Tag: bluegrass

Max Allard Wrote a Banjo Concerto

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The banjo, a sonic staple of folk and bluegrass, has often been left to its established devices in traditional circles or, more optimistically, among contemporary newgrass like Punch Brothers, the Infamous Stringdusters, and New Grass Revival, which included the genre-bending banjoist himself, Béla Fleck. Still, some musical spaces, like classical performance and composition, remain largely devoid of the banjo despite its lengthy and socially complex history, global presence, and tonal variety. Thankfully, between artists like Fleck, Noam Pikelny, John Bullard, and others, classical compositions have had a chance to shine on the instrument, paving the way for next-generation players to embrace and mix the traditions of classical writing with the distinct sound and musical capabilities of the banjo.

One such figure rising to the occasion is composer and artist Max Allard. A recent graduate of Oberlin College’s Conservatory of Music, the Chicago native is a champion of many cultures and genres in his work, which Allard describes as “an unclassifiable mix of bluegrass, jazz, new acoustic, classical, and pop.”

Allard has brought his stylistic openness to every facet of his artistry, including a duo with his brother Otto Allard; a bluegrass ensemble he co-founded, EZRA, that includes mandolinist Jacob Jolliff, guitarist and composer Jesse Jones, and bassist Craig Butterfield; and his touring support of Michigan-based bands Full Cord and Westbound Situation and Virginia-based band the Hackensaw Boys. Another instance finding him pushing banjo boundaries was his collaborative performance with fellow banjoists Bill Evans, BB Bowness, Cassidy Beentjes, and Matt Flinner in an adventurous arrangement of “In C,” the iconic composition by American minimalist composer Terry Riley, as part of a commissioned work series at the 2025 FreshGrass Festival.

Many of these ambitions grew alongside or after Allard’s studies, giving him several creative contexts in which to nurture his knowledge of classical forms and styles. One of the most impactful of these opportunities was part of Allard’s collegiate work itself: A Concerto for banjo and mixed ensemble. Encouraged by his EZRA bandmate and Oberlin professor Jesse Jones, Allard wrote his single movement work in 2023, giving the world premiere with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble under conductor Tim Weiss in December 2024. Though the piece has long since debuted, Allard’s vision for what the concerto would accomplish and what the experience of writing it revealed to him along the way remain ongoing sources of inspiration and guidance as Allard continues to write and perform for anyone who wants to listen. (Watch a video of Allard’s Concerto below.)

BGS recently spoke with Allard over the phone, discussing the many branches of his work as an artist and composer. We dive into how each stylistic space blends with his classical training, where he sees the banjo’s place in classical performance, his thoughts on cross-genre efforts by other artists, and more.

How would you describe the journey around your Banjo Concerto and its compositional process?

Max Allard: I had anticipated [the piece] for a while. I had gotten into Oberlin College as a composition major and part of the reason I chose Oberlin is because composition faculty member [Jesse Jones] comes from a background of playing bluegrass. He plays mandolin, some banjo, and guitar so I knew that I would have someone in the faculty on my side to help me, to know where I was coming from and to help guide the path forward in terms of a study and a pedagogy that I had not been taught before. So Jesse told me, “I think it would be great for your work here at Oberlin to culminate into a banjo concerto.”

I had the plan of approaching the banjo as a concert instrument – and as a concert instrument with the supporting ensemble. To do that, I had to get away a little bit from the folk aspects of the banjo in terms of a composition process, while still embracing those same aspects in terms of style.

[The concerto] sort of started as a banjo draft. And something I think is interesting to mention is that people have compared my banjo playing before to piano players and it’s a very valid comparison, because I take a lot of inspiration from piano players like Keith Jarrett, Chilly Gonzales, and many European classical composers like Sergei Rachmaninoff and Frédéric Chopin. I have long thought of the banjo as a very capable instrument to take solo composition very seriously on. I had to find ways to creatively think about which instruments to give various roles to. The nice thing was that I got to pick the makeup of the ensemble. I knew I wanted to have celesta. I wanted to have clarinet, flute with piccolo – there were certain sounds I knew I wanted to include.

I had very specific ideas about which instrument fulfills which role. It’s definitely a string-heavy piece and I’m a huge fan of writing for strings. So I had known that this piece would provide me the depths that the banjo doesn’t always have. I thought, “I can fill out these luscious piano-like chords that I usually like to write on the banjo, with the help of the supporting string section that has a much broader range than the banjo has by itself.” It was actually really liberating for me, because having an ensemble with a very diverse range – not just timbre-ly, but sonically and in terms of highs and lows – I had many options. It was a really great blank canvas for me to further explore creativity without some of the limitations of the banjo, be it physical or range related, or what have-you. I was able to basically apply my banjo knowledge and compositional tendencies to a blank slate, which presented a lot more opportunities.

What are your thoughts on the banjo’s “place” in classical music?

The banjo has a very checkered, problematic history and there’s a lot of moral debate that I’ve witnessed amongst people about what the banjo’s role is. It has had many different roles – a lot of it actually being erased. We talk about the problematic history of the banjo being used for minstrelsy but we actually forget about the banjo’s history of being used in parlor music. For a long time, the banjo actually had a role being played in parlors and social events, and even playing classical music.

I find it funny when people sort of criticize the banjo these days because the reputation has been ruined so much. People tend to think of the banjo with the film Deliverance. That film sort of ruined the reputation of the banjo as being this hillbilly folk instrument that’s not taken seriously. Unfortunately, that stereotype still exists, so people sort of scoff at banjo players who want to elevate the instrument into a certain concert environment.

I think all instruments can be used however people want. It’s like the artist has a final say in how they want to showcase their instrument. But for me, I think I’ll always still want to pay my respects to the traditions of the banjo. And as I said, the banjo has, throughout history, been used in a variety of different contexts. What I try to do is bridge the gap of pedagogic composition and folk music. If we’re talking about my banjo concerto, I want to write well-written concert music but [avoid creating] a totally contrived piece of music that just tries its best to fit the banjo in with an ensemble. I want to at least take my understanding of bluegrass, folk music, and old time music and still amalgamate it with concert music.

What do you find you learn most from other banjo players who have thrived in the classical space like Noam Pikelny, Béla Fleck, John Bullard, and others?

Broadly speaking, if [banjo players] want to put our instruments in the classical space, we need to do our best to understand the way the classic musicians think – really get in the minds of classical musicians. If one, as a banjo player, wants to pursue classical music, it behooves them to get at least a decent understanding of concert music. And I think most banjo players [like Fleck, Pikelny, Bullard] who have attempted that absolutely do have a different understanding. I just think the understanding of how deep it actually goes, what details go into really good concert music – it just takes a long, long time to master. And I am nowhere close to mastering it. But I at least have an understanding of how little I knew before attending [Oberlin].

Are there any aspects of Terry Riley’s “In C” that were especially challenging to capture with this banjo-centric arrangement?

I should give a shout out to Cassidy Beentjes, who did all this arranging – a really good pedagogue of the banjo. In terms of limitations though, the key [was one]. With the banjo’s natural key being G major, we took the piece down to a G-major tuning, so it makes much more sense to play the piece in G, especially since we want to achieve certain overtones. We could have played in C with a C tuning, but a lot of complexity would have arisen from playing in a foreign tuning. We were already uncomfortable in the first place, you know, with a piece of music like this, because banjo players don’t get the opportunity to do something like this very often, so we were careful.

What aspect of your musical identity does EZRA help you to fulfill that you don’t necessarily achieve in the same way with other pursuits?

I’d say it’s a good opportunity to write for a smaller acoustic ensemble where there’s a good understanding of not only folk and bluegrass, but also classical and jazz music.

It makes a big difference when you’re writing for people who you’re friends with – writing for people you know. You want to give people roles that you know they’re going to enjoy doing and that they do well. When I write for EZRA, it’s definitely much more stripped down and basic than if I were writing something like the banjo concerto. Because with the banjo concerto, I give very specific instructions, I supply a whole score with those specific instructions for everyone to read from. And when I’m writing for EZRA, usually I’m just writing lead sheets, just chords with the melody. In terms of arrangements, that can be discussed in the studio.

It’s funny though, because anytime we’ve recorded a record, we’ve had such limited studio time that we have to get our act together in just 72 hours or so and make our arrangements studio-ready. But again, that’s freeing for me, because I can write more vague ideas, stuff that I would not feel as intrepid writing with a big ensemble. When I’m with EZRA, I can just do whatever the heck I want and know that we can get away with it in some way. It’s also definitely a great opportunity for me to write contemporary folk music that is absolutely rooted in folk and bluegrass but also has all these other influences. A lot of Béla Fleck influence, a lot of classical music as influence – all kinds of stuff. It’s definitely a very special opportunity for me.

What’s the most unique aspect about the duo you perform in with your brother? How do you both approach playing together?

I guess the main thing that stands out is just the brotherly synergy. My brother is the easiest musician to play with because we know each other so darn well. Not much has to be planned – there’s almost never any stress. We’ve played plenty of gigs where we haven’t rehearsed at all beforehand and it goes pretty well just because we can glance at each other a certain way and know exactly what we mean musically. We’ve also played gigs where like a half hour has gone by and the whole thing is improvised. We just weave sounds together and it’s great.

It’s great to have a brother who plays music because it’s just that very intense, personal connection that one has with their sibling. You know each other so well that no communication really has to be done verbally. In general, playing with my brother is just very fun because we make crazy, spontaneous decisions and do ridiculous things that we would not do in any other setting.

Do you think the folk and bluegrass communities could better embrace the banjo being a genre-versatile instrument? And do you think that schools or community spaces are the best starting place to initiate that shift?

If I were talking to a banjo player who wants to get into classical music, I would say you can learn just as much by surrounding yourself with the right people. I think the most viable option is to try to meet some people who come from that background. And it can be any background. Like, say you want to get into a certain style – find musicians who can do that and try your best to talk to them, befriend them, whatever you can, and surround yourself with that. I think community is always important in the arts. Definitely, it’s very important to surround yourself with people – not even not necessarily like-minded people – but people who have very different experiences and very different backgrounds. Personally and musically in any way.

I think the bluegrass culture and scene could definitely benefit from opening themselves up a little bit. I think sometimes we forget that bluegrass has a very progressive foundation to it. Even Bill Monroe valued when he heard New Grass Revival. He was supportive of it, supportive of all those people who were taking bluegrass in a different direction. So I think it’s very progressive by nature. And music has always evolved and always will evolve and it has to sort of be accepted.

