Tag: Brenna MacMillan

BGS Class of 2024: Our Year-End Favorites

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Each year, when we begin the process of curating our year-end round-ups with our BGS and Good Country contributors, our prompt is never about superlatives or true “best of year” selections. We don’t strive to craft these lists based on “shoulds” – what record should be considered the best of the year? What should a list of the best bluegrass, old-time, Americana, and folk music include?

We perhaps couldn’t be less interested in such a list. Are they entertaining to read? Oh, yes. There’s almost no better year-end pastime than quickly scrolling through a “best of” list to find if you agree or disagree, or if your favorite album is included, or if your obvious choice is another’s glaring omission. But the beauty of music – especially these more traditional and folkway-adjacent forms – isn’t objectivity; it’s the intricately personal, particular, and subjective that’s hardest to capture.

Still, each year, as fall transitions to winter, we try our best to capture just that. In 2024, we tasked our BGS contributors with collecting their most favorite, most impactful, most resonant, and most persistent albums, songs, and performances. A quick Google search will reveal dozens of collections of the “most important” music of the year, but rather than wading into that very crowded space we hope our BGS Class of 2024 reflects the most ethereal, intangible, and fantastic music we encountered this year.

As such, our Class of 2024 has ended up with a lovely variety of albums and songs spanning the entire, expansive American roots music scene. You’ll hear picks like troubadours Willi Carlisle and Amythyst Kiah, there are straight-ahead grassers like Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, AJ Lee & Blue Summit, and Brenna MacMillan, and we’ve got buzzworthy acts like MJ Lenderman and Katie Gavin represented here, too. It’s not all bluegrass – it’s not any one thing, really! – but we hope you’ll find plenty to love and, hopefully, much exemplary roots music you might not have found anywhere else.

Scroll to find a playlist version of our BGS Class of 2024 below, plus stay tuned for more year-end collections coming your way, including our favorite musical moments, 2024 Good Country, our music book picks for the year, and more. – Justin Hiltner, editor, BGS and Good Country 

Willi Carlisle, Critterland

I didn’t catch on to Willi Carlisle until this year, which might be because he’s only just beginning to garner more broad commercial success – or, if I’m being honest, it could be because I mistakenly assumed he was just another white guy with an acoustic guitar and a microphone. But I was wrong.

Carlisle is a rare storyteller, a poet, an openly queer man from the South, and one of the most meticulous folk songwriters releasing music right now. This year, he dropped his third full-length album, Critterland, underlining his status as all of the above and proving he can masterfully weave old-time, country, folk, and honky-tonk influences into a cohesive style all his own. Whether he’s singing about spiritual existentialism, rural queer experiences, or his many meandering journeys across the U.S., Carlisle’s lyricism is captivating, rich, and alive. If you haven’t already listened to Critterland, don’t let the year roll over without doing it. – Dana Yewbank

Jake Xerxes Fussell, When I Am Called

Jake Xerxes Fussell’s version of the work song “Gone to Hilo” on his 2024 album, When I Am Called, is gorgeous. It reveals part of how he revitalizes and contextualizes new folk songs. Fussell is a man of great learning, but he wears it loosely and with pleasure. “Hilo,” the song, has a number of versions – some are about Hawaii and some are about Peru (a town called Ihru). Some are about a sailor named Tommy, others are about someone named Johnny. Usually it’s Johnny in Hawaii and Tommy in Peru; Elijah Wald’s 2024 book about Muddy Waters suggests that it might not be Hilo or Ihru, but “the Hollow,” and could originate from the vernacular of enslaved people.

Fussell, playing live in Toronto, didn’t interpolate the Hollow, but in a perfect three minutes, traded lines and verses, sometimes about one place, sometimes about the other, in a delicate blending of received wisdom. The smartest and most moving moment highlighting what it means to make music that I heard this year. – Steacy Easton

Katie Gavin, What A Relief

For years now I’ve been making an incredibly silly joke about how “MUNA are my favorite bluegrass band.” With her first solo album, the group’s lead singer and central songwriter, Katie Gavin, brings their resplendent and queer musical universe decidedly into our roots music realms. Producer Tony Berg (Nickel Creek, Molly Tuttle, Amythyst Kiah, Andrew Bird) in the control room and Sara & Sean Watkins as session players are just two of the inputs that make What A Relief delightfully folky, fiddley, and string band-infused. MUNA’s acoustic set at the iconic Newport Folk Festival this summer – and Gavin’s totally solo, side stage Newport performance of much of this material – further solidified the dancey, club-ready group as a true folk ensemble.

At first it was a joke, but I don’t think it’s a joke anymore! Like all of Gavin’s work, these songs are both fun and gutting, poignant while light and convivial. What A Relief is a standout for 2024. – Justin Hiltner

Liv Greene, Deep Feeler

Liv Greene is a huge cry baby – and a liar. She even comes right out and admits it on the first line of her new album Deep Feeler:

“I’m aware I’m a liar. Always lying to myself about my expectations/ I’m aware I’m a crier, and I know. All this crying doesn’t help the situation…”

Greene, who is the Deep Feeler in question, has grown tremendously on her sophomore album. She’s become one of the most promising young artists to create songs that tap right into the center of your heart. This is enormously true on her 2024 album through songs like “Wild Geese,” “Flowers,” and “Made it Mine Too.” She attributes that growth to honestly writing about being queer for the first time. Deep Feeler crawls in and stays with you. Who knew honesty could feel this good? – Cindy Howes

