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Tivoli, NY – Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is pleased to announce a Bluegrass Concert by powerhouse acoustic duo Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley on Friday, February 24, 2023 at 7pm. Tickets are $30 general admission. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit kaatsbaan.org/2023-events.
15-time International Bluegrass Music Association Dobro Player of the Year Rob Ickes and Tennessee-born guitar prodigy Trey Hensley are known for their white-hot picking, stone country vocals with soul and world class live musicianship. Together, they meld blues, bluegrass, country, rock, and other string band music of all kinds to form a signature blend of music that defies restrictions of genre.
About Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley
Take a 15-time IBMA (International Bluegrass Music Association) Dobro Player of the Year and a Tennessee-born guitar prodigy who made his Grand Ole Opry debut at the age of 11, and you have Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley, a powerhouse acoustic duo that has electrified the acoustic music scene.
Known for their white-hot picking, stone country vocals with soul and world class live musicianship, Ickes and Hensley meld together blues, bluegrass, country, rock and other string band music of all kinds to form a signature blend of music that defies restrictions of genre. They are equally at home on stages of prestigious performing arts centers, theatres and the Grand Ole Opry as they are on Americana, jamgrass, bluegrass and jam band festivals.
Ickes co-founded the highly influential bluegrass group Blue Highway and has been a sought-after Nashville session player and live performing musician for decades, with credits to his name such as Vince Gill, Earl Scruggs, Merle Haggard, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire and Alison Krauss. Hensley has been called “Nashville’s hottest young player” by Acoustic Guitar magazine and his soulful baritone vocals have received acclaim as well. Influenced by repertoires as diverse as The Allman Brothers Band, Ray Charles, Merle Haggard and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hensley has shared stages with artists such as Johnny Cash, Steve Wariner, and Peter Frampton. As a duo, Ickes and Hensley have shared the stage and collaborated with Tommy Emmanuel, Taj Mahal, David Grisman, and Jorma Kaukonen & Hot Tuna — all enthusiastic admirers of the duo — as well as Luther Dickinson of North Mississippi All Stars, Molly Tuttle, and many more. The duo were key players on “Original,” the recent highly lauded Compass album by bluegrass giant Bobby Osborne; their participation garnered a Recorded Event Of The Year Award for Bobby’s version of “Got To Get A Message To You” on that album at this year’s IBMA Awards; they also were on the 2016 Recorded Event winner, ”Fireball,” featuring Special Consensus, in 2016.
Ickes and Hensley have gained some added grit and a nod to the roots side of Americana aided by the guiding hand of GRAMMY-winning producer Brent Maher on the duo’s new Compass Records album, World Full of Blues (released Oct. 4, 2019). Maher, known for his production and engineering of such diverse artists as Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Merle Haggard, Kenny Rogers, The Judds, Faces, Ike and Tina Turner, Sly and the Family Stone, and Chuck Berry, loved the duo’s demos and signed on to produce immediately upon hearing them. Acclaimed bluesman Taj Mahal provides his unmistakable mojo to the title track and country music legend Vince Gill guests on an inspired rendition of cover of the Grateful Dead’s moonshiner song, “Brown-Eyed Women.” The project includes a range of songs that could be featured on a vintage Sun Records recording to Trey’s more traditional country originals. On World Full of Blues, they move beyond the acoustic-centric sound of their previous two releases (including the GRAMMY-nominated Before The Sun Goes Down) and juice things up with Hammond B3 and a horn section.
The album was recorded live at Maher’s Nashville studio, The Blueroom, with minimal overdubs. Maher says, “For me, this record was all about living in the moment…letting spontaneity rule.” Despite the diversity in instrumentation and song selection—acoustic blues to jammed out roots rockers, “Hag” country to Duane and Dickey style twin leads reminiscent of The Allman Brothers—the end result is a sound unified in its approach to the broad scope of roots music. “Ultimately we’re the unifying factor,” says Ickes. “It’s obvious we’re into all these different styles, but there’s a commonality in the sound of our instruments that, blended with Trey’s voice, makes it one sound.”
Ickes and Hensley wrote or co-wrote nine of the songs on World Full of Blues and put their own spin on the two covers. Hensley says, “Our songwriting was always present on the last records, but there were maybe three originals and the rest covers. We made a decision on this one to present more of our own material.”
Ickes contributes the instrumental “The Fatal Shore” and the cautionary “Thirty Days,” while Hensley offers the optimistic life-on-the-road song, “Both Ends of My Rainbow.” Hensley got the idea to write the lively “Nobody Can Tell Me I Can’t” after hearing a friend use that phrase in conversation. That title clearly embodies the duo’s creative streak, too.
“’World Full of Blues’” felt important to me to include from the first time Rob talked about it,” says Hensley. “Bill Scholer had written a version of the song, but Rob and I decided to rewrite it, with some help from our friend Jason Eady, to make it more modern, while keeping Bill’s original intent intact: ‘It’s a crazy world and it feels like it’s getting crazier all the time…’ We knew we wanted a guest on this song and Taj Mahal was at the top of our dream list. He loved it and agreed to sing a verse and play some guitar on it. Working with Taj in the studio was a huge highlight for us… what an amazing guy and an absolute legend in every sense.”