I think the banjo is actually in a very good place right now, because we’ve never had so many banjo players. It’s very good because the banjo is becoming popular for the right reasons – not necessarily gimmicky reasons, with banjos being used in pop music – but it’s being taken seriously amongst musicians from all different types of backgrounds. Broadly speaking, I don’t have too many complaints. I think it’s in good hands.

Photo Credit: Tanya Rosen-Jones

Obejváci’s Bluegrass of Czechia Playlist

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass in Czechia has unusual roots. It didn’t arrive as a passing trend, but as music people shared with one another – at festivals, in pubs, around campfires, and at home in the kitchen or living room. And that’s still how it’s played today, bringing lovers of this music together into an amazing community.

We even took our name from that living room spirit. Obejváci – something like “the ones from the living room” or “living room pickers.” A band that grew out of playing at home, we still hold onto that foundation. Rehearsals by the couch, more voices than cables, and songs that stand strong even without amplification.

We see our Mixtape of the bluegrass of Czechia as a small cross-section of a scene that is surprisingly vibrant and diverse. There are bands that keep the traditional sound alive and others that naturally bend it in their own direction. We’re sometimes surprised, ourselves – and very proud – of how many wonderful musicians in this genre our small country has.

A chapter of its own could be written about Czech bluegrass instrument makers: Krishot, Vláďa Ptáček, Průcha, Zdeněk Roh, Jaromír Jahoda, Čapek, Karel Začal, Stanislav Štol, Ondřej Holoubek… the list would probably be very long. Our guitarist and frontman Luboš Barchini took his love of bluegrass so far that just a short distance from that original living room he started building his own bluegrass guitars.

This year we released a new EP, Tisíc let. It’s our current chapter – a handful of new songs about time, relationships, and the landscape we know so well. We’re adding tracks from the EP to the playlist as a natural part of this theme. Because in our view, the best way to understand Czech bluegrass is by simply pressing play. – Obejváci

“Spring in the Old Country” – Slávek Hanzlík with Béla Fleck, Stuart Duncan, Mark Schatz

Slávek Hanzlík is one of the most prominent Czech acoustic guitarists and composers whose musical life has been closely connected with the bluegrass and instrumental scene both abroad and at home. Born in Prague, he spent many years in Canada and the United States, recorded several original albums with leading international players, and was shortlisted for the GRAMMYs twice in the Instrumental Album of the Year category. For us, though, Slávek is, above all, a good friend and a great inspiration. His approach to melody, his playing, and the way he connects tradition with his own experience have opened new horizons for us in how we think about acoustic music.

“Letní romance” (“Summer Romance”) – Robert Křesťan a Druhá Tráva

Deep lyrics, beautiful vocals, and masterful musicianship. Robert Křesťan and Druhá Tráva are among the most popular Czech bands and in recent years have been reaching far beyond the boundaries of bluegrass. They are definitely a Czech band worth knowing. This year, they are celebrating 35 years together with a special tour in the Czech Republic joined by Tim O’Brien.

“Ty víš” (“You Know”) – Obejváci

One of the songs from our new EP. We recorded it at SONO Records, one of the best recording studios in Europe. We recorded it live, almost the same way we play at home in our living room.

“Už se blíží svítání” (“Dawn Is Coming”) – Petr Kůs a Fámy

Songwriter, musician, and singer Petr Kůs has long been one of the leading figures of the Czech (not only) bluegrass scene. He has always surrounded himself with outstanding musicians and his songs are a must at any bluegrass jam session.

“Twin Peaks/ Happygrass Medley” – Radim Zenkl & Ondra Kozák

A duo of musicians with a strong cross-genre reach. In their program, they present original instrumental pieces and songs written by both players and complemented by bluegrass, Celtic, and world music traditional tunes in distinctive, personal arrangements. They began their collaboration in 2020 and have since performed a number of successful concerts around the world.

“Ještě ne” (“Not Yet”) – Pavlína Braunová & Minesengři

Minnesengři were a progressive folk band from České Budějovice, founded as early as 1968. They quickly became one of the most distinctive folk groups of their time. Their early recordings of South Bohemian folk songs, as well as their later original material, are still regarded as legends of Czech folk music. For anyone who knows Minnesengři, listening to their music carries a special meaning – not only because of the songs themselves, but also because of the mysterious disappearance of their singer Pavlína Braunová. Although the band disbanded in 1989, their legacy and the inspiration they drew from South Bohemia continue to live on.

“Tisíc let” (“A Thousand Years”) – Obejváci 

The song “A Thousand Years” captures a moment when a person pauses and tries to take a breath even in the middle of chaos. It speaks about closeness that can keep you afloat, yet also hurt, and about the hope that even after darkness, light can be found again.

“Signal Jammer” – New Aliquot

In our view, New Aliquot are currently at the very top of the Czech acoustic scene. Instrumentally, they are among the finest bands you can hear in the country. They play bluegrass, new acoustic, and folk music, combining original songs, instrumental pieces, and distinctive arrangements of roots music. The band was formed in 2016 on the foundations of the group Křeni and has since toured across the Czech Republic and Europe — from Germany to Sweden to France.

“If You Break My Heart” – Fragment

Fragment were one of the jewels of the Czechoslovak and later Czech bluegrass scene – a band that recorded numerous albums in the 1990s and toured across Europe and the United States. Their sound blended bluegrass with new acoustic influences, highlighted by strong instrumental passages and distinctive vocals, especially thanks to Jana Mougin Doláková. Although Fragment are no longer active, their legacy lives on in their recordings, in the memories of fans, and in the generations of musicians they inspired. Jana later moved to the United States, where she and her husband Stephen Mougin run a studio and label and continue to devote themselves to music.

“Osud nikdo nezmění” (“No One Can Change Fate”) – Monogram 

Monogram are a Prague-based bluegrass band active on the Czech and European scene for more than 30 years. Acoustic music fans associate them with quality and instrumental precision. Their repertoire consists mainly of original songs and instrumentals, which they regularly perform at festivals at home and abroad – from Porto to IBMA in Nashville.

“Balada pro čistou duši” (“Ballad for a Pure Soul”) – Obejváci 

This song is dedicated to a friend who chose to leave this world. It is not about tragedy, but about a quiet passage and the peace the soul finds. Images of nature – darkness, flowers, cold, snow – underline the fragility of life while also reminding us of its beauty. It is more a gentle celebration of life than a mourning elegy.

“America” – Milkeaters

Until recently, Milkeaters were one of the distinctive names on the Czech bluegrass scene. Formed in 2014, their common denominator was bluegrass, energy, and humor. They played both covers and original songs, always bringing drive and joy to the stage. For us, Milkeaters have an even more personal meaning – it was at their musicians’ camp that Obejváci first came together. The band ended its activity in 2024, but its members, songs, and spirit continue in new projects and in the people they inspired.

“Stokrát” (“A Hundred Times”) – COP 

COP are one of the most essential names in Czech bluegrass – and there is probably no bluegrass fan in the country who doesn’t know them. The band was founded in 1978 and despite the emigration of most members in the early 1980s, they found new life thanks to frontman Míša Leicht and continued on. Over time, they became festival mainstays; in 2023 they celebrated 45 years, still playing with their characteristic energy. For our guitarist Luboš, this band is an especially personal chapter – as a teenager, it was COP who led him to bluegrass and indirectly to today’s Obejváci.

“Až Uslyším Hvízdání” (“When I Hear the Whistle”) – Poutníci

The more banjo, the more happiness! Poutníci were founded in 1970 and their sound and approach influenced an entire generation of musicians. Their most distinctive era came between 1979 and 1991, when Robert Křesťan was a member along with banjo player Luboš Malina, considered one of the best Czech banjo players.

“Deeper than the Holler” – G-runs ‘n Roses 

The name G-runs ‘n Roses might suggest tough guys with tattoos and long hair. The reality is a bit different – but the energy is definitely there. They are a distinctive Czech bluegrass band built on a solid rhythm section, tight vocal harmonies, and expressive instrumental solos. They perform both original songs and covers, all in thoughtful arrangements with respect for traditional bluegrass.

“Traveling Shoes” – Loes van Schaijk

Originally from the Netherlands, van Schaijk has put down roots in Prague. She is a singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist appreciated on the European bluegrass and folk scene for her sincere vocals, natural sound, and sensitive playing on bass, guitar, and bodhrán. She performs in many different musical projects.

“Every Breath You Take” – The Jumper Cables

The Jumper Cables came together simply to make music. With their acoustic instruments, they create convincing and powerful arrangements of both original compositions and cover songs.

Photo Credit: Gwendoleena – Vendula Koloušková

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Tenille Townes, Mac Cornish, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s Friday and it’s new music time! We’ve got a few things on the slate that you simply gotta hear.

Starting us off, quickly rising bluegrass up-and-comer 16-year-old Asher Brinson gives us a sneak preview of his upcoming single, “Midnight Hurricane,” the title track for an album the young songwriter and picker has set for release in early April. “Midnight Hurricane” features Sierra Hull on mandolin and Lindsay Lou on vocals – and Brinson more than holds his own among the talented roster on the track.

Also in bluegrass sounds, Jesse Smathers turns the clock and calendar back to the primordial musical ooze before bluegrass with his rendition of “Take A Drink On Me.” The track was inspired by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, with whom Smathers shares a hometown. As the artist and mandolinist puts it, “This tune is a prime example of early popular dance music” – the kinda stuff that inspired the earliest bluegrass artists like Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and many others. In the hands of Smathers and his band, it’s a bluegrass song fit for any era.

There’s Good Country to enjoy below, as well. Mac Cornish unveils a new track, her cover of Ian & Sylvia’s “Trucker’s Cafe.” You can almost catch the glint of bright sunshine off a chromed truck stop diner listening to the tune, lush with pedal steel and honky-tonkin’ guitar. The boot scootin’ track was recorded in Nashville and produced by Andrija Tokic.

To round us out, Tenille Townes returns to the site with “The Acrobat,” a contemplative and resonant song featuring another of our favs, Lori McKenna. “When you’re barely hanging on it’s easy to let go,” Townes sings, her voice rich with emotion and conviction. The song is the title track for Townes’ upcoming album, set for release in April, and is a fitting nexus point for the LP. “After losing my way for a while,” Townes shares with BGS, “this song felt like such an important anchor for this album.” You can watch the brand new music video for “The Acrobat” below.

