Jon Stickley

newgrass · bluegrass · jam band

Jon Stickley is an American flatpick guitarist, born in Durham, North Carolina and based in Asheville, who leads the instrumental Jon Stickley Trio. He learned guitar from his father at twelve and came up in a North Carolina college scene that also produced members of Leftover Salmon, the Steep Canyon Rangers, Mandolin Orange and Town Mountain. Before striking out on his own he played in Colorado's Broke Mountain Bluegrass Band and in Town Mountain, forming the trio in 2012. The current lineup is Stickley on guitar, Lyndsay Pruett on violin and Hunter Deacon on drums; Patrick Armitage held the drum chair earlier. The music is rooted in the rapid-fire flatpicking lineage of Tony Rice and Norman Blake but folds in Gypsy jazz, rock, hip-hop rhythm and folk-punk, and the drum kit rather than a bass or mandolin gives the trio a cinematic, riff-driven texture uncommon in bluegrass. The discography runs from the self-titled Jon Stickley Trio (2012) through Lost at Last (2015), recorded at Echo Mountain Studios in their home city of Asheville, the EP Triangular (2016), Maybe Believe (2017), Scripting the Flip (2020) on Organic Records, and Meantime's Up (2023), along with standalone singles including Future Ghost, In and About and Death by Rainbow in 2021 and Take the Air in 2022. The trio works the Americana and bluegrass festival circuit, with dates including Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion, the Ballhooter Festival at Snowshoe in West Virginia, Boomtown in Asheville and Front Porch Fest in Stuart, Virginia, often sharing bills with Leftover Salmon, the Turnpike Troubadours and Sam Bush. Stickley plays Preston Thompson guitars.

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