Infamous Stringdusters photo courtesy of Sugar Hill Records.

Chris Pandolfi (banjo) studied with Tony Trischka, earned a Bill Vernon Memorial Scholarship, recorded a solo album (The Handoff), and toured with the New England Bluegrass Band, the Grammy-nominated Russian country-bluegrass group Bering Strait, and former Leftover Salmon mandolinist Drew Emmitt;

Jeremy Garrett (fiddle) performed with an array of bluegrass artists, including Bobby Osborne, Chris Jones and Audie Blaylock, backed award-winning country singer Lee Ann Womack, and released an album (Garrett Grass—Bluegrass Gospel 2005) with his father, Glen Garrett, that featured dozens of top-shelf bluegrass pickers and singers;

Jesse Cobb (mandolin) served a stint with Grand Ole Opry member Mike Snider, performed with Jim Lauderdale, Melonie Cannon, the Fox Family, Valerie Smith and Lee Ann Womack;

Travis Book (upright bass) anchored Colorado's Broke Mountain, winners of the prestigious Rockygrass band competition in 2003, and performed with Benny "Burle" Galloway, arguably the best-known independent songwriter on the jamgrass scene.
Yet as deep as their individual experience runs, the Infamous Stringdusters are quick to assert that the band is more than the sum of its parts—and after a furiously busy year and a half on the road, they're attuned enough to one another that they complete each others' sentences. Their closeness of mind and prodigious talents make for tight, quick-moving live shows that sparkle with an infectious energy.

Not surprisingly, audiences have responded with fervent enthusiasm, creating a word-of-mouth buzz that's brought the Infamous Stringdusters a startling string of triumphant appearances at venues usually indifferent to acts who have yet to release their first recordings. And whether they're appearing in a hard-core bluegrass hall in the famed Pennsylvania-Maryland firehall circuit, a crowded showcase suite at the International Bluegrass Music Association's annual trade show, at a hip club like the Passim in Boston or the Rodeo Bar in New York, at a straight-up bluegrass festival like the Joe Val festival or Colorado's loose-limbed Rockygrass, the group's abundance of talent and passion have won them a multitude of new fans.

With the release of Fork In The Road, the acclaim is guaranteed to grow wider and deeper. While traces of the group's varied roots can be found in the title track and in a couple of selections like Boston folksinger Geoff Bartley's "Letter From Prison" (which Hall previously recorded on Red Wing), the heart of the album can be found in the predominant collection of originals penned by most of the group's members. On these, with arrangements shaped by the collective creativity of the band, the unique combination of strengths and the interplay of its members individual sensibilities are given full play, and the results are full of satisfyingly familiar reference points and deliciously surprising twists.

Stafford, a long-time observer whose vantage point gives him a particular clear view, makes no bones about where he thinks the Infamous Stringdusters are going. "I think they're the vanguard of what bluegrass music is going to become," he says with a grin—and while that may sound like hyperbole, too, immersion in Fork In The Road is all it takes to convince one that it's nothing more than the simple truth.