Performing throughout the SF Bay Area and touring up and down the Pacific Coast for nearly a decade, THREE TIMES BAD played a high-energy, genre-bending form of “dirty American roots music” (the Register-Guard).

The “bluevelvetgrass” string band's debut studio recording, American Sojourn, was named “ALBUM OF THE WEEK” on Mike Morrison’s American Roots radio program: “American Sojourn is raw, atmospheric, and superbly arranged and played,” said Morrison, “and thanks to its huge originality will almost certainly be in many best-of-the-year lists! There is a mastery of their instruments and arrangements that enables them to roam at will through various old-time genres that contain not only a large slice of ‘hillbilly,’ but also folk, a little western swing, blues, jazz, all played in their own inimitably unique style.”

THREE TIMES BAD was nothing if not hard to pin down. Recognizing “a hint of ‘vaudeville’” in the group’s sound, Morrison said, “They are certainly not a bluegrass band,” while Music Junkie Press believed the combo was “breathing fresh new life into American bluegrass… with a variety of musical influences such as hillbilly swing, outlaw country, Gypsy jazz, honkytonk, folk songs, and much more… bringing back that nostalgic feel for a time where music held a common thread that cemented friendships and bonds were forged.”

The Good Men Project simply stated: “This is Americana music, the kind borne of community. It’s real…. Their lyrics also carry the kind of weight you’d expect of reflective singer/songwriter music, and while they’ve got sit-by-the-fire humor, songs like ‘No More, No Less’ come out, and the words make you realize that you need to go back and listen to everything a little more carefully.”

Many of the lyrics on American Sojourn come directly from band leader Reverend Sam Cain’s fiction, which trains its high beams on 21st century Americana, where sex, God and rock ‘n’ roll meet the social web. As James Greer (Guided by Voices) said about the stories that spawned the band: “The aim is to unsettle your assumptions about class, about gender, about sex, about religion, about identity: in short, about yourself, and what it means to be human in an inhuman world.”

THREE TIMES BAD carried on this artistic exploration with a Southern Gothic approach to songwriting and dynamic live performances in the family of the Devil Makes Three and early Old Crow Medicine Show — with a nod to Americana forefathers Uncle Dave Macon, Jimmie Rodgers, and Bill Monroe.

Led by Cain (on acoustic guitar, banjo, and lead vocals), the THREE TIMES BAD collective performed over the years in various combos with a power quartet at its core, including French Gypsy fiddler St. Jean-Pierre Duboucheron, mandolinist Doubting Thomas Romero, and upright bassist Megan McDevitt. In the great backcountry gospel tradition, everyone in the group stepped up to the mic, stomped, and shouted.

THREE TIMES BAD was a fixture on the regional festival circuit, including multiple runs at Ink n Iron Festival (with headliners Iggy Pop, Merle Haggard, the Offspring, and Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings), the Humboldt Hills Hoedown (with the Brothers Comatose, Hillstomp, Dead Winter Carpenters, and Hot Buttered Rum), Creating Commons Festival Hootenanny (at Oakland’s storied PLACE for Sustainable Living), and Hillbilly Robot (SF promoter Shelby Ash’s infamous annual “Urban Americana Music Event”). Other festival highlights included Bend Summer Fest, San Francisco Free Folk Fest, Mission Creek Oakland Music & Arts Fest, Brews on the Bay, Beast Crawl, and FIGMENT Oakland.

The band also played the region’s top venues (Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, Bottom of the Hill, Brick & Mortar, Cafe du Nord, Dante’s Inferno), provided direct support for leading indie touring acts (CW Stoneking, Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, Lydia Loveless, Old Man Markley, Cutthroat Shamrock, Larry & His Flask, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls), and partnered with world-class local groups (The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, Dirty Cello, Pine Box Boys, Mission Delirium, Junk Parlor, One Grass Two Grass, Laura Benitez & the Heartache, Hernandez Hideaway, the Human Condition, and many more).