Brittany Haas & Lena Jonsson, The Snake

On their second duo album of fiddle tunes (their first, self-titled collab dropped in 2015), Brittany Haas of Nashville and Lena Jonsson of Stockholm went even deeper into what’s possible in the blending of their native countries’ fiddle traditions. This time, they leaned far more on the Swedish end of the collaboration, emphasizing harmony over chord progressions, exploring the possibilities inherent in “second voice” dueting. They also tried their hand at writing a suite in the style of J.S. Bach – no small feat. The result is an utter delight for music geeks and casual fans alike, as folks can appreciate the languid lines and danceable moments they weave together throughout. – Kim Ruehl

Humbird, Right On

I remember where I was the first time I heard Siri Undlin sing, “There is an old barn on a ghost farm / Hollowed out and filled with stars…” the opening couplet of Humbird’s take-no-prisoners roots rocker “Cornfields and Roadkill.” I will reluctantly admit to some initial resentment that a songwriter who wasn’t me had written a song of such poetic efficiency and political potency. Undlin’s songwriting shines throughout the nine tracks of 2024’s Right On: the quiet earnestness of “Quickest Way” would have been at home on an early Kacey Musgraves album, and “Song for the Seeds” lays out both practical and spiritual methods for liberation, Farmer’s Almanac-style. But the palpable chemistry between musicians playing in a room together is the star of the show here. Humbird is an essential band to listen to as we watch the American empire crumble in real time. – Lizzie No

Katelyn Ingardia, “Silence”

This year, Katelyn Ingardia’s “Silence” got me feeling some type of way. I don’t know what they injected into this song, but I’m quite literally addicted to it. Bad day? I’m playing “Silence.” In a long line for coffee? I’m playing “Silence.” Cooking up girl dinner? I’m playing “Silence.” I scream a little on the inside every time I hear the fiddle kickoff.

The timbre of the song is so nostalgic of an early Union Station or Sierra Hull record, but Ingardia’s performance sets herself apart as something completely fresh and original. The writing, delivery, and production are all impeccable and her voice is like honey. And if all that wasn’t enough for ya, Ingardia just dropped her debut record, entitled Getaway. Some of my favorite tracks are “Lost Love” and “Talk to Me.” Y’all keep an eye on this gal as she continues to blossom into her career so we can all say we were here at the beginning. – Bluegrass Barbie

Cris Jacobs, One of These Days

Within the rock and jam realms, the name Cris Jacobs has been well-regarded and sought-out for many years, especially with his early project The Bridge, a vastly popular Baltimore-based rock ‘n’ soul ensemble up and down the Eastern Seaboard in the early 2000s, only to disband in 2011.

But, for the guitar wizard himself, it was Jacobs’ 2024 release, One of These Days, that really catapulted him into the national scene, especially in the Americana, bluegrass, and folk arenas. Produced by Jerry Douglas and featuring the Infamous Stringdusters as its backing band, the album includes appearances by Billy Strings, Lee Ann Womack, Sam Bush, and Lindsay Lou. At its core, One of These Days circles back to Jacobs’ early bluegrass, folk, and blues influences. But, more so, the record finally tells the rest of the world what a lot of us have already known for some time now – Cris Jacobs is one hell of a talented singer, songwriter, and musician. – Garret K. Woodward

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, I Built A World

The longtime fiddler for Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway shows off captivating songwriting alongside her impeccable playing skills and impressive vocals on I Built A World, her first album in nearly four years. Featuring the likes of Tuttle, Sam Bush, Dierks Bentley, Brit Taylor, and her husband Jason Carter, the 11-song adventure from Keith-Hynes – up for Best Bluegrass Album at the 67th Annual GRAMMYs – follows her journey from being homeschooled to making a living as an independent musician on her own terms.

Standouts range from the frenetic, longing “Will You Ever Be Mine” to the waltz-like, Dobro-heavy “The Last Whippoorwill,” proving that Keith-Hynes is poised to be a power player in bluegrass and country music for years to come. – Matt Wickstrom

Amythyst Kiah, Still + Bright

The sparkling singer-songwriter Amythyst Kiah sought a different direction this year for her third solo LP. She’d previously shown her ability to deliver emotionally powerful, socially relevant, and poignant material. But she wanted her music to reflect other aspects of her personality in her latest work, both her warm and humorous side, plus her interest in Eastern philosophy and spirituality. All these things are nicely balanced in Still + Bright, with Butch Walker’s production touches incorporating unexpected musical contributions like nifty pedal steel licks or fuzztone guitar riffs, plus Kiah’s own supportive and inspired banjo colorations and edgy lead vocals.

It was a tour de force that was even more impressive in live performance, and Kiah got rave reviews throughout her tour that included highly appreciative responses from the crowds who saw her performances during Americanafest in Nashville. In addition, Kiah’s been part of Our Native Daughters (an all-women-of-color supergroup also featuring Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, and Allison Russell). She extended her collaborative outreach on Still + Bright, working with such co-writers and features as punk legend Tim Armstrong, Sadler Vaden (a guitarist-vocalist for Jason Isbell’s 400 Unit), former Pentatonix member Avi Kaplan, and Sean McConnell (a singer-songwriter who’s also written with Brittney Spencer and Bethany Cosentino). All this reveals a dynamic artist willing to continue exploring new areas, while making some of the year’s most intriguing and exciting music. – Ron Wynn

