Tag: California

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Brothers Comatose, Caitlin Canty, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Your weekly dose of brand new roots music is here – You Gotta Hear This!

Our West Coast friends, The Brothers Comatose, kick us off this week with their new single, “Golden Grass.” The title track for their upcoming album, it’s a loping bluegrass number that pays tribute to the special regional string band styles and genre-bending of their home state, California. From the opposite side of the country, Caitlin Canty brings us “Hotter Than Hell,” a nostalgic song about nighttime summer drives, first loves, and first jobs that features fellow Vermonter Matt Lorenz on backing vocals.

We have a couple great new music videos, too, this week. Singer-songwriter Kai Crowe-Getty shares a live performance video of “Dancing on a Razor’s Edge,” a heartfelt original song about grief, loss, that takes inspiration from – as Joni Mitchell would put it – “you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.” Meanwhile, Hillary Reynolds also comes to us from an Americana space with her new track, “Can’t Turn Off My Mind,” a song about insomnia with an accompanying video that demonstrates how, to Reynolds, sleeplessness can become a familiar friend.

Keep scrolling though, because Nashville-based honky-tonker and picker-singer-songwriter Mose Wilson gives an unexpected flair to traditional country with his song, “Since I Lost You.” Wilson’s friend and sometimes bandmate, award-winning bassist Vickie Vaughn, returns to You Gotta Hear This once again with her latest Mountain Home Music Co. single, a fiery, soulful, and plaintive rendition of Vince Gill’s classic, “Liza Jane.” And, from just up the road across town in Nashville, string duo and old-time aficionados Golden Shoals turn their skills to “dad rock” for their pro-worker, anti-work-week summer anthem, “Five Day Weekend.” Of course, it’s just perfect for entering a long holiday weekend.

Country, bluegrass, folk, Americana, and blends of all of the above are all right here on BGS. You Gotta Hear This!

The Brothers Comatose, “Golden Grass”

Artist: The Brothers Comatose
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “Golden Grass”
Album: Golden Grass
Release Date: May 21, 2025 (single); September 12, 2025 (album)
Label: Swamp Jam Records.

In Their Words: “We wrote ‘Golden Grass’ about the current wave of string bands coming out of California that are creating a new take on an old style of music. They start with their foundations in traditional bluegrass and incorporate folk, rock, and jam elements to form that Western ‘golden grass’ sound. Lots of great string bands have come out of California, like AJ Lee & Blue Summit, Molly Tuttle, and even going back to Old & In the Way who were trailblazers for this type of sound. It’s about taking the heart and soul of bluegrass and infusing it with everything we love about music today.” – Ben Morrison

Caitlin Canty, “Hotter Than Hell”

Artist: Caitlin Canty
Hometown: Danby, Vermont
Song: “Hotter Than Hell”
Album: Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove
Release Date: May 22, 2025 (single); October 2, 2025 (album)
Label: Distributed by Tone Tree

In Their Words: “This is the first track I’m sharing from my forthcoming record, Night Owl Envies the Mourning Dove, out October 2. This song grew from the ground in Vermont, where I was born and raised and have recently returned to raise my little kids. On those hot humid nights before we had air conditioning, my folks would pack us all in the truck and we’d drive along mountain roads with the windows down to cool off. ‘Hotter Than Hell’ is a nostalgic summer throwback to first love, first jobs – those ephemeral firsts seared into memory.

“And making this record was my first time partnering with Sam Kassirer, who produced and played keys. I was nearly 8 months pregnant when we cut the record live at his Great North Sound Society in Maine. I just love to hear fellow Vermonter, Matt Lorenz (The Suitcase Junket) singing his blazing backing vocals on this song.” – Caitlin Canty

Track Credits:
Caitlin Canty – Vocals, acoustic guitar, songwriting
Jeremy Moses Curtis – Bass
Rich Hinman – Electric guitar
Sam Kassirer – Piano, organ
Matt Lorenz – Backing vocals
Ray Rizzo – Drums, percussion

Kai Crowe-Getty, “Dancing on a Razor’s Edge”

Artist: Kai Crowe-Getty
Hometown: Nelson County, Virginia
Song: “Dancing on a Razor’s Edge”
Album: The Wreckage
Release Date: May 23, 2025 (single); June 27, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “In my life, I’m not one who does a lot of looking backwards or dwelling in the past with much intention. This song, like several on the record, does exactly that. The Joni Mitchell refrain of ‘don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone’ was a lost inspiration here. My mother died when I was young and this collection of memories, some with her, some without, is trying to make sense of the present in one of my more personal writes. Like many things we avoid, tuck away, wait to face another day, it tends to come out in unexpected floods and fissures as we navigate the grief of it, standing on different shores.” – Kai Crowe-Getty

Video Credits: Filmed by Zach Phillips. Edited by Kai Crowe-Getty.

