New Deal String Band
Bands / Ensembles
The New Deal String Band was a bluegrass band from Raleigh, North Carolina, popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and among the first to bring rock and pop songs into bluegrass. An early lineup included Frank Greathouse on mandolin, Jim Watson on guitar, Mike Boykin on bass, Durwood Edwards on banjo and harmonica, and singer Leroy Savage. Long-haired and unconventional, the band played the Union Grove Fiddlers' Convention and Carlton Haney's early festivals, and banjo player Butch Robins called it possibly the only true hippie bluegrass band. At Haney's 1971 Labor Day festival in Camp Springs, North Carolina, the lineup was Rick Riman (banjo), Kenny Kosek (fiddle), Leroy Savage (lead vocals, guitar), Buck Peacock (lead guitar), Bob "Quail" White (bass) and Frank Greathouse (mandolin, vocals). There they played "Love Potion No. 9," which appears in the documentary Bluegrass Country Soul, along with the Grateful Dead's "Friend of the Devil." Sam Bush has cited the band as one of the influential innovators of the early 1970s.
In the newsletter
- No. 30 August 2002