Ladies and gentlemen, your Best Bands

Meet three of the groups you’ll see at Rock’n Ribs next month

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Doc Brown’s Odyssey

Who they are: Scott Criswell, mandolin/vocals; R.J. Flores, acoustic guitar/vocals; Jake Norman, upright bass
What they play: Bluegrass
Influenced by: David Grisman, Tony Rice, D’jango Rinehart.

The band has only been on break for about a month, but Doc Brown’s Odyssey bassist Jake Norman is already itching to get onstage again, which they intended to do about the same time as the Best Bands show on April 21 anyway. The bluegrass-jazz hybrid group is currently working on new material for some album recording sessions down the road, but DBO is used to holding down regular shows at the Bar Next Door as one in its stable of roots-music artists.

But forget the O Brother Where Art Thou comparisons; this trio (banjo player Curtis Miller left the band about a month ago) leans toward atypical song structure in the bluegrass genre. The group’s unusual style has earned it shows in St. Louis, too, although Norman says those sometimes come with a price. The group traveled once with the Arkamo Rangers to play a Thursday-night show in St. Louis, then drove back after the gig was over. Norman says he arrived at 5 a.m. only to be at work again at 8.

Trips such as that are odyssies of sorts, which brings us to an interesting question: Who is Doc Brown? Does the name refer to Christopher Lloyd’s character in Back to the Future? Is it Stuart Erwin’s Doc Brown character from Gunsmoke? Neither, it turns out. Norman says it’s the culmination of several topics that came up in a conversation once. “It just has a nice ring to it,” Norman says. Not exactly an Odyssey-like story, but it’ll do.

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