Bluegrass Hero
Marc Dykeman M’07, director of advancement services, performs on stage by evening and letter-presses album covers by night.
In 2015, The High & Wides were founded—a four-piece lineup that combines bluegrass, new grass, and eclectic-folk-Americana-rockabilly-boot-thumpin’ music to produce a truly original sound matching their energetic performances. The group has three Washington College alums—Marc Dykeman M’07 on guitar and vocals; Mike Buccino ’99 on bass; and Sam Guthridge ’04 on banjo, mandolin, and vocals. The fourth member, Nate Grower, plays the fiddle and is working on acquiring a Washington connection.
“We loved bands that were crossing over [between bluegrass, folk, Americana, and new grass]; you can’t put their music in a box,” Dykeman said. “They were very inspirational to us. So, we started messing around with style and playing those sorts of songs. There were a lot of brother bands that we pulled inspiration from, too: the Callahan Brothers, the Delmore Brothers, the Louvin Brothers, and the Maddox Brothers.”
Dykeman gets inspiration for his songs from other bluegrass bands, dreams, and even turns of phrase. “I'm somebody that has tunes running in my head all the time. I'll be driving on a long trip, and I’ll start singing into a recorder to remember the song that’s in my head,” Dykeman said. “Sometimes a turn of phrase comes to you, and you think to yourself, ‘that would be a great chorus.’ Then you try to make sense of what the song is telling you, figure out what's behind it, or what the story is, what’s worth saying. If you're not discovering something in your music, then there's no point.”
To date, The High & Wides have released three albums. The first, "Lifted," hit the Bluegrass Billboard Chart top ten on its debut. The second, "Seven True Stories,” debuted at number six. The third, "Blood," is a compilation of covers.
After their first album dropped, Mike Hoatson, the owner of the Listening Room audio systems store in Chestertown, Maryland, reached out to The High & Wides and encouraged the band to make a more unique record cover for the second album. “So, we collaborated with Aaron Capp from the print shop at the Washington College Rose O’Neill Literary House,” Dykeman said. Capp assists Mike Kaylor, who runs the print shop. “Hoatson offered to pay for the paper if we included the name of the store on the back. We ended up letter-pressing a thousand CDs and 300 records that we made from scratch. It was insane. And we did it again for the third album. Making the covers ourselves has been a cool part of the process. Usually, you come up with an idea, send it to a designer, and they print it up. This evolved into so much more. It was really an interesting part of the creative process to be hands-on through every step.”
The High & Wides are a local favorite and carry considerable weight in the bluegrass world. They recently played at MerleFest, a festival founded in 1988 in memory of Eddy Merle Watson to celebrate “traditional plus” music, where they played alongside Turnpike Troubadours, The Teskey Brothers, and Old Crow Medicine Show. Even though their travels take them far and wide, Dykeman anticipates continuing the close collaboration between the College and the band to develop and produce engaging album covers that reflect the band’s original and eclectic sound.
— Hillary L. Bitting