Tag: asheville

Camp Tunefox Immerses New Musicians in Bluegrass and Creativity

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Camp Tunefox strives to bring out the creativity in aspiring bluegrass musicians, even those who are just starting on guitar, banjo, or mandolin. This year’s camp takes place on May 15-19 in Montreat, North Carolina (right outside of Asheville), with teachers such as Danny Barnes, Wes Corbett, Grant Gordy, Clay Hess, Joe Walsh, and Mike Compton. Tunefox’s Bennett Sullivan answered a few questions by email about the upcoming event.

What sets Camp Tunefox apart from other instrument camps?

I’d say our focus on creativity and musicality over pure technique is what makes Camp Tunefox different. The schedule for the camp is organized using daily themes so each day all of the campers will have a focus that they can practice and discuss together. The teachers will teach their material with the theme in mind and the small group rehearsals will be aligned with it as well.

Tunefox is an app company and we have online content that will help support the students’ learning at camp. We’ll be launching a new feature and the campers will be the first ones to experience it in May.

How do you decide upon the instructors?

We wanted teachers that reflected both the tradition of bluegrass and pushing the envelope. Most of all, the teachers at camp are creators at heart. They’re people that have studied with the great bluegrass artists, either with their records or in person, and they bring that knowledge and passion with them to every gig, teaching event, or recording session.

I also am looking forward to learning from each of the teachers. As a professional musician, I know more than anyone the value of hearing a different perspective, be it musical or academic.

Your 2019 theme is Cultivating Individual Creativity. What does that mean to you?

It’s what I strive for every day! These days I’m writing more music in an attempt to further discover who I am. The creative process is a vulnerable, yet revealing space. At Camp I want the students to be inspired to look in themselves to not only technically play music but play it with intention. Bluegrass can be intimidating and when you label yourself as a ‘bluegrass musician’ it seems you have to play a lot of notes really quickly. I want the students to leave camp knowing themselves a little bit better. And I’d like that for myself, too.

What can a someone who is new to the instrument expect to learn at Tunefox?

[New players] will be immersed in an experience where they will learn foundational concepts like rhythm and chords but also be encouraged to create, improvise, and explore what music means to them. I think beginners can do this from the start. We’ve all listened to music before and we have a taste of what we like and dislike. So when you approach learning an instrument, you bring that discernment with you. It’s important to learn the fundamentals but when it comes to choosing songs to learn, pick what you dig most. Eventually, this will translate into ‘your sound.’

What is it like, from your perspective, to see these beginners develop their ability?

It’s exciting. The smallest breakthrough by a student gives me so much joy. All of the teachers resonate with this as well. Camp Tunefox will be a hands-on experience, giving students even more of an opportunity to make these breakthroughs with the guidance of experts at hand.

 

Photo courtesy of Tunefox

 

Discover more about Camp Tunefox and the Tunefox app at tunefox.com

LISTEN: Jane Kramer, “Hymn”

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Artist: Jane Kramer
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Hymn”
Album: Valley of the Bones
Release Date: March 1, 2019

In Their Words: “This song was a kind of ‘homework’ assignment from my songwriting mentor, Mary Gauthier. She looked me in the eye and told me that all of my self-deprecation wasn’t cute or charming and asked me, ‘When are you going to drop the bullsh*t and really own your power and talent?’ She told me that only then would I write the kind of songs that were up to my full potential. She challenged me to write a song from a perspective of self-love. Like, full, real, spiritual and true self-love, and to call it my ‘Hymn,’ whatever that meant to me. I spent a few weeks after that alone, backpacking around Italy with a little travel guitar. I wrote this song in a little mountain village called Vetulonia, where I slept in a little cottage with a hammock for a bed, looking out over mountains that reminded me of home, and it sunk in then that I couldn’t really come home till I came home to myself. So I did.” — Jane Kramer

Photo Credit: Rose Kaz

Greensky Bluegrass Capture the Live Jam on ‘All For Money’

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With their progressive mindset and undying faith in the power of the jam, the electrifying live shows put on by Greensky Bluegrass have captivated roots and rock fans alike for nearly two decades – but the Midwestern five piece has always been more than a group of gifted musicians. Layered, thought-provoking songcraft is also a big part of their DNA, and with their new album, All For Money, those two worlds come together like never before.

This month, the band – composed of mandolin player and primary songwriter Paul Hoffman, guitarist Dave Bruzza, banjo picker Michael Arlen Bont, Dobro player Anders Beck, and bassist Mike Devol – embarked on a milestone tour of listening halls that are well suited to showcase both sides of the Greensky Bluegrass double helix, and according to Hoffman, that everything-at-once approach is the next step of their journey.

