Tag: Alison Krauss

The 50 Greatest Bluegrass Albums Made by Women

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Earlier this year, NPR Music published a behemoth piece — “Turning the Tables: The 150 Greatest Albums Made by Women” — saying, “This list … is an intervention, a remedy, a correction of the historical record and hopefully the start of a new conversation … It rethinks popular music to put women at the center.”

Viewing this sort of conversation through a bluegrass lens, staging our own intervention, remedy, and correction is critical. It’s true that we’ve reached several historic landmarks in recent years — Molly Tuttle was just named the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year, the first woman to win the honor, and last year women won in the Fiddle Player of the Year and Mandolin Player of the Year categories for the first time, as well. Still, women are routinely marginalized by/within bluegrass. There are many bands that will not hire side-women pickers — the cliché “pretty good for a girl” is all-too common, even while it’s re-appropriated by women themselves. Also, there remains this overarching narrative that women are a recent, post-Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard addition to this genre. While often well-intentioned and placing well-deserved credit upon the influence of Hazel & Alice, this idea is false. Women have always been an integral part of bluegrass and the folk and roots music traditions that gave rise to it.

This list does not attempt to be exhaustive, complete, or comprehensive. We dare not be so bold as to claim that every important bluegrass album created by women is included. We are simply striving to illustrate the far-reaching, undeniable influence that these incredible artists have had on the music, as a whole. Each contributor, many of them groundbreaking, trail-blazing artists themselves, has chosen albums that are personally impactful. Glaring omissions and oversights are almost guaranteed, but therein lies the beauty of this conversation: This collection is merely a starting point, a springboard for a greater dialogue about the place of female creators, artists, musicians, and professionals in the telling of the history — herstory — of bluegrass.

At this present point on the bluegrass music timeline, diversity, inclusion, and openness are hot-button topics and they would not have been given even an inch of a foothold in our genre if it hadn’t been for the strength, determination, heart, and amazing music of the women below. — Justin Hiltner

Alecia Nugent — Alecia Nugent

Though it was released by Rounder, Alecia Nugent’s debut originated as a self-release funded by a fan — just one token of the hold her strong, emotive voice can have on a listener. The Louisiana native turned to Carl Jackson for production, and the savvy Grammy winner put together a nifty cast of players and called on a crew of sympathetic harmony singers — including himself in both categories. Together, they picked out a well-balanced set of songs that included both Flatt & Scruggs and Stanley Brothers classics, but leaned largely toward gems from the catalogs of Larry Cordle, Jerry Salley, and Jackson, himself. Either way, Nugent’s voice carries an unmistakable feeling of urgency that makes every line believable and, when she cuts loose on a ballad, makes every note a world of hurt. — Jon Weisberger

Alison Brown — Fair Weather

Let’s run down the cast of this record: Béla Fleck, Stuart Duncan, Tony Rice, Sam Bush, Vince Gill, Tim O’Brien, Claire Lynch, Missy Raines … and there are more. While Alison’s signature, outside-the-box playing style and modern aesthetic are at the center of this record top to bottom, the entire project is solidly bluegrass. “Poe’s Pickin’ Party” is a subtle nod to an actual party of the same name that openly excluded women from participating, on “Deep Gap” Alison plays Doc Watson-style guitar, and the burning double banjo tune “Leaving Cottondale” won Alison her first Grammy award. — Justin Hiltner

Alison Brown — Simple Pleasures

I had been playing banjo for a couple of years when I stumbled upon this album by Alison Brown while browsing through the tiny bluegrass section at a record store in the mall. It was the first time I had ever heard any banjo playing outside the bluegrass realm. I was completely fascinated, and my ears were opened to a whole new world of writing and playing. This record is the perfect example of how music that you digest during your most highly impressionable age and stage of development stays with you forever. She made a lasting impact on me by igniting a much-broadened awareness of what the banjo can do. — Kristin Scott Benson

Alison Krauss & Union Station — Every Time You Say Goodbye

If the sound of Adam Steffey’s flawless mandolin intro to the title track doesn’t grab you immediately, then just wait about 20 seconds and you’ll hear one of the greatest voices the world has ever known. Every Time You Say Goodbye is one of my favorite albums from childhood. Even as an adult, I never grow tired of revisiting it. Alison has always been a genius at picking the perfect songs, making albums that really stand the test of time. From start to finish, I think it’s an amazing album — a must have for anyone’s collection! — Sierra Hull

Alison Krauss & Union Station — So Long, So Wrong

“Looking in the Eyes of Love” may be the most popular song from this record — how many wedding playlists has it graced at this point, I wonder? — but in bluegrass circles, that very well could be the least important track on the record. You can still hear “The Road Is a Lover,” “No Place to Hide,” “I’ll Remember You, Love, in My Prayers,” and “Blue Trail of Sorrow” at jam sessions today, some 20 years later, played exactly like they sound here. And the sad, sad heartbreak songs on this album are nearly unparalleled. Try listening to “Find My Way Back to My Heart” in the wee hours of the morning on a solo road trip sometime. “I used to laugh at all those songs about the ramblin’ life, the nights so long and lonely, but I ain’t laughin’ now” will destroy you. It did me. — Justin Hiltner

Blue Rose — Blue Rose

Blue Rose was the brainchild of Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, who noticed the “super picker” albums of the ‘80s never included any women. These talented women turned the tables with Blue Rose. When the group appeared on the Nashville Network’s New Country, the producer wanted to use male session players so Blue Rose would sound as good on TV as they did on the album. Cathy quickly disabused the producer of this notion and these talented women did their own picking. — Murphy Henry

Buffalo Gals — First Borne

Martha Trachtenberg, Susie Monick, Carol Siegel, Sue Raines, and Nancy Josephson formed Buffalo Gals, the first-ever all-female bluegrass band, in the early ‘70s. They were largely regarded as a novelty act by promoters and talent buyers during their too-short run as a band — infamously, they performed an entire festival set in their sleeping bags on stage to protest being purposely relegated to the festival’s earliest performance slot. Their sole record, First Borne, is almost forgotten and sorely underrated, but should demand respect and recognition from all of us now. I mean, a bluegrass Carole King cover? Yes. — Justin Hiltner

Cherryholmes — Cherryholmes II: Black and White

“We had three strikes against us: We were a family band, we had kids, and we had women.” — Sandy Cherryholmes

Despite the “strikes” against them, I’ll never forget how Cherryholmes took my musical world by storm in the early 2000s. I first saw them play the Grand Ole Opry and was struck by the prodigy-level playing and mature voices of the Cherryholmes clan — including daughters Cia and Molly — in harmonies that can only be honed within a family. Even though the group disbanded in 2011, each of the family members continues to make their mark in various parts of the industry. Theirs is a sound I’ll not soon forget. — Amy Reitnouer

Claire Lynch — Moonlighter

Claire Lynch championed women through the ages with the writing of Moonlighter — an anthem to all who have ever tried to “have it all.” The music is pristine and the lyrics are timeless throughout. — Missy Raines

Claire Lynch — North by South

North by South by Claire Lynch is creative and, at the same time, quite bluegrass-y. I find myself putting this one on over and over again. — Gina Clowes

The Cox Family — Beyond the City

When a member of Counting Crows writes the liner notes for a bluegrass album, it will grab your attention; when it is an album by the Cox Family, it will grab your heart. Without question, the focus on Beyond the City (and any other album from the Cox Family, for that matter) is the universal love for that pure family harmony that comes from sisters Evelyn and Suzanne, brother Sidney, and father Willard. Suzanne and Evelyn were two of the most influential female voices in bluegrass during the ‘80s and ‘90s, and one listen to Beyond the City exemplifies why. From Suzanne’s bluesy, adventurous vocals on “Lovin’ You” and “Blue Bayou” to the sweet, ethereal tone of Evelyn’s voice on “Lizzy and the Rainman” and “Another Lonesome Morning,” it is easy to see why singers from Alison Krauss (who produced the album) to Flatt Lonesome’s Kelsi Harrigill and Charli Robertson point to the Cox Family as major influences of their own sound. — Daniel Mullins

Dale Ann Bradley — Catch Tomorrow

Dale Ann solidifies her place in bluegrass history with this album. Her voice is perfect, and the material is memorable. Contemporary and fresh without forgetting its bluegrass roots. — Megan Lynch

Dale Ann Bradley — Don’t Turn Your Back

While Dale Ann Bradley’s voice is as big and as lonesome as the mountains which she calls home, few female artists in bluegrass are as adaptive. A bold claim to be sure, but one needs to look no further than Don’t Turn Your Back for confirmation. Her influences are all over the map and she embraces the variety. Songs originally performed by Tom Petty, Flatt & Scruggs, Hoyt Axton, the Carter Family, and Patty Loveless appear next to original compositions, making for a musical palette atypical of your standard bluegrass album. From the sensitivity of “Will I Be Good Enough” to the sassiness of “I Won’t Back Down,” Dale Ann’s versatility showcases her depth of both musical mastership and emotional complexity. For me, though, Dale Ann is at her best when she is lonesome, as exemplified on the old mountain ballad, “Blue Eyed Boy.” — Daniel Mullins

Dale Ann Bradley — Somewhere South of Crazy 

While it might seem pretentious to talk about terroir in the context of bluegrass music, when I listen to Dale Ann Bradley sing, I feel like I can hear the soul of eastern Kentucky coming through every note. Dale Ann’s music is very much the product of the contrast in her upbringing — a ‘70s childhood set against the backdrop of rural Knox County — and I’m particularly proud of Somewhere South of Crazy for the way it weaves those disparate influences together. A pop-grass version of “Summer Breeze” sits comfortably alongside the traditionally rooted “In Despair,” and the haunting trio of Sierra Hull, Steve Gulley, and Dale Ann on the thinly veiled war protest song “Come Home Good Boy” is timeless. — Alison Brown

