What’s in a name: The Infamous Stringdusters
A while back we did a short piece about the band Crooked Still and where they came up with their band name. It was requested by a reader in the comments that we do a similar piece about The Infamous Stringdusters.
“Stringdusters” is fairly easy to figure out by itself, it’s probably a reference to keeping the strings clean by playing all the time. But where did the “Infamous” part come from? Andy Hall was kind enough to relate the story to me. Here’s what he had to say.
Actually Ben Eldrige came up with it. We had been through quite a naming crisis at the beginning. We started as Wheelhouse, but that was a metal band from L.A. Then we were Broken Drought, which is the title of a Robert Frost poem. Noam Pikelny suggested that, so we’ll blame that one on him. The Stringdusters was a band that Jethro Burns was in, but wasn’t around anymore. We added the “Infamous” to help distiguish from that. Hopefully we will eventually earn that description!
Coming up with band names is so hard. The ridiculous ones come easy. Sabertooth, Six On A Stick, The Free Radicals to name a few. Ironically these are probably all taken. I like where we ended up. The other cool part of The Infamous Stringdusters is that it’s acronym is IS.
I would guess we might be seeing that on a T-shirt sometime later this year!
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The Infamous Stringdusters were featured last week on Acoustic Cafe. They joined host Rob Reinhart in...
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Thanks Andy for forwarding my request to IS. I have reviewed their CD along with Uncle Earl’s and Crooked Still’s for the April issue of French magazine Crossroads. The review of Jim Lauderdale’s “Bluegrass” and Martha Scanlan’s “West was Burning “will be featured in the issue out on March 15. Tryi,g to instill some bluegrass into that rock mag!
As I’m typing, I’m listening to an excellent Stringdusters show available for download from the Steampowered Preservation Society’s website.
Keep up the great work.
Merci
Herve in pAris
Since you’re The Infamous Stringdusters, your acronym would/could be TIS. I like that too. Has an Irish flair to it!
Yer Cuzin’ Diana
You must