An anonymous man walked onto the stage at Cholmondley's, sat down and started fiddling. Throwing off a sandal, he stomped his foot in time to two songs without stopping at the Students for a Just Society coffeehouse Thursday night.The fiddler was Aaron Hauptman '06. He and three others make up the South Street Bluegrass Band, a quartet of seniors who play country-style bluegrass. Sam Petsonk plays banjo for the group, while rocking solos are shared by Jon Gradman (guitar and mandolin) and Jon Benjamin (string bass). The band's performance was the culmination of an evening featuring everything from Mike McCarthy's '06 Hendrix covers and the spellbinding poetry of Kat Howard '06, to the short poetic works of Kedar Kulkarni '06 and the solo acoustic guitar musings of Ezra Brooks '06 and Arjun Ray '06.

In an e-mail interview, Petsonk described the beginnings of the band. "Jon Gradman and I started the South Street Bluegrass Band after jamming together one evening in Scheffres our freshman year. We both come from the area of the old American 'Rust Belt' and had that visceral attraction to the 'good old Bluegrass music' that we'd heard growing up down along the banks of the Monongahela [West Virginia] and Allegheny Rivers." Petsonk also said the aim of his band is to share the rich culture of the American bluegrass movement with his fellow Brandeis students.

Petsonk went on to describe the group's musical influences, which include everyone from Doc Watson and Bill Monroe through Jerry Garcia's mid-'70s bluegrass band Old & in the Way.

Petsonk says that the group's greatest non-musical influences "are the thousands of ordinary folks we've met around America who pick the banjo or the mandolin or sing the Bluegrass music with all that sincere and unfinished audacity-that raw verve of simple old American spirit-that is so apparent and so compelling to the many people who dig the music and the culture of bluegrass."

The benefit coffeehouse contributed to the mission of Petsonk's other passion, the grassroots political techniques of deceased U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone. These techniques were realized through Camp Wellstone, which was held at Brandeis over the weekend. Students for Social Justice and a broad spectrum of other Brandeis organizations sponsored the event.

Petsonk and friend Wes Ludwig '06, are active on WBRS, and have a national audience through the station's Web site. Petsonk himself has gathered much of the history of bluegrass through his summer travels to bluegrass festivals across the country.

"I have recorded hours of interviews and station breaks with folks from every generation of Bluegrass music-from the originals, like Jimmy Martin and Ralph Stanley and Vassar Clements, up to contemporary folks our age who are taking the music in new directions-and many of the old folkies in the Boston listening audience have valued that," said Petsonk. An interview with the pair about Southern Rail is to air on WBUR this fall.