6 Day Bender started with a couple of students in Charlottesville, Virginia playing on the downtown mall for weekend excesses, hollering to the open city streets. Then they shoved it in the corners of local gutbuckets and plugged it in. After a few months, 6 Day Bender emerged as one of Charlottesville’s most raucous and promising bands. Like a fiery locomotive derailing across city asphalt.

Luke Nutting and Lauren Moses were students at the University of Virginia. Luke rented a room right above Lauren’s. Picking banjo in his room for hours, Luke started to hear occasional fiddle accompaniment coming up through his floor. After a couple weeks of playing together blind, they made each other’s acquaintance.

Lauren had grown up playing fiddle in her grandfather’s string band in Charleston, West Virginia. Luke showed her songs he had written. Within a few weeks, 6 Day Bender was playing its first bar gigs.

Country. Bluegrass. Folk. Blues. Punk. They call it Mountain Rock & Roll. 6 Day Bender may have ignited with a bluegrass spark, but the ensuing blaze quickly overcame any boundaries of genre. Luke recruited high-school classmate Clayton Avent of Birmingham, Alabama to play guitar, and halfway through the first gig when his acoustic wasn’t cutting it, he plugged in his Telecaster and stomped on the overdrive for the seminal second set. Luke coaxed Jersey Shore bassist and UVA classmate Mark Schottinger to join up, and Mark brought along his long-time drummer, Corey Gross. 6 Day Bender was a band.

With a reverence for songs that have stood the test of time, 6 Day Bender started writing and playing songs peeled from the seed of American music, with the distinct sound born of three voices intertwining and mounting into crystallized angel-band harmonies above a tumult of strings and fire-barrel drums.

Moving in together as a band in July of 2007 in the outskirts of Charlottesville, VA, the bandmembers revealed the breadth of their talents. Clayton Avent brought out his cello for “Going Back Again” and “Philadelphia.” Mark rekindled his ripping harmonica from his days blowing blues harp in high school.

After listening to the results of cutting two live tracks around a $35 mic in their basement, the band decided to record a portion of their constantly growing repertoire. After two weeks in the jury-rigged basement studio, “Eastham Basement” was finished and flying out of the briefcase toted to each show.

Over the course of the past year, 6 Day Bender has developed a devoted following in Charlottesville, VA and the surrounding areas. Now that all the band’s members have finished college, music is a full time gig. They are in the process of recording their first studio album (to be released in February) and booking dates for their 2008 spring and summer tours.

6 Day Bender is an ambitious young band that whole-heartedly believes in their songs, believes in their music. Their passion onstage is undeniable. There is not a behind in a seat when these kids are under the lights. Their music and shows are a return to truer musical times, but not a throw-back or a vaudeville guise. It is rock and roll through and through.
Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.