Golden Shoals, “Five Day Weekend”

Artist: Golden Shoals
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Song: “Five Day Weekend”
Album: The Dream and The Hunger
Release Date: May 23, 2025

In Their Words: “We live in a world where we’re pushed to our limits of productivity while being sold tons of garbage that we don’t need. At the same time, we could be harnessing AI to do the work that allows humans more leisure time, but Big Tech seems intent on replacing meaningful human work instead. The song just kind of manifested with a dad rock vibe. It details my dream for a world that I think is possible – where we all spend a significant, but not overwhelming, amount of time doing the hard work that a society needs to thrive and the rest of the time taking care of ourselves making the world a great place to live in.” – Mark Kilianski

Track Credits:
Mark Kilianski – Electric guitar, vocals, songwriting
Amy Alvey – Fiddle, vocals
Chris Sartori – Electric bass
Alex Bice – Drum kit, cowbell

Hillary Reynolds, “Can’t Turn Off My Mind”

Artist: Hillary Reynolds
Hometown: Appleton, Wisconsin (for the summer) and Los Angeles, California (for the winter)
Song: “Can’t Turn Off My Mind”
Album: Changing Seasons
Release Date: May 22, 2025 (single); August 8, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “‘Can’t Turn Off My Mind’ ended up being the first song I wrote for my album. It came in stages. I wrote the first half by myself and when I felt like it needed fresh energy, I turned to my dear friend and fellow artist, Madison Malone, for a little nudge. Simply put, ‘Can’t Turn Off My Mind’ is a song about insomnia. I love how the narrative has evolved over time. Since finishing this song, Madison and I have become mothers and insomnia has taken on a new meaning, becoming a familiar friend – whether it was breast feeding and watching Schitt’s Creek in the wee hours of the morning or having an endless to-do list running through my brain at 3 a.m., I love that this song is the first single, setting the tone of my forthcoming morning album, Changing Seasons.” – Hillary Reynolds

Track Credits:
Hillary Reynolds – Vocals, piano, songwriting
Madison Malone – Background vocals
Benjamin Kopf – Acoustic guitar, bass, singing bowl
Tom Shewmake – Octave mandolin
Matt Musty – Percussion
Jim Frink – Drums

Video Credit: Directed and filmed by New Normal Studios.

Vickie Vaughn, “Liza Jane”

Artist: Vickie Vaughn
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Liza Jane”
Release Date: May 23, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “I’ve loved Vince Gill’s ‘Liza Jane’ since I heard it on local country radio when I was little. His version is so iconic and playful and the groove is intoxicating. I wanted to take to the song and add some serious drama, giving it a little bit of a darker vibe and instead of just singing about Liza Jane, I wanted to be pleading and angry and desperate about her.” – Vickie Vaughn

Track Credits:
Vickie Vaughn – Upright bass, lead vocal
Cody Kilby – Guitar
Casey Campbell – Mandolin
Wes Corbett – Banjo
Dave Racine – Drums
Deanie Richardson – Fiddle
Lillie Mae Rische – Harmony vocal
Frank Rische – Harmony vocal

Mose Wilson, “Since I Lost You”

Artist: Mose Wilson
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Since I Lost You”
Album: That’s Love
Release Date: May 28, 2025 (single); July 17, 2025 (album)

In Their Words: “‘Since I Lost You’ is unlike anything I’ve released before. It’s a bridge between worlds – a song that could invite listeners from outside the traditional country audience to experience something new and unexpected. It’s a story of love lost told with a groove that’s both timeless and entirely my own.” – Mose Wilson

Track Credits:
Henry Long – Keyboards
Norbert McGettigan – Bass
John Papageourgiou – Drums
Will Johnson – Electric guitar
Stephen “Tebbs” Kearney – Dobro
Mose Wilson – Vocals, acoustic guitar

Photo Credit: Brothers Comatose by Jessie McCall; Caitlin Canty by Laura Partain.

