Tag: bluegrass

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.

Yamaha’s Atmosfeel Was
Created by Musicians for Musicians

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The great Doyle Dykes once remarked, “The Bible says, ‘Sing unto the Lord a new song and play skillfully with a loud noise.’ Of course, I guess it helps to have a good amp to do that!” The team at Yamaha Guitars has taken that theory a step further to include a good pickup/preamp system. That’s why they designed Atmosfeel.

Atmosfeel is user-friendly, easy to use, and available in the X models of Yamaha’s exquisite FG Red Label acoustic guitars and concert-size FS series. Its 3×3 concept – three elements, three knobs – may appear simple, but in fact it was almost five years in the making.

According to Yamaha Guitars marketing manager Brandon Soriano, development of the Atmosfeel system began in 2014, prior to its original launch, plus an additional three years leading up to the FG/FS9X guitars.

Like all Yamaha products, Atmosfeel was created with the musician in mind, says Soriano. “Yamaha’s consistent process is that we include a lot of feedback from artists, from our internal employees, and from partners we work with. This pickup system was geared toward artists and performers from the very beginning, so their feedback was essential in crafting this system.”

There is no shortage of choices when it comes to acoustic guitar pickups and preamps. What makes Atmosfeel different? Once again, says Soriano, it comes down to R&D by musicians, for musicians. With guitarists often searching and settling for what he calls the “least bad” option, Yamaha was determined to offer “actively good” the first time, every time, with technological advancements that don’t require an engineering degree and 200-page manual to make the magic happen.

“What we noticed is that the pickups on the market tended to not sound like your guitar,” says Soriano. “There was the sound of your guitar in the room, and then this other sound that happens when you plug it in. Our goal was to make a pickup system that sounds natural – a true representation of the guitar you have, of your tone onstage, while keeping it simple enough to use and easy enough to make changes on the fly, and to have the same sound in the room and through the speakers when you plug it in.”

Atmosfeel was developed alongside the FG and FS guitars, which allowed Yamaha to voice the pickup system to specific models within the series, guaranteeing accuracy and precision at every level. “Our process is so in-depth that we leave no stone unturned,” says Soriano. “For example, the 9 grade FG and FS guitars have Adirondack tops, which are a different stiffness than the Sitka tops you’ll find on the 3 and 5 grade guitars. The [more recent] 9 level guitars have a slight taper going on, where the outer edges are about .2 millimeters thinner than the center point.

“We have exact measurements of how each of those tops resonate, how they vibrate, what their headroom looks like. We have all of these [minute] details at our disposal because we made the guitars. We know that the back and sides might have a slightly different thickness between rosewood and mahogany. We know that the stiffness of Sitka and Adirondack is different to this exact measurement.

“When we’re crafting the pickup system, we take all those things into account and modify the voicing accordingly, with the ultimate goal of all these guitars outputting the most accurate sound we could possibly come up with, compared to what the guitar sounds like acoustically in the room. The guarantee is that we spent years developing this system and specifically voicing each model’s pickup system to that guitar.”

The onboard electronics and Atmosfeel system of a Yamaha FG9 MX guitar.

To further dial in accuracy and ensure that Atmosfeel could deliver anywhere, at any time, the system was thoroughly artist-tested prior to its debut.

“We come up with a voicing we’re really confident in and then we’ll bring in artists to do evaluations,” says Soriano. “In real time, we have the guitar hooked up to a computer, and a person is behind the keys adjusting the voicing based on the feedback the artist is giving us. We do this with a number of artists until we arrive at something that works for them and is the most versatile for all their different styles.”

How does Atmosfeel work, why does it work, and how does something so advanced remain simple and easy to use? This brings us back to the 3×3 concept, which was not a coincidence, says Soriano, but instead a carefully thought-out design balance between “How much is too much?” and “How little is too little?” One knob means few, if any, options, while an assortment of knobs becomes cumbersome and tricky, especially for guitarists who need quick-touch adjustments.

Atmosfeel is comprised of three elements: an under-saddle piezo pickup for low end, miniature condenser mic for mids, and proprietary, whisper-thin but deceptively strong, transducer contact sensor for overtones and clarity.

“Our approach was, first of all, to find out what are the strengths and weaknesses of all three elements,” says Soriano. “The under-saddle piezo pickups do a great job of capturing a bold and consistent low end. The weakness is that the high end has a tendency to sound unnatural to guitar players. That’s where you start to get a different sound than what your guitar is like in the room.

“The contact sheet, which is under the top wood of the guitar, is the inverse of that. It’s a paper-thin sheet that has a positive and a negative, and it captures the vibrations of the top. It’s really good at capturing air, high-end presence, and sparkle, and the low end is not as resonant.

