“Probably the best rock band in America that nobody knows”

In 2005, the writer Stephen King lavished praise in a review of an album entitled ‘If You Didn’t Laugh, You’d Cry’.

In his view, it was the best album of the year and it was, as he wrote, an album by “probably the best rock band in America that nobody knows”. Well, there were enough people who knew, as the album attracted widespread acclaim, the seventh to have been released by Marah, a band from Philadelphia that was formed in the early 1990s by singer and guitarist David Bielanko.

Comparisons over the years have included those with Bruce Springsteen, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2 (that was by Stephen King). And over the years, Marah have played in Spain. A 2006 release was ‘Sooner or Later in Spain’, which was a recording of a concert in Mataro, Barcelona province. They are now touring Spain again, one member of the band being Gus Tritsch, who was an eight-year-old fiddle-playing prodigy on a 2014 album that was based on folk songs from the Pennsylvania mountains.