10 Bluegrass Songs Ready for Retirement

Let’s blow up some balloons, get everyone’s signatures on the card, buy a Costco sheet cake, and send each of these bluegrass songs into their golden years with a loving swat on the rear. Buy that motorhome! See the country! Spend more time with your family!

10. “Man of Constant Sorrow”

Why is this bluegrass staple ready to be put out to pasture? Because, right now, you’re imagining George Clooney with Dan Tyminski’s voice.

9. “Ashokan Farewell”

Fiddle contests, weddings, funerals, jams destined to be busted … this interminable waltz has been everywhere! Except retired. It’s often touted as an old Civil War tune, but the truth is, it was made popular by a 1990s PBS miniseries, then promptly played into oblivion.

8. “Big Spike Hammer”

If you know what “mash” is, you know why this one made the list. Also, it doesn’t really mean what it once did now that Della Mae has appropriated the lyric. RETIRE IT.

7. “Raining in L.A.”

This one will live on forever, reverberating off the walls of IBMA and SPBGMA’s host hotels. It no longer needs us to sustain it. “Raining in L.A.” doesn’t make me wanna stay, I’ll tell you what.

6. “Blue Moon of Kentucky”

For all of the thousands of times it’s been performed and the hundreds of times it’s been covered, somehow collectively we still can’t remember when it goes into 4/4 time and how the split breaks are divvied up. And if there’s a single Kentuckian in the audience, they’re going to request it. Let’s cut our losses on this one.

5. “Rawhide”

We already have “Back Up and Push.” Bluegrass only needs one tune in C without a distinguishable melody, right?

4. “Little Maggie”

There comes a point in the lifespan of a popular song where it’s more often butchered than homaged. Therefore, “Little Maggie” privileges have been unilaterally revoked. Listen to this recording and think about what you’ve done.

3. “Dueling Banjos”

“Where two or three are gathered …” with banjos out of the cases, there some dumbass requesting “Dueling Banjos” will also be. Can we retire the “Paddle faster, I hear banjo music!” t-shirts with this one, too?

2. “Wagon Wheel”

If your knee-jerk reaction to this song appearing on this list is “That ain’t bluegrass!” let’s quibble over that detail after we’ve relegated this torturous, Frankenstein-esque, pseudo-grass, I-just-bought-a-banjo-at-a-flea-market earworm to that pearly Johnson City, Tennessee, in the sky.

1. “Rocky Top”

On the 50-year anniversary of the Osborne Brothers’ release of “Rocky Top,” it seems fitting that we should take this stalwart of a song out of the greater bluegrass repertoire and put it in a safe place, where it can no longer be abused, taken for granted, or interrupted with loud shouts of “WOOOO!” If you anticipate going into “Rocky Top” withdrawals, just head down to the Grand Ole Opry. You can still hear Bobby Osborne & the Rocky Top X-press perform it — and they are the only ones today really doing the song justice. And at tempos not every 85-year-old could sustain.

The 2017 IBMA Award Winners

The winners of the 2017 International Bluegrass Music Awards were announced last night with Molly Tuttle becoming the first woman ever to be nominated for — and WIN — an IBMA Guitar Player of the Year Award. 

The IBMA also inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame a number of legendary artists, including Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, Bobby Hicks, and Roland White. Congratulations to all!

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
The Earls of Leicester
Flatt Lonesome
The Gibson Brothers

VOCAL GROUP OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
Blue Highway
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Flatt Lonesome
The Gibson Brothers

INSTRUMENTAL GROUP OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
The Earls of Leicester
Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen
Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper
Punch Brothers

SONG OF THE YEAR
“Blue Collar Dreams” — Balsam Range (artist), Aaron Bibelhauser (writer)
“Going Back to Bristol” — Shawn Camp (artist), Mac Wiseman/Thomm Jutz/Peter Cooper (writers)
“I Am a Drifter” — Volume Five (artist), Donna Ulisse/Marc Rossi (writers)
“Someday Soon” — Darin & Brooke Aldridge (artist), Ian Tyson (writer)
“The Train That Carried My Girl from Town” — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Frank Hutchison (writer)

ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Fiddler’s Dream — Michael Cleveland (artist), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
In the Ground — The Gibson Brothers (artist), Eric Gibson, Leigh Gibson, and Mike Barber (producers), Rounder Records (label)
Mountain Voodoo — Balsam Range (artist), Balsam Range (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
Original — Bobby Osborne (artist), Alison Brown (producer), Compass Records (label)
Rattle & Roar — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Jerry Douglas (producer), Rounder Records (label)

GOSPEL RECORDED PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
“Give Me Jesus” — Larry Cordle (artist), Traditional/Larry Cordle (writer), Give Me Jesus (album), Larry Cordle (producer), Mighty Cord Records (label)
“Hallelujah” — Blue Highway (artist), Public Domain arranged by Blue Highway (writer),Original Traditional (album), Blue Highway (producer), Rounder Records (label)
“I Found a Church Today” — The Gibson Brothers (artist), Eric Gibson/Leigh Gibson (writers), In the Ground (album), Eric Gibson, Leigh Gibson, and Mike Barber (producers), Rounder Records (label)
“Sacred Memories” — Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers with Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White Skaggs (artist), Dolly Parton (writer), Sacred Memories (album), Joe Mullins (producer), Rebel Records (label)
“Wish You Were Here” — Balsam Range (artist), James Stover/Michael Williams (writers), Mountain Voodoo (album), Balsam Range (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)

INSTRUMENTAL RECORDED PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
“Fiddler’s Dream” — Michael Cleveland (artist), Arthur Smith (writer), Fiddler’s Dream (album), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
“Great Waterton” — Kristin Scott Benson (artist), Kristin Scott Benson (writer), Stringworks(album), Kristin Scott Benson (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
“Greenbrier” — Sam Bush (artist), Sam Bush/Scott Vestal (writers), Storyman (album), Sugar Hill Records (label)
“Little Liza Jane” — Adam Steffey (artist), Tommy Duncan/James Robert Wills (writers), Here to Stay (album), Adam Steffey (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
“Flint Hill Special” — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Earl Scruggs (writer), Rattle & Roar (album), Jerry Douglas (producer), Rounder Records (label)

EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Front Country
The Lonely Heartstring Band
Molly Tuttle
Sister Sadie
Volume Five

RECORDED EVENT OF THE YEAR
“East Virginia Blues” — Ricky Wasson and Dan Tyminski (artists), Croweology: The Study of J.D. Crowe’s Musical Legacy (album), Rickey Wasson (producer), Truegrass Entertainment (label)
“Going Back to Bristol” — Shawn Camp with Mac Wiseman, Peter Cooper, Thomm Jutz (artists), I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart) (album), Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz (producers), Mountain Fever Records (label)
“I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” — Bobby Osborne with Sierra Hull, Alison Brown, Rob Ickes, Stuart Duncan, Trey Hensley, Todd Phillips, Kenny Malone, Claire Lynch, and Bryan McDowell (artists), Original (album), Alison Brown (producer), Compass Records (label)
“Steamboat Whistle Blues”– Michael Cleveland featuring Sam Bush (artists), Fiddler’s Dream (album), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
“’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered” — Mac Wiseman and Alison Krauss (artists), I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart) (album), Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz (producers), Mountain Fever Records (label)

MALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR
Shawn Camp
Eric Gibson
Leigh Gibson
Buddy Melton
Russell Moore

FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR
Brooke Aldridge
Dale Ann Bradley
Sierra Hull
Amanda Smith
Molly Tuttle

BANJO PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Ned Luberecki
Joe Mullins
Noam Pikelny
Kristin Scott Benson
Sammy Shelor

BASS PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Barry Bales
Alan Bartram
Mike Bub
Missy Raines
Tim Surrett

FIDDLE PLAYER OF THE YEAR (6 candidates due to a tie vote)
Becky Buller
Jason Carter
Michael Cleveland
Stuart Duncan
Patrick McAvinue
Ron Stewart

DOBRO PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jerry Douglas
Andy Hall
Rob Ickes
Phil Leadbetter
Josh Swift

GUITAR PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jim Hurst
Kenny Smith
Bryan Sutton
Molly Tuttle
Josh Williams

MANDOLIN PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jesse Brock
Sam Bush
Sierra Hull
Frank Solivan
Adam Steffey

ANNOUNCING: 2017 IBMA Award Nominations

Nominees for the 2017 International Bluegrass Music Awards were announced today with Balsam Range and the Earls of Leicester leading the pack with eight nominations each. Balsam Range received six nominations for the band and two for their individual members, while the Earls pulled in five nominations, plus three for individual members. Close behind are the Gibson Brothers, with seven nominations (band and individuals), and Michael Cleveland and Flamekeeper, with five nominations (band and individuals). On an historic note: Molly Tuttle is the first woman ever to be nominated for an IBMA Guitar Player of the Year Award. 

The IBMA is also proud to announce the inductees into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame: trail-blazing bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, master fiddler Bobby Hicks, and Roland White, whose impressive career includes contributions to several seminal bands. They will be inducted at the International Bluegrass Music Awards Show, Thursday, September 28, 2017, in Raleigh, North Carolina. Congratulations to all the nominees and inductees!

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
The Earls of Leicester
Flatt Lonesome
The Gibson Brothers

VOCAL GROUP OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
Blue Highway
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Flatt Lonesome
The Gibson Brothers

INSTRUMENTAL GROUP OF THE YEAR
Balsam Range
The Earls of Leicester
Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen
Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper
Punch Brothers

SONG OF THE YEAR
“Blue Collar Dreams” — Balsam Range (artist), Aaron Bibelhauser (writer)
“Going Back to Bristol” — Shawn Camp (artist), Mac Wiseman/Thomm Jutz/Peter Cooper (writers)
“I Am a Drifter” — Volume Five (artist), Donna Ulisse/Marc Rossi (writers)
“Someday Soon” — Darin & Brooke Aldridge (artist), Ian Tyson (writer)
“The Train That Carried My Girl from Town” — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Frank Hutchison (writer)

ALBUM OF THE YEAR
Fiddler’s Dream — Michael Cleveland (artist), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
In the Ground — The Gibson Brothers (artist), Eric Gibson, Leigh Gibson, and Mike Barber (producers), Rounder Records (label)
Mountain Voodoo — Balsam Range (artist), Balsam Range (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
Original — Bobby Osborne (artist), Alison Brown (producer), Compass Records (label)
Rattle & Roar — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Jerry Douglas (producer), Rounder Records (label)

GOSPEL RECORDED PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
“Give Me Jesus” — Larry Cordle (artist), Traditional/Larry Cordle (writer), Give Me Jesus (album), Larry Cordle (producer), Mighty Cord Records (label)
“Hallelujah” — Blue Highway (artist), Public Domain arranged by Blue Highway (writer),Original Traditional (album), Blue Highway (producer), Rounder Records (label)
“I Found a Church Today” — The Gibson Brothers (artist), Eric Gibson/Leigh Gibson (writers), In the Ground (album), Eric Gibson, Leigh Gibson, and Mike Barber (producers), Rounder Records (label)
“Sacred Memories” — Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers with Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White Skaggs (artist), Dolly Parton (writer), Sacred Memories (album), Joe Mullins (producer), Rebel Records (label)
“Wish You Were Here” — Balsam Range (artist), James Stover/Michael Williams (writers), Mountain Voodoo (album), Balsam Range (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)

INSTRUMENTAL RECORDED PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR
“Fiddler’s Dream” — Michael Cleveland (artist), Arthur Smith (writer), Fiddler’s Dream (album), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
“Great Waterton” — Kristin Scott Benson (artist), Kristin Scott Benson (writer), Stringworks(album), Kristin Scott Benson (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
“Greenbrier” — Sam Bush (artist), Sam Bush/Scott Vestal (writers), Storyman (album), Sugar Hill Records (label)
“Little Liza Jane” — Adam Steffey (artist), Tommy Duncan/James Robert Wills (writers), Here to Stay (album), Adam Steffey (producer), Mountain Home Records (label)
“Flint Hill Special” — The Earls of Leicester (artist), Earl Scruggs (writer), Rattle & Roar (album), Jerry Douglas (producer), Rounder Records (label)

EMERGING ARTIST OF THE YEAR
Front Country
The Lonely Heartstring Band
Molly Tuttle
Sister Sadie
Volume Five

RECORDED EVENT OF THE YEAR
“East Virginia Blues” — Ricky Wasson and Dan Tyminski (artists), Croweology: The Study of J.D. Crowe’s Musical Legacy (album), Rickey Wasson (producer), Truegrass Entertainment (label)
“Going Back to Bristol” — Shawn Camp with Mac Wiseman, Peter Cooper, Thomm Jutz (artists), I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart) (album), Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz (producers), Mountain Fever Records (label)
“I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You” — Bobby Osborne with Sierra Hull, Alison Brown, Rob Ickes, Stuart Duncan, Trey Hensley, Todd Phillips, Kenny Malone, Claire Lynch, and Bryan McDowell (artists), Original (album), Alison Brown (producer), Compass Records (label)
“Steamboat Whistle Blues”– Michael Cleveland featuring Sam Bush (artists), Fiddler’s Dream (album), Jeff White and Michael Cleveland (producers), Compass Records (label)
“’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered” — Mac Wiseman and Alison Krauss (artists), I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart) (album), Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz (producers), Mountain Fever Records (label)

MALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR
Shawn Camp
Eric Gibson
Leigh Gibson
Buddy Melton
Russell Moore

FEMALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR
Brooke Aldridge
Dale Ann Bradley
Sierra Hull
Amanda Smith
Molly Tuttle

BANJO PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Ned Luberecki
Joe Mullins
Noam Pikelny
Kristin Scott Benson
Sammy Shelor

BASS PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Barry Bales
Alan Bartram
Mike Bub
Missy Raines
Tim Surrett

FIDDLE PLAYER OF THE YEAR (6 candidates due to a tie vote)
Becky Buller
Jason Carter
Michael Cleveland
Stuart Duncan
Patrick McAvinue
Ron Stewart

DOBRO PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jerry Douglas
Andy Hall
Rob Ickes
Phil Leadbetter
Josh Swift

GUITAR PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jim Hurst
Kenny Smith
Bryan Sutton
Molly Tuttle
Josh Williams

MANDOLIN PLAYER OF THE YEAR
Jesse Brock
Sam Bush
Sierra Hull
Frank Solivan
Adam Steffey

Singing Like He Feels: A Conversation with Bobby Osborne

I’d be willing to bet that, if you spent a day in New York City asking strangers to name a bluegrass song, seven out of 10 would look at you funny and walk away. The other three would say “Rocky Top.” It may be a mystery how any song permeates the popular consciousness to that depth, but my theory is that “Rocky Top” had one very unmysterious special ingredient: Bobby Osborne’s voice.

