Tag: Alison Krauss

Artist of the Month: ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’

Posted on by Editor

Twenty years ago, in 2001, the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? captivated America and, suddenly, bluegrass appealed to pretty much everybody. We could all sing at least a few words of “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow,” though admittedly not sound as good as Dan Tyminski or the Soggy Bottom Boys. Roots music heroes Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, and Gillian Welch added more positive press to their résumés, and before it was all over, the generation-spanning collection won multiple industry accolades, inspired a national tour, and even led to the first-ever Grammy Award for Dr. Ralph Stanley.

The song choices were largely well-known to dedicated bluegrass listeners, but even so, chestnuts like “I’ll Fly Away” don’t routinely end up on albums that sell eight million copies. Legends like Norman Blake and The Fairfield Four shared the spotlight with rising talent such as Chris Thomas King and The Peasall Sisters. Two decades later, The Whites still perform their version of “Keep on the Sunny Side” on the Grand Ole Opry at nearly every appearance, and to be sure, the audience smiles and applauds to hear it again.

This month, we’ll look at the legacy of that landmark album as an inspiration to a new generation of acoustic musicians, along with an interview with family members of John Hartford, whose name is back on the Grammy ballot this year for the collaborative album, The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Vol 1. We’ll also have a special edition of our Roots On Screen feature about the film. Plus, check out a special IBMA Awards show performance of “Down In the River To Pray” and an archive edition of The Breakdown. And to finish out the month, we asked a crew of young bluegrass and Americana stars what the film means to them. While you’re at it, put down the Dapper Dan and turn up the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack below.

 

With ‘Distance and Time,’ Becky Buller Gives Us More Heart, More Fiddle

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

In the business of bluegrass, it’s one thing to have a song on the radio or win some fiddle contests. But when you have a total of 10 IBMA awards between your fiddling, singing, and songwriting, then you might really have something. And Becky Buller has it.

Her new record, Distance and Time, is out now on Dark Shadow Recording, following 2018’s acclaimed Crêpe Paper Heart, while 2014’s Tween Earth and Sky ended the 10-year gap after her debut Little Bird. Known of us, Buller included, knew that we’d be spending an eternity in 2020 socially-distanced, yet Buller’s new set of songs is just the thing to keep us company as we head into winter.

BGS sat down with Buller to talk about the new album, her songs, and fiddlers — lots of them.

There is so much collaboration on this album and your work in general, between your songwriting and the featured guests. Why is that important to you?

Oh, it’s just fun to have a chance to work with these people. And of course, my band is doing the bulk of the work on the record, and they’re amazing! I do a lot more co-writing these days than I used to do, it just helps me get in the right headspace. Making that appointment forces me to sit down and write, which is really hard to do these days, because I’m wearing so many hats. It’s hard to focus on the writing as much as I’d like to. When I have the songwriting appointments, it’ll get me all excited about writing. I’ll even do some writing on my own, afterwards. 

“The Ride” is quite jammy, and “I Dream in Technicolor” is, well… technicolor! Knowing you, I wasn’t surprised to hear such diversity in the aesthetic. What’s inspired you to take this unique approach towards bluegrass?

With this record we were trying to stay rooted in the bluegrass tradition, but reach a little further forward. Most of the songs feature my band, standard bluegrass instrumentation. We did include drums on “Salt and Light” — Chris Brown and his drums of renown — that’s a first for me. Of course the Isaacs just added angelic harmony to that song. “I Dream in Technicolor” was a stretch, that’s more the progressive side of bluegrass music.

And of course we’ve got the more traditional, “The Barber’s Fiddle,” so I feel like there’s something for everybody on this album. We just tried to put together a collection of songs that offered diversity, but had that common thread of bluegrass. I personally like it when the songs on a record are diverse, it keeps me listening. So, that’s what I wanted to present. We recorded a cover, “Woodstock,” the day before the world shut down. The very last track that we tracked for the record.

Your voice fits so well with the Fairfield Four. What’s it been like to work with them multiple times now?

