Bluegrass stars The Lonesome Ace Stringband to round out series of Americana gigs at The Wedgewood Rooms

Written and sung by fiddle player John Showman it has inspired a nice little extra for the merch table – their #1 Spice Rub.

‘The song is very tongue and cheek but it's weird enough that it works, it's not overly silly,’ says John. ‘We've been performing it and Chris (Coole, banjo) had this good idea because there's one verse where I mention the spice rub and detail how to make it. Chris said, let's just make it and give it to people at the merch table if they come and talk to us and buy something.’

So, on their current UK tour, the Canadian trio stocked up on ingredients when they arrived here to make a new batch.

‘We brought the little bags and labels and then we went to this shop called The Scoop and Spice or something like that, this awesome little shop in Cardiff. There were all these bags of spices, so we got what we needed, went back to our host's and got a giant mixing bowl and put them all together. It's pretty small time, but it's fun.

We try not to take ourselves seriously, because if we did we'd be sunk… We were joking about it, if we put this much effort into our music, we'd sound amazing.’

He is being modest. The three-piece, completed by bassist Max Heineman play their own brand of bluegrass and roots music, honed by playing together for nearly two decades.

Drawing on a ‘giant repertoire of traditional music,’ they have also more recently taken to writing their own songs too. With four studio albums and one live album under their belts, the trio are currently working on the fifth.

Explaining the group’s origins, John says: ‘We had a five-piece bluegrass band, The Foggy Hogtown Boys that Chris essentially founded in 2001. That band played at least 1,200 shows, and that was probably between 2001 and 2014. We've played together a ton, I've probably played 2,000 shows together with Chris.

‘Max joined that band in 2005 when the original bass player joined, so I've played a load with him too, but probably only 1,500 shows!’

The three musicians knew they had a chemistry early on.

‘When the three of us got together, we were doing not so much bluegrass – it's a bit of a precious distinction for someone who doesn't really know the music – but more the Appalachian roots of bluegrass. Most of the fiddle and banjo stuff which came out of the communities in the Appalachian mountains, as opposed to bluegrass, which was a formalisation of that style of music.

‘In layman's terms, we took the music and eliminated guitar and mandolin. It's odd to have an acoustic trio which doesn't have a guitar, but that gave us a bit of a caché, and more than that, it gave us the freedom to play really around the chords and around the harmony in the music.

‘Just the voicings became different and it really informed the rhythm of how we played and the groove of how we deliver it. It became really interesting. And Max is an outstanding singer – he's got a powerful and special voice, so he was anchoring the vocals, but the three of us all have unique voices, compared to each other, and we're able to blend them pretty well.’

They play The Edge of The Wedge in Southsea on Sunday, January 29. Tickets £15. Go to wedgewood-rooms.co.uk.

And don’t forget to ask about the spice rub...