UNC professor and students come together for an evening of bluegrass

Hank Smith is more than just a professor in the Department of Music at UNC. Smith also plays banjo in the band, "Hank, Pattie & The Current."

On Nov. 22, Smith and his band will be accompanied by four student musicians. The band is made up of Jonah Freedman, Billie Feather, Hank Smith, Pattie Hopkins Kinlaw and Robert Thornhill. The event is free and will take place at 7 p.m. at Person Hall.

Growing up in Florence, South Carolina, Smith started playing the banjo at 16 years old.

“I more or less learned in isolation for a while,"  Smith said. "I didn't have necessarily a musical family or a teacher. So I would go to monthly bluegrass festivals near where I lived. And just kind of picked it up and taught myself."

During college at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Smith continued to learn the instrument and furthered his exploration in many different genres.

“I learned what other people were playing, which included rock and roll and jazz," Smith said. "There wasn’t a lot of bluegrass being played and certainly no one my age playing it. So as time went on, I just figured out all different styles of music and would dip in and out of bluegrass."

After college, Smith joined Barefoot Manner, a jam-grass band based out of Raleigh. 

“I was able to sort of blend all the things I’d be learning up until that point into a band that was open to doing all different kinds of genres of music," Smith said.

Smith said his current band, Hank, Pattie & The Current, was formed four or five years ago.

“Pattie and I were in two different bands," Smith said. "A bluegrass band, kind of an Americana-ish bluegrass band and kind of a rock and soul band. Both of those things kind of fell apart at the same time. And we were like sort of faced with ‘well what do you wanna do now?'"

The duo took this opportunity to play the music they had always wanted to play. Pattie’s background in classical music meshed with Smith’s in bluegrass. 

“This was our chance to kind of put together a band from the ground up that would let us explore all the things we wanted to,” Smith said.

At this performance, the band will be accompanied by a quartet of UNC students including Waverly Leonard, Sophie Nachman, Ian Mayes and Akul Narang.

“We picked those students because they are very versatile, talented people, and they are able to do the genre blending that we are doing with this," Smith said. "It’s not purely classical or purely bluegrass."

Two of the students accompanying the band, Leonard, on first violin, and Nachman, on second violin, also play for the Carolina Bluegrass Band. Smith said that these two in particular were able to play between bluegrass and classical styles. 

Leonard, the first violist, became connected to the band while she was one of Smith's banjo students. Leonard performed with the band at this event last year and at Cat’s Cradle. Leonard said that for the first time, the string quartet would be playing a piece without the band.

“In the past we’ve kind of backed them up as they play over the string quartet music," Leonard said. "So this is the first time that we’re getting a spotlight as the string quartet."

Leonard said that her mom, being a fan of Alison Krauss, a bluegrass singer and fiddler, had always wanted her to play bluegrass, but growing up she had learned classical music. It wasn’t until college that Leonard was able to explore this style. 

Mayes started learning the cello in sixth grade through his public school orchestra. He became interested in bluegrass through friends who were involved in the genre.

“My cello professor knew that I was interested, and so he reached out to me about Hank, Pattie & the Current," Mayes said. "So that’s how I was able to get in with them. It’s definitely different than what I do as a classical cellist. It’s more free, less structured. And it feels more fun, more loose."

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