String Machine

Location: R.A. Fountain

from our promo for this concert

String Machine was already one of the best new bluegrass bands to come out of North Carolina in recent years, and now they’ve added fiddler Shannon Thorne, formerly of Sweet Potato Pie. 

Thorne began learning at age 9 on her grandfather’s violin from Germany. She has studied with some of the best violists worldwide, but didn’t start playing bluegrass until she moved to North Carolina, “smack in the middle of bluegrass country,” she says.

Dexter Davis, on Dobro, played with the Hemby Bridge Boys from Union County and Lonesome Pine prior to joining the String Machine.

Marshall Gray, who plays banjo, has been a career Navy and US Public Health Service officer who’s moved around quite a bit, but he’s always found a bluegrass band to pick with. He currently lives in Hillsborough.

Guitarist Phil Wise started out playing rock at 13. At 16, he was touring with the regionally successful country band Ambush, but a bluegrass festival experience changed his musical interests. He lives in Selma.

Glenn Garrison, on bass, is a mechanical engineer by day and a bluegrass fanatic at all other times. Now living in Mebane with his wife, Lynn, he was formerly with the Misty Mountain Boys out of Wide-Awake Wilson. 

Tags: bluegrass