In Conversation with Mineral Hill

NEWS | TUESDAY, JUNE 23 | BY FUSION STAFF WRITER, RUDOLFO CARRILLO

Mineral Hill, a flavorful and hootenanny-ready bluegrass trio outta Central and Northern New Mexico, will be playing their first ticketed event at FUSION this weekend, on Saturday, June 27, beginning at 7:30 PM. This sentence will include the only upfront hint that going to this concert will bestow a certain sense of grace and fulfillment that only comes from witnessing sublime musical events at a really cool place in space.

After you read this article and make with the links, I can almost guarantee you will be there on Saturday night, boogie shoes y todo.

En serio, dudes and dudettes, can you imagine a hill made entirely of minerals? I guess that sorta natural structure could be based on the rocky nature of the Earth’s surface, but there is bound to be some organic matter, some meteoric stuff maybe, even the remnants of the constructions of humankind in such a hill.

How about music? Would music work if made an equal partner within that ideal hill of minerals described above? If so, what kind of music might emanate from such hilly environs? To find out I contacted the brains and hearts behind Mineral Hill, the band, through their social media page. In the few days it took to set up a proper interview, I totally listened to their music, soaking it up all day on Saturday, for example.

I found out a lot more about Mineral Hill when I talked to all three band members that day. For instance, their music sounds like it went through a very sad and windy place out West before settling into a beautifully restrained sense of transcendent acceptance that is mostly described through the use of certain chords and key signatures found in American folk music. They’re top-notch on that last account, and by no means derivative; rather, they are authentic voices of a musical tradition that continues to thrive and gain traction among pop culture audiences. You can listen to those sorts of postmodern folk-rock stylings on the tune, “The Sun Comes Around,” if you’d like to follow that plangently tuneful part of the trio’s musical sensibilities.

The leader of the band and chief songwriter is a multi-instrumentalist named Jonathan Mack, and he is from Alaska. He is joined by percussionist, groove maven, and New Mexico Highlands University professor emeritus Lauren Addario. John Funkhouser, a jazzer who comes outta the faculty side at the Berklee College of Music, fills out this massive trio and leaves it standing, often grandly, in the midst of Nuevo Mexico.

As Mack put it so elegantly: “I think we tend to think of our music as pretty place-based. You know, we love where we live. We really like stuff that feels like it’s from our geographical area and our community, our communities, and our world right here. That sense of geography really influences a lot of what we do. When I write, I’m writing what’s in my brain. New Mexico is what's relevant to my life.”

That sort of lived experience generates a sort of narrative authority and authenticity that the band has spent much time developing and manifesting. All three agreed that this project sees more rehearsal time than any other ensemble playing each has done over the years. As their musical interactions have grown, so has their sense of camaraderie, said percussionist Addario, who recalled, “We have fun. We laugh a lot. We, you know, we just, you know, we really enjoy each other’s company. We spend a lot of time together. That’s a good thing. We have these epic rehearsals. I mean, like, I’ve never played with a band that had a rehearsal that lasted more than maybe four hours. We have rehearsals that last all weekend! I mean, with little breaks for eating and like and hiking, you know, and maybe using the bathroom.”

So they’re a tight unit, musically speaking. But how does that virtuosic attitude, those sorts of chops, translate to grooviness, and what do audiences think about Mineral Hill’s music? Newcomer and jazz master Funkhouser took on that lofty inquiry, telling this reporter that audiences have responded with overwhelming enthusiasm to a band that expertly wears many musical hearts on their sleeves. “I feel so lucky to be with somebody that’s writing really interesting, evocative tunes. I really appreciate that, as do our audiences. I think that the thing that is the most compelling is Jonathan’s lyrics. I think that’s the most nonformulaic of all the things we’re doing; what he’s writing is just so unique.”

It’s true that postmodern folk-rock and rock audiences dig the sort of singular, authentic American sound that Mineral Hill is consistently able to produce, onstage and in the recording studio. That’s a facet of their form that the band is proud to report as a source of growth, as their musical reach expands in our part of the Southwest. Jonathan Mack reflected on that upward momentum as we all chatted, adding these important details into the mix: “We were at this age and stage of our lives and our musical careers where we just did whatever the hell tickles our fancy. So we end up covering a lot of ground and the music ends up being really interesting and engaging…I think, legitimately interesting, and fun, and original, right? That’s very cool; you know, there is a lot of formulaic stuff out there, but we are definitely not formulaic.”

Addario and Funkhouser echoed and complemented such rockingly unique artistic and musical conceits, adding at the end of our session that there is much more to come from this enterprising, enthusiastic trio, and that your commitment to the sort of starkly beautiful musical landscapes that Mineral Hill has to offer might well begin with a trip to FUSION this Saturday night. Multi-instrumentalist Funkhouser put it to me this way: “We really do bring significantly different things to the listening environment…I think it has a lot to do with the space that our music has, the space that we create as an ensemble.”

An Evening with Mineral Hill
Saturday, June 27, 2026
7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
FUSION | The Cell
700 1st Street Northwest
Albuquerque, NM, 87102 

Tickets here.