AJ Lee & Blue Summit, City of Glass

In case you have any doubts about the absolute magnitude of AJ Lee & Blue Summit, I will personally fund your one-way ticket to this transparent metropolis. City of Glass presents precisely what its title suggests – an entire ecosphere generated from its contents. The 12 tracks on this album cultivate a moving array of sensibilities, from tender love ballads to humorous narratives to honeyed poetics to grade-A yodeling. Brimming with multi-hyphenate talents, AJ Lee, Sullivan Tuttle, and Scott Gates all contribute lead vocals and songwriting credits to the compilation. Jan Purat’s fiddling serves as a raconteur, always perfectly delivering each narrative. Tuttle’s sister, Molly, even makes the trip from her City of Gold to join in for a tune. All in all, this album is a wondrous sonic journey that anyone would be remiss not to make! – Oriana Mack

MJ Lenderman, Manning Fireworks

From Hurricane Helene-ravaged Asheville, North Carolina, singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman has always been more than solid in the field of twangy indie-rock. Nevertheless, he took a quantum leap forward this year with the spectacular Manning Fireworks album, especially the song that falls in the exact middle of the track list. “She’s Leaving You” is the heart of Manning Fireworks, with verses that sketch out a tawdry Las Vegas hookup. But the part that resonates is the chorus, sung by Lenderman in a raw voice that falls somewhere between deadpan and shellshocked: “It falls apart, we all got work to do/ It gets dark, we all got work to do…” Lenderman repeats the line a half-dozen times and you would, too. If ever a chorus summed up the exhausted anguish of a moment in time, it’s this one. – David Menconi

Brenna MacMillan, Dear Life

Bluegrass, as an industry, operates about a decade behind the curve. As such, it feels more than remarkable when you find a straight-ahead bluegrass artist who’s not only on the cutting edge, but may be the actual blade. Brenna MacMillan’s debut solo album, Dear Life, displays all of the ways this picker, songwriter, singer, content creator, and online personality is pushing the trad envelope and establishing new models for success in the genre. Bluegrass has always felt like a direct-to-consumer business, but never with this level of intention – or with such ease on new media and social media.

Dear Life is a gorgeous collection, filled with MacMillan’s Nashville community and several legends, too – like Ronnie McCoury, Peter Rowan, and Sarah Jarosz. It’s down-the-middle bluegrass, but it’s entirely fresh and unique, with engaging songwriting and often surprising contours and melodies. There are many exciting things about MacMillan’s artistry, but the music is the most entrancing of all. – Justin Hiltner

Andrew Marlin, Phthalo Blue

This quietly-released full-length instrumental album from Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin was far and away the record I found myself returning to over and over again in 2024.

The name Phthalo Blue refers to the family of blue and green pigments most often used in painting (I had to look this up). At first I wondered why Andrew might choose a title so obscure and hard to pronounce, but the more time I spent digging into both the music and the color family, the more they took me to the same calming, centered place.

I have loved all of Andrew’s non-Watchhouse endeavors over the last few years – from his multiple 2021 releases to Mighty Poplar to his recent release, Wild Rose of Morning with Jordan Tice and Christian Sedelmyer. Hopefully he continues to deliver more of this prolific, purely creative output, seemingly unfettered by commercial expectations; simultaneously reverential to the instrumental traditions it pulls from and inherently perfect for our modern age. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs

Middle Sattre, Tendencies

Middle Sattre are part of a movement of queer artists brewing down in Austin. Their brand of indie folk is as devastating as it is finely crafted. Tendencies is a painful autobiographical work, presenting vignettes of growing up queer and Mormon. The collective navigate these stories with care and delicate musicianship, building a portrait of sorrow – and a determination to survive. This kind of documentation, of people who stay true to themselves no matter the cost, are essential now more than ever. There is a deep and serious artistry in Tendencies, haunting, beautiful, and impossible to forget. – Rachel Cholst

Aoife O’Donovan, All My Friends

It was difficult to imagine what would follow Aoife O’Donovan’s Age of Apathy, her reflection on living through the pandemic. However, with All My Friends, O’Donovan shows how well her creativity and artistic style can thrive in new musical and lyrical territory. I love how this album includes guest artist, orchestral, and choral collaboration, making the music itself feel as grand and complex as the album’s themes: the women’s suffrage movement and one of its leading figures, Carrie Chapman Catt. O’Donovan’s wordplay is as sharp as ever and she doesn’t shy away from historical details or present-day truths, whether celebratory or sobering. The production and arrangements do everything possible to complement and enhance the impact of the songs, even if that means turning everything down to let the implications of O’Donovan’s words sink in. Be prepared to feel so much, but then want to start it all over again. – Kira Grunenberg

Katie Pruitt, Mantras

Katie Pruitt possesses a voice for the ages. In 2020, the powerhouse made an incredible splash with her debut album, Expectations, a raw and cosmic set that drowned out all others. Her songwriting pen proved to be as potent and razor-sharp as her vocal cords. Four years later, Pruitt still defines the soul-crushing Americana genre on her own terms. With Mantras, she expands her musical sensibilities and stretches her creative muscles in impressive ways. Such moments as “Jealous of the Boys” and “Blood Related” serve as needle-prick moments of sheer vulnerability, woven together with her signature mountain-rattling peaks (“All My Friends”). Pruitt pieces together a tattered photo book, one that gives a glimpse into her very soul. – Bee Delores

Photo Credit: Amythyst Kiah by Photography by Kevin & King; Katie Gavin by Alexa Viscius; Bronwyn Keith-Hynes by Alexa King Stone.

