Heartbreak Pass plays high-energy bluegrass

Heartbreak Pass will bring bluegrass music to River Park Square for Saturday’s KPBX Kids’ Concert.

Bluegrass is the only original American music, said singer and bass player Bonnie Bliss. “It touches something kind of primal inside people,” she said.

Expect to hear standards from Bill Monroe, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard, and maybe something from the Dixie Chicks, alongside Heartbreak Pass originals “Just Like Me” or “There’s a Hippo in the Hospital.”

The stories in the original songs come from real life, said guitarist Stan Hall.

“A lot of the things we do are just reflective of life and general, ups and downs and the good and the bad,” he said.

Hall hadn’t pursued music seriously until after he moved to Deer Park from Western Washington about 12 years ago to start an organic farm.

“That property and that experience was actually the fodder for a lot of my songs,” he said. (He still has the property, but he’s no longer farming it.)

The group, which started in 2008, has been through various lineups. For the past few years it’s been a trio with Bliss, Hall and Singer Coats on mandolin. Just recently, they’ve become a quartet with the addition of Dennis Coats, Singer’s father, on banjo. Singing duties are shared among the four.

Heartbreak Pass explores the lighter side of bluegrass, Hall said. Performances are high energy, with lots of harmony in the vocals.

“It’ll be fun; it’ll be a lot of laughing,” Bliss said.

Kimberly Lusk