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Music

Rolling Stone

JAYME STONE at Hugh’s Room (2261 ­Dundas West), Wednesday (October 13), 8:30 pm. $17-$20. 416-531-6604. See Listing.


Banjoist/composer Jayme Stone and his backup musicians – fiddler Casey Driessen, guitarist Ross Martin and Orchestra London’s principal bassist, Joe Phillips – may look like a bluegrass band, but don’t be fooled.

“I like to say we play country music from another country,” says Stone over the phone from Vancouver, where he’s getting ready to hit 17 cities in 21 days in support of his third album, Room Of Wonders (independent).

A Torontonian now based in Boulder, Colorado, Stone played in the bluegrass/jazz group Tricycle before going solo. Both of his previous efforts – 2007’s The Utmost and 2008’s Africa To Appalachia, a collaboration with Malian kora player/singer Mansa Sissoko – won Juno Awards.

Stone dreamt up Room Of Wonders in his kitchen while listening to Bach’s European folk-dance-inspired French Suites. A Bulgarian ruchenitsa is followed by Irish reels, a Moorish sword-fighting dance and a Norwegian polka.

There’s also room for a Nordic folk dance song, the Brazilian-inspired Vinicius and a bluegrass breakdown.

“It’s like a chemistry experiment,” Stone explains. “You bring the banjo into a kind of music, and then you bring a kind of music onto the banjo, and that music transforms the instrument. I hope it makes you hear the music in a new way.”

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