“We don’t have any grandiose dreams or visions of things we haven’t accomplished,” he says, “and I think it’s been that way for the last 10 years. Being able to go out and play the right venue in all the right towns where we can put on a big show and present everything we do … it’s about getting that to happen everywhere now.”

BGS: You guys were inspired early on by The Grateful Dead, and I hear that improvisational spirit on the new album. Do you feel like All For Money is a return to your roots?

Paul Hoffman: We talk about this album being a lot more like a show than previous records because for us, [studio work and being onstage are] kind of two separate art forms. … With this record we went for the show aspect right from the get-go. It’s a little loose, and a little improvised, and we’ve succeeded with that more and more on every record – finding ways to capture that live spirit but still utilize all the tools available to us in the studio. Like for example, maybe there’s a place where there’s two mandolins at once. We couldn’t do that live, but if it sounds cool on the record, let’s do it.

Tell me about recording in Asheville. What kind of vibe do you guys get there?

We love that town. In the young days of the band we thought we should move there and maybe it would spark our career. We didn’t, and it was probably for the best, but the studio is really cool. It’s like an old church and it’s got a lot of room to work in. All our early records were done in Michigan in this studio that’s really small, and you don’t need a big room or an extra room downstairs with a ping pong table and video games and a kitchen and three couches. You don’t need any of those luxuries, but as soon as we went to [the studio,] Echo Mountain, to record the last record, it was like “Man, this is nice” … and now we probably do need them. [Laughs]

Digging into the live show versus studio album idea, you have a couple of really lengthy songs here. “Courage for the Road” is over nine minutes long, and I get that in a live setting, but why stretch it out for the album?

I think sometimes we’ve found that our fans are separate. Some of them are live music aficionados and don’t really enjoy listening to the records, and some people who like our records come to the show and are like “Why are all these songs so long and psychedelic?” I think there’s a part of us that figures those things don’t need to be separate, and maybe if we did a bit more from both sides of the equation, there’s something there for everybody.

The goal for that song is for it to remain interesting the whole time, and when I listen to it I feel like I’m listening to a well-mixed, well-recorded, live jam. It was so organic with how it happened that it kind of had to be left alone, and I think that translates to the listener as live energy. That’s the thing you sacrifice in the studio if you start overdubbing too much, and that’s when some people complain. What they’re really complaining about is that it loses some of that honest energy and integrity, so those jams should preserve that.

Tell me about the inspiration behind that song. Is this literally about being on the road, or more of a relationship thing?

It’s all of the things. I like to write about multiple things at the same time, and I think it helps. People are gonna read into it how they want anyway. So I’ll often start talking about something and then realize I’m talking about something else, too. It works really well as a simple song about being on tour, but it also works as a song about being in love with someone and not being able to let go, or being obsessed with something for the wrong reasons.

Why might you need some courage for being on the road?

It’s a lonely place sometimes, and that in itself is a paradox. You’re surrounded by people who love you every night, but then the lights go down and the crowd goes home and you’re all alone again. It’s hard to even have an argument for feeling lonely on tour when so many people are coming to see us and support us, but they are real things. And even in general, when you make that commitment to quit your job and leave your family for six weeks at a time, and maybe come home with little to show for it, it’s hard for musicians to keep sticking it out.

Tell me about the song “All For Money” and the interlude in the middle. When you were writing it, were you thinking, “It would be cool to do two minutes of jamming right here”?

Sometimes it comes up in the moment, but with that song it was real intentional. I wanted to explore this idea of the pressure of success and the whole “Be careful what you wish for” kind of thing. Back in the day when we were playing in a bar and all we had to do was win over some fans, in hindsight that’s almost easier than living up to the expectations of all these fans now, who travel and spend money to see us all the time.

They see us a lot so it’s like you’ve got to come up with new tricks and something happened in the last couple of years where it was like the pressure built up. That’s not to say it was too much or that we don’t love it, but it occurred to me that there was a real paradox of success happening where it was like “Man, this is hard!” Sometimes we joke around like “Why don’t they stop following us?!” … Which is absolutely not what we want.

So there’s a joke there, or at least a duality to be explored, and I wanted to set the song up in a way that it’s supposed to get creepy or disorienting, and to make you feel uncomfortable. I talk about being supported but surrounded, contained but captured, and then it comes around to that triumphant chorus that’s all about the love and the songs creating emotion and camaraderie. It goes on this journey of joking around and all these lies we were told in the beginning, and then it gets scary and uncomfortable on purpose. It’s almost supposed to be discomforting, more than a jam.