Take a scroll and enjoy your listen – You Gotta Hear This!

Asher Brinson, “Midnight Hurricane”

Artist: Asher Brinson
Hometown: Newport, North Carolina
Song: “Midnight Hurricane”
Album: Midnight Hurricane
Release Date: March 6, 2026 (single); April 3, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “When Chris Henry and I got together to write, I told him I was having an ‘off’ day and he said to let it flow – say whatever was on my mind. Those thoughts became the first line of ‘Midnight Hurricane.’ Growing up on the North Carolina coast, hurricanes have always just been a part of my life. And it seemed like they always hit at night! Midnight is quiet, but your thoughts aren’t, and hurricanes are like that — all of your feelings hitting at once. It’s a love story wrapped in chaos and after the storm, there’s a calm that makes you appreciate what’s steady and real. With Sierra Hull on mandolin and Lindsay Lou on vocals, this song instantly became one of my favorites. I feel like they both added just the right touch. While hurricanes unfortunately bring destruction, they also have a way of bringing people and communities together… to uplift each other, support, and rebuild.” – Asher Brinson

Track Credits:
Asher Brinson – Guitar, lead vocal
Cory Walker – Banjo
Jason Carter – Fiddle
Christopher Henry – Bass, baritone vocal
Sierra Hull – Mandolin
Lindsay Lou – Tenor vocal

Mac Cornish, “Trucker’s Cafe”

Artist: Mac Cornish
Hometown: Currently Nashville, Tennessee, but grew up in the Bay Area, California
Song: “Trucker’s Cafe”
Release Date: February 27, 2026

In Their Words: “This single is a cover of the Ian & Sylvia song, ‘Trucker’s Cafe.’ The song is from their 1969 record, Great Speckled Bird, which they also used as the name of their newly formed band, including the likes of Buddy Cage and David Briggs. Ian and Sylvia are a huge influence on me because of their blending of folk, rock ‘n’ roll, and country – especially on this album and this song. The song is a subversive take on the trucking country fad of the 1960s and ’70s, taking the perspective of a heartbroken truck stop diner waitress. The vocals are distinctly folk with their vibrato and falsetto, but the instrumentation is all rockin’ country goodness with walking bass and ripping pedal steel. I’ve always said that the best year in music was 1969. This is one of the many songs I absolutely love from that year in music and it only felt right to record a cover and honor my influences. My cover was recorded in October of 2025 at the Bomb Shelter in Nashville, TN and was produced by Andrija Tokic.” – Mac Cornish

Track Credits:
Mac Cornish – Vocals, acoustic guitar
Charlie Fuerstch – Electric guitar
Jeff Taylor – Piano
Cooper Dickerson – Pedal steel
Jack Lawrence – Bass
Dave Racine – Drums

Jesse Smathers, “Take A Drink On Me”

Artist: Jesse Smathers
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “Take A Drink On Me”
Release Date: February 27, 2026
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “Though my familial roots are deeply planted in Western North Carolina, I was raised in Eden, NC – the home of Charlie Poole. I spent my youth picking and competing at the Charlie Poole Festival there. The festival was held at Morehead Park, on the same grounds where the cotton mill Poole used to work at once stood. I heard the music of Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers ringing throughout my childhood. He, along with his bandmates, were some of the most prominent precursors to bluegrass stylings that came nearly 20 years later. Tales of Poole, Posey Rorer, and Norman Woodlief are still being told today, as you would expect, with larger-than-life personalities and musicians.

“I often imagine this scene: walking down Morgan Road in Spray (one of three small communities that made up Eden) in 1926 as a bystander and hearing the centric bounce of Piedmont Mill music in the distance. As I approach, I witness the North Carolina Ramblers sitting on a stoop sharing tunes and a jug of the best white liquor that the area along the NC/VA line is so notorious for. That sight is exactly what came to mind when recording this tune and what comes to mind when I hear it back. This tune is a prime example of early popular dance music. Hunter Berry on fiddle masterfully captured the necessary musical essences all while integrating his own spontaneous and playful liveliness. The same can be said of Corbin Hayslett who mixed in popping Charlie Poole banjo techniques. Whether it’s a Coke, glass of tea, a beer, or a jar of Shooting Creek’s finest, all you rounders get ready to party and ‘Take A Drink On Me’!” – Jesse Smathers

Track Credits:
Jesse Smathers – Guitar, lead vocal
Hunter Berry – Fiddle
Corbin Hayslett – Banjo
Nick Goad – Mandolin, harmony vocal
Joe Hannabach – Upright bass
Patrick Robertson – Harmony vocal

Tenille Townes, “The Acrobat” featuring Lori McKenna

Artist: Tenille Townes
Hometown: Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada
Song: “The Acrobat” featuring Lori McKenna
Album: The Acrobat
Release Date: February 27, 2026 (single); April 10, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “There’s an underlying whisper in this song saying you don’t have to make yourself smaller anymore, and it is my greatest hope that someone hearing this could believe it’s true. I have been navigating a return to self season in my life and reclaiming the belief that I don’t have to contort myself to fit what anyone else needs. After losing my way for a while, this song felt like such an important anchor for this album. Writing this song through the lens of a character helped me to hold enough distance from myself to be able to write the truth, and name the quiet damage that comes from performing, instead of just being.

“Lori McKenna has been a compass influence for me and it’s an honor to have her singing on this song we wrote together. I love how she enters the recording on the line about the fortune teller with all her knowledge, because Lori has been that voice of wisdom for me for years through her songs. The honesty in her lyrics and the way her voice holds emotional tension has given me permission to explore that kind of vulnerability in my own writing. I’m grateful for our friendship, and for the opportunity to share a love for the craft of a song with someone I am still so inspired by.” – Tenille Townes

Photo Credit: Tenille Townes by Madison Rensing; Mac Cornish by Mandi Fountain.

Big Richard Takes Big Strides

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Big Richard is blowing up the bluegrass scene. Their cheeky moniker is a fitting introduction to their mischievous spirit – think four women, leaps and bounds of talent, political acuity, and unrivaled vibrancy. Their magnetism has garnered a true energetic match from their fan base, who are occasionally known to attend live shows with inflatable male genitalia in tow. Everything about Big Richard is its own micro revolution.

Joy Adams (cello), Eve Panning (fiddle), Hazel Royer (bass), and Bonnie Sims (mandolin, guitar) make up the fearsome foursome. Each woman has cultivated a slew of experience in her own right, amalgamating into a supergroup of pulsating passion and prowess. February 6, 2026, saw the release of the group’s sophomore studio album, Pet, via Signature Sounds. A ripe combination of fiddle tunes, originals, and an astute cover or two, Pet was recorded live in an effort to encapsulate Big Richard’s dynamic chemistry. Raw power seeps through every track, their topical lyrics and fiery dispositions bulldozing over patriarchal expectations so often affiliated with the bluegrass legacy.

Big Richard is fierce, loving, and unstoppable. When BGS sat down to ask a few questions regarding their new release, their affinity for one another beamed radiantly through the grainy Zoom screen. Joining from an early morning in the middle of tour, Big Richard arrived to our call piled onto a single hotel bed á la the grandparents from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Their banter electric and punctuated by spurts of laughter, bassist Hazel even delivered a sardonic recitation of a poem from her bedside book before launching into the interview. What followed was a curious exploration of the inspirations and aspirations to which the band meticulously attends.

Congrats on Pet! Can you tell us a little bit about the narrative of Big Richard and why you’re all in the same bed? What brought you here?

Bonnie Sims: We started a band because a festival needed more ladies on their lineup. They called old Eve Panning on the fiddle over there and said, “Hey, you probably know other women, right?” So she took a call, and she called us.

Joy Adams: We were just supposed to play one show, and I remember having a rehearsal and everyone peeing their pants from laughing so hard. We played our festival set and half of it got rained out. So we had all these songs we still needed to play and decided to book another show so we could play them. We also got some hate at that festival – some people were very offended by our name. We were also handing out penis paraphernalia, and we made these puff-paint T-shirts that had a dick with hairy balls playing banjo.

Hazel Royer: People got mad enough that we were like, “Oh, we have to do this again. This is so funny.”

BS: We were like, “Are we rage-baiting middle-aged boomers? Could this be any more fun?” I grew up as a bluegrass kid, and I always had an aversion to some elements of the culture socially, especially towards women. I felt very stifled by it with my personality, so I always said if I was going to be in a bluegrass band, I wanted to feel like I was power-sliding in on my knees with both middle fingers up. I feel like Big Richard does that very well energetically. We are doing that constantly on the scene, on stage, to audiences, to other musicians, to promoters – we try to bring an unexpected vibe.

What is unique about collaborating with an all-femme outfit?

JA: Well when I get my period, they all get their periods. We’ll be halfway through tour and someone will be like, “Okay, when is it coming?”

BS: And I like that you said outfit. It’s mostly about our outfits. We share clothes, we encourage dressing up, we share beds, we like to theme – the chemistry is deep!

JA: We theme all of our outfits. Like last night, we’re staying at a Best Western, so our theme was “Breast Western.”

Eve Panning: I actually showed up dressed just like the drummer in the opening band. But yeah, I guess we’ve all played in bands with men before, and all sorts of other lineups. I personally have loved all of those bands, loved making music with them, and learned a lot. But there is something really special about being in a group with all ladies. There’s just something that I feel like is kind of unspoken and understood.

BS: And I feel like the reception of us often still has some sort of stigma attached to it. Like at gas stations, at venues, people will be like, “Oh, girls, are you traveling alone?” “Ladies, are you sure you’re okay?” And I get to be like, “Yeah, we are! Yeah, that’s right.” I feel like being in this band has fortified my personal independence bone.

Has being politically forward also impacted your reception?

HR: Yeah, definitely. This band has been pretty politically forward since its inception, so we’ve also curated a fan base that understands what to expect. For the most part, people come to our shows because they know that. Last year we had a few shows where people left in anger, but it’s not common.

BS: Even just the name Big Richard is a pretty good litmus test for whether or not you’re able to take a joke. If you get the joke, and if you’re willing to laugh, that’s a really good precursor to deciding if you want to be a part of this party.

What context, interpersonally or globally, informed the particular creation of your album, Pet?

