With their new EP, I Don’t Want Love You Won’t Give Until I Cry, this quintet of hard-driving roots artists have come into their own, with music that blends raw-edged, tough-as-nails bluegrass with pedal-steel country twang, narrative songwriting, and new-school Americana.
Each member of Finnders & Youngberg is a roots star in their own right, and the combination of five top players is a key to their precision as a band.
Guitarist and songwriter Mike Finders has one of the most compelling voices in Americana today, buzz-saw hard at times, especially when singing about harsh topics like infidelity (the country roots song “Infidelity”), and softly-gentle, quietly-hurting at other times (as in the song “Lonely Too Long”).
Husband-and-wife duo Aaron and Erin Youngberg bring not only wildflower-sweet vocals from Erin (check out the jazz folk title song), but also tight-as-drywall picking from Aaron on banjo and pedal steel.
Aaron’s a key recording engineer for bluegrass and roots music in Colorado, and brings a keen ear for mixing acoustic tones to this EP.
Fiddler Ryan Drickey is a much in-demand player in Colorado and a remarkably inventive instrumentalist– just listen to his opening riffs on “Hey Ramona.”
Twining around Drickey’s racing fiddle, mandolinist Rich Zimmerman completes this quintet, bringing vocals to “Hey Ramona” and a bluegrass chop on his instrument that propels the music.
The songs on Finnders & Youngberg’s EP show a remarkable edge and maturity. The all-original songs are eminently hummable, but the lyrics show the kind of depth you’d expect of hard-lined veterans of the roots music circuit.
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