In Wilmington, NC we find a new family bluegrass band consisting of four Trakimowicz siblings, with dad on bass.
The band name even incorporates what’s unique about the players. Things started with sisters Isabella, now 19, on fiddle, and AnnMari, now 18, on guitar. When the two started playing they called themselves MariBella, combining their names, and when little brothers Pete (13) on banjo and Chris (11) on mandolin joined in, they became MariBella & the Pigkickers.
Isabella was the first to take the bluegrass plunge, starting fiddle at age seven, inspired by Pa from Little House on the Prairie. She’s now in college at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. AnnMari chose guitar when she was eight, and is also the primary singer in the band, who now studies jazz and classical guitar as well, but mostly to improve her bluegrass chops.
Brother Pete is a fan of the Scruggs/Crowe banjo style, and was named the Most Promising Talent at the 2024 Mt. Airy Fiddlers’ Convention. The youngest, Chris enjoys playing mandolin, and is also a competitive bagpiper who won as Piper of the Day recently at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games.
Once they all started playing together in 2021, their father Joel was pressed into service on bass. They tell us he was ordered to buy himself a bass for his birthday a few years ago, and teach himself how to play.
Just three years after forming, MariBella & the Pigkickers have an EP, Magnolia, which not only displays their picking and singing, but their burgeoning songwriting skills as well. All five tracks were written by members of the band, and it was released by Teal Music Productions, a student run label recently formed at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
As a first single, they have created a music video for Magnolia Tree, an imaginative song with AnnMari singing lead.
It’s an impressive debut! Have a look and listen.
Magnolia Tree, and the full Magnolia EP from MariBella & the Pigkickers, are available now from popular download and streaming services online, and to radio programmers through AirPlay Direct.
