Since the 1970s, Béla Fleck has put his own mark on nearly every kind of music, from bluegrass and classical, to jazz and Latin, not to mention the exceptional albums with Indian and African roots. That can make him a hard guy to interview because there’s just so much to cover. Fortunately, accomplished podcast host Marc Maron is up for the task.
In this wide-ranging interview that lasts roughly an hour, Fleck talks about growing up in New York City, and meeting his birth father much later in life. Leaning heavily on Fleck’s origin story, the conversation explores the musician’s earliest experiences with the banjo, and as the visit continues, it’s clear that he is a lifelong advocate for the instrument, insisting since he was a child that people should take the banjo seriously. The conversation also touches on the important musicians that inspired him along the way, such as Earl Scruggs, Tony Trischka and Tony Rice. (Fleck describes playing on Rice’s album Cold on the Shoulder as “one of the greatest experiences ever.”)
In the fast-moving conversation, one fleeting moment gives further insight into Fleck’s approach to music. About halfway into their visit, Fleck addresses Maron’s self-confessed limitations on guitar. “Fast fingers is not necessarily the only goal,” Fleck responds. “It’s supposed to be an expression of you, and who you are. That’s what music is.”
Near the end, Fleck admits that he avoided bluegrass for a long time as his career progressed, reveals a couple of his upcoming projects, and talks about his family life with wife Abigail Washburn and their two kids. Whether you’re a lifelong fan or new to bluegrass, you’ll want to hear the full conversation between Béla Fleck and Marc Maron below.
Béla will be on the road throughout 2023, including a duo run in the northeast with Abigail Washburn October 14–30, and co-bills with his My Bluegrass Heart band and Punch Brothers. Dates and tickets can be found here.
As a musician, scholar (the holder of a B.A. in ethnomusicology), and songwriter, Jake Blount enjoys shredding stereotypes and defying conventional wisdom. His latest LP, The New Faith, is a conceptually ambitious, musically diverse, lyrically explosive work, one of the year’s most intriguing and exciting in any idiom. But it also represents quite a stylistic change from his prior releases that were powered by old-time banjo accompaniment and fiddle support. Instead, hip-hop and rap are a prominent feature, as well as flowing strings, drums and percussion.
That it is the work of a Black man whose approach has always been to ignore labels and refuse to accept notions about what kinds of songs and music are appropriate should be no surprise. Blount, the 2020 winner of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and two-time winner of the Appalachian String Band Music Festival, better known as Clifftop, is also an outspoken exponent of Afrofuturism, a still-evolving concept that both celebrates Black cultural tradition and seeks to expand and refute outdated notions about it. He’s also an engaging performer comfortable performing anything from Delta blues to traditional country and bluegrass.
With a background that includes being tutored by such acoustic music masters as Rhiannon Giddens, Judy Hyman, and Bruce Molsky, Blount has been a sensation since 2017, when his then-band The Moose Whisperers were Clifftop winners. He also received widespread critical acclaim for his sound and style, both in Tui, a duo with fiddler Libby Weitnauer, and his solo releases, the powerhouse EP Reparations in 2017, and full-length album Spider Tales in 2020.
Still, nothing he’s done to date matches the power and authority of The New Faith, which is part of the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ African American Legacy Series, in collaboration with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The project also includes wonderful contributions from Demeanor, D’orjay The Singing Shaman, Samuel James, Kaia Kater, Lizzie No, Mali Obomsawin, Brandi Pace, Rissi Palmer and Lillian Werbin.
Its 10 songs present a sprawling, often fascinating story set in a far-future world that’s been devastated by climate change. The focus is on a group of Black climate refugees as they perform a religious service, invoking vintage spirituals that are familiar in structure, but amazingly powerful in their presentation. Such songs as “Didn’t It Rain” and “Once There Was No Sun” are superbly and intensely performed.
Blount is unafraid, either in his music or interviews, to discuss such topics as George Floyd’s murder, or the hostility of organized religion and in particular the Black church towards LGBTQ individuals. Most importantly, the Rhode Island-based artist offers a consistently imaginative and intriguing — if often realistic and pessimistic — notion of the future.
BGS: How challenging was making The New Faith as compared to your previous releases?
Blount: This was by far the most challenging record I’ve ever done, in large part because it was mostly done during the pandemic. Working in isolation, people cutting their parts and sending them, then putting everything together, was an enormous challenge, and doing everything remote also presented some creative challenges. Brian (co-producer Brian Slattery) and I were working really hard in making sure that we got exactly what we wanted and the best from the different things that were coming in. Then we’re doing most of it in the bedroom. That’s really different as well. But I’m happy with how things turned out, and the contributions from so many wonderful people really added to it.
You’ve tackled some tough issues here, and subjects like climate change or police misconduct are controversial subjects. What’s been the reaction?
For the most part the album has been well received. Perhaps the most backlash has come from the inclusion of rap on the record. But if you’re going to reflect the music and society of the 21st century, you’ve got to include rap. It’s as much the instrument of communication today for young people as the fiddle and banjo were for a prior generation. I love both of those instruments, play them and incorporate them in my music, but I’m also looking to the future and trying to make sure that what I’m doing and saying is relevant to what’s going on today and to what audiences are hearing.
What were some of the sounds that influenced you in developing your sound and your style?
I grew up loving the music of Parliament/Funkadelic and Earth, Wind & Fire, and still do. But I also heard traditional folk music, the blues, country, bluegrass. My concept of folk music includes all these things. It includes both acoustic and electric influences. There have always been folks who’ve tried to restrict or limit music, who want to say if you’re a folk musician you can’t play this or you can’t sing that. I have never accepted those limitations and never will.
You also talk about Afrofuturism and its importance to your music. Do you feel that audiences have any problems or difficulties understanding what that means?
Afrofuturism is simply the broad spectrum of African American culture and music, being free to imagine and utilize pretty much anything within the canon. While I’m not doing the literary element of it as much, I’m influenced by the great authors as well. But when you talk about Afrofuturism within the music you’re encompassing and embracing everything that’s come within the culture, finding ways of expanding and continuing within that tradition.
You don’t hesitate, either in song or interviews to talk about the Black church and its not-so-positive relationship with LGBTQ people. Has that caused any problems?
One thing that I’ve always said and continue to say is that there needs to be a welcoming attitude in all churches towards all people, including LGBTQ. I know that there are those in the Black church who are uncomfortable with LGBTQ people for religious reasons. My concept of Black spirituality embraces everyone, and I want to create songs that support creating a safe and comfortable environment for all people.
Do you view yourself as a folk or country musician?
