Vassar’s The Powder Kegs win radio contest

Mally Anderson Arts Editor

Last weekend, Vassar student band The Powder Kegs won the Prairie Home Companion radio show’s first annual People in their Twenties Talent Show in St. Paul, Minn. The six diverse finalists that competed were selected from over 700 entries, and won the chance to perform live on the radio show on Saturday, April 21. Over 11,000 listeners cast votes for their favorite band, who would win a $1,000 prize.

The Powder Kegs are a string band with strong ties to Vassar—three of its five members are current students. They formed in 2005, when Sam McDougle ’09 and his high school classmates Dan Maroti and Ryan Dieringer joined with Pete Winne ’07 and Jake Hoffman ’07. They describe their music as old-time: “We derive our sound from a variety of traditional American musics—blues, Appalachian fiddle tunes, jug bands—as well as more contemporary rock ‘n’ roll,” said Winne.

“We play fiddle tunes, like those from Appalachia and the south in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but totally hyped up and faster. We try to make it kinda badass. We’ve only been together for about a year now, so we had to start on the basis of tunes we all knew. Now we’re writing our own stuff, and I think it’s our best material yet,” said Hoffman.

McDougle, along with the other band members, became interested in folk music in high school, through musicians such as Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and The Band. “They all have roots in American folk music,” said McDougle.

The band’s mission is to revive traditional American music and bring it to contemporary listeners. They combine bass, banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle and slide guitar, and four of the five members also sing lead vocals. Evidently, their unique sound caught on with audiences and won them a victory.

The contest consisted of two shows for live audiences, followed by the actual broadcast, during which each band played a short song and chatted on air with host Garrison Keillor. “Everything was going on at once,” said Hoffman. “We’d be ready on the side in the dark, and go right out and play. It was kind of intimidating.” The band played three songs—“Beat it on Down the Line,” “Cumberland Gap” and “Down Low,” a Powder Kegs original—and spoke with Keillor about student loans and their success as street performers in Burlington, Vt.

“Overall, this weekend was a wild experience. Seeing Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion in action was amazing,” said Winne of the performance. “All the performers were great people and were really talented.”

McDougle agreed, citing the experience of meeting the other bands as “the best part of the whole show—they were all so nice and incredibly talented.” Hoffman noted that the other groups were “really professional and comfortable onstage. The artistic quality was really high.”

After the show ended, The Powder Kegs spent time with the other groups in an informal jam session, hosted by Keillor. “It was fun to see how the show works, how they write the script, to get behind the scenes. Winning was kind of an extra,” said McDougle.

The band was entered in the contest by Winne’s mother, who sent in a copy of their first full-length album, The Seedhouse, to A Prairie Home Companion. “The other four of us didn’t know [about the entry] until we got it,” said McDougle. “It was a funny way to find out.”

The Powder Kegs’ musical career was flourishing before they entered the contest. They spent the summer of 2006 in Burlington, performing at bars, clubs and on the streets, all the while gaining listeners and support for The Seedhouse, which is available on iTunes.

The band plans to pursue their musical career full-time for at least one more year. Dieringer is taking a year off from Dartmouth College, and Maroti from the University of Vermont, so the band can live together in the Hudson Valley and devote their time to their music. They have plans for an east coast tour this spring and summer, including a performance at Vassar on May 5.