Larry Keel and Natural Bridge is offering four free audio downloads to anyone who signs up for their mailing list. The songs are from their current CD, Backwoods: Diamond Break, They, Crocodile Man and Bitten By A Snake.

All four songs are Keel originals, with Diamond Break a co-write with Chris Jones.

Natural Bridge is Larry on guitar and lead vocals, Jenny Keel on bass, Mark Schimick on mandolin and Jason Flournoy on banjo.

To get the free tracks, just click the widget below which will prompt you for an email address, and then send you to the band’s Reverb Nation site. Once you verify that you want to sign up for their email alerts, the audio files will be there for the taking.

Chris Pandolfi, of Infamous Stringdusters fame, has put together another of his “On The Road” videos, this time from a show the band did with Larry Keel earlier this year in New Jersey.

He catches the band in the van, backstage and onstage with Keel. It’s a wild – and sometimes psychedelic – ride.

We’ll have a preview of Chris’ upcoming solo project early next week, as soon as the CD arrives in the mail.

Mark Schimick, mandolinist with Larry Keel and Natural Bridge, and his wife Leigh, are celebrating the birth of a son. David Riley Schimick bounced into this world on Wednesday (2/25) at 12:12 p.m, weighing in at 7 lbs. 9 oz.

Mark tells us that they will be calling him Riley, after Gid Tanner and the Skillet Licker’s guitarist Riley Puckett – and that he has an insatiable appetite!

Congratulations to the happy Schimicks from The Bluegrass Blog!

The second album from the Songs From The Road Band, As The Crow Flies, in now available online. The band is a side-project for members of several bands based in North Carolina, the brainchild of Charles Humphrey III, bass player with Steep Canyon Rangers.

In addition to the Rangers, members of SFTRB are drawn from The Emmit Nershi Band, Shannon Whitworth and the Refugees, Larry Keel and Natural Bridge, Town Mountain, Super Grit Cowboy Band and The Grit Pixies. Pickers include Charles on bass, Mark Schimick on mandolin, Andy Thorn on banjo, Nicky Sanders on fiddle, and Sam Wharton on guitar. Vocalists are Robert Greer, Lance Mills and Shannon Whitworth.

Audio samples can be found on the band’s MySpace page. CDs can be purchased from CD Baby and downloads are available at iTunes.