“We’re taking the low end of the under-saddle and the high end of the contact sheet and creating what we consider to be the ideal blend between those two. That was the first step. Of course, neither of those technologies independently are completely new. Under-saddle pickups have been around for a long time. But the combination of the two, and the detail of how we blend them together, is what’s new in this system. That has created a new approach.

“The microphone, aimed at the side wood at the upper bout of the guitar on the low E string side, covers the mid-range character of the guitar, whether you choose mahogany or rosewood. Essentially, the system lets you have an ideal low end, an ideal high end, and you can blend the microphone in so that you get a mid-range to taste. We figured out how to take existing technologies to the next level and optimize them.”

All of this is controlled by three small knobs. “You get a Microphone Blend, which is really effective for shaping your midrange and overall character,” says Soriano. “You get a Master Volume, which is essential, and then the Bass EQ is really interesting.

“When you’re playing live, a lot of feedback can happen in the bass frequencies. The Bass EQ is a cut or boost knob, which can help with controlling feedback or warming up your signal. If you’re playing solo and need to take up more room in the mix, you can crank that Bass EQ knob. Vice versa is true as well. If you’re playing with a band and there’s a bass player, you don’t want to step on their toes, so you’re probably going to want to roll off some of that bass.

“The Microphone Blend can be used to pop in and out of featured parts or solos. If you need a smaller, more compressed sound just to be in the background, you might use less of the Mic Blend. When it’s time for you to step out and take your chorus, you can crank that microphone up, stick out in the mix momentarily, and turn it back down when the time is right.”

Atmosfeel was designed for player flexibility – style, genre, attack, in the studio, onstage, on your own, with a band. Wherever you go, whatever and however you play, the system’s versatility works with you and for you.

“If you’re an arena- or stadium-level act, chances are you have a pretty silent stage,” says Soriano. “Those acts today are using a lot of in-ear monitoring. You can get away with a lot of Microphone Blend in that setting, because you don’t have sound coming back at you with an onstage wedge, and the risk of feedback is probably lower. Also, in a larger space, the sound has more room to dissipate.

“If you’re in a coffee shop, you have a floor wedge aimed at you, and the room is small, your risk for feedback might be pretty high. In that instance, you want to reduce the Microphone Blend and maybe the Bass EQ to accommodate for those things.

“And, of course, everything in-between exists as well – clubs, mid-sized venues, things like that. The system lets you tailor your settings to each of those without being too complicated. It’s just three knobs. If you know how to use them, you can optimize your sound for whatever setting you’re in.”

Yamaha designed Atmosfeel with musicians’ peace of mind foremost, meaning durability on the road and reliability onstage and in the studio. Choose your settings and rest assured they will remain in place, even if you don’t. “The Bass EQ knob has a notch at 50 percent,” says Soriano. “When you get to that spot, it locks you into place. Of course, it’s not too hard to move out of that space, but it certainly will not move on its own.”

Best of all, the 3×3 setup means easy to use, easy to remember. “Even the highest level of professional musicians are human,” says Soriano. “When you’re onstage, you have adrenaline going, and you have to make quick decisions, you don’t want to pause and remember which one of your seven knobs does what. You want to reach down and do what you need to do quickly so you can get on with the performance. The three-knob system is extremely user-friendly for that. You don’t have to spend time thinking about it before making an adjustment.”

Atmosfeel is perfect for recording in a pro studio, home studio, or on the road. “The vast majority of the time, if you’re recording an acoustic guitar, you’re putting a microphone on the guitar,” says Soriano. “Nowadays, especially with the rise in home recording, a lot of people might have trouble getting a clean signal with a microphone in front of their instrument, especially if your room has a lot of reflections in it.”

What does this mean for bluegrass players?

“A lot of artists we work with are primarily bluegrass players,” says Soriano, “so bluegrass was absolutely a primary focus in the development of the FG9X guitars. Bluegrass players most commonly use dreadnought-style guitars, so when we were voicing the pickup system in the FG9’s, we knew they had to be able to use this and be happy with it. That was a big part of our testing.

“Bluegrass tends to be quite guitar-forward, especially if there’s a solo section, for example. Bluegrass players are discerning when choosing their instrument. A lot of players have a strong preference. They want rosewood or mahogany, and there’s a reason behind that. If you’re going to make that decision, and it’s going to show your artistry and your taste, you should be able to have that come through when you’re performing live, even with a pickup system.

In a world of bells and whistles, where everything has to be shiny with lots of buttons and gizmos, Atmosfeel is deliberately stripped-down – no flash, no glitter, just durability and refreshing beauty in its simplicity.

