Last weekend there were many fine bands and musicians on tap for Texarkana at the Jump, Jive and JamFest in downtown Texarkana.

With acts like Country Plus, School of Rock All-Stars, Ida Myrtis and others, it was an eclectic display of musical talent that certainly deserved a larger audience than it received.

The daytime headliner was the Grammy-nominated bluegrass band Cherryholmes, which consists of a family of six who’ve risen in the bluegrass ranks to create some energetic and enjoyable music.

Their latest album is “Cherryholmes II,” released last year on Skaggs Family Records. They’re just about finished working on a new album, due out in September.

Led by Jere Cherryholmes, the father in the bunch (Sandy Lee is the mom), Cherryholmes first got started in 1999. They’ve wasted no time in learning the craft and impressing the bluegrass faithful while wooing new fans.

It was, in part, the death of one of Jere and Sandy Lee’s daughters that inspired the family to come together musically—first for family jams and then to play at bluegrass festivals.

Jere calls their music “bluegrass on steroids” with an aggressive way of playing. But while their music has a “rock edge to it,” as Jere put it, they also have their feet firmly planted in the traditions of the genre.

The Gazette caught up with Jere after Saturday’s show. Here’s some of what he had to say:



How did you first get involved as a band and deciding as a family to go for it?

“We were looking for something to do, just get out of town for a day, and we ended up at a bluegrass festival out in California where we lived. We had such a good time. We walked around the festival and realized there were people playing the music at every different level, jamming in the parking lots and jamming at the campground, not just on the stage.

We just thought ‘shoot, it might be something to just get some instruments and together as a family get together in the living room and just jam ... something to do together and bind them (the family members) closer together.’”

Are you all self-taught?

“My wife is trained in music back when she was in high school and some college. So she was a reader. She could read music and play piano and stuff like that. She basically had to teach herself how to play something and then teach the kids how to play it ....

So we got to talking about it and we figured we’re going to have to go one of two ways. Either we were going to have to go ahead and go for it or we were going to have to quit or back off significantly so that we could let the kids go ahead and pursue their adult life.”

What do you like about being on the road?

“You know, we do like to travel and we’ve been able to travel all over the world playing bluegrass. We’ve been in Japan, Switzerland, France, Scotland, the Caribbean.”

How do foreign audiences take to bluegrass?

“They really like it a lot. They’ve got festivals over there where they have 20,000 people. Of course they link it together with American country, so we’re playing at country shows playing bluegrass. And we’ve been doing that over here too ...

At one time they were together. Talking back in the ‘40s, you’re talking about old-time country with the Carter family and all them Opry stars and people like that.”

Do you find yourselves connecting with a younger audience?

“I think probably out of all the bands we can connect with the younger audience more so than anybody ... I always liken it to that when you’re playing for an older audience you’ll get them tapping their foot, but what you want to do when you see a younger audience is you want to get them banging their head.”