With three recordings under its belt and another in the works, the young Hart duo in this week’s Local Spins Artist Spotlight has a busy week of St. Paddy’s Day performances ahead.
Fiddler Nathan Wright and bodhran player Jonathan Misner weren’t even teenagers when they started performing together.
Support our coverage of
West Michigan's music scene
So their Celtic music duo, Gasta, teems with an uncommon breadth of experience for a group whose members are only 22 and 23 years old, respectively.
That advanced musical maturity has produced three studio recordings and made Gasta an in-demand act around St. Patrick’s Day every year, with the band traveling throughout March from its home base in Hart to play shows across West Michigan, from Holland to Grand Rapids to Montague.
“It’s definitely a blast to play to excited audiences that are really in the St. Patricks’ Day mood,” says Wright, a home-schooled Vermontville native who started his classical training on violin at age 9 after two years of piano lessons. (He also plays guitar and mandolin.)
Adds Misner: “You brace yourself, then take a deep breath and you just get pumped up and you go all the way to the end of the month. It’s great.”
On Wednesday, Gasta brought that youthful enthusiasm to the studios of News Talk 1340 AM (WJRW) for Local Spins Live, performing a medley of traditional Irish tunes: “Paddy Ryan’s Dream,” “Kilkoy Castle” and “Jenny’s Chickens.” Listen to the show podcast here and watch a video of their performance below.
Although Wright grew up in a musical family with parents and siblings who played a variety of instruments, it was his fiddle teacher – Bob McCloy at Lansing’s Elderly Instruments – who introduced him to traditional Celtic music.
BLENDING BLUEGRASS AND JAZZ WITH TRADITIONAL IRISH MUSIC
“I really loved that,” he says. “I got into the Irish and melded it with bluegrass rhythms and developed an Irish-bluegrass-jazz style and that’s kind of what I do now with the violin.”
Misner, meanwhile, “always had that drumbeat thing going through my veins. I went from pretty much banging on tables at a very, very young age to playing on the bodhran and other hand percussion. I love the drive you get from playing hand percussion. It’s fun.”
Wright met Misner, a Montague native who also was home-schooled, at a New Era church and they soon began playing together, officially forming Gasta in 2009. They’ve since released two full-length albums, 2010’s “Vision” and 2012’s “Here’s to You,” along with a 2012 EP, “High Gear.”
Although Gasta focuses primarily on traditional, instrumental Celtic tunes, both musicians have written original music. And Misner has penned some vocal tunes the duo plans to feature in a new album they’ll record later this year while balancing their gigging with day jobs: Wright works for his family’s Liberty Family Farm & Bakery, Misner is in quality control for Oceana Foods.
In the meantime, the duo will celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the usual manner: by playing for audiences in dynamic fashion here, there and almost everywhere.
At 12:30 p.m. Saturday, the duo kicks off the holiday celebration at New Holland Brewing in Holland. On Monday, aka St. Patrick’s Day, they play twice: at 3 p.m. they’ll join the day-long party at Quinn & Tuite’s Irish Pub on Plainfield Avenue NE in Grand Rapids ($3 cover), then travel north for a 7 p.m. show at The Book Nook in Montague, which happens to be the first place that Gasta ever performed.
The band also plans short tours over the next few months that will take Gasta to venues in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. For more about the band and links to purchase its music, visit its Facebook page at facebook.com/gastamusic.
Email John Sinkevics at jsinkevics@gmail.com.
Copyright 2014, Spins on Music