I just love their music so much. There is so much soul, and depth. I just feel the spirit moving when they sing. So it was a thrill to get back in the studio with them. It’s also the first time I’ve recorded a co-write with Jon Weisberger. We’ve had a really good track record of getting cuts with other artists, but this is the first time I’ve recorded one of our co-writes.

For someone who’s just getting interested in bluegrass, who are some of the fiddlers that you’d suggest as a gateway into bluegrass? Bluegrass Fiddle 101.

Well, Stuart Duncan. Particularly the Nashville Bluegrass Band’s Waitin’ For the Hard Times to Go record. Alison Krauss, Every Time You Say Goodbye for an album reference. It’s so good. Jason Carter, on Del & the Boys. Anything by Michael Cleveland! Kenny Baker’s Kenny Baker Plays Bill Monroe. And Eddie Stubbs on the Johnson Mountain Boys’ Live at the Old Schoolhouse.

Your show on the road is fierce, and I can already envision the way these songs will fit in. What does this set of songs mean to you now, though, when there aren’t many live performance opportunities?

Well, especially the song “More Heart, Less Attack,” I’ve been performing for a few years now. We finally had a chance to record it, and it’s so timely. It’s fortuitous that it came out when it did. It just encourages people to be kind to one another, and we need that so much now. Also, we chose the title Distance and Time before the pandemic. Ironic…

Photo credit: Jason Myers

MIXTAPE: Jeff Picker’s Low End Rumblings on the Bass in Bluegrass

Posted on by Editor

Maybe I’m biased*, but I’ve always felt that the bass is the most important instrument in the bluegrass band. It might not immediately draw your ear, but a bassist’s interpretation of the groove and harmony of a song holds substantial power over how the song is ultimately felt by the listener. Without a great bassist, a band full of shredders can sound anemic and sad; a heartfelt lyric can seem tedious and derivative. But add some tasty low end, and the same band will soar; the lyric will swell with passion! (Attention sound engineers: simply cranking the subs won’t cut it.) As such, the bassist’s importance in a bluegrass band is considerable.

Even so, great bassists are rarely given their due, unless they also happen to be virtuosic melodic players. Well, that ends today! Here are some examples of masterful low end artistry from some of my favorite denizens of the doghouse. Please excuse the shameless inclusion of one of my own tracks, because, well… I have an album to promote. Enjoy! — Jeff Picker

*I’m definitely biased.

Tony Rice – “Shadows” (Mark Schatz, bass)

Mark is one of my favorite bluegrass bassists. His tone is huge and clear, and his bass lines are subtly creative. On this track, listen to the fluid transitions back and forth between standard bluegrass time and a more open feel. Also note his slick fills and voice leading throughout.

Nashville Bluegrass Band – “Happy on the Mississippi Shores” (Gene Libbea, bass)

If aliens came to earth, demanded to know what bluegrass bass sounded like, and stipulated that I had only one song with which to demonstrate it, I’d play this. Gene Libbea’s feel is perfect; his note choices are just varied enough to add a bit of intrigue to the basic harmony of the song, while never sacrificing the pendulum effect that drives the bluegrass bus. The occasional unison fill with the banjo adds to the fun.

Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys – “Loving You Too Well” (Jack Cooke, bass)

I love this approach to the bluegrass waltz. Jack Cooke’s playing here is busier than what you might hear from many bluegrass bassists these days, and there’s a certain playful and casual quality to it, which I find refreshing. He bounces around between octaves, and between full walking lines and half-notes. Old-school, “open air” bass playing.

Matt Flinner – “Nowthen” (Todd Phillips, bass)

This song may sound slow and simple, but make no mistake: to groove like this, at this tempo, in this exposed instrumentation, is HARD. Todd Phillips demonstrates his mastery here: clear tone, impressive intonation, and intentional, direct timing. I also love how softly Todd plays — at times, he seems to barely touch the bass. To me, that conveys maturity and experience.

Patty Loveless – “Daniel Prayed” (Clarence “Tater” Tate, bass)

I had fun studying the bass playing on this track when I got to perform it with Patty and Ricky Skaggs a few years back. Clarence “Tater” Tate played both bass and fiddle for Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys over the years, and had about as much pedigree in bluegrass as can be achieved. I dig the playing here, because it feels like an old-school, 1950s approach (bouncy, busy, slightly loose bass playing), but with contemporary recording quality. If you focus on the bass, you can tell how much fun he’s having with the slightly crooked form and joyous lyric — it sounds like a musical smile.

Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer – “Clyde Waters (Child 216)” (Viktor Krauss, bass)

The first time I heard this song, I didn’t even realize there was bass on it. But I found myself coming back to it, drawn by the story-like quality of the musical arrangement, and I realized that the bass plays a major part in that dynamism. Viktor Krauss displays impeccable taste in his musical choices here. He knows when to play, when not to, when to articulate an additional note, when to sustain. For a player as technically proficient as Viktor, such restraint is impressive. His playing serves the song, first and foremost.

Del McCoury Band – “Learnin’ the Blues” (Mike Bub, bass)

As everybody in Nashville knows, when Mike Bub and his Kay bass show up at a gig, a fat groove is imminent. This track showcases Bub’s rock solid hybrid feel — he bounces between 4/4 walking and half-time, triplet and ghost note fills, and even has a little two-bar break in the middle. This is the type of bass playing that makes it virtually impossible to sound bad (not that Del and the boys needed any help in that department). Bub is also a great guy with a sense of humor and tons of knowledge and stories about Nashville’s music history.

John Hartford – “Howard Hughes’ Blues” (Dave Holland, bass)

Bluegrass as a musical style is pretty specific — there’s room for a wide variety of personal voices, of course, but there are definitely some foundational qualities and vernacular that indicate whether a player is truly versed in the style. On this track, jazz legend Dave Holland sounds like exactly what he is: a jazz musician playing bluegrass. Normally a recipe for disaster, here somehow it works. His tone, feel, note choice, and general approach sound foreign in the style, but they actually mesh with Hartford’s loose and jovial manner quite well. A slightly bizarre but enjoyable approach to bluegrass bass.

Ricky Skaggs – “Walls of Time” (Mark Fain, bass)

I’ve spent a lot of time studying Mark Fain’s playing for my job with Ricky Skaggs, and I’m always finding subtle little musical gems in his bass parts. It’s Mark’s tone, taste, and timing that anchor most of the canonical Kentucky Thunder recordings that we all love. This track showcases his mastery of the bluegrass groove at a slow tempo — listen to the way he spruces up what could be a one-and-five-fest with ghost notes, fills, and syncopation.

Jeff Picker – “Rooster in the Tire Well” (Jeff Picker, bass)

When I was making my new record, With the Bass in Mind, one of my musical goals was to find some space for the bass to shine and for me to use some of the technique I don’t use very often as a sideman. As such, the record has many bass solos. This song has no bass solo, however, since this Mixtape isn’t about bass solos! There are some cool bass lines in it, though (if I do say so myself). I tried to choose my notes carefully, to help anchor the band through the song’s many metric changes.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – “Let Your Loss Be Your Lesson” (Dennis Crouch, bass)

This track is not exactly bluegrass, but what an incredibly grooving bass part. Here is a rare example of a time when slap bass was musically appropriate! Dennis is a friend of mine and a great guy and bassist. He plays with gut strings, punchy tone, and undeniably solid time. He’s also the master of throwing in a couple creative measures of voice leading at exactly the right moment in the song. I try to catch Dennis out playing in Nashville whenever I can.

Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio – “I Want To Be Happy” (Ray Brown, bass)

This is obviously not bluegrass, but no bass-centric mixtape would be complete without tipping the hat to King Ray. His half-time feel throughout the melody is flawless, and just listen to that crushing avalanche of groove beginning around 00:37. Ray is a bluegrasser’s jazz bassist because he plays on top of the beat, and his playing has a relentless forward motion, like the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs. I’ve loved this recording since I was 15 — you won’t find better bass playing anywhere.

Photo credit: Kaitlyn Raitz

In the ’80s and ’90s, These 10 Women Made Bluegrass Better

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With this year marking the 75th anniversary of bluegrass, it’s remarkable to note that women emerged as a creative force at roughly the halfway point between then and now. Of course, female musicians have been part of the fabric of bluegrass from the start, with Mother Maybelle Carter, Sally Ann Forrester, and Hazel & Alice among those serving as inspirations through the decades.

