Tag: Banjo

Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn to Host the 2017 IBMA Awards

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Banjoists Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn are set to the host the International Bluegrass Music Association awards in September. Their presence on stage signals the genre’s expansive growth in recent years, reaching toward the edges in order to better understand the center. It also preempts their second full-length album, Echo in the Valley, due out October 6 on Rounder Records. The follow-up to their 2014 self-titled debut finds the husband-and-wife duo exploring new territory by restricting their creative path: They only used banjos on their latest set of songs, and ensured all recordings could be reproduced live. The resulting conversations they have — a mix of original songs (all co-written for the first time in their career as a duo) and covers of Clarence Ashley and Sarah Ogan Gunning — reveal a quiet muscularity. The limitations, rather than stripping away their imaginative prowess, instead lay fecund ground. If 2017 really is the “Year of the Banjo,” then Béla and Abby are its exciting exemplars, showcasing just how much fun can be had on the edge.

The IBMAs are part of the International Bluegrass Music Association, and will take place in Raleigh, North Carolina, on September 28. Tickets can be purchased through the IBMA website.

As a superstar banjo couple, do you have a conjoined nickname like Brangelina?

Béla Fleck: Abba.

I think that one’s already taken.

Abigail Washburn: I don’t think we create those ourselves. You’re going to have to create them.

Leave it to the people — that’s fair. What does it mean to you both that you’re hosting the IBMAs together?

Béla: I’m quite proud. I’ve had a long association with the IBMAs — from the first year when I won the banjo award, then a couple of years ago I did the keynote. For me, as a long-time bluegrass player and a person in that world, I’ve been a little disassociated, and this means I’m not anymore. I’m right in the center of it.

Abby: And for me, it’s an extreme honor. I’ve played music that’s certainly got a lot of bluegrass elements to it — the old-time Appalachian music that I’ve been playing with Uncle Earl for a long time, and the work that Béla and I do — so just to be so deeply included in the community, but also to be on stage in front of those wonderful people who are preserving and passing along this really bright and beautiful piece of American culture and tradition. I’m excited, too, because Béla and I and the folks that are heading up the awards presentation, are brainstorming lots of ideas to be playful and have fun. We’re excited to get to share the playfulness of our couplehood on stage.

Béla: I think we both look for ways to be creative with any situation that we’re involved in. We’re trying to figure out, “Okay, what could we do that would really be fun and really feel good to everybody?” We’ll see what we come with.

It seems like a crowd that appreciates laughter.

Béla: I think part of that is they’re all together. It’s very safe for bluegrass people. Out in life, we can sometimes feel we’re very unusual and odd, but at IBMA, everyone’s together and so everyone understands these subtle jokes about old-time bluegrass people we all love … or Sam Bush’s hair. I think that’s really special.

I know, like any genre, there are some players who get mired down in tradition and don’t want to see things change, but you’ve both pushed those boundaries in really exciting ways.

Béla: I would just say the very fact that we’ve been invited to do it … because I’ve spent a lot of my life outside of the bluegrass world playing other kinds of music, but I always take bluegrass with me. And Abby, you wouldn’t call her a bluegrass artist at her core, but she’s very associated with it. It’s showing that we’re all part of that family. We’re very respectful of the tradition; we just happen to live on the edge of it. But bluegrass is a very wide musical genre these days. We only lose by chopping off the edges. Even Earl Scruggs was excited about swing. I’m hopeful that this is just part of appreciating the fact that you need some outside blood every once in a while. Where would we be without “Polka on the Banjo”?

That’s what makes for such exciting growth. Well, BGS has dubbed 2017 “The Year of the Banjo” because there are so many projects that are either banjo-focused or banjo-inspired. What would you pin to that explosion?

Béla: I’m a little skeptical of those kinds of things. I think people are doing great work every year and, a lot of times, the great strides come gradually along the whole scope of the curve, but then, every once in a while, there’s a moment when everybody shows up at the same time with new stuff and we do make a big jump. In the past, some pretty wonderful things were happening in the dark that might not even be covered, and might be ignored by the world at large, but now there’s enough interest in the banjo that we can really talk about it and build some energy around it.

Going back to your keynote address from 2014, you mentioned how the banjo was almost a hindrance to your early career because of the way people viewed it. It’s gone through its own sea change in terms of popularity.

Béla: I think part of it is we aged away from Deliverance. It’s an old movie and you have to go find it now. When it came out, it was everywhere and the song “Dueling Banjos” was such a huge hit. It sort of cemented that image of what happened in the movie with how people thought about the banjo, which was an unfortunate piece of that whole phenomenon. I saw very gradually a shift from “Squeal like a pig” to “The banjo? That’s cool.”

Abby: I think there have been a lot of people working really hard for a long time, including yourself. I will compliment my husband, at this point. He’s been working for decades trying to show another side of the banjo to people. Now there are a lot of younger groups who have really taken to it because of Béla.

Béla: Well, a lot of other people, too.

Abby: The list goes on. It’s having an impact. The things that younger people see isn’t Deliverance, but the Bill Keiths and the Rhiannon Giddens, and, gosh, Mumford and Sons. Different kinds of people playing the banjo. There’s the most wonderful representation of banjo that’s come from the edges. It’s very cool.

Very much so. Turning to your forthcoming album, you set out limitations about what instruments you could use and recorded songs that could be recreated exactly on stage. Why set such staunch parameters around creating?

Abby: Limitations are actually extremely freeing, when you set the right ones. We really like being able to create a record that can be experienced live by people. And it’s created these new kinds of challenges for us, because we want to learn and grow and spread our wings as a duo, and working on the eccentricities and complexities to develop the nuance of duo performance means that we incorporated some new ideas into what we’re doing.

Béla: My only addition to what Abby said is that it’s awkward when you make a record that you can’t perform live. We wanted the honesty of the music to be very clear. It’s really very sparse duet music, but we’re finding a way to make it sound as big and powerful as we can with just our two instruments. It’s an art of recording that we aspire to do well at, because I love that part of the process myself. I’m a nerd recording-type guy.

I would say that this latest LP is quieter than your debut and yet it’s no less powerful. I kept thinking of musical conversations that ebb and flow so naturally. Has your playing bolstered other forms of communication between you two?

Béla: I would say we have suffered times on this record because we have a lot of stuff to figure out.

Abby: Suffered times, in terms of the fact that we had an infant. This time, we had higher expectations for ourselves, musically, so we took on new challenges that made for a lot of conflict at times.

Béla: Someone would have an idea, and rather than the other person going, “Yes, that’s perfect,” they’d say, “That’s cool, what if we tried this?” You might get your feelings hurt a little bit, but a little time would go by and we’d come back and go, “Okay, how can this be both of us contributing equally to the song?” I think we’re really good in our relationship at taking each other into account, but in the creative process, things are never exactly equal. You gotta fight for your ideas and then you have to find a way to change them to fit what the other person wants.

Abby: We decided we wanted to write the lyrics together, and that was different from the last record.

Béla: So that was hard for both of us, but we got to a place where we’re both very pleased, and that made our relationship stronger.

Photo credit: Jim McGuire 

9 Times Clawhammer Banjo Was ALMOST as Good as Scruggs-Style

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Scruggs-style banjo is cooler than clawhammer, like, nearly all of the time … except, perhaps, these nine times when clawhammer came as close to surpassing three-finger’s coolness as it ever has.