“When you have a minimal setup that’s well dialed in, well executed, and well developed, when you put that work in on the front end, you earn the ability to have a simpler user interface,” says Soriano. “Because we are so confident in the voicing of this system, and in the fidelity and quality of the components, we didn’t have to put a million knobs on the guitar. We could afford to keep it simple and be confident that it’s going to sound great.”

This content is brought to you in partnership with Yamaha Guitars. All images courtesy of Yamaha Guitars.

Somethin’ About Train Songz

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

What first began as a locomotive and string music meme page has transformed into one of the most quirky and beloved sources of independent journalism in roots music, one zine at a time.

Founded by Anthony “The Conductor” Perasso and James “Promontory Paul” Lucey in July 2023, Train Songz has since grown its community to over 28,000 Instagram followers and more than 1,200 paid subscribers. Readers collectively contribute anywhere from $33-$99 per year (or $11 per copy), with three to four issues published per year. The latest, eighth edition features a 44-page interview with Billy Strings’ bassist Royal Masat.

The interview for Masat is a full circle moment for Train Songz, which began with a Billy-centric focus before expanding to feature other bluegrass acts like Mountain Grass Unit, East Nash Grass, and Valley Flower. In fact, it was a Billy Strings show in Bridgeport, Connecticut, attended by Train Songz co-founders (that they rode the train to themselves, no less) where the concept for the then-meme page first came together.

“At the show Billy was wearing a hickory-striped railroad hat that someone (who we’ve since connected with on Instagram) threw up on stage a few shows prior, as trains were passing by the stage,” recalls Perasso.

“I tweeted from my personal account a photo of Billy with the hat on and the caption ‘Train Songz,’ which was a Trey Songz pun – like if Trey Songz is Trey Songz, then Billy Strings is Train Songz,” Perasso laughs. “Four days later, I locked down the @train_songz username and posted our first meme.”

After publishing some popular Billy and Grateful Dead inspired memes, Train Songz began transitioning to a zine in December 2023, while Perasso was home for the holidays and more sedentary than usual after recovering from multiple surgeries. No stranger to producing print media, having previously worked on a satirical newspaper while in college, he says the zine quickly filled a void left empty since graduating in 2017. Now two years in with eight installments of the printed zine, Train Songz has grown into a thriving community bigger and wilder than Perasso, Lucey, and the rest of the core team – including Liza Chaplin (art/design) and Mitchell “Brakeman” Harbin (writer/editor) – could have ever imagined.

Original artwork by Morganne Allen from ‘Train Songz’ Vol. 7, Summer 2025.

“Beyond my personal penchant for print, Train Songz was gathering a community of wooden-instrument-music enjoyers, so print felt like a natural extension of that vibration,” Perasso continues. “And from a more boring media strategy point of view, print (and email!) offers you a direct relationship with your audience that algorithms can’t get in the way of and platforms can’t take away. So for both those reasons, a Train Songz zine felt like a perfect move.”

After wrapping up production on the eighth installment of the zine, the Train Songz crew spoke with BGS via Zoom about the zine’s origins, how they first discovered Billy Strings, the publication’s next steps for growth, and more.

Y’all use pen names in the zine (except for Liza). How did each of you come up with your alter egos?

James Lucey: Before I get to that, I’ll just add that leading up to this interview we all debated if we should do this as ourselves or go by our pen names. It’s been an interesting dynamic, [navigating] who are we in relationship to the zine [and] what the zine is in relationship to us and our audience. We made the zine to try and participate in some way in the broader conversation about modern-day bluegrass music; we’re not the face of the zine, we’re just the people that are powering it.

But regarding my pen name, “Promontory Paul,” he’s the voice of the Old Tune Review, which is one of the core pieces of the zine. In it we pick a handful of old songs [and] dive deep into [their] history through independent research. It’s born out of the idea that these old songs are still being played today and still resonate in some way. In some ways it’s like a time machine, because you’re feeling the same emotions that someone felt hundreds of years ago when they wrote these things. So it’s cool to dive in and see what the actual genesis of those songs are.

[Paul’s] the guy who runs that, but we also feature him in a little recurring cartoon series that sees him playing banjo and getting into all kinds of crazy adventures. “Promontory” is a reference to the Promontory Summit, which was the final completion [point] of the first transcontinental railroad in Utah, when the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroads (which had been building from Nebraska and Sacramento, respectively) finally met.

This effectively connected the old world with the new one, sort of like what we do with the zine.