In a genre synonymous with “high, lonesome” tenor singing (See Monroe, Bill; Stanley, Ralph; Flatt, Lester; and McCoury, Del) the fact that Bobby Osborne’s high notes can turn heads and drop jaws is, itself, impressive. Even better, his bio skims like a Marvel comic origin story for the ultimate bluegrass musician. Born in rural Kentucky, he grew up helping his dad stock his granddad’s general store and absorbing the songs on the Grand Ole Opry, eventually dropping out of high school to form a band with his brother, Sonny. Within a few years, he had played in bands with the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin, and on bills with Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. At age 16, his voice changed: It got higher.

By 1964, the Osborne Brothers were members of the Grand Ole Opry, shorthand for country music royalty. Their calling cards were Sonny’s banjo playing, Bobby’s mandolin playing, and a slight adjustment to Bill Monroe’s formula for bluegrass trio harmony: Instead of jumping up to the tenor harmony for choruses and giving someone else in the band the melody, as Monroe did, Bobby sang the melody on top in tenor range. Monroe’s high tenor gave his bands’ harmonies a magnetic intensity and rawness — but the melody had to be traded to another singer. Bobby’s version allowed the audience to follow him on melody, from verse to chorus, right up to the stratosphere. His high tenor gave choruses a sense of lift-off.

No one can be better than Bill Monroe at bluegrass harmony. He invented the sound. It’s more like Michael Jordan and LeBron James: a new generation with a fresh, slightly higher-octane version of the formula.

Take “Rocky Top,” for example. (Please, take it.) There may be better examples, but I think it’s instructive to confront the cliché case in point. Despite its borderline parody lyrics and the kitschy associations it’s gathered in the intervening decades, it’s still a great example of the recipe that made the Osborne Brothers — and bluegrass, as a whole — exciting.

On first listen, “Rocky Top” sounds like the record player is on the wrong speed. Blazing fast banjo, a mandolin break that almost goes off the rails, and a voice — very high, so high you have to squint your eyes and turn your head to take it all in, but also effortlessly high, beautifully high, somehow competing with the banjo for the status of most impressively piercing element of the song — a voice that makes your brain search the animal kingdom for comparisions, because those notes shouldn’t be possible for a human, certainly not a human male.

Here, it’s important to stop and consider the historical trajectory of bluegrass: When “Rocky Top” hit the country charts in the late ’60s, what we now call “bluegrass” music was still really young. Hardly 25 years had passed since 1945, when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe on the Opry and kids around the South gathered around their radios to hear the Blue Grass Boys. Their sound was new and wild and intense, and it made perfect sense in those heady post-WW II days of new technology and American optimism. Scruggs’ banjo was a musical hot rod, fast and loud and metallic. Bluegrass had a moment of pop culture enthusiasm. Then rock ‘n’ roll stole its thunder. Louder, brasher, groovier — the same recipe, to be sure, but a better vehicle for the energy and anxieties of the era. (Still, listen to Chuck Berry’s guitar intro to “Jonny B. Goode” or Elvis’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Would any of it have been possible without Monroe?)

The 1950s were the lean years for bluegrass. In the shadow of rock and electric country music, acoustic bands inspired by Bill Monroe chugged along, barely making ends meet. Then, thankfully, a new musical movement swept cities and college campuses across America. The Folk Revival considered bluegrass, if not exactly old, at least a sort of stepbrother to the blues and ballads and fiddle music that was unassailably, organically American. It passed the authenticity test. In other words, 1945’s hot rod of high-flying testosterone had become, by the 1970s, traditional and worth preserving. Bluegrass, thereby, gained a capital B and became its own community, its own brand. It wasn’t just a branch on the country tree anymore; it had become its own genre with its own heroes and hierarchies and rules. Point being: By the time the Osborne Brothers got famous — not just Opry famous, but “Rocky Top” famous — bluegrass had done a lot of growing up and settling down. So, when they added drums and pedal steel and string sections to their recordings, there were plenty of folks ready to offer a cold shoulder or a brisk “tsk tsk.”

To their eternal credit, Bobby and Sonny just kept doing their thing, as they had been doing all along, like when they performed a new Elvis song on a country program in West Virginia … in 1951. To them, music was music, whether bluegrass, rock, or country. Bobby heeded the example of older musicians (see Monroe, Bill) who made recordings they wanted to make and sang what suited their voice, no matter whether their peers sounded different.

Which brings me back to “Rocky Top.” Just as it’s a shame for any musician’s multi-faceted, decades-long career to be reduced to one song, it’s a shame for the praise of a remarkable singer to be reduced to genre-specific superlatives. Bobby Osborne isn’t just a great bluegrass singer. He’s a singer — like Roy Orbison or Freddy Mercury or Robert Plant — who can, at his best, make you stop what you’re doing, turn up the radio, and wonder how the hell someone can make that sound.

Would you tell me a little bit about Alison Brown and how she put the record together?

I’ve known of her a long time as a banjo player. The first time I ever seen her was out in Telluride, Colorado. How I got acquainted with her was through Pete Rowan — I’m sure you’re familiar with him. He approached me out there in Colorado and asked me to do a song with him on a CD [The Old School, produced by Brown]. I said that would be fine. I went down there and did that, got acquainted with her for the first time. I know she was familiar with my singing for a long time before I ever met her. Time went on and I got to wondering if she would want to do a CD on me. So I just wrote to her and asked her and she said, “Yeah, I’d be interested.” Everything just sort of worked out from there.

How did you choose what songs to record? It’s an eclectic batch, from Elvis to the Bee Gees …

Well, I hadn’t recorded for a while. First of all, she said, “You start picking out some songs you’d like to sing.” I really didn’t know what to put down. So I just put down some country songs of Merle Haggard and George Jones and Don Gibson. Then I went down to that meeting, and she started pulling out brand new songs I hadn’t ever heard before. And I liked every one of them! That was the thing about it. She figured out, with the way that I sing, that those songs would suit me. Being a producer, I guess, that’s the sort of thing you learn how to do when you’re going to produce a CD on somebody. I just liked every one of them. “Kentucky Morning” and “Eight More Miles,” practically every one of them.

There are a lot of great young players on the record. Sierra Hull and Trey Hensley. Were you introduced to them for the first time? There are also some folks who’ve been around a long time like Rob Ickes and Stuart Duncan.

Well, I knew Rob. I’d never met Trey Hensley. Or I might’ve met him and forgot about him. Most of them I knew just from knowing them, not by being around them. Buddy Spicher, I knew him as well as I knew anybody, because he’d been on a lot of sessions I’d been on. Sierra [Hull], I met her once on the Opry. She’s turned out to be such a great player and singer.

Another young player taking the mandolin into great territory.