Della Mae — This World Oft Can Be

How many bands do you know of that went from their inception to a Grammy nomination in just four years? This fact is just so much more delicious knowing that Della Mae’s name itself is poking fun at the type of testosterone-fueled, mash-heavy, boy’s club bluegrass that has deliberately excluded women for so long. And each of the incredible Dellas are excellent musicians — no “pretty good for a girl” qualifiers necessary. The music on this record teases the edges of bluegrass open, with old-time fundamentals, straight-ahead ‘grass’s drive, and poetic, literary lyrics. It’s truly an important moment in the history of women in bluegrass. — Justin Hiltner

Dixie Chicks — Home

When this record came out, I was an insecure, high school-aged girl. Because of this album, I was finally able to feel cool and proud telling my friends I play the banjo and spend my weekends at bluegrass festivals. It’s full of energy, tasty licks, tight harmonies, and good, catchy songs, and it has reached an audience that most bluegrass albums never will. — Gina Clowes

Dolly Parton — Heartsongs

This was one of the most influential records to me growing up. I remember singing along with and trying to pick out every harmony part that I could find as a little girl, playing the tape over and over to do so. Hearing two more of my favorite singers, Alison Krauss and Suzanne Cox, on harmonies made it extra special. — Kati Penn-Williams

Dolly Parton — The Grass Is Blue

First off, who doesn’t love Dolly? She’s kind of the ultimate artist, in my opinion. She’s one of the greatest songwriters to ever live, yet she can take a song she didn’t write and sing it from a place of sincere honesty like no other. From the downbeat of “Travelin’ Prayer” to Dolly’s first soaring high note (just listen to the huge tone she pulls!), I am sold. The production on this album is as slick as it gets, while still retaining that bluegrass grit that keeps you on the edge of your seat. She’s surrounded by an all-star band made of up of some of my biggest heroes, and I believe any musician can learn a lot from this album. — Sierra Hull

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, & Emmylou Harris — Trio

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris have long established themselves as powerhouses in popular music. It is only fitting that their first album together, aptly named Trio, showcases the depth of collaborations between these master artists. Having been long-time admirers of each other’s, as well as having covered one another’s songs on respective albums, the trio presented incredible harmonies and musicianship that set Parton, Ronstadt, and Harris ahead of the pack. It also succeeded in inspiring future generations of female badasses in country and bluegrass music (Lula Wiles, I’m With Her). Winner of two Grammy awards, Trio remains a tried and true collaboration between legendary musicians and visionaries. — Kaïa Kater

Donna Hughes — Same Old Me

With 21 original songs, songwriter Donna Hughes’s second album, Same Old Me, introduced her as a prolific force within the genre. With each listening, I am struck by the intimate way this recording captures a feminine voice leading a hard-driving configuration in the studio featuring Adam Steffey, Scott Vestal, Clay Jones, Greg Luck, Ashby Frank, Zak McLamb, Alan Perdue, Joey Cox, and Gina Britt-Tew. Donna juxtaposes B-chord, jam-style bluegrass with introspection centering around the oft-displaced female voice — something few albums have accomplished since. — Jordan Laney

Emmylou Harris — Roses in the Snow

While Emmylou is not known as a bluegrass singer, per se, Roses in the Snow made an enormous impact on the bluegrass world by opening a wide door for many new-to-bluegrass-fans to come through. After its release, I remember years of hearing Roses in the Snow added to the common festival scene playlist. Her fresh take on “Gold Watch and Chain” and “I’ll Go Stepping, Too,” as well as others, brought new life to these bluegrass treasures. — Missy Raines

Elizabeth Cotten — Folksongs and Instrumentals with Guitar

Bluegrass Albums Made by Women

Featuring songs like “Freight Train,” this seminal Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten album influenced the 1960s folk “re-awakening.” A mix of traditional and original songs, this 1958 release showcased Cotten’s signature left-hand guitar and banjo-picking styles. Mike Seeger’s recordings of Cotten, released on Folkways Records when she was 62 years of age, cemented her as a true matriarch of folk and blues. “Freight Train,” written when Cotten was only 12, has been covered by the likes of Paul McCartney, Peggy Seeger, and Joan Baez. — Kaïa Kater

Gloria Belle — Gloria Belle Sings and Plays Bluegrass in the Country

Perhaps best-known for her long stint with Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys in the late ‘60s and ‘70s, Gloria Belle is a fine singer, guitarist, mandolinist, banjoist, and bass player. In 1968, she released her first album as a band leader following singles that featured her mandolin playing. While she succeeded this debut with several more fine albums as a leader, this album features not only her powerful singing but her instrumental mastery, as well, playing lead breaks on banjo, mandolin, and guitar. — Greg Reish

Good Ol’ Persons — Part of a Story

The 1970s California bluegrass scene was fairly devoid of female players and singers, and the Good Ol’ Persons were a beacon of light for many distaff pickers — including me. In many ways, I think the Good Ol’ Persons foreshadowed the more gender-balanced bands that are coming up these days. Kathy Kallick, Sally Van Meter, and Bethany Raine were three-fifths of the band that recorded Part of a Story in 1986 for Kaleidoscope Records and, more than 30 years later, I still find myself coming back to this album. There is something loose and playful about their groove, a feel that separates a lot of California bluegrass of that time from its Appalachian cousin. The gorgeous melody of the title track has stuck with me across decades, and the ecumenical message of “Center of the Word” captures an open-mindedness that I associate with that time and place. — Alison Brown

Hazel Dickens — Hard Hitting Songs for Hard Hit People 

Many may argue that bluegrass is apolitical, but not when Hazel Dickens is singing. Despite this year’s induction into the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Hall of Fame with Alice Gerrard, Hazel’s solo work has yet to receive recognition for its monumental role in songwriting and activism within bluegrass, evoking the political, gendered, and “hard hitting” side of rural life. This album, in particular, continues to offer generations the anthems needed to gather and rally. From “They’ll Never Keep Us Down” to “Scraps from Your Table,” there is nothing hidden about Hazel’s message here: Fighting for the rights of workers and revealing inequity can — and should — be done through song. — Jordan Laney

Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard — Who’s That Knocking?

I first heard this 1965 album in 1974, and it knocked me out. Hazel & Alice really seemed to capture the high lonesome sound of the Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe, and the back-up band of Chubby Wise on fiddle, Lamar Grier on banjo, David Grisman on mandolin, and Fred Weisz on bass was a joy to listen to. By today’s standards, it’s pretty rough and rocky, but I read somewhere that the recording budget was $75 … so there you go. I became an instant fan. It was the first recorded example, for me, of women really capturing what I considered to be the bluegrass sound. — Laurie Lewis

Hazel & Alice — Won’t You Come & Sing for Me

When I first started playing bluegrass in 1975, there were two women who were role models: Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard. Every woman who was coming into the scene listened to the two albums they made in the ‘60s, and they were a frequent source of material, as well as being huge inspirations. Over the years, Hazel & Alice were heroes, role models, icons, and, eventually, dear friends. I feel lucky to have crossed paths, sung a bit, and laughed a lot with each of those women! — Kathy Kallick

Hazel Dickens, Carol Elizabeth Jones, Ginny Hawker — Heart of a Singer

Three generations of Appalachian women sang together for the first time in the lobby of the good ol’ IBMA. Hazel hadn’t made a record in a decade, but this trio felt special. “The thing that took the longest was choosing the songs,” said Carol Elizabeth, whom I called on a recent night drive to confess my love for this turn-of-the-century masterpiece. It took a year-and-a-half of weekend “marathon singing sessions” to find a batch that checked the boxes — great for harmonies with a story they could stand behind. “Hazel really wanted to sing songs where the women are strong.” Heart of a Singer was recorded in two sessions, one on either side of the birth of Carol Elizabeth’s daughter, Viv Leva (who is now pushing 20 with a forthcoming album that I’ll call an early contender for the next edition of this very list). — Kristin Andreassen

Kathy Kallick — My Mother’s Voice

This is such a beautifully personal album. I love Kathy’s original songs, but these that she learned from her mother tell you everything you need to know about her passion for traditional music. — Megan Lynch

Kenny and Amanda Smith — House Down the Block

When I first heard this record, Amanda’s voice hit me square between the eyes, and I was mesmerized by the choice of material. It really opened me up to the middle ground between covering, for instance, “How Mountain Girls Can Love” and esoteric mid-2000s Alison Krauss songs. — Megan Lynch

Kristin Scott — Kristin Scott

Kristin’s very first album was a cassette-only release, I think, but it had a huge impact — showing that instrumental prowess and instrumental albums were not just the territory of guys. She blazes through “Follow the Leader” and shows off her more wide-ranging musical tastes on tunes like “Bye Bye Blues” and “Charmaine.” — Casey Henry

Laurie Lewis — Love Chooses You

With songs like “Hills of My Home” and “When the Nightbird Sings,” Laurie Lewis created a masterful blend of traditional bluegrass and Americana. This record encouraged and inspired me to honor all of the influences that were brewing within me. — Missy Raines

Laurie Lewis — Restless Ramblin’ Heart

Great songs and aggressive fiddling! This album was the first Laurie Lewis record I owned, and it was the beginning of my journey to become a bluegrass musician. — Megan Lynch

Laurie Lewis & Kathy Kallick — Together

This duet album from these two powerful West Coast women includes Kathy’s song “Don’t Leave Your Little Girl All Alone,” one of the few bluegrass songs in which the ailing mother does not die! They also dedicate “Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar” to Hazel & Alice with thanks for “breaking trail.” — Murphy Henry

