Music first, politics second

Combining a powerful framework of traditional American folk music with eclectic elements of jazz, blues and rock, Hot Buttered Rum are the aural equivalent of the beverage from which they derive their namesake–delicious and good for you.

The Northern California band is taking a much-deserved break from the festival circuit to play an intimate set of its progressive bluegrass this Friday night at the Wonder Ballroom.

Touring in support of their most recent album, 2007’s Live in the Northeast, Hot Buttered Rum are making it a point to demonstrate the energy and creativity that made the aforementioned record so great to the eager ears of their fans in the great Pacific Northwest. Having already earned a good name for themselves in this part of the world with sets opening up for the String Cheese Incident, in addition to a plethora of successful smaller shows all over the state, there should be a large number of people in the greater Portland area that are very excited about this concert.

Though the Hot Buttered Rum String Band is based out of the San Francisco area, the group has a strong, historic relationship with the city and people of Portland.

Guitarist Nat Keefe attended the famous hippie day-care center Lewis & Clark College, where he met the ridiculously talented multi-instrumentalist Erik Yates–the band’s primary banjo player, flutist, saxophonist and accordion maestro. The pair bonded over a mutual admiration for acoustic music and rocked many a weekend house party in Southwest with their old band, the Foggy Notion Boyz, a stripped-down version of the behemoth they would eventually become.

Graduating with a degree in music composition (three out of the five members in Hot Buttered Rum are conservatory trained) and ethnomusicology, Keefe basically had no other option but to start a legitimate band as a source of income and happiness.

Like many other bands in the jam scene, the members of Hot Buttered Rum are enthusiastic granola-heads. They do their fair share of promoting environmental and social awareness, making it a point to travel in bio-diesel buses in addition to all the other Burning Man rhetoric you might expect from a group of their nature.

But an endearing quality of this band is the fact that this righteous-yet-cliché mission does not solely define their existence; they are solidly focused first and foremost on the music that they make for people. Quoted from www.rockthearth.org, a grassroots environmental advocacy organization, frontman Nat Keefe talks about his philosophy of activism:

“Well, I’m not as active as I’d like to be. I’m a musician first and foremost. But, like I once heard Michael Franti say, artists look for truth. Whether that truth is personal, social, romantic or political, it helps people relate to themselves and the world. I hope we can contribute to this in people’s lives, even if only in a small way.”

Friday’s show at the Wonder Ballroom is an excellent way to initiate oneself into the often overlooked but extremely entertaining world of live bluegrass music. Whatever negative stereotypes people have about the genre are most likely wrong, and the tunes are impossible not to dance to, whether you’re a punk rocker, an aging hippie or simply a human being who enjoys music.

Hot Buttered Rum w/ the Waybacks

Friday, Feb. 29Wonder Ballroom $178 p.m.All Ages