Got to get down to Stringtown

“We all kind of live within a couple miles of each other and we’ve all been musicians for a long time,” he said. “We all like the same kind of music: swing, folk, country, bluegrass — all of it. This is a cool project that we all wanted to do. Everybody plays three or four instruments on top of what they play in the band. It’s versatile.”

Howard has been in music since the 1970s, doing everything from lessons to studio work backing up other musicians. He said he and everyone else in the band is a full-time musician and “it’s a cool state to be a musician in.”

McCoy, Ross and Howard have 100 years of music experience among them. Their self-titled, self-released debut album is a collection of the 13 best tracks they came up with in their basement rehearsals. McCloy said their collaboration has given them the ability to mesh well together, to move easily into creating an album and playing live.

“We’ve got quite a shared language, we play similar styles,” he said. “We’re all at a level where you can just sing something to another guy and he just sings it back at you.

"We’ve all been doing it so long that we’re very comfortable with our instruments, and just kind of respond.”

Stringtown Trio

7p.m. Friday, July 23 East Lansing’s Summer Concert Series FountainSquare at the northeast corner of MAC and Albert avenues, East LansingFree (517) 319-6927www.cityofeastlansing.com/summerconcertseries