However, the role of women as bandleaders, rather than in a supporting role, began to change in the ’80s and flourished in the ’90s. As part of our Bluegrass 75 series, BGS commends these 10 women who carried bluegrass forward with a combination of undeniable talent, strong material, and a refreshing new perspective.

Emmylou Harris

One of the most visible country artists of the ’70s turned her attention to bluegrass, with a support team she deserves (Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas, Dolly Parton, etc.) Her material ranges from the Louvin Brothers to Paul Simon, though that exquisite voice makes the album seamless. It’s one of her finest albums in a brilliant catalog.

Claire Lynch

With a crystalline soprano, Claire Lynch first gained notice as a lead vocalist and guitarist with Front Porch String Band, which released an indie album in 1980 that was picked up by Rebel Records in 1983. The poignant track, “Hills of Alabam,” which she co-wrote, shows her gift for melody and her ability to sing with sincerity.

Laurie Lewis

A key figure of the West Coast bluegrass scene, Laurie Lewis can fiddle with the traditionalists, then hush a crowd with a beautiful acoustic ballad like “Love Chooses You.” As the acolyte of a generation before her, Lewis actively takes an interest in the bluegrass scene’s rising talent, as evidenced on her latest work, an album of duets entitled and Laurie Lewis.

Alison Brown

As a picker, Alison Brown has made her mark on countless recordings and won the 1991 IBMA Award for Banjo Player of the Year. She’s also a co-founder of Compass Records, a producer, and a Grammy-winning artist. At times blazing, and other times mellow, Brown consistently finds just the right tone on her albums’ instrumentals.

Lynn Morris

Blessed with a sweet but persuasive voice, Lynn Morris knew how to get the storyline across, whether she’s reminiscing about “Mama’s Hand” or laying down the law in “You’ll Get No More of Me.” As a banjo player, she had incredible chops, and her grace on stage (and off) has made her one of the bluegrass family’s most beloved figures.

Alison Krauss

A gifted vocalist, bandleader, and fiddler, Alison Krauss kept her early career focused on bluegrass, though her material would soon find its way to millions of country listeners, too. Being a former child prodigy herself, she served as a role model for a generation of younger pickers, while showing traditionalists that bluegrass is indeed in good hands.

Rhonda Vincent

Coming up in a family band, singer and mandolin picker Rhonda Vincent has been working in bluegrass for decades, though she’s always finding ways to keep things fresh. Still, her early albums remain some of her most satisfying work. As a bandleader, she keeps the energy up on stage, and her outgoing personality makes her a true entertainer.

Gillian Welch

While few would consider her albums to be bluegrass proper, Gillian Welch has exerted tremendous influence on its community. A 1993 winner of Merlefest’s Chris Austin Songwriting Contest, Welch has seen originals like “By the Mark” and “Caleb Meyer” become standards, and though she didn’t grow up in Appalachia, her songs somehow embody its heritage.

Dale Ann Bradley

A sterling discovery from the New Coon Creek Girls lineup, Dale Ann Bradley launched her solo career by selecting relatable material along with a surprise or two (including a U2 cover). It’s a template that still serves her well. The title track of East Kentucky Morning captures the mood and melancholy that she continues to convey so well.

Dolly Parton

It’s hard to imagine now, but Dolly Parton had dropped off the mainstream radar in the mid ’90s. Then her first bluegrass album proved what her fans knew all along — she represents her mountain people well. A wonderful mix of familiar favorites and new material, The Grass Is Blue solidified her reputation as one of music’s most important voices.

(Editor’s note: Explore more of our Bluegrass 75 Artist of the Month coverage.)

 

The String – Matt Rollings

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Matt Rollings says his role as the leading studio piano playing sideman in Nashville from the late 1980s onward made it hard for him to forge his own taste and sensibility as an artist.


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Now that he’s slowed that work and broadened his projects, he’s made his first album as a leader in 30 years, Matt Rollings Mosaic, with a bunch of friends and collaborators who happen to be superstars, including Alison Krauss, Lyle Lovett and Willie Nelson. Our talk covered the fascinating ways and means of the A Team Nashville session players and much more. Also in the hour, emerging singer songwriter Shannon LaBrie, who’s about to release an album produced by the guy who brought us The Judds and SHEL among many others.