Leyla McCalla — A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey

Having drawn a bit of courage from her time in the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leyla McCalla ventured out with her own voice on A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey. She felt compelled to not just tell the tales of Black America, but to tell the tales, specifically, of Black Haitian and Creole America. Those are her roots and she wanted to dig them up. Using a cello here and a banjo there, McCalla’s musical — and lyrical — languages bob and weave however they must to remain true to their subjects. And captivatingly so.  — Kelly McCartney

Lynn Morris Band — Shape of a Tear

Lynn’s music is so down to earth, so unpretentious, and just so darn tasteful. While any of the Lynn Morris Band’s albums could easily be included on this list, I think she really out-did herself on Shape of Tear. — Gina Clowes

Lynn Morris Band — The Lynn Morris Band

I started hearing about Lynn Morris in the 1980s, when she was playing with Whetstone Run. Lynn had a wonderful knack for finding material outside of the traditional bluegrass repertoire and turning those songs into bluegrass classics. She was a powerhouse guitar player and a ferocious banjo player, having won the National Banjo Championship in 1974. The fact that she was so accomplished as a musician and couldn’t earn a place in a good band irked her, and she was never completely comfortable leading her own band. Still, she was a wonderful front person, warm and personable, and her voice was heavenly. I had a long conversation with her in the early 1990s about her style of band leading. She took that job very seriously, and she was working with men who were often uncomfortable with her leadership role. She had to hold authority without complete support and that was challenging. She pushed the band hard, with long drives, often with a detour of several hours to play live on the radio or anything else that would promote the band. It paid off, as she was named Female Vocalist of the Year by IBMA, won Song of the Year with Hazel Dickens’ song “Mama’s Hand,” and her bandmates went on to win IBMA awards, as well. — Kathy Kallick

Molly Tuttle — Rise

Molly Tuttle’s 2017 release, Rise, gives me hope for the future of this genre. She’s not only a formidable singer, songwriter, and band leader, but is the first female to win IBMA’s Guitar Player of the Year award. (’bout damn time, amiright?) Her sound is mature and focused, making it a beautiful reflection of the future of bluegrass. — Amy Reitnouer

Ola Belle Reed & Family — Ola Belle Reed & Family

Ola Belle. The original queen of bluegrass singer/songwriter banjo players. She wrote about half of the classics on this album, including “I’ve Endured,” which you probably know from Tim O’Brien’s version. She comes right out and sings “Born in the mountains, 50 years ago” — her age at the time of this recording in ’76 — while most of the cover versions get slippery with “many years ago.” The only quandary I had in including this record on my list of favorite bluegrass albums by women is that I’m rarely able to listen past the brilliance of track four, which happens to be the one song Ola Belle’s son, David, sings solo while accompanying himself on the autoharp. His version of “Lamplighting Time in the Valley” (an old Vagabonds song) is one of those magic tracks that hits you from another dimension and must be listened to on repeat, but since Ola Belle created her son, I’m going to give her the points for that one, too. — Kristin Andreassen

Patty Loveless — Mountain Soul

“Mountain soul” is a common attribute associated with Patty Loveless’s stunning voice, long before she decided to pay homage to her eastern Kentucky heritage with an album by the same title. Her 2001 bluegrass project might be the most authentic of the “country-star-makes-bluegrass-album” endeavors that we have seen. Joined by bluegrass veterans — including Earl Scruggs, Gene Wooten, Clarence “Tater” Tate, and others — Patty also featured some all-star talent from the likes of Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, and Jon Randall for some powerful collaborations. Without question, though, the album’s pinnacle performance is the now-classic rendition of Darrell Scott’s “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive” — six minutes of nothing but Patty’s signature “mountain soul” sound. — Daniel Mullins

 

Rayna Gellert — Ways of the World

So Rayna will see this list, raise one eyebrow, and say, “Did I make a bluegrass album?” … because she plays old-time music, you know. If you’re still unsure of the difference, let Ways of the World be a guidepost. Groovy as a giant’s corduroy pant leg, this music needs a fiddle chop like a hole in the knee. But an album of mostly string band instrumentals, including a blessedly reincarnated version of the 100 percent bluegrass-certified “Arkansas Traveler,” is surely a close cousin. When Ways came out in 2000, it was a big moment for those of us who were just coming up through the cracks between folk revivals. A little younger than the hippies and a little older than the yet-to-be hipsters, there weren’t so many of us kids on the scene then. Ways came to me as a gift, and there was a picture in the liner notes of Rayna getting her head shaved. So, of course, we met, and eventually we had a band called Uncle Earl. — Kristin Andreassen

Red White and Blue(grass) — Pickin’ Up

This is the second LP by this early supergroup led by Ginger and Grant Boatwright. Although the album includes just one of Ginger’s original songs, her expressive singing is front and center on most of the tracks. Outstanding instrumental work by Grant on guitar, Dale Whitcomb on banjo, and Byron Berline and Vassar Clements on fiddles make this some of the best ‘70’s bluegrass ever recorded. The repertory is beautifully varied, too, with Ginger’s brilliant renditions of a couple of Bill Monroe classics, original instrumentals by members of the band, Bob Dylan’s “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” and such diverse traditionals as “Fixin’ to Die” and “Amazing Grace.” — Greg Reish

Rhiannon Giddens — Freedom Highway

While it’s merely bluegrass-adjacent with its old-time, soul, and folk tendencies, this album should be on a list of the top 50 albums by women, regardless of genre. It’s just that good. And just that important. From her early days in the Carolina Chocolate Drops to her current standing as a MacArthur Fellow, Rhiannon Giddens has shown us, time and again, that she ain’t messing around. She is a student of history and an advocate for justice, folding both of those duties together in her music which uses our past to gauge our present. To that end, on Freedom Highway, she gives voice to slaves and other victims of racial violence who dare not speak for themselves, but whose stories must be heard by all courageous and conscious enough to listen. And she stands firm in the roots from which bluegrass grew.  — Kelly McCartney

Rhonda Vincent — Back Home Again

Following a mid-90s foray into commercial country music, Rhonda Vincent had been back in bluegrass for a few years already before releasing her Rounder debut. But signing with the industry-leading label spurred her to a deliberative process that, combined with some of the best singing you’ll ever hear, makes the album a bona fide classic. She recorded two dozen tracks, then listened to what they told her when it came to making her final selections. Back Home Again combines kick-ass, hard-edged bluegrass played by a large and varied all-star cast with heart-wrenching country ballads sung with immaculate yet gripping harmonies, mostly from her brother Darrin with an occasional assist from their father and a couple of others. Nevertheless, the dominant term in the equation is Rhonda’s own singing — not to mention her hand as co-(and arguably lead) producer. The whole thing is polished to a high, high gloss, but it’s compelling as all get-out. — Jon Weisberger

Rhonda Vincent — The Storm Still Rages

At the turn of the century, Rhonda Vincent made a triumphant return to bluegrass music following several years of an under-appreciated country career. Back Home Again resulted in her being crowned the “Queen of Bluegrass,” and 2001’s The Storm Still Rages only enforced the moniker. Perfectly toeing the line between hard-driving traditional bluegrass and smooth acoustic sensitivity, the album includes such Rhonda Vincent classics as “I’m Not Over You,” “Bluegrass Express,” “You Don’t Love God If You Don’t Love Your Neighbor,” and “Is the Grass Any Bluer.” That year also marked Rhonda Vincent & the Rage’s Entertainer of the Year award from the IBMA, making her one of only two female band leaders to bring home the IBMA’s top honor (the other is Alison Krauss), and resulted in her second (of a record eight) IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year awards. The authority with which she sings and plays every note leaves those who want to throw about the “pretty good for a girl” caveat looking foolish. Rhonda is continually expanding the levels of professionalism in bluegrass music, and her ability to raise expectations (not just for women, but for the entire industry) is why she is one of the genre’s premiere figures. The Storm Still Rages is one of the queen’s crowning achievements. — Daniel Mullins

Rose Maddox — Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass

Released in 1962, this album has the distinction of being the first in the bluegrass field by a female vocalist. I first heard it in about 1974, and while I couldn’t really accept her voice as a bluegrass instrument (her big brassy vibrato sure doesn’t sound like the Stanley Brothers!), I kept going back to it for the sheer fun, the energy of the music, and for the repertoire. It’s got a fine back-up band, featuring Don Reno on banjo, Tommy Jackson on fiddle, and Ronnie Stoneman and Bill Monroe splitting the mandolin chores. — Laurie Lewis

Sara Watkins — Sara Watkins

No, it’s not the most traditional bluegrass album ever recorded, but coming out of Nickel Creek’s more progressive latter days, Sara Watkins’ debut solo record illustrated that she still had at least one foot planted firmly in tradition. But who’s counting? These originals got me through more than one heartbreak and the covers — of Norman Blake, John Hartford, Tom Waits, and Jimmie Rodgers — confirm the respect for the music’s past that you can feel as you listen. Make no mistake, though, Sara Watkins is looking toward roots music’s future; her following solo albums and her work with I’m With Her are blazing a trail I’m excited to follow. — Justin Hiltner

Sierra Hull — Weighted Mind

I think I saw Sierra perform for the first time with her band Highway 111 when I was 17 years old. I was simultaneously inspired — and infuriated — by the fact that someone my age could have so much creativity, such great touch and tone, and such ridiculous chops. Through the years, as we’ve both grown up, the inspiration has only increased and the infuriation is now much more … constructive. Weighted Mind has been hailed as a coming-of-age record for Sierra, but I think that categorization is far too simplistic. When I listen to this record, I do hear maturity, but more prominently, I hear individuality, vulnerability, confidence, transcendence, and infuriating, ridiculous chops. — Justin Hiltner

Skyline — Fire of Grace

This is a weird album, but it was one of the first weird bluegrass albums with a woman fronting the operation. And, yes, Tony Trischka’s name is sort of up front in this band, but it was Dede Wyland’s singing and guitar playing that really stood out. — Megan Lynch