She plays what I think of as today’s style of mandolin playing. She plays it and she plays it good. My style of mandolin playing, it isn’t over the hill or anything, but it’s not like they play today. So Alison got her to play the mandolin. She was on “Kentucky Morning” and “Got to Get a Message” and we did some harmony on “Country Boy.” Then she got Del McCoury and his two boys, Ronnie and Rob. I played some harmony with Ronnie on “Goodbye Wheeling.” Then Sam Bush came in and played mandolin on “Eight More Miles.” So Alison had mandolin players and guitar players … and when we were getting songs together, I remembered way back in 1951 when my brother and I were playing up in Wheeling, West Virginia, on that jamboree, Elvis came out with “Don’t Be Cruel.” At that time, we hadn’t thought about bluegrass being different from anything else. We were just singing any kind of song. So we started singing “Don’t Be Cruel.”

You mean even back in the ’50s you were singing bluegrass versions of Elvis?

That’s right. Then right out of the clear blue sky, I told Alison, I said, “You may not believe this, but my brother and me were singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ back when it first came out.” She wrote me right back and said, “That’s the one I want you to do!” That suited me because I’ve always liked that one. She said, “I’ve got an idea on that.” She said, “All I’m going to use on that one is bass, mandolin, and guitar.” I thought, “What can you get out of just three instruments on a song like ‘Don’t Be Cruel?'” But that’s what she used. Sam Bush played mandolin on that, Jim Hurst played guitar, and Todd Phillips played the bass. I don’t know how she knew to do that, but she knew more about sound than I did to think of that. And she got the same sound, with a little echo in it, that they used back then with Elvis Presley.

I’ve heard Sam Bush say that in the late ’60s and early ’70s, you were his hero and that the Osborne Brothers were the kings of progressive bluegrass. There’s that great video of the Camp Springs festival in 1971 when the Osborne Brothers played alongside young Sam Bush and Tony Rice in the Bluegrass Alliance. What did you think of those young kids playing bluegrass? Did you have a sense they’d be important musicians?

Of course, back then in the ’70s — it’s a different bluegrass we have today than we had then, for sure — Sam Bush and Bluegrass Alliance had kind of a rock beat with bluegrass. But since they were programmed as bluegrass, well, Carlton would have just about anybody on that festival. They were different from anybody else. Sam played just about the same style he plays now, I guess. I met him then, but I never did get acquainted with him until the years went by, worked on a lot of shows with him, talked to him at the Opry. He’s a guy who can play like Bill Monroe or he can play like me or like Jethro Burns. Whatever type of mandolin is called for, whatever anybody wants, he can play it.

Before Sam Bush, you were one of the first mandolin players to expand the style outside of what Bill Monroe was doing. You mentioned playing Elvis songs in the early ’50s. How did you go about becoming an original player and forming your own sound?

Back when I first started trying to learn how to play, the guitar was the main thing I learned first. I always liked fiddle tunes for some reason — “Sally Goodin” and “Fire on the Mountain,” things like that. I wanted to be a fiddle player to start with, but never could do it. I’ve got about six of them here at the house. I’ve got one good fiddle — one that Kenny Baker gave me, that black fiddle he played all the time — I’ve got it. I pull it out all the time. I take it on the road and play it sometimes. But the fiddle players today, they make me look sick. I got tired of looking sick and quit playing one. [Laughs] Anyway, since I always liked fiddle tunes and the mandolin is tuned like a fiddle — and I was good with a flat pick from guitar — I got completely wrapped up playing the fiddle tunes with the mandolin. I got to following Howdy Forrester, playing hornpipes and things. I finally got into learning some of those on the mandolin, so when it came to taking breaks on songs, I kind of transferred that over.

And your guitar playing influenced your mandolin, too?

You remember a guy named Hank Garland who played the guitar? I patterned my guitar playing on his, because he was such a good player back in those days. Boy, he could play those fiddle tunes on electric guitar. I learned to do that, then I transferred that over to the mandolin. It made me different from other players. Back in those days, there was only Jethro Burns and Bill Monroe. There wasn’t anybody else to try and learn from on the mandolin. So I learned those fiddle tunes and it helped me with the mandolin. The breaks I’ve took on songs throughout the years I’ve played like a guy would take on a fiddle. And I learned a long time ago that there was only one Bill Monroe.

I read that you shared a dressing room on the Opry with Bill Monroe for a long time. What was that like?

I enjoyed it. Bill was hard to get to know. But once he got to know you — and he was another guy who figured out if he liked you or not, and if he didn’t, well, he didn’t hang around with you at all. But I got to be good friends with Bill. Been on stage with him many times. I’d have to sing the lead, of course, because he had to sing tenor. And you had to do his songs. He wouldn’t do nobody else’s songs but his. I got along with him real good. The last 15 years he lived, I shared the same dressing room with him, got to know him real good. People like him, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Snow — all of them. I really feel so thankful, the way I see it nowadays, that I was able to live in the premier day of country music and bluegrass. Bluegrass has changed so much today. But of course everything has to change. If the world didn’t change, there wouldn’t be no world after a while. But I’ve just sort of stuck to my style. I appreciate what Sierra Hull plays and the other new players do. I appreciate what they’re doing because that’s what they were brought up to do. I was brought up to do traditional.

You played with almost all of the early bluegrass players. You played with the Stanley Brothers for a while when you were young, right?

That’s right. Just before I went into the Marine Corps, for about three months, I got to play with Carter and Ralph. I loved that time. I planned on going back with them when I got out of the Marine Corps, but by that time, Sonny had learned how to play the banjo. I thought to myself, “You know, maybe we ought to start all over again.”

And that’s when you started playing with Jimmy Martin, right?

Yeah, that’s right.

I’ve heard — I mean, he was a pretty difficult guy to work with, wasn’t he?

He was a real character. As long as things were going his way, he was okay; but when it wasn’t, he wasn’t. There’s got be a bend in the river somewhere, you know? [Laughs] But Bill was kind of like that, too. But he did it — of course, Bill never did use alcohol or drugs or anything like that. He was a different type of a person. Just about all of those people — Hank Snow, too. But Hank was from another country — Canada. I mean I never did hold that against him or anything. But he was a little bit peculiar. He’d learned his way of doing things, but he was a good guy.

Who else from the Opry did you learn from?

Well, Ernest Tubb was the first guy I ever tried to sing like. And I got to know him real well. I saw Uncle Dave Macon on stage once, but I never got to know him. Uncle Dave played the clawhammer banjo. He was a show within himself. He never got on the Opry until he was about 60 years old. The Opry started in ’25, and Uncle Dave lived in those days there, when the Opry started. He wouldn’t never have no kind of band with him. And he carried about five different banjos with him at all time. He’d throw them up in the air and catch them. He was a good showman. A great showman.

So did you grow up listening to the Opry?

Yeah, that was one of the first things I ever remember hearing on the radio growing up.

So that must have been an incredible feeling, when you became a member of the Opry. What was that like?

That’s hard to explain. I dreamed about it before I even saw a guitar or anything. I dreamed about what kind of people that those guys were, back in those days — the food they ate, how they lived. I thought about all of that, all about them.

They were really the rock stars of the day back then.

