Like the Jonas Brothers before them, the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys are a trio of squeaky-clean, underage, New Jersey-bred musical brothers. Unlike their hit-making predecessors, they don’t cite Bruce Springsteen as an influence. The late banjo legend Earl Scruggs is more their style. And instead of scissor-kicking their way across stages, they tend to huddle together in performance, picking and grinning, bluegrass-style.
The musical road less travelled has led to big things for the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys. Since forming as a band in 2010, the three brothers from Lebanon Township—guitarist Tommy Mizzone, 15; fiddler Robbie Mizzone, 14; and banjo player Jonny Mizzone, 11—have harmonized their way from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville to Carnegie Hall to Rockefeller Center, where they performed on the Today show. They’ve appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, jammed with actor/comedian/banjoist Steve Martin at a Scruggs tribute show in Nashville and opened for bluegrass star Ricky Skaggs.
“We’ve had a lot of cool experiences,” said Tommy Mizzone after a late-April performance at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park in West Orange, where the boys played a couple of tunes that were immortalized on wax to demonstrate Edison’s early recording techniques.
The boys also provide a new experience for many of their fans. “We’ve turned a lot of people on to bluegrass in the area,” Tommy said, “but it’s still not really a big bluegrass place.”
The brothers have gotten used to veering from the norm. They’ve been home schooled since before they started making music together (among their parents’ directives was that each boy study an instrument). Before they even became a band, they had racked up millions of YouTube views with their rendition of “Flint Hill Special,” a song made famous by Scruggs and his partner, Lester Flatt.
To date, the brothers have self-recorded and released two albums of original and cover songs. The latest, The Farthest Horizon, came out in October and reached number 3 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums chart.
The Mizzone boys plan to build on their momentum with more performances and recordings, but not without caution. “Jonny’s still young,” said Tommy. “We don’t want to burn him out.”