Uncle Earl — Waterloo, Tennessee

Any list of great female albums anywhere in this realm would be incomplete without an entry from the “Bangles of Bluegrass” — Uncle Earl. And their 2007 release, Waterloo, Tennessee, proves why. Packed with 16 old-time tunes, the set weaves the ladies’ vocals harmonies and instrumental chops into an irresistible musical tapestry that is both contemporary and classic. (Rumor has it, the G’earls — KC Groves, Abigail Washburn, Rayna Gellert, and Kristin Andreassen — may even be readying some new material.) — Kelly McCartney

Wilma Lee Cooper — White Rose

After many famous years of singing old-time country music with her husband Stoney, Wilma Lee Cooper released a string of solo albums that veered more and more toward bluegrass following Stoney’s death in 1977. Recorded for Leather Records, which released A Daisy a Day (Wilma Lee’s solo debut), White Rose was recorded in 1981 but wasn’t released until Rebel issued it in 1984. This is pure bluegrass, with Cooper accompanied by some of the best Nashville pickers who also played with her on the road and at the Opry — Marty Lanham on banjo, “Tater” Tate on fiddle, and the brilliant Gene Wooten on dobro. — Greg Reish

Best of: Grand Ole Opry

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When I think of country music, I think of the Grand Ole Opry. As far as I’m concerned, the two are synonyms. What began as the WSM Barn Dance radio show in 1925 has grown into an entire entertainment experience (their YouTube even has style videos), and solidified Nashville as the Country Music Capital. With its rich history, it is no wonder that aspiring country and bluegrass musicians across the globe dream of making an Opry debut. Here are five performances from “country’s most famous stage” for your enjoyment:

Johnny Cash — “Ring of Fire”

Let’s start off with this throwback video of Johnny Cash performing one of his most famous songs, “Ring of Fire,” at the Ryman Auditorium in 1968. While Cash had a tumultuous relationship with the Opry — and was even banned from the show for a period of time in the middle of his career — there is no doubt that his music is always a treat to listen to.

Carson Peters & Ricky Skaggs — “Blue Moon of Kentucky”

While the Opry is an integral part of country music’s rich history, it also ensures a bright future for country music by recognizing young talent. In this 2014 video, then 10-year-old Carson Peters, joined by seasoned Opry member Ricky Skaggs, breathes new life into Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

Alison Krauss & Jamey Johnson — “My Dixie Darlin’”

Every time Alison Krauss and Jamey Johnson make music together, the result is magical. While Johnson holds down the lead vocals beautifully on this stripped-down rendition of the Carter Family classic, “My Dixie Darlin’,” Krauss’s sweet harmonies and fiddle playing are icing on the cake.

Merle Haggard — “Workin’ Man Blues”

Country music legend Merle Haggard never became an Opry member, but he did perform there many times during his long career. Here, Haggard sings his anthem for the working class, “Workin’ Man Blues,” on the Opry in 1977. Make sure to stick around untill the end to catch an amazing guitar solo!

Steven Curtis Chapman & Ricky Skaggs — “What a Friend We Have in Jesus”

Many musicians across various genres have recorded and performed the old Christian hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” but this rendition by Steven Curtis Chapman and Ricky Skaggs is my favorite, by far. Chapman and Skaggs deliver the song with a certain tenderness that pairs perfectly with the already comforting lyrics of the song.

Canon Fodder: John Hartford, ‘Aereo-Plain’

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In September 2016, I did an interview with banjo player and producer Alison Brown for the now-dormant Producers column, and she told me a little bit about her studio in Nashville. Compass Records is headquartered there now, but 40 years ago, it was known as Hillbilly Central, where numerous outlaw and outlier country albums were recorded. “If I’d known John Hartford recorded Aereo Plain here, I would have been even more intimidated than I already was,” she confessed. “You could set the bar so high for yourself thinking about the other music that’s been recorded in the room, but, at the end of the day, you just have to look at it as there’s great energy in the room, great vibes in the walls, and you have to tap into that.”

I had to admit I didn’t know the album or much about the man. I knew the name, but that had more to do with the namesake music festival near my home than with any of his actual music. With minimal research, I learned that he was most famous for writing the song “Gentle on My Mind,” a late ’60s hit for Glen Campbell that was covered by everyone from Dean Martin to Aretha Franklin to R.E.M. to (most recently) Alison Krauss to (most strangely) Leonard Nimoy. I learned that Hartford was influential in the Newgrass trend of the ‘70s, and I learned that two of his songs had been included on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, the Big Bang of roots music in the 21st century. I learned that he was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who clashed with celebrity of any kind. He died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001.

It’s always instructive to fill in these odd gaps in your musical knowledge, and the experience got me thinking about the roots canon, if there is such a thing. It’s a broad term that covers a wide range of styles and traditions and formats, from old-time field recordings to blues and gospel performances to the latest folk and country album releases to bluegrass classes in Appalachia. It’s almost impossible to connect all the dots, but it’s interesting to think about: Which record should every roots fan know about? What would a canon tell us about roots music in the 21st century? What would it say about American traditional music at a time when the entire notion of America is up for grabs?

Those questions became the foundation for this new column called Canon Fodder, so named because I like obvious puns. Each month we’ll examine a new album by an influential artist and explore its impact across generations. Hopefully this will allow us to approach some old artists in new ways, to hear familiar songs with fresh ears. If you have any nominations for albums to consider in this column, please leave them in the comments section below. I can’t promise we’ll get to each and every one of them, but I’ll definitely add it to the list.

In the meantime, it seems worthwhile to kick things off with Aereo-Plain. Brown is right: It does sound intimidatingly magnificent. There are only a few instruments on these songs, but they’re mic’d beautifully to capture the minute grain of Hartford’s banjo and the vibrations of every string on the strummed guitar. Even the goofball vocals at the end of “Boogie” — sung low and phlegmatic, as though making fun of the song that just played — are recorded lovingly and carefully, as though every mucus rumble were important. What makes the album remarkable isn’t so much the sound of the instruments, but the way they interact with one another. They’re alternately genial and hostile toward one another, supportive and undermining. The banjo plays a practical joke on the guitar; the guitar reciprocates. Especially on “Symphony Hall Rag” Hartford evokes a parallax quality in the production, with the rhythm guitar so deep in the background of the song that it sounds out of focus, which makes the song sound slightly askew.

Actually, all of Aereo-Plain sounds slightly askew … most of all Hartford himself. He comes across as something of a mad hatter on these songs — a Frank Zappa parodist for the roots set, pushing bluegrass as a countercultural force. He understands there’s power in wackiness and, even more than Pete Seeger, he believes the banjo can be a weapon against capitalism, complacency, the mainstream, the music industry, electrified instruments, or even conventional song structures. “With a Vamp in the Middle” is a meta song about itself: “I wrote this song with a vamp in the middle,” Hartford declares, but he never really gets to that vamp. He just keeps playing and singing.

If loneliness pervades these songs, it’s largely an effect of the times, an inescapable by-product of living in America during the early 1970s, when the hippie dream was curdling into something of a nightmare of violence and regress. Nixon was already a crook, but hadn’t been impeached yet. Altamont had killed the ‘60s, but the ‘70s hadn’t quite defined itself yet (at least not in America; in England, glam was already starting to define the era). Singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Cat Stevens were starting to make inroads into the mainstream, but no sound or movement defined the pop or country landscape.

Hartford sees not a land of promise or possibility, but a society gone to seed, eaten alive by progress: “It looks like an electric shaver now where the courthouse used to be,” he sings on “Steamboat Whistle Blues.” “The grass is all synthetic, and we don’t know for sure about the food.” It’s not that he wasn’t made for these times; it’s that the times aren’t made for human beings. “We’ll all sit down at the city dump and talk about the good old days,” but it’s the way he sings “city dump” that makes you think the phrase is redundant. He may decry the commodification of country & western on “Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry,” but Hartford understands that music may be our last connection to a more fulfilling past, and Hartford is content to sit down there among the refuse just pickin’ and strummin’ and singin’ and fiddlin’ while Rome burns.

These songs long for a return to the American pastoral, an escape from the pressures of progress and politics to a pre-industrial ideal and, for that reason, the album sounds alarmingly current. “Sittin’ on a 747 just a-watchin’ them clouds roll by. Can’t tell if it’s sunshine or if it’s rain, rain, rain,” he sings on the title track, his voice rising into a comical falsetto. “Rather be a-sittin’ in a deck chair high up over Kansas City on a genuine ol’ fashioned authentic steam-powered aereo plane.” It’s a dream and a mission statement — one that knows the very idea is an innocent impossibility.

Perhaps Hartford knew, or perhaps he didn’t know, that tinkerers and inventors had been trying to build such a contraption since the 1840s, when an aerial steam carriage was patented by the British inventors William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow. Even before the Wright Brothers went airborne at Kitty Hawk, they had managed to fly a small craft on a steam engine, but they couldn’t reconcile the power of the steam with the weight of the engine. It was folly, and maybe that’s why Hartford longs for the freedom of such a fantastical vehicle. There’s power in folly, an unbridled joy in whimsy that sounds like an intense form of dissidence and defiance.

The Unbroken Circle: An Interview with Tim O’Brien

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Let’s say your banjo-obsessed buddy asks you to join him at the local Tuesday night bluegrass jam. Bluegrass. Sure, you’re aware of the term. You loved that George Clooney movie. You’ve got a couple verses of “Wagon Wheel” up your sleeve for wedding receptions. Plus, you’ve been wondering how Garrison Keillor suddenly got so good at the mandolin. Why not dive a little deeper?

