Greensky Bluegrass hosts 25th anniversary homecoming weekend in Kalamazoo

Greensky Bluegrass will always be a West Michigan band — or more specifically, a Kalamazoo band.

Indeed, the internationally acclaimed, progressive bluegrass pioneer will celebrate its 25th birthday not only with release of a special anniversary album, but with two “hometown” concerts this weekend at Kalamazoo’s Wings Event Center. 

“That’s home for us,” standup bassist Mike Devol told Local Spins. “We’re excited. We still very much consider ourselves a Kalamazoo band, a Michigan band. That’s where three of the guys were born. We started together, we learned to play bluegrass together, we learned to write music together and that all happened in Kalamazoo.”

While all five band members now reside elsewhere across the county – banjoist Michael Bont was the last to finally relocate from Michigan a couple of years ago – they often rehearse in Kalamazoo and regularly start or end tours in the Great Lakes State. 

And the first Greensky performance came on Halloween 25 years ago, so “it kind of times out perfectly that we can come and do these shows, and make it a big deal, and then it’s actually the 25th anniversary. … Kalamazoo is a big part of us and who we are, so it’s cool, it’s awesome,” said Devol, who’s made his home in Santa Cruz, California, for more than a decade.

The group that once served as the “house band” at Bell’s Brewery Eccentric Café now aims to pack several thousand fans into an arena two nights in a row for what Devol describes as a “big show” with special guests.

Celebrated singer Lindsay Lou and keyboardist Holly Bowling — both Michigan natives — will join Devol, Bont, mandolinist Paul Hoffman, guitarist Dave Bruzza and Dobroist Anders Beck on stage for the band’s 25th anniversary homecoming stand. 

To add to the star power, legendary Grammy Award-winning mandolinist and longtime Greensky pal Sam Bush will also pump up the lineup.

“Lindsay Lou’s going to be there both nights — just another great Michigan treasure. She’s such a close friend of ours, such a great piece of that Michigan fabric and has done so much, too,” Devol said of the singer and songwriter who also appears on the band’s upcoming album, “XXV,” and the re-working of a Greensky classic, “In Control,” recently released as a single.

“We’re having Holly (Bowling) in and, of course, the illustrious Sam Bush, who for a lot of us is a hero. He’s a big innovator in this newgrass, jamgrass world where we exist and he’s our friend.” 

Tickets for each concert — $48.75 to $118.50 — are still available at etix.com.

Some fashion advice for fans? “It’s Halloween, so we’re hoping everybody is dressed up,” Devol said, dropping this hint: “We are celebrating 25 years, our silver anniversary, so there may be some of that from us. But we’re hoping people come dressed to celebrate. It is going to be a party. It’s going to be really fun.”

For Devol, toasting a lengthy legacy with Greensky certainly wasn’t in the cards as a young, classically trained cellist from Ohio who moved to Kalamazoo to study classical cello at Western Michigan University.

“It wasn’t really until the end of studying classical cello I was kind of looking for something else,” he recalled. “Envisioning myself in that classical life was starting to not feel like it fit so well for me. My listening tastes were varied.”

Enter Greensky Bluegrass, a fledgling outfit he met and befriended while working at Bell’s.

“I wasn’t a bass player, I was a cellist, but I saw these guys and I’m like, ‘Man, this band is cool.’ I think somehow I likened it a little bit to what I was doing in string quartet chamber music. These guys are playing strings.”

So, he literally borrowed an upright bass from a friend, started learning bluegrass songs and the rest is history. “My story is unique in that I started playing bass and joined Greensky at the same time,” he said.

In those early years, the band didn’t envision a long-term career: “It was more incremental sort of steps when you’re 23. We all had other jobs and we didn’t need much to keep Greensky going. We didn’t need to be making very much money or (getting) very much notoriety. We wanted to play music, have fun, meet people, free beer.”

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Fast forward to 2025 and suffice to say, it’s been a long — and sometimes challenging — journey for the Greensky boys, who credit supportive fans, enduring friendships and balancing the demands of the band with home life for their longevity.

“It is complicated. It’s a lot of interpersonal relationship stuff. Greensky is not without its dynamics, but I’m grateful all the time that we are friends, we care about each other, we’re there for each other to do what we do, to travel as much as we have for as long as we have to create art together for this long,” Devol said, comparing bandmate ties to being in a marriage.

“It’s a delicate balance of mutual respect for each other and patience beyond the music and beyond the business that we’re running. … We have been in some ways the right band at the right time. As Greensky has grown, our music has continued to be inspiring for us and we’re inspired to make our music … and lucky enough to have enough success that the business has been able to support us continued to do the thing.” 

— Find more Michigan music news and concert listings online at LocalSpins.com. Email John Sinkevics at john@localspins.com.