One of the things that I’m very much about is creating a new discussion, a new understanding of what exactly is folk music. There’s always been a tendency towards making what is considered folk music as small and narrow as possible, seeing it in a way that excluded more people, be they musicians or just fans, than it included.
For me, when you talk about Black folk music, that’s as broad a spectrum of musicians and sounds as you could ever envision in a lifetime. It’s not just about a finite time period or a certain era that ended when a handful of people died. It’s ongoing, it’s contemporary, it embraces tradition, but continues to expand it. That’s what I’m trying to do at all times with my music.
Are you glad to be back out on tour?
Yes, there is nothing that matches live performance in front of an audience. I think a lot of the songs on The New Faith work even better in live performance, and I’m really anxious to get out on the road and perform them. Also just the excitement of being out on a live stage again, and going to different cities and seeing live audiences again, it’s such a pleasure and a joy.
Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia once said that the goal was not to be the best at what you do, but the only one who does what you do. In a way, that applies to Rhiannon Giddens’ high-profile career — except what she does is pretty much everything.
It can be more than a little dizzying to try and keep up with Giddens’ far-flung doings across multiple platforms as musician, actor, songwriter, composer, activist, musicologist and more. Her work draws from a range of classical as well as folk traditions, drawing accolades including the 2016 Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass, a 2017 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Grant” fellowship and a Grammy Award for Best Folk Album for They’re Calling Me Home.
2022 found Giddens touring and collaborating with various ensembles — the classically inclind Silkroad collective, the Nashville Ballet, the Black female Americana supergroup Our Native Daughters and with multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi — while the Spoleto Festival debuted her first-ever opera, Omar. Somehow she also finds time to do the Aria Code podcast for the Metropolitan Opera, too.
Whew.
As for future endeavors, Giddens has multiple projects percolating, including hosting the 2023 PBS series My Music with Rhiannon Giddens. In the meantime, she hits bookshelves for the first time this fall with Build a House, the first of her four children’s books to be published by Candlewick Press.
BGS: Thanks for taking the time. Where are you calling from?
Giddens: Ireland. I’m mostly here when I’m not on the road because it’s where the kids are. It’s hard. I have them half the year, so I have to fit a year’s worth of work into the other half because the bills don’t just pay themselves. It would be different and easier if I were still with their dad, but we’re not together anymore and I’m on my own when I’m with them. So I’m a single mom, working full-time to cram all the work into as little time as I can. It’s difficult not to feel pulled in a lot of different directions, while constantly feeling jet-lagged.
I haven’t been able to have much of a balance, to be honest. I’m doing everything I can to fit three lives into one and something’s got to give because I don’t want it to affect my kids. I’ve said it many times, but I just have to start making space on my calendar. In my working life, a bunch of projects got pushed into this year because of the pandemic, which has been insane. I am fortunate to have a lot of work, because a lot of people don’t. But it’s sometimes hard to enjoy what’s happening.
Your first children’s book is coming out, Build a House, illustrated by Monica Mikai. How did that start out?
It began as lyrics, and that one was kind of always a song. Sometimes I write poems that turn into songs, but this one was always lyrics. It goes back to the pandemic, when Ireland had a hard lockdown. That was going on when the protests over George Floyd started in 2020, which was super-frustrating to watch. I was over here feeling useless and sitting at my kitchen table thinking, “Forget Covid, I’d be on the front lines in the States right now.” I was trying to explain to my children why I was crying at odd times.
At times like that, I often write about it. “Cry No More,” that one was after the Charleston church massacre. Emotions will pour out: “What the hell do you people want? You brought us over here to build your frickin’ country, now what?” That became, “You brought me here to build your house,” and it went from there. Yo-Yo Ma reached out to ask if I wanted to do something for Juneteenth, and this song was perfect for that. So I recorded and filmed my part and we put it out on Juneteenth 2020 to an amazing response. That made me feel a little better.
At what point did it go from song to book?
It was actually on Twitter, where somebody said, “Hey, this should be a kids book!” And that got me thinking, huh, yeah, cool idea. I’ve been wanting to write a book about American music history, and my book agent Laura Nolan has been patiently waiting, checking in periodically. So I asked her, “What do you think about a kids book? Here’s an idea.” We set up meetings, Candlewick Press came in with an amazing offer for four books, and this is the first. We struck a deal and they sent us a short list of illustrators — all women of color, I did not even have to ask — and I picked Monica, which was pretty much the beginning and end of it. I’ve never spoken to Monica, which is how it works with kids books. Authors and illustrators communicate through the editor without getting together, each doing their thing. Next thing I knew, I was sent a sketch of the story she got out of the song, which was amazing. I was totally blown away and might have cried a little bit. When I saw her finished work, I could not have imagined it better than this.
That seems so odd, that writers and illustrators work completely separately on kids’ books.
I actually like that it’s separate. She’s an artist and I’m an artist, too, and these are two different forms coming together. She brought her art to bear on my words, so I feel like I did what I’m supposed to do. She got it without having to talk to me, which is the point of the book. It was an amazing experience, and not so different from when I bring another musician into the band and tell them, “Do what you feel like doing, and I’ll tell you if it jibes with what I’m doing.” But I never start with saying, “Do this” – unless it’s telling a bass player, “Don’t do 2-5-1 bluegrass bass-playing in anything I do.” I hire them to bring their expertise, working with them to do their thing.
The next book will be We Could Fly, out next year, based on a song I did with Dirk Powell and illustrated by Briana Mukodiri Uchendu. And the rough draft of the third one is done, about Joe’s First Fiddle — riffing on my mentor Joe Thompson. The fourth one will be about the banjo. But I’m really excited about paying tribute to Joe this way because I’ve wanted to write this since he was alive and would tell the story about his first fiddle. What I wrote is not exactly the same as the story he’d tell, but I sent the rough draft to Justin Robinson [her fellow Carolina Chocolate Drops alumnus], and he gave it a thumbs-up.
Tell us more about the book about American music history.
It’s American music through my lens, based on all the speeches and keynotes and lectures I’ve given over the last few years. Mostly it’s about the myths of American music, like the idea of where the banjo came from. That’s the most obvious myth, that it was born in Appalachia and invented by Scotch-Irish immigrants. No they didn’t, even though they played it. The banjo came from Africa. So what are the myths, and whose intentions do they serve? It’s the idea of looking at the culture we have in America through music, the misunderstandings we have and how that hurts us as Americans by obscuring a true understanding of who we are as a country. Basically, I’m talking shit all the time, and I want to put it in book form.