WATCH: Matt Rollings, “Stay” (Feat. Alison Krauss and Vince Gill)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Matt Rollings
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Stay” (featuring Alison Krauss and Vince Gill)
Album: Matt Rollings Mosaic
Release Date: August 14, 2020
Label: Dualtone Records

In Their Words: “I wrote this song with the incredibly gifted singer/songwriter Alisan Porter, who won The Voice in 2016. We wrote it for an album I produced for her that came out in 2014. When Alison Krauss agreed to be a part of Matt Rollings Mosaic, I immediately thought of ‘Stay,’ and that she is the only person (other than Alisan Porter) that I could ever imagine singing it. We cut it live — piano, drums, and vocal — and Alison Krauss did what she always does: Left everyone in the room with their jaw hanging open! Later I added her brother on bass (the insanely talented Viktor Krauss) and enlisted my friend Kris Wilkinson, who did the achingly sparse string arrangement. Finally, the incomparable Vince Gill added a background vocal that perfectly supports Alison’s sublime performance. The result is one of my absolute favorite tracks on the record.” — Matt Rollings

Photo credit: Michael Wilson

Jerry Douglas – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

For the final episode of season one of Toy Heart, we have host Tom Power’s 2019 sit down with legendary artist, musician, and sideman Jerry Douglas at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s annual business conference in Raleigh, NC.

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Douglas talks all about hearing “Uncle Josh” Graves for the first time with Flatt & Scruggs and, in the early days, using a toothbrush to turn his own guitar into something like a Dobro. He tells stories of his father’s band, the The West Virginia Travellers, and being discovered by the Country Gentlemen. He shares about his lifelong friendship with Ricky Skaggs — and his connections with Tony Rice, J.D. Crowe, Alison Krauss, Ray Charles, to O Brother, and more. Jerry Douglas will go down as one of the finest American musicians of his generation, but for this episode we focus on his true love — his life in bluegrass.

Alison Brown – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Banjoist and record label head Alison Brown speaks with host Tom Power from her studio at Compass Records headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. They begin with her early records made with Stuart Duncan, “finding her people,” and winning the Canadian National Banjo Championship (as an American).

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Brown then headed to Harvard, and playing banjo became “something you’d talk about at cocktail parties.” She describes the moment she decided to leave investment banking and commit to music full time, her cocktail napkin dream, and playing with Alison Krauss, Indigo Girls, and Michelle Shocked.

Power and Brown talk women in bluegrass, women in banjo, and the First Ladies of Bluegrass. The story they dive into together is ultimately about figuring out what makes you happy, and pursuing it bravely, against all odds.

Sean Watkins Heeds Good Advice (or Not) on Watkins Family Hour’s Second Album

Posted on by Editor

For brother sister, Watkins Family Hour’s sophomore album and first in five years, Sara and Sean Watkins decided to tighten their focus, writing songs that allowed them to shine as a duo. “It was an experiment, and it ended up being so fun and totally different from the first Watkins Family Hour record we did,” Sean says. “In this case, more than any other project, we were very deliberate about the style of the songs, how they came together, and how we recorded them.”

The effort paid off. Ringing in at ten tracks, including seven originals, brother sister ranges from glittering, harmony-driven folk (opener “The Cure”) to can’t-help-but-dance silliness (“Keep It Clean,” a Charley Jordan featuring vocals from David Garza, Gaby Moreno, and John C. Reilly). We caught up with Sara and Sean individually, chatting about the album and the forces in their careers that built them, including their early years with Nickel Creek. Read our Artist of the Month interview with Sean below, and catch Sara’s interview here.

BGS: You wrote a good portion of “Fake Badge, Real Gun” before you brought the idea to Sara. What inspired it?