I love your lyrics, because as you explained there are lots of layers and you’re not afraid to question yourself. What were you trying to get at with “Do It Alone”?

I was trying to touch on this angst-y, rock and roll thing. I wanted something that had an anthem vibe, something a crowd would cheer along with, and again I was thinking about a couple of different things at once. One moment I’ll be thinking about a friend of mine who’s in love with a girl who doesn’t love him anymore, and the next I’m like “Man, I miss my dog.” [Laughs] Sometimes really specific lyrics about really different things can help you get some insight into that other thing.

Photo credit: Dylan Langille/ontheDL Photo

LISTEN: Southern Pine, “Standing Still”

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Artist: Southern Pine
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Standing Still”
Album: Standing Still
Release Date: January 11, 2019

In Their Words: “I wrote the majority ‘Standing Still’ in a small park in North Hollywood. At the time I was nearing the end of my first several-month national tour and it seemed to burst out of me as a reflection of all that had transpired — a meditation on how the places we go and the things we see transform the people we are. The song sat for a long time, present in my mind, but feeling unfinished. I was ready to give up on it, when I met my friend Meryll Davis. I played her what I had and she instinctively came up with the final verse (my favorite of the song). The song now serves me as a punctuation of sorts, helping to guide from the end of one chapter into the next.” — Zack Kardon

Photo credit: John Shuler

Curiosity and Persistence: Amy Ray Gets Down to Her Roots on ‘Holler’

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Amy Ray’s new project, Holler, is the closest thing she’s made to a classic country album in a career that stretches across nearly 30 years. As one-half of the Indigo Girls, she’s won a folk Grammy and toured the world, sharing her musical path with Emily Saliers. But on Holler, Ray retreated to Asheville, North Carolina, with a hand-picked band of musicians who knew how to play country music – and she was eager to record the new music to tape using the studio’s vintage machines.

“For this band in particular, there is a real kind of magic quality to knowing that you can’t go back and change a lot of things,” she says. “So it keeps you on your toes the whole time. You have to be well-rehearsed. And at the same time, you just want to go for it.”

Taking a break from signing vinyl copies of Holler a few days before its release, Ray chatted with the Bluegrass Situation about finding happiness on a clawhammer banjo, discovering a commonality with Connie Britton’s character, Rayna Jaymes on ABC/CMT’s Nashville, and staying curious about the world.

How much did you rehearse this new material before going into the studio?

This unit has been playing together for about almost five years, so that’s like been our rehearsal — just touring. For these songs in particular, we did have some rehearsals, but most of the stuff we had rehearsed or worked on arrangements at my house. Or we would have a gig, like we opened for Tedeschi Trucks here and there, and I would use that as an opportunity to practice the day before. We would get together at the hotel and go to the conference room and work on songs – like at the Microtel or whatever – and do arrangements. It bought us a lot of time.

So the band knew the songs well in advance.

Yep, except for “Dadgum Down,” which was a wildcard, which no one knew. We didn’t even know if we were going to do it. I kept saying, “I have this song I wrote on banjo, but I don’t know what I’m going to do with it,” like a broken record over and over and over again. Jeff Fielder, the guitar player, and Alison Brown, who guested on banjo on the track – those two really came up with what became the arrangement for the song. It turned out to be a really fun experience because I put my banjo down and said, “I’m just going to sing.” But everything else, we had really worked on it and spent a lot of time fine-tuning the arrangements.

So the reference in that song about the sting of the bee — is that a reference to drugs?

It’s everything. The stinging [lyric] was another song I was working on, and I was like, “Oh, these are actually about the same thing.” Which is addiction, and relationships. So it’s like, it’s in the nature of the bee to sting. And it’s in the nature of love, and it’s in the nature of drugs. You can’t get mad at that item, because that’s part of their nature, and it’s also what you’re hungry for.

So it’s meant to be more than one dimension because the song is about wrestling with addiction — addiction to a person, and addiction to drugs, and addiction to anything. I’m always fascinated by that because I have an addictive personality, but also I have a lot of friends in recovery. And I don’t drink anymore, so I know how it is to try and beat that.

I want to ask about your musicianship. How did you get interested in the guitar?

It was just a vehicle to sing with probably. I mean, that’s probably why I’m not a better guitar player, too, because I looked at it as, “I want to write songs, and I want to sing, so I gotta learn how to play something.” I was playing piano, but not very successfully. I was in fifth grade and I got a guitar and took lessons at the Y. I learned like five chords and I could play all the Neil Young songs. So I was like, “This is perfect.”

What was the path to learning the other stringed instruments?

