“This is a good crowd. I felt a little awkward. I mean, this is a Scandinavian Festival and we’re playing bluegrass and cowboy music. Is this a fit? But people have been very friendly towards us,” Ethan Waddington said.

A quartet made up of four brothers from a musical rural family in southwest North Dakota, The Waddington brothers, (Seth, Ethan, Jacob and Job) offer a mixture of bluegrass staples, cowboy and gospel tunes made altogether fresh, thanks to commanding musicianship and polished harmonies.

The Waddingtons’ chemistry onstage has been cultivated over the years, beginning first in the family band led by their father, Caleb Waddington, and based in and around the Hettinger County area. Ethan Waddington said after the family band wound down, the brothers hadn’t played for about eight years as he and Jacob moved to Montana to build custom log cabins.

They eventually decided to form their quartet in 2019, though, as Seth Waddington put it, “2019 was a bad year to start a band” due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

After venues opened back up and the crowds returned, The Waddington Brothers haven’t looked back and, in fact, have reached new heights. In addition to appearances at events and festivals throughout the country, the brothers placed first place in a competition in the 2023 Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America festival in Nashville.

“Once you win they don’t allow you to compete again. So we’re glad. We’re done. We went and played at the (2024) festival, and we’re talking about going back this coming January,” Ethan Waddington said.

The Waddingtons’ setlist runs the gamut of bluegrass standards, such as “Keep on the Sunny Side,” to tunes such as “Stars in My Crown,” the titular song from 1950s western film starring Joel McCrea. One song in their performance was discovered in a rural diner while Seth Waddington and his father were helping Ethan and Jacob deliver a cabin house to Sundance, Wyo. Seth Waddington said their meal was graced by a lone man with a guitar playing music, who gave them permission to include one of his songs in their performances.

The Waddington Brothers perform today at 10:45 a.m. and 2 p.m.

“It’s been fun so far. We’re nearly halfway through,” Ethan Waddington said.