LISTEN TO THE BAND!
The Ecléctico String Band began in 2018 with Dudley Hiller and John Chasteen as a cello-guitar duo called CelloBrickRoad. Their eclectic repertory — from Gershwin to Johnny Cash to the Rolling Stones — was ripped from the soundtrack of their misspent boomer youth.
More recently, CelloBrickRoad has blossomed into a full four-piece string band with the addition of Fiddlin’ Al McCanless of “Bluegrass Experience” fame, and Colombian-born Carmen Chasteen, whose vocals are often in Spanish.
The four-piece Ecléctico String Band’s expanded repertory includes many original songs and is even more eclectic than CelloBrickRoad’s. The Eclécticos fuse diverse styles, harmonies, and rhythms. They rework roots music from all over the Americas, including Brazil. In the space of ten minutes they may play an Irish jig, followed by a Mexican ranchera, a bit of North Carolina clawhammer banjo, or the Beatles’ classic Eleanor Rigby.
Meanwhile, Dudley and John still like to play out occasionally as the original cello-guitar duo, CelloBrickRoad. Don’t tell anyone, but at craft breweries, they will sometimes do it for beer and tips. Either configuration will provide two hours of music, amplified or unplugged. Samples and pricing available on request at [email protected]
PRINCIPAL ECLÉCTICOS
Fiddlin’ Al McCanless is our musical guru and good-humored guide to the universe. His presence defines the Ecléctico String Band, but we can’t count how many bands he’s currently in. He comes from, and continues, a long line of Piedmont North Carolina potters. He has been fiddling since college, including on the nationally known “Bluegrass Experience,” a longtime fixture of the Chapel Hill music scene in the 1960s and 1970s.
He’s also been a pharmacist and a maker and player of other traditional North Carolina instruments, while for many years running his family’s farm on the side.
Fiddlin’ Al McCanless is our musical guru and good-humored guide to the universe. His presence defines the Ecléctico String Band, but we can’t count how many bands he’s currently in. He comes from, and continues, a long line of Piedmont North Carolina potters. He has been fiddling since college, including on the nationally known “Bluegrass Experience,” a longtime fixture of the Chapel Hill music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. He’s also been a pharmacist and a maker and player of other traditional North Carolina instruments, while for many years running his family’s farm on the side.
Dudley Hiller’s unique cello style provides our signature sound. His mom was a cello teacher who did her best with the boy, but the head-strong lad insisted on playing the guitar and thus lamentably wasted much of his life on that instrument. Not until the founding of CelloBrickRoad, with its string of early Rolling Stones numbers, did he come back to his true musical calling and . . . start fiddling on the cello. He has never looked back. On the side, he’s an avid gardener and do-it-yourselfer, also an electrical engineer with his own international business.
Dudley Hiller’s unique cello style provides our signature sound. His mom was a cello teacher who did her best with the boy, but the head-strong lad insisted on playing the guitar and thus lamentably wasted much of his life on that instrument. Not until the founding of CelloBrickRoad, with its string of early Rolling Stones numbers, did he come back to his true musical calling and . . . start fiddling on the cello. He has never looked back. On the side, he’s an avid gardener and do-it-yourselfer, also an electrical engineer with his own international business.
Carmen Chasteen is the heart of the band. Al’s enthusiastic accompaniments of Carmen’s Spanish vocals got the Ecléctico ball rolling. Carmen had first started singing publicly at parties and processions in her small Colombian hometown. During the 1980s, she and John sang frequently on the Central America Solidarity circuit to accompany rice-and-beans human rights fundraising dinners for El Salvador and Guatemala. Carmen harmonizes instinctively, always singing underneath, rather than above, the melody, in good South American style.
John Chasteen fronts the band as lead singer and songwriter. His step-dad showed him his first guitar chords at the age of eight. While he has still not exactly mastered his chosen instrument, he has, like Dudley, found his own way of playing it. John played steel strings in a conventional country or folk style until he lived in Cali, Colombia, where he met Carmen. Life in Cali changed his style in more ways than one, making his guitar strums syncopated and his home language Spanglish. John then taught history at UNC Chapel Hill for thirty years. Now, however, history is all in the past!
John Chasteen fronts the band as lead singer and songwriter. His step-dad showed him his first guitar chords at the age of eight. While he has still not exactly mastered his chosen instrument, he has, like Dudley, found his own way of playing it. John played steel strings in a conventional country or folk style until he lived in Cali, Colombia, where he met Carmen. Life in Cali changed his style in more ways than one, making his guitar strums syncopated and his home language Spanglish. John then taught history at UNC Chapel Hill for thirty years. Now, however, history is all in the past!
WATCH DUDLEY AND JOHN HORSING AROUND
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