It was cold. The first real bitter night in Detroit, and while the wind blew there was a warm glow resonating from the windows of Otus Supply in Ferndale, Michigan. Many inside were grabbing dinner, awaiting the doors of the Parliament Room to open and the band to take the stage. As a humble guest, I was escorted through the kitchen to a stairwell in the far corner, near the back door. Even with the clamoring of pots and pans, orders being yelled – I could hear the sounds of string music getting closer and closer. Atop those narrow stairs were scattered guitar cases, suitcases and four longhaired dudes laying down a final strum on their instruments, laughing as one boasted “ah, we will figure it out.” It was there I was introduced to Ben Wright, Jon Goldfine, Chris Dollar and Jake Howard – the gents that make up The Henhouse Prowlers.

I knew the names, I knew the faces and I really knew the music. I had seen the footage of their excursions around the world bringing folk music to far-reaching corners of the world as Bluegrass Ambassadors. Their music speaks for itself, the stage presence is a culmination of being 15+ years into the game and as you might expect, they are all extremely down to earth and genuine guys. But how did they get here? How do a few guys from Chicago, Illinois not only start a bluegrass band but keep it going and on top of that, take their music all over the world! It is this path that I needed to know more about and the lessons that come with the story of the Henhouse Prowlers reach further than even their music has.

MWG: Take us back to the beginning, what is the origin of The Henhouse Prowlers?

Jon: Back in 2004, there were six of us that all played in different bands, but we all lived in the same neighborhood and wound up playing a lot of the same shows and subbing with the same bands. So we all sort of knew each other. The bluegrass community in Chicago wasn’t huge, so if you played bluegrass music, you’re going to know pretty much everyone else that does.

Ben: It was a very casual thing at the start for me and two of the other founding members. We were in a rock band together that had a little bit of a bluegrass feel, I had an electric banjo and there was an electric fiddle but it was not a band really had it all together. It was just loud! So, a big part of starting this new band was to be doing something that’s more traditional in order to keep our chops up.

Jon:  We started playing every Tuesday night at a little bar called the Red Line Tap and did that, along with other spots around the city for 4 more years. The Tuesday night shows were steadily growing, eventually becoming packed and I remember one night just thinking “What is going on here?!”

Ben (with a boisterous laugh) : It was big time. We were making like $27 a person!

Jon: Dozens of dollars! But I remember the first time we took a weekend out of town as a group, it was late 2006, we went to Rockford, Illinois and Moline, Illinois. Over dinner, I had posed a question like we can keep this going, we should line up a tour. And it was then and there our original guitar player just said, “I’m out.” He had already toured with plenty of bands so was over that whole part of it. About a month later we had found a new guitar player and around Spring of 2007, we started playing shows around the Midwest nearly every weekend. We were still playing in other bands but it was around that time that we ended up quitting to focus on what would become the Henhouse Prowlers.

MWG: Since then you have established the organization Bluegrass Ambassadors, traveling the world and teaching through music. Where did that journey begin?

Ben: It was our founding fiddler player who brought it up to us saying ‘you guys should apply for this American Music Abroad program.’ We didn’t realize at the time it is a descendant of a program from the 1950s called the Jazz Ambassadors, where the State Department sends and has been sending bands all over the world doing musical diplomacy for decades.

I remember finally sitting down and applying, just kind of rushing through the application as it was due the next day. There were a lot of write-ups about what an educational program would look like if you were going to try to teach music-business to people who didn’t have access to the types of tools we have in the States. Now, we had done some teaching in the past with a program within Evanston, Illinois where we went to every school in Evanston over the course of a month and a half and did educational programs in front of kids, assembly style. So we had a foundation for similar programs to guide the answers on these questions. But I really had no idea what we were about to get ourselves into!

MWG: The application appeared to go well, so what were some of the steps in the process to be representing the program?

Ben: We auditioned in San Francisco. They did auditions in San Francisco, St. Louis and New York City we just happened to be on tour along the west coast. You get into this audition and there are six people sitting at a table judging you and very unhappily judging you because there were like 40 bands or something, all playing one of three songs. And I do remember the band before us was also in suits and they sang one of the songs in Chinese!

