Tag: Bela Fleck

Steve Martin: Making the Same Sound Different

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The sound of a five-string banjo has a cosmic pull. When Earl Scruggs first took to the Grand Ole Opry stage with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys in 1945, his rapid-fire, three-finger picking style shocked and stunned the Ryman Auditorium audience and radio listeners across the country. The standing ovation he received shook the entire building to its rafters with hands clapping, boots stomping, and hootin’ and hollerin’. It was the Big Bang of bluegrass banjo.

Almost every banjo player could tell you the first time they heard the instrument, the first time they encountered its cosmic pull — a personal, introspective banjo Big Bang unique to each person who is struck by its irresistible, joyful, magnetic sound. Steve Martin describes the first time he heard a banjo as his “What’s that!?” moment. “I kind of pin it on the Kingston Trio,” he remembers. “But I know there were earlier things. I fell in love with the four-string banjo, too. When I was 11, I would go to Disneyland to see the Golden Horseshoe Revue, and there was a four-string banjo player. When I worked at Knott’s Berry Farm, there was a four-string banjo player there, too.” His voice shifts to a whisper, as he adds, “But, we all know that five is better.”

He continues, “I do believe it was kind of the Kingston Trio or folk music, in general, that really made the sound like, ‘Wow, what a happy, wonderful sound!’”

He picked up the banjo as a teenager, taking on three-finger, Scruggs-style picking with the help and influence of his friend John McEuen. But, unlike most banjo pickers, who choose one style — Scruggs’ namesake method, or jazz and ragtime on tenor and plectrum banjos, or any of several types of frailing — Martin also had a “What’s that!?” moment with the old-time form, clawhammer: “It was a record called 5-String Banjo Greats and another record called the Old-Time Banjo Project. They were both compilations. So I don’t know who introduced me to clawhammer. When I was learning three-finger and I was into it about three years, I started to really notice clawhammer, and I go, ‘Oh, no. I have to learn that, too.’”

He is a master of both three-finger and clawhammer to this day and, on his brand new record, The Long-Awaited Album, he shifts effortlessly between the two — sometimes within one song.

Through his career as a comedian and actor, the banjo was ever at Martin’s side. It was a part of his stand-up act, it was peppered into his comedy albums, and it made cameos on his TV appearances. It would be cliché to assume that the banjo and bluegrass were a byproduct of Martin’s comedy career, but the instrument was never an afterthought, an addendum, or a prop. In fact, bluegrass and folk music showed him from his early show biz days working at theme parks that humor was an integral part of these musical traditions.

“When I first started hearing live music, like the Dillards or folk music of some kind, they all did jokes,” he says. “They all did funny intros to songs. They did riffs. They did bits. And then they did their music. That’s essentially what we’re doing now.” The silly, whimsical, comedic elements of the music Martin makes with his collaborators, friends, and backing band — the Steep Canyon Rangers — are just as much a testament to Martin’s history with bluegrass as they are a testament to his extraordinary comedy career.

During the seven years that elapsed between their last bluegrass album, Rare Bird Alert, and The Long-Awaited Album, Martin and the Rangers wrote, developed, and arranged the project’s material during soundchecks, band rehearsals, and downtime on the bus. Barn-burning, Scruggs-style tunes and contemplative, frailing instrumentals are sprinkled amidst love songs and story songs, silly and earnest, all steeped in quirky, humorous inventiveness. The album is centered on a solidly bluegrass aesthetic — but bluegrass is not a default setting.

Musical and production choices for each song were pointed and deliberate, with producer Peter Asher, Martin, and the Rangers keeping each song central and building out the sound around any given track’s core idea. “I love the sound of the five, six instruments that are traditionally bluegrass,” Martin clarifies. “That’s all we need. The Rangers, they say bluegrass is five musicians playing all the time. Other music is five musicians not playing all the time. In bluegrass, they have breaks, but there’s always the backup going. There’s always everybody chopping. So I thought, ‘What if we left out some of the instruments? What if we were not playing all the time?’ It really made a different sound.”