Mitchell Harbin: My name actually came out of the fact that a brakeman is a role on an actual train – he’s the guy that pulls the brakes. It was actually during the production of the zine’s third issue that I had come aboard to help with proofreading and copy editing. There were a couple of times in that process where James and Anthony were like, “Alright, we’re good to go, ready to launch” and I would pump the brakes and say, “Whoa, hold up.” Which is what eventually spawned the name idea.

Liza Chaplin: I’m still working on mine. [Laughs] It’s an ongoing thing that I’ve been thinking about, but so far I haven’t gotten anywhere with it. At first I decided to put my own name on it to use as a portfolio-building mechanism, but now with how the zine has grown it feels very silly to still have my actual name on it.

Anthony Perasso: “The Conductor” came to be when James and I were talking about taking the meme page offline [and moving] into print form with our first issue. We made a decision that Train Songz was the name of the publication and brand and community – or whatever vibration of people who value the same kind of music as we do, cultivating this eponymous meme page.

As the person who had started the meme page, I didn’t want Train Songz to be seen as an individual, as in, “That’s Anthony, he’s Train Songz.” Our desired outcome would be: “That’s Anthony, he’s The Conductor for Train Songz.” That allowed Train Songz [to be] less a single being and more of a vehicle for those involved. Pun intended. (A mentor even recommended to me that the title of The Conductor be something that can be passed on from individual to individual, like the Pope or the President. Time will tell if we get to that point!)

A Billy Strings train songs data visualization from ‘Train Songz’ Vol. 5, fall 2024.

What was Promontory Paul’s role in this latest issue of Train Songz given its focus on the Royal interview?

AP: Paul’s column still exists in the newest zine, but he went about it in a really cool way. The idea began with our third edition, when we gave Promontory Paul an entire section to write about old bluegrass songs regularly covered by the likes of Billy, the Sam Grisman Project, and whatever other bands we listened to or saw live that quarter. So we’d cite where we heard it played before diving into a history lesson and where it came from.

Then, for this issue with Royal, we took that Old Tune Review and instead of songs we heard out in the wild made it all about songs that he mentioned during the interview. Throughout the interview there are little interjections from Promontory Paul – almost like Clippy, the office assistant on Microsoft Word. It’s been fun to take these gimmicks that worked for us a year ago and apply them to the restrictions presented by this long-form interview. Royal gave us so much that we wanted to give him the entire issue, but we’re still going to sprinkle in the ethos of what our readers are familiar with and what we like to do, which is to connect something that’s happening in the present day – like the recent Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton tour with Royal – to the past. It’s been really fun connecting with folks like that through the zine. It’s almost like Paul’s on a time-traveling train or something. [Laughs]

We send surveys out to our subscribers after publishing each issue and Promontory Paul’s history lessons are always towards the top when it comes to [readers’] favorite parts of the zine. It’s also been a cool way to make note of the fact that it’s not just us behind the scenes who are enjoying this. It really speaks to how much we respect the audience that we have and how that drives us to create the best issue possible every quarter.

 

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I saw recently that Royal left a copy of Train Songz #7 at the NPR Tiny Desk following the session he recorded there with Billy. What did seeing that mean to y’all?

AP: He’s been a follower of ours for a long time and brought that copy of the zine to NPR on his own after reaching out to us to subscribe about a year ago. We knew he’d been reading along for a while, so once this tour came up with him, Bryan, and Billy, it just seemed like the perfect thing for the zine to cover. It was important for us to capture the combination of old and new in those shows dedicated to Doc and Merle Watson and T. Michael Coleman and featured the King of arena-grass playing these smaller rooms of 400 to [2,200] people with one of the most preeminent guitarists alive in Bryan Sutton.

It took us a second to come around to the idea, because we’ve been very cautious about not becoming a Billy Strings-exclusive fan zine. We want to serve the broader ecosystem, but that tour was something we couldn’t pass up, especially with Royal being a reader. Once we did reach out, he blew us out of the water with the time he put into it. His interview with Mitchell ended up being over 4,000 words that he sent us by email after wrapping up a tour in Europe. Once that wrapped I remember him sending us a literal tome – he took it very seriously and his responses were so thoughtful.

The final result almost looks like a children’s book with the way Liza designed it. None of that would be possible without our paying supporters, who make it possible for us to work with the 17 artists we partnered with on this issue to bring it even more to life with quirky illustrations that tie back to things Royal said, like throwing in an illustration of a medieval horse with a knight in shining armor where Royal refers to his bass as his trusty steed. I like to refer to what she does as “Andy Warhol-ing.” [Laughs]

Inset artwork by Sara Dennis from the 8th and most recent edition of ‘Train Songz.’

I know you just mentioned not wanting to become exclusively a Billy Strings fan zine. However, I’m curious to hear when and how y’all first encountered his music?

