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Among the torch-bearers of bluegrass music in Pennsylvania, Burnt Toast will reunite to celebrate their title as first ever live band to play the Bullfrog Brewery.
Although much has changed since 1996, the upcoming show at the brewery on Friday, Sept. 23, from 8 to 11 p.m. will be a step back for many people to hear the band that spread the word on a genre of music.
In the early 70s, Steve Belcher, who plays the upright bass for the band, worked for a camping supply store, called Nippenose Equipment Company, located at what is now the brewery.
"When Steve Koch opened up the Bullfrog, I had to check it out," Belcher said. "It was just beautiful in there and I told him, 'if you ever want to get a band in here let me know.' "
In 1996, Koch took him up on that offer. Burnt Toast became the first live band to perform at what would become and remain a legendary spot for live music in the area.
'We should do this'
Like all in the band both current and former, the musicians have a passion for bluegrass music. For Belcher, who now lives in the Nippenose Valley, it was seeing and playing Square Dance parties in New England. "I saw the people dancing and the energy of the whole thing was exciting," he said.
When he returned to Pennsylvania, Belcher started a bluegrass band called Cold Spring. The band included some of the original members of what would soon become Burnt Toast.
"Now we're going back pretty far here," Belcher said. "The early '80s. But we would just play frat parties and that sort of thing."
Belcher and the founding members of Burnt Toast met backstage at a festival where they were all playing in their own groups. The two members of the band Summit and the three members of the band North Fork all had the same thought after that jam: 'We should do this!'
"We were playing a pub one night and we all came back to my house where we were staying," Belcher said. "Well we woke up in the morning and Danny (Shipe) said, 'Man, everyone looks like Burnt Toast.' That's when we became Burnt Toast."
'Didn't really hear anything like it'
Burnt Toast began as Belcher, Craig Vance, Danny Shipe, Tom Hoover, and Fred Lantz. There were two guitars, a banjo, a mandolin, and a bass.
Although the instrumentation is common for bluegrass groups, what they were doing with those instruments was a on new frontier of acoustic music.
"It was more newgrass than bluegrass," Belcher said.
Newgrass is less a subgenre and more a progressive movement that blended traditional sounds with different genres.
Newgrass is still alive and well today in more projects than ever before.
Original members of Burnt Toast lived in New York, New England and Pennsylvania, and booked almost exclusively in New England in the beginning.
"People in the Northeast didn't really hear the newgrass sound like that often," Belcher said.
It was a tour in Ireland in 1996 that increased the demand of Burnt Toast all over the Northeastern United States and abroad.
"People started calling themselves Toast Heads of America," Belcher said. "There were people making t-shirts and things like that. It was crazy."
Reunion
Belcher vividly remembers one thing about the Bullfrog show in 1996. "It was packed," he said. He thinks the show next Friday will be too.
"We're going to do what we've done all those years back," he said. "And we're going to see a lot of friends we haven't seen in a very long time."
Burnt Toast members moved onto their own projects in 1998 and hold very successful legacies in acoustic music.
The original mandolin player Tom Hoover has since passed.
"I've been incredibly lucky to have played with some really really good musicians," Belcher said. "That's a cool thing about Burnt Toast ... we're all natural musicians and have pretty insane resumes and have had those opportunities."
Founding member Fred Lantz played with Dan Tyminski's band The Green Mountain Boys in the early '80s.
Belcher and Shipe, Pennsylvania natives, moved into the band The Hickory Project and have played all over Europe, Australia, and much of the United States.
Belcher has backed progressive acoustic music pioneer and mandolinist David Grisman and also the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Jeff Weisor, the current fiddle player, has played with the David Bromberg Band for nearly two decades.
'A lot who loved it'
One of the most insightful things the band has taken with them over the years is the purity of acoustic music.
"You know, not much has changed at all," he said. "What's cool about bluegrass and about festivals ... bluegrass caters to all ages and all different types of people. I always said, 'you either love it or you hate it.' Well we found a lot of people who really loved it."
On stage Sept. 23 will be Jeff Weisor on fiddle, Fred Lantz on mandolin, banjo and fiddle, Danny Shipe on guitar, and Steve Belcher on the upright bass.