Joel Cofield grew up in Georgia, close to the epicenter of bluegrass. But it wasn’t until he lived in Boston that he caught the bluegrass bug. And these days, thousands of miles from where he started, he’s an influential and admired member of the bluegrass community.
BB (Before bluegrass). Joel grew up knowing that his father, who died when Joel was very young, and his grandfather played electric bass in country bands. So, when the teenaged Joel picked up an instrument, it was the bass.
But playing bass lines along to Alice in Chains CDs in his bedroom quickly got boring, so he progressed to a Stratocaster. “I played electric guitar in my room for pretty much every spare hour when I wasn't studying for math exams.”
Watching videos of Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joel would play along until he noticed he wasn’t making the same sound as the pro. Then he’d stop the video until he could figure out exactly where the player’s hands were to match the sound.
He heard that his grandfather learned essentially the same way. An aunt told Joel, “I remember him pulling up the record needle and putting it back down to listen again.” Joel said, “We were more advanced by then – I had a DVD – but I was doing the same thing.”
The bluegrass bug in Boston. Joel said, “When I went to college, I still didn’t know what bluegrass was, but I started getting into more folk music. And when I finished college, around 2010, there was a huge chunk of popular music that at least had banjo in it – like the Avett Brothers. This was all music that I loved, and I listened to it all the time.
“Later I learned where this music came from and what it was related to, which was bluegrass. That wasn’t something I knew much about, even having grown up just a couple hours from the heart of it.”
Eventually, a friend took him to “an epic bluegrass jam” at Boston’s Cantab Lounge. And as happens to so many people, it wasn’t so much the music as the sense of community that drew him to the genre.
When he walked into that jam, he thought, “This is it.”
And he fell hard. “Tuesday, jam day, would roll around, and all I wanted to do was play bluegrass.
“I wasn’t working. I had just traveled the world, and my budget was pretty low – read ‘zero.’”
And his car wasn’t running, so he would walk two miles each way, carrying his guitar, in the cold. And if the formal jam wasn’t enough playing time, he’d go to a friend’s home afterward and play until five in the morning.
Joel not only had to learn bluegrass repertoire, but he had to catch up quickly on the whole jamming piece. And the musical bar was pretty high, given that many of the pickers were from Berklee School of Music and were heavy into fast, fancy instrumentals.
“It was so hard coming in thinking I knew guitar, and then just not understanding what was happening and how to play along. I think it would have been easy to get discouraged, and I saw other people come in and get discouraged by it. But it was so interesting to me that I had played guitar for so long, but I still couldn't play along,” let alone take a solo break. So, he persevered and cracked the code.
Most of the jamming was on fiddle tunes, with few vocals. “So, when I moved to California and everyone was singing in the jams, that was really fun for me.”
And today, he is known equally for his singing as his guitar playing.
West Coast sojourn. Joel is a data scientist and software engineer, so his career has taken him to various locations on the West Coast, including California’s Bay Area and Seattle. Now in Portland, he works for a renewable energy nonprofit.
While in California, he performed with a bluegrass band. When he moved to Portland he attended shows and festivals and performed the occasional show with existing bands, but he wasn’t able to start serious gigging for a few years. That's largely because he was flying to Georgia regularly to help his ailing grandmother, who had adopted Joel and his sister when they were young. It was a sad and difficult period for Joel, culminating in her 2024 death.
When Joel was able to commit the time to play, everyone noticed. In just a little over a year, Joel has made his mark. He has been playing bass with Fern Hill, a very traditional band whose oldest members are about twice his age.
He toured with Fog Holler, filling in as the band’s guitar player. And now he fronts Bean Water, an energetic band of young performers well-steeped in traditional bluegrass and country.
And he is in the center of a large and growing group of pickers and fans in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are revitalizing Portland’s bluegrass scene.
Check out Joel’s soulful singing, great harmonies and terrific guitar playing with Bean Water, and his bass and vocals with Fern Hill. You can follow Joel on Instagram, @j.oel.leo.j , as well as on Facebook.