Jerry’s Lounge: Bluegrass band planting roots

Friday, Dec. 2, 2005 | 7:58 a.m.

The Pickadillos may have the corner on the bluegrass music market in Las Vegas.

At least I know of no other bluegrass band with a regular gig locally.

The wildly infectious music by the Pickadillos may be heard at 8 p.m. Thursdays at the Freakin' Frog in a strip mall at 4700 S. Maryland Parkway.

A warning: You may have to stand during the performance, or you may want to stand just because the music moves you.

As word spreads, fans are crowding into the beer and wine bar across from UNLV to hear a sound that fuses classic bluegrass and rock 'n' roll.

"This is the culmination of my dream group," said founder Steve Harder-Kucera, who moved to Las Vegas from Santa Rosa, Calif., four years ago. "I had a similar project in the wine country of Northern California, but it was a little more traditional bluegrass -- no drummer, no amplified instruments."

Traditional bluegrass is mostly acoustical, with fiddles, banjos, guitars, mandolins and upright bass fiddles providing the distinctive sound that some say was born in the Appalachian Mountains in the 1940s.

The so-called first generation of bluegrass musicians included Bill Monroe (considered the father of the genre) and his Blue Grass Boys and Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs with the Foggy Mountain Boys, among others.

"I was raised in a lumber town of 52 people," Harder-Kucera said. "We had no TV and so I literally spent evenings and weekends playing banjo with my friends and family.

"Dad gave me my first banjo lessons, then I received private lessons from this guy up who taught Jerry Garcia to play banjo."

Harder-Kucera says his earliest influences were Bill Monroe and other traditional bluegrass musicians

"I'm grounded in traditional groups," he said. "As a kid I had the good fortune to see a lot of the legends."

But then he heard the new generation of bluegrass bands, such as New Grass Revival and Leftover Salmon.

"Leftover Salmon is a cross-genre group," Harder-Kucera said. "Within 10 minutes after I heard them, my musical life changed. I realized there is so much we can do with this music."

His California group embraced the "newgrass" and played all over Northern California.

"We were a bluegrass group, but because of the twist with modern pop songs, we played clubs we never would have played," Harder-Kucera said.

When he moved to Las Vegas, he says he didn't intend to pursue his music.

"I came here to start my Web design business and to take advantage of the low housing costs," he said. "But after my company got established and I could breathe again, I went to a bluegrass festival in Overton and discovered I missed being in a band."

It took a while, but he finally put a band together.

"We went through three other guitar players, five drummers and one or two other bass players," Harder-Kucera said. "This lineup is rock solid."

The musicians include Harder-Kucera (vocals/banjo), Raj Rathor (guitar), Brett Barnes (vocals/drum), Rob Edwards (bass), Robert Bell (vocals/mandolin) and Richard Wells (vocals/debro -- an acoustic guitar with a metal resonator).

The Freakin' Frog is the group's only gig at the moment except for a few parties.

"I never wanted to burn out musicians by playing at every little dive bar," he said. "We're just taking it slow and waiting for the right venues."

Jerry Fink can be reached at 259-4058 or at jerry@lasvegassun.com.