Ask

I don't have a favorite genre tbh. I only have a small group of gerber genres that I'm so picky about that it amounts to not listening to, and only one that I won't listen to, period.

With that disclaimer, one of my most listened to genres is bluegrass.

There's a group called the Cleverlys. Now, it's basically one guy with the rest of the musicians being hired guns, but he always has some great musicians.

The reason they're underestimated is that they're best known as a comedy act. They do silly bluegrass covers of popular songs, and do bunch of shtick as part of their live act.

But every now and then, they do a song seriously, and they end up putting more serious bluegrass bands to shame.

The absolute best example of this is Wait a Minute, originally by the Seldom Scene. The Seldom Scene are both incredibly influential and relatively unknown outside of their genre, but the Cleverlys' version of this song is, imo, better than the original.

The thing with the Cleverlys though, if you know bluegrass and know the instruments and such, their covers of pop songs show a really impressive range of skill. Their arrangements just work, despite them using instruments that aren't really close to the originals. So everyone thinks of them as this comedy act, and they rarely get recognized as the highly competent musicians that they are.

A fair warning to anyone that goes looking for their live performances. The comedy is pretty well based in being country as hell, and it isn't exactly what I'd call accessible to anyone that wouldn't also enjoy Heehaw reruns. The comedy is very much in that vein. Tbh, I tend to fast forward most of the comedy bits, and I grew up with Heehaw.

But the music? They really don't get the credit they deserve