The Punch Brothers take the stage at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium tonight to play a mix of music using classical bluegrass instruments.
The group includes Chris Critter Eldridge on guitar, Paul Kowert on bass, Noam Pikelny on banjo, Gabe Witcher on fiddle and Chris Thile, former member of Nickel Creek, on mandolin.
Eldridge spoke with Post reporter Jane Adams about his nickname, guitars and the start of The Punch Brothers.
The Post: How did you get your nickname Critter?
Chris Eldridge: Apparently when I was in utero (my parents called me) the critter
and then when I was born I became critter. When I was in college, my friends and I were hanging out with an old family friend, and they heard him call me that ... so the name just sort of came back and it has never gone away since.
Post: How did you first start playing guitar?
Eldridge: Both of my parents are banjo players, and music was their initial bond. I just really grew up immersed in music and around musicians, so it was kind of a natural thing for me to start playing.
Post: How did you end up forming the Punch Brothers?
Eldridge: Chris Thile is really the one who assembled the band. He started writing this piece, The Blind Leaving the Blind and he wanted to get some young guys to work on it with him. The more we played together, the clearer it became that we should really just turn this into a band.
Post: Can you tell me about the first time you ever played together as a group?
Eldridge: The first time we played together was Thanksgiving Week 2005, and Chris had just started writing The Blind Leaving the Blind and had finished the first movement. (The piece) is essentially a string quartet for bluegrass instruments. It's a very ambitious piece and something that people from our side of music, the string band bluegrass-influenced world, have not really done before. So it was a pretty awesome challenge for us.
Post: Where did the name of the group originate?
Eldridge: It comes from a Mark Twain short story called Punch Brothers
Punch. In the story, Twain gets this rhyme stuck in his head and it won't go away. We thought that was a good premise upon which to build a band. You want your music to be stuck in people's heads, and have them obsess over it and eventually pass it on.
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