Walk into a Greensky Bluegrass show expecting a quiet string band and you get a blackout, a distorted chord and an arena-style laser rig instead. That contradiction is the point. This episode traces the band from a fall 2000 open mic in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where a banjo player, a guitarist and a mandolinist with no bluegrass roots joined forces, through the 2004 debut Less Than Supper, a revolving lineup, and the arrival of a classically trained cellist who initially offered to manage the band and ended up anchoring it on bass.

From there the conversation follows their 2006 win at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival band competition, the Tim Carbone-produced Tuesday Letter, the 2007 addition of dobro player Anders Beck to complete the five-piece lineup, and the electrified, effects-driven live show that carried If Sorrows Swim and All for Money to number one on the U.S. bluegrass charts. Along the way they shared stages with Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, Jon Fishman, Billy Strings and Sam Bush.

• Why not knowing the traditional rules let them attack acoustic instruments with rock aggression
• How a cellist’s structural training turned the word brotherhood into a musical necessity
• What winning Telluride meant for an outsider band from Michigan
• The pickups, dampening and pedal boards required to run a mandolin through arena volume without feedback
• Steve Berlin of Los Lobos producing Shouted, Written Down and Quoted, and the 2022 album Stress Dreams