You were just in Tryon, North Carolina, filming for My Music with Rhiannon Giddens at the birthplace of Nina Simone. What can we expect from your show?
It’s me taking over David Holt’s State of Music, starting next year. That filming was really special. I had not been to the Nina Simone house before and it was cool even though I’m not a thing-and-place person, you know what I mean? Maybe I’m just too cerebral in an emotional-deficit way because it seems like those experiences don’t affect me so much. But I love seeing how they affect other people. It was really joyful to see Adia (Victoria) in that space, how she was affected by it with prickles all over her back, and my sister was blown away when she visited. For me, what’s important about Nina Simone is captured in her songs and performances. The rest, I’m not sure standing in her childhood house does anything for me. I live so much in the ether, the material aspects of life don’t hit as hard for me. But that’s okay, and others feel differently.
After studying opera in college and then going on to folk music, you performed on an operatic stage for the first time in almost two decades this year – Porgy & Bess in your hometown of Greensboro, North Carolina. What’s it been like to return to opera after so long?
It had been 18 years and it’s been really interesting to log back into that and realize how much I had missed it. I loved the Chocolate Drops and everything I’ve done since then, but a lot of it was more of a calling than pure joy because of the work I do. There have been a lot of transcendental moments on stage, but I realized I’d been missing a lot. Like standing on stage and just singing, no mic, just you and the orchestra and other singers. A beautiful thing. It was nice to come back to that as a performer, writer and composer.
As an art form, opera has such power. It gets a bum rap, the way it’s been taken over by the elite as a way to differentiate. They go not because they enjoy it but because it’s what they’re supposed to do at a certain level. It’s been great to get back into the art form, engage with it as itself without expectations as a young singer or having to deal with all the European dead white guys. I’ve come into it with a totally different perspective, with this grounding I had years ago.
With everything you’ve got going on, it must be hard to find time for your biggest project of all, composing a Hamilton-esque historical musical about the 1898 massacre in Wilmington, North Carolina. What’s the status of that?
I’m in constant contact with my collaborator, John Jeremiah Sullivan, who is a slow burner himself. The New Yorkerinterview profile he did on me took five or six years – I went through three different managers! But he takes time because he is extraordinarily thorough, and he keeps finding important things. I keep wanting to be in that space with him, getting together and creating. I think we are close to getting the institutional support we need. I don’t like to force things. Whatever is ready to go, I try to create a space for it and so far things have worked out in a beautiful way. Another project just came onto the burner and it might get going before Wilmington, or it might not. It depends on timing and co-creators, where they are and what they’re doing. But this is an important story and we’re gonna do it.
On Wednesday, August 2, 1972, after an overnight ferry voyage, I arrived in North Sydney, Nova Scotia. A four-hour drive brought me to Fred and Audrey Isenor’s mobile home in Lantz, 50 km (30 miles) north of Halifax. It was just after 7 pm, and they already had company, including gospel singer Lloyd Boyd, known as “The Radio Ranger,” and Charlie Fullerton, a dobroist and bassist whose sound system was to be used at the Jamboree.
Other friends of Fred’s dropped in that evening – men and women active in the local country music scene who shared his interest in bluegrass. I was the center of attention, the imported expert on the eve of Nova Scotia’s first homegrown bluegrass event. In my diary I noted:
Immediately I was quizzed on my knowledge of instruments, principally, D- series 45 style Martins but other things as well. Fred’s F-5 pulled out, my F-4 and Mastertone looked at.
Owning a prewar Gibson or Martin was a mark of serious interest in bluegrass. The big fancy Martin D-45 was the top of that guitar-maker’s line. Only 90-some were made from the early ‘30s to 1942; these were owned by famous country stars, including bluegrass great Red Smiley. In the late ‘60s Martin began making the D-45 again. Lloyd had one.
I noted another visitor:
Carl Dalrymple, a C&W bassist and guitarist about to go on the road with his sister-in-law [Joyce Seamone] who has a number one Canadian Country hit, “Testing, One, Two, Three,” came [by]. He’s a D-45 owner, too.
Carl’s son Gary, then three years old, already introduced by his father to bluegrass, became one of the second generation of musicians nurtured at the Festival which grew out of the coming Friday’s Jamboree. In 1993 Gary, a mandolinist, joined The Spinney Brothers, one of Nova Scotia’s most successful bands. I was honored to have them play during my 2014 induction into IBMA’s Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame.
By the early ‘70s, bluegrass in the Maritimes had been embraced by the young, working-class, rural country musicians who formed most of the “spread out” Canadian bluegrass community Vic Mullen had told me about. This night at the Isenors’ was my introduction to a new world of musical friends and acquaintances.
As the evening wore on, the focus shifted from instruments to music making. We jammed; I noted:
We played lots of gospel songs, few bluegrass standards, I did requests for Peggy [Warner, a budding banjo picker]. Tempos were slow generally.
This was not like bluegrass jams I’d experienced during the 1960s working and hanging out at Bean Blossom. In a sense, it was a step back in time for me. In my college years, fifteen years before, I’d first learned about bluegrass through recordings. It was a distant thing.
Then I moved to Indiana, met Monroe at Bean Blossom. By the time I moved to Canada the festival movement had attracted new audiences. Mid-’60s youth had embraced folk music; that drew some of them into bluegrass — the beginning of a process of gentrification that I’ve written about in Bluegrass Generation (pp.240-42). In 1972, this hadn’t happened yet in Atlantic Canada.
The next afternoon, Thursday the 3rd, Fred took me into Halifax. Knowing I was a professor of folklore, he wanted to show me a new shop in town, the Halifax Folklore Centre. He introduced me to the owners, the Dorwards, who, I noted:
Looked at my F4 (fret wire needed, if they are to do a fret job). I got the J&J instrumental LP. Lots of blues records. Fred and Tom Dorward, the owner, get on well.
I don’t recall much talk about the Jamboree. Months later, Fred confided to me that in promoting the event, they’d failed to connect with the Halifax university students who were into folk music. Dorward would play a role in that regard at the Festival, which grew out of the Jamboree. Next, I noted:
…we went to CBC to see about placing ads, and then to an electronics distributor for a mike.
Later I added to this note:
…a local fiddler who was supposed to play in Friday’s festival — Russ Topple — had unexpectedly gone to the U.S. (Wheeling) so when we stopped at the CBC … Fred put my name on the ad as visiting banjo picker. Everyone knows that I worked with Monroe, most think that means as a banjo picker. Lots of questions about the banjo (“old Mastertone”) etc.
