Luke Hinder: We were playing our set in one of the side tents and as soon as we started playing, it just started dumping snow. It was so cold that year we played. And we just saw a bunch of people go for the tents and it just packed out our tent, which was great. Just a good old fashioned snowstorm. That's one of the best parts of WinterWonderGrass, really. Outdoor music while it's dumping snow is something that you only get there

Harrison Gaeng: The snow is always on your side. Another that comes to mind was Paul Cauthen’s set. It was dumping snow and it brought back a memory of the first year I went to WinterWonderGrass – it was a similar situation. I can’t remember whose set it was but it was just dumping snow and I remember being like ‘this is so cool.’ And that captured that moment again, seeing the snow pile up on the stage. It’s always a good thing if it snows at WinterWonderGrass.

SM: What are you looking forward to this year?

LH: I’m a huge Mountain Grass Unit fan, so I’m really glad they're back this year and I can't wait to catch them on the main stage.

Daniel Putrino: I’m a big fan of The Devil Makes Three and I’ve never seen them play so this will be fantastic.

HG: They were an early inspiration for Luke and I so it will be cool to see them. For me, we’re going to be playing a bunch of new songs so I'm really excited about that.

SM: How did you all get together originally?

LH: We started back in Maryland. Harrison and I grew up together, along with Fritz, who is our dobro player. Shortly after high school we all got into bluegrass. We were listening to a lot of The Devil Makes Three, Trampled by Turtles, Old Crow Medicine Show. We all picked up bluegrass instruments and were like, ‘you know what? Let’s try and play these and see what happens.’ It started off just getting together and jamming as something to do. As time progressed we just got better and decided one day to try and play some local gigs around our hometown. We continued that in Charleston, South Carolina and that's where we really started focusing on being a band. We picked up Dan when we moved out to Colorado. 

SM: You’ve played in Steamboat a lot, at many venues – what would you say about the bluegrass fan club in Steamboat? 

HG: They’re the best. That’s why we keep coming back.

DP: They've been very supportive of us. With Kay and Fritz living in Steamboat and being a part of the community, there’s always a big friend group that comes out that's associated with those guys – and they've adopted us. And Steamboat is a great town. You play a show and people are like, ‘I’m comin’ out.’ It always feels great to play shows there.

HG: We feel like it's our unofficial home.

SM: What do you think makes your bluegrass stand out from others?

LH: Right now we’re playing with no guitar player. We just have five instruments: upright bass, banjo, mandolin, dobro and fiddle. And I think that’s definitely a very unique thing. I feel right now, guitar is really popular in bluegrass, especially with Billy Strings and all these great up-and- coming guitar players. So yeah. It was scary at first, honestly, because we were all kind of questioning if we could do it without a guitar player, but listening back to some of our recent shows, it’s forced us to work our instruments in a different way. We’re all trying to fill in that space of where a guitar would be.

DP: It definitely makes for interesting reworking of existing songs and how we approach new songs. You know, people say they don't miss it and I don't think we miss it that much. But of course, if Erik Hill from Magoo wants to play guitar for us then we’re going to let him do it.

SM: What are your plans for this year? What do you have going on?

HG: Lots of stuff. We’re always trying to build on the momentum that we've captured from an album a couple of years ago and get some good slots at headlines. Last year we had our debut Denver headline at the Globe Hall and we’re trying to build off of that. We're going to be releasing a live album here very soon. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks. We have a tour that we’re working on out east. And then we’re going to try to tour more regionally.

LH: We're going to try to fit in some shorter three or four day tours a little bit closer to home for us too, in Wyoming and Utah. But we've done an east coast tour the past two years and it's been awesome every time. We always find a way to make it back to Maryland where we started. It's just nice to get back to family and friends on the east coast.