As a newcomer to the strange pastime of standing in a circle with fiddles, banjos, and mandolins, you will be perfectly positioned to ask a really good question: “Where did all of these songs come from?” Your banjo friend might try to satisfy you by calling the songs “traditional,” but that’s just evading the question. Sure, some common tunes arrived in America on boats from Europe, and some of them were “collected” by folklorists like John and Alan Lomax who combed through rural America in the early 20th century, but the bigger-picture truth is that the bluegrass canon has been alive and evolving throughout its history. Even before bluegrass’s inception in the 1940s, the story of folk music in the 20th century is one of surprising re-discovery, unorthodox re-interpretation, and, yes, the addition of songs that happen to be brand new. Right up there alongside the other great writers and re-interpreters — A.P. Carter, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and many others — there’s a whipper-snapper (by “traditional” music standards) named Tim O’Brien.

Tim’s band, Hot Rize, emerged in the late ’70s as part of a neo-traditional reaction to New Grass Revival and David Grisman’s no-holds-barred hippie bluegrass boom of the early ’70s. There was a back-to-basics element to Hot Rize’s chemistry — led by O’Brien’s distinctive tenor and mandolin playing — but bassist Nick Forster played an electric bass, banjo player Pete Wernick occasionally played through a trippy phase-shifter effect, and they all wore obnoxiously ugly ties with their formal wear. (Traditional Ties was one tongue-in-cheek album title.) In other words, in a world of stiff suits and tall Stetsons, they injected a playfulness that both revitalized the tradition and reminded it not to take itself too seriously. In that way, they weren’t a reaction to New Grass Revival so much as their fraternal twin. Both bands effectively proved the point: Long-haired kids can play their own kind of bluegrass.

Tim’s original songs “Nellie Cane” and “Ninety Nine Years” share the rare double distinction of being staples of many local jams and also popular covers in the repertoires of Phish and the Punch Brothers, respectively. He’s also re-energized old songs like “Blue Night,” “Pretty Fair Maid,” and “Look Down that Lonesome Road,” bringing them and many others into popular bluegrass rotation.

Before all that, O’Brien was just a kid from West Virginia listening to the Beatles on the radio and playing wedding gigs with his talented sister, Mollie O’Brien. This month, he released a record, Where the River Meets the Road, that returns him to his West Virginia roots. True to form, he uses the opportunity to try his hand at old gems like “Little Annie” and to bring to life surprising re-interpretations of other West Virginians’ songs, like Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands.” We talked about the new record as well as his many decades spent nudging the folk tradition forward. 

The band on Where the River Meets the Road is killer. They really move together like a tight band, rather than just background studio musicians. Some of them are familiar folks from the bluegrass world like Stuart Duncan and Noam Pikelny. How’d you end up incorporating Chris Stapleton?

I’ve known Chris for a good while. When he first moved to Nashville, Bryan Sutton was hired to produce demos of his. I went and played and sang on his demos, and I was really impressed. We wrote together a little bit, messed around. We stayed in touch. He sang on a record I made called Chicken and Egg. I was really pleased he was able to sing on this one.

That’s a great duet. Your voices are totally different, but the harmony is kind of striking. It really works.

He came in there and nailed that thing. I have to say, that track was good before he sang. You know how it can get in the studio. It’s pretty mellow listening to the same track over and over. Then he came in, started singing, and we all shot up straight in our chairs. Our spines straightened and our hair stood up on the back of our necks. I said, “Yeah, more of that!” It was really wonderful.

I saw on your schedule that you’re headed to Wheeling, West Virginia, tonight.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m playing my hometown tonight. It’s really exciting and terrifying at the same time. I haven’t played there in so long, and I think most of the people who bought tickets in advance are friends of mine, so you’re kind of on display. But I’m excited about seeing the old hometown.

Have you spent much time there since you left home many years ago?

No. You know, my dad died in 2011, and my mom had died before. I have a few cousins there, but I’m not close to them. I’ve only just sort of passed through a couple of times. I played with the Wheeling Symphony a couple of years ago and that was fun. My sister and her husband and my partner Jan and I sang.

Wheeling has a symphony?

Wheeling was the biggest city in the state for a long time. It was the only symphony in the state before they ever had one in Charleston. Yeah, Wheeling was a rich town with a steel mill at one point. People dressed in finery, you know. It’s a faded town now, but it has surprising culture. [Laughs]

And it had a great radio station that you grew up listening to, right? WVA?

WVA was a great resource. I was into pop music and stuff at the time, but WVA was a place you could actually see live performers on a Saturday night. I enjoyed listening to the radio, as well, but I liked going down to the Saturday night show and seeing the pros play their guitars.

But you were just a kid mostly listening to pop radio and Beatles records. So, in other words, you weren’t from a traditional music family on an inevitable path toward a folk career?

No. Not at all. My parents loved music, but it was just on the sidelines. They liked the music of their era — Glen Miller and Benny Goodman and stuff like that. When my sister and I got into music, they encouraged us. They tried to steer us toward a well-rounded experience growing up, so we could choose what we wanted to do.

Did you and Mollie sing together and learn from each other growing up?

Well, she was playing the piano and I started playing guitar. By the time she was in high school, she was studying voice there, so, yeah, we would get some little gigs — school plays, different things. We would play at weddings, sing a few Peter, Paul, & Mary songs, Beatles songs, or whatever.

Then you left college to move west and pursue music. Did your parents think you were crazy?

Well, I was the youngest of five. Being the youngest, my parents cut me a lot of slack, I’d say. They had been through it with the rest of them. Also, you know, I was determined. They wanted me to stay in college, but I just wasn’t going to respond. So they said okay. I think they were holding their breath for about three years. Then I put out a record on a little label — I think it was ’77 or ’78 — and that’s when they finally said, “Oh, maybe this will lead to something.” They developed a more open mind. Then my parents became big fans of whatever I was doing and supported it. So it was a gradual thing, kind of a wait and see. They lightly steered me, but they knew they couldn’t do the final job, you know? I’m lucky I had that background with them.

So after growing up in West Virginia, you moved out west to Colorado to get your career started. Why did you feel like you had to leave the south to play bluegrass music?

My dad said, “You just want to go as far away as you can, don’t you?” I said, “Well, sort of.” [Laughs] Really, I was going out there because I loved the weather and the scenery, the lifestyle out west. I thought in a ski area, maybe I could play music and ski — both things I was excited about. So I went to Jackson Hole. Some other friends that had worked at summer camp with me were going to spend a winter there, so I went out and joined them and scuffled around for the winter. I ended up looking for a more active music scene and I ended up in Boulder. I guess I could’ve moved to a college town in West Virginia, but I wanted to see the rest of the country.

It’s funny — when I sing the song, “High Flying Bird,” from this record, I realize it’s symbolic of what I wanted to do when I was young. I wanted to get the heck out of there. I didn’t want to be rooted and tied down in West Virginia. I wanted to see the rest of the country, the rest of the world. And I didn’t realize that song was from West Virginia until now. You get away and you find perspective on where you left. You can see it from a longer view. The music provided a connection to West Virginia, as well as my family, so I kept going back. I realized it was a valuable base to have started from, and I continue to value that.

What is it that’s made you interested in reconnecting with your West Virginia heritage? Why now?

I feel like I’ve been given a gift of this music and this background. I got involved with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame when they wanted to start that about 12 years ago. Meeting all these people as they come through to be inducted was really wonderful. You learn that a lot of people you knew about and music that you’d heard came from West Virginia.

Until I heard your record, I had no idea Bill Withers was from West Virginia.

Yeah, and that’s the thing. Part of the aim of the Hall of Fame is to connect those dots. We’re doing it for the public, but as it turns out, the members of the board and the members of the Hall of Fame are learning about the rest of the scene and connecting dots themselves. I think why I did this project now is, well, I needed to put a record together! [Laughs] I originally wanted to do a record of all original material, but I didn’t think I could pull that off for another year. I’d been thinking about a West Virginia record for a while, and I didn’t realize how much work I’d already done organizing it, making lists of songs, brainstorming on it. I’d already done a lot of that. So it came together really fast. It felt right.

One big part of your story is that you’ve made so many different types of music, so many types of records over the past nearly four decades. Do you have to keep exposing yourself to new songs and new sounds to keep your ideas fresh? How do you do that?

You just keep looking. You go to the record store. Nowadays, I get online — YouTube or Spotify. Then back to my own old record collection. My huge CD wall. Every year, I clean a lot of stuff out of it, give it away, put it in the free box at the Station Inn or something. Then there’s a lot of stuff that always stays there — the first generation of bluegrass masters, or the Lomax field recordings, or classic songwriters like Randy Newman or whatever. Then my friends around me are always writing new stuff, and I’m trying to keep up with their stuff. It’s a constant search, and I always feel the need to refresh the palate. But it’s funny — even by going back to the same stuff you’d passed over, you’ll hear new things and learn. So I’m always combing. Part of the week’s work is to comb for new music.

I like that — it’s part of the week’s job. It’s what you do when you wake up. Reminds me of the first time I saw you solo, at Grey Fox in 2012, when you did a solo guitar tribute to Doc Watson. I’m a North Carolinian and I know Doc’s stuff pretty well, but you put a new stamp on those tunes. It was like rediscovering Doc. So, for me, it was a sort of revelation, but I heard a guy next to me say, “Wish he’d brought his mandolin …” I can imagine for you that must be frustrating. Do you have to put effort into not being pigeonholed?

Yeah, you do get pigeonholed in bluegrass. I think back when I was starting, if you did bluegrass, you couldn’t do anything else. People wrote you off. When Pete Wernick called me [in 1978] and said, “Hey, why don’t we get a band together?” — our solo records were both coming out around the same time in ’78 — I said, “Yeah, that would be great.” I told him I wanted to play some traditional bluegrass, for sure, but I also wanted to do some country music and different things. I asked him if he played dobro so we could get away from the traditional thing.

