The "down-home funkgrass" of southeastern Michigan's own Back Forty has been a fixture of the Michigan festival scene, and the rest of the Midwest is rapidly catching on. With their unique blend of traditional instrumentation combined with wild improvisation, this eclectic jam band can go from bluegrass to psychedelic rock to deep funk in zero seconds flat. The members of Back Forty pride themselves on strong original material; the band has five songwriters, each with distinctive vocals that combine for some terrific harmonies. Says Robert Costa of On the Town (Grand Rapids): "It is hard to pigeonhole the sound of Back Forty because it uses the elements of traditional bluegrass or soul or Irish folk or rock or whatever you thought you knew about a genre, and it blows it up, redefines it, and puts it back together in a way you have never heard."