The Rusty Cleavers
With The Cottonwood Cutups
Dig Deep Gardens
Saturday, September 14th
7:00pm

The Rusty Cleavers are a group of four weirdos with a shared love of bluegrass, punk, jazz, funk, and whatever Tom Waits is. Luke is a stay-at-home dad with a 7-year degree in percussion performance who SLAYS the washboard and 4-string guitar. Kevin is an elementary music school teacher and garlic enthusiast who SHREDS the mandolin and 6-string guitar. Zach would rather be pushing a slab of oak through his ban saw than talking to you and he MURDERS the bass. Forest is a music therapist at Washington’s largest psychiatric hospital who PICKS the banjo.

When these four odd-balls get together, their voices combine for sometimes gruff, sometimes sweet harmonies on songs about lust misuse, trust issues, and dying young. Their instruments create a twangy cacophonous orchestra of metal and wood that has been bringing audiences to a compassionate frenzy at hundreds of performances across the Pacific Northwest for the past decade. This is not your backwards grandpa’s or creepy uncle’s redneck bluegrass. This is queer-loving, Black Lives Matter proclaiming, progressive pickin’ from the heart of Tacoma.