Colebrook Road to Roe Entertainment

Roe Entertainment has announced the recruitment of the Pennsylvania/Mid-Atlantic area band Colebrook Road to its talent agency.  

Jim Roe, founder of Roe Entertainment, said ……

“We are very excited to be working with Colebrook Road as their exclusive booking agency, ….  [Colebrook Road is a] great band of pickers that has won numerous band and instrument contests over the years. They primarily perform their own material with some traditional material and a few bluegrass style pop and rock covers thrown in. They do all of them well and their live performances are full of energy.”

Wade Yankey, the mandolin player with Colebrook Road, traces the steps towards this link-up … 

“We met Jim at IBMA in 2017. We almost didn’t go, but got invited to Stephen Mougin’s excellent band coaching workshop a few weeks before the conference and decided to make the trip. While we were there (for only a day or so) we we’re lucky enough to showcase up in the Charm City suite. Our buddy Roger Moss (formerly of Podunk Bluegrass Festival) came out and brought Jim along. We got to chat some the rest of the time we were at IBMA and stayed in touch. Jim came to see us a number of times this year at IBMA and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Colebrook Road was formed as a consequence of a meeting between Jesse Eisenbise and Wade Yankey in September 2008, having expanded from a four-piece unit to a quintet in 2015 with the addition of Mark Rast on banjo. 

The band is composed of lead singer, guitar player, and songwriter Jesse Eisenbise; mandolinist and winner of the 2014 Watermelon Park Fest mandolin contest Wade Yankey; upright bassist, and tenor vocalist Jeff Campbell; banjoist, bass vocalist, dobro player, and winner of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival banjo contest Mark Rast; and fiddler, baritone vocalist, and winner of the 2015 Deer Creek Fiddler’s Convention bluegrass fiddle contest Joe McAnulty. 

In addition to award-winning members from an array of backgrounds, the songs performed are almost exclusively original compositions with varying themes. 

Colebrook Road specialises in original music written within the band, performed in an aggressive, contemporary bluegrass style. 

Here is an example of their creative approach, Boy in The Bubble 

Roe Entertainment is a full-time booking agency, of over 13 years standing, representing some of the best-known award winning and talented all-acoustic bands performing today. 

The agency was established in 2005 by owner Jim Roe and specializes in contemporary and traditional bluegrass bands, Americana, and singer songwriters. All of their bands tour coast to coast, including Canada and overseas. 

Roe Entertainment is now accepting booking offers for Colebrook Road for throughout 2019 and beyond. 

Colebrook Road signed with Mountain Fever Records in August 2018 and their first release for the label is expected in the spring 2019.  

Richard D. Smith, author of Can’t You Hear Me Calling: The Life of Bill Monroe, wrote in Bluegrass Unlimited in July 2017……. 

“This outfit has a real synergy, both vocally and instrumentally…a refreshing contemporary grass sound that stays very much in the traditional bluegrass mode.”

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About the Author

Richard Thompson

Richard F. Thompson is a long-standing free-lance writer specialising in bluegrass music topics. A two-time Editor of British Bluegrass News, he has been seriously interested in bluegrass music since about 1970. As well as contributing to that magazine, he has, in the past 30 plus years, had articles published by Country Music World, International Country Music News, Country Music People, Bluegrass Unlimited, MoonShiner (the Japanese bluegrass music journal) and Bluegrass Europe. He wrote the annotated series I'm On My Way Back To Old Kentucky, a daily memorial to Bill Monroe that culminated with an acknowledgement of what would have been his 100th birthday, on September 13, 2011.