Who: The Larry Keel Experience with Curtis Burch
When: Saturday, April 27, set time is 3:30-5 p.m.
Where: Greening Up the Mountains on Main Street in downtown Sylva

Larry Keel is the most accessible guy I know. Sure, I didn’t actually get an interview with the flatpicking fiend from Natural Bridge, Va., but that doesn’t mean he’s some crotchety music deity who hands out a morsel to the mortals from time to time.

Of course, no one could blame Keel if he acted like a celestial somebody. Here’s a guy who won the prestigious Telluride Bluegrass Festival flatpicking guitar competition on his first try. New Grass pioneer Curtis Burch (who will appear with Keel in Sylva on April 27) has found new digs performing with the Larry Keel Experience and was quoted as saying, “Keel has lit a fire in me. Playing with him has brought me to new levels.” Bluegrass legends Vassar Clements and Tony Rice just finished up a series of shows with Larry, and Rice furthered the authenticity by raving, “The Larry Keel Experience is a force to be reckoned with.”

Hmm, if the co-founder of New Grass Revival and the “Man with the blurry hand” were saying such proclamations, it wouldn’t be hard to have a case of head swells. But Larry, with a pirate’s voice and the demeanor of a goose feather, plays like he’s forever imprisoned in his own living room ... and we’re the lucky saps who happened upon it.

Larry picks like he belongs on Olympus, but his demeanor and his wide swath of music is open to virtually anyone who enjoys a song with a meaty pick. Most critics feel comfortable giving Larry a bluegrass label, but his music is not exclusive to the genre. Jazz freaks will be bowled over by Larry’s interpretations of Miles Davis and Django Rheinhardt (whose speed-like reflexes and silky notes have never been mirrored until Larry came along); Reggae ritualists will have a hard time not swaying to the Experience’s rendition of Bob Marley’s “Hammer;” and the bluegrass faithful will know why they’re in attendance when Larry lays down a Bill Monroe standard like “On My Way Back to the Old Home.”

The covers are nice, but it gets real gritty when Larry decides to peel back a few originals. His pen is as mighty as the string, and the lyrics show someone who understands the entrails of music. Dark examinations and road-weary tales flow from Larry’s ink, and each tale captivates like a campfire yarn. The original “Buffalo Creek” sums it all up — “The wind was a blowing, mighty trees had fell, now it rolls on down the river, it’s a sign of destructive hell. And the clouds up above me, they go and spread their ominous light, as I view the mighty power of the storms that fell last night.”

Larry’s life story has that same kind of access. It’s a tale that makes the unaware want to see and feel the Larry Keel Experience. Larry worked hard to be where he is, and the only thing that’s surprising is why there isn’t a festival named after him (which, I promise, will come in time). Larry’s father and brother made the guitar his adolescent gauntlet, and the discipline (tune, timing, and tone) was infinitely etched through pickin’ parties and learning the roots of Appalachian music.

At 18 Larry answered a want ad to be a bluegrass musician at Tokyo Disneyland. For 7 months he played six shows a day for six days a week, honing a sound that would become the pride of Telluride. Back in the states, Larry was coerced by long-time friend, Mark Vann (R.I.P.; one of the founders of Leftover Salmon), to travel to Colorado to compete at Telluride’s guitar competition. Larry walked away with the award that year, and then traveled back the next year to take it again. In fact, his band at the time, Magraw Gap, held a distinction at Telluride for having every one of their members win awards in competitions in 1995.

In 1996, Larry decided to bank on his name and create the Larry Keel Experience, a band that would be dedicated to preserving the art of acoustic goodness. Joined by wife Jenny Keel on the upright bass, the Experience has undergone several transformations, each one with a distinctive edge. Jason Krekel (formerly of Snake Oil Medicine Show, and recently, the Sufi Brothers) has formerly manned the mandolin post. Will Lee (son of Ricky Lee from Ralph Stanley’s band and a member of Magraw Gap) has played banjo at opportune times, and New Grass co-founder and Dobro master Curtis Burch pops up in LKE’s outfit quite regularly.

Burch is such an interloper, in fact, that LKE’s new album has his name etched in the marquee. “Larry Keel & Curtis Burch and the Experience” is the Experience’s fourth album, and is the collaboration between legend and soon-to-be legend. Names adorn this album like flair on a TGIF work shirt, and they include Billy Constable (Dough Dillard band, Hypnotic Clambake), Woody Wood (David Via, the Blue Rags), Jason Krekel, Mark Schimick, and Jenny Keel.

Recorded by engineer, Mike Brantley (former bass man for the Del McCoury band), the new album (released on March 7) features four new originals, a communally writ song by New Grass vets Burch, Sam Bush, and Mark Olsen; and a buffet of tunes by John Hartford, Tut Taylor, A.L. Wood, the Country Gentlemen, the Dillards, the Everly Brothers and Django Reinhardt, all rearranged for Larry’s (and our) picking pleasure.

The ghosts of plucking past graffiti this album, and it is deeply inspired by the late great John Hartford. It was only appropriate that the new album was dedicated to him.

So when you see Larry disassemble your mind (and his strings) in Sylva on April 27, don’t be afraid to see him as a person. Yes, the fire from his guitar will have a certain molten edge (reminiscent of the mythological god, Mars), but the smile on his face and the kind words that follow will make you realize that he’s human after all. That is, until he has his own festival.