Nowadays, the rock ‘n’ roll and country players, even the jazz players, are respectful of bluegrass. They understand it’s a training ground, that there’s a certain amount of woodshedding you have to do to even try to play bluegrass. So, yeah, I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. But I am pigeonholed. I’m always referred to as a bluegrass artist — and I’m glad to have a handle to carry it around on. Bluegrass music is Bill Monroe’s music, but then the bluegrass audience is a separate thing. There’s the genre as defined by the history, the classic examples. Then there’s the genre as defined by the audience — though it may only be a small part of what that audience listens to. So, in a way, I’m lucky to have been labeled a bluegrass artist while still sneaking in this other stuff. If I play something on acoustic instruments, they tend to accept it. Bluegrass fans are a very tenacious, very loyal bunch. They keep giving you another chance.

Can’t they be a pretty judgmental bunch, too?

I’m sure there’s judgmental stuff going on, but I don’t really look for that or worry too much about that. I just go my way and hope things will work out. And they have. I tried to get on a major label — I sort of glanced at the big time there. It didn’t take. I thought maybe I’d get the big publicity for a while and then I’d be on my way. Instead, I dug into the trenches of the folk and bluegrass worlds and developed an audience slowly but surely. You’re a product of what you do, so if my output has been eclectic, the audience that has remained has been willing to accept that. There’s enough of them out there to make a career.

Back in the Hot Rize days, and also what you do now, your music was right on that line between the traditional and the progressive — or neo-traditionalist, as people called Hot Rize. Did you ever feel any tension between those two camps? Or was the general attitude different in Colorado?

With Hot Rize, it was interesting. West of the Mississippi, we represented a traditional bluegrass band, but east of the Mississippi, we were these wild card guys. Our hair was too big and our ties were wrong and we had an electric bass.

But you guys had a sense of humor about it, too.

Yeah, we did. I mean, you’ve probably been at a bluegrass jam where people play a tune and, when it’s done someone, will say, “Well, that’s not bluegrass,” and everyone will laugh. Bluegrassers are always referring to their relationship with Bill Monroe’s music. They’re always measuring that. It’s part of our thing.

Sort of a self-conscious conversation we’re always having.

Yeah. And there is a tension. I’ll say this: There are a couple of places where we couldn’t get booked because Pete [Wernick] is Jewish. But, like I said, we took it where we could. Luckily, we came along at a time when people like New Grass Revival and David Grisman had broken a lot of ground. There was a hippie element that supported an alternative to the music. We were on a wave that was returning back to a traditional sound — the Johnson Mountain Boys, Nashville Bluegrass Band, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver were starting out at about the same time. They were hip and innovative in the way they were presenting traditional music, but they weren’t breaking the walls down like New Grass Revival did. This was viewed by a lot of people as a refreshing return to form. We enjoyed that. You know, we tried to play the kind of no-boundaries music when we started, and it just didn’t work out. Charles [Sawtelle] was playing bass at first, and we had a different guitarist. When Charles started playing guitar, he was much better at the traditional stuff. And we felt better playing it. You’ve just got to find your feet in whatever situation you’re in. That seemed to be the way to go, so we kept going there.

Since then there have been many ups and downs in terms of bluegrass’s broader popularity, the general awareness among the public. Is there anything that surprises you now about what the scene is like or feels particularly different about the 2017 bluegrass world?

The biggest draws in bluegrass now are the jam bands. Again, if you defined it in terms of Bill Monroe’s music, they’re not bluegrass. But they’re playing banjo and bluegrass and they’ve got a lot of attention. There’s a crowd that will get interested in that and look behind it for their influences. They might get into Widespread Panic or the Grateful Dead — or they might go to Doc Watson and the people that he learned from. The thing about bluegrass — even with the ebbs and flows of it — it’s always been growing. With O Brother, Where Art Thou, or with Alison Krauss crossing over into country, or with String Cheese Incident becoming a big draw — there might be a surge related to those things. But mostly the genre grows slowly like a tree. It’s healthy. The roots are growing, as well as the branches.

From those days starting out with Hot Rize in ’78, it just seems to keep growing. That’s the overall trend. Young kids are going back to the old stuff and remaking it. Even if you do something that’s been done before, your version of it will appeal to someone in a new way. It’s heartwarming to see it. Evolution is part of the definition of tradition. Each musician is a link in the chain and, whether you like it or not, you’re part of a tradition. You’re not going to do it exactly like the old folks did it, and you’re not going to do something completely original. You might as well get used to it.

In the same vein, you’re circling back to Wheeling tonight.

Yeah, it’s really exciting. I’m playing a little restaurant bar! [Laughs] Almost everyone there will be my friend, so that’s a little intimidating. But it’ll be fun. I just want to go out and walk the streets a little bit.

MIXTAPE: Mark O’Connor’s Bluegrass Basics

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From Bill Monroe on down the line, bluegrass has always stayed rooted even while it has reached its branches out to embrace each new generation of players. Fiddler Mark O’Connor knows a thing or two about that history, growing up listening to the greats and, eventually, playing with many of them. He collected a dozen bluegrass basic tunes for anyone wanting to explore the form.

Bill Monroe — “New Muleskinner Blues” (1940)
The virtuoso singer Bill Monroe introduced his new bluegrass sound in 1939 to the Grand Ole Opry with “New Muleskinner Blues.” Jimmie Rodgers also called it his “Blue Yodel No. 8” on his recording of the song 10 years earlier. In an Atlanta recording session in 1940, Bill and his Blue Grass Boys revved the song up with his high tenor voice, a faster tempo, and his trademark hard-driving rhythm. Along with his unusual lead mandolin solos and the bluesy fiddling by Tommy Magness, it set the pace for bluegrass to come. I am proud to say that I got to record with Monroe on one of his signature instrumentals, “Gold Rush” in 1992.

Flatt & Scruggs — “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” (1949 Mercury Single)
Flatt and Scruggs made bluegrass wildly successful, bringing it to the mainstream of television, the movies, and to Carnegie Hall. Lester Flatt had, perhaps, a more accessible country music voice than Monroe did, but it was his instrumental counterpart, Earl Scruggs, who lit the music scene up with the perfected five-string banjo roll he adopted from North Carolina banjo pickers. Forward, backward, and alternating, he was an absolute virtuoso on the banjo. I had the Scruggs book and tried to learn banjo the way he did it, as did thousands of others. A thrilling opportunity for me was to record with Earl on his second instrumental banjo album produced by his son Randy Scruggs.

Osborne Brothers — “Rocky Top” (1956)
When the mandolinist and virtuoso singer Bobby Osborne recorded “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?” featuring his astonishingly clear tenor voice, the bluegrass world had another standard-bearing tenor after Monroe. The brothers soon took “Rocky Top” to being one of the most successful bluegrass songs in history. Not many have the chops to sing “Ruby,” but our own Kate Lee sure can in the O’Connor Band! We recorded it in a loving homage to these greats from the 1950s.

The Stanley Brothers — “Angel Band” (mid-1950s)
My mother had nearly 30 Stanley Brothers albums during my childhood. Like with Mozart, mom thought that listening to the Stanley Brothers on the phonograph was good for her children. And it was. Ralph had the most alluring lonesome tenor voice in bluegrass music, and there is no one really close to him on that account. When the old-time mountain soul singer comes in on each chorus to join his brother Carter, Ralph’s was a lonesome, enchanting beauty. The sacred quartet singing of the Stanleys moved the soul.

Doc Watson with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — “Tennessee Stud” (1972)
When I was 11, this is the album that I actually took to bed with me at night. It replaced my stuff animal and security blanket, I loved it so much. I wanted this music more than anything else really, and so did a lot of people as the three-LP set went platinum. Besides the virtuoso performances on it by Vassar Clements and Earl Scruggs, I was transfixed by Doc Watson’s guitar playing and voice. He was a larger-than-life figure on this recording. I joined Doc on the road, along with his son Merle, for a few years in my early 20s on the fiddle and mandolin, and it gave me the mountain groove for a lifetime that I will never forget.

Old & in the Way with Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, and Vassar Clements — “Midnight Moonlight” (1973)
The folkies and hippies from the unlikely bluegrass stronghold of California were blowing minds in the ’70s. For the next generation like me, it appealed to my contemporary sensibilities. These rockers navigated the bluegrass byways with their long hair, virtuoso playing chops, and a modern attitude with the old music. While it was hard for Monroe to accept, this generation of bluegrass was among the best thing that happened to his music. It gave bluegrass music its future, and prevented it from becoming a museum piece. I must have played “Midnight Moonlight” on stage with former Monroe sideman Peter Rowan hundreds of times in the ’80s.

J.D. Crowe and the New South with Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Douglas — “Ten Degrees” (1975)
At the same time that the California bluegrassers were establishing the genre’s jamband future, Crowe ran his ship tightly with this group of new bluegrass virtuosos out of Kentucky. In much the same way that Monroe rehearsed his boys, the New South vintage 1975 album achieved perfection in bluegrass music for their time. Ricky became a superstar and Jerry became a person for which the dobro could have been renamed. And there was the legend in the making — Tony Rice. He was defining what bluegrass guitar was to become and, at the same time, bringing modern songs and singing into bluegrass repertoire.

David Grisman Quintet with Tony Rice — “E.M.D.” (1976)
When this album came out, it changed my young life and musical direction. I knew what I wanted to be, all of the sudden. Although I loved the old bluegrass, I could not see myself embarking on a career doing it. Tony’s switch to the DGQ from traditional bluegrass gave many of us bluegrass musicians permission to partake in swing and jazz, and that we did. I got to join the David Grisman Quintet just three years after this recording was made, replacing Tony as the lead guitarist and playing Dawg music.