LC: The first time I saw Billy was at RiverRock, a free festival on Brown’s Island in Richmond in 2019 before he blew up. I had heard of him prior to that, but after seeing him live I became absolutely mesmerized. I didn’t like bluegrass for the longest time, but something clicked with me when I saw Billy and was like, “Oh, this is what I want to keep following and chasing.”

MH: In college, I was a huge Deadhead and Phish fan and was consumed by the jam world. Then I heard about Billy on some Facebook groups and message boards, talking about how he covers The Dead really well.

I moved to Boston shortly thereafter and the first month I was living there Billy played at the Wang Theater. I wound up buying a ticket and went without having listened to his music at all beforehand and was absolutely blown away. To me, it was like a psychedelic Dead or Phish show combined with bluegrass, which in hindsight probably hit on the homesickness I was feeling at the time, because I had been around bluegrass before, but wasn’t really interested in it when I was living in the South. From there, I jumped down the rabbit hole into more old-time bluegrass, which is when I started playing the music myself. So I attribute my musical pursuits now to that moment and think that is probably true of other people, too.

JL: I remember [going down] a YouTube [rabbit] hole in 2020 and coming across a set of Billy playing Doc Watson tunes. It may have been Royal’s first gig with him. I just so happened to be in a bit of a bluegrass moment at the time I found that video of Billy and was instantly hooked, resulting in me digging even deeper. I was already a Deadhead as well, so I loved his covers of those songs too. Then I worked my way to his original stuff – which is also sick – and I have YouTube to thank for it!

AP: I remember James, “Promontory Paul,” showing me Billy for the first time. Like most of the bands I like, I channel my music taste through him. When we first got into him there was still a lot of remote work going on, so we’d listen to Billy while doing that or even while we were playing games like Fortnite. I started listening to a lot of The Dead in order to try to get to the point where I could listen and name the year the show came from. But over time Billy started taking more and more of the market share of my listening time away from the “What year is this Grateful Dead show from?” project.

What are your next steps for continuing to grow Train Songz?

AP: We occasionally host concerts (the next one is February 12, 2026 with The Asheville Mountain Boys), and have captured audio recordings – which we call Tiny Train Sessions – in the past, but we look at them more as a marketing tactic than a growth mechanism.

My day job is a social media manager and doing that I’ve noticed that the best way to get a lot of views on Instagram is to post reels, because they [are served] to non-followers and new followers first. We could post a bunch of concert clips and other things to build our audience, but we intentionally opted to not do that because we’re firm believers that things that grow slow last a long time. We don’t want to gatekeep or make it hard to find us, but rather [hope folks will] find us organically through a friend sharing one of our memes or sending you a copy of the zine itself. I want the first point of contact to be someone who’s already within our ecosystem that really digs it and turns you onto it, one person at a time.

All visuals, artwork, and zine scans courtesy of Train Songz. Learn more about artists Morganne Allen and Sara Dennis.

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Thomm Jutz, Frank Evans, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Get ready to enjoy some excellent new roots music – bluegrass, country, blues, and more.

To start us off and get us in a romantic holiday mood, the Bibelhauser Brothers from Kentucky offer their bluegrass rendition of John Prine’s “Glory of True Love.” Releasing, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day, the song reinforces just how well suited Prine originals are to the bluegrass treatment – it doesn’t have to just be “Paradise”! Following up with his own cover of a country classicist, banjo picker Frank Evans pulls together an all-star cast for a live video performance of Roger Miller’s “TJ’s Last Ride.” Evans released the single studio version last week, following it up with Shad Cobb, Thomas Cassell, Mike Bub, and Jimmy Stewart joining him for the excellent live video of the track.

For a bit of gospel, Eighteen Mile releases a new single today, “Living Waters,” showing yet again the deep connections between bluegrass and sacred music. It’s a thoughtful, contemplative, and inspiring breath of fresh air – or, perhaps, a refreshing sip of cool, living waters. Plus, singer-songwriter Thomm Jutz brings us a live performance video of a new bluesy, original track, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues,” just voice and tender fingerpicked, acoustic blues in duet. Jutz reflects on the undying temptation of such vices and how the low points they often bring can be a vehicle to better things. “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues” heralds Jutz’s upcoming solo album, Ring-A-Bellin’, arriving in April.

To close us out, Nashville honky-tonkin’ staples – and life partners – Hannah Juanita & Mose Wilson have a brand new EP and with it, a video for the title track, “If I Ever Lost You.” Gauzy and retro, Juanita and Wilson put on throwback styles and sounds without it feeling contrived or gratuitous – while all decked out in countrified wedding garb. It makes perfect sense, as they explain, “As we prepare to wed this year, the lyrics hit especially close to home. We drew inspiration from the greats who paved the road: George & Tammy, Loretta & Ernest, Red & Kitty, keeping their timeless storytelling at the core.”