After supper we went to farmer John Moxom’s place out in the country at Hardwoodlands, the festival site, about 14 km (8.7 mi) east of Lantz, to help Charlie Fullerton set up his sound system. I noted:
Farmer J.M. has built outdoor covered stage about the size of and dimensions of that at Roanoke. On 4 posts 6’ high; 18’x10’ floor with covered sides (except for the last 4’ at front). Roof slopes from 10’ at the front to 7’ at the back. Rough steps off the left corner rear. We end up setting speakers on Fred’s ’66 Chrysler roof beside the stage for separation. See map of festival site on the following page.
A hand-drawn map of the layout of the first Canadian bluegrass festival. Excerpt from Rosenberg’s personal journals.
The evening ended with a rehearsal at the home of Don and Joyce Peck, Fred’s bandmates. I noted:
Charlie subbed on bass for Fred’s partner (in his Lantz music store, Country Music Sales), Bruce Beeler, who works as a chef on the CN RR.
After dinner the next day (Friday the 4th), Fred and I returned to his home after visiting more of his musical friends, to find The County Line Bluegrass Boys had arrived. They would be playing at Jamboree that evening. They were from Lunenburg County, down on Nova Scotia’s South Shore. I noted:
The mandolin player and the banjo player (Mel Sarty) are the central figures in the group — first got into Bluegrass when they were 11-12 years old in the early sixties, when a relative bought the Bluegrass Gentlemen LP by chance. Have learned entirely by records. … They do quite a bit of four-part singing.
Vic Mullen, Nova Scotia’s best-known bluegrass musician, was the emcee that evening at the Jamboree. The audience was mainly in cars, parked in front of the stage. Applause came in the form of honks and flashed lights. Three Nova Scotia bands appeared.
The Pecks with Fred and Bruce on bass opened. Vic and I helped add a bluegrass touch to their sound with fiddle and banjo. A number of other singers and pickers joined us for guest appearances. Next came the County Line Bluegrass Boys.
The Boutilier Brothers closed the show. They came from a musical family; their grandfather was a well-known old-time fiddler in the region, and the two oldest brothers, Bill and Larry, began their professional career with their father, also a noted fiddler. They were inducted into the Nova Scotia Country Music Hall of Fame in 1999.
By the early 1960s they were singing brother duets and appearing with Vic Mullen on banjo. With the help of Mullen, they made four LPs (all had “Bluegrass” in their title) on the Rodeo label between 1963 and 1967, by which time a third brother, Ken, had replaced Vic on banjo. The brothers had retired several years before, but came out of retirement specially for the Jamboree.
When Fred and Vic surveyed the results of the Jamboree, they decided to try another the following year. This time they would announce it as “the second annual BLUEGRASS FESTIVAL at Hardwoodlands, N.S., July 27, 1973.” The Boutiliers and the Country Line Bluegrass Boys appeared again; more widely advertised, it was successful and drew enough bluegrass enthusiasts that in 1974 Fred and Vic brought Tom Dorward into their planning and began working on a two-day event.
John Moxom, Neil Rosenberg, Vic Mullen and Fred Isenor at Hardwoodlands, N.S., July 1973
For the next five years, I traveled to the Festival annually from Newfoundland to help Fred and the gang, running instrumental workshops, emceeing, and appearing with our St. John’s-based band, Crooked Stovepipe.
As the Festival took off, young musicians began appearing. Eventually a fourth generation of Boutiliers became involved. In the 1980s these young pickers added Vic Mullen to their band, and, with his encouragement, took on his old band name, calling themselves Birch Mountain Bluegrass Band. In 2001, 2002, and 2004 they won the East Coast Music Association’s “Bluegrass Album of the Year” award.
Another second-generation band developed out of the County Line Bluegrass Boys. In 1973 banjoist Mel Sarty’s brother Gordon joined the band as bassist and in the 1980s he and his three daughters created a new band, Exit 13. Lead vocalist, songwriter, and banjoist Elaine Sarty fronted the group. They won the ECMA “Bluegrass Album of the Year” in 1997 and 1998. Here’s a profile of the band that appeared in the ‘90s on a national prime time CBC show, “On The Road Again.“
This, of course, was all to come! I knew nothing of the Jamboree’s bluegrass festival future when I left the Isenor home on Saturday August 5, 1972, continuing my research trip. Heading west on the Trans-Canada Highway, a half-day’s drive brought me to Woodstock, New Brunwick, near the Maine border. There I visited a student and her family who’d invited me to see the Don Messer Jubilee at Old Home Week, Woodstock’s annual fair.
The event was held in a large building in Connell Park, the fair site. It had three components: the Jubilee concert, a fiddle contest, and a dance.
The concert followed the format of Messer’s television broadcasts, with fiddle tunes prominently featured along with songs by the band’s remaining vocalist Marg Osburne. Her singing partner, Charlie Chamberlain, had died less than a month before. This was one of the Jubilee’s last public performances; Messer would pass in March 1973.
The fiddle contest, which Messer judged, was won by Mac Brogan, a fiddler from Chipman, NB. Here’s a sample of his fiddling, very much in the Don Messer style, from his 1984 album:
Finally, chairs were cleared away and Messer and the Jubilee orchestra played for dancers. Although Messer continued on the fiddle, several of the other musicians switched to wind instruments. The music was mainly a sentimental reprise of popular songs from the big band era that they’d played for dancers during their salad days in the ’40s and ’50s.
After the dance I introduced myself to Mac Brogan, telling him I was interested in researching old-time and country music in Canada and asking if he would be willing to talk to me some time for an interview. He consented and gave me his address. It would be over a year before I’d have time to do the interview, but this, along with my conversations with Fred and Vic, marked the start of what would become a decade of studying the connections between country and folk music in the Maritimes.
On Monday the 7th I was off again, heading into New England, en route to southern bluegrass scenes.
Musician, folklorist, and instrumentalist Willi Carlisle is a bona fide troubadour in genres often populated by mimics and pretenders. But even so, and quite strikingly, his professional and artistic persona is not at all cast through a “greater than thou” light – or through the self-righteousness with which most creators stake their claim to the outlaw fringes of roots music. His debut album on Free Dirt Records, Peculiar, Missouri, is a testament to this dyed-in-the-wool road dog’s commitment to a populist, accessible, and identity-aware brand of country music.
Peculiar, Missouri is all at once intimate and grand. Brash and rollicking radio-ready singles intermingle with raw, “warts and all” tracks that sound live and visceral, tender and ineffable. Stories of cowhands and wagon-train cooks and circus performers and legendary figures are peppered with queer text and subtext and underlined with a class consciousness. The result is not only inspiring, it will stop a listener dead in their tracks.
