What is Roots Music? What is considered traditional in modern society? Have you ever had to pull a tangled mess of barbed wire from the blade of an industrial mower? If you’re raised on a farm, you can’t help but sound a little bit Country. If you’re a teenager with a guitar, Rock ‘n’ Roll provides the soundtrack. If you spend enough time on the road, wandering, aimless and alone, the Blues is a natural companion. There are no stories of blues on the front porch or of a traveling family of gospel singers. Chad Nordhoff first picked up a guitar in the mid-eighties, the heart of the infamous hair-band era. By the mid-nineties the time of the guitar hero had waned and the popular musical landscape sent Chad on a search to understand how we had come to this point. You’d find him in the back of the class listening to tapes of Robert Johnson or Hank Williams on the old Walkman. Chad would spend the next 15 years jamming, traveling, moving south to river towns, and absorbing the history of American music. Whirled Boogie was born on Beale Street in Memphis, TN. By early 2009, Chad had left the day job behind for the precarious title of full-time musician. After years of his “Electrifying Acoustic One Man Show” the time came to amp things up a bit. Memphis drummer Jason M. Vawter was brought in to drive the spikes and lay a new track for the cross-country freight train that Chad’s guitar style had become. The duo was never much for rehearsal. Their sound was honed and grooves were tightened in clubs, on stages in Memphis and North Mississippi. So what would you get if Waylon Jennings and members of Led Zeppelin collaborated on a set of Memphis Blues? Whirled Boogie would call it Roots Rock and Blues. Call it whatever you like. Dig it!