There’s plenty to boot-scoot to below, so get scrolling! You Gotta Hear This…

Bibelhauser Brothers, “Glory Of True Love”

Artist: Bibelhauser Brothers
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Song: “Glory of True Love”
Release Date: February 14, 2026
Label: Common Loon Records

In Their Words: “‘Glory Of True Love’ has been a part of our repertoire during live shows for many years with the Bibelhauser Brothers. It’s a beautiful feeling to ‘grass up’ such a timeless tale of love, written by one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation, John Prine. Recording this single has been a really special way to follow up since dropping our full-length record, Down the Road, including mostly original songs just four months prior, as our band and our signature sound has evolved. This is our first recording featuring Boston, Kentucky, native Turner Hutchens on mandolin, with Jeff Guernsey tracking twin fiddles, Steve Cooley on banjo, Adam on bass, and Aaron singing and playing guitar. We hope you enjoy our own Bibelhauser Brothers spin on this John Prine classic, with more music to come soon!” – Bibelhauser Brothers, Aaron and Adam

Track Credits:
Aaron Bibelhauser – Vocal, guitar
Adam Bibelhauser – Bass
Steve Cooley – Banjo
Turner Hutchens – Mandolin
Jeff Guernsey – Fiddles

Eighteen Mile, “Living Waters”

Artist: Eighteen Mile
Hometown: Upstate South Carolina
Song: “Living Waters”
Release Date: February 13, 2026

In Their Words: “In the Bible, there is a story commonly called the story of the ‘woman at the well.’ In that story, Jesus is talking to a lady who was married five times, likely abused and abandoned in those relationships before eventually becoming an outcast in her society. Jesus, using an analogy, called himself the ‘living water’ and said that she could believe in him and be completely, eternally fulfilled. C.S. Lewis famously said, ‘If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.’ This song captures the heart behind everything Eighteen Mile does. We want people to experience and find complete fulfillment in Jesus, the ‘Living Waters.'” – Carson Aaron

Track Credits:
Hallie Ritter – Upright bass, harmony vocal
Carson Aaron – Acoustic guitar, harmony vocal
Emily Guy – Lead vocal
Jack Ritter – Acoustic guitar
Savannah Aaron – Fiddle
Andy Leftwich – Mandola
Steve Pettit – Mandolin
Rob Ickes – Resonator guitar

Frank Evans, “TJ’s Last Ride”

Artist: Frank Evans
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Song: “TJ’s Last Ride”
Release Date: February 6, 2026
Label: Englehardt Music Group

In Their Words: “I’ve loved Roger Miller’s music since childhood, from the Robin Hood soundtrack to constant car rides with his greatest hits, which made choosing one of his songs feel natural. ‘TJ’s Last Ride’ stood out for its Hartford-like imagery and the mournful warmth of a Stanley Brothers ballad. In the session, we agreed to keep it simple – the take you hear is almost entirely the third run-through. I was honored to record it with Casey Campbell, Mike Bub, Justin Moses, Shad Cobb, and Jake Stargel.” – Frank Evans

Video Performance Credits:
Frank Evans – Banjo, vocals
Jimmy Stewart – Dobro, vocals
Mike Bub – Bass
Thomas Cassell – Mandolin
Shadd Cobb – Fiddle
Jake Stargel – Guitar

Video Credits:
Videographer – Kyle Horan
Video Editor – Frank Evans

Thomm Jutz, “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues”

Artist: Thomm Jutz
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Blues”
Album: Ring-A-Bellin’
Release Date: February 13, 2026 (single); April 3, 2026 (album)

In Their Words: “Going on the road at 19 was the perfect way to live at the time. No responsibilities but to make it to the next gig. Do what you know how to do and move on. That way of living follows its own archetypal patterns, that’s why it doesn’t matter where you are, you could be going up and down the Mississippi River in 1898 or the damn Autobahn in Germany in 1998.

“There’s always somebody waiting to play another game, frequently with a bottle of booze. For some people, that charm never wears off. It did for me. I got sick of the people I was with, sick of myself for sitting down at the table to play their game.

