Chicken Dinner Road featured in upcoming bluegrass concert

 Entering their 20th year performing throughout the Treasure Valley and nationally, the regionally popular bluegrass band Chicken Dinner Road is scheduled to be live at the Bee Hive at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 8, in a concert to benefit Slocum Hall, the headquarters of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest and Festival. 

 Fans will want to get their tickets early, which are on sale now at $20 for advance tickets or $25 at the door. They can be purchased at beetreefolkschool.org/event/cdr. 

 In addition to the evening’s entertainment, and for a separate $20 and $25 registration fee, the band is offering an afternoon workshop on “How to be a Great Band Member.” The group’s 200 years of combined experience and longevity performing together indicates they know something about the topic.

 As a bonus for musicians who love a good jam, Slocum Hall will be open both Friday and Saturday nights, Feb. 7 and 8, for overnighters who want to play till they drop, with all of Chicken Dinner Road’s band members joining in after Saturday night’s performance. Room reservations may be made by contacting NOTFC board member Gary Hill at ghill557@gmail.com.

 Celebrating their 20th anniversary in 2025, the current group of musicians has been together since 2011, a length of time CDR co-founder and mandolin player Dennis Stokes describes as “almost unheard of.”

 Along with Stokes, Gary Eller, banjo, Rue Frisbee, fiddle, Brent King, guitar, and John Blakely, bass, make up Chicken Dinner Road. All have long and deep ties to Weiser’s Fiddle Festival, which will play out for the 72nd time this June.

 “One thing, when we put this group together, the band still going today, we are all song writers so we’ve brought a lot of our original music to the band,” Stokes told the Signal American. “And the main thing we do is have a good time. We entertain the crowd and we love playing music together. 

 “We read each other, we know each other’s next moves, it’s a really cool thing,” he added. “We’re very thankful we know how to get along and just have a good time.”

 Stokes said he had been coming to Weiser to jam for the nearly two-week run of the annual rendezvous for several years before he and friend, Brian Hakan, decided they wanted to expand their country music leanings into bluegrass in early 2005. By May of that year, and after Hakan’s banjo teacher Bill Cates suggested they put a band together, and Chicken Dinner Road was born. Cates pulled in a bass player and Stokes invited his wife’s nail technician, Carma Phillips, to come on board as the fiddle player.

 A week after their first “free” gig at a pizza place in Boise, the band was on the Fiddle Festival stage at City Park. The same day, on another suggestion from Cates, they entered the 2005 Battle of the Bluegrass Bands, taking their first of three consecutive titles. They followed up the next two summers, winning the “battle” in 2006 and 2007, before retiring from the competition.

 Between 2008 and 2011, Stokes said each of the other original band members had had to opt out of the group for various reasons.

 “We found Gary through the local bluegrass community in 2008,” Stokes said.

 When Phillips stepped down in 2009 in order to give her young family more attention, Stokes said he knew exactly who he wanted as the next fiddler.

 “We had been following the Buckhorn Mountain Boys for years, and they had a hot fiddle player, Rue Frisbee,” he said. “Almost immediately after Carma stepped down, the Buckhorn Mountain Boys played their final show. I got hold of Rue the next day, and that just really took the band to a new level with his kind of fiddling.  

 “Rue was a champion fiddler, fiddling a long time at Weiser and he played the style of music I had come to love,” Stokes said. “His energy, it’s worked out great, and the whole history of the band is really tied to Weiser.”

 Those ties include King and Blakely, who both joined CDR in late 2010. Stokes said he had seen and heard them playing together at Weiser.

 “We had them over to my house and Deep Ellum Blues was the first song we played with them,” he said. “We knew then we had something special and since then we’ve played all over the country, performing for large and small audiences.”

Slocum Hall

 The major renovations completed at Slocum Hall since the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest took ownership of the historic building in 2013 have come mainly through the efforts of the Treasure Valley’s bluegrass community. 

 A total of 19 dorm rooms have painstakingly been restored and furnished over the past 12 years, and are put to use not only during Fiddle Week, but during a number of annual music camps held there, as well. 

 Funds now are needed to complete the renovation of the 20th guest room at Slocum, hopefully in time for this summer’s IBA Bluegrass and Banjo Camp, June 5-8, and during fiddle week, June 15-21. Additionally, major plumbing improvements were just completed, replacing a tangle of century-old unstable pipes.

 Hill said tax deductible donations for Slocum’s updates, or in support of the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest are always welcome, as well.