Fresh from their Hardly Strictly Bluegrass appearance, the Carolina Chocolate Drops visited the most-excellent Sierra Nevada Brewing Co’s. Big Room in Chico, Calif. on Oct. 4, 2010. I first witnessed the trio, who incidentally were the first black string band to play the Grand Ole Opry, at the main stage of the High Sierra Music Festival in July. I became quickly aware that although their music initially sounded like bluegrass, there was more to the story than that. The engaging and charismatic Chocolate Drops -- Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons, and Justin Robinson -- don’t follow so much in the footsteps of bluegrass legends Bill Monroe or Flatt and Scruggs. Instead, the old-timey string band, according to their band bio, is “a tip of the hat to the Tennessee Chocolate Drops, three black brothers … who lit up the music scene in the 1930’s. … The Carolina Chocolate Drops are the newest and youngest players in a long lineage of Black String Bands. The tradition traces its roots to musicians from Africa who came to the Americas in the holds of slave ships.” Their fine Chico performance got the crowd up and dancin’. Images ©Alan Sheckter / AlSheck@comcast.net. You may link to this gallery, but images may not be republished without expressed written consent from the photographer.