“As it turned out, that part wasn’t over when I moved to Nashville – as it turned out, it was necessary, so better things could come.” – Thomm Jutz

Hannah Juanita & Mose Wilson, “If I Ever Lost You”

Artist: Hannah Juanita & Mose Wilson
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “If I Ever Lost You”
Album: If I Ever Lost You (EP)
Release Date: February 13, 2026

In Their Words: “‘If I Ever Lost You’ is a love letter to the golden era of country delivered in a classic, heartfelt shuffle. It’s our first co-release and our first duet, built from years of collaboration and crafted as a performance we both get to share on stage. The song speaks from the heart; love is everything when it’s here, and its absence is everything we fear. As we prepare to wed this year, the lyrics hit especially close to home. We drew inspiration from the greats who paved the road: George & Tammy, Loretta & Ernest, Red & Kitty, keeping their timeless storytelling at the core.” – Hannah Juanita & Mose Wilson

Track Credits:
Hannah Juanita – Vocals
Mose Wilson – Guitar, vocals
Jeff Taylor – Piano
Norbert McGettigan III – Bass
Matty Meyer – Drums
Ryan Stigmon – Pedal steel

Photo Credit: Thomm Jutz by Don VanCleave; Frank Evans by Scott Simontacchi.

Two Decades of ‘Dusters Discography

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

With over a dozen studio credits and even more EPs and live albums to their name, the Infamous Stringdusters have been one of the most persistent forces in bluegrass and roots music ever since staking their claim with 2007’s Fork In The Road.

Even as members changed in those early years, the band quickly found its core – Andy Hall (Dobro), Andy Falco (guitar), Jeremy Garrett (fiddle), Chris Pandolfi (banjo) and Travis Book (bass) – and rapidly began homing in on a sound that’s equal parts traditional and progressive bluegrass with a touch of country, jam, and other influences along the way. That variance has led to each of the band’s recordings having a distinctly different flavor than its predecessors, from the harmonious bluegrass symphony of Silver Sky to the feature-rich Ladies & Gentlemen, hope-fueled Laws of Gravity and Rise Sun to the somber Toward the Fray.

“Making a record that sounds like the Stringdusters isn’t the challenge,” Book told me in 2022 for No Depression. “The challenge is seeing just how deep we can get on each song in order to make it the best, most authentic version of itself it can be. This requires us all setting aside our egos, being open to suggestions, and trusting one another to create the best music as possible.”

In celebration of our Artist of the Month, we take a look back on the Stringdusters’ sonic evolution and essential tracks from their two decades in service of bluegrass and the song.

“Fork In The Road” – Fork In The Road (2007)

On their emphatic 2007 debut, Fork In The Road, the band – then comprised of eventual Punch Brother Chris Eldridge (guitar) and Jesse Cobb (mandolin) alongside Book, Garrett, Hall, and Pandolfi – quickly struck a chord with bluegrass aficionados on songs like “No More to Leave You Behind” and the album’s title track. The latter of which positions the band’s fiddle maestro front and center as his high-pitch croon carries the weight of being at a crossroads. Whether it’s a hypothetical take or one rooted in the group’s own musical experiences, it’s safe to say the path the ‘Dusters have taken since has more than paid off with a legacy 20 years strong and counting.

“Magic #9” – Things That Fly (2010)

The band show off their picking prowess on the whimsical “Magic #9,” a track that resulted in their first-ever GRAMMY nomination at the 53rd annual awards in 2011. While the ‘Dusters can thrash and sing bluegrass harmonies with the best of them, songs like this also showcase the group’s knack for crafting their own instrumental compositions. Their tunes pack just as much story and emotion – if not more – into a three-and-a-half minute burst than most of their counterparts with vocalized accompaniment. Coincidentally, the GRAMMY the song was up for was not in a bluegrass category, but rather for Best Country Instrumental Performance. Given the band’s penchant for string music, unreal levels of improvisation, and the consistently inconsistent award nominations process, it’s the least bit surprising, if not even a bit fitting.

“Rockets” – Silver Sky (2012)

The song that first unlocked my captivation for the Infamous Stringdusters (and still my favorite to this day) is “Rockets.” It was around the time the album it’s included on, Silver Sky, dropped that I began seeing the band in concert for the first time and this song was always a staple. The uplifting temperament and optimistic nature of Book’s vocals combined with the meticulous instrumental timing – from Garrett’s fiddle interjections to Pandolfi’s hard-driving banjo backbeat and Hall’s slick Dobro tones – culminate in a joyous, borderline spiritual experience every time I hear it.

Because of this and other tracks on Silver Sky like “Fire,” “Night On The River” and “Walking On The Moon” I consider the record without a doubt their most essential project to date. Although, as you’ll see, the great tunes haven’t slowed down in the years since.