By leaving out an instrument here or there, adding in a cello or, in the case of the lead track, “Santa Fe,” an entire Mariachi band, the album’s sound registers immediately as bluegrass, but refuses to be lazily or automatically categorized as such. First and foremost, it sounds like Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. “I’ve always loved the idea of the sound of the banjo against the cello, or viola, or violin, because you have the staccato notes against the long notes. The cello or viola contribute to the melancholy and mood of the banjo. But mostly, it’s just us, the seven musicians, including myself. We can reproduce it on stage … except for the mariachi. But the song called for a mariachi band, you know?” He laughs and adds, “There’s almost no way to avoid it.”

Where many bluegrass and folk writers eschew modern vernacular, places, and topics, Martin leans in, embracing contemporary scenarios and themes that don’t necessarily fit the stereotypes of train-hopping, moonshine-running, field-plowing folk music. The Olive Garden, nights in a biology laboratory, a gate at an airport, “Angeline the Barista” … the timelessness of roots and folk music isn’t lost in these themes and settings; it’s enhanced, it’s relatable, and it’s damn funny.

“I’ve written a song about a train, and I’ve written a song about Paul Revere. I think it’s got to be specific for people. They’ve got to go, ‘I know that!’ If I’m writing about a train, I know that 99 percent of people that the song will be heard by won’t really have that experience. But if I write about the Olive Garden and a girl busting up with you, I think a lot of people can relate to that, even if they don’t have that exact experience.”

The relatability and visibility of Martin’s music have brought bluegrass — and the banjo — to countless ears that may have never heard it otherwise. In 2015, the International Bluegrass Music Association awarded Martin a Distinguished Achievement Award with this visibility and outreach in mind. With The Long-Awaited Album; the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass that he awards annually; a national tour of his banjo-forward, Tony-nominated Broadway musical, Bright Star; and a heavy touring schedule criss-crossing the country with the Steep Canyon Rangers and his longtime comedy partner, Martin Short, Martin is poised to continue bringing the banjo to many first-time listeners.

But when faced with the idea that he, himself, could very well be the “What’s that?!” moment for an entire generation of brand new banjo players, he is unfalteringly modest. “What I try to express with the banjo is the sound of the banjo. When I first heard Earl Scruggs, I loved his skill, his timing, and his musicianship. I regard myself as someone who’s expressing the sound of the banjo rather than being a superior, technical player like Béla Fleck. So, if anyone picks up the banjo from hearing me, it’s because they fell in love with the sound of the banjo. What I do is get the sound of the banjo out there to a broader world, I guess.”

Lede illustration by Cat Ferraz.

3×3: Violet Bell on Prince, Prince, and Prince

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Artist: Violet Bell
Latest Album: Dream the Wheel
Personal Nicknames: “Omar” is ripe for situation-specific nicknames — Showmar on stage, Promar when we’re practicing, Gomar when we’re on the road … the list goes on. Omar’s been introducing Lizzy on stage as the boss with the sauce, Lizzy Ross. Sometimes she also has floss.

rain day

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What song do you wish you had written?

Omar: “7” by Prince and the NPG, or “Agua” by Jarabe de Palo

Lizzy: This is a tough question. Today, the answer is … “I Was an Oak Tree” by Jonathan Byrd. Omar played with JByrd for a few years, and we both admire his catalog of gorgeous, soulful songs.

Who would be in your dream songwriter round?

Neil Young, Debussy, Nina Simone, JJ Cale, Fela Kuti, Gillian Welch, Lou Reed, Béla Fleck … how many songwriters can we have? The list goes on! Prince! Dolly!

If you could only listen to one artist’s discography for the rest of your life, whose would you choose?

Prince, Prince, Prince. So many different flavors, concepts, and motivations. We love that man’s willingness to go out there into uncharted musical and conceptual territories and bring back some light. Or Béla Fleck. His discography runs the gamut of styles and he’s got music for every emotion.