Rhiannon Giddens — “Following the North Star”

Like the time Rhiannon pulled clawhammer banjo’s African roots out of the instrument with every string pluck. And those bones! I mean, c’mon.

Bruce Molsky — “Cumberland Gap”

Or the time Bruce Molsky sat on a folding chair, stageside, in the middle of a muddy field, and proceeded to be a badass. As far as solo acts go, he is one of the most entertaining; he entrances audiences with just his voice and an instrument.

Allison de Groot with Jack Devereux and Nic Gareiss — “Black-Eyed Suzie”

Or the time when the core of every string band (fiddle + banjo) was augmented by a percussive dancer and, for a split second, we all forgot that bluegrass is a thing and Scruggs-style is the pinnacle.

Uncle Earl — “The Last Goodbye”

Or any time Abigail Washburn picks up an open-back. Seriously, if your banjo playing stacks up against Béla Fleck’s, you’re working on higher plane. Higher than most three-finger stylists? Maybe …

Adam Hurt — “John Riley the Shepherd”

Then there was the time when we all learned that banjos could be this haunting. Something about a natural-hide, fretless, gourd banjo almost wipes resonator, tone-ringed, flanged banjos clear out of the mind … almost.

Giri & Uma Peters — “The Cuckoo”

Okay, this is actually objectively better than Scruggs-style banjo. Not only because our friend and hero Uma Peters is incredibly young, but she’s also massively talented. Look at that right hand form! This video went viral on Facebook — it has more than 160,000 views currently — and it’s surely because her sweeps are staggering.

Della Mae — “This World Oft Can Be”

There’s also the time Della Mae showed the world (which oft can be a down and lonesome place to be) that clawhammer banjo is, in fact, bluegrass — not just a lesser form of real (aka three-finger) banjo. Yeah. We said it.

Mark Johnson, Emory Lester, Steve Martin — “Forked Deer”

Finally, there was that time Mark Johnson (winner of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo & Bluegrass in 2012) traded solos with Steve Martin on Letterman. We’ll take banjo on national television in any form, three-finger or clawhammer.

WATCH: Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes, ‘When We Love’

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Artist: Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes
Hometown: Wytheville, VA and Big Stone Gap, VA
Song: “When We Love”
Album: Sam Gleaves & Tyler Hughes
Release Date: June 16, 2017
Label: Community Music, INC

In Their Words: “This song is our way of advocating for love in this time of divisions. Music celebrates our shared humanity. We are grateful for our friends who are doing inspiring work and especially the wonderful young people who appeared in this music video. The evidence is all around us that we can and should work together to build a more inclusive society.” — Sam Gleaves

Photo credit: Susi Lawson

In Countering Melodies: Molly Tuttle in Conversation with James Elkington

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As soon as I get Molly Tuttle and James Elkington on the phone, the conversation immediately turns to who is the better guitar player. There’s no showboating or bragging. On the contrary, each insists the other is much more accomplished, much more refined in their technique. “I hadn’t actually heard much of your music until a couple of days ago,” Elkington admits, “but I have to say that you are the far superior guitar player.”

“No way!” Tuttle insists. “I love your guitar playing.”

Their mutual demurrals stem partly from modesty, but also from the fact that both Tuttle and Elkington practice such different folk traditions that there’s very little overlap in their playing styles. A bluegrass picker who grew up in California and made her stage debut at 11 years old, Tuttle attended the prestigious Berklee School of Music in Boston and formed the Good-Bye Girls. On her solo debut, an EP titled Rise, her playing is rhythmically complex, technically precise, and remarkably fleet, as though there are two sets of hands running up and down the frets, yet the guitar remains secondary to her evocative songwriting.

Elkington, who originally hails from a small village outside of London but currently lives in Chicago, is a self-taught guitarist with a background in indie rock, most notably with the Zincs, the Horse’s Ha (featuring members of Eleventh Dream Day and Freakwater), and Wilco. However, his new solo debut, Wintres Woma, leans more toward folk music — specifically, the British folk revival of the 1960s, when players like Davey Graham, Bert Jansch, and Richard Thompson were melding early music, rural folk, jazz, and rock.

Their albums couldn’t sound more different, despite the shared combination of voice and guitar, yet both bluegrass and folk music value technique in service of interpretation; more important than the fluidity of notes or the deftness of picking is how the artist updates, refines, and furthers the musical ideas of the past.

One of the reasons I wanted to get you two on the phone is because I’m fascinated by the very different strains of folk music that you represent. Both of your albums strike me as using something — bluegrass or British folk revival — as a jumping-off point for something very different, very current, and very personal.

James Elkington: I didn’t really grow up in much of a folk tradition, outside of the fact that we sang those songs at school and they always seemed to be around. It seems like it’s probably part of my DNA. When I started writing my own songs, which was comparatively late, other people told me that I sounded like that. I didn’t really know that it was in there, and it’s one of those things that I’ve subsequently found I have quite a deep connection to. But that’s why I don’t perform an awful lot of traditional music, although subsequently I have gone back and arranged those tunes just because I love playing them. Now it’s part of what I do. That’s where I’m coming from.

Molly Tuttle: I grew up listening to a lot of bluegrass. My dad is a bluegrass music teacher who teaches all the bluegrass instruments, so I always heard him playing traditional songs. They seeped into my brain, I think, so that when I started playing, I was learning all these bluegrass songs and old traditionals. That was my background and, as I got older, I started listening to other genres and styles. I started writing songs and still had the bluegrass form in my head, so it was definitely a starting point for me.

JE: You know, funny thing that I’ve found actually … I find that somehow the physicality of playing folk music demands a certain technical ability. It feels good to play, as well as sounding good, and when I started writing my own songs, I wanted that to factor in somehow. In some ways, it adds not a limitation exactly, but something like that. It sets up a nice boundary to work within, if you use those traditional forms as a jumping-off point.

MT: It does make it accessible for other people to learn the songs and join in, too.

JE: And to actually know where you’re coming from.

What other music informs what you do?

MT: A lot of singer/songwriters, actually. I listened to a lot of Bob Dylan, when I was starting to write songs. Before that, I had heard a lot of bluegrass songs and felt limited by that. But when I heard Dylan, lyrically and musically, he was just breaking so many boundaries and that opened up my songwriting a little bit. I was just really inspired by that. Joni Mitchell and Gillian Welch are big heroes of mine, too, and Dave Rawlings, who plays with Gillian Welch.

JE: He always plays the right thing at the right time. The way he thinks of arrangements is …

MT: Yeah, he’s doing a counter-melody sometimes, just always putting the perfect piece in. What about you? I’m interested to hear about where your playing style comes from.

JE: I started playing guitar when I was about 10. There are vaguely musical people in my family, but no one who really plays anything. And the guitar was something that was just for me — something I could do privately, sort of like my own private little island to go and visit. And when I started out, I was just really into chords. This was in England in the 1980s. I don’t know if you can have any conception of what that was like, but it was a lot of really jangly guitar bands. It was like this Renaissance of underground bands, like the Smiths and the Cure. When I was learning the guitar, I was really into those groups — particularly Johnny Marr, who was the Smiths’ guitar player.

MT: He’s one of my favorites.

JE: That’s great to hear, because he’s like really the last great British guitar hero. His guitar playing on those records is amazing. The strange thing about it is that I found out subsequently that a lot of what he does, in terms of using other tunings and his approach to finger-style guitar, is really from people like Bert Jansch, Martin Carthy, and Joni Mitchell — all this stuff that I didn’t grow up listening to, but somehow it filtered through him in a way.

