Merging bluegrass with everything from classical music to space sounds, bluegrass fusion band Porch Fire will be playing at Macs’ Uptowner Saturday night.

The six-piece band’s members come from all over the Midwest, but are based in Carbondale.

Porch Fire’s members are Dakota Yeck-Petty on the mandolin and vocals, Blake Bledsoe on guitar and backup vocals, Elizabeth Hartman on bass and backup vocals, Troy Hutchens on drums, Cecily Rhodes on the fiddle, and Levi Jones on keyboard.

The group started in August, playing their first show together in Charleston.

The band plays bluegrass instruments but experiments with other genres like reggae, funk and experimental jam, bringing it back to bluegrass.

“We like to bend the genre a little bit and see what else we can do with these instruments,” Yeck-Petty said. “We’ve got a lot of different sounds that we can do a little bit of Middle Eastern stuff, do a little bit of space sounds, then go into something bluegrass then going to something jazz. It’s great. Everyone talks together really well musically.”

Hartman has been playing the double bass for 15 years.

“I’ve mostly played classical music for the past 10 years, playing in orchestras and stuff, and whenever I’m able to bring that in where it fits in that’s really neat,” Hartman said.

The band plays a combination of covers and original music.

One of the band’s favorite songs to play right now is called “Inertia,” which was written by Hartman.

“I have way too much philosophy in my head,” Hartman said. “It needs to come out somehow.”

“For the first Porch Fire song we wrote, Blake came over with a chord progression, Troy came over with the idea for the song and I came up with lyrics and within an hour we had this song. We’ve done quite a lot with it since but that’s how we built it,” Hartman said.

The band hopes to finish their first EP by the end of the year.

“Everybody will come in and shoot their part to a click track and we record the instruments separately, and once we mix it down we upload to Soundcloud and Facebook and wherever you want to get music for free, and eventually have it at shows in a cool case or sleeve. We have done almost all of the instruments, all we have left to do is vocals, solos, and drums,” Blake said.

Blake studied audio engineering in college.

The show starts at 9:30 p.m. and has a $2 cover charge.

Kendra Cwilka can be reached 581-2812 or kecwilka@eiu.edu