“Brown Eyed Women” has the distinction of not only being one of the duo’s favorite Grateful Dead tunes, but a career first for country legend Gill. “Vince is one of our big musical heroes and it was so awesome having him sing on a Grateful Dead tune, which was the first time he’s recorded a Dead song.”
“Born With The Blues” is a song Ickes and Hensley wrote with their friend Bobby Starnes. “Bobby started it and we finished it up,” Ickes recalls. “It reminds me of a Clint Eastwood western, and the percussion and horn section really solidifies that. This is a song that gives us room to stretch out musically. It felt like the perfect song to kick off the record.
“Suzanne,” written by Hensley with Larry Shell and Larry Cordle, finds the duo swapping instruments, Hensley playing a 1931 National resonator guitar and Ickes playing a 1927 Montgomery Ward guitar that belonged to his grandfather. “We had spent the morning talking about how amazing Lightning Hopkins, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker all were and this song just appeared.” Hensley recalls. “Having Jim Hoke arrange the horns and play on it just really added a Howlin’ Wolf-era/Sun Records vibe.”
Closing the project is a rousing, smoking hot take on blues-jazz-rock guitarist Robben Ford’s “Rugged Road.” Few guitarists cross boundaries as deftly as Ford and this rendition firmly places Ickes and Hensley in the same pantheon as the celebrated guitar slinger.
Ickes grew up in a suburb of San Francisco and discovered the Dobro as a teenager when he borrowed a Mike Auldridge cassette from his brother. He later moved to Nashville to pursue session work, and eventually graced the recordings of some of the best in the business before co-founding Blue Highway, and earning an unprecedented number of IBMA Dobro Player of the Year accolades.
Hensley grew up in East Tennessee and started singing in a gospel group when he was 6 years old. A few years later, his parents took him to a bluegrass festival where the lineup included back-to-back sets by bluegrass legends Charlie Waller and Jimmy Martin. Hensley decided then and there that he wanted to play guitar. By the time he was 11, he had given the life-changing first performance on the Grand Ole Opry playing guitar with Earl Scruggs and Marty Stuart.
When Scruggs played Knoxville not long after the Opry appearance, he invited the young Hensley to sit in. Ickes, who was playing Dobro in Scruggs’ band at the time, remembers Hensley as “a very talented kid,” but it would be roughly a decade before they crossed paths again. When they did, Ickes was blown away.
“I couldn’t believe the guy!” Ickes says. “I was just so excited about his music that I called everyone I knew in Nashville and told them about him. Then I suggested that we start playing at (Nashville’s) Station Inn and treat it like a showcase for Trey, just to see what might happen. I used to tease him and say, ‘I’ll have you famous by Christmas.’ Then, just one year later, our first record was nominated for a GRAMMY.”
Ickes and Hensley have performed in places as close to home as Nashville’s world famous Grand Ole Opry (multiple performances at both the Grand Ole Opry House and the Ryman Auditorium) and as far away as Denmark’s Tonder Festival. They’ve played many prestigious music festivals, including Telluride Bluegrass, ELLNORA | The Guitar Festival, AmericanaFest, Rockygrass, ROMP, Wintergrass, Bluegrass Underground, Vancouver Island Music Festival, Guitar Town, Sisters Folk Festival, the Freshgrass Festival, Copper Country Music Festival and several others. They were invited to perform at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass with Buddy Miller in Oct. 2019 and will set sail from Miami to St. Croix and Antigua on the Cayamo cruise alongside Brian Wilson, Jeff Tweedy, Mavis Staples, Rodney Crowell and others Feb. 2020. Several more tour dates are planned in 2020 with Taj Mahal, their “World Full of Blues” collaborator.
Going forward the goal is simply to reach more people and illustrate what the unique talents and down to earth, honest approach of Ickes and Hensley can bring to roots music. “We want to keep doing the music that we love, no matter what the genre, and finding the audience that gets what we’re mixing together” says Ickes. Hensley adds, “I love what we’re doing, so it’s just continuing on with that, to more and more people.”
About Kaatsbaan Cultural Park
Kaatsbaan Cultural Park continues to deepen its mission to provide an extraordinary environment for cultural innovation and excellence with two annual outdoor festivals, year-round education programs, and creative residencies for artists at all stages of their professional careers. As both an incubator for creativity and presenter for diverse world-class artists in dance, theater, music, film, poetry, culinary, media, and visual arts, Kaatsbaan provides artists with state-of-the-art dance studios, accommodations, an indoor theater, and two outdoor stages. Sitting on 153 Hudson River-adjacent acres, Kaatsbaan is free of urban facilities’ space and time constraints, allowing for exciting levels of artistic exploration, creative action, and achievement – just two hours north of New York City. Kaatsbaan Cultural Park is committed to the advancement of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the arts as it aims to present, promote, and embrace programming that accurately reflects its society. We encourage a broadly diverse group of individuals to participate in our programs and join our Board and Staff and insist on being inclusive of all peoples regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socio-economic background, physical or mental ability. For more information, please visit www.kaatsbaan.org.
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