Ragged Union

The History


Ragged Union's signature bluegrass-and-beyond music has appeared at festivals, concert series and events all across the USA, England, and China, since 2013. Past performances include IBMA Wide Open Bluegrass, John Hartford Memorial Festival, Northwest String Summit, Durango Meltdown, Shrewsbury Folk Festival (England), and the Qingdao International Beer Festival (China), to name a few. Their music appears on celestial and satellite radio, and can be found on Spotify, Pandora, and anywhere music can be found, streaming or otherwise. The band toured as a five, or six-piece unit from 2014 until 2019, and from 2020 to 2023 as a quartet or trio. 2024 brought back the five-piece format, and to the delight of audiences, the music once again reaches its full potential.

The Music

The band’s recipe for tasty contemporary bluegrass contains three main ingredients. Geoff Union’s ‘Outsider Songwriting’ makes use of poetic lyric ideas that stretch beyond the ‘normal’ country themes to include personal, and even historical, stories, often presented in creative rhyme meter. Ragged Union sets their sometimes obscure-in-a-good-way lyric content to ‘Timeless Melodies’ that are new, yet sound familiar and classic. The songs are further enhanced with ‘Unexpected Arrangements’. Changes in feel, tempo, and time signature, along with rich compositional ideas, and atypical song structure (like putting the bridge at the end of the song) set Ragged Union’s original material apart. All of these concepts come together in an impressively exciting live performance that is equally at home at the festival, concert series, or nightclub.
The band has released four albums, 2015’s Hard Row to Hoe; 2017’s Time Captain, and Live at Leeds (recorded live at the Seven Arts Theatre in Leeds, England) and 2022’s Round Feet, Chrome Smile. A new release is in the works for the winter of 2024-25.

The Lineup

Geoff Union - flatpicker, singer, songwriter, Fayetteville, NC. The primary songsmith and long-standing leader of Ragged Union, Geoff is known for a songwriting style that’s light and bouncy on the surface, but lyrically deep and complex, with plenty of twists and turns in the music to make the listener come back again and again.

Elio Schiavo - mandolin and vocal, Philadelphia, PA. With a unique, soulful voice and wildly skillful mandolin playing, Elio introduces elements of R&B, funk, rap, reggae, and classic rock absorbed during his long and varied recording and producing career. Elio is a creative instrumental composer and skilled audio engineer as well a founder of one of Brooklyn’s most popular longstanding bluegrass jam sessions.

Rebekah Durham - fiddle and vocal, Midland, TX A world-class violinist, Rebekah trained at Juilliard and has played at local and international festivals. Past groups include the internationally touring indie band, San Fermin, and Colorado’s own The Ginny Mules. She continues to perform with orchestras and at select events, and her classical upbringing fosters a perpetually growing appreciation for fiddling and the intricacies of bluegrass and string band music’s scope and potential.

Chris Elliott – banjo, Houston, TX An award-winning banjo player, Chris joined Ragged Union from 2014 until 2019, and the band is happy to have him back on stage again in 2024. He has been a staple of the Colorado bluegrass scene for over twenty years, performing with Spring Creek, Blue Canyon Boys, and Chain Station, and Foggy Mt Spaceship. Chris also teaches banjo technique via the Elliott Banjo School.

Ian Haegele – bass Wauwatosa, Wisconsin Highly skilled in jazz and classical music, as well as bluegrass, Ian has worked with many top-shelf groups in Colorado over the years, including Long Road Home, Thunder and Rain, and the Martin Gilmore Trio. He also appears in theater productions, and earned his Masters in Music Performance from the University of Northern Colorado at Greeley.