But the pause that this album supplies is not due to Peculiar being demonstrably extraordinary. Just the opposite. The simplicity, the downright everyday-ness of this record is its shining accomplishment. The seemingly infinite inputs that Carlisle distills, synergizes, and offers to the listener – regional roots music, old-time country, queerness, vaudeville showmanship, folklore and storytelling, the Ozarks, poetry, and so on – are perfectly synthesized in a remarkably simple and approachable format. Peculiar, Missouri is fantastically free, but not scattered. It’s extraordinary in its refusal to be anything other than ordinary.
We spoke to Carlisle via phone ahead of his appearances this week at AmericanaFest in Nashville, where he’s excited to continue to grow the community that centers around the small business of his music. “I want to play a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty shows a year. I want to work my ass off,” he explains, excited for the weeklong conference and festival. “I’ve got a small business and it’s built on this group of people that I really love and that I really trust. Now I get to bring them together. It feels like a really unique and positive situation in a pretty garbage industry, sometimes!”
Our conversation began with Peculiar’s extraordinary simplicity.
BGS: I think the most extraordinary thing to me about the record is that it kind of refuses to be anything other than ordinary. And I hope that that doesn’t seem like a backhanded compliment, because to me the music feels so grounded, raw, and authentic – but in a way that doesn’t just propagate antiquated ideas around what “authenticity” is. So, I wanted to ask you how you crafted the vision for the project, because it did end up so simple, but I know that simplicity doesn’t necessarily mean building the concept for the album was simple at all.
WC: Simplicity is hard to do and I’m the kind of person that has forty ideas and maybe a couple good ones in there, so I had a lot of songs. I give a lot of credit to friends and family in Arkansas and the folks at Free Dirt for helping me figure out how to try to nail [my vision] to the wall. I wanted to play old-time music on the record. I’ve been really lucky to do square dances and play old-time music in the Ozarks for a long time. I want to be old-time music and I want to be country and I want to be queer and I want to be a poet. I want [the album] to be grounded in American literature, and also want it to be grounded in American old-time music, so that it feels like the songs are highly regional and from specific traditions that I’ve learned from.
This might make it sound like getting to simplicity was simple, but it really came down to a series of checkmarks. I want to be able to learn from Utah Phillips forever and his legacy and the legacies of the people that worked with him. So I knew I wanted to do a Utah Phillips song. I wanted to do something that felt more like a square dance call than like a capital S “song.” So we did “The Down and Back.” I’ve been setting poems to music for fun for a long time and that was why we did that song, “Buffalo Bill.” I’d always wanted to just tell a story, too, so we set a story to my own fingerpicking, because there’s a lot of that style in the ‘70s and from people I admire the most, like Steve Goodman and Gamble Rogers. It also came down to what traditions we were working in. “How do we evoke these different traditions in a way that is diverse but is unified?” At the end of the day, it might just be my voice and limited capacity instrumentally that unifies it. [Laughs]
The record feels “agnostic” to me in so many ways: The genre aesthetic (or lack), agnostic. The songwriting perspective, agnostic. The identity narratives, agnostic. The regional qualities, too. And when I say “agnostic” I mean, they all feel very defined and tangible, but not that you’re professing any one of them as traditional or as truth. You’re placing this music so specifically within a longstanding tradition of old-time country and string band music, but you’re doing it in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to ensconce a “correct way” to make music.
Carl Jung, who writes the best shit [Laughs], writes about some kind of “spiritus mundi,” some kind of larger idea of the world that can bind us all together, psychologically. In a lot of these things about America, we receive these overarching stories about what it is to be an American, what it is to be free, what it is to be this, that, or the other. These stories have identity concerns, but they have to be agnostic, because they’re too general to ever be specific. Which is to say, it’s all sort of false.
I guess as I was looking at all of the historical moments that I wanted to underline, I found that the overarching narrative was that there was not going to be one. The title track is about traveling for a long time and having a panic attack in a very specific place, but also a very non-specific place, which was a Walmart. It may be the most unifying place in the country, now. I wanted to take the idea of this universal American spiritus mundi and locate it within as many specific voices that were inspiring to me. And usually those are people that tried to do folk music or vernacular music in this big, all-encompassing way.
That agnosticism, that acceptance of the duality of all things, that’s such a queer perspective. And it’s not just because of the pink album cover. [Laughs] It feels like the undercurrent and overcurrent of this record.
Yeah, it’s designed to be, it has to be inclusive. [The album] also includes voices that are on the very edge of slipping out of existence. It also sort of includes failure and incompetence and foolishness and folly. I think a lot of our “sad bastard,” dude country – which is really one of my favorite genres, it ain’t me ragging on sad, sad country. [Laughs] “Tear in my beer,” I’m 100% behind that! But for some reason we’re willing to valorize those feelings, but not valorize historical discomfort and the total dissipation of huge groups of feelings. And [we valorize] money.
Like, if I was going to do a Utah Phillips song, the one to me that fit the most was “Goodnight Loving Trail.” One, because it’s stone cold banger and two, because it’s about a cook on a wagon train. And if I think that somebody is going to get the idea that I’m going to talk about rootin’ tootin’, gunslinging, and stuff, I wanna fight that with, “Here’s a song about the emotional condition of a pissed off cook who stays up all night playing melancholy songs on his harmonica.” That’s it! There’s nothing else, the only message of that song is we get old and we die. We outlive our youthfulness, and to what end?
“Sad bastard” or, as I like to call it, “sad boi country” – sad boi anything is so, so hot right now. Especially this kind of idea of “sad boi” or “dirt boi” country, and it’s really prevalent in Americana. But I feel like this record is turning that new-ish trope on its ear. Something about straight, cis-, white, privileged men self ascribing “sad boi” or “dirt boi” always rings untrue to me as a listener. But Peculiar, the sadness intrinsic in it doesn’t seem like “sad boi country” to me, because it does have that queer thread. Do you agree or disagree?
Well, the title of the record is intended to be a pun: “Queer sadness, peculiar misery.” I guess I would include that. I think there are perfect sad boi country songs out there. Formally, I don’t really have anything against the form, I just want to do my own version of it. If I’m totally honest, that’s mostly the way it comes out. That tends to be the way it comes out, in this format. I have written songs that go in circles around, I guess, a more normal sort of self-indulgent sadness, but I’ve never felt them to be my best work. It’s nice to lean into the thing that hurts you, I think that there’s power in that.
I think that a lot of that sad boi country is angry at women, or is saying, “I’m no good and women hate me.” Or, “I’m no good and my mama knows I’m no good.” Or there’s “I’ve tried to be good and I can’t.” Instead of like, looking inward and being like, “I want to be better, I need to be better. My problems are my own.”
