Bluegrass Disciples Show Their True Character

Phil Zimmerman appraised the crowd size from the stage of the Rough Draft on Tuesday night, his mandolin slung over his shoulder.

“Guess the audience outnumbers the band, so we got to start,” he said.

Standing next to him was Andy Bromage on guitar. ​“It’s the last Tuesday of the month,” he said. ​“Time to celebrate life on earth.”

And with that, The Bluegrass Characters — Zimmerman on vocals and mandolin, Bromage on vocals and guitar, Tom Hagymasi on fiddle and vocals, Pete Kelly on vocals and bass, and Joe Lemeris on banjo — launched into the first song of the night, in an evening of bluegrass done old-school, in accordance with the wishes of the band’s founder, Stacy Phillips, who died of a heart attack in June.

The band was originally called Stacy Phillips and His Bluegrass Characters. Closing on a half a year since his death, the band showed how it’s continuing his legacy, and forging a path of its own.

One characteristic that remained firmly intact was the Characters’ affinity for shtick. After a couple songs originally done by bluegrass originator Bill Monroe (of Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys), Zimmerman quipped that ​“it’s Bill Monroe night.”

“Like it is every night,” Bromage said, without missing a beat.

But deeper than that was Phillips’s sense of musicianship, as the Characters showed what makes bluegrass an enduring genre. They knew when to swing and when to drive hard, and preserved the odd timing — a measure added here, a beat dropped there — that keep bluegrass players on their toes. And Zimmerman, Hagymasi, and Lemeris proved to be more than able soloists, passing around breaks and ideas fluidly and egging each other on.

“We lost Stacy in June but we’ve tried to keep his style going,” Bromage explained before hitting a Carter Family song. By that he meant that the Characters didn’t play newgrass, or progressive bluegrass; if anything, they reached back even further into the past than Monroe did, to the earliest country songs and the Appalachian traditions that bluegrass came out of — and in doing so, showed as Phillips did why that style has proved to have an enduring power, in the muscular rhythms, complex solos, and sharp three-part harmonies belted out in that high, lonesome sound.

But the humor — and sense of fleeting time that permeated it — was never far behind. Zimmerman explained early in the evening that the setlist was intended as a ​“marathon” for Bromage vocally, as Zimmerman was recovering from surgery and wasn’t sure he’d be able to sing. That fear was unfounded, as Zimmerman excelled at the swelling, swooping lines that epitomize the singing style.

“That’s Phil Zimmerman and his newly trimmed-down tongue,” Bromage said. ​“You sound better!” he said to Zimmerman. ​“I think they should take a little more off.”

Zimmerman smiled good-naturedly. ​“I’m just glad I’m here to joke about it,” he said.

As the musicians settled in, they played better and better. They swung a little more. They grooved a little harder. They took more chances with their solos. The audience ate it up with clapping, whoops, and hollers. Someone in the back of the room turned out to have a piercing yee-haw. During the Characters’ second set, they invited a couple musicians in the audience up to join them for a song or two, changing up the sound while keeping it moving. At the end of their second set, two hours after they began, the musicians in the Characters were possibly playing their best. Zimmerman and Bromage invoked Stacy Phillips a few times throughout the evening, but the real homage to him was showing that the chemistry the musicians developed with Phillips has outlived him, and lives on.

“This is fun,” Zimmerman said. ​“If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be doing it.” That all the musicians were enjoying themselves was clear. But there was a bigger message, too, in one of the lines from the last song of the evening: ​“Hello city limits, I’m starting out brand new.”