Fly Me to the Moonshroom!
- Susan Marquez
- Oct 1
- 3 min read
The brainchild of Jake Keegan and Lily B. Moonflower, Moonshroom is a Kansas-based band that channels futuristic cosmic grooves and deftly melds them with traditional bluegrass to create an expansive, improvisational vibe while honoring the roots of the music they play. Think of it as a jam band with plenty of creative energy and soul.
Jake and Lily have been playing together for seven years, combining projects for the past three years to form Moonshroom. The name came to them during a camping trip a few years back. “Jake and I toured the West Coast as a duo, camping a lot along the way,” recalls Lily. “One night, we were on Mount Shasta, kicking names around for the band. We looked up at the full moon and decided it looked like a mushroom. We both love mushrooms…we had recently stopped at a roadside mushroom stand on Highway 1 and bought big porcini mushrooms. And in San Francisco, we found a huge amount of chick-in-the-woods mushrooms in the woods. Mushrooms pretty much represent our music and vibe. They are so well grounded and down-to-earth, but they can also be a bit spacey.”
They met while working on separate projects. “Lily asked me to record on her album, and we liked our musical chemistry,” says Jake. Along the way, they fell in love, marrying in early summer. “It’s cool that music brought us together,” he says.
Their diverse musical styles, along with the diverse musical backgrounds of their band members, have helped to create a unique sound for the group. The elected array of influences gives the band a pop-Americana-roots-bluegrass-cosmic blend that audiences have embraced at festivals and concerts. “We are regular musical social butterflies,” laughs Jake. “We like to play respect to traditional music, but we also enjoy experimenting with pushing boundaries. I guess you’d call it progressive bluegrass, expanded with rock stylings. I like that we are free to explore creative expression, which is really what is at the core of this project.”
The band’s debut album, Take a Trip, invites listeners into “an atmosphere of spontaneity, acceptance, and unity.” Lily says the album includes all the original music pulled from the forty songs they play regularly at gigs. “We narrowed it down to ten songs that tell people who Moonshroom is. The album takes people on a musical trip, and we hope people listen to it from beginning to end.” The album was recorded at Element Recording Studio in Kansas City, with Joel Nanos as the engineer.
Lily and Jake hope the band has success touring this season. “When the hype of the release dies down, we’ll look at recording a second album. We launched a Kickstarter campaign to get the first one done and exceeded our goal by a lot thanks to our amazing family and friends.
My introduction to Moonshroom began with a Google search. I found their website, and on the homepage, it boldly proclaims, “A Lunar Fiesta of Cosmic Twang.” Below that heading is a video. Of course, I pressed play. For the next three minutes and 47 seconds, I couldn’t take my eyes off my computer screen. A colorful explosion of visual excitement combined with a catchy tune made me want to “Party on the Moon” with the band called Moonshroom. - Susan Marquez
moonshroom is the best!