Artist:Miles Gannett Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland Song: “Thunder River, Tumbling Down” Album:Meridian Release Date: April 16, 2021
In Their Words: “I heard the melody and a few of the lyrics, including the lines ‘Thunder River, tumbling down; catch your babes before they drown’ in a dream, and I woke up and sang what I could remember into my phone. It kind of creeped me out, so it sat around for a couple years until I figured out where to go with the rest of the lyrics. It contains a lot of trippy apocalyptic imagery and I guess quasi-religious commentary. Musically, I was inspired by the vibe of some of my favorite late ’60s and early ’70s progressive bluegrass artists, especially Dillard & Clark, who combined bluegrass and psychedelic folk rock in a way that I think is really cool, and J.D. Crowe & the New South, who used drums and pedal steel on their Bluegrass Evolution album, which I love even if Tony Rice didn’t (ha ha). I was honored to have such great players on the record, who could help me achieve the sound I was searching for. Ron Stewart of the Seldom Scene played banjo on the track, which, along with Eric Selby’s drumming and Joe Martone’s bass, really propels the song and creates a solid foundation for Dave Hadley’s pedal steel and Sean P. Finn’s fiddle. I did my best to keep up on acoustic guitar!” — Miles Gannett
Artist:Jason Davis Hometown: Galax, Virginia Song: “Modern Day Jezebel” (Feat. Dan Tyminski) Release Date: April 13, 2021 Label: Mountain Fever Records
In Their Words: “I first got the demo of this tune four or five years ago from Daniel Salyer. I loved it the first time I heard it and knew I’d like to cut it for my next record. Luckily, nobody had put it out in the meantime. To me it’s a great modern bluegrass tune. I think it’s a cool way of telling the story of a love gone wrong and I really liked the chord progression and melody. Dan played guitar on the session and I was especially excited when he wanted to sing it. It was an honor to get to track with all the guys (and gal). They really knocked it out of the park on this one. They killed it!” — Jason Davis
Artist:Nefesh Mountain Hometown: Montclair, New Jersey Song: “Wanderlust” Album:Songs for the Sparrows Release Date: June 11, 2021 Label: Eden Sky Records
In Their Words: “The idea for this song came from the Traveler’s Prayer — these age-old words that our ancestors have spoken for centuries. ‘Wanderlust’ and this new album are very much a celebration; about adventure and endurance and pushing through the difficult times. We’re looking at some painful things in these songs, but it always comes back to the idea of persevering and letting love be your fuel.” — Doni Zasloff, Nefesh Mountain
Artist:The Gina Furtado Project Hometown: Winchester, Virginia Song: “Kansas City Railroad Blues” Release Date: April 9, 2021 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “How in the world I made it all these years as a banjo player and not heard of ‘Kansas City Railroad Blues,’ I have no idea. Nonetheless, I heard this tune for the very first time last year and it quickly became my new favorite. This tune has the magic fire that drew me to the banjo as a kid and hasn’t let me put it down since. I chose it knowing it would be a great way to show off the hot pickers in the band. It provides a perfect template for Drew and Malia to exhibit their pristine swing style chops. This is also the first single of ours that includes our newest band member, Lu Furtado. And boy, does she make a grand entrance with her stellar bass playing! Lastly, Wayne Benson and Kristin Scott Benson, joining us on mandolin and from the producer’s chair, respectively, made this a super special recording. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it!” — Gina Furtado
Since our first excursion to Bonnaroo in 2013 BGS has been filming, crafting, and releasing Sitch Sessions with the absolute best and brightest musicians and artists in roots music. We’ve been so fortunate to work with new and old friends, freshly discovered and up-and-coming artists, and legendary performers with enormous legacies. After nearly eight years, we’ve amassed quite an archive of sessions, and within that archive more than a few stellar songs and performances have seemingly fallen to the wayside.
These 8 Sitch Sessions from the BGS archives are a few of our most favorite, underrated moments from our years of shooting sessions. We hope you’ll enjoy a few of these “reruns” — and take a deep dive into our past featured videos yourself!
Nathan Bowles – “Burnt Ends Rag”
One of our favorite shooting locations is a rooftop in downtown Los Angeles, where countless BGS Friends & Neighbors have taped their Sitch Sessions over the years. One of our favorites is this clawhammer banjo performance by Nathan Bowles, which demonstrates that old-time music and its trappings can be perfectly at home in modernity — and in urban settings, too. More banjos in DTLA, please and thank you!