Well, mandolin, I just learned. It was like a natural thing for me, I guess. I was interested. I think I learned it because…. I’m trying to remember why I picked up a mandolin. I think I borrowed somebody’s flatiron mandolin and I liked it a lot. I thought this was cool, these chords. And I never really learned how to play properly, which I really want to do one day. But I was learning more from mountain music, like field recording kind of stuff. So I didn’t really learn the bluegrass style, or any of that. And then banjo is just something to knock around on, I don’t really know how to play.

Yeah, but it makes you happy right?

It makes me happy! It doesn’t matter. I try to play clawhammer and it makes me happy. [Laughs]

I’ve followed your career since that first Indigo Girls record, and you always seem to be doing something new and having something coming up. Where did that work ethic from?

Probably my parents, my family, just the way I was raised — workaholic.

Yeah, but you’ve never really rested on your laurels or waited around for it.

I get bored with laurels, and there’s not enough of them to rest on, either. I like the process as much as the prize. I mean, seriously. So for me it’s like I get bored and I really do want to become better at what I do. I think the only way to do that is to keep doing it. And for Emily and I, persistence was our friend forever. I mean, if we hadn’t worked hard and been persistent, and then had a lot of luck, we wouldn’t have made it.

That reminds me of “Tonight I’m Paying the Rent,” which is about putting in the time. Some gigs are not necessarily feeding your spirituality, but you’re still working, doing what you love. What’s the reward for what you’re telling me about – where you’re working, and traveling, and staying busy?

I don’t know, I’m just proud of it. Because when I do a solo tour and get to the end of it, and been able to play all the gigs, and drive all the miles and everything, I feel proud of it. I don’t know why. The process is fun, and I like the people I’m with. I’m just compelled. I think we are compelled by something, and it probably is fear of mortality and all of those deep things too. But it’s also like, well, it beats us sitting around. And it’s fun to try to do something that’s hard to do, and then be able to do it. It feels good.

Is it a calling for you, do you think, to be up there singing?

Who knows? I mean, I have no idea. It’s all I know, though. It’s all I know how to do. So I don’t know if it’s a calling or like a compulsion. I mean, “Tonight I’m Paying the Rent” really also grew out of needing an attitude check. Emily and I were playing a few of these private party kind of things, and I had such a negative attitude about it because they’re soul-sucking. And you’re just doing it for the money, and we stopped doing them because of that.

But then at the same time, I was watching an episode of Nashville where Rayna has to play a private party for a venture capitalist in California. And of course, the guy that hired her is a big fan, but no one else likes her, or likes country. And she’s out there, and she’s smiling, and no one’s listening. And I was like, I’ve totally been there a million times. Then her attitude about it after the show was like, “We all have bills to pay,” or whatever she says.

And that’s the attitude I have. Like, “Tonight I’m paying the rent.” That’s what that song grew out of. It’s like, “Why be so negative about this thing?” Yeah, maybe it’s not fun, but it beats digging a ditch. And look – you’re actually paying bills. That’s hard to do.

To me, “Didn’t Know a Damn Thing” is about history that you haven’t been taught, that you discover it on your own by seeking it out. Where does your own sense of curiosity come from?

I think that’s probably from my family and growing up with role models that were curious. Even my dad, who was super conservative, was also curious about everything. Even though we disagreed about a lot of things, one thing I know about him is that he was curious, and he would always listen to the other side. All the best teachers I ever had in high school and my favorite youth minister at church were curious and they didn’t mind it when I questioned things either.

And I don’t know why I always felt like I needed to question things. … I think part of that was paranoia. It was like the flip side of curiosity, which is paranoia. And I was like, this can’t be all there is, there’s got to be something else going on. It doesn’t feel right. And when you start feeling those feelings, you know you’ve got to look into it.

Photo credit (color): Carrie Schrader
Photo credit (black-and-white): Ian Fisher

BGS 5+5: The Band of Heathens

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Artist Name: The Band of Heathens
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest Album: A Message From The People, Revisited

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

Literature has been a strong influence on music and life in general. I really fell in love with reading at a young age, devouring everything from Inside Pro Football 1985 to The Three Investigators series. I had a great 20th century literature course in high school with a teacher named Chuck Wettergreen, who really encouraged me to fuse my love of playing music and writing songs with literature. We tackled everything from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible to As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner. Writers such as Kerouac, Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson have been life-long companions that have inspired me in the songwriting process.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I think I always knew that I wanted to play music. The first time I performed in front of an audience was in pre-school. My teacher somehow got Ella Jenkins (The First-Lady of Children’s Folk Songs) to visit our class and play music for us. I somehow ended up with a guitar in my hand at some point during the presentation and performed for my class. I was hooked from that point on!