220 miles to Boyton Beach! Playing at the Living Room tonight, 8-10

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How often do you do laundry?

We’ve gotten better about it! About once a week now for the both of us! Any longer and the car can get …gnarly. Folding it is the real challenge. As we tour more, what’s the point of having more clothes than we can fit in a duffel bag?

What was the last movie that you really loved?

We both loved Secret of Kells — spectacular Irish music, faeries, ancient secrets buried in dusty old books? Yes, please. Omar loved Hateful Eight. Tarantino films are always full of surprises and nuggets.

If you could re-live one year of your life, which would it be and why?

Lizzy: Maybe next year? I’m excited to find out. It seems the best is yet to come. I have loved being alive, so far, and I’m excited to be here and now. Life keeps unfolding before us, and I wouldn’t change where it has brought me so far!

Omar: Pass.

What’s your go-to comfort food?

We LOVE Pho. On the road, however, all those noodles can make us sleepy behind the wheel. Green curry is a serious contender. On tour, we sometimes eat it every day… sometimes more than once a day! We like the spice. We’re beginning to wonder if we need a green curry intervention.

Kombucha — love it or hate it?

Love it! Fizzy mushroom tea?? Count us in! Before we got so busy touring, we used to make it at home!

Mustard or mayo?

Both! They’re like us: complementary.

Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, ‘If I Could Talk to a Younger Me’

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It’s good to be reminded, sometimes, of the important things — the ones we so easily forget. Between the breakfast coffee and the toothbrush before bed, a day can swing by in what seems shorter than a few breaths. It’s a cliché thing that, most memorably, we once needed Ferris Bueller to cement into our brains: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Pop culture has a way of being pretty poignant. Preach, Ferris.

Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck, two of our modern masters of the banjo who happen to also be married with a child, handle this concept of the fast drip of time more elegantly on “If I Could Talk to a Younger Me,” from their forthcoming LP, Echo in the Valley. Emotive and ethereal, Washburn sends a message out into the universe … to her self, to her offspring, to whomever might tune their ear to her songs. “If I could talk to a younger me, I’d tell me to go slow,” she sings, as the banjo plucks furiously in an instrumental duet. “This time on earth, it moves so fast, and when it’s gone, it’s gone.” These aren’t complicated lyrics cased in metaphor, but a rather simple reminder to take a moment — as Ferris would say — to stop and look around once in a while. And it never hurts, especially if you’re Washburn and Fleck, to do this in a way that makes that time on earth sound just a little bit more beautiful.

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 

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.

3×3: Hot Buttered Rum on Doc Ellis, Béla Fleck, and the Perils of Hydration

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Nat Keefe (of Hot Buttered Rum)
Hometown: Redwood City, CA  (currently lives in San Francisco)
Latest Album: The Kite & the Key  
Rejected Band Names: Shuttlecock, Christmas Is Ruined, Webalo … I think we’ll stick with Hot Buttered Rum.

If you had to live the life of a character in a song, which song would you choose?
If I could be a character for one day, I’d like to be Doc Ellis in Todd Snider’s “America’s Favorite Pastime.” That guy pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburg Pirates high on acid! What’s a stranger thrill than that?!

Where would you most like to live or visit that you haven't yet?
I was driven by travel-lust for years. Now that I’ve been to five continents and all the states, all I want is to explore my home. That is, when I’m not enjoying the highways and motels of this great country with Hot Buttered Rum. 

What was the last thing that made you really mad?
…

What's the best concert you've ever attended?
The month I graduated high school, I saw Béla Fleck at the Fillmore. Something came together for me there, and I saw a life of music unfold in front of me. Seven years later, I was onstage with Béla in Bean Blossom, Indiana, for Peter Rowan’s all-star jam! I love that guy’s spirit of adventure and dedication to excellence. He makes me think, “What’s the next uncomfortable, scary situation I’m going to put myself into?"

