Packway Handle Band at Chelsea's Café

• By MICHAEL FARRAR
• Special to 2theadvocate.com
• Published: May 21, 2008 - UPDATED: 9:00 p.m.

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Playing music for a living can lead to strange shows in unusual places. The Packway Handle Band knows this from experience. Playing out-of-the-ordinary spots is part of the unexpected fun of life in a bluegrass band.

"We played out in front of a seafood restaurant," Andrew Heaton, fiddler for Packway Handle Band, recounted with a laugh. "We played out in front of a bank one time."

They can afford to laugh about their experiences, because both of those were paying gigs. Performing to lure in bank customers might bother other groups, but the Packway Handle Band takes it in stride.

The Athens, Ga.-based band includes the combined talents of Heaton (fiddle, vocals), Michael Paynter (mandolin, vocals), Josh Erwin (guitar, vocals), Zach McCoy (bass) and Tom Baker (banjo, vocals).

If you’re wondering where the Packway Handle Band’s name originated, wonder no more. The band was stuck without a name the night before their first show. As they tossed around possible names, a friend with a mild case of Tourette Syndrome blurted out “Pack-Way Handle.” The band liked the phrasing better than anything they had come up and kept it as their name.

Getting their official start in the music business was also a pleasant, beer-soaked surprise for the Packway Handle Band. Their very first CD, “Chaff Harvest,” was a studio recording that the group began putting together on their own.

However, when they won a battle of the bands contest, it earned them, not only a year's supply of beer, but also money to finish recording their CD and release it.

Since then, they have avoided professional studios, preferring to record either in front of audiences or in a home-type settings.

"We recorded songs in whole takes, meaning that we started a song, we played it the whole way through, and we either liked that take or we didn't. And if we didn't, we would play the whole song through another time," Heaton said.

This was the technique that marked the Packway Handle Band's "Sinner You Better Get Ready" CD (2005) with a natural sound, which included a touch of wind and crickets.

This background noise wasn’t some elaborate special effect. The CD was recorded on Heaton's back porch.

Packway Handle Band also uses two chunky condenser microphones mounted on one stand in their performances on stage and to record their CDs.

"We do a slight variation of the old single mic style of playing," said Baker, "Everything except the bass is going through two condenser mics at the center of the stage. The band mixes itself by stepping in and out of those microphones."