PHOTOS: Dream Date with JOHNNYSWIM

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Last week, JOHNNYSWIM – husband-and-wife indie-folk duo of Amanda Sudano Ramirez and Abner Ramirez – released their highly-anticipated new album, When the War Is Over. A stand out track, “Los Feliz,” can be found second-to-last in the sequence.

“Los Feliz” was written by Ramirezes and songwriter-producer Britten Newbill. It kicks in with grooving, pocketed drums and warm electric guitar, loping as if up and down the southern California hills.

“Somethin’ ‘bout LA/ Golden hour getaway/ Oh… I want you close,” Amanda sings the opening lines. Abner picks up where she leaves off, creating another musical dialogue – a common facet of the pair’s music across their twenty-year-plus catalog. Their songs feel like intimate vignettes, a window into their lives, their relationship, their family, and their creative processes.

“Los Feliz” is a love song– to each other, to Los Angeles, and to their favorite neighborhood, of course. The lyrics and message feel especially apropos since the devastating LA wildfires, as we all feel heartbroken seeing these neighborhoods we hold dear forever altered. But, like in the track, there’s plenty of redemption to be found in this beautiful city and this sweet corner of the City of Angels.

To celebrate When The War Is Over, JOHNNYSWIM brought Good Country along on an adorable Los Feliz date, taking us and our readers to a few of their favorite spots, captured by their longtime friend and photographer Amy Waters.

Below, Amanda describes their date for each of us as we all get the unlikely treat of third wheeling with JOHNNYSWIM.

Little Dom’s

One of our favorite date activities is to go to Little Dom’s in Los Feliz. It’s an old school Italian restaurant with delicious food, a cozy vibe, and it just makes you feel like you’re in a movie.

Reckless Unicorn

After that, we walk right across the street to an adorable toy shop called The Reckless Unicorn. Because we’re parents (and every parent knows that you can’t go on a date night without talking about your kids), we end up buying our kids presents so they get excited when we go on date nights knowing they’ll usually get a treat when we come home.

Vermont Ave. x Melbourne Ave.

From there, we’ll take a stroll around the neighborhood. There’s a beautiful florist on the corner of Vermont and Melbourne where we’ll pick up some flowers or a plant, or even just smell some roses.

Maru

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All photos by Amy Waters.

Peter Rowan and Sam Grisman Project Will Bring Old & In the Way to the Ryman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On January 9, 2025, there will be a special performance – more so a once-in-a-lifetime celebration – of the groundbreaking music of Old & In the Way at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.

Led by the “Bluegrass Buddha” himself, Peter Rowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the group will be backed by the Sam Grisman Project. The gathering will also feature a murderers’ row of talent: Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie & Rob McCoury, and more.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan told BGS in an exclusive 2022 interview. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old & In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

To preface, Old & In the Way started as impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions in the early 1970s between Rowan, his longtime friend, mandolin guru David Grisman, and Jerry Garcia, iconic guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who reached for his trusty banjo during the gatherings at Garcia’s home in Stinson Beach, California.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan remembers. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

At the time, Garcia was searching for new avenues of creative exploration, seeing as the Dead were in the midst of taking a much-needed hiatus after years of relentless touring and recording. He was also, perhaps subconsciously, trying to tap back into his roots before the Dead, this landscape of the late 1950s/early 1960s where Garcia was heavily involved in the San Francisco Bay Area folk scene.

“And you realized that Jerry was an intergalactic traveler, just dropping in on the Earth scene for a little while, but he was totally at home,” Rowan says of Garcia’s restless penchant and lifelong thirst for acoustic music.

When Old & In the Way formed in 1973, the trio recruited bassist John Kahn, as well as a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements). Sporadic gigs were booked around the Bay Area, with the vibe of the whole affair casual in nature – the ethos one of camaraderie and collaboration, but without expectations or boundaries.

“I remember singing the ending of ‘Land of the Navajo’ at the first rehearsal and I looked over at Jerry,” Rowan recalls. “He kept nodding his head like, ‘go.’ It was like Jack Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at City Lights Bookstore – ‘go, man, go.’ Encouragement, encouragement.”

By 1974, Old & In the Way simply vanished into the cosmic ether, but not before capturing a handful of live performances that have become melodic sacred texts of a crucial crossroads for acoustic music. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.