Jon: The same song we were about to play… in English.

Ben: Yea, we were like, oh well – this isn’t happening.

Ben: Then the questions started. I remember one that was like, ‘okay, so you show up to a school in Ghana, you thought there were supposed to be 40 students and it turns out there’s 200 and there’s no electricity, what do you do?’ At the time it was like, well… that’s absurd, but almost the exact thing has happened to us a couple times!

Ben: As we were walking out of the room our guitar player at the time who was one of the sweetest kids ever, very shy, never really spoke out of turn stopped and said to the judges, “Can I say one thing?” – and I remember the judges wanting to hear him because, originally they wanted to actually hear him sing – to make sure we all could, but he turned to them and simply said “If we got this, it would mean the world to us.”

Jon: He was really emphasizing that we were the right band for this. That we had toured internationally and that we would take it so seriously. He made his case. And for a guy that never talks, I think he is the reason we got it.

Ben: We left there kind of exuberant, not necessarily feeling like we got it but just that it was all over with. But that night we were staying at a friend’s house and overnight the van had got robbed and all of our instruments were stolen. We had to cancel our last show of the tour and drive home from San Francisco to Chicago and in an empty van. For us, it was absolutely devastating. It really could have ended the band… but it didn’t.

Two months later I got a phone call and they were like, you got it!.. and I lost my mind because I felt like something positive came back from one the darkest days of my life. But I had no idea what the ambassador program really meant, which was the beginning of an opportunity to soak in the world, unlike anything I could ever imagine.

MWG: How has the ambassadorship grown and how has it influenced you all?

Jon: So that first tour was in 2013, we did several countries in Africa and the Middle East but it was about three years ago that we really changed the focus of it to start bringing back those experiences and start focusing on doing more educational work here, going into schools and teaching about world cultures through folk music. We had already set up the not-for-profit but hadn’t put it to use.

Ben: You know, one of the things we learned quickly with those trips was that if you showed up and had learned some of their music, the doors that opened were far wider. Right. So the concept of Bluegrass Ambassadors now, partly, is to bring what we’ve learned abroad back home. Here we are going to schools and even learning music here in the States that kids can connect with. Whatever the demographic is, we’re going to find out what is popular with them and those same doors open just as wide. We just did a program four months ago, and we did… oh… what was that song? The country rap song?

Everyone in the room: OLD TOWN ROAD!!

Ben: Yes! And the kids lost their minds! And it is the same response that happens in Nairobi, Kenya or Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan or, Elmira, Illinois, you know…

… music is the key to everybody’s heart.

With the cameras down and microphones off, I joined the rest of the crowd to fully soak in a Henhouse Prowlers show. Before that, I was observing, conversing and just hanging out with 4 individuals – but on stage, they were one. There is something about the Henhouse Prowlers on stage that has a different feeling than seeing other bands. They check all the boxes… great lyrics, musicianship, compositions – they are a GREAT bluegrass band. However, it feels different.

They have such a cadence with each other and the music, an energy that is extended seamlessly to the audience. To me, that intangible difference is that they have tapped into the human experience of music. They are not just playing for fans, but have crafted a sound and a presence that goes deeper than that. I would attribute that to their time abroad, whether they know it or not – they are putting that experience into their music and show, drawing the genuine response from the audience. It doesn’t matter if you are a bluegrass fan from Wisconsin, a village elder in Ghana, a student in Kyrgyzstan or a passerby in Ferndale, MI – you are getting the same show, the same feelings, the same Henhouse Prowlers and it’s one hell of an experience.

We can not thank the Henhouse Prowlers enough for letting us hang with them. A long night of great conversations, that we may end up publishing more! But don’t stop here! Be sure to check out The Henhouse Prowlers on your favorite social media accounts, stay up to date on the band and learn more about the important role they play as Bluegrass Ambassadors here and abroad…

Cheers…