Sean Watkins: I have a folder in my notes on my phone, Future Song Titles. I like to think about what a good song title is — you know, when you see a song title on a record and you’re like, “Oh, I really want to know, I want to hear that song.” A book title can be the same way. I heard the term “Fake Badge, Real Gun” in a hotel room on some kind of local news station. It was a headline, probably a story about a kid, or somebody who was pretending to be a police officer. When I heard that phrase, I put it in my phone, because I just thought, “There’s a lot more in there to be explored.”

There are plenty of people in power who don’t deserve to be. They have the power to destroy and create a lot of chaos, but they didn’t really earn it, or they don’t deserve to be there for one reason or another. Everybody comes into contact with authorities who affect you in profound ways, especially when you’re younger, without knowing how they’re affecting you negatively. At a certain age you get to a point where you unpack your childhood — what your teachers taught you, what you heard in church or what you heard in college — and you have to look at it objectively and figure out who gave you that advice, what they were meaning to get across, and whether you still believe it.

Did anything in your life specifically come to mind?

I went to a Baptist Christian school for a while. It wasn’t because my family was Baptist, but because it was the closest private school, and my parents were public school teachers and didn’t really like the way public school was going. The teachers were pretty strict, evangelical, and I remember this girl who was probably in seventh or eighth grade. She had a great voice, and she got vocal nodes on her vocal chords — it’s just something that happens when you don’t use the right singing technique. It happens to a lot of people. But she asked our Bible teacher, “Do you think God gave me these vocal nodes because I’ve been singing secular music?” I think she’d sang an Oasis song at a coffee shop or something.

And the teacher said, “Yeah, that’s probably why.” Like, in all seriousness, he told her that, because she sang a secular song, God gave her these vocal nodes. And he believed it! But who knows how long that stuck with her, that by singing a certain kind of song God will strike you. You can carry that with you for the rest of your life, whether you know it or not. So I try to think about that in my life: What are the things that I’m carrying around that I don’t need to carry around, because someone who had authority used their “gun” in a way that was, looking back, absolutely wrong? You can take the idea out to any number of places in the world.

The cover of the Charley Jordan song is so fun — what a way to end the record. Can you tell me about deciding to cover “Keep It Clean”?

A few weeks before going into the studio, and we were taking inventory of what we had, what kinds of things might be fun to add to the record, what was missing. We just thought it’d be fun to have one song that’s just a party song: what people know the Family Hour to be, which is kind of a wild, fun ruckus; a song that’s easy for anyone to jump in on, with different people singing verses. Something that sounds like what we do when we play our shows [in Los Angeles] at Largo.

Originally I heard this song when I did a month of shows with Lyle Lovett, playing in his band years ago filling in for a friend of mine who played guitar with him. He did that song every night, but totally different: His version was a bouncy, Texas-swing kind of vibe. I really liked it, and I asked him where it came from. He said it was a Charley Jordan song, but that he’d changed it a lot, and that I should check out the original. It’s so funny because it’s such an old song, but it has such a beautiful, almost current pop melody to it. The guitar line in the original version sounds like a Beach Boys melody. It doesn’t sound like ‘20s blues at all, and I thought that was a really cool element of it. So we based our version on that, although it evolved and sounds very different.

Another thing I like about it is that the lyrics are just quirky and weird; you can’t really tell what they are. The verses were based on popular off-color jokes at the time. So people hearing the song back then would have gotten these references that we’re not getting right now. [Laughs] And they might just be really dumb jokes! It’s like a museum piece. I thought it was so cool.

It’s been twenty years since Nickel Creek released its self-titled, breakout album. How do you feel like the success you had then influenced the way Americana and bluegrass are perceived now, or influenced the player you are now?

Every seven or ten years it seems like there’s a recurrence of some kind of music, and at that time, there was a confluence of things that happened that brought acoustic music way more to the forefront. A big one of those was the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack: a soundtrack for a movie that sells millions and millions of records, and is mostly old-time bluegrass, that’s a big deal. Alison Krauss was the only one selling millions of records playing anything related to bluegrass, and she wasn’t playing very traditional music. So that record came out, and Alison was — still is — just cranking away, hugely popular. We kind of got lumped in with all of that. People thought we were on the soundtrack a lot, which we weren’t. [Laughs]

There was just a wave. We have to give Alison credit because she saw the potential in what we could do. That first record is a very different record than we wanted it to be. We were so young, so green. We wanted to make a much more wild and aggressive type of record, and she was like, “Listen, that’s fine for your live shows. But it’s not gonna wear well. It’s going to be exciting to listen to the first couple of times, but people aren’t gonna want to listen to it a year from now — you’re not gonna want to listen to it a year from now.” She was really wise in restraining us in a lot of ways that we wouldn’t have.

