Trails End String Band formed in 2004 from a casual picking session in a back room of the now defunct Paul's Speedway Bar in Madison, WI. It was during a weekly Monday bluegrass jam, and a guitar player and bass player who had played together before met up with a fiddle player and mandolin player who had played together before. We started picking some familiar tunes and by the third song had attracted a small crowd of onlookers. It was around that time we thought it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves to each other. We exchanged numbers and met up to do some weekly porch picking. Once we started to meet regularly, we realized that just doing bluegrass was not enough to satisfy our musical tastes. We added a few jazz standards to the set list, and then a few Dawg tunes. A few klezmer songs joined the list soon after that, as did many old-time and fiddle tunes.