As it stands today, Rowan, now 82 years old, is the only remaining member of Old & In the Way still actively performing. Garcia, Clements, Kahn, and Hartford have all sadly passed on, with the elder Grisman and Greene retired from touring. Grisman’s son, standup bassist Sam Grisman, is now carrying his father’s bright torch.

And although the tenure of the Old & In the Way was short-lived, the ripple effects of the band’s ongoing influence and enduring legacy remains as vibrant and vital as it was those many years ago, when a handful of shaggy music freaks kicked off a jam that will perpetuate for eternity.

In preparation for the upcoming Old & In the Way showcase at the Ryman on January 9, BGS recently spoke with Sam Grisman, who talked at-length not only about his continued work with Peter Rowan and the intricacies of Jerry Garcia, but also why a band Grisman’s father started over a half-century ago still captivates the hearts and minds of music lovers the world over.

You were five years old when Jerry Garcia passed away. You were really young, but do you remember anything that you hold onto?

Sam Grisman: Yeah, I have a very vivid memory of what our house felt like, smelled like, and just what the energy was like when Jerry was around. And I remember that sort of ease, just the way that he made people feel. It seemed like my parents were at ease when he was around.

And he probably felt at ease being around them. It was probably a safe haven at that house.

Definitely. And, you know, my parents smoked weed in the house. But, my mom was pretty strict about cigarettes. [She] wouldn’t let anybody smoke cigarettes in the house. But, when Jerry was around, he smoked cigarettes in the house. So, part of this smell in my blurry five-year-old memory is the smell of cigarettes. And Jerry would sometimes wear a leather jacket, maybe the smell of leather.

I remember the sound of his laugh. I remember all that music, and some of it I remember so vividly that I just know that part of that memory is reinforced by being there as a little toddler when they were working up [music]. Because they would often work on tunes upstairs in the living room and then take them down to the studio, put them on the mics and pull them.

You just wanted to be around it all and soak it all in.

I was a really curious kid.

With the Ryman show coming up, there’s been a lot of celebration of Old & In the Way as of late, especially with you touring with Peter Rowan and the current Jerry Garcia exhibit at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. You’ve been around those songs your whole life. But, when you think about the context of Old & In the Way, and what you’re doing at the Ryman, what really sticks out with why that was such a special time in not only bluegrass, but in the lives of those people?

I mean, what a lightning-in-the-bottle chapter of all those people’s lives, you know? I think 1973, ’73/’74, was a particularly fertile time for Jerry. He was playing a full schedule with the Dead. He had Jerry Garcia Band stuff. He was playing in Old & In the Way. He was playing pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It seemed like he really had an itch to go back to where his roots were, especially when you look at [the Grateful Dead album] Workingman’s Dead [that was released a] couple years prior.

For all of us, who are looking back on it 50 years in the future, it seems like this momentous, heady time that was just meant to be. But, for those guys in the moment, it was just total serendipity. And the quintessence of just going with the flow – Stinson Beach, California, vibes. They just kind of stumbled into this reality.

“Y’all wanna play?” “Sure, why not.”

Yeah, where it would just be really fun to have this bluegrass band that they didn’t take super seriously, which I think really comes across in the recordings, you know? Because there’s all this joy in that music that might not necessarily have been there if those guys were taking it super seriously or if they needed it to pay their bills. It was a very interesting circumstance.

And for them to call their hero Vassar Clements into the mix, on a sort of whim because Peter found his number on a card in his wallet. It was sort of like a fantasy camp for these guys. Like a bunch of hippies sitting around on the beach, smoking a joint, thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the world’s greatest fiddle player just show up?” “I bet you we could book a gig.” “Hey Jerry, you got these legions of people following you around, you could probably get us a gig, right?”

And that’s kind of how it happened. Those gigs were so magical, because they happened mostly for all of these Deadheads in Marin [County, California], for like 16 months or something.

So, if you really had your finger on the pulse of it and you were going to the Keystone [music club in Berkeley, California], to see [the Jerry Garcia Band] and you loved what the Dead were doing, you knew that they were going to take this time off, but you just saw Jerry the week before and he never took his guitar off. He just finished the [Jerry Garcia Band] set and walked backstage with his guitar on and was smoking a cigarette, and then you saw him 30 minutes later talking to somebody off the side of stage, still had his guitar on — you’re thinking, “Gee, this guy’s not going to stop playing music this year, so I better keep my eyes peeled for what’s next.” And they played all these little gigs mostly around the Bay Area — they kind of captured some lightning in a bottle.

