Bozeman Magazine

Jes Raymond writes and sings songs that connect the day to day with the muses of wonder and myth. The Blackberry Bushes is the collective centered around those songs and her long time collaboration with fiddler Jakob Breitbach.Together, they fall somewhere between Stevie Nicks, Gillian Welch, and The Infamous Stringdusters.  Jes and The Bushes draw from the deep well of American Roots music for a modern sound that has a light-hearted rusticity, elegance, and soul.  Jes’s songs evoke the natural world, with themes of imperfection and impermanence. The instrumentation is precise and improvisational. The Bushes have that rare magic that allows them to fuse voices from many genres into an acoustic instrumentation that retains distinct threads of sonic color. They are emerging as artists with an obvious love of performing, spot on chemistry, and a live show that truly aims to stir the spirit. Jes' skillful flatpicking interlocks the band's soundscapes. Jakob’s virtuosic fiddle improvisation propels a song-focused band to expand outward in exploratory delight. Backed by a rotating cast of talented believers, theysimultaneously honor the genius of tradition and innovation. Elements of old-time, bluegrass, jazz, West Coast psychedelia, classical and gospel saturate this Americana sound that is buoyant, bold, and like their thorny namesake, rooted and growing, growing, growing.