ALCHEMIST

8/19/2009 10:00 PM at Poverty Line Old Time Band "lots of banjo’s"
435 South Huntington Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts 02130
Cost: Always Free

Bluegrass / Roots Music / Folk oldtime is the new punk rock more banjo less pants Bio / Background Poverty Line began back in nineteen-dickety-two, in Timber Lake, South Dakota. Jimmy Fox was a ranch hand at the time, driving cattle across the plains from their summer to their winter pastures. It was rough work, and to keep himself from sinking into depression, he would play the guitar with no one to hear him but the cattle and the fierce prairie wind. One night at a local watering hole in Timber Lake called Shay’s Saloon, Jimmy ran into a rough-and-tumble stranger carrying a suitcase and a banjo. This was Todd Giles. Todd had come from California where he had been laying rail for the Sierra line, but had soon grown fed up with slinging steel and left for greener pastures. It seems Todd had made quite a reputation for himself around the railroad camps as a poker player, and he decided to make his way east in search of opportunities to make money. Jimmy noticed Todd’s banjo and bought him a whiskey. This fortuitous meeting was the beginning of a musical career.