the ever-evolving Hunger Mountain Boys bring “Three” to The Stone Church

Kip Beacco and Teddy Weber already had a good thing going in The Hunger Mountain Boys. Why would they be looking to change that?

Since 2003, the western Massachusetts-based duo had been touring as an old-time country act with a powerfully authentic feel. Going beyond tribute and into replication, their show gave audiences a near-time travel experience. With Beacco on mandolin, fiddle and guitar, and Weber on guitar and steel guitar, they cranked out a fast-talking, smooth-picking two-man medicine show, featuring close harmonies punctuated with down-home stage banter. Dressed in brown broadcloth suits, narrow ties and porkpie hats, they looked as though they’d been beamed across the central plains from some Depression-era music hall or Saturday night barn dance radio show. Their signature sound, the tightly matched and perfectly timed vocal harmony of early country’s brother duets, revived a singing style that had given rise to bluegrass and modern country. Expressive, fast string picking and strumming rounded out the songs.

The Boys enjoyed an uncontested niche, sharing stages with legendary artists and contemporary favorites. They issued two CDs on their own record label, Old-Fi Records, and in 2003 walked away with a Mountain Stage New Song award for “Nashville, Don’t Touch My Country Music.” Their musical style seemed like a train they’d ride forever, hooked up to the engine of the recent American roots revival. But after three solid years, they were ready to see where they could go by jumping the rails.

The title of their recently released third CD, “Three,” reflects more than its place in the band’s discography. It signals that the Hunger Mountain Boys are now a trio, having brought on longtime friend Matt Downing to hold down the rhythm with upright bass. With new arrangements possible, they’re also expanding their sound, taking listeners on an all-inclusive tour through the roadhouses and record bins of pre-1950 American music.

“We wanted to open up the sound a bit more and free ourselves up,” says Weber. “People would always ask us, ‘Do you feel limited being a duet?’ and we always said no, and it was always true. But we reached a point where we did start to feel that way.”

The Hunger Mountain Boys formed when Weber moved to western Massachusetts from Colorado, where he’d been involved in a thriving bluegrass scene. He taped up a poster at the local music store, seeking people who might want to jam.

Beacco had picked up the bluegrass bug years before at his first festival, and had also spent some time playing the Colorado scene. Once back in the Berkshires, he put together a local bluegrass band called the Beartown Mountain Ramblers, but was also interested in doing a serious project with national reach. When Matt Downing, then Beacco’s bandmate in the Ramblers, saw Weber’s poster, the three met for a living-room jam session. Though Downing was swiftly drawn away into touring with another band (bluegrass outfit Jim and Jennie and the Pinetops), Weber and Beacco found that their goals matched. Both had the time and interest, and both were ready to delve deep into American music history. Finding songs for two voices was a natural first step.

“We really wanted to do it, and we realized we would have to do it as a duet,” says Beacco. “That put us in the direction of listening to the early country artists, to see what they were doing.”

Weber adds, “(Being a duo) was just logistically easy. We talked to other, larger bands, and there were all these problems. ‘So-and-so can’t make it. So-and-so can’t commit. So-and-so smells when they’re on the road.’ But Kip and I just got along.”

The parameters were tight. Most often the guitar player—a role Beacco and Weber trade off—had to hold down a strong rhythm, leaving only one instrument free to play decorative fills and solos. The sound had to stay clear and sharp. “When you’re onstage, and there are only two of you, you’ve got to be on at every second,” Beacco says. “If we played slower, folky stuff we wouldn’t have to worry about it, but when you boil it down, this is precision stuff. It’s fast, and it’s intimate.”

Certain musical styles just didn’t lend themselves to interpretation by a twosome. This was frustrating, because their listening tastes were broadening as they explored more early recordings. New sounds were sneaking into the group’s songwriting.

“Over the course of the last year, growing as people and as musicians, a lot of new influences crept in,” Beacco says. “We were listening to more and more jazz, some Hawaiian, Django Reinhardt, New Orleans ’20s and ’30s Dixieland.” Weber credits some of their new sound to a boxed set of 1940s bandleader Milton Brown, which he found in a Boston record store.

“Milton Brown was known as one of the pioneers of Western swing. They were pulling in jazz influences and Appalachian fiddle influences. Since then we’ve been listening to jazz, early Western swing, boogie.”

Both Beacco and Weber wanted to incorporate some of the energy and flavor of this explosively creative music into their next album, but found themselves bumping up against the limitations of their two-man format. “As a duo, there’d be times when we’d look at each other and say ‘Here’s where there would be a great fiddle solo,’ or ‘This is where the rhythm section would take over—but yeah, we can’t do that,’” says Weber.

It wasn’t until the Boys were just about ready to record the latest album that the leap to trio-dom was made. As they tell it, it was a quick decision that just felt right. “The conversations about feeling musically limited really came to a head then,” Weber says. “We had already started recording the album, but we decided, standing right there in the living room, that we wanted to add a bass. I said, ‘I’ll call Matt tonight.’ A couple days later, he was down at the studio with us. Matt was learning things on the spot and recording them.”

Downing’s other band had recently decided to slow its touring pace, so he was happy to join them as a permanent member. “They are two of my best friends anyway, and I always missed hanging out with them when we were doing our separate projects. Now I get to hang out with them more.”

From duo to trio, from pure early country to Western swing and ragtime—that’s a fair amount of change for the Hunger Mountain Boys. The one thing that won’t change, they assure listeners, is what they all call the “spirit” of the group. What is that spirit? Answers vary, depending on which band member you ask.

“Someone said there’s a certain desperation to a lot of music in the ’20s and ’30s,” Weber says. “I’m no historian, but I can imagine how true that is. If you were trying to make a living off playing music back then, I think you’d be trying pretty hard. You didn’t have any other options. You really had to have your chops up.”

Beacco says, “There’s just a soul that people sing and play with. I think it’s there today in some bands, but sometimes I wonder if the whole recording process really strips the music of that. We want to keep the same spirit we’ve always had from day one, high energy, high intensity, real edgy. When we start losing our edge, it’s time to hang it up.”

“The sound is kind of indescribable,” Downing says. “In a way, it’s based on Western swing, but I feel like it’s kind of its own thing. I wouldn’t really know how to classify the songs. They’re really fun, is all. People smile when we play them.”

American music has never stood still, continuously absorbing and combining elements from all traditions. Drawing on a range of musical innovations from times past, the Hunger Mountain Boys are becoming innovators, too. “I think we’re all really excited because we’re just trying to be more of ourselves,” says Weber. “We’re intrigued by a lot of influences. Why was I so foolish to think that when I found early country and early bluegrass, that’s where I would live for my entire life? We’re going to constantly grow and evolve. Whatever we’re listening to in future years, it’ll be incorporated into our music.”