Andrew Combs – “Firestarter”
One fine AmericanaFest week in Nashville in September a few years back we partnered with Crowell Floral, Jacob Blumberg, and Dan Knobler on The Silverstreak Sessions, a series of Sitch Sessions set in a vintage Airstream and flanked by gorgeous flowers and verdant foliage. At the time, “Firestarter” had not yet been released — now you can hear it on Combs’ 2019 release, Ideal Man. For this session all Combs needed was his guitar, this heartfelt song, and that honey sweet, aching voice.
Alice Gerrard – “Maybe This Time”
Every opportunity we’ve had to collaborate or speak with Bluegrass Hall of Famer and living legend Alice Gerrard, we’ve taken it! This session is two of a pair we shot with Gerrard, the other a stark, awe-inspiring a capella number that was quite popular on our channels. This Alice original, “Maybe This Time,” is cheerier, lighter, and has that charming old-time bounce in its bluegrass bones.
With a new documentary film available, You Gave Me a Song, perhaps it’s about time for another session with this hero of ours!
Ben Sollee – “Pretend”
Maybe you’ve seen Mark O’Connor play fiddle while skateboarding, or Rushad Eggleston performing all manner of acrobatics and avant garde silliness with his cello, but do you remember when Ben Sollee toured America by bicycle? In this 2016 session, Sollee demonstrates his cello-while-pedaling chops.
We’re firm believers that the world needs more bluegrass, old-time, and Americana cello and we’re happy to return to this archived Sitch Session for that reminder!
Caroline Spence – “Mint Condition”
Another session filmed on our home turf in Los Angeles, Nashville-based singer-songwriter Caroline Spence brought “Mint Condition” to her taping fresh off her debut, eponymous release on Rounder Records in 2019. “Mint Condition” displays Spence’s unique skill for writing strong, unassailable hooks that on almost any other songwriter’s page might trend cheesy or trite. Spence instead displays the simple profundity in her lyrics, a skill evidenced plainly in this session.
Laura Veirs – “July Flame”
Over the years, we’ve partnered with festivals, companies, and brands on tailor-made sessions — like our Portland series, where we partnered with our friends at Ear Trumpet Labs on some of our most popular, most viral Sitch Sessions ever! This beautiful, sunny, summery rendition of “July Flame” by Laura Veirs certainly deserves a re-up.
In 2016, after this session was published, Veirs went on to release case/lang/veirs with Neko Case and k.d. lang. Remember that!?
Kelsey Waldon – “Powderfinger”
We first filmed a Sitch Session with Kentuckian country singer and songwriter Kelsey Waldon in 2015 — after the release of her debut album, The Goldmine, in 2014. In the time that’s elapsed since, Waldon has followed her golden debut with two more impeccable studio albums, the latest being White Noise / White Lines, which was released on the late John Prine’s Oh Boy Records in 2019. On the tail of White Noise / White Lines, Waldon gave us this gorgeous cover of Neil Young’s “Powderfinger” displaying her talent for cover song interpretations as well as original song sculpting.
Sunny War – “He Is My Cell”
Guitarist and singer-songwriter Sunny War has just released a brand new album, Simple Syrup, as charming and entrancing as ever and built firmly, yet again, upon her unique and idiosyncratic guitar picking style. In 2018 she released With the Sun, an album that included “He Is My Cell,” which ended up featured in a Sitch Session in early 2019 on BGS.
War recently appeared as a guest on our Shout & Shine series – read our interview here.
This week, we take The Show On The Road to the countryside of Sweden for an intimate talk with Kristian Matsson, a poet-songwriter and masterful acoustic multi-instrumentalist who has released five acclaimed albums and two EPs over the last decade and a half, performing as The Tallest Man on Earth.
Growing up in the small hamlet of Leksand, a three hour trek from Stockholm, Mattson was in rowdier indie-rock outfits like Montezumas before breaking out with his own dreamier acoustic material and gaining international notice with his breakout solo offering Shallow Grave in 2008. Tours with Bon Iver across North America gained Matsson an adoring audience in the states, where he ended up setting up shop in Brooklyn.
Most often performing solo even on the biggest stages, Matsson is known to have seven or more intricate tunings for his guitars and banjos, and with his high, cutting voice and cryptic, nature-inspired lyrics, he has been compared to some of his heroes like Roscoe Holcomb, Bob Dylan, and Paul Simon, but with a Swedish-naturalist touch. Songs like “Love Is All” or “The Gardener,” while gaining tens of millions of steams on folky playlists, pack quite a punch, often detailing how the cold cruelty of the animal kingdom filters into human life with its many frailties.