MT: I listened to the Smiths so much in high school. I was obsessed with Morrissey’s lyrics, and then the guitar playing was a second thing that I got really into, but I’ve never tried to learn any of his parts to figure out what he was doing.

JE: When I was a kid, I thought that’s really how you had to play the guitar. What changed me was that, when I was in my late teens, I started working in a music store, and there was a guy there who was really into bluegrass. He wanted me to come and play tunes with him, and for some reason, I had no interest in playing the guitar in that setting. But I had this strange attraction to the five-string banjo. I never got very good at it, but I learned the basic rules. Then, when I’d been doing it long enough to realize that I couldn’t play it well, I just applied all of that to the guitar, and that was the start of me doing finger-style stuff.

MT: I play three-finger banjo, so when I play finger-style guitar, I feel like I’m using some banjo stuff, as well.

JE: So you play banjo and guitar? Do you play anything else? Any fiddle or anything like that?

MT: I’ve tried to play fiddle, but I can’t get the hang of it. I play a little bit of mandolin, but not very well. I saw that you play a lot of different instruments.

JE: To a medium-low standard, I would say. I started out playing drums, which I loved. The drums are my favorite instrument, but I didn’t ever seem to get any better at it. For some reason, guitar is somehow easier for me to play. I do play some other things, but it’s not to the point where I could actually say, “I’ve really got this down.” I think I have a really short attention span, is what it is. I tend to move around a lot.

But you played most of the instruments on your album, right?

JE: Yes, but the arrangements are pretty sparse. My friend Nick Macri plays all the upright bass on it. I’ve been playing on and off with him for a long time. And I have some string players who are part of the jazz and new music scene here in Chicago. But mostly it was just me. It’s some fairly simple stuff. I’m mostly self-taught on most instruments. I really took the slow way round. I learned mainly just from trying to play along with the record. Molly, I saw some footage of your band playing, and they all seem equally amazing. Where did you meet those people? Do you always play with the same people?

MT: It’s a little bit of a rotating cast. For the most part, I’ve been playing with Wes Corbett, who’s a banjo player I met in Boston when I was studying at Berklee College of Music. He was teaching there, and we started playing together after I graduated. Right now, I’m on the road with Joe Walsh, who’s also currently teaching at Berklee. He’s an amazing mandolin player and singer. And then Hasee Ciaccio is playing bass with me right now for the summer and fall, and she’s a great upright bass player who lives in Nashville. We’re actually neighbors. What made you gravitate toward Chicago?

JE: It was a few different things. When I was in my later teens and early 20s, all my favorite music was coming out of Chicago — the underground and experimental rock stuff. I had a chance to come and visit here with friends, and I found that it was almost exactly what I wanted it to be. I’m sure, when you moved to Nashville, it was because you wanted to be around that music and be part of that community. I felt exactly the same thing with Chicago. I felt immediately at home here, like this was the place where I wanted to be. It actually all worked out, too. I really did end up playing music with people whose records I had. It’s really a “Hey, let’s all pull together and make something” type of place. I lived in London before, and I never really felt like that there.

MT: That’s how I feel about Nashville.

JE: Did you make your record in Nashville?

MT: I did. It’s my first solo release, so it’s all original stuff that I’ve been working on for years. I did it in Nashville with producer Kai Welch. It has some of my favorite musicians on it. It was great to finally make something of my own, because I’ve done stuff with other bands before but never released anything under my own name.

JE: That’s something I wanted to ask you: Have you played in other people’s bands a lot? Have you ever been just a guitar player in someone’s band?

MT: A little bit, with different bluegrass people. When I was living on the East Coast, I used to play a little bit with this banjo player Tony Trischka, who is like a great …

JE: Oh my God! Really?

MT: You know him?

JE: Let’s briefly go back to 1989 here. When I thought I was going to be this banjo ripper, Tony Trischka wrote THE best books. This friend of mine was really into that resurgence of bluegrass that Rounder Records were putting out — Tony Rice, Hot Rize. He would give me all these records — Béla Fleck records, stuff like that — and Tony Trischka was one of two people who had written sensible, up-to-date books on how to approach the five-string banjo. So you used to play with him?

MT: I did a few tours with him. I always have a lot of fun playing in someone else’s band and being more of a sideperson. I find that a really fun role. And I have another band called the Good-Bye Girls that I play with. It’s all people I met when I was in Boston. We do a couple of tours a year, but that feels more like less of a lead role to me. I like stepping into different roles and not always doing stuff where I’m the lead.

JE: I’ve found exactly the same thing. I’ve found that actually being able to play in different bands and have the focus be different each time means I never need to take a vacation from it, because it’s different enough each time. If I was just a singer, I think I would need to take a break from time to time. But I never really feel like that, and I think it’s because I have enough plate-spinning that I’m always mixing it up. I can tell from the way that you play that you have a deep knowledge of the bluegrass songbook, that when people call tunes, you can just play them — which is not something that I can do. I can’t even play my own songs sometimes when someone asks me to do that. That’s always something I admire in other people.

MT: Oh, thanks. It’s a really nice tradition, because once you have learned enough bluegrass songs, you can make it through most of the standards, even if you don’t know them. A lot of the songs have similarities, and you can jump in, which makes it fun. Even people who are new to the genre can jump into jams and find their way through songs they don’t know very well.

JE: I stopped listening to bluegrass for a while, but then, a few years ago, a friend of mine who has a band called Freakwater was doing a tour to celebrate an album that came out 20 years ago [Old Paint]. This album had a lot of dobro on it, and they wanted me to play dobro. I play a little bit of lap steel, but I’ve never really played dobro before. So I bought a cheap dobro and really got into it! It totally took over for about a year. That’s all I was doing. But now I don’t get asked to play it very much. I played it a little bit on my own record and I’m planning on playing it more, but I think you actually have throw yourself more into the bluegrass community.

MT: Was it a steep learning curve for you, or did you find it similar to lap steel?

JE: It was not too bad. I could already play some lap steel, and I’ve played bottleneck slide, so I had a little bit of understanding. But I had to watch a lot of Jerry Douglas YouTubes! You don’t even think some of that stuff is possible unless you actually see and hear and do it.

MT: Is this your first solo album?

The Unbroken Circle: An Interview with Tim O’Brien

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wheeling has a symphony?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LISTEN: Dougmore, ‘Best Outta Three’

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Artist: Dougmore
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
Song: ”Best Outta Three”
Album: Outerboros
Release Date: June 2, 2017
Label: Golden Stag Music

In Their Words: “In ‘Best Outta Three,’ I attempt to capture a moonlight-drenched walk home from a first date gone wrong — that feeling when Lady Luck lets you lose, when a brazen first kiss is met by a turned cheek. Exploring games of chance to find my language for this particular heavy-hearted experience took form from its well-known, most basic-level — a playground match of rock, paper, scissors. Suddenly, metaphors for this romantic tête-à-tête find new life through the signing of hands by a metonymic displacement of the kiss event.

