During my (first) junior year of college, in 1999, well before everyone had laptops, my fraternity house had a small “computer lab” with four or five desktops. The internet was still relatively new, and a music file-sharing platform called Napster was blowing every music lover’s mind. Instant access to over 4 million songs. While my parents probably have a better accounting record than I do, I would estimate that at least one semester of school was spent burning hundreds of hours of songs from Napster onto blank CDs. Yes, it was in that dingy, windowless computer room of the Sig Ep house at Central Missouri State University that I fell in love with the songwriting and music of one, Reid Genauer.
Eight years previously, some 1,300 miles from Warrensburg, Missouri, something very special was happening in the Burlington music scene. As a sophomore at The University of Vermont, a young songwriter named Reid Genauer partnered with fellow UVM student and guitarist John Trafton to form an acoustic duo called Strange Folk. The following year, in 1992, the pair would codify the lineup by adding drummer Luke Smith and bassist Erik Glockler, becoming Strangefolk (now one word).
This was also the time and place in which another Vermont-based quartet was charting their course to be one of the most successful and longstanding acts in American music history. Genauer recounts, “When I got to UVM, there was a buzz in the dorm about this band called Phish. I went to see them on a Sunday night at a venue called The Front. There were probably 300 or so people there. At first, I had no idea what was going on musically, until they hit Bathtub Gin, but the people all around me sure did—and there seemed to be something historic happening.” While not on the level of Phish, Strangefolk caught a massive updraft from a loyal fanbase, and toured the country from coast to coast for nearly a decade.
In 2000, Genauer parted ways with Strangefolk to pursue other musical interests. In 2003, after releasing a solo album titled Assembly of Dust, Genauer and his hand-picked group of troubadours from the New England music scene formed a band under the same name. Over the next two decades, Assembly of Dust (AOD) would go on to release nine albums, play hundreds of live shows, and perform at iconic festivals such as Bonnarooand The Newport Folk Festival. While Genauer’s various musical projects would often land in the “Jamband” category, his songwriting and delivery align much more closely with groups like The Band, Steely Dan, and Little Feat than your typical jambands. Maybe this is where the story turns into an op-ed, but it doesn’t take a lyrical savant to quickly decipher that Genauer is a master storyteller.
Genauer recently embarked on an entirely new musical adventure, which was inspired by a fan’s artwork. “It started with a poster, which is a perfectly ridiculous way to make a record. A fan and artist named Pete Nogas was inspired to create what amounts to nothing short of a visual atlas that wove 100 of my songs in a 24 x 36 pen-and-ink illustration. Entitled This is What I Saw, the piece is composed of characters, little vignettes, and places I’d been carrying around for years in my noggin', hanging out in my songs. When my copy of the hand-drawn print arrived, I studied it, proudly mounted it on my mantel, and waved it around as a trophy of sorts. One afternoon I was sitting in my living room and I truly "saw it" for the first time. Nogas had captured thirty years of narrative, the body of my songbook and the arc of my life in one coherent image. I thought, well, apparently everybody’s here. I should probably show up and do the same musically,” says Genauer.
From that inspiration, he made the ambitious leap to record his entire catalog with just his voice, a microphone, and a guitar. Each song was done in one take, flubs and all. “That sent me off to a little studio in the California redwoods, where I recorded all 100 songs in five days. Just me, a few guitars, and a somewhat questionable understanding of how many hours there are in a day. It's the musical version of the poster—a Smithsonian-like collection of my songs. Some of those songs I wrote when I was sixteen, some at forty-six. Going back through them was a reunion of sorts—with the songs, but also with the people and pieces of my life tucked inside them,” recounts Genauer.
In 2026, Genauer would go on to release a 20-song chapter every six weeks. The result was a 100-song album, appropriately titled This Is What I Saw. The concept was perfectly imperfect, and for those who have followed his career, this is of course how it was meant to go down.
Spending his childhood in New York State, then raising a family in the Bay Area, Genauer now calls Lyons home. “ The landscape, the pace, who you’re having coffee with—and musically who you are making a racket with. All of that informs what you have to say and how you say it in a new song or just as a regular dude,” says Genauer.
While the touring schedule has scaled down a bit from the early days, Reid and Assembly of Dust are as much of a musical powerhouse as ever. Later this month, on November 13 and 14, AOD will play four sets of music at Roots Music Project here in Boulder, with no repeats. Whether you are an OG Strangefolk fan, or simply want to hear one of the greatest songwriters of our generation, these intimate shows promise to deliver.
“The lovely thing about Colorado is how familiar the people feel. The Bay Area and Front Range music scenes are about one degree of separation. You meet someone, and pretty quickly it’s 'Wait, you played with so-and-so?' and off we go. My three sons have made a ton of quality connections here as well. It's like a welcoming blanket of a community. Living in Lyons has brought those connections into my everyday life. I’ve moved somewhere new and gotten closer to a tribe that, in some ways, was already mine.”
ASSEMBLY OF DUST | REID GENAUER’S EPIC TWO-NIGHT STAND
- Friday, November 13 & Saturday, November 14
- Roots Music Project - 4747 Pearl St. V3A
- For Tickets: RootsMusicProject.or