Banshee Tree

indie rock · jam band · trance

Banshee Tree is a Colorado quartet that blends indie psychedelic pop and rock with gypsy-jazz guitar, saxophone textures and dance grooves. The band is built around guitarist, singer and producer Thom LaFond, who founded it after relocating to Colorado from upstate New York. In its earliest form it was a duo of LaFond and washboard player and vocalist Kalyn Pembridge, and the pair lived in a century-old mining cabin in a mountain town west of Boulder that ran on solar power and had no running water, driving down to the Front Range most nights to play. That early repertoire leaned on swing standards and gypsy jazz. A weekly speakeasy residency in Boulder proved the turning point, giving the group room to write past the swing format, and players drawn from Denver's funk and punk scenes pushed it further toward psychedelic rock and dance-floor grooves. The current lineup adds drummer and harmony singer Michelle Pietrafitta, who joined in 2017, bassist Jason Bertone, and saxophonist Jesse Shantor, who came aboard in 2024 after the band's longtime violinist departed during the making of its second record. Banshee Tree issued a self-titled debut in 2019 and Bad Luck in 2024, the latter described by the band as its most fully realized record. Its booking history is unusually wide for a Colorado act, taking in dubstep festivals in California, electronic bills in Colorado, and bluegrass shows alongside Leftover Salmon and The Infamous Stringdusters, plus runs through New Orleans and the Pacific Northwest. Live, the group moves between acoustic and electric arrangements, pairing sharply written songs with jazz-inflected guitar solos and extended instrumental passages.

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