In 2019, Matsson found his marriage to a fellow Swedish singer-songwriter ending and he holed up in his Brooklyn apartment to write, produce, and engineer his newest Tallest Man On Earth LP, I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream. Like Springsteen’s eerie and emotional Nebraska, Matsson’s collection is a clear-eyed view of our current state of interpersonal (and even societal) isolations. Standout songs like the warm guitar and echoey harmonica opener “Hotel Bar” — though written before he knew what would happen with our current pandemic — seem to capture the lost closeness and romance of our very recent past, where one could fall in love with a new stranger every night in a new town and think nothing of it.
Sequestered in a small house in the middle of Sweden since the world shifted last year, a new Tallest Man On Earth album is sure to be on its way. Admittedly Matsson is going a bit stir-crazy away from the road, but really he’s grateful to be able to have the time to explore and create new sounds without any distractions. A fall tour of the states is in the works (fingers crossed), including an opening slot at Red Rocks joining Mandolin Orange and Bonny Light Horseman.
Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, the Radio Hour has been our weekly recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the pages of BGS. This week we’ve got music by Charley Crockett, Danny Barnes, Rhiannon Giddens, and more! Remember to check back every week for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour.
Charley Crockett – “Lesson in Depression” After Charley Crockett’s 2020 release, Welcome to Hard Times, we didn’t expect another great record so soon – but here we are! Crockett’s latest, Lil’ G.L. Presents: 10 For Slim Charley Crockett Sings James Hand, is a tribute to his hero, Texas’ James “Slim” Hand, who passed away in 2020.
New York City’s Reid Jenkins brings us a new single from his upcoming project, A Beautiful Start, due in April on Nettwerk. “Strange Lover” explores the tension between avoiding the unknown and being drawn in by the thrill of beauty and discovery.
John Mutchler of the Golden Roses wrote this song after visiting his grandfather’s neglected grave – but it’s more like the song was sent to him. “When I’m Gone” asks the question (while we’re still alive) of whether or not anyone will come and visit us when we’re gone.
From Dripping Springs, Texas, Israel Nash joins us on a 5+5 this week – that is 5 questions, 5 songs. We talked with “Izz” about everything from nature to songwriting to the larger purpose of his career: to be inspired, create, and inspire others to create.
The bluegrass world hasn’t heard much from Andy Leftwich since he left Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder several years back. The fiddler (and overall multi-instrumentalist) just signed a deal with Mountain Home Music Company, and this first single is an excellent sign of what’s still to come from Leftwich!
It’s been just over a week since the Grammy Awards, where so many deserving roots artists (and friends of BGS) were recognized for their work with multiple nominations. One who sticks out is Danny Barnes, formerly of the Bad Livers, whose 2020 album Man on Fire garnered a nomination for Best Bluegrass Album. BGS caught up with Barnes from his Northwestern home to talk about the record, his creative methods, and how he’s remained busy during the pandemic.
Drew Holcomb shares a sentiment that is familiar to us all – we need to go somewhere, just anywhere. As the world’s cabin fever continues to grow, the promises of warmer weather, vaccines, and brighter days are ahead. Continue to stay safe, until we can all join Holcomb on that journey.
From Southern California, Loiacono and Drake bring us a song in the spirit of the old heartbreak numbers by artists like Patti Page and the Everly Brothers. Their first duet, “San Felipe,” provided a platform for the writing and recording of “Bound to Fall.” It definitely seems they’re natural collaborators, here’s hoping they keep at it!
Jackson Scribner wrote this song in the front of his grandparents’ house that sits on County Rd 497. It’s about the things we have in our young life that feel like they’ll never go away – but as we get older, life changes, people and places come and go, and there’s never certainty of what comes next.
From their new album Heritage & Hope, family band Williamson Branch brings us a video this week for “Which Train,” a haunting tune about eternal decisions. The all-female harmonies drive that train feel, just like the lonesome whistle.
This spring brings about a second collaborative record from Rhiannon Giddens and Francisco Turrisi! The second single, “Waterbound,” is originally from the 1920s, but its lyrics are especially true for Giddens in this day and age, who has spent the pandemic in Ireland, looking across the Atlantic toward her North Carolina home.
An Indigenous singer-songwriter from Shawnee, OK, Samantha Crain brings us a song of her upcoming I Guess I Live Here Now EP. “That old traditional gospel song ‘This Little Light of Mine,’ it feels so childlike and so ancient and wise at the same time and it has such a calming effect on me,” Crain told BGS. “I wanted to incorporate that feeling of hope and lightness in with my lyrical explorations of mindfulness and fortitude in my own life.”