Two Women on the Cutting Edge of Bluegrass’s Future

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

At whatever level you may be plugged into the online bluegrass scene, you have surely heard, seen, or scrolled into content by Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and Brenna MacMillan. These two young, talented pickers are part of a vibrant and blossoming community of traditional musicians and folk artists that includes folks like Cristina Vane, Victor Furtado, Hilary Klug, Wyatt Ellis, and many more.

What makes these creators stand apart, especially Keith-Hynes and MacMillan, is that they aren’t just shoehorning social media into their art-making and creative processes to move up Music City ladders and check abstract music industry boxes. Instead, they’ve intentionally demonstrated how powerful, engaging, and charming content can be when it’s made with art, creativity, tradition, and joyful, cooperative generation as its focal points. Instead of bending over backward to construct virality and lean into transient socials trends, they let their talent, their songs, and their communities do all the talking.

In May, Keith-Hynes released her second solo album, I Built a World, her first project to center songs and her recently-developed, impressive vocals. Drawing on musicians and pickers from her immediate circle and her main gig – Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – as well as tapping notable country stars and bluegrass legends, the project finds Keith-Hynes at her most confident and unbothered. This is a fiddler-singer-front woman who has found her voice – literally, through work, practice, and vocal lessons as well as figuratively, not satisfied to craft a career on bowing the fiddle alone.

@bronwynmusic Somehow Tonight [Earl Scruggs] SPBGMA stairwell jam!!! Our favorite acoustics for sweet harmonies 😇 🎻: Bronwyn Keith-Hynes 🪕: Brenna @Brenna MacMillan 🎸: Danielle Yother #spgbma #bluegrass #indoor #festival #nashville #harmonies #womeninmusic #banjo #guitar #fiddle #fridaynights #weekend #fyp #stairwellsinging #explore #foryou #bluegrasstiktok ♬ original sound – Bronwyn Keith-Hynes

Later this year, MacMillan will release her debut solo album. Its lead single, “What’s to Come,” features Ronnie McCoury and is indeed a harbinger for the superb album to follow. This project, which highlights MacMillan’s prolific songwriting and features her musical community fleshing out the band, is built directly upon the successes she, Keith-Hynes, and others have found on the internet. Eschewing labels, management, or traditional roll outs, MacMillan will release the project herself, with funds raised on GoFundMe, bringing the music directly to her consumers on her own website and socials channels without “middle men.”

So, not only are MacMillan and Keith-Hynes innovating on ideas around what it means to be a side person, a career picker, and multi-hyphenate, professional traditional musicians, they’re taking all of their expertise as online brands and businesswomen to find success for themselves, on their own terms. They’re focusing on what matters, centering their communities, and making incredible, superlative music at the same time.

BGS connected with MacMillan and Keith-Hynes together via video chat to talk about their unique approaches to making albums, content, and music, while highlighting the deep and tight-knit “bluegrass influencer” circle they’ve each helped create since moving to Nashville and putting their all into bluegrass.

I wanted to start by talking about community and musical community – one of the reasons why I wanted to have you both in conversation with each other is how you each rely on, draw from, and center your musical communities in what you create. It may look like these are solo projects that you’re making, but they’re clearly not solitary projects – and they don’t really feel like vanity projects, either. from the outside looking in either. It really feels you’re making music with other people so you can make music with other people. Could you talk about your work, your solo albums, and working in your communities?

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes: Yeah, I think first and foremost, me and Brenna are good friends and we just ended up being drawn together. We both moved to Nashville around the same time and ended up doing a lot of things together and had a lot of similar interests. That’s cool to find. I haven’t found that many women who have my same interests until I moved to Nashville and then all of a sudden I felt like there was a whole bunch. It’s been really awesome to find that.

First of all, I’m just such a fan of so many people, and I wouldn’t want to make music any other way. My project was based around songs from my community, which was really special to me. It was like a little nerve wracking reaching out to friends and people I respected to be like, “Do you have a song that you’re not going to record that I could record?” But, thankfully, a lot of people did – including Brenna – and I ended up recording one of her songs. And, she sang on it and it was awesome!

I feel like I couldn’t do it alone. I know my strengths and then I know other people’s strengths and I want to make sure we’re all [drawing on our strenghts]. I don’t know if singing is my strength, but it’s something I feel passionate about and feel driven to do for whatever reason. I know the things that I want to put out in the world; I want to make sure the music I’m making has the best parts of myself, but then the best parts of everyone else who’s playing on it.

I think that folks who aren’t just straight white men in this industry, we realize from the get-go that we have to have others with us. We have to do it together. Otherwise we’re not going to go the distance. I feel that in both of your music, as well. But Brenna, I wonder what that question brings up for you, as you’re thinking about and positioning your album to release as well?

Brenna MacMillan: It’s funny, because when Bronwyn asked about songs that I had, I had like a bunch and at that time I wasn’t even thinking about [making] an album at all. I think it was maybe like a couple months later that I decided, based on my friends that kept being like, “You should record some of these songs!” And I was like, “I guess…” I wasn’t thinking about it at all whatsoever.

Then that’s another way like to get my songwriting out there, too. And why wait for someone to come to me for songs if they don’t even know that there are songs? Besides my friends, which is who I first would want to do my songs anyway. It’s funny, because obviously it’s really cool putting out your own music, but I still get more excited when “Riddle” comes on than when “What’s to Come” comes on. [Laughs] That is so cool!