What was your favorite grade in school?
A split between kindergarten, because I love finger-painting, and senior year, because that’s when my game with the ladies started coming together. 

What are you reading right now?
I just finished Ralph Stanley’s autobiography in preparation for this project. Highly recommended! He somehow got his voice onto the page, and I don’t think he blogs every week for practice. I’m also on a serious Philip Roth kick. I think part of me wishes I was Jewish and from Newark. 

Whiskey, water, or wine?
A little of each, please. I have aspirations to be well-hydrated, but I also have a small bladder. So I balance my water intake with our travel itinerary. I get made fun of for always having to pee. My skills with a culca have improved. What’s a culca, you ask? Well … 

North or South?
Wherever I’ve travelled in the world, there’s always a rivalry between the North and South, the East and West, the highlands and lowlands. People, myself included, thrive on rivalry and calling someone the “other.” I channel this urge into professional baseball. Go Giants! Beat L.A.! 

Pizza or tacos?
I live in the Mission in San Francisco. It’s all about the burrito. 

3×3: Elephant Revival on Colorado, Karaoke, and What They Almost Named the Band

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Artist: Elephant Revival
Hometown: Nederland, Lyons, & Boulder, CO
Latest Album: Sands of Now
Rejected Band Names: It’z Evolving, Rippin’ Britches 🙂

 

Thanks to @onthedlphoto for this great shot of our set at Red Rocks!

A photo posted by @elephantrevival on

What was the first record you ever bought with your own money?
Dango: Guns n’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
Daniel: Bob Dylan – Live at Carnegie Hall
Bridget: Foo Fighters (self-titled)

If money were no object, where would you live and what would you do?
Dango: I’m very content living where I do and playing with Elephant Revival. Nederland is very beautiful, and it's a unique community full of interesting people. That said, I love the Oregon coast and Brevard, NC. Not to mention, many places overseas I have yet to be — such as the Isle of Skye.
Daniel: There are so many places I have yet to go, so in my finite knowledge, I’d probably buy some land in Colorado and buy a bunch of solar panels and a Tesla battery. Then I’d build a monolithic dome and a separate music studio and have it all be powered by the sun. I’d invest in an organic heirloom seed bank, buy some chickens and goats, and hire some friends to help grow some food.
Bridget: I would live in the mountains just outside of Boulder, up high and near the river. I would play music locally and teach kids for free!

If your life were a movie, which songs would be on the soundtrack?
Dango: I’d create a mix-tape of Penguin Café Orchestra, Balmorhea, and Michael Nyman.
Daniel: "Tangled Up in Blue" and "The Times They Are a Changin’" by Bob Dylan, "Girl in the War" by Josh Ritter, "Born at the Right Time" and "You’re the One" by Paul Simon, "Hold On" by Tom Waits
Bridget: All the music of Béla Fleck, "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead, anything off Blue by Joni Mitchell

What brand of jeans do you wear?
Dango: Levi’s
Daniel: I have two pairs of jeans — Levi's and Kenneth Cole.
Bridget: I hardly ever wear jeans, but when I do, they are stretchy.

What's your go-to karaoke tune?
Dango: Don't do Karaoke
Daniel: "Redemption Song"
Bridget: "Stay" by Lisa Loeb

What's your favorite season?
Autumn

Kimmel or Fallon?
Yes & Colbert

Jason Isbell or Sturgill Simpson?
Both of them passing songs around the fire

Chocolate or vanilla?
Dango: Swirl
Daniel: Chocolate
Bridget: Chocolate

Photo credit: Angie Barnes

Learn the Banjo from the Comfort of Your Phone

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Learning an instrument has never been easy, but there's nothing quite like a good teacher to have you going from zero to Scruggs in 60 seconds (or, more likely, 60 months). And what if you could carry that teacher around in your pocket? Enter Pocket Lick, a new app that could be your banjo Mr. Miyagi.

