Jake Armerding w/ special guest Rachael Davis

Jake Armerding was 6 years old when he pulled a beat-up tape recorder out of the attic of his Massachusetts home, balanced a cheap microphone on top of his clock radio, and began taping the pop hits of the mid-1980s onto cassette. These sessions often ran well into the night, and when he would finally turn off the radio and fall into bed, the soundtrack would switch to his dad, Taylor, practicing bluegrass mandolin up in the living room. Ten years later, when Armerding began crafting his own style of music, it was no surprise that pop and bluegrass were the main influences.

By the time he graduated college in Wheaton, IL, Armerding had his first album in hand. Cagèd Bird reveals his early experiments with a pop-bluegrass blend; it was also informed by 10 years of classical violin lessons and a six-year stint as fiddler in his father’s acclaimed “newgrass” band Northern Lights. Boston’s WUMB Folk Radio began spinning it regularly, eventually naming Armerding their Best New Artist of 2001.  On a whim, he packed his stuff into his Honda Civic and took off for Nashville. For the next eight months he wrote and recorded songs for his next album, hung out in the local acoustic music scene, and jammed with his childhood bluegrass heroes. He headed back to Boston with most of the record done; ironically, it was then that Nashville-based independent Compass Records bought the unfinished tracks and decided to turn them into a national release.

The CD was picked up by radio stations all over the country, and Armerding logged appearances at the Newport Folk Festival, the main stage at Falcon Ridge (NY), Great Waters Folk Festival (NH) and the Moab (UT) Music Festival, along with clubs from Anchorage to London.  As the buzz built, so did critical praise.