Strength in Numbers — “Slopes” (1989)
Once upon a time, there was this group of bluegrass players that upped the ante from the swing, modern country, and rock explorations of its predecessors, bringing in modern jazz and classical sensibilities to the bluegrass music, successfully, for the first time. No one really knew what to call it or knew what to do with it, at the time. Decades later, the words “seminal” and “iconic” are ascribed to the five Nashville lads who dared to take it another step further.

Mark O’Connor — “Granny White Ridge” (1991)
This is one of my recordings and one of the biggest-selling albums I have released. Receiving two Grammys, this album put Nashville session musicians from the 1980s front and center. For a blistering track, the bluegrass and newgrass cats of Nashville were summoned: I called on Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Russ Barrenburg, and Mark Schatz who all rose to the occasion and answered bluegrass’s call once again!

Alison Krauss & Union Station — “Every Time You Say Goodbye” (1992)
Alison made history as the first great female bluegrass star. With the voice of an angel and great bluegrass fiddling to match, she took a page from J.D. Crowe’s seminal bands and made bluegrass about smart, contemporary songs for a new generation of music lovers. Two of my best memories of getting to know Alison are when she beat me in a fiddle contest at age 13 and her parents apologized to me! And when I arranged the old tune “Fishers Hornpipe” for both of us to play fiddles with Yo-Yo Ma. Today we carry that arrangement of the old hornpipe into the O’Connor Band.

Kenny Baker — “Jerusalem Ridge” (1993)
I was like a kid in a candy store when I got to create an album that featured all of my fiddle heroes on it — all 14 of them! But the fun didn’t end there … I got to play fiddle duets with each of them on the album, and recording the very music of theirs that inspired me to play the violin in the first place. The largely out-of-body experience culminated in one of my classic records. For one of the cuts, I got to record with the bluegrass great Kenny Baker on a fiddle tune he wrote with his boss at the time — the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. Perhaps the greatest bluegrass instrumental tune of all time. We added the tune to the O’Connor Band repertoire as well with our three fiddles in the mix. Always a highlight, it is timeless.

Photo credit: mauxditty via Foter.com / CC BY.

A Slice of Life: A Conversation with Mac Wiseman

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Members of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys — and there were more than 150 of them during his half-century career — often started their own bands in the style of their mentor. This was a huge part of Monroe’s influence: He was both bandleader and charismatic evangelist, training future bandleaders to preach bluegrass in a Monroe-style band of their own. His star students (Jimmy Martin, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Carter Stanley, Del McCoury, Peter Rowan) started their own influential bluegrass bands — not carbon copies, of course, but homages to the Founding Father’s vision. It was an apprenticeship model.

But one early Blue Grass Boy, Mac Wiseman, left the band to do something unusual: He played solo. He still sang songs from the canon of bluegrass and early country, but he presented them with just his guitar and voice. For dyed-in-the-wool grassers, it was kind of weird. The inside joke went something like, “Did you hear the sad news? Mac Wiseman broke up.”

There was another thing that made him different — and this is just my impression, but I think our interview backs it up. Among the early Monroe disciples, he projected a pretty non-bluegrass relationship to his Southern-ness. Wiseman grew up during the Depression in Virginia coal country, having as much of an authentic claim to rural roots as any of the bombastic blue-collar belters like Jimmy Martin, but he de-emphasized the drawl. Wiseman started his career as a radio broadcaster and always sounded like one. He didn’t want to develop a groovy, bluesy, Monroe-style band or shake the rafters with a piercing tenor. Instead, he found a home in the ’60s folk revival crowd. He told stories. He enunciated. He crooned.

And now, at 91, he has a new album. I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart) features 10 songs that tell the story of Wiseman’s long, busy life. Featured guests like John Prine, Shawn Camp, Sierra Hull, and Alison Krauss help pay tribute to his distinctive voice and one-of-a-kind career. Amazingly, Mac Wiseman can still hit the high notes.

I called Mac at his house in Nashville and first got his answering machine. He picked up, interrupting my message, and said, “Sorry I almost missed you! I had the vacuum going!” We talked about his childhood during the Depression, how he learned guitar while recovering from polio, his introduction to John Prine (it involves a threat — and Earl Scruggs), and his deep disappointment with the direction of country music. At 91, he’s gracious, funny, and sharp as a tack — and, maybe most impressively, he still does his own vacuuming.

First of all, I think it’s amazing that you’re 91 years old and still singing. It’s amazing, too, to think of how much social and cultural change you must’ve seen in your lifetime.

Oh, it certainly is. And I’ve been blessed with a decent memory. When I think of all the different phases I’ve gone through, it’s hard to cope with it sometimes.

I know you were born in mining country in Crimera, Virginia, in 1925. I’m sure life in Virginia back then was pretty different.

The first four or five years I was alive, it was peaches and cream. Then the Depression hit and it was the opposite. It was onions and water! I have vivid memories of when I was four, five, six years old. I remember how carefree things were. When the new highways were being constructed all over the place, my dad was making nine dollars a day. He had a Ford Model T car with solid rubber tires on it in 1928. Then, the next year, he couldn’t even afford to buy the tags for it.

I heard that you started learning the guitar while you were recovering from polio, is that right?

Actually, it was while I was recovering from a few corrective surgeries. I had polio when I was six months old, but they wouldn’t do any surgeries until I was approximately the growth I was going to be. So, at about 13 years of age, I went to Charlottesville to the hospital — twice. They operated on my legs, and it made all the difference in the world. That’s when I started learning the guitar, just laying around with a cast on up to my butt!

I guess you couldn’t do much but sit and sing.

That’s exactly right. I had been very active, of course, working the farm for our livelihood, but when I was laid up that summer and fall through the seventh grade, my mother had to take me to pick up the school bus in a little buggy. Then I went on and became valedictorian. How do you like them apples? [Laughs]

That’s impressive! I heard another impressive quote about you. Bill Monroe called you “the best lead singer I ever had.” That’s pretty high praise from a guy who was a tough bandleader.

Well, he did say that, and that was very complimentary. Oh, working for him was very interesting. We toured a lot. He was from Kentucky, of course, and we played all the big theaters around there. We traveled and watched all the movie rolls. Bill and I watched them so much we could recite them riding along in the car! He was a very interesting man to work for. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he told you. But I enjoyed working for him and we never had a cross word.

You’ve made over 60 albums, recorded some 800 songs …

Yep, sure have. A lot!

… and most of that was before the Google era, when you could look up all 50 versions of a song with one click. How did you learn new songs, and how did you decide which ones to record?

In my growing up days, we mostly listened to live radio. In the ’20s and ’30s, radio was just coming into its own, you know, and it was mostly live — there were no disc jockeys. My mother was quite interested in music. She would play the organ and read shape notes and things like that. She encouraged me, hoping I would learn something that would get me out of the fields. That’s where I learned a lot of those old songs. She would sit out by the radio — we had the first battery radio in our community — in the wintertime, when it was too cold to work outside, she sat there and quilted and crocheted. She had a composition book laying on top of the radio, and when a live group would come on and sing a song, she’d get a verse or two of it. A few days later, they’d sing it again and she’d get some more. I’ve got 13 composition books in her handwriting where she wrote those songs down for me.

That’s really a treasure.

It is indeed. That’s where I got my background of the old songs. I can remember some of those songs from when I was four or five years old. “Granny’s Old Arm Chair” and “Barbara Allen,” things like that.

That’s interesting. Those old ballads like “Barbara Allen,” they’re story songs. And that’s sort of what the songs on this new record do. They tell your story.

That’s right. It’s my life story in song … 10 songs.

That’s one thing I really like about your singing, that sets you apart from some bluegrass and country singers — it may be a small thing, but it strikes me as important to you — that you sing words really clearly. It’s always easy to hear your lyrics.

Lyrics are very important to me. That’s been an important identity for me, as well. I went to college majoring in radio and did a lot of air work — news, pop records shows, working the control room — and that’s where a lot of my diction comes from.

Well, it shows in your songs. You know how to tell a story.

Well, I try to do that. You know, I actually lived those stories. They don’t change with generations. Even with a new batch of people, the old songs remain the same, and the themes remain the same. Disasters and love and train wrecks, things like that. They’re a slice of life, so to speak.

I’m only 26. My generation grew up with the Internet, many of us living in suburbs, getting our food from an air conditioned grocery store. Do you think all these songs about trains and cabin homes and farming can still resonate emotionally with people?

Well, like I said, they’re a slice of life. Maybe there aren’t many train wrecks that you know about anymore, but it’s also an historical look, these songs. I’ve played a lot of the colleges, the listening rooms, just me and a guitar. They’ve wanted to hear these old songs that paint a picture of a life these kids have never been exposed to. That’s the reason for the longevity of them, I think.

One amazing thing to me is that you’ve played through so many eras of history and eras of music. You were right there through the beginning of bluegrass in the ’40s, but you also played the Newport Folk Festival in the ’60s — what was the Newport folk scene like?

I never knew Bob Dylan, but I did a number of festivals with Joan Baez. After these festivals in the evenings, that was fun, we’d gather up in hotel rooms and sing old songs.

So you’ve been making music for a long time, and it seems like learning from every different generation — bluegrass in the ’40s, folk in the ’60s, pop along the way. Do you feel like you had to reinvent yourself for different eras?

No, I just kept on doing my thing, you know. I could’ve been a bigger star for a short period of time by following the trends, but I decided to just be myself and hoped people liked that. Fortunately, I’ve had a pretty good haul all these years. But I never tried to copy anybody else in the business or change my style to seek what they wanted.

You got to work with a lot of great musicians on this new record.

That’s right. Alison Krauss came by my house and we recorded “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered” for the new CD. And I sang it the same key as I sang it in 1951 when I recorded it first for Dot Records! Even the new songs we wrote for this record, those are true stories in those songs: standing and warming my feet where the cows had been laying … wheat crop going bad because it rained on it … Every one of those are actual stories about my life. So, yeah, sorry to repeat myself, but it’s a slice of life.