HR: We wanted to create an album. There was Live from Telluride [2022] before I joined the band and then we had Girl Dinner [2025], which was an album we made in the studio. For Girl Dinner, we were all separated sonically, isolated and in booths with headphones so that we could edit things and overdub stuff. I was very new to the band at that point. Our sound was very informed by coming together and creating this new thing.

But for this new album, Pet, we recorded every song live. We wanted to emulate the live sound that we have on stage with each other, because that’s where we feel most confident and powerful as a group. I think it is where we are the most successful musically. And we recorded all live to tape, so everything is analog, which has been awesome.

BS: Big Richard is definitely an energy. A large part of our alchemy together is the energy that the four of us create. And that requires being in the room together, having our voices actually, physically interacting and coming together into things. We wanted to tap into the stuff that feels real. And for us, we’re a live band. We perform shows all the time, and so we’re trying to bring that element into the studio.

What is your process of composing and arranging like?

EP: We’ve done some co-writes, which have been really fun, but a lot of the time someone will bring a song of their own with an idea of where they want it to end up, though our arrangements are also pretty collaborative. Each of us has a distinct flavor that they bring to the band.

What would you say is the most distinctive difference in your respective musicianships?

BS: Eve and Joy were classical kids growing up, and Hazel and I both had dads who played the banjo.

What is it like to bridge that gap?

BS: When Eve writes out her fiddle tunes, I take the music, I go home, and I write every note, and then I practice it. And Joy just somehow immediately has it down – so she bridges it really fast, and I have to build a bridge, piece by piece.

EP: And then when Bonnie or Joy or Hazel is singing a song, and they’re like, “Eve, can you sing the harmony part?” I have to be like, “Guys, how do I make it sound better? How do I sing good?” And then they try and help me out there.

JA: We use our skillsets to fill in the gaps for each other.

BS: And we don’t expect people to know what we know. That’s not a fair thing to put on other musicians. We all come from different backgrounds.

Lots of dynamic abundance!

What did y’all each have on repeat while you were recording Pet?

JA: I was listening to Twain a lot. “The Fox (Yup Yup Yup)” or “The Sorcerer” from Twain.

HR: I was listening to Christian Lee Hutson a lot. “Tiger” is so good.

BS: Probably scream-singing Chappell Roan in my car on the way home.

EP: I had a bit of a phase with The Weepies this summer, because I hadn’t listened much, but then Hazel was putting them on in the van a lot.

HR: They’re so good, too.

Always a good bet. Now, if y’all were in an alternative universe where you were still connected as a group, but you weren’t a band or a musical group, what would you be?

JA: Probably a truck-driving outfit.

BS: Yeah, we’re Ray Bitcher, we’re a truck-driving outfit. Or– can we be the Golden Girls, too? I want to be old ladies with y’all. Oh, and a third thing. We are also a punk band called Hateful Hazel.

Incredible. Is there anything you feel like you’ve learned about yourselves or playing together throughout the process of putting out this album?

BS: This is a collaboration and a democratic process of a band. Putting together Pet, and Big Richard as a whole, is constantly an opportunity to compromise. It’s not about my singular creative vision for any song or any record. It’s about coming together and listening to each other and then having everybody’s input. It ends up being this amalgamation of everybody’s creative juju. Incorporating somebody else’s ideas is a great learning opportunity for any creative.

HR: We also learned that this live recording style works really well with this band. We’d always had a hunch that if we just got in a room together and set up a mic that it’d be the best way to capture our sound. Turns out it’s pretty true.

BS: We learned that we liked dressing up as clowns. Artistically fitting.

JA: Apocalypse clowns, specifically.

Oh yeah, the album art is impeccable. Beyond the clownage, what are y’all each proudest of on this album?

JA: I think we’re just proud that it finally sounds like us on stage. Girl Dinner was very clean, but the live recording on Pet really worked for us.

BS: I do love “Make the World Go Away” as the ending of the record. It’s always such a potent moment in live shows, because a lot of times we’ll go into the crowd and sing it acoustic. The music becomes so tangible – we’re literally standing a foot from somebody, you know, and their face is right by our face, and we’re singing and we’re looking at them. I feel like we can miss music in that realm with performing.

The stage amplifies what we’re doing, but it’s also a barrier. Which, at times, is great because it wouldn’t be successful on the ground in a crowd of 3,000 people, but in a club with 250 or 300 people, you can stand in the middle of it and ask everybody to be quiet while you sing an acoustic song. Those moments are so connected. And I feel like this is how music can reach out and touch everyone. It’s not just for performing and money and clapping and being on a stage. It’s about feeling as humans together. Music is a tool for that.

Was that philosophy a big influence for Pet as a whole?

BS: We’re definitely trying to apply music as medicine. Humanity is missing out on something right now, and music is a tool to help us access our higher selves.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

BGS 5+5: Jesse Appelman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Jesse Appelman
Hometown: Oakland, California
Latest Album: Where We Go (released February 20, 2026)

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

For me, music is about community, connection, and collaborative creation.

It’s about the intimacy of singing harmony with someone, or finding musical ideas that only occur to me because of what someone else just played. I’m in awe of people like Keith Jarrett who can carry a full solo show, but my musical voice only feels complete in collaboration. I play best when I have things to respond to.

I leave most festivals with at least one new real friendship, forged through a shared language and the vulnerability of playing music together. There are not a lot of spaces where this can happen so easily, especially once you’re past your 20s, and they only exist because people keep showing up and participating.

I’m most interested in the music that results when musicians prioritize the collective sound while still bringing their full and unique personality to the table. When everyone listens and tries to make everyone else sound better rather than demonstrating their own ability. It’s easy to take for granted the ability to sit down with strangers and create music in real time but we are so lucky to get to do it.

Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?

I don’t think anyone involved in this record ever discussed what genre of music we were making. Not John Mailander, who produced the album, and not the band (Eli West, Sami Braman, and Emily Mann). We talked a lot about the how and the why. We talked about density and space, groove, melody, interaction, texture, and flow. Nobody asked if they should be playing these tunes like bluegrass, old-time, Americana, or anything else.

So what kind of music is it? It’s the sound of these particular musicians playing these tunes, trusting their ears and instincts, and adding their unique personalities to the stew. Bluegrass is certainly in there, and old-time, and probably some jazz and classical, but it’s not a conscious “little bit of this and little bit of that,” it’s just what comes out when we play without thinking too hard.

I remember listening back to the tunes at the end of the first day in the studio and John said something like, “Isn’t it cool how you can do all this planning and arranging and preparing, but you have no idea what the album will sound like until you start making it?”

Some musicians immerse themselves in a single tradition or lineage and spend a lifetime going deep inside it. I listen to a lot of stuff like that, and it’s some of my most beloved music, but when I play I’m most interested in what happens when you agree on priorities and principles, and let musical identity emerge. My priorities come from lessons learned from musicians in my West Coast string band community. Some get called innovators, some traditionalists, but all share a commitment to deeply-felt, collaborative, and highly personal music-making.

Music is an activity and genre is a labeling system; the best I can do is focus on the activity and get the right people together and trust that the result will sound like us.

If it needs a label, maybe string band music that breathes?

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

I have a loose mental checklist that I try to review before I go on stage or into the studio or even to a jam. I don’t succeed at all of them all the time but it’s a north star to aim for.

The first is from Chick Corea:

1. Play only what you hear.
2. If you don’t hear anything, don’t play anything.

This is simple and sometimes really hard. To me it means that every note should exist in my mind before it comes out of my hands – whether it’s a particular texture when playing backup or a phrase in a solo. Even down to the tonal color, dynamics, and articulation. This takes deep focus and deep listening both outward to the band and internally to your own ideas. When I listen to my favorite improvisers – Jim Hall, Stuart Duncan, Keith Jarrett, David Rawlings – I hear this level of intentionality.

The second is from John Hartford: “Style is based on limitations.” This means giving myself permission to play within my actual capabilities rather than the ones I wish I had. If I have to take solo over something that is outside of my comfort zone in terms of tempo, harmony, or whatever, I search for the most musical solution available within the boundaries of my own technical and conceptual limitations. This might be something simpler and more spacious than what I might feel like I’m supposed to play, and consequently truer to my own voice.

The rest of the checklist: Stay relaxed in mind and body. Listen deeply at all times. Never sacrifice groove or tone to execute an idea. Never go on autopilot when playing behind someone else’s vocal or solo. Search for the most beautiful idea, not the cleverest.

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

My happiest place outside of music and family is underwater. I scuba dive and snorkel for the same reasons I play music. It feels like a portal into another universe. Diving requires an intentionality of every movement that I try to apply to making music. Your time underwater is limited by the air in your tank, and the more you exert, the faster you breathe. Every muscle movement costs you air and time, and the best divers carry themselves in the water with a calm and economy of movement that is almost meditative. It’s a flow state that slows your breathing and lets you focus your attention fully on the environment around you. I make my best music when I find that same state and put most of my awareness on what’s happening around me.

I find a lot of inspiration in California’s landscapes and colors. Kelp forests, rocky coasts and windswept coastal meadows with washed-out browns and green, golden hills dotted with green oaks, the pale gray granite of the High Sierra. There’s an aesthetic minimalism to these environments that I think shows up in some of my music, like “Lyell Fork,” a stream that flows from a glacier on a high peak in Yosemite and flows through alpine meadows and over granite slabs before joining the Tuolumne River. Or “Montaran” which is a stretch of coast south of San Francisco. In both cases I thought those tunes sounded like how those places feel.

What would a perfect day as an artist and creator look like to you?

Waking up to my kiddo climbing in bed for a cuddle. Breakfast, immediately followed by some quiet unstructured time with an instrument in my hands with an extremely good cup of coffee, before all the details of life fill my brain. A hike or bike ride with my wife. Some silly afternoon play time with my kid. Cooking mapo tofu for family dinner. Tunes and songs in the evening with a few dear friends. Someone else sends all my emails for the day.

Photo Credit: Giant Eye Photography

An Oral History of the Infamous Stringdusters

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

BGS was founded 14 years ago and from the very beginning, we’ve been covering, collaborating with, and cheering on the Infamous Stringdusters. Our first posts about the group published to our site in 2013 – not even a year after our launch – spotlighting banjoist Chris Pandolfi’s Bluegrass Manifesto, the band’s only-four-years-old marquee event The Festy Experience, and their most recent album at that time, Silver Sky. Now, in 2026, they’re not only our Artist of the Month for the second time, they’ll be headlining our stage at Bourbon & Beyond this September, too. But, our love for the band – and the many partnerships we’ve built together – began, like most, back in 2007 with their now iconic debut album Fork in the Road and a banner year for the group at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass and the IBMA Awards.

