Rushad Eggleston, the inventive 28-year-old cellist with Crooked Still, will play his last show with the popular alternative bluegrass band at The Iron Horse in Northampton, Massachusetts, on Nov. 18.  The 2003 Berklee College of Music graduate and Grammy nominee, whose improvisational riffs on the cello have played an integral role in helping Crooked Still bend the boundaries of traditional music since its inception in the summer of 2001, is being replaced by eclectic multi-instrumentalist Tristan Clarridge.  Young old-time fiddler Brittany Haas is also joining the band. 

Like Eggleston, both Clarridge and Haas, have played with Darol Anger, as well as in other projects.  Although he will be playing the cello in Crooked Still, Clarridge is a three-time Grand National Fiddle Champion and the youngest person ever to win that title.  He also has toured with Cape Breton fiddler NatalieMacMaster.  In addition to being a charter member of Anger’s Republic of Strings, Haas has performed with Tony Trischka’s Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, Appalachian fiddler Bruce Molsky, Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas (her sister), Yonder Mountain String Band, and others.  Both Clarridge and Haas have been instructors at Mark O’Connor’s string conferences in California.
 

This marks the first lineup change for Crooked Still since its launch some six years ago, when all four of its members were in college in Boston, Massachusetts.  Vocalist Aoife O’Donovan, banjoist Gregory Liszt and bass player Corey DeMario remain with the band, which is set to begin recording a new album for Signature Sounds in January 2008.  The Massachusetts-based independent label geared toward singer-songwriter, Americana and modern folk music, reissued Crooked Still’s 2004 debut Hip Hop earlier this year, after releasing its critically acclaimed label debut Shaken By a Low Sound in 2006.