 10 with the cello. He grew up listening to mostly rock 'n' roll
groups like Men at Work, Rush, Yes, and Led Zeppelin. It was in the Tamalpais High School Orchestra that
he first met Aaron Redner, future fiddler for Hot Buttered Rum.
In college, Bryan began
playing electric bass in the jamband Oversoul. While playing in Oversoul, Bryan became more interested
in acoustic music; he eventually transitioned from electric to acoustic bass and never turned back. His
musical influences include Old and In the Way, Edgar Meyer, Phil Lesh, Stanley Clarke, and Gonzalo
Rubalcaba. Coming back to the Bay Area after college, Bryan played in some musical groups with the
members of Oversoul, eventually connecting with Nat Keefe and Erik Yates.
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Erik Yates
banjos, guitars, woodwinds & vocals
Erik spent his musical youth trying nearly every instrument and style he came across. Growing up in the auditory carnival that is northern California meant that this included just about everything: piano lessons, saxophone quartets, garage bands and folk songs had all weaseled their way into his life by the time he hit high school. College in Portland, OR brought new musical horizons, including studies with composers Vince McDermott and Joe Waters, flutist Nancy Teskey, editor John Callahan and poet Vern Rutsala. It also brought him new conspirators (including classmate Nat Keefe) and a new project, Hot Buttered Rum, which would soon gleefully take over his life.
After graduation and enough time in the non-profit and teaching worlds to know that playing music was the world’s only sensible job, Erik hit the road with HBR to change the world “one bar at a time.” The group has become a platform for all his various trades, musical and otherwise. It pushes his banjo and guitar picking and his songwriting, which he now combines with his knack for wind instruments (flute and saxophones) to give HBR its unique musical palate. Erik has appeared with songwriters Peter Rowan, Tim and Nikki Bluhm, and banjoist Bill Evans (also his teacher). When not on the road with HBR, Erik can be found playing around the Bay Area in support of other local artists or with one of his many side projects. |
Matt Butler
drums, percussion & vocals
Matt Butler is the founder and conductor of The Everyone Orchestra, a revolving cast of stellar musicians he brings together for concerts, festival superjams, and special events. He brings EO’s barrier-busting improvisational vision to HBR performances, often conducting from behind the drum-set and sometimes even sneaking out in front with his signature cue cards.
In his EO capacities, Matt has conducted a growing legion of musicians including members of HBR, the Grateful Dead, Phish, moe., String Cheese Incident, ALO, Tea Leaf Green, Club d'Elf, and Steve Kimock, Darol Anger, Futureman, Jimmy Herring, Adrian Belew, Taj Mahal, That One Guy, Maria Muldaur, Tuvan throat singers, live painters, dancers, chanters, choirs, hula-hoopers, fire-spinners, jugglers, stilt-walkers, storytellers, pranksters, a presidential candidate and so many more.
For more than eight years, Matt was the drummer for West Coast jamband Jambay logging more than 1,200 performances. Jambay also worked with Ken Kesey as the pit band for his play Twister.
Matt also is a producer and composer. He has recorded two CDs, The Redwood Project, a benefit CD to help protect California’s ancient redwood ecosystem featured in the Grateful Dead Almanac and Good Options, featuring numerous guest performances. Matt recently wrote “Little Bug,” one of 4 new kids’ tunes that can be found on the Discovery Kids™ Digital MP3 Boombox.
Matt and EO have performed numerous concerts for non-profit organizations, coordinated donation drives for the needy, and brought EO’s brand of participatory performance to student groups, schools, hospitals, an orphanage and more.. |
Nat Keefe
guitar & vocals
Nat's panoramic songwriting skills and baritone vocals play a defining role in HBR's sound. Inspired at an early age by musical parents, Nat began playing guitar at age 11 and electric and acoustic bass at 16. The next year, guitar teacher Tony Khalife pushed Nat to study tabla - the north Indian drums. The rhythm section of the high school jazz band formed a rock band called STEW, in which Nat played bass. When Nat turned 18, his uncle Rodney Bolloni took him to Las Vegas for a crash course in the art of songcraft; Nat still cites his uncle as one of his biggest influences.
Instead of returning to sophomore year of college, Nat traveled to Nepal and India. Hiking and climbing in the Himalayas, Nat found that his passion is writing songs and singing for people. Nat returned to Lewis & Clark College, met Erik Yates, and formed the Foggy Notion Boyz, a stringband dedicated to the almighty Yeehaw Factor. Wild weekends with the Foggy Notion complemented with long hours of study as Nat earned a degree in Composition and Ethnomusicology under teachers such as Joe Waters, Nora Beck, Vincent McDermott, Gil Seeley, Obo Addy, and Dan Balmer.
In two trips to Ghana, West Africa, Nat has studied polyrhythmic drumming,
14-key xylophone, and palmwine guitar. A grant allowed him to travel there
and produce a CD of field recordings (GHANA Boko Paa), a CD of original
compositions (Music for Ordinary Motion), a short paper about the
development of highlife music, and a short film (Dances and Music of the Awudome Villages).
The last three years Nat has produced a multi-media variety show in San Francisco, the Nat Keefe Concert Carnival. The Concert Carnival has featured burlesque dance, film, circus arts, trick dogs, hula hoop, body percussion, tap dancing, and all sorts of music, and has become a Bay Area holiday tradition. The spirit and goal of the NKCC is to bring artists from different disciplines together in new combinations, and create new work in new ways. The NKCC recordings feature musicians from the Mother Hips, ALO, the Peter Rowan/Tony Rice Quartet, New Monsoon, Everyone Orchestra, HBR, and much more. Music and video samples are available on Nat's myspace page and CDs are available through CD Baby.
Influences: David Lindley, Jimmy Cliff, Beatles, Rush, Ralph Stanley, Hot Rize, Gillian Welch, Rodney Bolloni, D'Gary, Oliver Mtukudzi, John McLaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Django Reinhardt, Igor Stravinsky, Charles Ives, Grateful Dead, Phish, Mother Hips, John Zorn, Bela Fleck, Mike Marshall, The Sweet Snacks. |
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