In 2012, The Kingston Trio did something unprecedented for a folk band with more than 55 years experience. It released an album of all new material.
Dubbed “Born at the Right Time,” the project included 15 tracks, written by contemporary songwriters and handpicked by the three current members of the trio, George Grove, Bill Zorn and Rick Dougherty.
Titles like “Forever and a Day” and “If I Were Free” kept to the same Kingston harmonies with banjo-and-acoustic-guitar accompaniment.
“It was important to do something with new music that didn’t stray away from the Kingston Trio sound at all,” said Grove, the banjo player for the group. “We didn’t move away from what the trio does. We added to it with new music.”
The group will sprinkle some of the new stuff in with classics such as “Tom Dooley,” “M.T.A.” and “Scotch and Soda” when it plays the Temple of Music & Art Wednesday and Thursday.
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None of the trio’s current members is original, but all are well-qualified.
Zorn performed with the trio from 1973-76 before striking out on his own.
Dougherty was a member of a second-generation version of The Limeliters with Zorn before joining up with Kingston in 2005.
Grove has been part of the trio for nearly 40 years, longer than any other trio alum, with the exception of co-founder Bob Shane.
Shane started the iconic group with friends Dave Guard and Nick Reynolds in 1957 and remained a player until 2004, when he had to bow out from touring due to heart disease.
The 80-year-old Phoenix resident still performs occasionally and will be at next week’s performances.
“I feel like I am a curator of a museum,” Grove said. “None of us are original but we do have provenance. We are like a Stradivarius dating back to the late 1600s.”
Grove wouldn’t have it any other way. As a child, he fell in love with the sounds of the trio. It was one of the primary reasons he got into music in the first place.
“They were huge icons for me,” he said. “As a young man, I wanted something I could call my own. For so many of us, that became folk music.”
He feels the new songs in the Kingston repertoire could attract future generations.
“If we give them the right mix, old and new, we get to show off our talents and bring the old fans, their children and grandchildren into the fold,” he said.