In the language of love, hand imagery is commonly employed, as in ‘winning his/her hand in marriage,’ a figure of speech that is an extension of the symbolic exchange of rings as signifiers for a couple’s love and relationship status. I use the poetry of the song to play in the space existing between sign and meaning, as well as signified and signifier, as my metaphors dance and spin out into something new as they run away with themselves.” — Dougmore

Photo credit: Yoichi Nagano

Counsel of Elders: John Cohen on Never Giving Up the Search

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In 1959, John Cohen went searching for something. Were you to ask him at the time, before he headed south toward Kentucky from New York by way of bus, he might’ve responded that it had to do with a sound. But underneath that sonic exploration lay an interest in weightier connections beyond what he’d heard pour out of his family’s speakers when his mother or his father dropped the needle on a new Frank Sinatra LP. Cohen was looking for a connection.

Over the course of his long and varied career, Cohen has been a musician, a filmmaker, a photographer, and more, but at the heart of those titles — and the identities they color — exists a desire to cull the past for its most earnest and forgotten correspondences. As if the banjo playing of Roscoe Holcomb or the traditional songs Cohen performed with his band the New Lost City Ramblers in the 1950s and 1960s, and more recently with the Down Hill Strugglers, contained an integral message to be cared for and passed on. It’s an appreciation for the past that has led some to describe him as a documentarian or a historian or even a preservationist, but any such qualifier only strikes Cohen as being too stiff for the living things they contain.

Cohen will be performing with the Brooklyn-based old-time string band the Down Hill Strugglers at the Brooklyn Folk Festival beginning April 28. He joins a host of traditional and world sounds that have shaped him and continue to inform his listening aesthetic to this day. The search, after all, is never finished.

You’ve mentioned before how you wanted to differentiate yourself from your parents and the standards they listened to at the time — like Frank Sinatra — and, later, the collegiate trend within the folk revival. How did class factor into your taste?

My grandparents were immigrants. My parents were children of immigrants in New York City and, in the process of distancing themselves from their parents’ orthodox Russian Jewish background, they let us kids run wild in American culture. We lived in working class Queens, a place called Sunnyside, but around my 10th birthday, they changed classes and went down to the suburbs and took me with them. And I became middle-class.

By the end of my years in high school, I felt something was wrong and I became an open revolt against that. Music was an important part of my realization of what a cocoon the suburbs were. When I heard Woody Guthrie — this is 1948 I’m talking about — and the Carter Family and Uncle Dave Macon, well, it just opened my horizons. It showed me things about America that I had never even heard of. Here I was listening to Lead Belly when I came home from high school, while everyone else was listening to Frank Sinatra. I was on a very different track, and it’s been that for the next 70 years.

Authenticity is such a loaded word, and yet it seems like you were turned off of the pageantry and production that surrounded popular music at the time. What were you pursuing in this kind of sound?

It completed the picture. The middle class, the Frank Sinatra, the comfortable life, and even the things around rock ‘n’ roll, which are really beautiful and exciting but pretty safe … and then suddenly to see this other side to things. That put the two together and made a much bigger picture. I spent many years making films and photographs in Peru, and it’s even more profound there because the culture is so different. Everything is so different than what we’re raised on here in America. I’m not a universal man, but I have this sense of seeing things from many sides at once. I’m satisfied that I got to that place.

Now we have the Internet and infinite discovery at our fingertips, but you really had to go searching, especially with regards to music.

Eli Smith, a dear friend of mine who presents the Brooklyn Folk Festival, gave me an iPod a couple of years ago loaded with 15,000 tunes, but they’re mostly old blues, old hillbilly music, traditional music, and music from all around the world. I just can’t believe how much joy it gives me, and it’s not exactly “joy” because I put it on shuffle. One moment I’m listening to a Ukrainian orchestra and then, in the next moment, an old bluegrass band. In my mind, I’m constantly asking, “What is it about this music that can make me feel so good about each of them, or what do they have in common?” There’s a certain age to the music, to the singing, a certain vigor that you don’t find in every day life.

A certain connectivity?

Yeah, I mean I could go into ethnomusicology terms, but that’s just a structure around it. It’s a feeling, an intensity. There’s a wonderful writer and musician named Julius Lester and, during the Vietnam War, he went up to North Vietnam and said at midnight they were at the edge of the river waiting for a ferryboat to come and get them across. A ferryboat was just one man in a little boat with an oar, and [Lester] said that man was singing and it sounded just like Clarence Ashley, who was an Appalachian singer from the 1920s. To hear that, it explains it. The same feeling, the same ache to the voice, the same explanation of a life.

These subjects are universal. You’ve described yourself as an artist not a documentarian, and — as a thought experiment — if you put those two identities on the same spectrum, I wonder if you won’t fall somewhere in the middle, like a preservationist, if that’s not too staunch of a term.

It is. It reminds me of formaldehyde. Walter Evans, a wonderful photographer, he used the phrase, “Well, I work in a documentary style,” which means it looks like what people think a documentary is, but that doesn’t mean that it really is. The other thing that I find all over the place is that the word “interpretation” comes in more. I look objectively. I take a photograph: It’s a lens, it’s a film, it’s a fact. But by the time I finish with it, it’s an interpretation. In a way, it holds true for my music, too. I don’t consider myself to be an original musician. The origins are somewhere else, and I’m constantly interpreting those origins. That’s the way I have to look at it.

Yes, but you’re also interested in sticking to the instrumental and melodic foundation. There’s an inclination to preserve there.

I use that as the tools with which I work, but I admire so much and I’m so moved by some of the inventive old sounds that it’s my attempt to get at that. Of course, I can never be them — I can never be Clarence Ashley — but I can reach for it, as long as I don’t lose sight of the original. And very often when I sing or perform, I’ll refer to the source … and it’s not for historical reasons or anything; it just helps me get through the song.

A seeking instinct led you to Kentucky, and the idea of seeking has shifted in recent decades. Have we lost anything?

With the Internet and a lot of phonograph records, you can get the illusion that you’re with someone else and still be sitting on your sofa. But the real trick is to get up off the sofa and get out the door and go somewhere else. And don’t go as a tourist. Tourism is one of the biggest industries in the whole world right now, but that’s because people are looking for something beyond themselves. They don’t know how to approach it. I mean, I went down looking for banjo recordings.

Door-to-door, no less.

More gas station to gas station. And once the folks start retuning the banjo, it opens up their memories of songs they hadn’t played in years or sounds that they don’t play regularly. It’s like a continual opening up of very special things when you have something that you’re after.

New Lost City Ramblers at Newport Folk Festival

I look at the Internet and obviously someone could “seek” by searching, but you lose that face-to-face connectivity.

Oh yeah, and all the questions like, “Where am I going to eat?” When you go somewhere else, you gotta ask those questions yourself, unless you stay on the main path all the time. One of the things about my approach to music — and it’s not just me alone — is when you hear something that you wanna get at and you try to play it, you’re engaging in a very different way. You have to listen again; you have to listen closely. That’s another form of engagement. I guess it’s about seeking the experience of making music or participating in it rather than just listening to it.

What excites you about the Brooklyn Folk Festival?

It’s a reflection of all the things I’ve been talking about. It’s a great opportunity to see these people in person and hear the music in person, but again, you’re not sitting in your living room with your headphones on. You’re there.

Like you said, opening up the experience.

Yeah, the depth of variety of music … it’s like that iPod. It’s loaded with stuff from all over the place and strong because it’s been curated: They selected one group rather than another. And it goes back in time, as well as being contemporary.

Years ago, in 1961, we formed an organization called the Friends of Old-Time Music and our purpose, for the first time, was to bring traditional performers from the countryside into the city and give them solo concerts. It was the first time we had tried that. Very often, you have a traditional American singer come and be a guest on a Pete Seeger show or a festival or something. Here we were putting on full concerts and that kind of set things in motion in this direction.

