Trout Steak Revival

Like the fish in their name, Trout Steak Revival is a thing of subtlety. They’re not called Buffalo Steak Revival for a reason, they’re less obvious than that.

Trout Steak Revival isn’t going to earn any awards as the fastest or loudest bluegrass pickers with their newest release Flight. But the band may be in line to challenge many of those quick and ripping pickers when it comes to songwriting.

The Denver-based group formed in 2008 through a network of friends at backyard and sometimes backwoods parties, and part of Trout Steak’s charm is that jam-session-like looseness. But amidst that casual approach is some intensely focused attention to song structure and lyrics, backed by some very solid, yet not flamboyant, picking. Each member of the group turns in at least one original on Flight, in addition to a few re-arrangements of traditionals and one straight-up cover song, but even with that diversity, the common theme is a­ focus on the tradition of storytelling.

— BFJ - Marquee Magazine

Trout Steak Revival formed in the summer of 2008 on the secret shores of a Colorado mountain lake. After singing songs and telling stories during days of rain, the five guys, some of whom are originally from the Midwest and East Coast, came away from the outing with a true mountain sound, inspired by their surroundings. Using bluegrass as a backbone, about half of the cuts on the quintet's self-titled album, which was recorded last summer in Conifer, are high-energy, foot-stomping numbers, like "So Many Roads" and a take on the traditional tune "Still Water." The other half, cuts like "Those Days" and "Eight O'Clock," have the relaxed feel of friends playing music around a campfire near a serene lake. On either end, the men of Trout Steak Revival make you feel like you're right there with them by that lake in the mountains. - Westword - By Jon Solomon Tuesday, Dec 14 2010

Sometime just before the pilot turned our plane around over Wyoming and headed back to DIA and rang the death knell on any chance of my flight to Portland getting in within five hours of its advertised arrival time, Travis, the guy sitting next to me mentioned that he was in a band. Nice guy, but everyone’s in a band, right? Whatever. I managed to scrawl the name of the band, Trout Steak Revival, down in a notebook, and managed to hold onto the notebook until I got home, and I looked them up. Fayhee has always pressured me to put some music in this column, and I’ve never been confident enough in anything to recommend it to readers of a mountain magazine. What’s mountain music, anyway? Well, this is, and it is great. I downloaded the seven songs the band had on its web site, and rolled them through my iPod for three straight days. Trout Steak Revival was founded on a backpacking trip to Mystic Island Lake in the Holy Cross Wilderness. It rained the entire trip, and the guys had one mandolin they passed from tent to tent, playing songs the whole time. They subsisted on trout caught by the band’s eventual guitar player, Kirk, and thusly, a Trout Steak Revival was born. Bluegrass, hippiegrass, newgrass, whatever. TSR calls the songs it plays “Bluegrass-inspired mountain music.” I call it music that makes me want to drive around Colorado with the windows down. The band’s first album, self-titled, comes out this month. - Mountain Gazette - by Brendan Leonard on November 2, 2010