Back then, when the Stringdusters took home trophies for Song of the Year (“Fork in the Road”), New Artist of the Year, and Album of the Year, perhaps no one – not even the band themselves – would have predicted the seismic, existential impact they would end up having on bluegrass and the as-yet-unnamed subgenre thereof: jamgrass. Twenty years on, the Stringdusters celebrate their duo of decades with 20/20, an album of 20 songs celebrating 20 years of defining and redefining bluegrass and jamgrass.

For our Artist of the Month coverage, BGS and Good Country co-founder Amy Reitnouer Jacobs sat down with all five members the Infamous Stringdusters for a wide-ranging conversation of a band that epitomizes bluegrass, jamgrass, and psychedelic string band music in the 2000s.

First of all, again, I wanna just thank you for doing this. We are so thrilled to have you guys as our Artist of the Month and congratulations on 20 years of the ‘Dusters.

I wanna start this with Panda actually, and this is not gonna be just an oral history interview, but I think, looking back on 20 years, it feels appropriate to start from the beginning. So let’s talk about origins and start back at Berklee [College of Music], if that’s cool. Tell us a little bit about the beginning of the band.

Chris Pandolfi: I arrived at Berklee in 2001, which was the year that Andy [Hall] had just left Boston for Nashville. I first met Critter [Chris Eldridge] through Zach Hickman, who was playing in Josh Ritter’s band. He went to Oberlin [University] with Critter. We got together and we were playing, and Zach had some free studio time at a spot in New Hampshire and we were gonna go record some music, just for fun. Our careers were not underway in any way, shape, or form. We didn’t have any grand designs here. We were just gonna go record some music and have some fun.

Then, on the precipice of this recording, we went down to the Cantab Lounge to meet this guy named Andy Hall. We went there and–

Andy Hall: [It was] The Plough and Stars.

CP: The Plough and Stars! Andy was playing–

AH: I don’t remember exactly if I was playing or if you were playing.

CP: And the next day we were in New Hampshire at this recording studio and we made this EP called Stable Horse. Essentially, Andy was already living in Nashville, so around that same time, he had met Jeremy [Garrett] and they were playing together. It was that recording session that got the wheels turning for me. Like, “Oh, we could do this thing with other people our age,” and not fall into the very sort of common thing in bluegrass where you get hired by someone else and you’re essentially a sideman.

We were recording and teeing things up, and we all had other gigs at that time. It was me, Andy, Jesse [Cobb], Critter, and Alan Bartram from the Del McCoury Band. But that was my earliest memory of “We could start a band with our contemporaries.” And Zach Hickman, I give him credit, he facilitated that.

I don’t even think we had the name “Stringdusters” yet. Alan got the offer to go play with Del McCoury and we had met Travis [Book] at IBMA, so we called him up and he came and lived in my driveway for a few months. True story.

Travis Book: You can really get away with a lot if you park your car in someone’s driveway and then try to stay outta the way.

So Andy and Jeremy, what are the origins of you guys starting to play together?

AH: Was it Ronnie Bowman? Was that the first time? I was in Ronnie Bowman’s band and the fiddle player and Ronnie had a bit of a falling out while we were on the road and–

CP: We were all at a festival, so we scooped up Jeremy and he got on the bus with Ronnie Bowman!

Jeremy Garrett: Yeah, I definitely knew about you two beforehand. And, of course, in bluegrass everyone’s a fan of Ronnie Bowman. He’s such a crooner and such a cool cat. I definitely had plenty of experience before, but this was like one of my first major Nashville gigs. And it was eye-opening very quickly that, as a sideman, it’s pretty limiting.

The conversations I remember started happening pretty fast in the back rooms: “Hey, let’s maybe consider doing something of our own. Long-term, how can we make this happen?” But it was just like whispers. I remember going to IBMA – that’s where I met Chris Pandolfi and he blew me away with his melodic banjo playing style and this futuristic sound that he had. I’d really never played with that before, because I came from a very traditional side of bluegrass.

CP: Didn’t I give you a copy of my record? I remember you telling me that.

JG: Yeah. And I listened to that record all the way home from IBMA – I’ll never forget – and my dad was riding with me. I was just like, “This guy’s awesome.” Overall, it felt like all of us coming together through our connection in Nashville and these music parties that used to happen on the reg. I don’t know if they still do. We would have huge jam sessions, especially at Panda’s Pad. There’d be 20-30 people all gathered up in somebody’s backyard, picking. And it was almost every night. So you can’t help but get tight and start seeing the writing on the wall, the possibilities, through those kind of connections.

CP: These days in Nashville are so different. It’s so much “cooler” now. There’s so many young people playing bluegrass and when you hear about a lot of the socializing in Nashville, it’s a lot of young musicians. When we were having these parties, it was a real diverse mix of ages. You had Sam Bush there, you had Scott Vestal, you had Ronnie Bowman, and the McCourys. We were the young cats around and there wasn’t a very vibrant young scene. We were intermingling with a lot of the elder statesmen of bluegrass.

That’s a really special time in Nashville. I can remember that’s when I started hanging out in town and there was like a magic in the air. That intergenerational mix doesn’t organically seem to be happening as much, but maybe it is and I’m just not invited to parties anymore.

So Travis, were you coming to Nashville from Colorado? Where were you before then?

TB: Yeah, I was living in Durango and Anders Beck from Greensky [Bluegrass] and I started playing music together in maybe 2002. There were gigs and we were learning this music and then Andy Thorn and some other friends – that’s Leftover Salmon – they just showed up in a music store one day. Andy was probably 19 on college break and we hung out with him for three days straight. When he went back to North Carolina, we called him up. We’re like, “Dude, you gotta come back! We gotta make a band! We’ll play RockyGrass, you’ll win the banjo contest, we’ll win the band contest.” Anders and I were like, “We can see the future, but we need Andy Thorn,” because he was such a compelling musician and just such a natural. Still is.

We started this band called the Broke Mountain Bluegrass Band with Jon Stickley, who’s also a visionary in our music. We were all picking and almost entering that same path as Leftover Salmon or Yonder [Mountain String Band]. We were already doing this like hippie bro band, just loving playing music and camping and playing festivals and going to hot springs and just fucking around. It was brilliant.

But then we went to IBMA, which at the time was the best way to show off your band and position yourself in the context of the larger [bluegrass] world. Try to get some gigs and go party your absolute brains out for a week. We were pretty rough around the edges, but one night I stepped off an elevator and Chris Eldridge came around the corner. [He] was like, “We need a bass player for this jam. Will you come jam with us?” I went into this little alcove and it was essentially the Stringdusters. It was Critter and Pandolfi and Andy Hall and Jeremy and Jesse Brock. I was just hanging out, holding on for dear life. I’m partying, I have a backpack full of beer, I have no shoes on, and I looked around and all my band mates were just there sitting along the hallway floor listening to the jam.

Andy’s partner at the time, Janice, said, ” Do you ever think about moving to Nashville?” I just laughed. Absolutely not. But I had fixed myself in their mind and once they exhausted all the possibilities of people who could play bass in Nashville – at least this is my understanding – they dug into their collective consciousness and called me up to audition. They’re like, “We think you’re the guy. When can you move to Nashville?” So I went out there to work on Fork in the Road that summer. What was this, 2004? Am I right, guys?

AH: I think that would’ve been 2005.

TB: Yeah, you’re right. 2005. [I] moved out there in September and lived in this guy’s driveway. It was kinda wild.

Falco, I promise we’re getting to you. We’re almost there!

In pretty quick succession though, you’ve got the core crew with Critter and Jesse [Cobb] at that time, you record the album, and get signed to Sugar Hill. And then things just start happening! Can you walk me through the time between recording and the IBMA Awards in ’07?

CP: There’s a lot of extremely disorganized touring. We’re driving around in two cars. I still have the notebook from the gigs – we were getting paid a few hundred bucks a night, maybe a thousand on a good night. Doing everything that we could.

We didn’t have grand designs on anything. The IBMA Awards was a really big moment for our band. Thinking back, it was a moment of legitimacy, of just getting [to] one of the hardest things as a band, which is the collective feeling that this thing is gonna stick together. That’s the peril of starting a band with players who you think are really good: at any time anyone could get hired away for something. But we were playing gigs, we were loving life, we were working on our music, and we were poor as could possibly be. I just remember the IBMA Awards as a big moment of solidity, of that feeling like we could really do this, we could really be in this for a long time.

TB: There was that first summer we had a couple of big anchor gigs, but a lot of it was really just driving around and killing time in between these anchors and hoping that we could reach the right audiences. I think that the big bluegrass scene was ripe for some young pickers who were taking it seriously and committed to each other.

JG: Yeah, getting gas in the tank right off the bat was huge for us, that’s for sure. And we spent a lot of time in between those gigs just going to be in the wilderness and spending time together. I don’t know, for lack of a better way of explaining it, [we were] bonding like a band.

But man, when you’re a real band and you’re not just like a frontman or whatever, you’ve got a real synergy with other guys in a group. It’s special. And I feel like a lot of what brought us together and [what] makes us as tight as we are now was those off times where we were discovering our lives and just doing cool stuff like that. Creating this thing together.

I do need to know who came up with the name. Where did the name come from?

CP: Ben Eldridge.

AH: Yeah!

CP: We were working with a list of pretty mediocre names and Ben came up with “Stringdusters.” After 20 years, I can say there’s a lot of bad band names out there, but the Stringdusters – I think it’s a cool band name and it suits us.

All right. Now we bring Falco into the mix. So how did you get mixed up in all this? Tell us your origin story.

Andy Falco: So, Critter fell off the back of a truck and I got picked up – no! What happened was, I’d known Pandolfi and Andy Hall from the Northeast bluegrass scene. I was playing with this guy, Buddy Miriam, who’s on Long Island, and who actually was friends with Bill Monroe because he got struck by lightning at the Berkshire Mountain Bluegrass Festival, which of course was Grey Fox. And Monroe found out about it and reached out and they became friends. So he learned a lot of mandolin directly from Monroe.