Nowadays we’re enjoying the culmination of that exposure.

When my band the New Lost City Ramblers started in 1958, we tried to get at that music: The music that wasn’t being heard, we tried to perform it. We were showing that city kids or urban kids or kids from another tradition could really involve themselves in performing this music, and I’m so proud, after all these years, to see the size of the string bands. There’re festivals and there’re gatherings; it’s all over the place. How many young men and young women study violin and then they change their mind and they play fiddle music? They’re off and running.

Lede photo: John Cohen with Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt. All photos courtesy of John Cohen.

Playing with Purpose: An Interview with Leigh Gibson

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The Gibson Brothers are one of the tried-and-true mainstays of the contemporary bluegrass scene, and it’s no wonder why: With masterful, Monroe-style instrumentation and suits to match, they’re the picture of a sharp-dressed, classic bluegrass band. But their background — in the world of traditional bluegrass music, anyway — could hardly be more unorthodox.

Eric and Leigh Gibson grew up on a dairy farm in Upstate New York just a couple miles from the Canadian border. Gritty, mid-’80s New York City was only a few hours South, but they felt like outsiders in their home state’s cultural capital. They were raised on their father’s regimen of classic country music and daily farm labor. Their farmhouse got Canadian public access channels instead of MTV — Gordon Lightfoot instead of Michael Jackson, with a healthy dose of French Canadian fiddle music thrown in. Turns out the Stanley Brothers and Lester Flatt’s stories of rural life made them feel right at home. They didn’t miss the mainstream stuff.

But when they traveled South, they felt like outsiders all over again. At some traditional bluegrass festivals — places where “drink” and “bank” make a tidy rhyme, and the stars and stripes may be the second-most common red, white, and blue flag — they represented a special subset of foreigners called “Yankees.” Even there, they quickly gained respect. A boatload of IBMA Awards soon added the exclamation point. Their bluegrass success is a testament to their farm-style hard work and that timeless synergy of two brothers singing close harmonies. Also — sorry to bury the lede here — they write really good original songs. That probably has something to do with it.

I planned my conversation with Leigh Gibson expecting to talk about traditional bluegrass. Based on their appearance and the festivals they play — and, yes, their reverence for old bluegrass music — they’ve been neatly pre-categorized as “traditional” bluegrass. But when I listened to their record I had to remind myself: The easy distinction between traditionalists and progressives is as convenient as it is misleading. Like the Steep Canyon Rangers or Balsam Range or, for that matter, the Del McCoury Band, the Gibson Brothers only look the part of rigid traditionalists. They write songs reminiscent of Robbie Robertson or Bruce Springsteen just as often as the Stanley Brothers. Sure, they have a banjo in the band, but the interesting part is what they’re doing to expand the vocabulary of their chosen form.

Being a bluegrass band doesn’t make them just a bluegrass band. The Gibson Brothers are a good reminder that some folks with mandolins and banjos should be considered, first, as a great band, regardless of genre. Then you can call them bluegrass.

Let’s talk about In the Ground. I’ve been jamming to this for the last few days. It’s a great record. This is the first album of original tunes since 2011, right?

Right. And it’s the first one that’s all original. Eric and I, early on, were covering Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe, plus doing songs of the popular bands of the day, just trying to figure it out. As a really young picker — I don’t know if this is true for everybody — I didn’t have as much to say. I’d write a little bit, but it wasn’t the same thing it is today, where you feel like you have something to say and you can stand behind it after you say it.

So how did you make that process happen? How did you graduate from playing classic songs and learning to play other people’s licks to having your own sound and something to say?

As far as the sound goes, we were so far removed geographically from the center of things. Growing up in northern New York State, there wasn’t really a template. We didn’t come up in someone else’s band and then start our own band. I don’t want to call it peer pressure, because that’s not what it is — but we weren’t as affected by the question of what is bluegrass, what is the contemporary sound of bluegrass, because we weren’t picking with anybody who had any idea what that meant. We were mostly playing with French Canadians at fiddle contests who liked the banjo. We would go into Quebec into these jam sessions at someone’s house — some of these folks didn’t even speak English. It was a different sort of gateway into the music profession, for sure. But it was really cool sitting there singing old country songs, classic country from the ’50s and early ’60s. So we went North first before we went South.

I hadn’t thought of the geographic closeness of French Canada and the fiddle tradition there, but that makes a lot of sense.

We were exposed to Canadian television and radio because we grew up in such close proximity to the border. We were just two miles away. Behind our family farm, which started in 1860, there was nothing but woods and then the border. So we grew up watching Canadian television and we were exposed to a lot of Canadian artists — Gordon Lightfoot and others. And we might see some Opry stars on Canadian television, like Charlie Louvin or the Osborne Brothers, who had a bluegrass pedigree.

So this was the mid-’80s. What else was in the air at the time? Was it Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper? Were you exposed to that mainstream stuff, too?

Growing up like we did where we did, we didn’t have MTV. My wife is just a year-and-a-half younger than me and she grew up in downstate New York. She was totally influenced by MTV and that part of the culture. But not us. What I was hearing for rock ‘n’ roll was coming out of Montreal.

So for a lot of people your age — growing up on MTV — bluegrass might have felt exotic and old fashioned. But it sounds like it was closer to what you’d been exposed to as a kid, with the Canadian fiddle music, Canadian radio, and old country music.

Yeah, I didn’t feel so much like an oddball in bluegrass. At that point in time, if you were listening to country radio as we were, just when we were getting into the music — that’s when [Ricky] Skaggs was breaking out. All those influences from his bluegrass pedigree came into his country songs. It was a validation happening, in my mind, for what we were trying to do with these instruments — learning banjo and guitar and singing Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe. So I wasn’t missing the Cyndi Lauper stuff.

So even though you were in the same state as New York City, this cultural capitol of the world producing all these big modern stars, you felt closer to Canadian fiddle music and old country music. But then bluegrass was composed of mostly Southerners, so you were kind of both culturally inside and outside.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. At the time, I didn’t feel like we were outside. You have to remember, we were living on a dairy farm. My father worked that farm 365 days a year, so we didn’t travel much. We’d find bluegrass radio stations — it was back in the cassette days. We would record a Sunday night radio broadcast out of Ottawa. We didn’t get the station really well, but at night in the summertime you could get it. So we’d hit record and listen to those shows throughout the week on that cassette.

That reminds me of stories you hear old bluegrass musicians tell. Folks would gather around the family radio in the living room and listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Why do you think y’all were drawn to country and bluegrass radio?

Once you get up above Poughkeepsie, New York gets really country. We were six hours north of New York City. They’re country people up there. There are mining communities. I think it’s more closely related to Appalachia than people would think.

So the North/South divide is the wrong spectrum to think about. It’s more the urban/rural divide?

I think so. I was never apprehensive about going to the South, but every time I cross the George Washington Bridge, I still get a tightness in my chest, like, “Oh, boy! Here we go!”

[Laughs] Even as a native New Yorker.

New York is exciting if you’re not bringing a car, but I still feel that way. Like that is a different world.

Sure, but thinking of that North/South divide, I mean, if I took a friend from New York City to a rural North Carolina bluegrass festival with funnel cake and chewing tobacco and banjo music, they would be like, “Where the hell am I?”

