The House Band

OLG’s “house band” is The Legendary Trainhoppers, an American band from Fort Wayne. (Full disclosure: Matt Kelley plays guitar and mandolin and writes songs in the band.) The band writes, rehearses and performs in The B-Side at One Lucky Guitar, the small listening venue within our office.

Over 2019–2020, the band released three EPs, and during the pandemic wrote and recorded five new songs. All of that material has been compiled on the double-album Hard Times, which features 18 songs over two discs, along with a bonus DVD featuring a documentary, live performances and more. You can buy the record here, or, of course, stream it on Spotify and Apple.

The record was extensively covered in The Journal Gazette.

The accompanying documentary, A Slight Sleight of Hand, was produced by OLG and Red Tide Productions. It’s a breezy seven-minute watch—enjoy:

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• The band is a collective, a scene—as drummer Kevin Jackson said, when he packed his bag to move to Montana, “I’ll always be in this band. There are no former Trainhoppers; we’re just active or inactive.”—and as such, it doesn’t exist without collaboration:
• The band is Casey Stansifer, Chris Dodds, Colin Boyd, Connor O’Shaughnessy, Dan Smyth, Jon Ross, Kevin Jackson, Matt Kelley and Phil Potts.
• Featuring guest musicians Cassie Beer, Derek Reeves, Ian Pettit and Susan Stephens.
• Recorded at Berry Street Records with Scott Rottler and Morrison Agen, Off the Cuff Music with Jason Davis, and The Loft with Troy Koch.
• Documentary and Live at The Landing videos by Red Tide Productions with John Burkett and One Lucky Guitar.
• Music videos by One Lucky Guitar with Zach Vessels.
• Live at The Landing event produced by One Lucky Guitar with Olivia Fabian.
• Live sound at Fort Wayne Museum of Art by Blueberry Sound with Bob Sweigert.
• Album art by One Lucky Guitar with Matt Kelley, featuring photography by Brad Bores at Brad Bores Films.
• Beer labels by Jake Sauer at One Lucky Guitar.

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Oh, one more note—
What’s up with the name? Back in 2005, Matt was given the photo above by his aunt, who dabbles in genealogy. Matt’s great-great grandfather is there, Lafayette “Layf” Bacon. Being as it was a hundred years since the photo was taken, Matt and his friends dreamt up what that band sounded like, and tried to re-form it a century later. Since the original band looked like they rode in on a hopped train, we ran with that idea, and The Legendary Trainhoppers were born.