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Paul McCartney + Lebanese Food in Beirut. I am of Lebanese descent and grew up loving the cuisine. Additionally, I’ve never been to Beirut and I understand that’s it’s a magnificent city. Oh yeah, I’ve also never met or dined with Paul McCartney, so it would probably be cool to talk about The Beatles and some other stuff.

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

Independence. The whole idea of making music and living my life as a creative person is based on an idea of freedom. The freedom to be independent to live a life of your choosing; from the hours you keep, to the friends you have, to the way you look and the clothes you wear. I know we live in a country where we are free to pursue anything we want, but I’ve always felt that this lifestyle was a way for me to manifest that idea and truly live it.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I’ve been living in Asheville, North Carolina, for about 5 years now and we are sandwiched between two national parks and have access to all sorts of natural wonder and beauty. I really enjoy hiking and exploring in the Pisgah National Forest, it really offers me a great opportunity to deep-breathe some fresh air and escape the everyday sounds of life. I’ve found that it really clears my head and makes room for creating song ideas. So many of my best initial ideas have come while I’ve been walking through and old growth forest, in the morning as the fog is lifting.

WATCH: Songs From The Road Band, “Road to Nowhere”

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Artist: Songs From The Road Band
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “Road to Nowhere”
Album: Road to Nowhere
Label: Lucks Dumpy Toad Records

In Their Words: “‘Road To Nowhere’ is a song about reconnecting with humanity. Today’s world is filled with digital distractions and all sorts of hustle, bustle, and worry. ‘Road To Nowhere’ will hopefully encourage the listener to get lost on a back road and spend some face to face time with a real person. The basic theme of the song is ‘unplug’ and reconnect with the natural world and the people in it!” – Charles Humphreys III

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

New Freedom Blues: A Conversation with Town Mountain

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The very first instrument you hear on “New Freedom Blues,” the new single from Town Mountain, is a kick drum. Wait, what?! As the title track of their upcoming album (out on October 26), it’s a mildly, slyly defiant poke at bluegrass tradition (or, more precisely, one interpretation of that tradition) before the full band piles in behind Robert Greer’s gruff, wry lament from a guy who just can’t win for losin’. (Stream the song below.)

Yet as a conversation with banjoist Jesse Langlais makes clear, the members of Town Mountain are more determined than ever to dish up a different take on the bluegrass legacy—one that hearkens back to some of the greatest work by some of the music’s greatest masters during their times of greatest creativity. That should come as no surprise to those who have followed the independent-minded group since they first attracted attention in and around their hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, more than ten years ago.

For while it’s easy to hear the individual progress they’ve made as players, singers and songwriters, and the collective progress they’ve made as an ever more confident and tightly-knit band, their unrestrained energy and freewheeling approach were there right from the start. Whether you’re talking about their shows or about their growing body of recordings, they’ve always had one foot in the honky-tonk and one foot in the jam band world, all the while following the rambunctious roads paved by the King of Bluegrass, Jimmy Martin, as well as his best-known banjo man, J. D. Crowe.

That’s a powerful combination, and it’s taken Town Mountain on a unique journey—one that’s found them as much at home in muddy festival fields filled with energetic dancers as at ground zero for traditional bluegrass, Nashville’s World Famous Station Inn. Still, they’re like almost everyone else when it comes to trying to figure out the 21st century music business, and that’s where our conversation began.

Twenty years ago, it was clear what making a record would do for you as a band: you’d sell it, and hope to get some airplay, so the writers at least would make some royalties. But there was a much bigger economic component to making records back in the day than there is now. So what motivates you guys to make a record?

You’re completely right about the business. I don’t know, it’s just to get that stuff out. The record sales are not what drives the reasoning behind an album for bands at our level anymore; financially, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The bulk of the material that gets sold is such a small percentage of the music out there. A lot of independent artists are just trying to get people to come to their shows—and one catalyst to do that is to release music. And personally, it’s also gratifying, just to be able to have that tangible object with which you as an artist can say, this is my material.

You guys pretty much write all your own material?

Yes. Phil Barker and I tackle the bulk of the material, Robert contributes a couple of songs here and there, and then we sprinkle a couple of covers in. But yeah, that’s been the premise of the band from the beginning: let’s utilize the songs. And really, for the longest time, songs would come to the chopping block and we would say, well, how bluegrass is this song? And that would be the parameters for how we would choose our material; we succumbed to the ways of the bluegrass world. That was almost dictating the material that we would choose, and all the while, there was all this other material that you’re turning the page on, so it’s just sitting in song notebooks, which we finally realized. So our last album and previous albums are much more of our brand of bluegrass, while I’d say half of the new one is more of a departure from that, but still maintaining the Town Mountain sound.