True, true. And I sometimes forget because I’ve been to so many of those things. I do remember the first couple Southern Virginia festivals we played. You just couldn’t feel like you fit in, because — it was our first time being around Confederate flags flying at every campsite, and the only compliment you’d get is, “You guys are okay. For Yankees.”

Well, I guess that’s a really high compliment for some people!

[Laughs] Yeah, and they meant it! You know, the second or third time they’d see you they would come up and say, “Tell me true, now, you’re mama is from down here, right?”

That’s awesome. So, in other words, you passed the test. You weren’t dismissed for being Yankees because you got the music.

And when we first started, we were paying tribute to their music more than our own. Obviously we’d sing a little different, since we grew up talking around different people, learning how to speak and sing from different people. But we were singing Bill Monroe or Stanley Brothers or Jim & Jesse, so we didn’t introduce ourselves to them immediately. We didn’t know who we were at the time.

So, at that point, you started developing as a bluegrass band by hanging around bluegrass bands in the South? That’s how you developed your sound, too?

I think it was unavoidable that the rhythmic feel of, say, the Lonesome River Band or Nashville Bluegrass Band would creep into my guitar playing or Mike Barber’s bass playing. We listened to Sam Bush a lot. Of course, New Grass Revival was on country radio in the late ’80s. And Peter Rowan was a big one. Every one of those bands have great vocals, great songs, and can play. We were trying to figure it out like anybody would. Like when a rock band first hears the Beatles. They’re going to try and emulate that sound. So we did the same thing.

What are you listening for when you hear a great bluegrass band? Or, rather, what is it that makes a great bluegrass band great?

I guess the same could be said for any kind of music, what I’d listen for. It’s almost like you’re listening for purpose. There are people with great voices, but you still can’t stay engaged with what they’re singing about or what they’re saying. It doesn’t feel like it demands to be listened to. But look at Willie Nelson. He’s not the best singer in the world, but he makes you believe it. Del McCoury has that. There’s purpose there. You believe what they’re singing about.

Is it a question of authenticity?

Yeah, maybe. They’re authentic for sure. And the band doesn’t have to be full of the best pickers on each instrument, if it has that collective thing that makes you sit up and take notice.

Where do you think the Gibson Brothers’ sounds fits into the full picture of modern bluegrass?

I think we’re seen by most people as being traditional bluegrass. It has something to do with our configuration — we have mandolin, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and upright bass. That’s the instrumentation we’ve chosen, and the people we’re surrounded by, but I still don’t really approach it like a bluegrass band. It’s become more about us and our story. More about the catalogue of songs we’ve written and play at shows. I think those songs would still hold up if we had different instrumentation, because we believe in the songs so much.

So you’re saying that a bluegrass band is chasing after something authentic and honest, like any kind of band. They just happen to have fiddles and mandolins and banjos.

It’s true. Because those are the instruments we learned. What if my father had had a trumpet under the bed instead of a banjo that we could’ve learned on? It was a mix of timing and location that put us where we are today.

Why did a northern New York dairy farmer have a banjo?

He wanted to learn to play. He liked a lot of kinds of music — he had Mac Wiseman and Lester Flatt records. You know, that old stuff like, “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered.” Classic stuff. He liked Celtic music a lot, too. At some point, the dairy farmer who was enjoying Celtic music and a little bit of country decided he was going to order a banjo from Montgomery Ward. So he did.

I noticed one of the songs on the new record, “Everywhere I Go,” was co-written with Eric’s son, Kelly, so it seems like he’s maybe following in your footsteps. Would you encourage your kids to become working musicians?

If it would make them happy, I wouldn’t discourage them. Let me put it that way. It would please me if I could make music with my children. But here’s the father in me — only if they approached it like a professional and worked hard, not just because they want to sleep in until noon. The way we grew up on the farm, it was hard work every day. They’re not learning that first hand, exactly — I mean, we’re not splitting wood to heat the house — but I think about how to show them what hard work can do for you. Hopefully they recognize that example in our career, that it’s hard work and it pays off.

I’m thinking of the title track, “In the Ground,” where you’re lamenting the loss of the family farm. That family farm seems like a big part of your story, going way back to your grandparents and great-grandparents, etc. Is that what you miss about that lifestyle, the ethic of hard work that came along with it?

For sure. The farm teaches you that hard work doesn’t guarantee success. You can’t control the weather. The music industry is like that. There are things you can’t control. But if you don’t do the work, you won’t have any success. That’s the best thing our dad gave us, a really strong work ethic …

When the farm was still there and my father was still working it, it was fresh in my mind. That life was still there to me. Then my father passed away, so that connection was frayed, and then you feel more and more disconnected from that life. Suddenly you start looking for it, and you’re a couple of decades removed from what was already a bygone era that we were living. Now I can’t find that connection. I don’t miss having to do it every day, 365 days a year, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Seems like that feeling really connects you to a tradition in bluegrass songs. You know, longing for the old cabin home, reminiscing about Uncle Pen — or a newer song like “Old Home Place” written in the ’70s. Mourning that connection to the land and to tradition that’s been lost.

Yeah, you think about Monroe writing “On My Way Back to the Old Home,” missing home when he was in Chicago living a different life. That’s kind of what I’m doing. If that farm in that same location still could’ve provided a living for the next generation, one of us probably would’ve taken it over. There’d be no Gibson Brothers. So it’s not a lifestyle I would’ve run away from, if my father hadn’t told us from an early age that it wasn’t going to happen.

Why wasn’t it possible anymore?

Back in the day, you could have three cows and consider yourself a dairy farmer, if you were selling a little bit of milk. You didn’t need much land. But in the ’80s and ’90s, the milk prices were falling as costs were going up. In order to stay in business, a farmer had to grow and grow, adding hundreds of cows. Then you’re deeper in with the bank and milk prices drop again, so what do you do? … When my father came along, he had come to the end of the line of what was productive and profitable. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it happened. Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to become a lesson in the dairy industry …

No, it seems like important background. It strikes me that you’re almost telling the quintessential story of the American South and the way it was defined by change in the middle of the 20th century — but you grew up on the Canadian border in the 1980s. That’s wild.

True, yeah. That’s probably true. I think we have a lot in common with Appalachia historically.

Thinking of that track, “In the Ground,” and the tradition in bluegrass music of longing for an earlier time, I can imagine some kid from New York City or California who doesn’t know about bluegrass hearing that nostalgia for a better, bygone American era and being reminded of hateful, exclusive political rhetoric that also talks about getting back to a golden era. How do you convince them that’s not what you’re talking about?

I feel like our music … yes, it’s about the good old days and, yes, it has some nostalgia, but it’s our nostalgia. Although it has some common ground with traditional bluegrass, we really do sing about us. But how would I convince some 22-year-old kid in New York City? That’s a good question.

So you’re telling an honest story that comes from your own life. Maybe that’s all we can ask of any artist.

Yeah, that’s what we’ve grown into. Being our age, in our mid 40s now, we’re looking back and realizing what we’ve lost. That comes later when you get older and have children. Earlier, when you asked about the acts we love in bluegrass, it was about feeling like their songs meant something to them, that they were being authentic. That’s what I hope we’re being. We’ve spent a long time becoming us. It’s all we really know how to do.