With playing these Old & In the Way melodies not only throughout your life, but also extensively nowadays with Peter Rowan, what’s been your biggest takeaway on what makes those songs and the ethos/history behind them so special to you? What about in terms of musicality, technique, and approach?

It’s hard to articulate how special it is to be exploring these beloved songs that mean so much to so many folks, myself included, with Peter and a cast of some of my best friends and favorite musicians. It’s a catalog that’s got a lot of depth.

Old & In the Way would play anything from songs by bluegrass heroes like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, and Jim & Jesse to Vassar [Clements], Jerry [Garcia], and my pop’s instrumentals, to the tunes that Peter was writing at the time, which are some of my absolute favorite songs ever written.

Songs like “Midnight Moonlight,” “High Lonesome Sound,” and “Panama Red.” Playing these tunes with Uncle Peter makes me feel connected to the times he spent with David and Jerry in Stinson Beach in the early ’70s.

I grew up in Mill Valley and loved going to Stinson Beach with my friends, so I have a pretty vivid image in my mind’s eye. They played tunes, hung out, relaxed, took in the sea breeze, smoked a bunch of great weed, and developed a highly individuated “West Coast” approach to playing and singing this bluegrass music that they all loved and respected so much.

And then, they called one of my bass heroes, John Kahn, and their fiddle hero, the inimitable Vassar Clements and gave the world about one glorious year – I think around 50 shows – of a rare and lovable breed of bluegrass.

So much of everyone’s personality comes through in the music, and you can hear their camaraderie in the recordings. I guess my biggest take away from getting to play this music with Peter is how important it is to bring your own approach to these timeless songs that we love, while still honoring what it is that makes us love them in the first place.

You’ve known Peter Rowan since you were born. But, what has this latest endeavor together meant to you, to play the Old & In the Way catalog to not only lifelong fans, but also a whole new generation of acoustic music fans and bluegrass freaks?

It means the world to me to get to spend some time out on the road sharing space and time in service of this music with Uncle Peter. Getting to meet all of these folks who care so much about this music and feeling their appreciation and gratitude for Pete has been truly special.

There are so many people from so many different ages and different walks of life for whom this music has been the soundtrack to many fond memories, and I’m honored to be one of them. It’s also been a joy to see fresh faces in the audience and some folks taking in this music with a new perspective.

In your honest opinion, what is the legacy of Old & In the Way when you place it through the prism of the history of bluegrass and the road to the here and now, especially this current juncture where the torchbearers are selling out arenas and creating this high-water mark for acoustic, traditional and bluegrass music?

For many folks who know and love the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Old & In the Way has been their first exposure to bluegrass. So many people over the years have told me how listening to Old & In the Way led them to further explore bluegrass music and its roots and branches. And others have told me how it inspired them to become pickers and start bands of their own.

I think Old & In the Way has been pivotal in bringing a wider audience with a more adventurous musical palette into the bluegrass universe. The legacy of Old & In the Way is one of exploration and preservation, and they certainly paved the way for many of us to walk a similar path — honoring the music that we love, while exploring its boundaries and finding our own voices and approaches.

It’s wonderful to see my friend Billy Strings out there playing for so many folks on such a big scale simply being himself, playing his own songs with a great group of friends, and also honoring the material that made him the musician that he is — maybe that’s a part of the legacy of Old & In the Way.

Photo Credit: Elliot Siff
Poster Credit: Taylor Rushing

Artist of the Month: Dead in December

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: This December, we continue our annual series – see also: Dolly in December, Dawg in December, Dylan in December, and Del in December – by celebrating the iconic, trailblazing jam band, the Grateful Dead, all month long! We’ll be featuring the Grateful Dead as our Artist of the Month, celebrating their enormous impact on bluegrass and roots music over the next few weeks.

To kick off our coverage, BGS contributor Garret Woodward pens a heartfelt and personal AOTM reveal. Plus, don’t miss our exhaustive Essential Grateful Dead Playlist below.)

The single most profound moment within my 39 years of existence (thus far) is the first time I heard the Grateful Dead. Not far behind that life-altering experience were my initial encounter with LSD (in high school) and finally cracking open Jack Kerouac’s seminal 1957 novel, On the Road (in college).