John Prine is featured on this record, and you made a record with him in 2007. How did you get to know each other?

Well, I’d always been aware of his work. Then, one time, a guy who owned a studio came to Earl Scruggs’ birthday party — he’s a real boisterous fellow and he told me, “John says, if you don’t come see him Thursday, he’s going to kick your butt!” I admired him and all, so I went down to his office. What he had in mind was pitching me songs for me to do on my own. We got to talking and found out we knew a lot of the same things, so that’s how that record came about. That was one of the great experiences of my life, singing with John and swapping verses, you know. John still comes to my house to see me quite frequently.

You’ve been around for so much of country music history. I’m curious if you listen to any new music and what you think about it.

Today’s music? Well, I’m very disappointed in it, because so many of the younger artists don’t know the background. That’s the reason I go to colleges: They sit on the floor all hush-hush and listen to the old stories. Sometimes I have to do the same old song two or three times in a concert. So it’s an educational thing to the younger people. For so many industry people today, it’s all a mechanical thing. The record companies have publishing companies, so they can sign up an artist and put him in a room for four or five hours a day to write. Pretty often, one song out of the whole album is the one that hits, but the rest of them are junk. I still listen to it just to see what changes, but I don’t enjoy it like I did. There’s a few acts that I enjoy, but a lot of the younger ones, I don’t know who the hell they are!

So you feel like a lot of the younger artists don’t have an understanding of the history of country music?

No, they really don’t. They don’t have the knowledge of it. Actually, the record companies don’t have a knowledge of it. They’re business people out of New York and Chicago and L.A., and they come to Nashville to make business out of it. A lot of them have no idea of the history. I’ll give you a quick example: I was on the board of directors for the CMA where we nominated people for the Hall of Fame. And there was a young man on there from New York representing Decca Records here. We were at a board meeting, and folks like Owen Bradley were there, people of that vintage. [Note: Owen Bradley was an influential producer who helped modernize the Nashville sound in the ’50s and ’60s.] Owen nominated Brenda Lee. This young man stood up and quite innocently said, “Who is she and what did she do?” I wrote a letter of resignation right then and there. He was an honest fellow, and it was okay that he didn’t know, but what was he doing on that board?

Didn’t that make you want to stay on the board and change it and teach them a little more about the history?

No, you know, I was one of the founders. I worked at every facet of it. I’m the only living member of the original board of directors. I’ve been in it professionally since ’44, you know. Radio, bands, and recording. I was A&R director of the country department for Dot Records out of Hollywood for six years. Done a lot of things.

Well, you’re still singing at 91 — and you still sound like you. I’m sure a lot of people are wondering what’s your secret to staying productive into your 90s and still being able to sing so well.

I don’t know, but it is a blessing. I think it’s sticking to your guns and the good Lord’s blessing — that’s it.

Mr. Wiseman, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me this afternoon.

Well, it was my pleasure. I’m so pleased you’re writing about this music. But at the same time, you know, it keeps me alive.

MIXTAPE: Songs to Crawl Inside

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Aren’t half-somber, half-hopeful songs the most comforting? Through gloomy Winters when you’re chilled to the bone, snuggled under your favorite fleece with a piping hot cup of herbal tea, perhaps you find yourself newly single, binge-watching reality television and taking a spoon directly to that pint of Ben & Jerry’s … or when you’re staring down four years of an unqualified, immature, egomaniac, C-list celebrity/Twitter personality occupying the White House — crawl inside any or all of these songs.

Brandi Carlile — “That Wasn’t Me”

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t ever put this song on repeat and sobbed the lyrics over and over. Whether accidentally or purposefully, we’ve all had experiences when our true selves haven’t shown through. Maybe our intentions have been mischaracterized through no fault of our own or maybe we hide behind intricate facades. “Do I make myself a blessing to everyone I meet? When you fall, I will get you on your feet. Do I spend time with my family? Did it show when I was weak? When that’s what you see, that will be me.”

Darrell Scott — “Someday”

“Someday” is a really difficult word to handle, but it’s a beautiful thing when it’s hopeful rather than daunting. Someday the world will change for the better; someday it will all fall into place; someday we’ll finally be the people we want to be; someday we’ll look back and understand. As usual, Darrell Scott sings with goosebump-inducing conviction, “I will love someday. I’ll break these feet and these eyes and this heart of clay … someday.”

Lee Ann Womack — “Little Past Little Rock”

This song is a mandatory addition to every road trip playlist I make, but it’s not just a comfort for travelers and everyone eastbound on I-30. This is a song of liberation, of staring fear in the eye and finally standing up for oneself. If LAW is at peace with not knowing what the future holds, then we can be, too. Let that baritone guitar tug your heartstrings.

Alison Krauss & Union Station — “Find My Way Back to My Heart”

“I used to laugh at all those songs about the rambling life, the nights so long and lonely. But I ain’t laughing now …” And with just the first line you find yourself curled up within this song like a warm, impossibly soft snuggie. We would all crawl inside Alison’s comforting, plaintive voice on its own if we could, right? Then the slight, lilting asymmetry of the lyrics and the haunting, iconic So Long So Wrong aesthetic draw us in even further.

Ashley Monroe — “Like a Rose”

It takes a zen mindset to acknowledge your past with its good, bad, and ugly, and appreciate how it’s brought you to where you are today — especially if where you are today isn’t quite where you want to be yet. But if you can understand that you can still be your best self in any of those contexts, well, you really have come out like a rose. Lemme just crawl inside that beautiful moral-to-the-story.

Jason Isbell — “Flagship”

With a setting that would rival the best indie movie — a crumbling hotel, a harlequin cast of characters — Isbell aspires to a love that will last longer than structures, that won’t fade or grow stale, and will stand out as a banner for all to achieve. At first seemingly naïve or out of touch, the realism of the unmanicured surroundings make us feel like this kind of connection is not only attainable, but right around the corner. And that idea is just so gosh darn reassuring.

Erin Rae and the Meanwhiles — “Minolta”

Here’s another voice you’d crawl inside, if you could. Erin Rae shines a more positive light on our culture of constant social media and photo sharing, but with a vintage twist. Imagine a friendship so dear that you wish you could follow that special person around just to see the world through their eyes. “Good things are on their way for you, and if I’m not beside you for the ride, take a picture I can stop and look at sometimes.” Friendships like this help us all get out of bed in the morning.

Hot Rize — “You Were On My Mind This Morning”

If you’re thinking about someone and reminiscing, this song is for you. If you’re scared a certain someone isn’t thinking about you, this song is for you. If you wish Tim O’Brien were thinking about you this morning, well … us, too. The seminal, progressive bluegrass sounds of Hot Rize are excellent, as always, but my personal favorite recording of this song has to be our Sitch Session of Tim serenading the mountains.

Chris Stapleton — “Fire Away”

Let’s talk to each other more. Let’s listen to each other more. Let’s let it all out more. Let’s warm up with Stapleton’s smoky voice and cuddle up in his beard. Wait … wut?

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris — “Feels Like Home”

This song had to make this list. But perhaps the more important thing here is the version. Of all the recordings of this modern classic, could there be a single one more comforting and soothing than Linda, Dolly, and Emmy? Hint: The answer is no. (Give “High Sierra” a spin, while you’re at it. It gets an honorable-crawl-inside-mention.)

Sara Watkins — “Take Up Your Spade”

Okay. It’s time to get to work, put one foot in front of the other, and push slowly but surely toward our goals. Oh, and don’t forget to give thanks along the way. We all have a lot to be thankful for.

Photo credit: Martin Cathrae via Foter.com / CC BY-SA.

BGS Class of 2017: Preview

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This is going to be an exceptional year in roots music with new releases coming later on from Jason Isbell, Lee Ann Womack, Holly Williams, Chris Stapleton, Chuck Berry, and so many more. Here are some albums we’re excited about dropping in the first half of 2017.

Natalie Hemby: Puxico

Ani DiFranco: Binary

Pieta Brown: Postcards

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Alison Krauss: Windy City

Rodney Crowell: Close Ties

Caroline Spence: Spades & Roses

Valerie June: The Order of Time

Noam Pikelny: Universal Favorite

— Kelly McCartney

* * *

Jaime Wyatt: Felony Blues

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Natalie Hemby: Puxico

Alison Krauss: Windy City

Sunny Sweeney: Trophy

Pieta Brown: Postcards

Nikki Lane: Highway Queen

Caroline Spence: Spades & Roses

Rogue + Jaye: Pent Up

— Brittney McKenna

* * *

Mark Eitzel: Hey Mr. Ferryman

Ryan Adams: Prisoner

Alison Krauss: Windy City

Nikki Lane: Highway Queen

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Old 97’s: Graveyard Whistling

Valerie June: The Order of Time

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator

Various: From Here: English Folk Field Recordings

Bruce Springsteen: TBA

— Stephen Deusner

* * *

Tift Merritt: Stitch of the World

Leif Vollebekk: Twin Solitude

Ryan Adams: Prisoner

Jesca Hoop: Memories Are Now

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Gold Connections: Gold Connections (EP)

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator

Laura Marling: Semper Femina

Michael Chapman: 50

— Amanda Wicks

* * *

Ryan Adams: Prisoner

Nikki Lane: Highway Queen

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Hurray for the Riff Raff: The Navigator

Valerie June: The Order of Time

Dead Man Winter: Furnace

Laura Marling: Semper Femina

Son Volt: Notes of Blue

Sera Cahoone: From Where I Started

— Desiré Moses

* * *

John Moreland: TBA

Rogue + Jaye: Pent Up

Rhiannon Giddens: Freedom Highway

Nikki Lane: Highway Queen

Little Bandit: Breakfast Alone

Ryan Adams: Prisoner 

— Marissa Moss