Béla Fleck on Playing His Newest Role

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Béla Fleck has explored chapter and verse over the course of his tome-length music career, but there remained one role he had yet to play — father. The world’s most inventive banjo player took on that title over three years ago when he and his wife, clawhammer banjo player Abigail Washburn, welcomed their son Juno. Parenthood inevitably shifted innumerable things for both musicians, not least of which included when and how to write music. “It’s all family-motivated,” Fleck explains about his life now. “How do you find the time to be a musician when you’re trying to be the best parent you can be? It was a new structure that I’ve never experienced before.”

It was especially tough at first. Fleck and Washburn received a standard warning from their doctor about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) prior to taking Juno home from the hospital, which left an indelible mark. “All I could think was, ’I’m not letting him out of my sight. I’m going to have my eyes on him 24/7,’” Fleck recounts. “When he slept, I would sit and watch him all night because we were all so spooked.” Composing at home, as opposed to concentrating on duet or band projects requiring his presence elsewhere, became a way to balance fatherhood with the musical identity he’d long inhabited. “That was the beginning of realizing you can get a lot of work done by yourself when you’re with your family,” he says. Fleck took to using naptime and nighttime to work out ideas he quickly captured on a recorder during other points of his day. “Creativity can be like maple sap coming out of a tree,” he says. “If you don’t collect it for a while, and you go back, there’s a whole bunch waiting for you. It really happens that way sometimes.” As a result of his newfound approach, Juno’s influence is everywhere. “Anybody who has kids knows how that works.”

It’s an influence that extends to Fleck’s latest project and second banjo concerto, Juno Concerto. Besides naming the project after his son, Juno’s thumbprint arises thematically throughout each of the three movements. “As a musician, I was trying to be who I was as a father, and I also wanted the music to express some of the ways I was feeling,” Fleck explains. “Some simpler emotions were coming out that I was not expecting to ever feel before I became a parent. I felt more comfortable with letting them be in the music and encouraging them, while still finding ways to be my complicated self in the middle of it.” The end result is cinematically striking, full of sweeping musical phrases and a seamless conversation between banjo and orchestra. “I didn’t expect to be playing over the full orchestra going crazy, but I had to be very aware of creating textures where the banjo could be heard and then creating places where I was either in support of the orchestra or not playing at all so I could be big and not distracting from the orchestra,” he says. “It’s like a David and Goliath heroic kind of thing, but they’re not competing. At their best, they lift each other up.”

If there’s one singular characteristic to Fleck’s career, it’s his willingness — his inclination — to push boundaries. Having recorded as a solo artist, a collaborative partner, and in an array of bands — including the Béla Fleck and the Flecktones — as well as a variety of styles, Fleck takes pleasure in erasing preconceived notions about where his instrument belongs. “I want it to be on the edge and something that hasn’t been done before,” he says about his approach. “That’s the whole reason to play music: expression and exploration.” Thanks to his boldness, Fleck has done much to quell ideas about high and low art. The banjo may have found its most familiar setting in bluegrass, but over the course of his career, Fleck has helped reveal its historical place in early jazz (bringing it up to speed in the modern era), its African lineage, and now its classical possibilities. “I’d prefer to be a wine that matured and got better than a wine that you need to drink when it’s young, because I’m not young anymore,” he laughs. “I’m trying to say something meaningful and trying to get deeper into honest, pure expression as I play music, whatever music I’m playing.”

Fleck composed his first banjo concerto in 2011 after receiving a commission from the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. “It’s a lot of fun when you’re composing. You’re just sort of ordering everyone around on paper,” he says. Appropriately titled The Impostor, it involved a good deal of posturing; Fleck concentrated — thematically and literally — in asserting the banjo’s place alongside more traditional classical instruments. But he didn’t include a true slow piece for the banjo, following a concerto’s typical fast-slow-fast structure. With Juno Concerto, he set out to answer that challenge. “The banjo tends to do things well that are fast and crisp and clear,” he says. “I made a real point of insisting that the banjo could play slow, as hard as it was to do these gaping spaces. It was a challenge.”

Juno Concerto didn’t fill an entire album’s worth of space, so — as he’d done with The Impostor — Fleck set about adding additional string pieces, recording “Griff” and “Quintet for Banjo and Strings: Movement II” with string quartet Brooklyn Rider. He originally composed “Quintet for Banjo and Strings” with Edgar Meyer in the early 1980s, but never got about to recording it. “It’s so good to have something like that to settle the dust of all the craziness of the pieces I like to write,” he says. And since he’s received one more commission to compose a concerto, he anticipates following suit by combining concerto and string pieces for that next album. “I didn’t intend to do the exact same thing, but then I started to think, ‘Well, if I do it three times, it’ll be a set,’” he says. “Three concertos with three string pieces, that becomes interesting.”

For all his experimentation, it might seem that nothing intimidates Fleck anymore. In fact, the bravery he’s developed by inserting himself into myriad musical conversations only comes about after months and months of hard work. “I’ve done so much stuff that, sometimes, I forget how hard I worked on each thing,” he says. “I have a pretty intense work ethic, and then when I’m done, I forget and I go back and listen to the record and go, ‘Oh that sounds pretty good.’ I don’t hear all the blood and guts that went into getting it to that level. But when I start on a new project, I go, ‘Wow, this doesn’t sound very good. Maybe I just don’t have it anymore. Maybe my good years are behind me.’ But I don’t realize that I spent months and months and months working on those projects that, in hindsight, makes them sound easy.”

If there are ever any doubts about his talent diminishing with age, Fleck’s work ethic seems likely to keep things in check, as well as his son. Growing up in a household with two world-renowned musicians means Juno has developed quite the ear. “He doesn’t realize how much he knows about music from being around it so much,” Fleck says. Still, there’s one point on which they continue to disagree. “He always asks me, when I play instrumental songs, ‘When’s the singing going to come in?’” Fleck jokes. “That kind of bothers me because I’ve made a life of trying to make believe that singing doesn’t have to be there for music to be good. I’ll play him a song and he’ll go, ‘Papa, that’s too long.’”

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

Infinite and Unforeseen: A Conversation with Sera Cahoone

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There often seem to be seasons in life, when one thing after another takes our breath away — and not always in a pleasant way. Singer/songwriter Sera Cahoone has been experiencing just such a time for the past few years. From losing her cousin to getting engaged to breaking that off to losing one of her best friends, Cahoone has taken a quite a licking over the past few years. But her new album, From Where I Started, proves that she is very much still ticking, and beautifully so.

The 11-song cycle finds her returning to her DIY musical roots, after releasing three albums via Sub Pop and servng as a drummer with Band of Horses and Carissa’s Wierd. It also finds her parsing what it means to be alive, through heartache and hope … emotions that are infinite, unforeseen, and always in season, no matter who you are.

You were warned on Twitter about this first question: Where have you been all my life?

[Laughs] I love that!

Seriously, how have we not crossed paths? I mean, all things considered. I’m in the center of your Venn diagram demographics.

Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know. This is my fourth record and they are all pretty Americana-y.

Part of it is that I never kept up with Band of Horses, even though Bill [Reynolds] and I lived in Ojai at the same time.

Oh, nice! Bill’s awesome. I don’t know. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I released my first record. I had a lot of friends help. And I ended up on Sub Pop, which was amazing, but I didn’t really know that I should be in this vein or anything.

You do play the banjo …

Yeah. Exactly. It’s just been a huge learning process. Now, I’m 41, and it’s like, “OH!” It’s just been a whirlwind. I guess I was just doing the things I thought I should be doing, but maybe not playing for the right people a lot of the time.

