Buster Sledge

Photo: Nikolai Grasaasen

Buster Sledge is an acoustic chamber-quartet of four voices, fiddle, banjo, guitar and contrabass fronted by a Californian living in Norway and backed by three Norwegiansl of diverse musical backgrounds, all with a shared love for traditional American music. With many musics as software and bluegrass music as hardware, the band creates a contemporary twist on music steeped in tradition through an original repertoire of music that brings the structure and pop-esque melodic focus of american old-time fiddle music as well as the lyrical meter and storytelling focus of old mountain-ballads and country songs together with modern harmonic and lyrical elements from rap, pop, jazz, or whatever happens to best serve the song. These are some of the ways the group engages with the age-old tradition of recycling paraphrased archetypes into a new generation of expressions.

The band is preparing for its fourth release in the fall with Heilo Records, Nice Time on Earth Today, the first record featuring the newest addition to the band on bass Vidar Starheimsæter. 

Michael Barrett Donovan – fiddle/lead vocals

Jakob Folke Ossum – guitar/vocals

Mikael Jonassen – banjo/vocals

Vidar Starheimsæter – bass/vocals