That’s funny, because it sounds very much like a bluegrass album to me. What are the ways you feel like these songs are less bluegrass than in the past?

There is some bluegrass material on this album, hands down. But if you sit down and analyze the songs musically, you would probably understand a little more of what I’m saying. I would say one thing is that we’ve got a full drum kit in there, which changes the feel immediately. Adding a snare in a bluegrass band totally works, and sometimes you bury it in the mix and can’t even tell it’s there. But with a full kit, it allows some of these tunes to breathe a little bit. We just said, OK, let’s not chop these songs at the chopping block because they don’t fit the mold; let’s move forward with them. And I guess that still maintains some bluegrass integrity, which is good to hear.

It’s not imitative but it reminds me of what the Osborne Brothers were doing, or what J. D. Crowe was doing, in the 1970s—the Starday album, You Can Share My Blanket, the Keith Whitley stuff. And then I notice you hit that low C note on your banjo more than a lot of other banjo players I hear these days, and that’s kind of a throwback thing to Scruggs, J.D., and Sonny. It sort of skips back a generation.

That’s the highest compliment we could be paid. I don’t think anyone could say anything that would make us feel more proud. If you’re getting that vibe of the Osborne Brothers and J.D., that’s totally what we’re going for. Everybody in Town Mountain just loves that ‘70s music so much; My Home Ain’t in the Hall of Fame, anything that Crowe put his stamp on is like the best stuff ever in my opinion, and I know Robert and Phil and the other guys feel the same. Now, I am a huge Osborne Brothers fan; not everyone else in Town Mountain is a huge Osborne Brothers fan, but I am. I’ve personally always loved the mix of hardcore country and the hardcore grass sound—and yeah, collectively Town Mountain is trying to emulate and bring some of that sound back into the scene.

One of the things about the classic bluegrass band creation pattern was that people played in somebody else’s band, went through an apprenticeship, played with people older and more experienced, and then went off to do their own thing. And around the turn of the century, something new started to happen—bands began more like garage rock bands, where people heard the sound of bluegrass and wanted to do it, but they didn’t go through the apprenticeship. How did Town Mountain get started?

None of us grew up in the ranks of the bluegrass community, doing what you’re describing. None of us have. Did we all play in other projects prior to Town Mountain? For sure. But they weren’t products of that hardcore bluegrass environment. Robert and Phil and I were all in bands based out of Asheville, but they were more like pick-up bands—buddies playing music. I’ll say, there’s nothing wrong with what you describe but it does create parameters when everyone’s coming through the same sounds and is being taught how to play the same way—I’m generalizing—and it creates this precedent and guidelines to adhere to, and all the musicians and bands end up kind of getting into that sound. I dig that sound, I get it for sure, and it’s a lifestyle and a way of music and a genre, and totally cool. But developing in that garage rock kind of way allows for a little more outside influence, a little more of a creative approach to the music. And that is how Town Mountain started, for sure.

One of the implications of that is that you have to be more deliberate about learning the older stuff. How’d you guys find your way through the bluegrass canon? How’d you get into that Crowe stuff?

Digging, lots of digging. Personally, my foot was put in the door through Old & In The Way. But as soon as I found out Old & In The Way, I found out who Flatt & Scruggs were, the Stanley Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Jim & Jesse and Bill Monroe. And I found a banjo teacher who would tell me to check out stuff. So then, for five to seven years, the only thing I would listen to was classic bluegrass, or bluegrass in general. I dug in full force. Because at that time in my life I had no idea what it was. I grew up in Maine; it wasn’t part of my life. So I immediately immersed myself in it. And after that period, I could cover so much of the bluegrass canon; I knew by then who J.D. was, and the sound that I love. And then, when I moved to Asheville and met Robert and Phil, it was like, oh, these guys would love Jimmy Martin, too. You know how everybody loves everybody, but this one’s a Monroe guy, this one’s a Stanley guy? We were all Jimmy Martin guys. So our musical taste in bluegrass was very similar from the beginning of the band.

When I look at the band’s recording career, you self-released, then you signed with Pinecastle—that’s a hardcore bluegrass label—and then you made your way kind of back out of the bluegrass mainstream. I look at the variety of material on the album, but right in the middle there’s a very straightforward bluegrass instrumental. I looked at your schedule – you’re playing a lot of clubs and music festivals, but then you’re playing mainstream bluegrass events like Festival of the Bluegrass or Joe Val. Do you feel like you’re in a balanced place between the bluegrass world and all the other stuff?