Well, this record is everything I want a record to sound like, if that makes sense … just enough banjo, some cool drum grooves, great songs … tastefully hitting all my sweet spots, if you will.

Well, thank you.

That being said, the framing of it, title included, seems to indicate that it’s something of a departure from your previous records. I don’t hear it that way, though. If anything, it’s just an evolution or a refinement.

Well, my very first, self-titled record, I did on my own. I played all the drums and found musicians to piece it together. I didn’t quite know what I was doing. It all just fell together in a really quick way. I think we recorded it in four days. Then I started to get a band, so the next two were with a band, but I still played some drums. But, this record … I had been touring a lot solo or duo, and I was not feeling like I was in a band anymore. At home, I do demos and I know what I want. I record the guitar, then I’ll put a drum thing to it and build it into a song.

I met this guy, John Askew, in Portland, and we just vibed. We did a demo session — I did three songs with him. He brought in this piano guy named Rob Burger who totally blew my mind. I was like, “O-kay! He’s the one!” [Laughs] He just made a totally different sound than I was used to because I’ve had a lot of the same people play on my records. So I knew I wanted the piano and the fiddle to be more of the main focus. I just kind of pieced this thing together, and I did bring in Jeff Fielder and Jason Kardong, who played on my other records. It was just fun. I wanted to keep it as my thing and not worry about anything else.

You were a drummer first, right?

Yeah.

What does having that percussive foundation in your bones add to your guitar and banjo playing?

I think it does a lot. I’m not that great of a guitar player. I’m playing chords, and it sometimes has a rhythm to it that I instantly know I want this or that kind of drumbeat to it. But my playing is very rhythmic, so it always goes back to that.

And how do those melodic aspects, as a singer and player, inform your drumming? Are you keyed in more?

Yeah. I’ve learned a lot, just being a drummer. I feel like, at first, I was like, “It’s about me! It’s about the drums!” [Laughs] And, now … I played with my good friend Patrick Park and I learned a lot from him, that the most simple drums are the best. I’m super-sensitive to the song.

Serving the song … I always love that approach.

Yeah.

I’m a fan-TAS-tic air drummer, though very mediocre on an actual kit. But I know enough that, if I can air hit every fill and crash on my first listen through a song, I think, “Go away.” [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah! Totally.

I love to be surprised where I think, “Hang on … what happened just then?”

Totally. Totally. Exactly. Mick Fleetwood is one of my favorite drummers and he’s not Mr. Showy at all. He’s so tasteful.

I love Matt Chamberlain. Just his inventiveness.

I love him! He’s amazing.

Okay. Songs. “Rest my head on the collar of your favorite shirt …” in “Better Woman” … there’s something so soothing about that line to me. The specificity of it evokes intimacy and avoids cliché.

Thanks. [Laughs]

This is a topic I’ve discussed with a couple of other artists lately — the idea that there are so many different ways to say “I love you” because there are so many different experiences of love.

Right. Yeah.

There’s no question in there. [Laughs] But, if you have any thoughts on that …

I understand what you’re saying. I feel like that’s something I try to be aware of. It’s maybe not intentional all the time, but I try not to be too over-the-top cliché.

Or even too saccharin. But the bigger lesson embedded within that tune is of being a better version of yourself, the best version, if you can. Is that something you’re actively trying to put into practice? And have you found it to be not as scary as it might seem?

Yeah. I’ve had a lot of life lessons, especially the last four or five years of my life. Life is really short and throws shit at you. Good stuff, too. You have to keep yourself at a higher level and make sure you’re being the best you can be.

The surrender of “Up to Me” is certainly a part of it. I feel like those are related. You have to have some detachment about it all.

That was a funny song. I wrote that … there’s a thing up on Whidbey Island called Hedgebrook which is a women’s retreat. They have six cabins and, usually, it’s female novelists. But they do a singer/songwriter thing for a week or two. So I went there and wrote that song in five hours, which is really weird because it takes me a really long time to write songs.

Why the long marination?

I get distracted. Then I get bored of it. And I think it sounds stupid. I think it’s mostly that I get distracted. I’m one of those …

So it’s more ADHD than contemplation? [Laughs]

[Laughs] Definitely.

“Hey! There’s a shiny new melody over there!”

Yeah. Totally. I had “Better Woman,” or a lot of it, a really long time ago. I didn’t have the words. I just had this song that was there and never finished it. So I do that a lot.

That song and “Tables Turned” share a theme of self-doubt — or maybe it’s just self-awareness. Whether songs like that are confessional or conceptual, the singer is always the blank screen upon which the story is projected. People are going to assume it’s about you, whether it is or not. So what’s your process for deciding how much to reveal or portray?

I’m a pretty private person. In my songwriting, I can reveal it. A lot of this record is very much me.

Was that scary?

Yeah. It always is. Because you just feel so vulnerable. But I don’t know what else I’d be doing. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Writing a bunch of “oh baby, baby” songs …

Yeah, I mean, I could … but then …

What’s easier to write, happy in love or heartbroken in loss?

Definitely heartbroken in loss.

Really?

Yeah, I don’t usually write happy songs. It’s not easy for me.

I’ve had this conversation with Brandi Carlile about how, when she got married and happy and had a kid, she didn’t think she’d be able to write. Then Tim [Hanseroth] told her you can do everything better when you’re happy — even write sad songs. Do you believe that?

I do. I’ve been really happy and written some really depressing songs. [Laughs] I love writing sad songs, even if it’s nothing that’s happening in my life. I like sadness in music, in general. Sometimes too-happy stuff feels a little weird.

We need those, too, but save them for the “oh baby, baby” people.

[Laughs] Exactly.

So, when you have gone through a seismic life shift, as you have, and it’s still sort of fresh, and you have songs representing both sides of the divide, how do you find your way into the performance of them without losing your shit?

Well, yeah, that’s been hard. But they are songs I love, so I’m not gonna not sing these songs because of that. You just have to try and make them take on a new direction and a new life.

I was going to ask that, too: As you carry on with life, do your songs attach themselves to new meanings?

Yeah, I just love singing them live. Some are harder than others. But they take on new meanings.

Public therapy.

[Laughs] Yeah. Totally.

It has to be pretty cathartic. As each layer sheds, it’s like, “Okay, that line doesn’t hit me in the same way anymore. Cool.”

It really is. Yeah. That’s exactly it. That’s nice when that happens. It’s pretty rare. I did a West Coast thing in October and I actually came to AmericanaFest, when things were really … fresh. So that was really hard. But you gotta do it. The last six months have been really challenging and hard. I just lost one of my best friends a couple of months ago. It was really awful. It’s like you’re up on this and then this happens. It’s just been like, “MAN!” It’s so nice playing music and I’m happy that my record is coming out. It’s just … it’s been a ride. It’s just what you do, I guess.

Any time someone tells me a story like that, I flash on Tig Notaro’s bit about, “Oooooh, she can handle a little bit more!” [Laughs]

[Laughs] I know! Right? Totally. So true. “Here’s some more!”

Life comes at you fast.

I feel like I’ve learned a lot. Or, at least, I like to think I have. And, it’s not a new look on life, but it feels so short to me.

It’s our 40s.

It’s so weird. There’s so much bullshit. It’s so exhausting. Now, I’m trying to … I get a little too much in my head still, but I’ve just learned a lot. And I’m trying to not do that to myself.

Photo credits: Kyle Johnson & Stephanie Dore