To end this week’s BGS Radio Hour, Abigail Dowd brings us a new single, written while living at various friends’ homes after a flood, while waiting on the city to buy and demolish her own home. Though those days sound bleak, in Dowd’s memory they are gifts of time, as she gives us a reminder to enjoy the moment, and have faith that a brighter day is always coming. There’s a mantra for your Tuesday!
Photos: (L to R) Valerie June by Renata Raksha; Rhiannon Giddens by Ebru Yildiz; Charley Crockett by Ryan Vestil
Artist name:The Bones of J.R. Jones Hometown: Manlius, New York Latest Album:A Celebration Personal nicknames (or rejected band names): J.R./ Jonny, Jon Jon.
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memories are the unexpected ones and I mean that in the most literal sense. Most nights on tour I take the stage exhausted and it takes a song or two for me to fall in rhythm. I remember one night in while on tour in England I took the stage after a 8-hour drive, traveling across three different countries, going through customs and after getting a speeding ticket… my mood was sour, to say the least. The first song I played knocked me over. The crowd knew every word and sang as loud as my guitar was ringing. It turned out to be one of the best shows on that tour. That’s the magic of the stage, for that hour or so… reality disappears.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
I think I am most moved and inspired by dancing. I am always in awe of the control and discipline dancers have… something I like to strive for in my music, but feel I never truly achieve because I let my emotions take the song away from me, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but not always where I want to go with my music. The beautiful thing about art is that one discipline often informs and adds to others. I often think about this while watching a dancer and how the music chosen or written for the piece is just as important as the choreography. The same goes for film and the visual arts.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I don’t think I knew it at the time, but I remember listening to Springsteen’s Born in the USA when I was young and feeling so completely invested and overwhelmed by the songs. It struck me deep and resonates with me till this day. The heartbreak, the hurt, the feeling like you are being left behind and the drive for recognition… all the while you are just doing the best you can with the hand you are dealt. Every time I step into a studio that album subconsciously shows up in the strangest ways in my production.
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
Every song is tough. I mean it, every damn song. I have never been fortunate enough to have a song just flow through me. And truthfully the only reason a song is ever done is because I have to record it, ha ha. I try to tell myself that a recording is a song at that one moment. That a song is a living thing and tomorrow it will change on me again and we will have to find a new balance between each other.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
Every time. I mean you have to. How else can you make anything feel relatable? You need to live it to a degree. It doesn’t need to be autobiographical, but it does need to be true.
Artist:The Golden Roses Hometown: Austin, Texas Song: “When I’m Gone” Album:Devil’s in the Details Release Date: March 19, 2021
In Their Words: “Before I moved to Texas, I went to visit the grave of my grandfather. It was apparent no one had been there in years (myself included). I got to thinking about being forgotten after we die. My grandfather was a well-respected bluegrass man (a banjo picker). Unfortunately, he did his drinking Saturday mornings and not Saturday nights. I think he sent that song to me as a parting gift before my move.” — John Mutchler, The Golden Roses
The spring is often the peak time for artists to drop a new release — the festival season is just warming up, and a new album can bring about immense plans for an exciting year on the road. But for many road warriors like Danny Barnes, who released a new album in March 2020, release tours were turned upside down by the pandemic. Fortunately, in his true spirit, Barnes has managed to stay as creative as ever.
Man on Fire is Barnes’ 10th major solo release, not to mention his ‘barnyard electronic’ Bandcamp work, and an extensive collaborative discography including the likes of Bad Livers and David Grisman’s Dawg Trio. Though he often utilizes taste over flash, Barnes has been long recognized among the top banjo players — for example, he was the 2015 recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. The new record, though released during an unprecedented time, garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album.
BGS caught up with Barnes to talk about recording Man on Fire, how he’s filled his time during the pandemic at home in Washington, and his major creative methods, from finding the right collaborators to populating his songs with characters who will surprise you.
BGS: With the release of Man on Fire last March, how have you managed to best stay creative during the pandemic?
Barnes: One great thing is not spending so much time in transit. I was flying three weekends a month for decades, really. The amount of time I spent in a hotel, rental car, or airplane was astronomical. So when you pull all that out of the equation, I can just make stuff like crazy. I’ve been writing a bunch of songs, studying music like crazy, studying art, I just make things like crazy. I have a lot of ideas, you know.
I’ve heard you talk about using the banjo as a pencil. Can you explain that idea, and how it informs your creative process?