Someone else’s vision for your song, it’s like the coolest thing ever to me. Because, I know what my brain comes up with so it’s not shocking, but someone else’s ideas around something that you wrote – it’s like the coolest thing ever, and I guess that’s why I love the community. I feel like community is like the word that I say way too much, but I do I love it. For Bronwyn, Cristina [Vane], Hilary [Klug], Emily, and Mallory, to some extent back in 2018, we all were moving to town around that time and then 2020 hit and I think that’s when we all got a little closer, because we were all bored and wandering around. I took a lot of walks with my friends, individually, we tried to stay across the path from each other, but I think those bonding moments brought us closer. We were like, “Let’s get coffee” or “let’s get dinner,” and then we ended up making a video or something and it all evolved into great friendship, plus people online being like, “Oh, we like to hear you guys play together!”

@brennamacbanjo Friday night with Lester Flatt! #bluegrass #harmonies #sisters #womeninmusic #fyp #banjo #fiddle #musicians #foryou #friday #weekend #vibes #flatt #scruggs @bronwynkeithhynes @cvanemusic ♬ original sound – brennamacbanjo

One of the things I love most about that whole community of content creators – you’re talking about Cristina Vane and a lot of these other folks you create with here in Nashville – it never feels like you’re trying to shoehorn bluegrass into contemporary content creation. It really seems that making bluegrass music and making roots music with your friends is the impetus, and then you made it fit into social media – instead of vice versa. Like, it’s happened organically and from a community standpoint first, and not just from “I have a social strategy. I have a five year plan.” Do you agree or disagree?

BM: Oh yeah, I agree. There’s not much strategy that’s happened in here. There’s not a lot of that going on. [Laughs]

And yet, I can tell you objectively from the outside looking in, y’all are still operating with 110% more strategy in mind than most of bluegrass. [Laughs]

BKH: I feel like Brenna and I have both talked about – correct me if I’m not saying this right, Brenna – wanting social media to serve us, rather than for us to serve social media. The end goal, for at least for both of us, is not like to become a social media star, it’s to have it serve us, to get our names and our music out to more people.

BM: Yeah! And it felt like it was very random that social media took off for me. I was just like, “Where are you guys coming from? Why do you want to hear me kick off a J.D. Crowe song like every day?” But at the same time, it has its own frustrations and that’s when me – and I think a bunch of the other girls that do this side by side with their music careers – we’re like, “We’re going to have this, but only if it makes sense for helping promote our live gigs and any projects we’re doing.” But as soon as I get nasty comments, or this, or that I’m like, “Oh, I will literally just get off of this app if it’s going to go this direction.” I just block people and then keep going.

I want an audience who will appreciate the things that I want them to appreciate. I think that I’ve trained my audience, too. Basically I shoved it in there, “You are going to listen to this slow song and try to enjoy that. And if you don’t, then I’m going to take you [out of my following]…” Because there have been some people who think that I am a content creator on there, and I’m like, “No, I play music and I took an hour out of my day and posted this video and we’re lucky that happened. Now I’m on my way to a gig and I don’t need some [negative] comment.” But you could come to a live gig and request a song!

Brenna, one of the things I love about your upcoming album and the messaging around it is that you’re really doing  a direct-to-consumer business model and roll out. You’re being like, “Y’all can come to me. You already know how to find me, so this is where you can find the music, too.” I think it’s amazing and again, it’s the cutting edge of what the future of bluegrass will be while it’s also so fucking trad. It’s like back in the day, when bluegrass music required taking the car battery out of the car to play a show in the high school auditorium and then putting the battery back in to drive to the next high school auditorium.

It’s like you’re doing that in the 21st century. You’re being a DIY bluegrass musician, but in 2024. Can you talk a little bit about the direct to consumer model you’re using with your album roll out?

BM: I was like, I need to build a website so that there’s everything in one place – I remember why I did it, too, because there are a bunch of fake accounts. I knew I needed something out there to be authentic and to have all of my official links. That was literally my number one goal with the website. So now, here’s the link to my website, you can find my YouTube channel, my Facebook, my Instagram, my TikTok from there. And you’re going to know you’re in the right place. I’ve basically just started to try to push everything to my website and go from there to everything else, even if it’s taking you back to Instagram. Because [the website is] where everything’s going to happen, so that you know that it’s me instead of some person scamming you. I guess with that in mind, I started trying to link everything, like in my stories, when I’m talking about anything coming up, I just say, “Go to my website!”

Bronwyn, I wanted to ask you again about community and about bringing your circle, your scene into your album. I love all of the features on your album and I also love that it doesn’t just feel like you’re reaching for a Collaborative Recording of the Year nomination. 

[All laugh]

But I wanted to know how it felt to you, as you were thinking about who you wanted to have on the record and why you wanted to have them on the record?

BKH: I’m glad to hear you say that it feels like it’s in service of the music, because that was definitely my intent. It was the funnest part of [recording the album], for me. I did kind of make those decisions after the tracks were done and I’d done my vocals. I just didn’t know how it was going to turn out until I heard it. Then I would brainstorm with Brent [Truitt], and Jason [Carter], and whoever about who to get on it. Dudley Connell was somebody I was really excited about and I’d never met him. I didn’t know him. Someone just gave me his number, I called him up and left him a nervous voicemail. But yeah, he turned out to be the sweetest guy ever – and he’s a bluegrass hero, I love all those Johnson Mountain Boys records.

It’s crazy especially being a new singer, I haven’t heard my voice recorded much ever. Then to hear my voice with all these other voices that I know and I’ve heard a lot – to hear like that combination for the first time – it was like very surreal!

What was it like working with Dierks [Bentley]? We all know his bluegrass pedigree and his connections to the Station Inn and to the McCourys and that he’s always had one foot so solidly in bluegrass, but y’all would have gotten to know him and got to spend some time with him on the road with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, too. I wondered how how that conversation happened and also what it felt like to you to have someone who has gold records and platinum records collaborating with you on your record?

