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Special Consensus

1 upcoming festival

Chicago bluegrass institution founded by banjo player Greg Cahill in the mid-1970s, with generations of players passing through the lineup since.

Greg Cahill has kept Special Consensus running out of Chicago for close to fifty years, playing three-finger banjo at the center of a rotating cast. Alison Brown and Josh Williams both spent time in the band early on, and the alumni list has grown long enough that the group functions as a kind of apprenticeship for young players. The sound stays close to the hard-driving side of the music: tight vocal trios, fiddle and mandolin breaks, tempos that rarely sag. Cahill has also spent years on the administrative side of bluegrass, working with the International Bluegrass Music Association.

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