Summer 1994. I was nine years old and living a simple, yet happily mischievous childhood in the small North Country community of Rouses Point, New York. One mile from the Canadian Border. One mile from the state line of Vermont. Solitude. Desolation. Rural America. Mornings spent building tree forts and wandering vast cornfields surrounding my childhood home. Afternoons jumping off the dock into nearby Lake Champlain.

Even at that time, I was a bona fide music freak. Whether it was Top 40 radio (Gin Blossoms, Melissa Etheridge, Collective Soul, Sheryl Crow) blasting out of the small boom box in my bedroom or whatever my parents shoved into the cassette deck in the family minivan (Willie Nelson, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nat King Cole, George Jones), I was in search of “the sound.”

But, everything in my existence changed one evening that summer at a family cookout at our camp on the lake. Sitting at the picnic table — chowing down on some burgers, beans and potato salad — I noticed a hat my aunt’s boyfriend was wearing. The logo on the front was of a dancing bear, with the back featuring a skull with a lightning bolt. I inquired.

“It’s the Grateful Dead,” he replied with a Cheshire Cat grin emerging from a bushy beard. “Have you ever listened to the Dead, man?” No, I replied. After dinner, he walked me over to his early 1990s Volkswagen Jetta. He hopped in, rolled the windows down and turned on the stereo. Again, with a grin, as if he knew what was going to happen once he pressed play and cranked the volume.

It was the Skeletons from the Closet album. The opening tune, “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion),” hit me like an undulating series of waves in some endless ocean of melodic tones and lyrical truths. It was just like when Dorothy Gale entered the world of color in The Wizard of Oz.

Nothing really was ever the same after that moment. It was not only the first music I’d discovered on my own – without the radio or my parents’ influence – the Dead, for some unexplained reason at the time, immediately became “my band.” Something clicked deeply inside of me. I awoke. And I had arrived.

Soon, a seismic shift occurred in my adolescent life. I wore Dead shirts to my Catholic elementary school to the dismay of the nuns. Tacked up Jerry Garcia posters on my bedroom wall. The swirling sensation of “Sugar Magnolia” or “St. Stephen” echoing from the boom-box. Incense burning on the windowsill overlooking the cornfields and unknown horizon of my intent. I even had a small shrine to Jerry on my bookshelf for several years after he died. I was all-in.

Musically, the Dead were a bunch of incredibly talented bluegrass, folk, and jazz freaks, who were inspired by the onslaught of the Beatles to plug in and go electric. The band itself was this massive sponge, one which soaked in any and all influences it crossed paths with — either onstage or merely wandering down the road of life. That authentic sense of curiosity and discovery is key to the Dead’s magic throughout its decades of improvisational splendor.

At its core, the Dead’s message resonated within my often-bullied and ignored self as a kid. If you like the Dead, you’ll always find a friend out there in the universe to connect with. The band’s symbols are beacons of love, compassion, and acceptance once you walk out the front door. In essence, I’d found my tribe, this wild-‘n’-wondrous ensemble of loving oddballs, eccentric weirdos, and all-around jovial folk. My kind of people, who remain so to this day.

The Dead is about personal freedom. To not only be yourself, but to also seek out the intrinsic beauty of people, places and things in this big ol’ world of ours. Have adventures. Pursue wisdom. Radiate love. Be kind. Damnit, be kind. All of these things offered from the music and its followers were placed in my emotional and spiritual toolbox as I began to wander the planet on my own following high school, college and impending adulthood.

And here I stand. Age 39. That nine-year-old discovering the Dead is still inside of me somewhere, still burning incense and blasting “St. Stephen.” That youngster’s excitement for all things music (especially live), endless curiosity for what lies just around the corner, and running with a reckless abandon towards the unknowns of tomorrow are as strong and vibrant as ever — especially through this ongoing catalyst that is my career in the written word.

Case in point, I recently headed to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky, for another celebratory weekend for its current exhibit: “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey,” on assignment and on the ground covering the festivities. An incredibly curated collection of rare Garcia artifacts and wisdom, the showcase will run onsite until next spring.

Before the inception of the Grateful Dead, Garcia was completely immersed in the bluegrass and folk scenes in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was part of numerous acoustic acts and ensembles throughout the bountiful period — the culmination of that vast knowledge and in-depth experience being poured into the Dead’s formation in 1965.

To note, there’s a lot to be said about Garcia’s talents on the banjo being applied to what would become his signature tone on the electric guitar. And to that notion, add in the sheer lyrical aptitude of Robert Hunter, who not only penned many of the Dead’s iconic melodies, but was also on a parallel journey to Garcia’s early on and throughout the band’s 30-year trajectory.