BKH: I grew with his Up On The Ridge album, it was literally one of the first bluegrass albums I heard around my college years.
I was obsessed with it and I thought it was so cool. It got me into listening to the more trad stuff, but I’d always loved his music and then being Jason [Carter’s] partner, and Jason and he were friends even before he was famous. So they’ve been friends from the get go.

I’d met him a few times through Jason and then again when we were on tour [opening for him], that was cool. ‘Cause I felt like we could meet [more as peers], not just because I’m somebody’s partner. But now, this is my gig and this is your gig. And you’re asking us to sit in every night. I felt a little bit more comfortable to make that ask. He just came into Brent’s studio one day and tracked it in under an hour. He’s great! Very quick.

Brenna, talk to me a little bit and if you have features on your upcoming album – and if you can’t talk about them yet, that’s totally fine.

BM: I know, I was trying to think of what I should say – I don’t know, I’m the one in charge! But let me check, I don’t know if Brenna wants to tell all that yet. [Laughs]

At the very least, we can talk about Ronnie [McCoury] and “What’s to Come.” Ronnie’s one of my favorites. Talk a bit about, again, bringing in community and bringing in the scene that already surrounds you.

BM: The core band in the studio was [Mike] Bub on bass and Jake Stargel on guitar. Me, I played banjo on four or five of the tracks, but I have been writing a lot on clawhammer lately and I know that I’m not good at it, so I had Frank Evans come in for those and then I had Cory [Walker] play on a couple very last minute. I was thinking, it’s just going to be better if he does it.

When the special guests ideas popped in my brain, I was thinking, “Do I want special guests to be like my friends, my age, or like people that I really are like heroes of mine? Is this the time to ask them? I don’t know.” Nobody knows who I am, but that’s okay. I had met Ronnie a handful of times in kind of settings where it was like, “I’m here with so and so” and I’m just a little curmudgeon. [Laughs]

“What’s to Come,” it’s like a reflective life song. I know that I sound like a small baby when I sing, and I was thinking of someone with an older sounding voice. Like wanting ancient, lonesome vibes so that there could be old and young together, pondering about life. If you’re young or if you’re old, you still ask all the same questions about life.

Also, [Ronnie’s] gritty mandolin playing. I love it so much. Jarrod Walker played on most of the core mandolin stuff, but he happened to be out of the country that session. I was like, this is perfect! But it’s funny, because I didn’t even know if Ronnie was going to bring his mandolin! [Laughs]

To wrap up, here’s a question I had for both of you, because you’re both musical shape shifters. You move in and out of musical contexts so easily; you’re both side people, you’re both front people, you’re both social media brands. How do you maintain your senses of self?

BKH: I feel like I can’t get away from myself! I don’t feel like I ever even think about that. The only way I’ve struggled with that a little bit, or thought about that more, is doing the solo projects. That’s where I’m like, “Wow. OK. What would Bronwyn do next?” But I think I know what I like and I know what I want to do. I’m just like, “How am I going to do that? I need to figure that out.

BM: I think similarly, I don’t really think about it that much. I think I know what I like, too. And I know what I don’t like. From the get go, I’ve very much just been myself online. I come home from the lab job and do a video with dark circles [under my eyes] and grunge and smelling like hemp trash. That’s what I established from the beginning. So now, I feel comfortable being myself.

Pretty much everything has been my own ideas and, it’s funny, because ten of my eleven songs are originals on the album, three of which are co writes, but hearing it come to life in the studio with other people, it still ended up being what I thought it should be. Which is weird, because there’s no way that I could bring some of these musicians into the studio who are eons beyond what I could imagine, but they knew exactly what the track needed. It does sound like me still and what my vision would have been if I had expressed it [all myself].

BKH: I feel like I’m like more myself these days than I’ve ever been. I feel like for a while, starting out in bluegrass, I had a lot of ideas of what a woman in bluegrass needed to look like, or be, or act like. In the last couple years, maybe inspired by being with Molly in Golden Highway, I feel like I’ve been able to let a lot of that stuff go – about how I should dress and whatever. Now, I embrace the things I actually like.

Photo Credit: Brenna MacMillan by Sophie Clark; Bronwyn Keith-Hynes by Alexa King Stone.

Your Guide to the Internet’s Essential Bluegrass Content Creators

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

When I started playing mandolin in 2004, the internet was integral to my experience. I spent countless hours on websites like Mandolin Cafe, used a PayPal account I made when I was 9 to buy albums on eBay, and downloaded countless viruses onto our family computer pirating bluegrass recordings on Limewire. When the internet went public 30 years ago, it immediately changed the world and bluegrass. By the end of the ’90s, blogging had become mainstream and bluegrass had cultivated its own corner of the web with forums and listservs like BGRASS-L. When broadband replaced dial-up, people were able to share large files such as recordings and videos and information sharing exploded.

I grew up in a generation that saw regular people like Justin Kan (who would later go on to co-found Twitch) become celebrities through vlogging and like many people my age, I wanted to be a content creator. “Content” is just the soulless marketing word for the cultural ephemera humans have always created, but in the internet age. When I was in high school, microblogging became popular with platforms like Twitter (now X) while social media sites such as Vine and Snapchat that favored short form content appeared, creating another paradigm shift towards the hyper-specific, unpolished, slice-of-life videos we now see on TikTok and Instagram Reels.

