PORT ANGELES — It’s not every day you hear a country band play a bass-thumping song by the Temptations.
Or a bluegrass quartet trying out a couple of hits from the Coasters and the Cars.
Yet these are on the menu as FarmStrong, the Sequim-based band known around the Northwest bluegrass festival circuit, arrives at downtown’s Metta Room on Saturday night.
“Pure, distilled country music,” is the shorthand for the foursome’s sound, along with the tag line “smooth as velvet.”
FarmStrong, with singer-guitarists Jim Faddis and Cort Armstrong, standup bassist John Pyles and Rick Meade on the Dobro, is celebrating its second CD, titled “Forever,” with the first Port Angeles performance in quite a while.
In the 9 p.m. show — which has no cover charge — the band will roam through the album, which features Robbie Robertson’s “Ophelia,” Delbert McLinton’s “Livin’ It Down,” the Cars’ “Drive” and Armstrong’s own “Unseen Hand Blues.”
FarmStrong played a fair number of bluegrass festivals and venues across Oregon and Washington this year, and did some gigs in Port Townsend and Sequim.
The Snowgrass festival in Port Angeles and Wintergrass in Bellevue are on the itinerary for early 2016. And this Saturday is the first time the quartet has played the Metta Room, 132 E. Front St.
FarmStrong is often called a bluegrass band, even if there is no banjo in sight.
It’s those brotherly vocal harmonies that hearken back to that sound, and no wonder since Faddis traveled for years with the well-loved bluegrass band Prairie Flyer.
These days Faddis is stretching out in new directions, penning songs such as “How Many Times,” a murder ballad, and “Holding My Own,” about a particular era in a man’s life.
He also wrote “Forever,” the new CD’s title track, about a note his late father wrote to his mother at Christmas time in 1935.
The singer, guitarist and retired police officer has found a delicious groove with FarmStrong. He’ll step into it Saturday night as he takes his place in the center.
“I always look forward to being the middle guy on the harmony,” Faddis said.
With Meade on one side and Armstrong on the other, “I get the harmonies coming at me from left and right.
“To me, the harmony’s all about the sweet spot you stand in. There’s this magic that happens,” as though there’s a phantomlike fourth tone.
The men’s voices join together in songs ranging from the Temptations’ “Papa Was a Rolling Stone” to Kate Wolf’s “Across the Great Divide;” the latter is on the new CD alongside the Vernon Thompson-Billy Smith tune “Backsliding Blues.”
Saturday night’s gig promises old songs that are new FarmStrong material: the Coasters’ 1957 song “Young Blood,” Bryan Bowers’ “Friend for Life” and Hank Williams’ “Mansion on the Hill.”
On “Young Blood,” Pyles, the band’s joke-telling bass player, has a rare vocal part.
Which is all the better for that harmonic experience.
“I’m the beneficiary,” said Faddis. “I get to hear it all come together.”