My brother was getting into bluegrass and was like, “You should come to this bluegrass festival.” I went up there and saw Doc Watson and really got into playing bluegrass. ​I moved to Nashville maybe a year after Panda and Critter did. Andy Hall was already playing in Dolly Parton’s band. And I had met Jeremy, actually by accident, at SPBGMA. My first time in Nashville, some guy came up to me and said, “Hey man, how are you doing? How’s everything been?” I was like, “Great. This is my first time in Nashville. Everything’s been great.” Then he stopped and said, “Man, I thought you were someone else.” And he says, “Come meet my son.” That was Jeremy’s dad, and that’s the first time I met Jeremy.

When I moved to Nashville, these guys were starting the band. I was watching them doing their sets at IBMA. It was killer. Then when Critter left, they asked if I’d be in. I wasn’t gonna start until September and one month later was the IBMA Awards. So I just joined the band and here they are, winning all these awards.

JG: I would like to say, I’ll never forget your first gig. You killed it harder than literally anybody I’ve ever worked with to this day. Absolutely stepped into the role and blew it away. And it was very obvious at that moment that he was the right man for the job, for the Stringdusters.

AF: I had big shoes to fill with Critter – and Critter and I were friends. In fact, I knew Critter before I met anybody in the Stringdusters. We met at seven o’clock in the morning on the last day of IBMA, when we’d pick all night and our door was open. And here comes Critter with his guitar.

CP: Critter introduced us.

AF: Yeah.

CP: He said to me, “Do you want to go hear the fastest guitar player alive?” And I said yes.

AF: I worked with Critter, too. Critter was very supportive of coming over when I was preparing to join the band, showing me the parts that he played on the record. So I had a really good foundation, thanks to Critter, of what he had done. Then I was able to put my stamp on it.

So what is that pivot then? You all mentioned the kind of shift that occurred, moving you away from traditional bluegrass and more towards jamgrass. How did you find your own sound? What was the decision to pivot?

AH: I remember a specific show where we decided we were gonna try and extend some [of the] set. I think it was the Animus Theater in Durango and it was a Colorado bluegrass crowd, which was more of a dancing crowd. They were used to more diverse sounds. I don’t remember, we were just like, “Let’s try and put a jam in this one song,” or whatever. So we’re playing, we’re jamming, and we’re extending whatever song it was. The whole crowd was just dancing. The energy was feeding back and forth and it was like, “Whoa! This is so much more exciting,” in contrast to everyone sitting silently and clapping in between songs. We made a choice one night and we saw the crowd just light up and dance and lose themselves in the music, and that fed our energy.

CP: Also, we were into that stuff.

AH: Yeah.

CP: But we hadn’t really made that connection yet. The real moment that I remember is we opened three shows for Railroad Earth. We played the 9:30 Club. We played Theater of the Living Arts and, I think, and we played Burg Williamsburg, when our van broke down and we showed up last minute. Those are the gigs that I referenced in the Bluegrass Manifesto. When I did the IBMA keynote that grew out of that, it really referenced those. I remember a few shows, too, where we would come off stage and we’re like, “Oh my god, that jam. Let’s do that again.”

We played these shows with Railroad Earth and it connected some dots that didn’t connect automatically, even though we had Grateful Dead, Phish, playing all the time. We were really coming from that IBMA buzz and awards. And, like anything, it took some time to discover, [it took] some experience. That was when some real change started happening around our business. Then the music really followed that trend.

JG: I’ll say, you guys, don’t forget about the Zeltfestivals. They were beyond anything that I personally had ever experienced. We went out and these people were going absolutely bonkers for our music – they had barricades out there and stuff. I’d never seen any of that at a bluegrass show. To me, that was fire in the tank.

AF: I think that also a big part of that is just, I know for myself, not growing up playing bluegrass music and then getting turned onto it by Garcia and Grisman and people like that. But I think it was just like when I started learning bluegrass. There’s a way that you have to do it and then, finally, you get to a certain point where all these dots are being connected, where you start to let these other influences come out, because you start to get more comfortable as a band. You start to allow that like, “Yeah, why can’t we do it? Why can’t we mix these things?” Even just as individual players. Why can’t you play this style? Blending these kind of jammy elements and these rock elements and then seeing how it worked.

You all have such varied individual projects and influences. Do you still think that you’re shifting your sound? What are you listening to and is that influencing what you’re doing?

AH: It’s definitely influencing what we’re doing. I think, to Falco’s point, I feel like I’m allowing [in] more and more of my original influences that I grew up with. I was a metal dude in high school. I think the older I get, the more I enjoy letting in who I am.

AF: Getting away from the “that ain’t a part of nothing” bullshit, right? Like, what? Who’s to say, right?

JG: Yeah, at the end of the day it’s art and you gotta let that lead itself, if you’re a true artist. Otherwise, you’re doing a preservation society kind of thing in the bluegrass world. For the longest time, I felt we were all paying homage to this awesome music, but we’re not letting it breathe like it should sometimes. It’s very fun to be an artist and be able to have the permission to just kinda let it flow, which is what we let ourselves do. We let the art dictate what we did, and we were true to ourselves in that way. That was something that served us very well. Still does.

You all live in different places now. I know the band is not as centered in Nashville as it used to be, but you did talk about the off-times and how that bonded the group early on. How do you stay bonded as a band now? How have things shifted? Being a decentralized band, how has the writing recording process changed for y’all over the last 20 years?

JG: I think that’s an important point. Yes, we’ve changed a lot over the years, but we’ve been able to stay tight because of those early formative years when we were all just broke traveling around in a band. I didn’t have any brothers growing up, but these guys are definitely my brothers and they know more about me than anybody else in this world. To allow each one of us to have the freedom to live where we wanna live and come together the way that we want to come together, I think that has been really one of the main things that have kept us together.

Over the years we’ve all developed little side things outside of the band. I think that’s been healthy. For me, I like to do my own solo music, music that I write and I like to perform – and stuff that wouldn’t necessarily fit within the confines of the Stringdusters. But I still want to get that art out there. We continue to challenge each other. Music can be competitive in a not-healthy way. But I feel like we do it in a healthy way, in the sense that we drive each other to just be the best that we can be at what we do.

CP: I got married last fall and in the run up to my wedding, one of my aunts asked me, “Are all your bandmates gonna be there?” In my mind I had this moment where I was like, “Are my band mates gonna be there?” You might as well ask me if my family is gonna be there! It’s just life at this point. After 20 years, it’s cool to observe the level to which you become each other’s family.

That’s the definition of community and you don’t think about these things when you’re going into this life, but there are some incredible unintended consequences. That informs the music and that informs all the life experiences too.

And here we are, 20 years later. That’s pretty cool.

Explore more of our Artist of the Month coverage of the Infamous Stringdusters here.

Photo Credit: Daniel Milchev

The Lone Bellow’s Latest Album is a Communal Singalong

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The Lone Bellow are far from alone with the launch of their new album, What a Time to Be Alive.

Released on their own label, the collection conveys a shared vision, even beyond the founding members of Zach Williams, Kanene Pipkin, and Brian Elmquist. Williams wanted to factor in the ideas from their touring bandmates – namely, multi-instrumentalist Tyler James (formerly of Escondido) and drummer Julian Doro (formerly of the Whigs), ensuring everybody felt like they had a say. The group prepared the bulk of the material in a formerly abandoned firehouse in Henderson, Kentucky and polished the project in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with Elmquist serving as producer.

When the album was in the mixing phase, the hard drive storing the new music was stolen during a van break-in while the group were on tour in Chicago. The band turned to GoFundMe, hoping to recoup some of the costs of rerecording. They were surprised to wind up with nearly $25,000 in donations, arguably making their fans just as invested in the project as everyone else in the band.

Not unlike the Lone Bellow’s full-throttle live shows, the new music practically begs the listener to sing or shout along. Indeed, What a Time to Be Alive does feel communal.

“This is what our hope was with this one,” Williams says. “You know, this is our sixth record, and this is definitely a way of life for us, and we’re very, very grateful for it. But it was also the record where we were like, you know what? We don’t have to try to write some hit radio single. We don’t have to play some ambiguous game. We can just make the beautiful record that we want to make, and we’ll just release it in the way we want to release it.”

Zach Williams caught up with BGS by phone on a sunny afternoon in Nashville, where the group relocated from Brooklyn in 2016.

What was the energy in the studio like as this record was taking shape?

Zach Williams: We did this one a bit different than we’ve done other records. One of the main things that I love that we did with this one is, usually somebody writes a song, and they come in and that intellectual property belongs to the songwriter. That’s it. And I wanted to make a record where everything was just split evenly between all five members of the band, no matter what. We decided to do that and that really created a very different atmosphere to work in.

It alleviated a bit of the quiet little murmurs. … You know, when you’re making something with somebody, and you don’t have any ownership in the song, sometimes you can just show up and be like, “All right, I play the drums. Here’s me playing the drums. Bye.” But when it was like, “Hey, you’re going to have an actual piece of this thing,” everybody just showed up, ready to pour their whole selves into it.

One of the most fun songs on here is “Honeysuckle.” I haven’t heard The Lone Bellow do something with that kind of old-time vibe. How did it feel to put that song together?

George Jones and Willie and a few of the old guys, they would have these murder ballads, is what I call them. They would just be singing their little heart out about burying a guy. And I was like, “I want to write a murder ballad.” So that’s our murder ballad. I did change the last verse. The original last verse was talking about how the trash man didn’t know that he was carrying out dead bodies to a truck. I was like, “You know what? I’ll fix that. I’ll clean that up just a little bit.”

Personally, I usually don’t get to play guitar on records, because I’m not a technically savvy guitar player. The guitar is basically a means to an end for me to try to write a melody or lyrics. And on that one, Brian was like, “Hey, you have this way of playing this riff that you wrote that has a sense of humor to it, and I can’t do it.” So, I play my thing and then he doubles up and plays with me. And they decided to keep the little laughs that were in the microphone, where I’m literally laughing at myself because of how bad I think it sounds. Brian was like, “No, we’re keeping all the laughter.”

That’s a big thing that we did with this record. We kept a lot of the human nature of it. …We made this record a while back. We started our own little record label to release it. That took about a year to put that whole thing together, with Thirty Tigers and distribution and all that. So, we’ve been sitting on this record for a second, and this was before AI started dropping hits. Now I’m so glad that all of that human nature is captured in this record, because there’s no denying that it’s absolutely as real as it can get. And I hope that that will just ease some souls out there.