And there I was in Owensboro, some 400 miles from my current home in Western North Carolina. Traveling for hours just to arrive on the mighty Ohio River – the state line of Kentucky and Indiana, this crossroads of the Southeast and Midwest. And for what? To push further and farther down the cosmic rabbit hole that is Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and those who follow.

The next 48 hours were a whirlwind of sound and scope. Seemingly endless tribute sets to Garcia and the Dead at the Woodward Theater inside the museum from the Kitchen Dwellers, Lindsay Lou, Fireside Collective, and members of the Infamous Stringdusters to late-night jam sessions in hotel rooms next door.

The Grateful Dead are arguably the only musical entity to exist that – regardless of who or what genre is being represented – once one of their tunes is placed into a performance, folks either show up in droves or are already present with ears perked up to what’s radiating out from the stage. It’s a fact that no matter what style of music you play, if it involves the Dead in some form or fashion, Deadheads are game to check it out. You could be a polka group and we’ll be right there, standing front row, the second you roll into “Althea” or “Shakedown Street.” The music provides, always and forever.

Before I left Owensboro and the Garcia celebration at the museum, I found myself on a bourbon distillery tour on Saturday afternoon. I walked into the enormous facility and checked in with the host. All by myself and waiting for the tour to start, the host tapped me on the shoulder.

“You like the Dead?” his face lit up, pointing to the Dead stealie tattoo on the back of my right leg. “Sure do, my brother,” I shot back with a smile of solidarity. We talked about our favorite live Dead recordings and where we’ve caught Dead & Company in concert recently, kindred spirits now eternally connected by this band of roving musical pirates. It’s a genuine interaction that happens often to Deadheads and something I don’t ever take for granted.

Even as we stand in this uncertain time in American history – where nothing is the same, everything is the same – the Grateful Dead remain this portal to escape, to purposely choose compassion, camaraderie, and community. It’s about cultivation of one’s self and of the sheer magnitude and gratitude of daily life, so long as you stroll this earth with the pure and honest intent to connect, to listen, and to understand.

“I will get by, I will survive.”

 

WATCH: Rachel Sumner, “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” (Traveling Light Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)” (Traveling Light Sessions)
Album: Heartless Things 
Release Date: November 21, 2024 (video); May 10, 2024 (album)

(Editor’s Note: Over the last few weeks, BGS has premiered a new series of live performance videos from singer-songwriter and band leader Rachel Sumner. Today’s video marks the end of our series together. Watch more from the Traveling Light Sessions here.)

In Their Words: “‘Radium Girls (Curie Eleison)’ is based on a true, terrible piece of United States history – one that I didn’t learn about in any history book. It tells the story of the Radium Girls, young factory workers poisoned by the very material they were told was safe, and their courageous fight for justice. The title juxtaposes scientific progress with a plea for mercy, tying the legacy of Marie Curie to the tragic consequences of her discoveries.

“Performing this song with Traveling Light keeps the arrangement stark and intimate to let the haunting resonance of the story come through. This video is particularly special to me, because I had the chance to play a guitar that one of my songwriting heroes, Josh Ritter, has used to record many of his own epic story songs. It felt like a beautiful connection to the power of storytelling.” – Rachel Sumner

Track Credits:
Rachel Sumner – banjo, lead vocals
Kat Wallace – fiddle, harmonies
Mike Siegel – bass, harmonies

Video Credits: Engineered by Zachariah Hickman.
Filmed by Lindsay Straw.
Mixed by Rachel Sumner.
Mastered by Dan Cardinal.
Video edited by Rachel Sumner.

Photo Credit: Bri Gately

WATCH: Rachel Sumner, “3000 Miles” (Traveling Light Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “3000 Miles” (Traveling Light Sessions)
Album: Heartless Things 
Release Date: November 14, 2024 (video); May 10, 2024 (album)

(Editor’s Note: BGS is excited to premiere a new series of live performance videos from singer-songwriter and band leader Rachel Sumner. Over the last few weeks, BGS readers have enjoyed three live song performances of tracks pulled from Sumner’s latest album, Heartless Things, and performed by her touring trio, Traveling Light. Stay tuned for the final installment coming next week.)

