Hank, Pattie & the Current
Hank, Pattie & the Current
Hard-hitting bluegrass pickers who moonlight as symphonic classical musicians, Hank, Pattie, and the Current have forged their unique sound by approaching their string band much as they would a string quartet. The four-piece group based in Raleigh, North Carolina is led by banjo player Hank Smith and fiddle player and vocalist Pattie Kinlaw. On their new album, Paper Lanterns, they present a collection of intricately crafted messages to their lovers, friends, and children.
Kinlaw grew up in Williamson, NC, the daughter of a church organist. She began studying classical violin as a kid, but soon discovered and became enamored with the fiddle music of her native rural region. She never felt she had to choose between the two genres, and got a degree in violin performance before moving to Nashville where she worked with the legendary Mark O'Connor, and then Asheville, where she studied with bluegrass master Bobby Hicks. When Kinlaw moved back to the Raleigh area, she soon met kindred musical spirit Smith, and the two began playing together regularly.
Smith grew up in South Carolina, and was a relatively latecomer to music, picking up the banjo at age sixteen. However, once he started playing, he was a man on a singular mission, studying the music of Earl Scruggs and Bela Fleck with extreme tenacity. “I was the kind of kid who would write research papers that were not assigned”, he laughs. “So I kind of did my own independent study in banjo music”. After completing an undergraduate and then a master’s degree in Middle Eastern History, Smith gave up the academic path to join the burgeoning jamgrass band Barefoot Manner, which brought him to the Raleigh area.
As Kinlaw and Smith’s various musical projects began slowing down in 2015, the two friends realized that it might be time to start a project of their own. “We were playing in a band, both primarily as instrumentalists, and that band kind of imploded,” explains Kinlaw. “And as the other band members all went back to their regular day jobs, we both looked at each other like, ‘well we are full-time musicians, what are we supposed to do?’” Smith was determined that the two of them should create their own project. “We need to make a band”, he said, “We need to choose our players, play the music we want to play without compromising”
Thus, Hank, Pattie, and the Current was born. The present iteration of the band includes bass player Stevie Martinez, who also performs with the Asheville Symphony, and guitarist Billie Feather, who hold numerous degrees in guitar and engineering. The group embraces their arguable over-education by bringing an academic perspective to Bluegrass. “In the past, we’ve created bluegrass arrangements and then added a string quartet to them, but with this album, we took a new approach to genre-bending, in which we simply treated the bluegrass band as a string quartet”, explains Smith. “The tone of this album reads much more modern than our past work, and my favorite thing about it is that all the band members really had a heavy hand in creating it”, adds Kinlaw.
In the world of traditional music, it’s common for musicians to try and hide their backgrounds in classical or jazz genres for fear of seeming “inauthentic”. With a wealth of knowledge and passion, Hank, Pattie, and the Current refreshingly embrace their myriad of musical influences to create a unique sound, true to themselves.
Albums
Paper Lanterns (2024) RBST029
Letters (2022) RBST022
Rise Above (2019) RBST020
Hank, Pattie & The Current Live (2018) RBST016
Hold Your Head Up High (2017) RBST013
Hank, Pattie & The Current Self-Titled (2016) RBST011