Ponderosa Grove is a band born out of the artistic tapestry of Prescott, Arizona. Whether they’re performing as an acoustic duo/trio or in a full 5-8 piece set up this collective brings a warm and inviting sound that has been compared to a contemporary Fleetwood Mac or Queen with electric stage presence, tight harmonies, and groovy vibe like no other. The band features a group of musicians that bring a wealth of creativity and diverse influences into its fold. A songwriter on the Grammy-nominated album, Wild Heart by Mindi Abair, lead vocalist and frontwoman Candace Devine has opened for and worked with artists from Ringo Starr and Christina Aguilera to Adam Lambert, Michelle Branch, Styx, and many more, as well as singing for a multitude of television shows, feature films, and the National Anthem for multiple NBA teams. In 2021, Ponderosa Grove won the coveted Music Prize competition in Louisiana out of thousands of bands, and released their genre-blurring debut album, aptly titled The Debut. They followed with the release of their single’s: “Christmas Spirit,”(2021) “Changin’,”(2022) “Don’t Worry Child”(2022) which charted in the top 10 of Triple A radio, a live cut, “Waterline LIVE” (2023), “I’m Sorry” (2023), and “A Bird Can’t Fly (2024) and are set to release a new full length record in Jan 2025 . They have been performing nationwide, opening for the well-loved Tedeschi Trucks Band, Talbott Brothers, Sheila E and playing festivals.
Ghost, the debut album by The FBR, is not a concept album per se, but it does have a number of interconnected themes.
“We didn’t write those songs with that topic in mind,” says Tim Hunter, the group’s principal songwriter and rhythm guitarist. “But Malarie saw it was kind of a unifying thread through all the songs.”
Malarie McConaha, The FBR’s powerhouse lead singer, guitarist, co-writer and arranger, expounds on that point.
“Ghost is essentially a collection of thoughts on what’s really haunting in life,” McConaha explains. “As a kid, it’s monsters that you kind of make up in your head. I think as you get older, you realize the most haunting things in your life are regrets or memories or love — the real ghosts in your life.”
While The FBR is now a sextet that includes guitarist Evan Opitz, keyboardist Brandon Mordecai, bassist C.J. Singer and former Goo Goo Dolls drummer Mike Malinin, it started with McConaha and Hunter performing as a duo. They met at an open-mike night in 2014 at what was then known as Puckett’s Grocery and Restaurant in Leipers Fork, a small rural community 30 minutes southwest of Nashville popular with songwriters and musicians. It was during a period of time when McConaha had discovered the music of Leonard Cohen, who had lived in Leipers Fork himself in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
“I was still not brave enough to play some of my own songs,” McConaha recalls. “I did one song of my own that night, and I decided to do ‘Hallelujah,’ but I sang a lot of unknown verses that Leonard had written. Verses like the church version or the one you’d hear in movies or Jeff Buckley’s version even.”
Hunter was in the audience that night and approached her after her set. As McConaha remembers it, he said, “Wow, you didn’t learn that from his records or from church, did you?”
“I said, ‘No, I love Leonard Cohen,’” she continues. “So we started playing music together literally because of a Leonard Cohen song.”
“It was almost like his ghost brought us together,” Hunter adds.
The group takes its name from another song by Cohen, “Famous Blue Raincoat,” which he recorded in Nashville in September 1970, and that is what the duo began calling themselves after Cohen passed before later shortening it to “The FBR.”
“Just before Leonard died and after hearing ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ only once or twice in my life, I sat down at the piano with no sheet music, and it just poured out of me, and tears were streaming down my face,” McConaha says. “That song is one of the most beautifully tragic songs I’ve ever heard. Then he died like three days later, and I didn’t even know he was sick. I found that very weird.”
They had been kicking around group names, but none were good enough to McConaha. “It’s got to have meaning,” she says. Around this same time, Hunter and McConaha learned Cohen had lived in Leipers Fork.
“We found a rough address of where his cabin was, and when we drove down into that hollow, I just felt this presence and this peace come over me — like this is right, you need to go with that band name,” McConaha says. “We shortened it to The FBR so it’s kind of elusive. People ask us about it anyway, so we can tell them.”
One might expect a group named after a Leonard Cohen song to be a folk act or maybe folk-rock, but that’s not the case with The FBR. Decades ago, they would have been considered Southern rock, and that’s still not a bad description of their music because it’s essentially gospel-flavored blues rock with a little boogie on the side. The FBR may work some classic musical territory, but that’s not to suggest they’re retro. The music on Ghost has a timeless and authentic quality that transcends its roots and gives it a powerful relevance in the postmodern musical landscape.
At the heart of The FBR’s sound is McConaha’s enchanting and soulful voice, which can go from a whisper to a roar. In what seems like a contradiction, her voice is both familiar and different. But despite her obvious vocal gifts, she didn’t move to Nashville to be a singer.
“When she first got to Nashville, she came here to be a songwriter,” Hunter says. “She wasn’t thinking of fronting a band or being an artist. But I kept telling her, ‘Malarie, your voice is amazing, and I’m not just saying that. Your voice stands out — it’s different. It doesn’t sound like everybody else, and I love it.’”
McConaha cites a variety of vocal influences, but there is one who stands above the others.
“Janis Joplin is the reason I became a singer,” McConaha says. “The emotion in her voice, it wasn’t always perfect, but there was such raw emotion in her voice, so she was a big influence.”
McConaha also counts Emmylou Harris, Robert Plant, Lucinda Williams, Adele and Amy Winehouse among other vocalists who influenced her. Some have compared McConaha to Maria Muldaur of “Midnight at the Oasis” fame, and their voices do have a similar flowing and sensual quality. On Ghost, the power and allure of her voice is on full display.
Work on the album began Pre-Pandemic in 2019 with co-producer Matt Sepanic, and those sessions, which featured backing from studio musicians, yielded three songs — “Rain On,” “Still On The Run” and the album opener and first single, “Before I Drown.” Six other songs, including the next two singles — “Empty Room” and a mashup of a pair of traditional numbers “Hurricane”/“House of the Rising Sun,” which has become a showstopper in their live performances — were recorded with their band in June 2022. “Skies of Donegal Blue,” which features just McConaha and Hunter and provides a glimpse into what they sounded like as a duo, was cut in California in spring 2023 with producer Jim Scott, who also mixed the album.
“To me, this album felt like a reckoning,” McConaha says. “It’s one thing to have the vision and dream, but to see it come to fruition? Tim and I both had to conquer fears, doubts, and our own faults to see it through. It taught us so much about ourselves and the process. Ghost just makes me hungry to make more.”
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