The Band
A country blues to bluegrass road trip
East of Westreville is Americana roots music: bluegrass, blues, folk, gospel, and country, stitched together with homespun humor. We take our name from the land itself. Westreville is a vanished South Dakota town where Kaija's ancestors farmed and worshipped, and where many rest in the Pleasant Valley Church cemetery, just to the east. What began as a single song in church grew into something none of us quite planned: voices that blended with uncanny ease, then guitars and bass, and a sound that felt less invented than remembered.
Who We Are
The members
Twenty-five years in, the four of us are still doing what we started in 2000: making the music we love, together. In 2024, East of Westreville became the first group ever inducted into the South Dakota Friends of Traditional Music Hall of Fame, an honor we treasure because it comes from the tradition we call home.
Kaija Bonde · vocals
On stage since she was three years old, and five decades later audiences are still showing up by the thousands. Kaija has headlined more than 40 musicals, from Eva Peron in Evita to Maria (and Mother Superior!) in The Sound of Music, and starred for more than a decade in the touring sensation Always... Patsy Cline, earning Best Actress of the Year for what the Argus Leader called "an uncanny, spine-tingling performance." She has sung on A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor and at Senator George McGovern's funeral, and for 25-plus years has sung lead with East of Westreville. With Brian she has spent nearly three decades building The Comfort Theatre Company, work that earned them the Sioux Falls Arts Council's Lifetime Achievement Award. She is an O'Gorman High School Hall of Fame inductee, and through it all, including navigating life with Primary Progressive Multiple Sclerosis, Kaija brings the same fire to every performance. Word is she's quietly developing a new solo show that promises stories audiences have never heard.
Boyd Bristow · lead guitar, vocals
The man behind the songs, with songwriting that now spans more than five decades. Boyd co-founded Blueberry Buckle in 1972, playing the J&M Club seven nights a week, with Al right there on bass the whole time. Some partnerships just don't quit. He has earned spots in the South Dakota and Iowa Rock and Roll Halls of Fame and the SD Traditional Music Hall of Fame, played with The Red Willow Band and South Dakota's beloved Acoustic Christmas, and served as music director for Always... Patsy Cline. Every track on No Dream Unfulfilled was mastered by Boyd at his Maxine/Audiophile studio in Sioux Falls, so when you hit play, you're hearing Boyd five times over: writer, vocalist, guitarist, producer, and the craftsman who makes sure the band sounds right. Inside scoop: the guitar in his photo here is the same one featured on the album cover.
Brian Bonde · rhythm guitar, vocals
Performing since grammar school, Brian toured the Americas with Up with People right out of Flandreau High School, then returned to Augustana and Sioux Falls to build a career in the performing arts. He has more than 30 theatre credits, from Pump Boys and Dinettes and Evita to Jean Valjean in Les Miserables. With Kaija he founded The Comfort Theatre Company, producing hundreds of shows across the upper Midwest, including the decade-long run of Always... Patsy Cline. He founded Arts South Dakota, shares the Charlotte Carver Lifetime Achievement Award with Kaija, holds the Governor's Lifetime Arts Achievement Award, and in 2026 will be inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in Arts and Entertainment. Offstage, you may find him and Kaija at their cabin in Rochford, deep in the Black Hills.
Al Slaathaug · bass, vocals
The steady hand on the low end for more than five decades. Al's reputation began in 1972 with Blueberry Buckle, the legendary Sioux Falls band that packed the J&M Club virtually every night and logged more than 200 performances a year, earning induction into the South Dakota Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He remains a cornerstone of the traditional music community, playing with the Sergeant Creek Stringband and holding court most weeks at the long-running old-time jam at The Wheel in Canton. Musicians will tell you he's the player every band hopes to have: the one who listens, locks into the groove, and quietly makes everyone around him sound better.
Kenny Putnam · fiddle
A South Dakota fiddle legend and longtime friend of the band, Kenny played with The Red Willow Band and spent years touring with Roy Clark, and he brings the kind of playing that makes a whole room lean forward.
Owen DeJong · fiddle
Owen has been sawing alongside us since the Patsy Cline years, when he anchored the fiddle chair in the show's country swing band. His playing runs all through No Dream Unfulfilled, warm and sure as ever.
Watch
See the band
Four favorites from the archive: the 25th anniversary night at the Levitt, the living-room broadcast we made when the pandemic closed the stages, the night we played Johnny and June Carter Cash's own guitars, and a Boyd Bristow original from the Orpheum.
The 25th anniversary concert: Levitt Shell, July 3, 2026, with guest fiddler Kenny Putnam
Levitt in Your Living Room: our June 2020 broadcast when the pandemic canceled the concert but not the music
"Wildwood Flower" on Johnny Cash's 1971 Martin (the "Bon Aqua") and June Carter Cash's 1967 Gibson Hummingbird, on loan from the National Music Museum, for SDPB's Ken Burns "Country Music" special. Look for Johnny's name in the wood at 2:22.
"I've Been Waitin'," a Boyd Bristow original, at the Orpheum Theatre with Kenny Putnam
The Name
No dream unfulfilled
The album takes its title from a lyric by the late South Dakota songwriter Tom Peterson: "There'll be no more sorrow, sickness or pain. Lovers and friends, together again... There'll be no heart that's broken, no dream unfulfilled." We carry with us the South Dakota musical dreamers who have gone on before. Their songs echo in ours.
The Listening Room
Hear the band
From No Dream Unfulfilled
Eight samples from the 25th anniversary live album. Fifteen more songs are waiting on the full album.
On the air
Interviews and radio features from along the way.
July 3, 2026
The anniversary night
What a night it was. 4,300 of you showed up, the weather was perfect, and the Levitt was magical. Boyd's guitar playing was inspired, Kaija's voice was in full bloom, Al held the whole thing together on that upright bass the way only Al can, and Brian's rhythm guitar kept everybody locked in. Kenny Putnam came all the way from Denver to play fiddle with us one more time, and we were absolutely delighted when Suzannah Chap and Tom Schaeffer sat in. What a joy to share that stage with such talented family and friends. We could not have asked for a better way to celebrate 25 years.
If you were there, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If you missed it, the music doesn't have to be over: the anniversary album captures it all. Our friend Jeff Kellogg was there with his camera, and his photos capture everything we felt on that stage.
Bring Us To Your Town
Hire the band
We hope you will consider booking East of Westreville. We provide the set, staging, sound, and lights, and we have been delighting audiences in theaters, opera houses, festivals, and town squares across the region for twenty-five years. Presenters: promotional photos and materials are available on request.
Contact us about booking