Sure was. And where I come from, back in Kentucky — you know, that song “Kentucky Morning,” that’s one of the main reasons why I did that song because it tells a true story of how I grew up. I think about my dad and mom, how the times have changed. Where we lived, there was no electricity, no inside bathrooms, no running water. We had a well back then for fresh water. Nothing to wash clothes. My mom would take the clothes to the creek and pat the dirt out of them with a rock. That was the thing that really got me in the lyrics to that “Kentucky Morning.” It just brought back so much of the early days of my life. My dad and my mom, they saw times that I didn’t ever see. My dad finally wised up and moved away from Kentucky, when I was about 10 years old.

You moved to Ohio, is that right?

That’s right. He went to Dayton, Ohio. First time I saw a loaf of bread or an ice box you put ice in — see, there weren’t no refrigerators back then and very little electricity used. So we had a big old icebox. You could get a 25-pound block of ice or 50-pound or 100, depending on the size of your icebox. That was the first time I ever saw anybody put food in there to keep it cold.

So what did your father do for work?

In the Kentucky days, he taught school. He was a school teacher. And he taught school in the building I’m in right now teaching the mandolin.

Wow. Full circle.

He sure did. We lived four miles out in the country, in a place called Thousand Sticks, Kentucky. My granddad had a little store. Very few people lived in that area back there. Only way you could get anywhere was walk or ride a mule. And when the creeks were up — the roads back then went right through the creeks — if it rained, why, it was so muddy you couldn’t get over. A lot of times you just couldn’t go nowhere …

So my dad helped my granddad at his store quite a bit. It was four miles from Thousand Sticks to Hyden, Kentucky, and about once a month, he would take a wagon and mule and go across that mountain to get dry goods from a dealer in Hyden. I would go with him. I was about seven or eight years old then. But finally he got tired of that. He heard there was work in Ohio, so he borrowed 50 bucks off of his sister and went to Dayton, Ohio. First place he came to was a place called Nashville Cash Register. They gave him a job. So he came and got the family and we moved away from Thousand Sticks and never lived there again. When we went to Dayton, the big city, everything was so different then. We learned how to live in the big city. But I never did forget where I came from. I still like the country.

That must’ve taken some guts for your dad to start over and move somewhere totally different. How did you feel about it as a 10-year-old?

It hurt me in my schooling. I started going to school — they did have a school over there in Thousand Sticks. I will tell you this, too: Back during the second World War, there was work in Radford, Virginia, in a powder plant where they made powder for the weapons we were using in the war. So my dad went there and worked in that powder plant and took the family. But every time we moved, they’d put me back a grade. I was supposed to be in the fourth grade when we moved to Virginia, but they put me in the third grade. He worked there seven or eight months, and when we came back I should’ve been in the fifth grade, and had to go back in the fourth grade again there. Then when we went to Dayton, Ohio, I was supposed to be up in the sixth grade, but they sent me back in the fifth grade. So I had a tough time trying to get any education moving around like that.

Were you playing music during that time?

I was trying to play the guitar, yeah. It was about fifth or sixth grade when I got my hand on a guitar. By the time I got to the 10th grade, most people I should’ve been in class with had already graduated. So I finished my sophomore year and, by that time, I was into this music. I made up my mind right there, wasn’t no more school for me. I wasn’t going to waste my time. I wanted to put all my time into this right here, and I guess I just got lucky. So I never got any kind of education to do anything up to the 10th grade, the way I bounced around. But I will say this: I learned a lot by traveling. I’ve been in all 50 states playing bluegrass music. I’ve been in foreign countries. I’ve been in Japan two or three times, Germany, and Sweden. You get an education when you travel, if you travel enough. You learn all about different types of people, how they talk. Even starting in Kentucky, when you get to Dayton, Ohio, they have another lingo — then the Carolinas and Georgia, too. So I got a pretty good education traveling.

That might be even better than a textbook education.

I guess moving around, you learn more about the world than you would sitting still.

How did you develop your own singing style? Who did you learn from?

If you wanted to sing bluegrass, if you didn’t have a voice like Bill Monroe or Lester Flatt, you just couldn’t sing bluegrass. I lived by the Grand Ole Opry — I listened to it all the time in those days — and I noticed that one guy sounded different from the other guy. Ernest Tubb or Eddie Arnold, how different they sounded. I got tied into Ernest Tubb. I liked his songs and his singing. When I first started singing, my voice was kind of low. I could sing Ernest Tubb songs in the same key. And I had never heard anything in the world about bluegrass. The only thing I knew about bluegrass was that they called Kentucky bluegrass country. So, in listening to Ernest Tubb, I got to know all his songs.

Anyway, one day I was singing and I noticed my voice couldn’t go that low. About 16 years old, my voice just went up. And I thought, “Man, what’s happened here?” I could sing the songs, but had to put them in a higher pitch. So that put me right out of singing Ernest Tubb songs like him. Then one day I was listening to the Opry and I heard something that jumped out at me. Boy, I thought I had it on the wrong station. I heard something come through that radio and I asked my dad, “What is that?” He said, “That’s the banjo.” I had never heard of a banjo. And I couldn’t figure out how they were doing that. I kept listening every Saturday night, over and over, and didn’t hear that sound again. Finally, one night, I heard it, playing that same song, same melody as the one I had heard some weeks before that. And the announcer said, “That was Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys with Earl Scruggs playing the banjo.” That was the first sign of the word “bluegrass” connected with music I had ever heard. Then I got to singing Bill Monroe songs and I figured out I could sing them in the same key he did.

So my voice changed and went high like that. By the time I got out of the Marine Corps — I had already been playing with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers in Bluefield, West Virginia, and Carter and Ralph Stanley before the military — so when I came back, I started with my brother singing Bill Monroe songs again. Flatt and Scruggs came along, and I got started singing their songs, too. But I never stopped singing country songs, either. I still sing Ernest Tubb songs today. On this new CD, I did Eddie Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away,” so I still sing country songs; I just sing them the way I feel like singing them and in my key. I guess that put me in a bluegrass class and a country class. My voice, once it got to where it was going, when I was 18 or 19 years old, it just stayed high pitch and hasn’t changed yet.

You were talking about how, even in your early days, you were playing Elvis songs and learning from electric guitar players like Hank Snow. One thing I appreciate about your music is how you always tried new sounds in the studio and new types of songs. You added drums to bluegrass early on. What did people think when you were experimenting and not trying to be traditional?

I never did try and sound like anyone else. I tried to sound like Bill Monroe at one time, and Ernest Tubb, but I found I couldn’t do that. I had a fiddle player come up to me one time and say, “Son, if I had a voice like you, I wouldn’t sing a Bill Monroe tune or Flatt and Scruggs, either one. Just sing like you feel.”

Who was it that told you that?

His name was Benny Sims. He was a fiddle player with Flatt and Scruggs, at that time. If you’re familiar with their Mercury cuts, that’s him. Yeah, we played a show with Lester and Earl, and he heard me sing. Back then, if we did a show with Bill Monroe, well, we’d sing Lester and Earl’s songs. We wouldn’t do Bill in front of him, cause that would make him mad. And if we sang with Lester and Earl, we’d sing Bill’s songs. But we worked a couple shows with Flatt and Scruggs, and of course we sang all Bill’s songs. Well, Benny heard me sing and he called me over by myself and said, “I’d like to tell you something.” He told me, he said, “If I had a voice like yours, I’d never be caught singing a Bill Monroe song or a Flatt and Scruggs song. I’d be you.” He said, “Just sing like you feel.” So I got to singing Jimmie Dickens and relying more on Ernest Tubb songs, Eddie Arnold. That’s what got me going — country songs. I’d always liked country songs. I never programmed myself to be all bluegrass or all country or all rock, or whatever. I just never did program myself any one thing, cause I could sing anything. If I wanted to sing it, I’d find the way I’d want to do it, and I’d do it.


Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

STREAM: Bobby Osborne, ‘Original’

Artist: Bobby Osborne
Hometown: Hyden, KY
Album: Original
Release Date: June 2, 2017
Label: Compass Records

In Their Words: “Hi everyone, Bobby Osborne here. I want to thank the Bluegrass Situation for premiering my new album, titled Original, on Compass Records. Alison Brown and her staff of personnel and pickers truly made this one of my all-time greatest CDs.
Best wishes,
Bobby Osborne”

8 Legendary Artists on Our Bluegrass Bucket List

It was 2012 which taught me that, even though bluegrass is a relatively young genre, I was taking that young age for granted. In just a few months, both Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson passed away before I had gotten the chance to see either of them live in concert. Being a banjo player, I was especially broken-hearted over never having met Earl and thanked him for everything he gave me, indirectly, via the banjo. Even though I resolved to catch shows by as many living legends as possible after that particularly devastating year, I have not done well enough. In order to learn from my personal shortcomings, here’s a list of the legends that we all simply must see and hear as much as we possibly can. There’s no time like the present.

Curly Seckler

Chances are, if you’re listening to a recording of Flatt & Scruggs, you’re hearing Curly Seckler sing the tenor. His singing and mandolin graced more than 100 songs during his tenure with the Foggy Mountain Boys. In the ’70s, he joined Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass and inherited the act after Lester passed on. After retiring more than 20 years ago, he continued to release albums and appear as a guest with nearly every bluegrass band of note, on stage and in the studio. He’s a Bluegrass Hall of Famer, an IBMA Award Nominee, and one of the last surviving members of the first generation of bluegrass.

Mac Wiseman

AKA “the Voice with a Heart,” Mac Wiseman got his start with Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, and went on to join Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys before setting out on his own, carving out a solo career that continues to this day. Though he’s currently 91 years old, he just released a musical memoir, I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart), on Mountain Fever Records and he has hundreds more songs backlogged for future release. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductee rarely performs these days, but musicians, writers, and fans continue to make the pilgrimage to his home just outside of Nashville where he holds court from his armchair — and still does his own vacuuming.

Jesse McReynolds

With his brother Jim, Jesse McReynolds toured and recorded some of the best brother duo bluegrass music ever created. A tireless innovator, Jesse has recorded an album of Chuck Berry covers, a Grateful Dead tribute album, and even appeared on the Doors’ Soft Parade. Lucky for all of us, Jesse still tours, playing festivals and concerts around the Southeast. He also performs quite frequently on the Grand Ole Opry and is the Opry’s oldest member. At 87 years old, he’s still got it — and you need not take our word for it, just catch him tearing through “El Cumbanchero.”

Eddie Adcock

Eddie Adcock is one of the wackiest, most joyful, ingenious banjo players to have graced bluegrass music with his playing. He, too, spent a stint playing with the Blue Grass Boys and went on to join the Country Gentlemen. He toured as a solo act with his wife, Martha, for many years. Their annual benefit concert for Room in the Inn, a homeless shelter network in Nashville, is always a highlight of the Christmas season. It’s worth attending just to catch Eddie, but the lineup is usually brilliantly star-studded. Interesting tidbit: Eddie had brain surgery to correct debilitating hand tremors and was kept awake during the surgery so he could play banjo and the doctors could determine to what extent they could eliminate the tremors. There’s video of this. Go find it.

Bobby Osborne

At 85 years old and after more than 60 years of performing professionally, Bobby Osborne filmed his first music video for “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” the single off his brand new record, Original. That’s right, it’s a bluegrass Bee Gees cover. And it isn’t the only surprising cut on the new record, either. There’s “They Call the Wind Maria” from the Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon and Elvis’s “Don’t Be Cruel.” The record plays like a walk back through Bobby’s — and the Osborne Brothers’ — highly influential career in bluegrass, country, and the folk revival. You can catch Bobby touring across the country with the Rocky Top X-press and on the Grand Ole Opry. It might be the only context in which you hear Rocky Top without being mad about it.

Larry Sparks

Larry Sparks got his start with the Stanley Brothers in the early 1960s and, after Carter Stanley passed away, he became lead vocalist, singing some of Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys’ most iconic songs. His own band, the Lonesome Ramblers, continues to carry the torch for traditional, straight-ahead, no-nonsense bluegrass music, but without the hubris and self-righteousness that these uncompromising bands sometimes espouse. Larry was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2015 and he is a two-time winner of IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year award. He’s still going strong with nary a sign of stopping. You need to do yourself a favor and see him live.

Roland White

Too often eclipsed by the fame and influence of his late brother, Clarence, Roland White is the quintessential bluegrass living legend. He appeared on the Andy Griffith Show with his brothers in its first season, he performed with the Kentucky Colonels, the Country Gazette, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band, and he founded the Roland White Band in 2000, after nearly 60 years in the industry. He recently turned 79, but he still teaches at camps and workshops, tours across the country, and plays monthly at the World Famous Station Inn in Nashville. Over the past few years, he’s re-released two live albums by the New Kentucky Colonels: Live in Sweden 1973 and Live in Holland 1973. These recordings should be required listening. Go get them.

Norman Blake

Do you know what Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, John Hartford, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tony Rice, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, and Inside Llewyn Davis have in common? Norman. Blake. To call his guitar playing “iconic” would be sorely understating it. His influence reaches beyond bluegrass to almost any player who has ever picked up a flat-top box, whether those players know it or not. His latest record is Brushwood (Songs & Stories), recorded with his wife and longtime musical partner, Nancy. It’s a folk album that channels the roots of the music, but with a political bent that’s as unapologetic as it is classically folk.


Eddie Adcock photo by Eddie Janssens. All photos courtesy of the artists.

The Producers: Alison Brown

Forget, just for a moment or two, the fact that Alison Brown is one of the best banjo players alive. Put aside that she’s been playing all her life and has released 11 solo albums and many, many more with various duos and groups. Never mind that she left a lucrative career at Smith Barney to co-found Compass Records and has been honored by the International Bluegrass Music Association with a Distinguished Achievement Award.

Instead, let’s think about Alison Brown strictly as a producer. She has quietly established herself as a creative force on “the other side of the glass,” as she says, forging a style that is precise yet imaginative, grounded in tradition yet anchored in the artist’s own distinctive personality and style. In the last 10 years, she has produced albums by some of the best musicians in bluegrass — young and old alike — starting with Dale Ann Bradley’s Catch Tomorrow in 2006 and following it up with projects by Peter Rowan, the Special Consensus, Susan Greenbaum, Claire Lynch, and — most recently — Quiles & Cloud.

