BOOKING INQUIRIES: TheNailStrippersBand@Gmail.com
A few miles south of the Canadian border The Nail Strippers coagulated or coalesced, depending on who you ask, winter's ago. As the cold air moves in things slow down up north and fires are built and darkness outside leads to musical experimentation. Old time string band sounds too polished. We've all got deep roots with Uncle Pen and Bill but that's not what's happening here. We gotta watch each other, or watch out for each other, shredding while staring at our shoes ain't what's going on. Songwriting about love, loss, and visions of a harmonious future.
Don’t let the name fool you—Stabby's a sweet guy. “Gotta love ’em all” He’s made his way around this country and beyond, earning a reputation for having a real knack for fixing things. Once, on the Paris Metro, he took a stab at fixing a fellow who had gotten “a little too impolite and a little too close” for Stabby’s Southern sensibilities. Problem solved. More or less. These days, he’s usually seen carrying an old fiddle case, though nobody seems quite sure what’s inside. Some claim it holds his great-uncle’s fiddle, only slightly damaged in a house fire, apparently takes a crowbar to get the thing open. Not much for practicing but he’ll saw the bow. Stabby is a man of contradictions. A traveler who ended up on a frozen island a few miles south of the Canadian border. A fixer by trade—or at least by reputation. Whatever the problem, he'll take a stab at it.
Tabarnak Esti! Hailing from New Brunswick. Shediac to be exact. Say another word. Canadian Rednecks. Living on smoked herring on the edge of the Bay of Fundy, selling stimulants so the tourists can escape the tides. An aspiring member of a notorious group of hellish heavenly fellows. Sucking down sweets to appease his ravenous hunger for the lower parts. Floating on an old double bass with one oar and a sack of smoked herrings on the northern shore. Desperately awaiting the tide to send him home after a week of pillaging Saint Jeans. Attaching a large crab shell to the end of his bow he rows himself home all the while singing Evangiline to anyone who would listen.
He showed up one cold day and never left. Seems to have traded or sold something to claim himself some unearthly guitar pickin abilities. Don’t ask, don’t tell. Cecil’s been around longer than most give him credit for. Often known to make a quick exit for unknown reasons. Never seen him without a bit of sawdust sticking to him. On old widow once said he looked like Cary Grant and Clyde Barrow had an illegitimate son. One she’d like to spend some time with.
Like all banjo players, Droon was hatched as a fully formed adult, emerging from a tent with a banjo in his hand nine months following a muddy music festival in Donegal, Ireland. Droon spent his early years in Germany working the Haribo Gummi mines before immigrating to the United States where he spent 15 years operating a walk-in liposuction stand/Lava Lamp emporium in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Driven out by hostile locals, Droon has now relocated to Vermont where he ekes out a living breeding cluster flies and playing banjo with the Nail Strippers