Put your keys between your fingers and make a fist. Stagger your feet and leverage your weight to escape a bear hug from behind. Be all ears, all eyes, all the time. Use any means necessary to make it back to your tour bus alive.
Self-defense isn’t part of the day-to-day calculus for most acts on the bluegrass festival circuit, but it was among the guidance offered to local quartet Big Richard by fellow all-women string band Della Mae in the early days of their career.
“It was really sweet and heartbreaking at the same time,” cellist Joy Adams tells Boulder Weekly on a video call with her bandmates ahead of their 2025 headlining national tour. “This is not a conversation bro bands would have.”
Big Richard have never done things quite like the boys — and on the traditional playing field of American roots music, that can raise the hackles of the dude-dominated old guard. Relishing this dynamic, the self-proclaimed “gremlins of the bluegrass world” match their top-shelf musicianship with dick jokes and inflatable phalluses as they take aim at the conventions of genre and gender with impish glee.
“Historically, women in bluegrass sing songs about Jesus and play a very well-defined role,” Adams, 36, says. “To have four women come out on stage making horrible jokes, being aggressive and taking solos brings an attitude that has maybe been missing from roots music.”
‘Colorado bluegrass is not trad’
The band may get a charge from sticking a thumb in the eye of expectation, but Longmont-based mandolin player and guitarist Bonnie Sims says the local Americana landscape is more welcoming of people who buck the standard.
“I grew up in a conservative bluegrass scene, and I would say all the [stereotypes] about bluegrass are true in that realm,” Sims, 38, says. “But Colorado bluegrass is not trad. This is a very progressive scene. When you go to a bluegrass festival in Texas, everybody tucks their T-shirts into their jeans.”
“Here you’ll find men without shirts, which is also disturbing,” she adds to a peal of laughter from the group. “If my nipple is illegal, then your nipple is illegal, buddy. Cover up. I don’t wanna see it.”
Of course, it takes more than a funny bone to build a following as devoted as Big Richard’s. Since first stepping on stage together at an invite-only Castle Rock festival in 2021, the Front Range supergroup have carved their sizeable reputation by dazzling audiences with a pyrotechnic live show, one gig at a time, shuffling barn-burner anthems with tender ballads and left-field covers of songs by the likes of Radiohead and Billie Eilish.
Now, on their just-released debut album Girl Dinner — recorded last year at Longmont’s Vermillion Road Studio — the band has captured the lightning of their live show in a bottle, even if it comes with a few less thunderclaps.
“We’ve played a lot of these songs so many times, and we’ve been working them into our live show,” says 32-year-old fiddle player Eve Panning. “But the energy is different, because in our live show we have these big, high energy moments. We stepped away from that for this album, and we just sort of focused on the softer side.”
Exceptions to the rule include fiery standouts like the fiddle-forward “Beards Brushing in the Night” and certified asskicker “Deal Me In,” showcasing the band’s formidable chops with a sizzling urgency. These livewire moments feel that much more charged against delicate blooms of cello and fluttering mandolin washing over the rest of the album’s 45-minute runtime like a gentle mountain stream.
“Everyone brings in their own songs and we all collaborate on the arrangements,” says upright bassist and guitar player Hazel Royer, 23, currently studying at Berklee College of Music in Boston. “Sometimes people come in and they’re like, ‘I know exactly how everything’s gonna sound on my song,’ but most of the time that’s not how it goes.”
‘People are stirred up right now’
Poised on the precipice of the biggest moment in their career, Big Richard says the cross-country tour in support of their debut LP — stopping at Boulder Theater for a hometown show on Valentine’s Day — is more than an opportunity to grow in their craft while pissing off bluegrass gatekeepers. It’s a chance to connect with a broad swath of listeners who find something life-giving in the music.
“We went out to the merch table [at Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon] and there were 60-year-old women crying and hugging and us, like ‘I’ve never felt so free as when I watch you. Don’t ever stop what you’re doing, because this is really important,’” Sims says. “I think a lot of people are stirred up right now. It’s a climate thing. Having that intense emotional reaction is really powerful, and has made me be like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna dig in. I’m gonna go even harder.’”
On top of shining a light in the dark for the generations of women who came before them, Big Richard hope to serve as a model for little girls who might see themselves reflected onstage — larger than life, louder than hell and laughing like crazy.
“If I had been that age and had a band like this, I think it would have made a big difference in who I am as a person,” Adams says. “To see women be unapologetically themselves, that’s powerful in any field.”
ON THE BILL: Big Richard with Silas Herman & The Tone Unit and Heartthrob Hoedown. 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 14, Boulder Theater, 2032 14th St. $32