ASHLAND — The group Cypress represents a unique blend of three musicians determined to create their own sound.
Formed in Huntington after Zac Doss, Cierra James Doss and Steven Schumann met at Marshall University, the band continues to increase its fan base with its live shows and new album “firstfruits,” which debuted in April 2021.
Locally, Cypress is known for writing and producing the song “Fly Again,” dedicated to the memory of the victims of the 1970 Marshall football team plane crash, which moved many who heard it performed by the trio last fall.
On Friday, Sept. 3, Cypress will perform at the First Friday Festival in downtown Ashland, hosted by Ashland In Motion. Taking place in Broadway Square in the downtown area from 6 to 9 p.m., the First Friday Festival will also feature a Kid’s Zone, a basketball contest, a car show and food and drink vendors.
The live music to be featured at tomorrow’s First Friday Festival will include Kristin Hope at 6 p.m., Cypress (the trio) at 7 p.m. and the full Cypress band with friends at 8 p.m.
Zac Doss studied vocal performance, English education and English at Marshall, where his future wife Cierra studied vocal performance and music education. Steven Schumann is continuing his education after his Marshall years at Belmont University in Nashville, where he is working on his graduate degree in commercial cello performance.
Along with Zac on guitar and vocals and Cierra on vocals and cajon percussion, Schumann’s cello brings the sound of Cypress to a special place.
These days, the cello is considered a cool instrument thanks to artists such as Yo Yo Ma, Ben Sollee, Joe Kwon of the Avett Brothers, Rushad Eggleston and others. Schumann was lucky enough to have a fiddle-playing sister who was 11 years older than him who offered him $20 if he learned to play the cello. It helped that he grew up in a musical family, with his father being a music minister and his mother a music teacher, so he grew up surrounded by tablature.
Schumann is originally from Wichita, Kansas, but he lived in many places before settling in nearby Russell, Kentucky, where he went to high school. Once he enrolled at Marshall, he met West Virginia natives Zac and Cierra and the Cypress trio was soon formed.
“I started playing the cello when I was in fourth grade, and then in sixth grade there was a girl in our school orchestra that I wanted to impress, so I learned the Bach Cello Suite in G major thing that everyone plays, and from that point on I was hooked,” said Schumann. “And now, the cello has become my career. So, now that I think of it, being bribed $20 by my sister is a funny way to start out, but that is why I chose the cello. While I never stopped playing the cello, I also played the trombone in high school band and then I picked up the guitar and bass in high school because you can’t really sit around and play the cello around a bonfire with friends. But, I ended up integrating my knowledge of the guitar, bass and keyboards into what I do with the cello. So while I am classically trained, my specialty is now in Americana and other singular genres.”
As for Appalachian roots music, Schumann did not hear those ancient-yet-new sounds until after he arrived in the Tri-State from Kansas.
“I had never heard much about bluegrass music until I moved to Kentucky and West Virginia,” said Schumann. “It was just not a thing that I grew up with. But when I went to school at Marshall, I started playing with Zac and Cierra and they have an Appalachian feel to what they do. Then as an undergrad student, I worked on a research project for two years, studying the immigrant communities of southern West Virginia in the early 1900s and how their cultural backgrounds may have influenced how music was exchanged and created at that time.
“That is when I started to understand that there is this wealth of history in West Virginia and the Appalachian Mountains that I was not aware of because I wasn’t from here. And, I really fell in love with it then and I started studying fiddle music on the cello.”
As for Cypress’ original song “Fly Again,” it was written at the request of some folks connected to the yearly Marshall plane crash ceremony. The now-new-standard composition has touched many who have heard it.
“Some people from Marshall approached us and asked us to write a song about that experience,” said Schumann. “Zac did a lot of the writing on ‘Fly Again,’ although we all worked on it together and I produced it. When I show people that song, a lot of people think that it’s cool, but if you are not a part of the Marshall community, you don’t quite understand it. One of my favorite parts of ‘Fly Again’ is between the second chorus and the little bridge section where there is a part of the song where you can hear the sound of the fountain, and then you hear it shut off, like a moment of silence before the music comes back in. If you are not a Marshall person, you may not understand it like somebody who has been to that ceremony every year.”
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September 02, 2021 at 11:00AM
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Huntington-based Appalachian folk trio Cypress brings unique sound to Ashland on Friday - Huntington Herald Dispatch
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