On a quest to make friends, new Longmont resident Kyra Holt could have never imagined that she’d meet her future bandmate, or that she’d become part of a band.
A Boulder native, Holt moved to Longmont in 2017 after spending the previous 16 years living in North Carolina. Upon her return to the area, she took to the social media app NextDoor in an attempt to meet new “mom friends,” she recalled with a chuckle.
Longmont resident Elli Varas answered Holt’s post and the two women decided to meet. Both are mothers of two-year-old boys and, at the time, it seemed like that was the only thing they had in common.
At their sons’ first playdate, however, Holt and Varas quickly realized how much they shared besides children of the same age: They both played the banjo, they both loved bluegrass music and they both had backgrounds being in bands.
By the end of the playdate, “we were like, ‘hey, I like you as a mom’ and ‘I like you as a person’ ... ‘Maybe we should try to play some music together,’” Varas said.
Although having children and pursuing non-musical professions had led both Holt and Varas to put an indefinite halt to their musical ventures up until this point, the pair met up in Holt’s basement one night with their banjos in hand.
At their first jam session, “our musical connection just felt really immediate,” Varas said.
For the next couple of years, Holt and Varas played music together whenever their busy schedules would allow. At these jam sessions, Holt played banjo, Varas switched between banjo and acoustic guitar and the two alternated between the role of lead singer depending on the song.
Although their setlist was limited to mostly covers of bluegrass songs in the beginning, both Holt and Varas soon decided to draw upon their backgrounds in writing their own original music — which is what continues to set them apart from other bluegrass bands today, they said.
“Bluegrass is a really traditional genre of music, but what we’ve done is kind of use the same traditional instruments while doing a lot of songwriting ourselves,” Holt said. “I think that’s another area where we made a connection: (Varas) is a prolific writer and I had written some songs before, so it was something where we just enjoyed writing music together in this sort of bluegrass instrumentation style.”
When the duo was presented with their first opportunity to perform at a local brewery a few months after they started jamming, deciding on a stage name for the young band became a necessity.
Based on Varas’s captivation with the different moons, what they represent and how they often show up in her songwriting, the name Sugar Moon occurred to her, she said.
“Sugar Moon is the first full moon of spring when everything is sort of coming back to life, the air is so full of possibilities and everything’s waking up after winter,” Varas said. “To me, the name felt appropriate since (Holt) and I had come back into music after being musically dormant for a little while.”
By 2019, Holt and Varas were performing frequently at local bars and breweries up and down the Front Range. Sometimes, however, the shows would run long and as a result, “we thought it would be nice to have someone else who could take a solo,” Holt said.
From her experience in Colorado’s bluegrass music scene, Holt had come to know Matt Malick, a talented mandolin and upright bass player, she said.
One day, Holt and Varas invited Malick to rehearse with Super Moon and, immediately, “we really loved playing with him,” Varas said. “Then he said, ‘I know a great fiddle player named Christie. She’d be a really good fit for the band.’”
Similarly to Holt and Varas, Christie Schneider had put her fiddle aside a few years ago after having children. That’s why, when Sugar Moon’s members approached Schneider to join the band in the summer of 2020, “I was like, ‘oh no, not a band,’” Schneider said with a laugh.
Initially, Schneider didn’t know if she had enough time to commit to rehearsals and everything else that comes along with being in a band, she said. Nevertheless, she resolved to meet Holt and Varas “to feel it out.”
In the end, “I couldn’t say no to (Holt) and (Varas),” Schneider said, “because they’re both in the same phase as moms trying to come out the other side, to have fun, to make that musical connection and see where it goes … But not take it too far. I knew it was a good fit.”
In contrast to her extensive experience playing bluegrass music with men, playing with Holt and Varas from Super Moon was refreshing for Schneider, she said.
“Bluegrass is very male-dominated and that was another thing that drew me to (Holt) and (Varas),” Schneider said. “I was just like, ‘wow, there are women playing bluegrass' and it’s just a different space creating music with females in the mix.”
Although Holt and Varas hadn’t declared it a criteria for new Sugar Moon members to have similarly-aged sons who were also blonde, Schneider also just happened to have two sons that fit these characteristics, they said laughing.
“Our kids are our biggest fans,” Varas said.
Although Sugar Moon had begun to gain momentum and perform at bigger shows right before COVID-19 hit, according to Varas, they decided to use the down time during the pandemic to “keep rehearsing, writing and creating,” she said. “And we’re looking forward to this spring.”