“Still the One” (featuring Nicki Bluhm) – Ladies & Gentlemen (2016)

The ‘Dusters’ 2016 effort Ladies & Gentlemen stood out for many reasons – most notably its more folk-leaning bluegrass numbers and star-studded list of collaborators ranging from Mary Chapin Carpenter and Lee Ann Womack to Sara Watkins and Jennifer Hartswick (Trey Anastasio Band). However, the most frequent collaborator from the record was Nicki Bluhm. Her contribution on “Still The One” blossomed into frequent support songs on the road performing not only that track, but several other cuts from the breakthrough album. It wound up taking the band’s already spectacular knack for partnering with others to another level. As for the song itself, “Still the One” is a powerful rallying cry about a love that persists even when heavy rain, or life’s difficult moments, try to get in between and tear you apart.

“Gravity” – Laws Of Gravity (2017)

After a decade of slinging bluegrass, country, and roots-adjacent bangers, the ‘Dusters finally reached the musical mountaintop with their 2017 album, Laws of Gravity, which earned them their second GRAMMY nomination and first-ever win for Best Bluegrass Album. Central to that accomplishment was the album’s de facto title track “Gravity,” an anthemic adventure.

Similar to the aforementioned “Still the One,” the song focuses on the story of two inseparable lovebirds charting out a future life of memories together, even if they don’t know exactly when, how or why it will all happen. Most important to them though is the memories being made in the current moment, whether that be together, at a Stringdusters show, or something entirely different.

“Rise Sun” – Rise Sun (2019)

With the lead and title track to their 2019 album Rise Sun, the Infamous Stringdusters make a late entry to folk music’s stomp-clap party, combining the early 2010s trend with heated string music like few 2010s contemporaries could muster. The track also features a noticeably hopeful hue set in motion by the metaphor of a rising sun not only spawning a new day, but bringing change and the opportunity for a fresh start, as well. In that sense, the band had no idea how much hope people would need the following year, when COVID shut down the world. The result of which inspired the band’s next original entry to this list. But first, the ‘Dusters pay homage to the father of bluegrass…

“My Sweet Blue Eyed Darling” – A Tribute to Bill Monroe (2021)

The bluegrass ballad in pole position on Bill Monroe’s 1977 album Sings Bluegrass, Body And Soul, was “My Sweet Blue Eyed Darling,” a track that holds the same spot on the Stringdusters’ 2021 recording, A Tribute to Bill Monroe. On it, Pandolfi leads the way with his steady, blistering banjo while Garrett and the others hit home on the signature high and lonesome harmonies that Monroe is legendary for.

Fittingly, this collective album honoring the bluegrass legend wound up earning the ‘Dusters their third GRAMMY nomination in 2022, though they came up short to Béla Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart. Their foray into recording covers isn’t anything new for the band, who later went on to record a Flatt & Scruggs tribute along with a series of Undercover EPs (more on that later) in addition to weaving other folks’ material into their live sets on a nightly basis.

“Pearl Of Carolina” – Toward the Fray (2022)

While the Stringdusters’ members call many places home, there may not be a more appropriate individual place with which to associate the band than Western North Carolina. Touching on that connection to the Old North State, Book sings about love and longing to return home on “Pearl of Carolina.” The song’s title stems from an intro script he was crafting for his musical talk show podcast, The Travis Book Happy Hour, as a way to describe the region.

In addition to being grounded in a person or place, similar to “Gravity” or “Still the One,” “Pearl of Carolina” is also a reminder to search for the places and small things in life that bring you joy. While much of Toward the Fray takes on a darker tone, “Pearl” stands out as a burst of much-needed normalcy on a project otherwise finding inspiration in a world of disarray.

“Touch Of Grey” – Undercover, Vol. 3 EP (2024)

The band has covered a bevy of artists on their Undercover series of EPs, from Tom Petty to The Highwaymen, The Cure, and ZZ Top, but none fit the band’s style and sound (with the exception of the Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs stuff, perhaps) than their rendition of The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey” on Undercover, Vol. 3. Released in 2024, the ‘Dusters’ take on the Dead’s most commercially successful hit combines the best of both groups, further adding to the song’s timeless nature – a message that, 40 years after its original release, feels just as relatable and relevant as ever.

“Working Man Blues” – 20/20 (2026)

Much of the Infamous Stringdusters’ journey over the past two decades has been inhabiting the role of blue-collar road warriors playing anywhere for anyone who would have them. With that in mind, there’s no more fitting song to kick off their next album, 20/20, than “Working Man Blues.” The band sings about a man clocking in before sunrise and doing hard labor all day before clocking out and heading to the bar in search of fun. It’s a combination of rugged, resistant, and rowdy that embodies the Stringdusters’ entire sound and ethos for 20 years now – and, if we’re lucky, will continue for another 20 more (and then some).

Continue exploring our Artist of the Month coverage of the Infamous Stringdusters here.

Photo Credit: Daniel Milchev