And thank goodness they became a band. Their first gigs were local, small venues, cafes, restaurants, coffee shops, where they’d play for multiple hours honing their set list and learning shared musical vocabularies. Now, as they criss-cross the country performing hundreds of shows a year to larger and larger audiences, you can sense the intention they had back then – to make music together not for just aspirational reasons, but because it’s fun – and it’s all you want to do as young musicians. Currently made up of Lee on mandolin, fiddler Jan Purat, and guitarists Scott Gates and Sullivan Tuttle, the band carries that youthful, festival-parking-lot energy with them still today, but at the same time there’s a genuine ease and confidence to their music making. This is not the bluegrass of ambitious musicians intent on industry success, this is music made firstly for the joy of making it and primarily made for each other. It’s part of why, as they ready their third studio album, City of Glass – their first label release, out July 19th via Signature Sounds – their product feels mature and fully realized, while deep in the Blue Summit pocket.