My social media career began in earnest in 2019. I was burned out from touring and was trying to find a way to stay relevant without traveling so much. I started by posting clips of myself playing tunes that I was learning, which eventually morphed into a Patreon page. Patreon became hugely popular with artists after the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but at the time I began using it there were relatively few educational bluegrass pages. I ended up formatting mine in a similar way to podcasts that I subscribed to at the time. I studied up on how the algorithm works and during lockdown began creating and posting fervently.

A preview of Tristan Scroggin’s Patreon profile.

Once restrictions were lifted, I found myself drawn back into performing and had less and less time to consistently post. In the ever intensifying war for attention, consistency is key, but I found no satisfaction in churning out things I didn’t care about and the things I do care about take time. So I found myself burned out again, trying to learn how to slow down. It’s a vicious and common cycle.

Ultimately, I love creating new things and sharing them with people. This is true of all of the people on this list, many of whom are friends and part of a community that openly shares tips and tricks on how to navigate the unfiltered digital miasma of social media. For every entry on this list there are a dozen more who I couldn’t include for space. Separating the wheat from the chaff in the world of online bluegrass content can be difficult, but there are many shining beacons that have and will continue to influence those that follow them.

Billy Strings

Billy had a small cult following in his home state of Michigan before videos of him performing at festivals went viral. Videos became an integral part of Billy’s brand with footage from his concerts becoming inescapable for a time. Taping culture, the act of recording a live show and posting it online – an activity with ties to old school tapes of bluegrass shows that David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Sandy Rothman created and distributed along the West Coast to help spread bluegrass – had grown with social media and videos of full performances were shared religiously online. This practice has challenged more traditional bluegrass artists who have often relied on physical CD sales and see digital distribution as undermining that effort. Despite that, Billy’s most recent record Me / And / Dad was #1 in pure album sales in country, and #5 in all of music selling more than 15,000 copies upon release.

Billy’s Youtube channel has more than 300,000 subscribers and currently features everything from music videos to full concerts to behind the scenes mini-documentaries. Billy has since partnered with Nugs.net to livestream and host his current shows. Nugs is a livestream website that provides high quality video and audio of concerts, mostly rock and jam bands providing an updated version of the Grateful Dead tapers from days of yore.

Carter Vintage

Since their start nearly a decade ago, Carter Vintage Guitars has posted demonstration videos and in-store performance footage to their YouTube channel, which became a who’s-who collection of Nashville talent. While the videos started out as informal captures from around the store, by the end of 2016 the production quality had increased with Jon Roncolato and Keith Cypert making sure they looked and sounded great. While there are videos from hugely popular rock and Americana artists such as Jason Isbell, the majority of their most popular videos are from Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings from when they had recently moved to Nashville and were still relatively unknown.

Clover Lynn

@hillbillygothic Heres an old tune called Katey Daley hope yall enjoy #banjo #fyp #bluegrass #appalachia #music ♬ original sound – Clover-Lynn

Clover Lynn, also known as hillbillygothic, is from Southern Appalachia and plays banjo with a dark gothic-esque twist that challenges Steve Martin’s assertion that “you can’t play a sad song on the banjo.” She gained a massive amount of fame on TikTok and later Instagram for dueting posts. (A duet contains two videos in a split screen that play at the same time.) Specifically, she’d duet TikToks featuring men “challenging” feminism, spouting misogyny, or outright supporting violence against women. When they began spewing hate speech, Clover would appear alongside the original video loudly playing tunes like “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” over their bad opinions. This trend was extremely popular; the most popular post I could find had 8.2 million likes. Clover also uses her platform to advocate for the Appalachian region and its often overlooked BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ people, issues, and history.

Dirty Laundry

Marcus Veliz, through his page Dirty Laundry, has created a collection of moments and memories from his travels. Marcus is a wanderer driven by mindfulness. His videos offer short, musical meditations in nature that reflect on the beauty of living in the moment, which then informs his music. It’s all very “carpe banjo.” He has cultivated a following of nearly 40,000 followers on social media, but has deliberately chosen to focus on Instagram, because he values the community that he can build there. When scrolling on an app, these moments can be completely disembodied from the people who made them, but by creating a collection of these moments, Marcus, like a poet’s anthology, has created a digital visage of himself with Dirty Laundry that feels as if Woody Guthrie had an Instagram account. (Read BGS’s 2023 feature on Dirty Laundry here.)

Educational Videos by Eli Gilbert, David Benedict, and Lessons with Marcel

Educational content is hugely popular online. While there are countless pages dedicated to teaching bluegrass, I’ve collected just a few here. All three produce educational content that is supplemented by other work. Eli Gilbert has run his YouTube channel for nearly a decade, growing an audience of people learning the banjo (that included myself). Eli centralized these folks on his Patreon page and Discord server. While he’s not the first to post banjo tutorials or start a banjo Patreon page, he is currently the most popular banjo instructor on Patreon with more than 2,000 subscribers.

David Benedict has been well-known in the mandolin scene for quite some time. He curates a Mandolin Mondays series that’s run continuously since 2016. What started as videos of him playing tunes grew into a collection of over 400 videos in partnership with Mandolin Cafe that feature incredible mandolinists from all over the world. Check out his YouTube channel, too.