I like the line in “I’m Here for You” about slipping down the water slide. I could picture that exactly where you are in that scene.

That’s literally how I met my wife. I was 12 years old at summer camp. In the late ‘80s, early ‘90s, there was this couple called Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and they had a strange Christian-themed theme park in South Carolina. After the poo hit the fan, they shut the theme park down, and then these other people opened it back up and called it New Heritage USA. The week that they opened it up was the week that I went there for summer camp.

At the turn of the century, [the Associated Press] collected the top 100 most influential pictures taken of the century. One of the top 100 pictures is of a man named Jerry Falwell in a suit sliding down that slide. It’s because of the story of how he corralled his way into taking over that whole establishment. … So, that’s literally the slide that that song mentions, and that’s just the memory of how I fell in love as a little boy, as a 12-year-old idiot, maybe even younger.

Are you a bluegrass fan? Or did you grow up listening to bluegrass?

Man, I’m a huge bluegrass fan. Being in a van with Kanene, who grew up in Fredericksburg, Virginia, she knows bluegrass! I grew up like white trash. So, if there’s like a white trash bluegrass…

I grew up in a family where you’d sit around in the basement and play music together. I think that’s a base level for bluegrass. And I grew up thinking that was totally normal and now I know it was not. So I’m really grateful for bluegrass.

How old were you when you picked up the guitar?

I picked up the guitar at, like, 13, but I didn’t have any guitar lessons or anything. I had a sweet Charvel, which was like Jackson Charvel. It was super heavy metal. I think someone gave it to me, but I didn’t know that you needed a guitar amp for the first several years. [Laughs] A scary amount of time passed where I was like, “I guess this is just how a guitar is supposed to sound.”

But you held on. There’s something about the guitar sound, I guess, that you loved.

Yeah, my grandpa played the guitar, and I would go and live with him in the summers. He would play old hymns at night. I’d fall asleep listening to him playing the old spirituals.

That makes a lot of sense, because one thing your band does as well as any band, it has that dynamic. It has that rise and fall of the voice and in the arrangements. I hadn’t thought about that being based in spirituals and gospel. Did that influence the way you write?

One hundred percent, man. For good and for bad, it’s there. All the baggage is there, and there were beautiful parts of growing up in that kind of culture, too. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but it was also pretty weird. … I grew up in a church where the pastor would run all the way around the room and jump up and down on the couches and scream and holler. It was wild. It was like big tent revival kind of stuff. We didn’t ever go down to snake handling or anything. But there was some wild stuff. And it wasn’t until probably college, and then living in New York, where I was like, “I don’t know if all that stuff was good for everybody.”

But the core of a human being, wanting to feel the beauty, wanting to feel the presence of God, if you want to call it God or energy, I believe that’s very real. That’s what I love about especially live shows is everybody literally invests in the night. They buy tickets and they show up, and we’re facing each other, and it’s like, we’re going to try to create something memorable here. I think, especially right now, it’s such an important moment to just feel alive and connect with other humans, face to face.

How would you personally describe that feeling of being on stage? What’s that energy like from your perspective?

Jim James gave an interview a couple months ago and he nailed it. Like, every night, I have a pretty bad wrestling match in my own mind of, “Am I doing this to try to entertain? Is there a competitive spirit in me where I want to try to sing better than other people?” And the best nights are when I can just be, and let go, and just be alive and a part of the moment. And it doesn’t happen a terrible amount.

What usually happens is, I’m in my head battling thoughts of impostor syndrome on stage in front of 2000 people, night after night, which is really annoying. You would think by now that I would be like, “It’s cool, everything’s fine.” But that’s just not how it works for me. So, on the nights when I can let go of that impostor syndrome and just be another spoke in the wheel, those are the nights where we all ascend to a different place in our souls. I love those nights.

Photo Credit: Emily Dorio

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Tony Trischka, Maoli, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

So much new roots music to enjoy this week! From bluegrass to the Pacific Islands and back again.

Starting us off, artist and songwriter Ryan Dart debuts a new song, “Dirt Road Woman,” combining folk, country, and troubadour styles in a musical tribute to strong, empowered women. Below, Dart explains how the song arrived quickly, “like it downloaded straight from the muse.” For a more tropical, seaside country flair, Maoli – who was born and raised in Hawaii – offers a brand new single today, too. “Some Are Just Better” is a track we’ll be returning to plenty this spring and summer, as it celebrates those good, dreamy days that are almost too perfect to believe.

In bluegrass, Lonesome River Band lean into their moniker with a new track, “There Where the River Rolls Around,” written by their longtime friend and songwriting collaborator Billy Smith. Mild and old-timey with lush low-tuned banjo and a laid-back groove, it’s a song about home, homesickness, and place – all perfect topics for ‘grassy explorations. Banjo great Tony Trischka is on his way to a new album, Earl Jam 2, so he’s dropping off a new music video released earlier this week. “Red River Valley” features Molly Tuttle on lead vocal and guitar with Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Sam Bush, and Mark Schatz filling out the band. We can’t wait for more from the second round of Earl Jam. And young mandolinist phenom Wyatt Ellis launched a new video this week featuring a bunch of all stars, too. “West Dakota Rose” is a cinematic instrumental tune centered on Ellis’s virtuosic playing and featuring Christopher Henry joining on guitar. In the official music video, Ellis strolls around a cabin porch while picking through the tune with an excellent slate of pickers – and a tasty twin fiddle break.

Meanwhile, the Montvales offer an old-timey track of their own, “Carolina,” out today in anticipation of their upcoming March album, Path of Totality. While it certainly sounds old-timey, this is a song rooted in the present, heels dug in against late stage capitalism and the rampant woes of our current day-to-day. Also, singer-songwriter Jack McKeon gives us a sneak listen at his new song, “Kid Like Me,” a sort of sonic bridge from his last album, Talking to Strangers, to his next – which is set for release in July. Written with Theo MacMillan and inspired partially by Tim O’Brien, the track began much more bluegrassy than it ended up after reaching the studio.

Finally, Minneapolis, Minnesota’s Roe Family Singers speak truth to power and bring each of us into their communities and neighborhoods with a chilling new folk song, “Blacked-Out Ford.” Living in Minneapolis in 2025 and 2026 means living on the frontlines of fascism, kidnappings, and government overreach, with the Roes and their friends watching chilling federal SUVs surveil their streets and neighborhoods, tearing families apart and violating human rights. The Roe Family Singers highlight ICE’s murders and unlawful actions in song, calling us all to join them in action and solidarity.

We always love sharing new music with you all every Friday, but this one is especially high quality. Enjoy! ‘Cause You Gotta Hear This…

Ryan Dart, “Dirt Road Woman”

Artist: Ryan Dart
Hometown: Boulder, Colorado
Song: “Dirt Road Woman”
Album: If Love Don’t Break You
Release Date: February 20, 2026 (single); May 1, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “I wrote this song about falling in love with a powerful woman and the ‘love bubble’ phase of a relationship – how the outside world just fades away. I know some men may not be comfortable with powerful women, but I think there are plenty of us who are attracted to an empowered, strong woman who also embodies the sacred feminine. It’s incredibly compelling and I wouldn’t want anything else.

“You’ve got to ride the bad horses before you recognize the good ones. I set out to write a love song that felt like a cousin to Jason Isbell’s ‘Cover Me Up’ – something that balances raw, real emotion without ever feeling cheesy. This one came fast, like it downloaded straight from the muse, born of pure feeling. I hope it resonates with listeners the way it does with me.” – Ryan Dart

Wyatt Ellis, “West Dakota Rose”

Artist: Wyatt Ellis
Hometown: Maryville, Tennessee
Song: “West Dakota Rose”
Release Date: February 6, 2026 (single); February 19, 2026 (video)
Label: Knee High Records

In Their Words: “Getting to shoot the music video for ‘West Dakota Rose’ was just one of those days you don’t really forget. The tune already feels like it tells a story without words, so being able to stand in a place that matched that feeling made it even more real. Joseph Cash has directed and filmed all of my music videos so far, and he always makes it an adventure. It’s like showing up not totally sure what kind of wild idea he’s going to have, but somehow it always comes together even better than I could’ve imagined.” – Wyatt Ellis

Performer Credits:
Wyatt Ellis – Mandolin
Christopher Henry – Guitar
Julia Claire Eversole – Bass
Kyle Tuttle – Banjo
Noah Goebel – Fiddle
Christian Ward – Fiddle

Video Credits: Joseph Cash, director, director of photography, editor. Kitt Fresa, gaffer. 

Lonesome River Band, “There Where the River Rolls Around”

Artist: Lonesome River Band
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “There Where The River Rolls Around”
Release Date: February 20, 2026
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “We got this song for our long time songwriting friend Billy Smith (‘Hobo Blues,’ ‘Tears In My Tracks,’ ‘Crazy Heart,’ among others). As we listened to the song one late night going down the road in the bus, the arrangement just fell into place and we began working on it. A haunting song about leaving home searching for more and longing to be back. Thanks, Billy!” – Sammy Shelor

“The River [in the song] is Haw River in Rockingham County, North Carolina. I always believed that I would make it big playing music and writing songs in Nashville and go back there. I moved here with my brother Terry (the Grascals) and cousin Alan O’Byrant of the Nashville Bluegrass Band. 52 years later, I’m still here, with three kids from two marriages. But I always wanted to return ‘There Where The River Rolls Around’ and it always touches my heart when I hear it sung. Bless Sammy Shelor and the Lonesome River Band for recording that one and 8 other of my songs, including ‘Crazy Heart’ and ‘Hobo Blues.'” – Billy Smith, songwriter

Track Credits:
Sammy Shelor – Banjo
Jesse Smathers – Acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
Mike Hartgrove – Fiddle
Adam Miller – Mandolin, lead vocal
Kameron Keller – Upright bass
Rod Riley – Electric guitar

Maoli, “Some Are Just Better”

Artist: Maoli
Hometown: Haiku, Maui, Hawaii
Song: “Some Are Just Better”
Album: Maoli Music Overload – MMO 3
Release Date: February 20, 2026 (single)
Label: ONErpm

In Their Words: “I’ve been waiting to release this since the day we wrote it. It was my first time writing in Nashville and I was so excited to collaborate with Mikey Reeves and Rob Snyder. I love the horns, the feel, and the lyrics – I’m so proud of how it all came to life.

