Mr Sun (Saturday)

If you haven’t heard of the cheerfully named supergroup Mr Sun, you’ve certainly heard its proponents, four of the finest musicians on the American roots scene: Renowned fiddler Darol Anger, Professor Emeritus at Berklee College of Music, who has released many solo albums in addition to his work with David Grisman and Mike Marshall, and founded the Turtle Island Quartet, Psychograss, and Republic of Strings; Joe K. Walsh, mandolin virtuoso and vocalist who spent four years with the award-winning bluegrass act the Gibson Brothers before becoming solo artist and songwriter and Strings Department Professor at Berklee; all-around guitar genius Grant Gordy, a former member of Dawg Music guru David Grisman’s band; and the phenomenal Scots bassist Aidan O’Donnell, who has backed harpist Maeve Gilchrist and countless modern Jazz heroes.

MR SUN FUN “FACTS”

• None of the Mr Sun members have any medical degree whatsoever. Also coincidentally, none of them are doctors!
• The Mr Sun band is evenly divided between players of fretted instruments and instruments with no frets at all. Which half of the band worries the most?
• Aidan, our bassist, was born and raised in Scotland and has a charming Irish accent. Why doesn’t he announce all the tunes in concert? Many people are saying that Mary, his wife, pays the band a small stipend to keep him from talking during shows. True? Just asking.
• The band was named after an image on a banner which appears in the very first band photo taken in a children’s library. That image, in reality, happens to represent the largest object in the entire school system, with a mass 300 thousand times larger than the earth!
• Amazingly, 75% of the Mr Sun band was born in the same country. Out of the entire band, ONLY Aidan, our bassist, was born in a different country. What are the odds?
• Numerological fun fact: If you add up the total ages of Joe, Grant and Aidan, you get a total of 129. 1+2+9= 12, the VERY SAME age that Darol started playing the violin!
• The combined number of years that the Mr Sun band members have been practicing their instruments comes to 149 years of experience. If you subtract bathroom and meal breaks, you get about 130 years. If you subtract sleep breaks, you get about 80 years. When you subtract school time and homework, you get about 50 years. Take away youthful crappy day jobs, we get 25 years. If you subtract driving to-and-from-the-gig time, you get about 18 years. If you subtract procrastination time, you get about 12 years total practice time for four people. Astonishing! It’s a wonder these guys can play at all!