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• If you go: Bawn in the Mash at The End Zone

Rick Phelps has got it bad and that's good.

Phelps, who caught two nights of the Phish reunion concerts in Hampton, Va., in early March has already got a little music festival fever.

And he's spreading it around.

Tonight, Phelps has helped book Paducah, Ky.-based, funky jam-band Bawn in the Mash. The band tore up a late-night set last year at Appalachian Uprising in Scottown, Ohio. The band will be coming back to the Uprising on June 5, along with dozens of other national acts. The fest runs June 4-6.

Bawn in the Mash, which just released its third full-length indie CD, "Confluence," in January, will be playing at 9 p.m. today, March 27, at The End Zone, in downtown Ironton.

There is no cover charge.

Phelps, who booked another Uprising act GreenSky Bluegrass at The End Zone a couple of years ago, said he's been hooked on the eclectic Bawn in the Mash sound since he heard them last year at the Uprising.

He went to see the band's Halloween show in Louisville and has been trying to get the band here ever since.

"They've got a unique style, and they have a lot of good original songs," Phelps said. "I also like their cover picks. You don't get too many bluegrass bands covering Pink Floyd and Phish."

Bawn in the Mash guitarist, Nathan Blake Lynn, who put out his solo debut, "Two Catfish and a Bluegill," in August, said they're stoked to come back and play for Uprising fans at The End Zone.

"There's a national base of fans that come there at the Uprising but there's a lot of folks from West Virginia and Kentucky and Ohio, so it's good to go play Ironton before the Uprising," Lynn said. "Maybe we'll draw some people out there. It's all about bringing more people out to the festival. The Appalachian Uprising has been really good to us."

While nearly all of the members of Bawn in the Mash released solo CDs last year or this year, they're also all contributing on the band's third full-length original CD in three years, "Confluence," which came out in January. The album features Lynn and fellow members: Josh Coffey, Tommy Oliverio, Breathitt Kelly, Brey McCoy and Eddie Coffey.

"We're really lucky and blessed with a lot of good songwriters, and its a good mixture of experimental rock and a lot of historical fiction," Lynn said. "I seem to write a lot of songs based on history since I have a history degree. I've got three tunes on the CD, and Josh Coffey has four tunes and the band wrote one or two. We all have songs on there that we wrote."

Lynn, who started Bawn in the Mash with a guy he met in the U.S. Forest Service, said what started out as a straight-up bluegrass band has continued to morph and grow as they quickly added McCoy's drums to be loud enough for many bar gigs. The unit now is -- to twist a Lonnie Mack line -- too funk for country, too bluegrass for rock 'n' roll.

The band's first CD," Welcome to the Atomic City," in 2006, was a dozen songs all written about events in and around Paducah, Ky., from its nuclear plant ("Nuclear Waltz") to songs about the rivers.

Last year, the band got some nice attention when its song "Little Piece of Paper" was featured in Global Rhythm Magazine and when Josh Coffey's name made its big screen debut in the Mike Myers movie "The Love Guru."

That's Coffey's fiddle playing "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" during the bar fight scene.

Produced by Chris Henry back home in Paducah, where the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers flow into the Ohio, "Confluence" is a refreshing and flowing musical trip indicative of its name.

"I think it is a natural progression with people because you can't hold back on what comes out," Lynn said. "It's interesting, we have fans that were really into the bluegrass albums and they still support us tremendously and fans not into us then who are really into us now. We try to play a huge variety of country, bluegrass and rock, and whatever comes out we just let it flow."

Courtesy of www.bawninthemash.com

Nathan Blake Lynn and his band Bawn in the Mash will perform Friday, March 27, at The End Zone in Ironton. The group has built a local following thanks to the Appalachian Uprising.

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