Cold Chocolate is a fresh and exciting Americana band with a unique sound that fuses bluegrass and folk with a dash of funk. With original tunes and technical prowess, this trio from Boston is mesmerizing audiences with guitar, upright bass, percussion, and three-part harmony.
Guitarist/songwriter Ethan Robbins began his bluegrass career at Oberlin College. A founding member of The Outhouse Troubadours, an Oberlin Bluegrass Phenomenon, he began to explore how this hard-driving fast-paced genre could be stretched. A classical violinist from age four, Ethan fell in love with the guitar when he turned fourteen and his father bought him five quintessential albums: The Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” Bob Dylan’s “Bringing it all Back Home,” John Hartford’s “Steam Powered Aereo-plane,” Hank Williams “Live at the Grand Ole Opry,” and the Grateful Dead’s “Workingman’s Dead.” Ever since, Ethan has attempted to bring those raw, rootsy sounds into his own original material.
Ethan met Cold Chocolate upright bassist Kirsten Lamb while at Oberlin. Born into a musical family, Kirsten became a multi-instrumentalist from an early age. At thirteen, she shifted her focus to the upright bass, as its versatility was a good fit for her growing musical curiosity. She graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory and, in 2015, earned a masters in the Contemporary Improvisation Department from the New England Conservatory. Having been called part of “one of the finest rhythm sections ever to be fetched up in the name of bluegrass” by Mickey Clark of AmericanaUK magazine, Kirsten’s bass work in Cold Chocolate captivates audiences.
In 2011, the loose-wristed Ariel Bernstein joined Cold Chocolate on percussion, completing the ensemble. Although percussion is often thought to add heaviness to acoustic music, Ariel brings a light and tasteful groove to Cold Chocolate’s tunes, filling out their sound and heightening the band’s exhilarating power. In addition to playing in Cold Chocolate, Ariel can often be found at Dimension Sound Studios in Jamaica Plain, engineering the records of many of Boston’s finest acoustic musicians, including Josh Ritter, The Ballroom Thieves, and Mr. Sun.
“They sound softer than the dew on the mountainside, harder than a Harley pushing back red dust, sweeter than true love.” -The Boston Review
Join us next Friday, Sept. 29. The doors open at 7:30pm for this 8:00 show. Click here for more information and to purchase tickets.