Punch Brothers
bluegrass · progressive bluegrass · classical
Punch Brothers are an American progressive bluegrass band formed in 2006 by mandolinist Chris Thile, with Noam Pikelny on banjo, Chris Eldridge on guitar, Paul Kowert on bass and Brittany Haas on fiddle. The group first assembled to record Thile's solo album How to Grow a Woman from the Ground and toured briefly as The How to Grow a Band before adopting the Punch Brothers name in 2007, taken from a Mark Twain story built around the jingle line punch, brothers, punch with care. Kowert joined on bass in 2008; founding fiddler Gabe Witcher played his final show with the band at the 2023 Telluride Bluegrass Festival and was succeeded by Haas. Signed to Nonesuch, the band debuted with Punch in 2008, an album anchored by a four-movement suite that signaled its interest in extended, through-composed form. Subsequent albums are Antifogmatic (2010), Who's Feeling Young Now? (2012), produced by Jacquire King at Blackbird Studio in Nashville, The Phosphorescent Blues (2015), All Ashore (2018), and Hell on Church Street (2022), a complete reworking of Tony Rice's 1983 record Church Street Blues made in tribute after Rice's death. All Ashore won the Grammy Award for Best Folk Album in 2019. The Unsung Adventures of Punch Brothers, released in July 2026, is the band's first all-instrumental album and the first to feature Haas, combining eight original compositions with three traditional arrangements. The group's approach applies string-band instrumentation and improvisational looseness to compositional strategies drawn from classical chamber music, jazz and rock, and its work has been described as American country-classical chamber music. In 2023 and 2024 the band hosted The Energy Curfew Music Hour, a live music variety show staged at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York and recorded for Audible.
Upcoming shows in Michigan
- Punch Brothers — Wednesday, September 9, 2026 · 3:00 PM at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
Where they play in Michigan
Upcoming shows in Minnesota
- Punch Brothers — Tuesday, September 15, 2026 · 8:00 PM at Mayo Civic Center