Do you still take that advice to heart when you’re recording?

Absolutely. I have a mental bag of tricks that I’ve collected from different people over the years. A lot of the great producers will say something that really sticks with you, and it’s immediately like, “I’m gonna remember that and apply it the rest of my life.” I remember being in the studio one time for something that T-Bone Burnett was producing. We were in the control room, and he was musing and talking about the creative process, and he said, “People think about writing songs like writing songs. Don’t think about it that way. Think about writing a feeling. Like when you’re writing a movie, you’re writing a story. When you’re writing a song, just write a feeling — don’t write a song.” I was like, “That is soooo great.” Because that’s exactly what it is! A song’s supposed to make you feel something.

(Read our interview with Sara Watkins here.)

Photo credit: Jacob Boll

Louisa Branscomb: The Songwriter Still Chasing Sunshine Round the Bend

Posted on by Editor

You may not recognize her voice, but you’ve heard her songs.

Louisa Branscomb wrote “Steel Rails,” the song that helped launch Alison Krauss’ career and inspired a new generation of young women to sing bluegrass. She is a talented singer and instrumentalist, with a dozen albums to her name. Yet it’s as a songwriter that she’s had the most influence, both in the industry and among individuals who benefit from her guidance and unique approach to writing.

In Louisa’s words, “The most powerful tool we have to move people, and bring people together, is music. And songwriting is where music begins. The most important skill a songwriter has is not craft or rhyme — it’s empathy, to connect deeply with one’s own soul and to connect to others. Two verses and a little soul can change lives, and when life is changed, the song keeps on going, crossing frontiers in ways we can only imagine.”

Louisa has been writing poetry and stories since she could first hold a pencil. At age 11, she won a composition contest, gaining her a stage performance with the Birmingham Symphony. By the time she finished college, she had written 400 songs and attracted the attention of country star Mel Tillis. He suggested she move to Nashville to work as a songwriter.

But, she told Bluegrass Today, she hated hairspray and couldn’t see herself fitting in with all that 1970s “big hair” in the country music world. Plus, she was “painfully shy.” So, she chose bluegrass over Nashville. In 1971, she played guitar and sang with Bluegrass Liberation, which Murphy Hicks Henry calls “the first modern all-female bluegrass band.” She was one of the earliest women to lead a mixed gender band after switching to banjo. Her band Boot Hill performed her originals, including “Blue Ridge Memories,” a hit in Japan.

Through 1980, Louisa played up to 250 gigs a year. Then a doctorate in psychology, a farm, a passion to teach and later, a daughter, kept her closer to home. She has since become one of the bluegrass industry’s principal advocates for songwriters, a valued mentor and an important contributor to the bluegrass repertoire, having received countless songwriting awards and nominations.

Louisa is as well-known as a teacher as she is for her own writing. She uses her fascination with psychology and her immense compassion to help others express their experiences in words and music. She has founded a number of teaching programs, including the Woodsong Farm Retreat for songwriters on her Georgia farm. Several programs engage elementary school students and foster children. And she has mentored more than a thousand hopeful songwriters.

“Dear Sister,” co-written with Claire Lynch, won Louisa the 2014 IBMA Song of the Year Award. Some of the biggest names in bluegrass have recorded her music. John Denver sang “Steel Rails” on his final album, earning the song’s second Grammy nomination.

A stunning selection of bluegrass musicians joined Louisa for her 2019 album, Gonna Love Anyway. Nearly 50 years after she wrote her most noted song, she recorded a new version of “Steel Rails” on the album. In a tribute to both the enduring appeal of that song and Louisa’s ongoing creativity, Gonna Love Anyway reached #1 on both the bluegrass and folk charts.

Photo courtesy of louisabranscomb.com