Stillhouse Junkies Bring a Bigger Sound to Custer

Stillhouse Junkies have spent nearly a decade building a sound that stretches well beyond traditional bluegrass.

The Durango band works from a familiar string-band setup: guitar and mandolin, fiddle and upright bass. In the hands of Fred Kosak, Alissa Wolf and Jeanette Adams, that setup moves through bluegrass, Texas swing, blues, rock and improvisation. They also spend a lot of time putting it in front of audiences, playing more than 150 shows a year.Stillhouse Junkies have spent nearly a decade turning three acoustic instruments into a band that refuses to stay in one lane.

The Durango trio of Fred Kosak, Alissa Wolf and Jeanette Adams works from a familiar string-band setup: guitar and mandolin, fiddle and upright bass. From there, the music moves through bluegrass, Texas swing, blues, rock and improvisation, backed by a touring schedule that keeps them on the road for more than 150 shows a year.

On Saturday, Oct. 10, they bring that sound to the Custer Beacon.

If bluegrass is the first word that comes to mind when you see fiddle, mandolin and upright bass, it is a reasonable starting point. It just does not explain all that much about Stillhouse Junkies.

The band calls what it does “free-range folk,” moving between roots music, bluegrass, Texas swing, blues and rock. Fred Kosak plays guitar and mandolin, Alissa Wolf plays fiddle and Jeanette Adams plays bass, with improvisation built into the way the trio performs its original songs. (stillhousejunkies.com)

A useful place to start listening is “Colorado Bound,” from the 2022 album Small Towns. The song carries some of the band’s bluegrass foundation, but it also points toward one of the things that makes Stillhouse Junkies particularly interesting out West: their songs have a strong sense of place.

Kosak told WMOT in 2022 that place sits “at the forefront” of his writing. Small Towns is full of Colorado geography, mountain towns and travel, including songs tied to Ridgway and Leadville. Kosak came to Durango after teaching school in Boston, looking for a mountain community and finding one that quickly began turning up in his songs.

The band itself grew out of that community.

Stillhouse Junkies began in 2017 after musicians started finding one another through local jam sessions in Durango. An early version of the band landed a regular Friday gig at Durango Craft Spirits. The personnel changed as the group developed, but Kosak and Wolf remained at its center as the residency turned into recordings, touring and eventually national recognition.

Wolf brought a different path into the group. She grew up in Durango, studied violin classically and eventually began pushing herself toward music that required learning by ear and improvising. In the WMOT interview, she described deliberately putting herself into musical situations where improvisation was unavoidable. That combination of classical training and roots-music looseness helps explain why Stillhouse Junkies can sound tightly arranged one moment and considerably less predictable the next.

That range is easier to hear on one of the band’s 2026 live releases. “Big River > Hard Telling,” recorded at the Mancos Opera House in Colorado in March, runs nearly eight minutes, giving the trio room to stretch well beyond the shape of a compact bluegrass song.

The road eventually led Stillhouse Junkies to the International Bluegrass Music Association. They were selected as official showcase artists for IBMA World of Bluegrass and, in 2021, received the organization’s Momentum Band of the Year award, an honor aimed specifically at artists in the early stages of building professional bluegrass careers. ()

Their music has kept moving since.

In 2025, Stillhouse Junkies released The Ballad of Charlie Avalon, a concept album written by Kosak around a fictional traveling musician. The record was inspired in part by Mississippi John Hurt and in part by Kosak’s own observations about trying to build a life in the music business. Joe Newberry contributed banjo, while Sam Bush provided spoken narration connecting sections of the story. (

It is a much bigger idea than simply putting another collection of songs on an album.

The record moves through the life of its central character in songs and short narrative sections, including “The Whiskey Works The Same In New York City,” “Somebody’s Got To Lose It All,” “Levee” and the closing “So Long.” The last of those is a good way into the album if you want to hear where the band’s songwriting has gone since Small Towns.

The current trio is Kosak, Wolf and bassist Jeanette Adams. Their official material describes live performances as free-flowing and improvisational, with original songs that can take a different path from one night to the next.

Saturday’s Custer show puts all of that into a fairly simple setting: three musicians, three acoustic instruments and a room built for listening.

The Beacon currently has Stillhouse Junkies scheduled from 7 to 10 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, describing them as “free range folk from the mountains of Colorado.” (custerbeacon.com)