Hunger Mountain Boys

Matt Downing, Teddy Weber, and Kip Beacco

Hunger Mountain is in Monterey, Massachusetts, about 10 miles east of Great Barrington. But on this early June day its peak is pretty much impossible to make out, thanks to the thick, rainy mist that blankets the Berkshires and makes the roads a sopping mess. On the other hand, the disagreeable weather also means it’s especially nice to be warm and dry in the Victorian parlor-like coziness of Club Helsinki’s dining room, sharing tea and veggie burgers with Hunger Mountain Boys’ singer, guitarist, and dobro player Teddy Weber and string bassist Matt Downing.

“Kip [Beacco, 37, sings and plays guitar, fiddle, and mandolin in the group] built a timber-frame house on that mountain,” says the sideburned, 30-year-old Weber from beneath his ever-present, beat-up fedora. “He and his family even live on Mount Hunger Road,” adds Downing, lean, scruffy, and 29.

Country-derived sounds have, of course, never fully disappeared from America’s musical landscape. But far too much of what’s been pumped out of Nashville in the name of country over the last several years has been either signifier-driven, boot-scootin’ schmaltz or, far worse, jingoistic, chest-beating hate music. Part of a burgeoning scene of new, tradition-conscious American acoustic artists, The Hunger Mountain Boys bypass the ill turns country has made in recent times, instead taking the music back to its 1920s and ’30s rural, string-band roots and injecting it with just the right amount of Noughties consciousness.

The roots in Weber’s life, however, haven’t only been of those of the musical variety. “I grew up in a little town in northern New Jersey called Branchville,” he recalls. “And in 1996 I moved to Maine to study forestry.” While each of his fellow members also sports a noteworthy performing resume (Beacco played in garage and jazz-fusion bands; Downing did time in top Philadelphia bluegrass outfit Jim & Jennie and The Pinetops), Weber’s is easily the most eclectic, including classical trumpet training and stints in ska bands and college jazz ensembles. After his tree-lined days in Maine, he went to Colorado for a year (“There’s a really big ‘newgrass’ scene there, but I wasn’t part of it.”) before ending up in the Berkshires/Hudson Valley area in the fall of 2001.

“When I got here, right away, I was like ‘I gotta meet the local musicians. I gotta find out what’s going on around here,’” Weber says. After spying one of their posters, he checked out a few gigs by The Beartown Mountain Ramblers, an early band that featured Beacco and Downing. (“We weren’t very good, but people loved us,” Downing says.) But Weber didn’t approach them directly.