This year she is nominated for two IBMAs — Instrumental Recorded Performance of the Year and Recorded Event of the Year — for her work on the Special Consensus’s “Fireball,” from their recent Brown-helmed album, Long I Ride. A wildly inventive and rambunctiously paced bluegrass jam featuring twin banjos and twin mandolins, the song threatens to fly off the rail with every note, but somehow she and the band manage to keep it all on track.

How did you move from being an artist in the studio to being a producer?

It happened very organically. When we moved home for Compass Records, we bought the Glaser brothers’ former office space. The Glaser brothers were, of course, part of the outlaw movement in country music and they had a legacy studio that was known to the press as Hillbilly Central. It’s where part of the first platinum-selling record in country music was cut and a lot of others, like Waylon Jennings’ Dreaming My Dreams and John Hartford’s Aereo Plain.

All of a sudden, we had this office space that had this legacy studio in it. I think the first record I produced was for Dale Ann Bradley, who is an amazing bluegrass artist from Kentucky, and she just asked if I could do it. I had never really thought too much about producing. I’d always had someone else produce my records, but I agreed to do it. In the process, I really learned that I had learned a lot on the other side of the glass that I could share with somebody else. It was a result of having that space and then realizing that I knew more about the process than I thought I did.

So you’re running Compass out of that building, along with the studio?

Conceptually, it’s the perfect example of vertical integration. The studio is upstairs, and most of the offices are downstairs, except for my office and Garry West’s office. We co-founded the label together. There’s this idea that we could record a track from 10 in the morning to one in the morning, and it could be mixed and up for sale on iTunes by the end of the business day. We can really do the whole thing, starting off with pre-production through getting the record off to mastering. We’ve got someone doing package design. We’re doing publicity, promotions, social media, marketing … with the team downstairs. So it is a soup-to-nuts operation.

What do you remember from those first sessions you produced for Dale Ann Bradley?

I guess I remember two things. First of all, in part, I feel a producer’s job is to make the artist — and, in this case, it was her band, too — as comfortable in the space and as able to do their best work. For people who aren’t used to being in the studio, it can be hard being under the microscope, especially if you’re not doing that every day. I think that’s there’s an aspect of psychology to the job: figuring out what everybody’s fears are, their point of discomfort, what they’re most nervous about having to do, and trying not to put them in that position.

The other thing I remember is that I’ve been fortunate to have my own records produce by some really talented people. David Grisman produced my first record, and I’ve worked with Mike Marshall a bunch, too. I feel like I took a lot of lessons from them, especially the way I look at song structure and the little things you can do to make the recorded version of a song something that bears repeated listening — the little twists and turns and corners of an arrangement. I came to realize that I had learned that lesson and that was something I could bring to bluegrass music, which can, at points, be repetitive. I wanted to try to think about arranging it so that it’s something that people are going to want to come back to over and over and, when they do, hopefully they’ll hear something a little different each time.

People always ask artists about their influences, but I’m always curious to hear about where producers go for inspiration or examples.

I feel like my biggest influence, as a producer, has been the work I got to do with Mike Marshall. He’s one of these prodigy guys who came out of Florida playing mandolin, fiddle, and guitar. He was in the David Grisman Quintet in the ‘80s and had a band on Windham Hill called Montreux. He’s done a lot of stuff with Darol Anger and Chris Thile. He produced a bunch of stuff for me early in my career, and I got to work with him in a band called NewGrange. He’s a remarkable musician, but he’s a great producer, as well. Seeing how he approaches arranging music and getting the most out of instrumental music, I feel Mike’s guiding hand in what I do. I learned so much by the ways he thinks about how to structure songs, which instrument to put on it.

You mentioned the psychological aspect of producing. Can you elaborate on that?

Unless you’re hiring the Nashville Cats, then you can be working with people who are in the studio only once every 18 or 24 months, or maybe it’s only their first or second time. When I go into that situation with a band and I don’t know the guys yet, one of the first things that I’m trying to glean from the situation is that dynamic. I really think that’s important, because we all have things that we’re afraid we can’t deliver the first time: "What’s it going to be like if I can’t nail that solo? Or that vocal take? Or whatever?" I’m always thinking about that. I don’t know if my perspective stems from being female, but I think women approach situations differently. Not that one’s better than the other, but that’s just my approach.

Most of the time I’m playing music, I’m playing with all guys — although things are changing a little bit. When I’ve been in a situation where it’s all women — an all-female band — the approach to building consensus and working together is completely different. It’s a different energy. I don’t know if my approach is gender-specific. When Garry West produces an album, he’s not thinking about what’s in the fridge or on the coffee table for people to eat and drink. But that’s something that’s really important. If you’re going to create, you need to have good snacks. I don’t know what it is about being in the studio, but it makes me think about food. I love to show up to a session with warm banana bread. Something like that really adds to the experience and I think it makes people more comfortable. They’re able to let their guard down and feel like it’s a safe place.

It seems like a crucial tactic, especially in a studio that has such a legacy. I could imagine any musician being intimidated.

Absolutely. If I’d known John Hartford recorded Aereo Plain here, I would have been even more intimidated than I already was. You could set the bar so high for yourself thinking about the other music that’s been recorded in the room, but, at the end of the day, you just have to look at it as there’s great energy in the room, great vibes in the walls, and you have to tap into that. You have to find the joy in making music, because to make music is a real privilege. To the extent that I can make people see that, that’s a really important aspect of my job as a producer.

How do you balance that strategy with challenging people and making sure they can get out of their comfort zone?

I feel like I’m always mixing stuff up on people, and sometimes I worry that I’m doing it too much. One of the ways I really feel like I can add value is, when we start a new tune during pre-production, we’ll just sit around the coffee table and I’ll write out a chart and start to think about how to change things up. I’m always changing chords and throwing out ideas and left turns for people. There’s always an element of change and challenge, but you want to make sure to create a safety net so people aren’t afraid to try. You get people out of their comfort zone of what they’ve practiced and what they’ve prepared to do, but you have to get them comfortable enough to reach for that next thing and know they’re not going to fall off the high wire. There has to be a net there so we can feel encouraged to experiment. It’s always part of the process of making a record, at least for me, where you really grow. Hopefully, you’ve created something that’s better than you are.

So this process not only creates this thing — this song or this album — but it changes you as an artist.

Absolutely. I see the whole act of creation as a real process of self-discovery. You write something you didn’t know you had in you, you come up with an idea and you’re not exactly sure where it came from, and you learn something about yourself in the process. That’s been true for me as a producer, too. I didn’t know that I had that skill in me, but working with the people I’ve gotten to work with and being in the producer’s chair has really helped me discover a different part of myself, too. I really owe those artists a debt of gratitude.

You were talking about making sure songs would have something that would make you want to listen to them again and again. That doesn’t seem like an easy task, especially with a lot of acoustic music, where the arrangements might be pretty spare.

That’s something I think about a lot, because we live in a consumption environment. We listen to music like Ms. Pac-Man. We gobble it up and then we’re on to the next thing to gobble up. In a way, your live performances on YouTube are competing with the recorded versions of the songs you’ve slaved over and spent thousands of dollars to get just right. Why is the consumer seemingly so happy to listen to just some live version at some festival on a Saturday afternoon? What is there to make somebody want to buy the recorded version of it — not just stream it, but own it and have it be something they come back to again and again?