That’s something we’ve always toiled with, making sure that we’re maintaining a foot in all these different scenes. But we’ve always kind of been a fringe band within the bluegrass world. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at Town Mountain and said, “There’s traditional bluegrass.” So we’ve always kind of been right where we are right now. We maybe used to do more bluegrass festivals. We made a conscious decision to balance that out with other, all-around, eclectic music festivals. But we hope to get some play on the bluegrass radio stations, and that that will help to keep us in that scene. We certainly want to be part of that music scene as much as it wants us to be part of it.

 

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

Nomadic Impulses: A Conversation with the Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson

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The road has always fueled the troubadour’s imagination, and it’s no different for the Dead Tongues’ Ryan Gustafson. Instead of using the road as inspiration for his eventual return to more stable writing environments, however, he used the ebb and flow of tour life with Hiss Golden Messenger to capture what he saw as he saw it. As such, the Asheville-based singer/songwriter’s new album, Unsung Passage, captures an orchestral folk sound that feels, in some ways, like a fever dream.

Through flutes and banjos, guitars and string sections, the Dead Tongues pay homage to the passage of folk before it. “Ebb and Flow” echoes a ceaseless locomotive quality that calls quietly to Uncle Dave Macon, while “Won’t Be Long” nods to Bob Dylan, in both vocals and rhythm, and “Pale November Dew” tips its hat to Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.

Unsung Passage is a melodically dense and textually rich portrait of life’s messier moments, those times when expectations fail to achieve reality, or when the business of living feels closer to a Sisyphean task. But it’s not all moody contemplation. “My Other” looks through the shadows to see life as a strange, wondrous gift. “What is life if not a chance to get on that open floor and dance?” Gustafson sings. Since it was written on the road, themes of travel, movement, and change inform Unsung Passage’s overarching scope.

How would you say the rhythm of the road has influenced your musical rhythm?

Especially with the last few years touring almost non-stop, it’s a different pace than previous in my life, where I’d travel a lot but it was kind of random and just on my own beat as opposed to this scheduled momentum. It was really interesting to write within that. I wrote all of Unsung Passage within that period. It’s funny, I actually looked back on that time and tried to figure out when I wrote this album. I’m not sure. It happened in so many different spaces over so many different times that eventually I just had an album. It felt like it came from nowhere.

Almost like a fever dream.

I have memories of writing it in so many different places, but it was definitely at a much more rapid pace. That was a new thing to get in the groove of. Tour life, it does agree with me, but it’s a much different lifestyle than I had experienced before even though I was used to traveling. That is partly getting used to being in hotels and these places that are kind of soulless and try to keep your soul alive.

I follow [Hiss Golden Messenger’s] M.C. Taylor on Instagram, and I saw that to celebrate the end of his tour last year, he invited a tattoo artist into the hotel. Were you part of that?

I was in the room, I was watching them. I have quite a few tattoos and for some reason I just…I hadn’t had one in a couple of years and I was like, “I’ve been feeling good not getting tattoos.”

I was only asking because you mentioned trying to bring a bit of soul to these soulless places, and that struck me as an interesting way to do that.

Yeah, that was a particularly good day off.

Since you wrote this across so many different spaces, what other specific U.S. or worldwide places influenced your sound?

Specifically, like “Giver,” I’ve listened to a lot of music from Laos and I think that influences me. Some of that Southeast Asian traditional music overlaps with old-time music in the States in a really cool way. I haven’t been to Laos yet, so it’s not a personal thing that I’ve picked up, but I’ve picked it up over the years of listening.

As far as all over the States, I definitely find inspiration musically and also within poetry. There’s a quality to the American experience as I can see it or portray it through my lens that I’m trying to capture and let out, and by looking at all things Americana that kind of opens up some different portals. I’ve been really into [poet] Frank Stanford’s writing; he’s a very Arkansas writer from the bayou area. He’d spend time on the river and write about it.

Also I’m trying to learn more about the Appalachian Mountains and spending time in this area has been very influential. I get really influenced by the landscapes and lifestyles that I encounter as much as I do through music, so it maybe filters itself through other things.

The Durham scene is notorious for breeding a certain kind of feel or spirit. Where do you think that comes from, and why do you feel it’s situated itself there specifically?

I’m not sure but there seems to be some connection between humidity and the music just as far as you get into the South and the groove gets funkier and funkier the closer you get to New Orleans. I think that there’s a lot of people in North Carolina who are here because they relate to that type of music and musical traditions, you know the Piedmont Blues. And also, where I am in Asheville, the mountains bring a whole other groove to it with old-time music. It could just be that if you’re really looking for that, you might not land in New York or L.A. It’d be easier to find that in North Carolina. In talks with M.C., that seems to be why he’s there. He was following it from California.

