Fireball Mail

bluegrass

Fireball Mail is a Nashville bluegrass band that began performing in 2014 and won the band contest at the 2016 Telluride Bluegrass Festival. The lineup is Brad Bulla on guitar and vocals, Phil Easterbrook on dobro, banjo and vocals, Forrest O'Connor on mandolin and vocals, Joe Brown on upright bass and Tyler Andal on fiddle. Bulla, a North Carolina native who took up banjo and guitar at thirteen, led the family band The Bullas in northeastern Washington, opening for Merle Haggard, Ray Price and Ricky Skaggs and recording for Rounder Records before moving to Nashville in 1999; he has won the Western Open Flatpick Guitar Championship and the Indiana State Banjo Championship. Easterbrook started playing bluegrass in Colorado Springs in 1976, toured with Claire Lynch's band from 2002 to 2005, has released several albums of his own including Rainy Day Sessions and Acoustic Christmas, and runs the acoustic recording studio Rocket City Roots in Alabama. O'Connor, a Harvard graduate and Tennessee State Mandolin Champion, is a founding member and lead singer of the O'Connor Band with his father, violinist Mark O'Connor; that group's debut, Coming Home, topped Billboard's bluegrass chart and won the 2017 Grammy Award for Best Bluegrass Album. Andal, a Middle Tennessee State University graduate, has won the National Old Time Banjo Championship and the Traditional Grand Master Fiddle Championship and works as a bow luthier. The band's debut album, Bending the Rails, gathers eleven tracks of original tunes plus a few covers, with writing credits to Bulla, Easterbrook and Caleb Edwards. Fireball Mail plays regularly at the Station Inn in Nashville, where its shows have hosted guests including Michael Cleveland, Buddy Greene and Roland White, and its repertoire mixes traditional and progressive bluegrass with a growing body of original material.

Official site

Subscribe to this calendar

Upcoming shows in Tennessee

Where they play in Tennessee

Upcoming shows in Alabama

Where they play in Alabama