West Michigan bands that ‘folking’ rock

Multi-instrumentalist, South Haven native and Renaissance man Andru Bemis has spent the past decade or so making his way across the country carrying his instruments on his back, spreading folk songs like apple seeds as he goes. Bemis is a churched-up version of the hobo you imagine in the back of a railcar, picking on a stringed instrument, coasting off into the sunset. But Bemis is much more than just a picker in a bowler hat: this is a folk musician’s folk musician, singing his own lyrics alongside traditional songs in his signature bluegrass-y warble; swapping between banjo, guitar, fiddle and ukulele onstage; and nodding to folk styles from Celtic and Cajun to more modern styles and back to pure Americana. — Recoil Magazine [Grand Rapids, MI]