Newgrass jam band Hot Buttered Rum [ tickets ] has filled in its calendar for the rest of the year and started making plans for 2009.

The quintet, often described as a rock band playing bluegrass instruments, will criss-cross the US starting with a two-night stand next week in Santa Barbara, CA. Stops include a two-show Halloween celebration at Groveland, CA's "Tortugas Dance of the Dead Festival" and a multi-night New Year's Eve soiree in Denver. Hot Buttered Rum will also support Dark Star Orchestra at a few late-November gigs on the East Coast. Details are listed below.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based group continues to push its 2007 effort, "Live in the Northeast," which features handpicked selections from its fall 2006 tour. The set touches on everything from reggae to psychedelia, and includes covers of the Grateful Dead's "Cumberland Blues" and Leo Sayer's "Feel Like Dancin'." A few songs from the album are streaming at Hot Buttered Rum's MySpace page.

The band also continues to churn out live recordings for its "Live Butter" series, which is available at the Live Downloads website.

The men of Hot Buttered Rum--bassist Bryan Horne, guitarist Nat Keefe, multi-instrumentalist Erik Yates and mandolin/fiddle players Zachary Matthews and Aaron Redner--pull from musical influences ranging from bluegrass to rock and folk to jazz. They're just as comfortable plugging in at large-scale rock festivals as they are playing quiet, acoustic-folk sessions, according to their bio.

Hot Buttered Rum has performed at festivals including Bonnaroo, High Sierra, the Newport Folk Festival and the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, and shared the stage with artists including Phil Lesh, Bela Fleck, Ben Harper, Chris Thile, Mike Marshall and Peter Rowan, the latter two of whom worked with HBR on its latest studio release, 2006's "Well-Oiled Machine."

That album's name refers to Hot Buttered Rum's ecologically friendly tour vehicles, which run on vegetable oil and biodiesel fuel. With the amount of touring they do, the nature-loving bandmates have made a commitment to reduce their ecological footprint, and they also use their music to raise awareness about social and environmental problems.

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