I want to talk about production, because one of the things I love about the record is that you’re playing with sonic space so much. Some of the songs are placed very close to the listener, like a radio mix. Others are really quite distant and you play around in that space, kind of mischievously at times. Where did that production quality come from and why was it important to you?
Well, I don’t want to take credit after the fact. It was the idea of the producer, Joel Savoy, who essentially was like, “Hey, I’ve got this old vaudeville theater, I’ve never gotten to use it, but I think that you could spread a couple tracks out in this old theater.” It’s like hundreds of years worth of people dancing in this theater, it’s just gorgeous. I also told him, “Look, I want a couple tracks ready for the radio. I want to be able to take a real shot.”
On the other level, it’s just me and an instrument. I want it to sound like I’m sitting on the edge of somebody’s bed and they’re sitting with the covers pulled over them. That’s pretty much what I said [to Savoy]. A lot of the production is me having an interest in the record reaching some kind of minimal commercial viability, I want to say pretty clearly that that’s an intentional move. I know that I can make a record that will never reach commercial viability. I just got nominated for an award in outlaw country and that really just means I’m not ever going to reach commercial viability, but they do agree that I’m country. [Laughs]
I wanted to be able to share the project and create a couple of things that would invite people in that might never normally hear the message on the record. But, if I was only known for the tracks that were radio-produced, I wouldn’t like that at all. The idea is to invite people into the whole record.
I’ve said quite a bit, what’s more outlaw country than being anti-normative, anti-idyll (in this case, read: queer) in country music? That’s what I feel like is coming through in “I Won’t Be Afraid,” because it’s not outlaw country in that it’s professing that you must forsake emotion and forsake heart and forsake these sort of non-masculine, anti-normative ideals to be outlaw. It’s outlaw in a way that embraces otherness and any form of the other can be outlaw. To me, it’s not a song that’s just a personal declaration, but also an industry-wide one. And it’s more than that, too.
The song came out all at once. It was one of those crying fit songs. I was like, “Okay, that’s a crying fit song, I know what that is. That goes deep in the drawer and we don’t really bring that one out.” Well, I did share it with a couple of people and they liked it. At the point I recorded it, I’m still, I’m just… I almost used the phrase “a sack of shit,” but I guess I wanna say I was an absolute mess in that place. I was not able to contain the feelings I was having in order to play a G chord. I think that does give it a quality that I like, but also gives it a quality that I wish I could, oh, slap a little tape or a little rouge or something on it.
As far as outlaw stuff goes, I made up this saying that outlaw shit is kissing your buds and dancing like your grandma is proud of you. [When I came up with that,] I was thinking about how hard it is to do. And what kind of risk it entails, to actually feel happy with yourself and happy with where you come from. …I do agree, on some level, with the maxim from the outlaw country guys early on that it’s about doing things your own way and it’s about not doing what the institution tells you to do. But that’s also a marketing scheme that’s appeared on T-shirts at Spencer’s in the mall ever since I was a kid, right? It’s not going to work for me. I want to revise it. I’ve gotten some kickback over the virulence with which I might be revising it, but we’ll see how it goes. I don’t think my career’s over or anything. [Laughs]
What’s more outlaw than people saying you’re not outlaw?
It’s a snake eating its own tail!
Photo credit: Lead photo by Tim Duggan, square thumbnail by Jackie Clarkson.
Artist:Nora Brown Hometown: Brooklyn, New York Latest Album:Long Time to Be Gone
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
This is an interesting question because I don’t think I can remember a time where I ever dreamt of being a musician. You would think that especially someone who started so young might have those ambitions but I don’t think I did. I think that sometimes it can take time to realize how much you love something and really want to pursue it, which I think has been my situation. I’ve had a pretty unique experience with music, because I’ve had a professional experience but have always operated in the fairly protected environment of being a minor. This has allowed me to really take any opportunities that come my way without much risk. In other words there was no exact moment when I wanted to do what I do. I sort of just took what came, and ended up really enjoying it.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
Probably one of my favorite memories from being on stage was performing with Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton. After playing a tune together, Jerron got up to step off stage but as I started my next tune, “Liza Jane,” he sat back down and asked if he could join me on this one, too. He was playing bones and I was on my fretless banjo. The tune is rhythmic and rolling, perfect for the bones. It’s cool to have those spontaneous collaborations sometimes! Jerron is a musician I definitely look up to, and I was so pleased that he had asked to play another with me.
Which artist has influenced you the most…and how?
Many artists have made great influences on my playing but probably the most would be Lee Sexton. I model a lot of my 2-finger picking after him, not only in the patterns but also in the rhythmic sounds that he creates with his picking. I’ve realized that the better portion of my solo material is played in the 2-finger style (rather than clawhammer) which is maybe reminiscent of the impact he has had on my own style of playing.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
I think I’ve received a lot of good advice, but when I read this question, my mind immediately went to the first time that I had visited George Gibson in Knott County, Kentucky. As me and my dad were leaving his home, George told me “learn to play bluegrass.” This may seem like sort of a benign statement, but it came as a surprise and kind of confused me to hear this from George, someone I thought to be a pretty strictly old-time musician, maybe someone very into traditional authenticity. It sort of expanded my perception and helped me understand that you can still be authentic while shaping songs in your own hands and playing music other than old-time. I haven’t really followed this advice exactly…but in some ways I think I have.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I’d say that the nature I’ve spent the most time with throughout my life would be the ocean. I’ve never really thought about how it impacts my work, but I do see some reflections of the beach on traditional music. On the shore of the south fork of Long Island (where I’ve spent most of my time with the ocean) it’s always a surprise how rough or calm the ocean will be and how long or short the beach will stretch to the waves. The general landscape of the beach is always changing, but is always recognizable. I think that the general consistency of change is something that is very reflective of traditional music’s constant changing while holding on to some certainty.
The first Canadian festival, a modest affair billed as a “Bluegrass Jamboree,” took place in August 1972. I was involved in its organization and presentation. Subsequently, the Jamboree grew into an annual festival that’s still running.
The annual family friendly Nova Scotia Bluegrass and Oldtime Music festival is Canada’s oldest, and North America’s second oldest continuously running Bluegrass Festival, and is presented and hosted by the Downeast Bluegrass and Oldtime Music Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Bluegrass and Oldtime music in Eastern Canada.
Here’s how it happened.
By the summer of 1972 I had been living in Canada for four years, working as a professor of folklore and archivist in St. John’s, Newfoundland, at Memorial, the big provincial university.