Unsung Passage is quite striking because of all the different textures you’re orchestrating. Once you wrote the album and you set about recording it, why did you want to expand it in that way?

I wanted it all to be really simple, and most of it turned out simple. It’s almost all tracked live, all the vocals and the music.

That’s wild for the sound you get. The layers feel so complex.

I’ve always loved flutes. I’ve been wanting to have an album with lots of flute on it for quite a while. That’s just been a long time coming, and I like having these songs, you know, the core of the song just being a pretty solid traditional song. It feels really at home for me to take that and try and give it some type of mystical mountain air on it. Bring a little bit of that vibe to it. I think that’s what sparked the idea of the instrumentation.

On “Clip Your Wings” some of the images really resonated with me as I’ve been a bit of a nomad these past few years. You sing about a “hungry ghost” and “walking the tightrope.” When does your sense of movement threaten to upend your sense of self?

I think that’s a really interesting way to read into that song. To me, that song is not necessarily written about myself, but oftentimes what I find is that years later I’ll hear them and see it as though I was actually writing about myself. That song is about these ways of movement and change, but in ways that ultimately end you or destroy you. It’s actually a hidden song to some extent about suicide. An old friend of mine…but I’ve found in almost all of my writing it ends up in many ways being a mirror of myself as well. So I’ll think about that. I like that question a lot.

 

Photo by Shervin Lainez

MIXTAPE: Amanda Anne Platt’s Asheville Assembly

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This is a playlist of 12 songs by Asheville artists that have entertained and inspired me in my own little corner of this town. To choose only 12 was a challenge, to say the least, since the music scene keeps growing and it seems that every day there are new songwriters and musicians adding their talents to the pool. I felt a little under-qualified as I started to narrow it down. By no means comprehensive, erring a little on the old school side, this is what I came up with. — Amanda Anne Platt (of the Honeycutters)

Malcolm Holcombe — “Who Carried You”

What better place to start an Asheville list than with Malcolm Holcombe? He’s an incredible songwriter, a captivating performer, and a local legend. This is one of my favorite songs, ever. And if you haven’t had a chance to check out The RCA sessions yet, do it!

Taylor Martin — “Travel Far, Travel Wide”

Taylor Martin may sound like a made up name for a songwriter, but he’s the real deal. This is one of my favorite Taylor songs, from his 2014 release Heartache or Bust.

Moses Atwood — “Garden of Eden”

Moses hasn’t put an album out in a while, but the two he has are still in heavy rotation at our house. I would have put four or five of his tunes on here, if I had more space.

Miriam Allen — “Contrabandista”

She’s got a beautiful voice, is a badass guitar player and songwriter, and she built her own house. I aspire to be a fraction as cool as Miriam Allen.

Floating Action — “To Connect”

This was the first Floating Action song I ever heard, when I found myself stoned and sitting on the old couch at the Grey Eagle for a free show. It still might be my favorite.

Aaron Woody Wood — “Coal Black Hair”

No list of Asheville songs would be complete without a murder ballad. I first heard of Woody Wood as a member of the Blue Rags, and then with his rock band Hollywood Red, but some of my favorite performances of his are solo acoustic.

Jen and the Juice — “The Damnsong” 

I remember someone saying to me, when I was new in town, that I had to meet “Jenny Juice.” “She just writes songs that make you smile,” they said. And she does. Jen also has done many things over the years to unite the music scene here, including starting the Brown Bag Songwriting contest.

Town Mountain – “Long Time Coming” 

Followers of the Bluegrass Situation won’t be strangers to Town Mountain. This is my favorite cut off of their most recent release, Southern Crescent.

Grits & Soul — “Hundred Year Farm”

Though they have technically relocated to Mt Sterling, Kentucky, Grits & Soul will always be an Asheville band in my heart. This album has a lot of great tunes, but this is the one that’s been worn out on my copy. It’s a tear jerker.

Red June — “I Saw You in August”

This is a tune written by my friend Will Straughan, though this album has great songs from all three writers. I love their harmonies.

Laura Blackley & the Wildflowers — “Favorite”

This song should be on a list of the greatest slow dance songs of all time.

Tyler Ramsey — “No One Goes Out”

As a child of the ’90s, I’m a fan of ending a mix with a slow, retrospective song. Love this whole album from Tyler Ramsey.

Photo credit: Eliza Schweizbach