Bennett Sullivan, mastermind behind the Pocket Lick app, describes it as, "an iPhone/iPad app that demonstrates how to play banjo licks in three different formats — using tablature, watching video, and listening to audio." A musician and bluegrass fan himself — he's played banjo and guitar for 12 years and cites Béla Fleck and Tony Rice as his top two bluegrass artists — Sullivan developed the app so that banjo players can easily up their picking games by ear, by tab, or by using a combination of different methods, all from the convenience of a smartphone. 

"We came up with Pocket Lick because we saw a need for a clean, easy-to-use, and fun learning tool for bluegrass banjo players at any skill level," Sullivan says. "Bluegrass musicians regularly use licks in improvisation and creating arrangements. Essentially, licks are a staple of any seasoned musician’s vocabulary. We wanted to give our users an opportunity to easily learn these valuable phrases so they can sound better faster."

So, for $2.99, users have a veritable banjo encyclopedia at their fingertips, one that continues to prove useful even as their playing abilities improve.

"Pocket Lick is designed with the intermediate to advanced player in mind, but I urge beginners to also try learning the licks included," Sullivan adds. "I’ve always found that I improve more when the challenge is greater, and I always encourage my students to continue to challenge themselves when they pick up the instrument. Using Pocket Lick is a fantastic way to continually challenge yourself, regardless of your skill level."

So, hey, if your New Year's resolution is to channel your inner Béla, put down the tab book and grab your phone.

Learn more about Pocket Lick (and its sibling guitar app) here.

Sierra Hull and the Shortest Way Home

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The cover of Sierra Hull’s forthcoming Weighted Mind depicts a small Hull pulling a cart that holds a larger version of herself, thoughts pouring out of what must be one heavy head. It’s a fitting image for the mandolin virtuoso’s third full-length, which was as much pulled forward by Hull’s conviction as it was delayed by her insecurities. Like the art that will adorn its cover, the record is carried by Hull’s increasing confidence, stripping back the additional instrumentation to which she’d grown accustomed and entrusting the bulk of the record to her capable vocals and swift picking.

“I had never really challenged myself in that way,” says Hull. “What if I really did have to cover all the roles in one setting — what does that mean?”

The word “prodigy” has hung over Hull for a decade and, between debuting on the Opry stage by her pre-teen years to being the first bluegrass musician to receive a Presidential Scholarship to Berklee College of Music, she wears the distinction well. But working with other musicians has always been at the core of her craft, and she is effusive about the influence that her family and the bluegrass community have had. After all, her beginnings with the mandolin were sparked by her father’s lifetime affinity for the instrument: Her chance to take it up came along just a year after he began playing, himself, in their hometown of Byrdstown, Tennessee. She credits her self-taught Uncle Junior for early music lessons and recalls many a weekend spent in neighboring Jamestown, Tennessee, jamming with the locals on a community stage.

“A lot of those bands started getting me on stage with them to play. I didn’t even know very much, but I’d chop along and play rhythms,” she says. At 9, she attended her first IBMA event, and it’s there that, one year later, she would meet Ron Block, who passed along Hull’s music to his band mate (and her hero) Alison Krauss.

“The bluegrass world is a very sweet community. Your heroes are more accessible than in some other genres,” says Hull. Krauss, who brought Hull out at a televised Opry performance shortly after Block connected them, has become somewhat of a mentor to Hull, who signed to the same record label — major indie player Rounder Records — at age 13.
“In a kid’s life, a year can feel like five years. Even in a young person’s life, from 19 to 22, 23 — that’s an interesting time period in life,” Hull offers. That added significance of each year for 24-year-old Hull have made the five years since her last record, Daybreak, feel particularly weighty. “There was something different about what I felt I was writing this time around. I knew it would be different just because of the way it came out,” she confesses. Hull was writing songs on the guitar rather than the mandolin, and was wary about “forcing” the latter on them during the recording process. “It wasn’t something that felt like it would lend itself to a bluegrass album, straight ahead.”