Deeply immersed in bluegrass, I now stayed in touch with the music I’d left behind via bluegrass friends in the states, I read Bluegrass Unlimited every month, and I got County Sales‘ newsletters and bought new LPs from them by mail.
June 22, 1968. Banjo workshop at Bean Blossom, IN: Vic Jordan, Bobby Thompson, Dave Garrett, Neil Rosenberg, Ralph Stanley. (Photo by Frank Godbey)
When I arrived in Newfoundland in September 1968, I’d just published my first academic article — on bluegrass — in the Journal of American Folklore. I’d been writing regularly for Bluegrass Unlimited. That past June, Bill Monroe had included me in a banjo workshop at his Blue Grass Festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana; and a few weeks before coming to St. John’s, I’d been at the Richland Hills fiddle contest near Dallas, Texas, jamming with Alan Munde, Sam Bush, and Byron Berline and the Stone Mountain Boys.
August 18, 1968. Richland Hills, TX fiddle contest: Neil Rosenberg (b), Sam Bush (m), Byron Berline (f). (Photo by David Stark)
During the late ’60s and early ’70s, bluegrass festivals were proliferating (I wrote about this in Bluegrass: A History, 305-339) and bluegrass was having success in the popular music business (I wrote about that too, 305-339).
By 1972 I was hearing at a distance about the adventures of my friends from the U.S. bluegrass festival scene. Alan and Sam had made a popular instrumental LP. Now Alan was picking banjo with Jimmy Martin and Sam was singing and playing mandolin with the Bluegrass Alliance. And Byron, working as a studio musician in Los Angeles, had recently recorded with The Rolling Stones.
As I continued to study and write about bluegrass, I maintained my musical calling, moonlighting in the local contemporary folk and pop music scene. It was several years before I met anyone in St. John’s who played or knew much about bluegrass.
In 1969, RCA Victor invited me to edit an album in their Vintage series titled Early Bluegrass. Aside from some Monroe LPs, this was the first historical bluegrass anthology. I signed its detailed historical liner notes with “Memorial University of Newfoundland” under my name. It got a good reception in the bluegrass world and introduced me to Canadian bluegrass record buyers.
In 1971 I signed a contract with the University of Illinois Press to write a volume on bluegrass history in their new Music in American Life series. It was a book that would take years to write, for I had catching up to do. Not only was I out of touch with the bluegrass scene I’d been in before immigrating, I also knew little about the bluegrass scenes in my new home.
June 22, 1968. Banjo workshop at Bean Blossom, IN: Vic Jordan, Bobby Thompson, Neil Rosenberg, Dave Garrett, Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks. (Photo by Doc Hamilton)
Learning About Canadian Bluegrass
Even before immigrating to Canada, I knew it had bluegrass, thanks to Toronto’s Doug Benson, who put me on the mailing list of his magazine The Bluegrass Breakdown. The first issue had reached me in spring 1968 while I was still in Indiana. It told of bluegrass scenes in Ontario and Quebec.
En route to Newfoundland in September 1968, we entered eastern Canada via the Maritimes— the provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Picking up our landed immigrant passes from Canadian Customs at the Maine border, we drove through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where, in Cape Breton, we caught the night ferry to Newfoundland.
During this trip I got my first taste of Canadian bluegrass in an Antigonish, Nova Scotia motel where we watched Don Messer’s Jubilee, a Halifax-produced CBC weekly TV show starring a fiddler who’d been recording and broadcasting nationally on radio since the 1930s and television later. Messer’s prime-time Jubilee was Canada’s second most-watched show, exceeded only by Hockey Night In Canada.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Messer’s band included a five-string banjo played bluegrass style! To this immigrant’s eyes and ears, Messer was blending bluegrass into his country and old-time sound. Here’s his performance, taken from Jubilee footage, of “St. Anne’s Reel,” a popular Canadian fiddle tune:
The smiling banjo picker behind Messer was Vic Mullen, the youngest member of his band. Born in 1933 and raised in rural southwestern Nova Scotia, he had been working as a musician since his teens, playing with country bands in the Maritimes and Ontario.
In 1969, Mullen left Messer and began appearing with his own country band, The Hickorys, on another Halifax CBC weekly prime-time show, Country Time. There wasn’t much bluegrass on that show beyond Mullen’s occasional southern-style fiddle pieces.
Getting Acquainted
My first meeting with a Newfoundlander who shared my enthusiasm for bluegrass came early in April 1971 when I had a letter from record collector Michael Cohen of Grand Falls-Windsor.
By the time we met, Michael’s family owned six furniture stores in central Newfoundland. He’d grown up listening to country music on the radio and began collecting records. After attending university in Ottawa, where he’d heard lots of local and touring American and Canadian country music, he returned to Windsor to work in the family business, continue his collecting (he has all of Hank Snow’s recordings) and play in a country band.
He wrote me because he’d been told about me by a friend. “Early bluegrass and string bands … are my main interest,” he said, introducing himself and welcoming me to make tape copies of his rare records.
I wrote back inviting him to visit us on his next trip to St. John’s. This was the beginning of an enduring friendship. Through him I met others interested in bluegrass and Canadian country. The first was Fred Isenor of Lantz, Nova Scotia, a small community north of Halifax, who got my address from Michael and wrote me a few weeks later.
August 18, 1968. Alan Munde, Neil Rosenberg, unidentified fiddler. (Photo by David Stark)
Fred, Vic Mullen’s contemporary and friend, worked at the local brick factory, and had a music store in Lantz. He was a record collector, a Bluegrass Unlimited subscriber, and a musician. He played mandolin and bass in The Nova Scotia Playboys, which he described to me as an “authentic (non-electric) country” band. They had represented Nova Scotia at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.
Fred had purchased his mandolin, a 1920s Gibson F5, for $100 at a Halifax pawn shop in 1960. Only later did he learn that its label, signed by Lloyd Loar, meant that he now owned an instrument like that of Bill Monroe, who’d just been elected to Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame.
Our correspondence began with shared unsuccessful attempts to put together a Bill Monroe tour. I’d planned to speak with Monroe at a New England festival that summer. But the festival was cancelled; that plan fell through. In March 1972, Fred wrote of other plans:
There is a possibility of a one day bluegrass jamboree in Nova Scotia this summer. Not really a festival but if we can put it over it will be a start. Perhaps Michael has mentioned this to you. As you played with Bill Monroe and helped run Bean Blossom [I’d told Michael about this when we first met] I thought possibly you could offer some helpful suggestions, in other words some do’s and don’ts.
He explained that with a limited budget the event would have to utilize local talent.