“We all have days that stand out – not just good days, but the kind where everything falls into place and just feels right. The kind of day you know you’ll look back on and smile about for years. It’s about capturing that feeling. You can’t relive a day once it’s gone, but music has a way of taking you back – even if it’s just for a few minutes.” – Maoli

Jack McKeon, “Kid Like Me”

Artist: Jack McKeon
Hometown: Chatham, New York
Song: “Kid Like Me”
Album: Every Once in a While
Release Date: February 27, 2026 (single); July 3, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “‘Kid Like Me’ began its life as the ‘most bluegrass’ sounding song in the bunch before I went into the studio. Written with Theo MacMillan, we talked a lot about parenting, being an older sibling, and trying to make sense of a world that’s always in flux. Theo’s son was about to be born and I was reflecting on watching my younger sister begin to reach adulthood and face real and more challenging problems. Musically, we spent most of the writing session talking about Tim O’Brien and wrote ‘Kid Like Me’ at a faster tempo that we thought would fit with Tim’s Odd Man In era. Once we were in the studio, it was Casey Campbell and Seth Taylor who turned the recording in a more ambient direction, hinging on Casey’s extended mandolin intro that sets the tone for the rest of the song. I wanted to lead my new project off with ‘Kid Like Me’ as it is reminiscent of the sounds and themes of my debut album Talking to Strangers, but breaks new ground for my production as it features Mellotron, drums, and electric guitar as well.” – Jack McKeon

Track Credits:
Jack McKeon – Acoustic guitar, vocal, songwriter, producer
Seth Taylor – Acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Casey Campbell – Mandolin
Vickie Vaughn – Bass
Josh Hunt – Drums
Phillippe Bronchtein – Keys
Melissa Erin – BGVs

The Montvales, “Carolina”

Artist: The Montvales
Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio
Song: “Carolina”
Album: Path of Totality
Release Date: February 18, 2026 (single); March 20, 2026 (album)
Label: Free Dirt Records

In Their Words: “‘Carolina’ is an old timey song that is firmly situated in late stage capitalism. I called upon the steadfast, rooted sounds of home when I was writing this one. It brings those old sounds forth into this uncertain era and makes a vow: even when there seems to be no path forward, we’ll find a way.” – Sally Buice

Roe Family Singers, “Blacked-Out Ford”

Artist: Roe Family Singers
Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota
Song: “Blacked-Out Ford”
Album: Light & Hope & Roses
Release Date: February 2, 2026 (single)

In Their Words: “We wrote ‘Blacked-Out Ford’ about two weeks after Renee Good was murdered by ICE in our Minneapolis streets. Good’s murder, combined with the discovery that ICE is housed about six blocks from our house and has been seen circling our neighborhood, looking for people to abduct… that’s where this song came from. Our area has a large Muslim population, neighbors primarily from India and Pakistan, also Somalia and Ethiopia, so pretty soon every blacked-out SUV started to look like ICE sharks circling, and every parked truck looked like a prelude to a kidnapping. We debuted the song live at a mutual-aid benefit, and the benefit raised a ton of money; the next morning we woke up feeling proud of ourselves and empowered by the fact that we felt like we were using our art to fight the fascists. Then we got the news that Alex Pretti had just been murdered by ICE in our Minneapolis streets.” – Quillan Roe

Track Credits:
Kim Roe – Washboard, vocals
Quillan Roe – Guitar, vocals

Tony Trischka, “Red River Valley” Featuring Molly Tuttle

Artist: Tony Trischka
Hometown: Fair Lawn, New Jersey
Song: “Red River Valley” featuring Molly Tuttle
Album: Earl Jam 2
Release Date: February 18, 2026 (video); March 13, 2026 (album)
Label: Down The Road Records

In Their Words: “I grew up listening to ‘Red River Valley’ and once I found Earl Scruggs and John Hartford playing it in one of their jams, I knew I had to put it on Earl Jam 2. Who better to sing it than Molly Tuttle? I’ve known Molly since she was a teen (when I thought she was just a solid Scruggs-style banjo player) and it’s been a joy seeing her career take off. She has the perfect voice for this tune and with the estimable talents of Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on fiddle, Sam Bush on mandolin, and Mark Schatz on bass, I knew we had something special. When we’d finished recording and I went back to listen to it the next day, I felt it needed just a little bit more of something. So I got in touch with Bronwyn (talk about careers taking off!) and she added beautiful harmony vocals. The very last vocal chorus melts my heart!” – Tony Trischka

Track Credits:
Tony Trischka – Banjo
Molly Tuttle – Guitar, vocals
Bronwyn Keith-Hynes – Fiddle, harmony vocals
Sam Bush – Mandolin
Mark Schatz – Bass

Photo Credit: Tony Trischka by Ali Hasbach; Maoli by Sean McGee.

Basic Folk: Laurie Lewis

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A foundational participant in the ’70s Bay Area bluegrass scene, Laurie Lewis knows the power of collaboration. She’s been a part of an ensemble in recent years that’s called Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, with Laurie on fiddle, guitar, and vocals, Brandon Godman on fiddle, George Guthrie on banjo, and Hasee Ciaccio on bass. That group plays a huge part in her new album, O California!, a collection of songs that explore our own places in the natural world and in each other’s hearts. It also serves as a love letter to her home state. One standout track, the traditional “Fair and Tender Ladies,” is a duet with Ciaccio, which brings the song’s cautionary tale to life. In our Basic Folk conversation, Laurie talks about what it’s been like to learn traditional songs before actually catching their meaning, long after figuring out the tune.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • AMAZON • MP3

Lewis emphasizes the communal and collaborative nature that defines her musicianship. She recounts her early exposure to music played socially when her father and his friends gathered at their home to play classical music when she was young. She credits that experience with solidifying her decision to learn to play, so she could have as much fun as they did. Laurie also opens up about her path to finding independence from her father’s expectations and her eventual return to music through modern dance and folk tradition. She touches on her passion for nature, recounting transformative hiking experiences, and reveals her thoughts on collaboration and mentorship within the music community.

Additionally, Lewis reflects on the profound impact of losing her voice in 2021 and the emotional journey of rediscovering her musical identity. We wrap up our conversation talking about her friend Alice Gerrard, whom she covers on the new album. After we hung up, Laurie emailed me an addendum about Alice that I wanted to share: “I forgot to say, when you asked me about Alice Gerrard, that I also greatly admire her community involvement in the music she loves, as evidenced by her starting and running the Old Time Herald for so many years. She’s a remarkable person. Plus, she trained her dog to fetch a beer out of the fridge for her and then put the empty can in the recycling!” Incredible.

Want more? Check out our recent Cover Story interview with Laurie Lewis.

Photo Credit: Dawn Kish

ANNOUNCING: Bourbon & Beyond’s 2026 Lineup is Here

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Danny Wimmer Presents has announced the full lineup for the 2026 edition of Bourbon & Beyond, the world’s largest music and bourbon festival. Held September 24-27 at the Kentucky Expo Center in Louisville, Kentucky, the hugely popular event – which attracted more than 200,000 attendees in 2025 and boasted more than $40 million in local economic impact that year alone – will include headline performances by Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Mumford & Sons, Kacey Musgraves, Chris Stapleton, the Red Clay Strays, Dave Matthews Band, and Hootie & the Blowfish. Passes are on sale now; view the full lineup poster below.

For our eighth consecutive year, BGS will return to Bourbon & Beyond to curate and present the Bluegrass Situation Stage inside the mouthwatering Kroger Big Bourbon Bar tent. Over four days, Thursday to Sunday, the BGS Stage will include performances by some of the most exciting and buzzworthy bands in bluegrass, Americana, jamgrass, and folk. Headlining acts on our stage will include mandolinist and GRAMMY nominee Sierra Hull, psychedelic jamgrassers Kitchen Dwellers, our current February Artist of the Month the Infamous Stringdusters, and the expansive sonic universe of Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country. Other performers on the BGS Stage include Wood Box Heroes, Magoo, Shelby Means, Rainbow Girls, Meels, Caleb & Reeb, and many more. See our full BGS Stage lineup below.

Though we tend to stay close to our own stage during Bourbon & Beyond – we’re partial, what can we say! – each year the DWP team does an excellent job of spreading roots music, country, bluegrass, and Americana across the event’s five stages. This year, we’re excited to catch performances by so many of the artists and musicians included on the lineup, from Charley Crockett, the Red Clay Strays, Mumford & Sons, and Kacey Musgraves to Langhorne Slim, Maoli, Paula Cole, Kaitlin Butts, Clover County, S.G. Goodman, the Devil Makes Three, Palmyra, Amos Lee, Max McNown, and many more. Plus, we’ll be sure to catch Kentuckian viral sensations the Creekers while on-site.

Music isn’t the only draw, of course, as bourbon, food, and fellowship are equally tempting alongside the superlative roster of bands and artists. Hundreds of bourbon labels from dozens of distilleries will be on sale or available for tastings as well as impeccable food by local chefs and celebrity culinary personalities. Catch cooking and beverage demonstrations at the Fork & Flask stage curated by Kroger or enjoy bourbon panels and workshops at the Bourbon Experience. Our team, partial to tiki vibes and tiki drinks, will be sure to stop by the Jim Beam Black Tiki Barrel Bar over the course of the weekend, as well.

BGS has been proud to partner with Bourbon & Beyond and Danny Wimmer Presents ever since the festival’s very first iteration more than eight years ago. We are so excited to return to Louisville to celebrate bluegrass, roots music, bourbon – and beyond! – with you all in 2026. Buy your passes now and check out our full BGS Stage lineup below. We’ll see you at the Big Bourbon Bar in September.

The 2026 Bourbon & Beyond Bluegrass Situation Stage Lineup

Thursday, September 24

Wood Box Heroes
Mason Via
Magoo
Sierra Hull

Friday, September 25

Fireside Collective
Rainbow Girls
Shelby Means
Kitchen Dwellers

Saturday, September 26

The Fretliners
Meels
The Infamous Stringdusters

Sunday, September 27

Vickie Vaughn Band
Caleb & Reeb
The Steel Wheels
Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country

All artwork courtesy of Bourbon & Beyond and Danny Wimmer Presents.