The Moscow Mules’ bluegrass twist on classic rock scored them the 2023 Best of Local Bands title by a wide margin.
On the scene since 2017, the band name is a play on the name of the classic cocktail that has stuck with the group for several years.
The two original members, Sean Long and Paul Hohenlohe, have had multiple band members rotating in and out over the years, with Eli Paxton joining in August.
Long strums the guitar, Hohenlohe plays banjo and Dobro and Paxton plays the upright bass.
While they’ve become fixtures in the local music scene, none of the band members are originally from Moscow. Academia brought all three to the Palouse.
Hohenlohe moved to Moscow in 2011 as a biology professor at University of Idaho. Long is a geology professor at Washington State University, where he started in 2015, and Paxton is an undergraduate student who started at UI in Fall of 2020.
Bluegrass is the band’s background, but the Mules pull songs from a wide variety of genres. Rock songs from the 1960s and 1970s are crowd favorites, along with Grateful Dead covers.
“A lot of bluegrass music puts a big emphasis on musicianship and playing ability, and improvisation is a big part of it,” Hohenlohe said. “We bring that along to lots of different other sorts of music.”
Both Paxton and Long previously lived in Reno, Nevada. Neither of them were expecting Moscow to have a music scene so robust and diverse.
“There’s an outsized number of really good musicians in the Moscow region compared to the population,” Long said. “There’s some seriously talented people up here.”
Paxton echoed an appreciation for the local scene.
“The pool of musicians out here, it’s like the community. It’s not a very big group of people, but everybody out here is so nice,” he said.
Anyone planning to see the Moscow Mules live should be prepared for a high energy, interactive performance.
“We like audience members that don’t wait until the end of the night to start dancing,” Long said. “We gear our music so the whole second half of the night is all really good stuff to dance to.”
The Mules’ extensive discography means that every performance is different. Whether playing encore requests or bluegrass classics, the band has something to offer for any fans of live music, local talent and bluegrass fusion.
The band was surprised and elated to hear that they got the most votes for Best of Local Bands on this year’s poll.
“To know there’s so many people, especially at the university, that love what we’re doing, that’s an honor in itself,” Paxton said. “We are just over the moon and thrilled about it. We weren’t expecting it at all.”
The Mules have multiple shows coming up in and around Moscow. They will be playing at Hunga Dunga Brewing Co. on April 14. They will also be at Earth Jam on the UI campus on April 18. More band information and show dates can be found on the Moscow Mules’ Facebook page.
This article has been corrected for Hohenlohe’s name, as his first name is Paul, not Pat.
Check out the Best of Moscow here!
Katie Hettinga can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @katie_hettinga