Please do not mention this to anyone as definite … so far Vic Mullen and I just talked briefly about this and will be discussing it further on Monday night.
He asked if I’d be able to visit him and take part in the program.
I responded enthusiastically, calling the jamboree a festival, offering my suggestions, and saying I’d be driving through Nova Scotia in August and hoped to visit him then.
Meeting Vic Mullen
In June 1972, Country Time came to St. John’s to tape some shows. I asked Vic if he’d do an interview, explaining to him that I was working on a book about bluegrass. He agreed.
Still in his thirties, Vic had been playing country music professionally for a quarter century. He’d mastered instruments — mandolin, fiddle, guitar, five-string banjo — as needed, working on the road with a series of increasingly high-profile bands. Bluegrass chops were just one aspect of his professional tools — a flashy banjo piece, or southern-style hoedown fiddle as part of the show, that kind of thing. He’d worked with some bluegrass bands in Ontario, done TV, etc.
In the late fifties he started his own band, The Birch Mountain Boys. Working at first in southwestern Nova Scotia, he teamed up with Brent Williams and Harry Cromwell, young African Canadians from his home county, Digby. They played bluegrass in the Maritimes for several years before Brent and Harry started playing country and Vic joined Messer.
Now Mullen was fronting his own national CBC TV country music show. He liked bluegrass and enjoyed playing it, but as a bandleader he chose it rarely. Most people in his audiences didn’t know the word “bluegrass” when they heard it and even if they liked it, it was just nice country music to them. Bluegrass was a niche genre. It had enthusiastic fans and great performers, but they were in a minority.
Vic was supportive of his old friend Fred; he understood Fred’s enthusiasm. He knew about BU and the bluegrass festivals that were happening in the States, but he didn’t think the festivals were going to catch on in Canada. Of Canadian bluegrass fans, he said that:
Altogether in a group, there’d be a lot of people. But they’re spread out from coast to coast and particularly between here and Ontario … there wouldn’t be enough people for an audience in any one area, it’d be just too far for them to get there.
Still, he was planning to be at Fred’s Jamboree. In our interview, Vic had given me an insider’s introduction to the world of Canadian country music. From him I heard for the first time many names and facts that would become familiar to me later. I was encouraged that a musician of his caliber, experience, and reputation would be there.
A week after the interview, I wrote Fred and told him I’d be catching the ferry to Nova Scotia on August 1, driving to Lantz the next day and staying to get acquainted. I explained that this was just the start of a crowded trip for “some hurried field research on bluegrass music … in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.” I closed by mentioning that I’d had a pleasant experience interviewing Vic.
Fred’s reply came a few days later. He was looking forward to my visit, he said, and then, referring to my earlier letter, told me the event would be a jamboree — “outdoors, just one evening.” Referring to a nearby farmer who held dances in his barn, Fred explained:
John Moxom is building an outdoor stage as soon as his hay is made and it appears now that we will be holding it either Friday, August 4th or August 11th. All the local bluegrass musicians are willing to help and take a chance on it being a flop. We hope to find out if there is enough interest to try something bigger and better next year. I know you have a busy schedule but if August 4th turns out to be the date we would sure like to have you present.
By the end of July 1972, I was headed first to visit Fred in rural Nova Scotia. Then I’d drive to New England, stopping near the border at Woodstock, New Brunswick, to see Don Messer’s Jubilee perform at a county fair, and then going to Vermont where my family was vacationing. After a short rest I’d be heading for West Virginia to join my photographer friend Carl Fleischhauer on the trip we described in Bluegrass Odyssey.
On August 1, I headed for the Canadian National ferry terminal in Argentia, Newfoundland, ready to sail west for some bluegrass.
North Carolina musician Tray Wellington is fresh off a nomination for this year’s IBMA New Artist of the Year, following the release of his full-length debut album Black Banjo. Still in his early 20s, Wellington pulls from a myriad of influences — on his latest album he cites jazz as the major influence of his progressive bluegrass style. Many other banjo players of this younger generation are using the influence of genre and blurred genre lines, adapting and subverting narrative and traditions, and utilizing sheer unrestrained creativity to operate outside the traditional confines of the instrument.
In honor of BGS Banjo Month, Wellington gathered a collection of current artists who are thinking outside the box, creating their own voice on the banjo in new and innovative ways, and striving to make the banjo a better-known and appreciated sound.
In Their Words: “Eminem has been one of my favourite songwriters for many years. We listen to a lot of him in our house. I’ve been mostly influenced in my life by writers who bravely put fearless emotion into lyrics and no one does that better than Eminem. I don’t really care too much about what genre music fits into, just that the sound comes from a real, authentic place from inside the artist. Eminem makes me feel things when I hear him. Not always the most comfortable things but I’m not sure that music is always meant to make us feel comfortable. I’ve had it in the back of my mind for years that I knew there was a version inside me somewhere of ‘Lose Yourself’ on a banjo (it took Covid lockdown to give me enough time to learn the lyrics properly and write a melody to it) that I wanted to play live but it was really just for the self-indulgent reason that I love the song so much. I had no idea that audiences would respond to it like they have. Something else takes over my body when I play it and I get completely lost in it. I can honestly say it’s the most I’ve ever connected to a performance of a cover song in my life.” — Kasey Chambers
Banjo player Max Wareham is telling the little-known story of a pioneering bluegrass musician in his upcoming book, Rudy Lyle: The Unsung Hero of the Five-String Banjo. Set for publication on August 23, the book features exhaustive and largely never-before-published transcriptions and analyses of every break Lyle recorded with Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass. Lyle’s historical significance is explored in the final interviews given by banjo legends Sonny Osborne and Bill Emerson, as well as interviews with other prominent banjo players and members of Lyle’s family. Beautiful portraits of each interviewee are included alongside several never-before-published photos of Lyle himself.
In addition to the 19 main transcriptions, the book features chapters on Rudy’s style and its historical importance, his approach to backup playing, a thorough comparison of his breaks on every alternate take of Monroe’s classic “Raw Hide,” and several live transcriptions from before and after his time as a Blue Grass Boy. Tony Trischka provides the foreword.
“I began this project as a way to root my own playing more firmly in the tradition,” Wareham says, “but quickly came to realize that despite Rudy’s tremendous influence on the development of bluegrass music, he’s been nearly forgotten.”
To wrap up BGS Banjo Month, the Bluegrass Situation is proud to present an excerpt below from Max Wareham’s Rudy Lyle: The Unsung Hero of the Five-String Banjo.
Illustration by Giselle Harrington. Excerpt reprinted by permission of the author.
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