It’s not like Hull had the intention to spend half a decade on Weighted Mind: She got into the studio with six tracks to record not long after her last full-length was released.

“I always think back to that quote: ‘The longest way around is the shortest way home.’ That was the case for me with this album,” says Hull. She holed up in RCA Studio A, handling the producer role herself and recording those six songs with renowned engineer Vance Powell. Hull went big on instrumentation, enlisting other musicians to compliment her sound and ending up with a richly layered final product. Ultimately, though, she opted not to release the material. “I think I was running from this idea that I thought everybody had of me,” she says. “Although I still think [the recordings] are really cool — working with Vance, an incredible engineer, they sound really good — something about it just wasn’t 100 percent right. I think, sometimes, you just know that.”

Mixed feedback surrounding the tracks put Hull in a vulnerable place, down on herself and unsure how to do her songs justice without reverting back to the well-worn instrumentals that she was worried had come to define her. Hull leaned on Krauss, talking through her insecurities and toying aloud with the idea of handing off the producer reins. It was Krauss that suggested banjo extraordinaire Béla Fleck for the job.

“There’s nothing, musically, he doesn’t understand,” Hull remembers Krauss saying, noting also that he would make a particularly great vocal producer. A lucky seat in front of Fleck at that year’s IBMAs gave Hull the confidence to reach out about the project and, before long, they were re-working the songs she had recorded already with a new focus.

“It was him that, for the first time, made me think that stripping everything away to just mandolin and voice could be enough,” says Hull. It started with album track “Compass.” Fleck heard the version of her song from the initial sessions and asked her to perform the number with just a mandolin. While the thought terrified her, the result was a “life-changing” one: “I was trying to make a solo record, but covering myself up. If you heard it, it could sound like anything or anybody,” she says. “What better way to know what you really are than to take everything away and leave only you?”

For the most part, that’s what Weighted Mind has become — a celebration of Hull that zeroes in on her truly unique gifts. Much of the record is characterized by impressive solo instrumentals paired with just Hull’s vocals, and stripping things back has allowed her songwriting strengths to shine through, too. “Bluegrass music is very instrumentally and melodically driven. It’s a lot about the picking and the virtuosity of the musician and their solo moment,” she says. Given her background excelling at instrumentals, it’s easy see how she might have gotten caught up there, but instead she shifted her priorities. “This time around I really felt like the lyrics were more important to me than they’ve been on a project.”

On Weighted Mind, “In Between” details the highs and lows that went into the record, touching on Hull’s being “too young to crash, but not to get burned.” Meanwhile, standout track “Black River,” which closes the album and features contributions from Fleck and Krauss along with Abigail Washburn and Rhiannon Giddens, is as much a collaborative high point as it is a mark of Hull’s growth lyrically. Rife with metaphor, the song’s chorus successfully lends a literary quality to mascara-stained tears, and tempered harmonies contrast lyrics that detail the uncontrollable welling of emotions. For all Hull’s qualifiers and warnings that Weighted Mind wouldn’t fit the bluegrass mold, the record is an astonishing celebration of traditional sounds juxtaposed with modern themes.

“Bluegrass has been my home base, my world,” Hull confides. “I’ve found that people’s ideas of bluegrass music fluctuates from Mumford & Sons to Bill Monroe. It’s a little bit of everything, and I think that’s wonderful. If people want to categorize a wide variety of things as bluegrass, I only think that’s healthy for the greater good of the music.”

Weighted Mind is a testament to Hull’s lived experiences and the study of her craft, and it seems prime to pluck Hull from her prodigious roots and place her among the varied contemporaries she admires in the bluegrass community. A confident step, one can only hope it is but the first on her shortest way home.

This post was brought to you by Weber Fine Acoustic Instruments. To shop Sierra's favorite mandolin and more, visit webermandolins.com.

Lede illustration by the fantastically talented Cat Ferraz.