They are a local band but their talents and taste for music are much broader than Clarksdale and that is part of the reason they attract an audience with such variety.
Young, old, rich, poor and even country music fans and rock-n-rollers gathered at The Stage downtown recently to hear Blackwater Trio finish up Friday at The Stage.
“Thank you for coming out on such a beautiful night,” said Seth Stroud, a hometown boy who plays acoustic guitar. “Clarksdale is such a wonderful place. We’ve got kids playing. This is a great place to call home.”
The Blackwater Trio bills themselves as a folk/rock band that uses two guitars, a violin and three-part harmony to pull their audience.
Based in Clarksdale, the Trio was formed in the fall of 2013 when violinist Alice Hasen, then a high school band director, sat in with local guitarists Walt Busby and Stroud.
Stroud and Busby smile when they say they quickly turned Hasen, a classical violinist from Vermont, to the “dark side” of Delta Blues.
Their repertoire is varied – just like their audience – Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, and the classical canon, just to name a few.
The sound that emerges is a refreshing mix of opposites - Stroud’s crooning and sometimes rough-hewn vocals; Busby’s hard electric guitar layered over intricate acoustic patterns; Hasen’s refined violin technique coupled with a fiddler’s style.
They will play at Hooker Grocery this weekend.
