‘We just play’: Sopris Mountain Boyz sprinkle signature bluegrass twang and easy playfulness across genres

For the past six years, the Sopris Mountain Boyz have been jamming together at weddings, bars and clubs, blending classic bluegrass instrumentation with diverse genres from contemporary rock to classic pop.

“It really works because we’re all on the same boat where we enjoy playing a wide variety of music,” bassist Trevor Mountjoy said. “We attack it with much the same kind of attitude, which is we’re there to have fun. Sometimes the wheels are coming off, but we’re still mainly laughing about it, having a good time and it’s exploratory — it’s changing all the time.

“So similar attitudes and a similar approach are probably credit for a lot of the reasons we still keep going back, aside from people feeding us,” he added. 

Although local musicians Dave Notor, Don Marlin and Mountjoy have played with each other in different musical iterations for decades, the core trio —  Sopris Mountain Boyz — was officially formed in 2019. It was “desperation” that drove the group together, according to Notor. 

“We have to play music,” Notor, a mandolin and dobro player, said. “We have to play and we’d like to find a core that we can gel with. It’s not easy.”

Mixing the sweet tones of mandolin and dobro with stand-up stick bass, banjo and guitar, the multi-faceted, flexible trio brings an abundance of variety, personalized with a Sopris Mountain Boyz twist, to every function. 

Notor — who refers to himself as the “master of disaster” — is often the one who pushes the trio to take pieces in new directions while performing, a tendency the group refers to as “notarizing.” 

“Dave will go off on a tangent, and then Trevor and I just go, okay, where’s he going?” Marlin said. “Then we follow, and then boom, we all collectively get together…his notarizing is very creative.”

“One of the fun parts is that we are constantly altering familiar songs, there’s always alterations going on in the middle of it,” Mountjoy added. “Once in a while, the wheels might be slightly coming off, but we have a pretty good record of gathering things up and turning it into something. Dave’s usually somewhere in the beginning of that (alteration).” 

To expand their sound, the trio often recruits other local musicians, including Randall Utterback on mandolin and fiddle guitar, Brad Manosevitz on vocals, guitar and percussion and Steven Frischmann on vocals and guitar, transforming the group’s sound into a sampling of Roaring Fork Valley musical stylings.

“The trio we have and the people we involve in the trio are a pretty interesting cross-section of local musicians from the Valley,” Mountjoy said. “(The audience) gets a pretty authentic taste of Roaring Fork Valley music.”

Even without guest artists, Notor, Marlin and Mountjoy are longtime members, and representatives, of the local musical culture. 

“Given the fact that all of us have been playing here for a very long time, I think you see a lot of influences from this valley that you might not get elsewhere,” Mountjoy said. 

Although the group regularly performs at local spots like Carbondale’s Homestead — their home venue — and Marble Distilling and has performed at a multitude of weddings, they intentionally don’t take themselves too seriously. For the Sopris Mountain Boyz, that means they don’t practice — each performance is about pure, undiluted, in-the-moment fun. 

“Everyone’s writing original material now, every band you’re listening to, and there’s a word you have to do as a band,” Notor said. “You have to practice. That is not in our genre.”

“We just play,” Marlin added.