Marcel Ardans has over 500 full-length videos on his channel, Lessons with Marcel. Perhaps his most unique contribution to the genre is the bluegrass YouTube video essay. Video essays are exactly what they sound like and in the last decade they’ve gained immense popularity with the general public, especially on YouTube. With educational topics such as A Guide to Bluegrass History by Subgenre to more light hearted ones like The Untold History of Bluegrass Triangle, Marcel is filling a niche in the bluegrass community by providing thoughtful analysis in a style that audiences have become accustomed to. Marcel has also collaborated with many other popular social media pickers in the same sphere such as Jake Eddy and Hayes Griffin.

In 2023, Marcel was an official social media ambassador at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass business conference, where he held a guitar contest in partnership with IBMA and Martin Guitars.

Hillary Klug

Hillary Klug gained international popularity for multiple viral videos featuring her fiddling while buck dancing. In addition to her 100,000 YouTube subscribers, she has more than a million Facebook fans with her most popular video on FB sitting at over 64 million views. Hillary has been able to leverage short form content to reach people all over the world and her frequent collaborators – such as Cristina Vane, Brenna MacMillan, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes – have also developed substantial followings on these platforms thanks to video creation in this style.

Molly Tuttle

When sites like YouTube and Facebook launched, they created networks that many used to connect with real world friends and family. But videos uploaded to share with distant relatives had the side effect of being visible to the general public. So when Jack Tuttle began filming his children, Michael, Sully, and Molly, to share their musical talent with family back in Illinois, suddenly thousands of people could see their virtuosity. The family formed a band called The Tuttles with AJ Lee, performing regularly and continuing to post videos that would garner hundreds of thousands of views until the oldest, Molly, went to college.

I distinctly remember watching their most popular video dozens of times which featured Michael, the youngest, playing El Cumbanchero. I watched that video over and over again with a sense of both jealousy and admiration. This feeling would become familiar as similar videos – such as a very young Sierra Hull playing with Sam Bush – would also go viral.

Molly has gone on to become one of the most popular bluegrass acts currently touring. She was the first woman to win the IBMA Guitar Player of the Year and she won a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album in 2022. In that same year, she was nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy alongside hugely popular artists such as Samara Joy and Latto. Molly’s brother Sully also still plays, professionally touring with childhood friend, bandmate, and fellow bluegrass internet child celebrity AJ Lee in her band Blue Summit.

The Petersens

The Petersens are a family band based in/near Branson, Missouri that has played theaters in that area for more than a decade. After their oldest daughter, Ellen, made the top 48 on American Idol (season 16), they began producing videos of themselves performing, which have become extremely popular. A video clip of Ellen’s audition is one of the first videos posted on their YouTube channel and currently sits at over 3 million views. They have since garnered more than 200 million views, which they’ve utilized to gain fans in countries all over the world. This form of vlogging has created an entire ecosystem and a style many other family bands emulate, such as the Sleepy Man Banjo Boys, The Family Sowell, the Cotton Pickin’ Kids, Williamson Branch, and more.

Bluegrass Barbie

A post by bluegrass.barbie on Instagram.

Bluegrass Barbie may not quite belong on this list, but I absolutely couldn’t write a piece about influential bluegrass social media personalities in the year 2024 without mentioning them.

As a chronically online teen, I watched the birth of internet “memes” – a term originally coined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in 1976. I very distinctly remember the first time I saw a bluegrass meme. Dread washed over me, as I was struck with a haunting vision of a future full of low effort, bottom text memes misquoting Bill Monroe. I lived in this “No Exit” style social media hellscape for years until 2023, when Bluegrass Barbie appeared.

This Instagram account doesn’t have the numbers (239 followers at the time of writing), but they do have the jokes. Rather than “dunking” on Mark O’Connor or Billy Strings ad nauseam, Bluegrass Barbie presents a look at the humor in growing up as a young woman in bluegrass in a way that is relatable, contemporary, and hilarious. It’s the only good active bluegrass meme account; fight me about it.

Russ Carson

Russ Carson, known as the banjo player for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder since 2014, runs 81Crowe, a one stop shop YouTube Channel for banjo nerdery as well as a source of high-quality, behind the scenes footage of both his personal and professional life.

Russ creates more traditional vlog content. Videos of jam sessions have shown up on YouTube since the very beginning, but Russ innovated them by implementing a gopro he would wear on his head to film, simulating a POV experience for the viewer as a participant. In addition to performance and educational videos, Russ provides video content of private jam sessions and conversations with talented friends as well as his off-stage experience touring with one of the most well known bluegrass bands out there. His explanation of his personal thoughts on banjo as well as his other hobbies, including photography, are the kind of personal details that make vlogging what it is.

Take’s Bluegrass Album Channel

Takehiko Saiki’s Take’s Bluegrass Album Channel has an air of mystique about it. Since 2014 it has served as a digital museum where out-of-print vinyl records, albums, and CDs have been sporadically posted by the hundreds. In fact, this channel is no longer active. After posting 1,300 albums, Take started Take’s Bluegrass Album Channel Phase Two, which already has 1,000 more albums. Take is a fan of “roots music” in general and runs additional YouTube channels for folk, blues, jazz, and country music, but he seems to have a particular love for bluegrass. In addition to his album channels he has a channel for recordings of live performances from Bill Monroe to the Flying Burrito Brothers and everything in between.

These channels are a treasure trove for fans of classic bluegrass and an invaluable resource for amateur historians like myself. So much so that I felt conflicted about including it on this list for fear that it might disappear. Take is very clear that he will take down anything, immediately, at the request of the owner and states that the channel’s mission is to “make it possible for bluegrass lovers [all] over the world to have access to as many bluegrass albums not available on CD as possible.”

Photo Credit: Hillary Klug courtesy of the artist; Clover Lynn by Madison Tunnicliff.