If you’re trying to play an instrument, say if you take up the saxophone or something like that, you spend a lot of years just chasing the instrument. I’m in my 50th year of playing [the banjo], and after a few years of working on it, it sort of gets where you can go the other way with it, where you’re expressing things through it. It’s like a different operating system; typically it takes a lot of years to get that familiarity with something. Over time, you develop this atomic understanding of things, a really good objective look, you know. I use the banjo to get ideas out.
There’s so much music in the banjo itself that’s untapped… In the traditional styles it has a certain role, like the shortstop on the baseball team. There’s a lot of guys like John Hartford that pointed the way before me. My experience was, I spent a lot of years just trying to wrench something out of it. With a pencil too, it’s a really simple thing, but you can do incredibly complex things with it. Similar to a 5-string banjo, it’s real simple in a certain way. Spending time figuring out how to play the banjo gives you a way of putting energy out the other way.
You’ve done a lot of collaborating with folks throughout the years. Can you tell me about some of the friendships that went into Man on Fire?
A lot of those guys I’ve known for a long time. I guess I met Bill [Frisell] right when I first got up [to the Pacific Northwest], I met Dave [Matthews] shortly after that, and I’ve known John Paul Jones since around there too as a matter of fact, early 2000s. I’d never met Geoff [Stanfield], who produced the record. I was talking about making a record and Dave suggested Geoff, who’s a friend of his. He’s a Seattle guy, so I could work here, I wouldn’t have to fly to L.A. or something like that.
I’m really blessed to have really close friends that care about me, and are super-elevated in the art where they really have another way of looking at things. It’s been a real honor to be able to work with those guys, I’ll tell you that. It’s tough when you’re in the music world, because everybody is involved in it. There are certain subjects that people just in general don’t have opinions about, say for instance like microscopes or something. Music though, people are so used to manning the ship as it were. I’m talking about the audience, people that would potentially listen. So you’ve really gotta think about how you want to stage things and get things out.
The trick about music is that it’s tough to get really really good opinions about stuff. Sometimes guys will make criticisms about stuff just because they want to work on it, you know what I mean? So you still don’t know anything. There’s a lot of ego. What I’ve found is that you have people that know you really well — I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of what I call true masters of music, guys who are super elevated in my field. Those guys, when they have something to say, you can really count on it. Especially if they love you and care about you. If you know them and their kids, you know… it’s relationships. It’s not like you met them at Folk Alliance or somewhere and you’re just gonna make a record with this guy.
You have one of the most unique songwriting styles, between the vastness of your characters from beautiful love songs (“Fun” off of Rocket) and angry men mad at the world (“Bone” from Pizza Box). What is your inspiration behind creating the characters and stories surrounding them?
It’s really like being a poet or something like that. I feel like there’s something that happens to you, I’m not trying to brag on myself, but when you put out a lot of records over the years, there’s a place where you kind of meet yourself. And you go, “Oh, there I am, this is what I do.” If I wanna deviate from this, I now have something to deviate from. I figured out from my poetry that it’s sort of this southern outsider art, like art brut, the French saying for raw art. Kinda like Reverend Howard Finster, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, sort of southern gothic, bleak but funny at the same time. And that’s who populates a lot of my little movies. I find it fascinating, when you can make all these characters, and they can do all of these things and have all these experiences.
The video for “Hey Man” is one of my favorite pieces from the new album. What was your inspiration behind that song, as well as creating the video?
I got this idea from a friend of mine, who went out to his garage, whipped the door open, and there was a dude living in his garage. I just use stuff like that for songs. I thought about telling the story from the homeless guy’s view, and he’s trying to explain why he’s in there as he’s getting all his stuff and getting out of there. Like on that show Cops, they’re stuffing a guy in a car and he’s trying to explain how he got into this situation, and no one is really listening.
David (Dave Matthews) really liked that song, and he’s got this guy Fenton, his lighting guy, who’s really smart about imagery, along with a couple dudes from the DMB crew who are really into editing. We storyboarded the whole thing, shot it in a couple of days over in Seattle. We put a lot of work and time into it. I’m really proud of it. I’ve never been able to do a budgeted video before. It was a real honor to get that out.
Any major plans you’re looking forward to when things resume?
I’m always doing stuff with David Grisman. He and I have a record that we put out a year or so ago, and a whole new record written, just waiting for a good time to record it. The Bad Livers, we’re kinda working on a record. I’m working on this music for tuba and banjo, kind want to make a record build around that. I’ve been writing a bunch of music for the 12-string guitar. I kinda want to make another ambient record. I’ve always got a lot of ideas.
Photo by Sarah Cass
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