When I look at a chart for a song, what I’m really trying to figure out is how to make a little something happen in this one spot. Maybe you don’t hear it the first time. Maybe you didn’t realize that Kenny Malone was reacting to that lyric the first time you hear it, but when you do catch it, it’s so cool. I’m trying to get the most out of this that I can.

That seems to inform the diversity of your production work, which borrows from a lot of different styles at once. In particular, that song “Empty Train” from Claire Lynch’s new record, sounds like a rock song played on acoustic instruments.

In some ways, that song is an outlier on the record because it’s more jam-oriented. Getting Jerry Douglas in to play the way Jerry Douglas plays opened up a lot of space for the instruments to have something to say and made it different from the other tracks on the record. That was a challenge, and I wasn’t sure, at first, if putting a Celtic tune in there would make sense. But it actually does. It roots the music back to that tradition and serves as a jumping-off point. I guess I do think about how something like that is going to fit within the world of the record.

When I’m thinking about my role as a producer, I’m also thinking about designing an outcome. That comes from being on the business side of it, too. When I start a project, I encourage the artist to think about what kind of outcome they want. Fast-forward 12 months and the record is out there: What are the things you want to see with this record? Do you want a shot at non-comm Triple A radio or a certain bluegrass music awards category? Do you want attention from a certain media outlet? Then you’ve got to make sure you have those ingredients in the project. The worse case is that you don’t think about that ahead of time and then you deliver a record that doesn’t do what you want it to do. Maybe you want to have a shot at an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, but you didn’t create the talking points in the music. So think forward to what you’re trying to accomplish and make sure you incorporate those things into the record.

With Claire’s record, I was definitely thinking about the different radio formats where different tracks could land. There are a couple of tracks with Béla Fleck playing banjo or Stuart Duncan playing fiddle, so those are well-suited for bluegrass stations. But Claire’s music goes in other directions, too. Having Jerry Douglas or Kenny Malone makes it suited for non-comm Triple A. Those are definitely formats where she needs to be.

Bluegrass is a genre that really prizes technical skill. Especially on a record like your own, The Song of the Banjo, how do you make sure that the technical side of the musicianship doesn’t overwhelm the aesthetic aspect of the song?

I’m glad you asked that because that’s something that I was thinking about with that record. What I was trying to do was say, "Hey, the banjo is a beautiful, very lyrical instrument and it can do all this fancy stuff." But I really wanted to serve the melodies, whether they were cover tunes like “Time After Time” or an original tune like “Song of the Banjo.” I didn’t want it to be just about fancy picking as much as just showcasing the lyrical side of the banjo. Don’t do something flashy just because you can. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The flashy side of the banjo wasn’t as important as the beautiful side of the banjo. If something was flashy but not beautiful, I would have to question why it belonged on the record.

That seems like an idea that comes into play on “Fireball,” off the new Special Consensus record. It’s a rollercoaster of a song, but it never sounds like it’s just a props-for-chops showcase.

I’ve been playing bluegrass for so long, and I’ve spent so many hours listening to it and thinking about it, so I have pretty strong opinions about whether something is tasteful or not. Fortunately, the guys in the Special Consensus all share my opinions. Nobody’s instinct is just to play some licks. Maybe part of that is making sure you have the right guys and girls in the room, too. Part of being a good producer is knowing who to have in the room. When you call Rob Ickes or Stuart Duncan, you’re going to get some great playing, but nothing is going to be inappropriate.

I guess this is my third record for Special Consensus. In some ways, they’re like family, even though the members of the band have changed. The core is pretty much the same on all three records. I know those guys pretty well at this point, and they’re so open to my suggestions and so trusting of my input. Because of that, they’ve helped me grow as a producer. When we were trying to think of a tune to do, I suggested doing “Fireball” with all these twin tuners on the banjo. I’m grateful for them giving it a go. When we sat down to track the thing, we heard that click track and we just all burst out laughing. It does go by lickety-split.

Was that an idea you had specifically for them or something you had been thinking about more generally?

It was neither, really. There’s something that happens when you get into the zone on a project and the people around you are very willing cohorts; it just opens up your mind to good ideas. I just grabbed that tune out of the air. It’s one I’ve always liked, and I thought it would be cool with twin tuners on the banjos, the Scruggs pegs. I wasn’t aware of anyone ever trying to harmonize Scruggs pegs. So the idea popped into my head and, of course, we had to have twin mandolins, too. When you have positive energy in the studio, it really opens to door for some good ideas.

That seems to push the genre forward a bit and show how expansive it can be, rather than just going with what’s traditional or expected.

I completely agree. I’m all for trying to blur the edges a little bit. A band like Special Consensus might seem like a pretty middle-of-the-road bluegrass band in many ways, but in terms of their song selection, they’re definitely open to lyrics that are a little bit different. The title track was written by Robbie Fulks. It’s a great song and it fits the genre, but lyrically it’s a little bit outside the box, which I think is cool. I love traditional bluegrass music, but I’m definitely one who believes it has to evolve to live.

One of the great things about doing a third record with a band is that you’ve been through the process together and you know everybody’s sensitive points and what their strengths and weaknesses are. We’ve made two really good records together, so everybody’s wide open. But it is different when you get a band you’ve never worked with.

As part of the FreshGrass Festival in North Adams, Massachusetts, they have these band contests and duo constests. We’re sponsors with the organizers, and one of the suggestions we made early on was to have contests, because that was such a big part of the scene when I was growing up and I feel it’s a bit missing in what’s going on these days. As part of the prize, the winner gets a session in our studio — with my production guidance, if they want it. As a result, I’ve had a chance to do a couple of projects with people who didn’t know me. That’s a very different dynamic because you have a day and you have a track and it’s all happening on a much faster timeline. It’s a different situation, but it can still yield great results.

How many of those sessions have you done?

We did a session with Quiles & Cloud, who are a great duo. The record was made as a trio, but Maria Quiles and Rory Cloud are the core. They decided to make a full record; they had one day and they added on three more. We recorded them basically live, and the two of them sing such tight, beautiful harmonies. We recorded them facing each other, so close they're touching. That’s how we recorded — playing and singing at the same time. Then I did a session with the guys from Old Salt Union back in the Spring. They had a new song, so they hadn’t really set their arrangement in stone and were open to input. They had this great jam session in the middle, which was fun for all of us and fun to hear them execute it.

What kinds of projects do you have coming up, if you don’t mind me asking?

Let’s see, what am I working on? I’m working on a Bobby Osborne project. He’s 84 years old now. I had him in the studio on a Peter Rowan record that I produced. He was singing and playing great, and he made this comment to me that he didn’t think he was going to get to make another record. I started thinking about that and trying to figure out a way to make that happen. One of the things bluegrass does so well is to honor its elders and, to me, the ultimate way to honor somebody is to give them an opportunity that they didn’t think they were going to get again. That’s the next thing I’m doing, probably this Fall.

I’m also working on a record with Stuart Duncan, who is the best fiddle player in the world. He and I grew up together playing bluegrass in Southern California, and we made a record together when we were teenagers called Pre-Sequel. We’ve had the title for our next record for a long time, and we ‘ve been thinking that we should finally make it. So we’re working on Sequel.

 

For more IBMA Award nominees, read Joseph Terrell's conversation with Sam Bush.