Detour Bluegrass
Detour is a bluegrass band from Northern Lower Michigan. Detour combines original contemporary bluegrass sounds along with great traditional favorites. With tight focused harmonies, precision instrumentals, and creative melodies, Detour takes you down a unique bluegrass road.
The band’s talented line-up features the soaring lead vocals of Zak Bunce on string bass, the championship fiddling of Peter Knupfer, the soulful guitar of Scott Zylstra, the hard driving mandolin and superb song writing of Jeff Rose, and the stellar banjo playing of Kevin Gaugier. Detour has quickly become a standout bluegrass band — “a bluegrass joyride,” that the Lansing State Journal acclaims as “perhaps the best bluegrass band Michigan has yet produced.”
Detour has enjoyed three highly successful seasons receiving great critical acclaim at numerous concerts and festivals including Dunegrass, Wheatland, the Great Lakes Folk Festival, Virginia Public Television’s “Song of the Mountains” concert series, and Interlochen Center for the Arts, among many others.
We invite you to continue with us on the bluegrass road less traveled. Thanks for visiting!
Our latest album is now available, with great playing and singing from the whole crew! Visit our music page to hear a clip and click over to order it hot off the presses…
Detour: “The Road That Lies Ahead”
Thanks to all our fans who packed the Unitarian Universalist Church in East Lansing last Friday for our gig at the The Ten Pound Fiddle concert series! The band had a grand old time and we loved the chance to visit with friends from the Lansing area. The Fiddle is celebrating its 35th year of great acoustic music in mid-Michigan — we hope everyone can get out to enjoy the concerts this year, which continue to generate rave reviews (especially from MSU students, who can get in for five bucks, a real deal!).
Bluegrass music’s premier publication, Bluegrass Unlimited, reviews our CD The Road That Lies Ahead this month, and it looks like we pass muster! “An extremely good contemporary bluegrass recording,” they tell us — “one full of attractive arrangements, earcatching touches such as the upward vocal slide into the chorus of the title cut, sharp New Grass Revivallike rhythmic punctuations, fine soloing, and tight harmonies.”
Labor Day weekend the Detouristas invaded the Upper Peninsula again, to play for a concert series in the beautifully-restored theater in Crystal Falls, MI. Some of our friends happened through town a week before and took a snap of the marquee. The audience was terrific, and the theater a stunning house to play in. Thank you, Crystal Falls!
You really know it’s festival season when work becomes play, and you get a chance to spend time with fellow musicians just enjoying the sounds you can make together. Yesterday the Detour gang descended on Salt River Acres for a rousing good time at the 31st annual Salt River Acres Bluegrass Festival. A great roster of local and regional bands entertained a crowd that occasionally had to scurry for cover from the raindrops that made it through the magnificent canopy of trees in front of the stage. We arrived in time to find out that because of cancellations by other acts we had the opportunity to play three rather than two sets, so we teamed up with our good friends in Hardline Drive and Missy Kay of the Missy K Band to do a few numbers that really stirred up the audience. One of the great things about this music is how easy and enjoyable it is to share — to blend voices, instruments, ideas in an impromptu setting! Missy, Toni Erskine, and Danielle Smith sang some great harmonies together. Awesome! Maybe there’s a tour in the making here somewhere?
After a winter that never seemed to end, so far it’s been an idyllic summer in Michigan this year, with gentle evening breezes to ward off the bugs, warm but not blistering days, and mild humidity — perfect pickin’ weather! The Detour gang has been wandering Michigan’s summer roads enjoying the opportunity to play outdoor festivals, concerts in the park, and even a lovely July 4th birthday party on the shores of Little Traverse Bay. At each stop we find cheerful faces and light hearts eager to enjoy bluegrass music. And there’s been a few “firsts” — like the unique opportunity to be joined on stage by a turkey while Peter sawed a toe-tappin’ version of “Turkey in the Straw.” We look forward to the chance to play for you — come join us at any of our upcoming appearances. We’re delighted that we’ll be part of the reunion celebration for Cabbage Crik, a very popular bluegrass band from the 1970s, at the Green Food Bluegrass Festival in Saugatuck on July 19. The following weekend we’ll be up near Oil City at the Salt River Acres Bluegrass Festival, joining a number of fellow Michigan bluegrass bands. And we’re really looking forward to our performance at the ever-popular Wheatland Music Festival in September. Let’s hope the weather holds!
