Dirt Road Trio refuses to get paved

(a portion of this piece was published by Planet JH Weekly)For every forty bands that have some version of an Internet presence, there exists a musical project that flys completely under the radar to audiences outside of their home zip code. Side projects, one-offs, combos, jam sessions, and eighty year-olds usually fall into this hard-to-pin-down crew of musicians. But occasionally, there are hard working, ultra-talented professionals that still manage to function in a space that exists through the ole-fashioned principals of face-to-face networking, established relationships with venues, and keen chops.Enter Teton Valley’s Dirt Road Trio—singer-songwriter Greg Creamer on guitar, Ted Wells on banjo and harmony vocals, and Keith Phillips on accordion. No website, no Facebook page, no recordings, no advertised gig schedule, just three veterans of the area music scene that like making great music together in public places.The foundational glue that holds their sound together is the rhythm chops of Creamer (pronounced “Kramer”). Creamer also plays in Chanman Roots Band, is a go-to sideman, a painter on the side, and a recording engineer/producer out of his home studio in Driggs, dubbed PureLand Studio (GregCreamerMusic.com). His role is usually that of a lead and fills man, an icing-on-the-cake instrumentalist. In Dirt Road Trio, he is the trunk.“I’m bringing the rhythm and chordal framework and they are bringing the flesh,” Creamer said from his studio. “These guys are in a different league than me. They are monster players and I know that I’m on to something if I can keep those guys interested in playing with me. I haven’t been singing all that long, so it’s interesting for me to be holding down the song structure, not really playing much lead.”The Dirt Road repertoire meanders from Nashville to Memphis, onwards to New Orleans and even jumping ocean to the sounds of Eastern Europe in Austria, Germany and Italy. The latter international flair developed when Phillips joined the project about a year and a half ago. For the first three years, Wells and Creamer had maintained as a duo. Their scope has become quite an anomaly in the local scene. A handful of Creamer originals are interspersed with beautiful instrumental waltzes, mazurkas (Polish folk dance in triple meter), zydeco, European traditionals (“Arrivederci Roma”), and a heavy batch from veterans of the Americana scene (Buddy Miller, Darrell Scott, Guy Clark, Rodney Crowell, Subdudes).As for Phillips and Wells, their individual careers are telling. Wells is a founding member of bluegrass quartet Loose Ties with Ben Winship and Phil Round, is a member of Major Zephyr/Ghost Rider, and operates Alpenglow Farms in Victor. Phillips—who spent sixteen years as keyboardist and keyboard programmer for the national tours of Evita and Cats as well as on Broadway in New York City—is known locally for his jazz and classical chops as a pianist at Warbirds Café and The Granary.“We aren’t scared to work on the spacing factor…the spacing between notes,” Creamer asserted. “There’s a real scare of letting a note ring out for a four count. People want to fill up the holes. I have to have somewhat of a mathematical hat on for song structure, so there’s a lot of trust with that open space.” Dirt Road Trio, 3 to 6 p.m. in the Trap Bar at Grand Targhee Resort. Free. GrandTarghee.com. (Also catch duo versions of the band at Warbirds in Driggs and The Alpenhof in Teton Village.)