In Their Words: “‘3000 Miles’ is an autobiographical song that traces my journey from the deserts of California to Boston, the place I now call home. Growing up, the Mojave felt confining to me and I always sensed that I’d need to leave to find myself. This song is a rambler’s road song, shaped by years of searching. However, it took the stillness of lockdown to finally finish it – when I couldn’t travel anywhere. That pause gave me the chance to look back and make sense of all the miles I’d put behind me.” – Rachel Sumner

Track Credits:
Rachel Sumner – banjo, lead vocals
Kat Wallace – fiddle, harmonies
Mike Siegel – bass, harmonies

Video Credits: Engineered by Zachariah Hickman.
Filmed by Lindsay Straw.
Mixed by Rachel Sumner.
Mastered by Dan Cardinal.
Video edited by Rachel Sumner.

Photo Credit: Bri Gately

WATCH: Rachel Sumner, “Head East” (Traveling Light Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Rachel Sumner & Traveling Light
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Head East” (Traveling Light Sessions)
Album: Heartless Things 
Release Date: November 7, 2024 (video); May 10, 2024 (album)

(Editor’s Note: BGS is excited to premiere a new series of live performance videos from singer-songwriter and band leader Rachel Sumner. Over the next four weeks, BGS readers will enjoy four live song performances of tracks pulled from Sumner’s latest album, Heartless Things, and performed by her touring trio, Traveling Light. Watch the next installment here.)

In Their Words: “‘Head East’ is our next release from Heartless Things (Traveling Light Sessions). It has an extra special place in my heart, because it was the first song I ever wrote. Thirteen years ago, I moved to Boston from the Mojave Desert in California (where I grew up) and felt such a connection with the city and a feeling of possibility that I got there – a feeling I didn’t find in my hometown. This song was a plea to my younger brother to get out and find his good fortune elsewhere, just as I had.

“For this song, Kat Wallace trades her fiddle for the tenor guitar, and Mike Siegel adds a sublime third-part harmony that makes the chorus feel like heaven. ‘Head East’ has had many lives and arrangements, but this one is quite possibly my favorite.” – Rachel Sumner

Track Credits:
Rachel Sumner – banjo, lead vocals
Kat Wallace – tenor guitar, harmonies
Mike Siegel – bass, harmonies

Video Credits: Engineered by Zachariah Hickman.
Filmed by Lindsay Straw.
Mixed by Rachel Sumner.
Mastered by Dan Cardinal.
Video edited by Rachel Sumner.

Photo Credit: Bri Gately

The Stories and the Storyteller Behind ‘Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Stelth Ulvang is a storyteller, but as he shares in our conversation, if it hadn’t been for a broken mast on a famous sailboat years ago, his stories might have found a different outlet than music.

Since then, his musical life has unfolded from one wave to the next. From playing with established bands like The Lumineers or his own projects like Heavy Gus to finding pick-up bands in different towns, he is fast and prolific. His latest effort, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips, is a ten-song opus, cut in New Orleans by The Deslondes (a band he indeed met through a friend). A self-declared autumnal record, Ulvang grapples with death with a lilting cover of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Killing Moon” and guides the listener along his travels in “What Three Dogs.” The (mostly) live recordings lend themselves to the raw emotion of the storytelling.

BGS spoke to Stelth Ulvang over Zoom from his home in Bishop, California.

How’s your life?

Stelth Ulvang: Well, we just got back from a family vacation, and our 3-year-old hates us for trying to explain jet lag to him.

It sounds like you were on a real adventure. Where all did you go?

Greece, Turkey, and the Republic of Georgia. We have a friend there that is a wild, wild, Wild West woman.

She won this great horse race, and she’s really into cooking over big fires. She won the Iron Chef competition there. She’s a pretty versatile human, but pretty wild. So it was fun to have a friend in these places. We had friends in Greece and we had friends in Turkey. But we didn’t have instruments. My wife and I play a lot of music together, so we’ve always traveled with instruments, and this time we refused to.

I’ve just been recording all last year. I’m sitting on three records of recordings and trying to just put out one of them right now.

Nice. That’s awesome. Do you write alone, or do you and your wife write together sometimes?

I normally write alone. I have a hard time writing with others. I just haven’t had enough practice with it. With our other project, Heavy Gus, we will bring songs to the table and then we’ll intermingle and edit them together. But for the most part, it always comes from one voice or another. We haven’t sat down and said, ”Let’s write a song.” I find it harder. It’s more vulnerable than the other parts of a relationship, I find. After like sexual or intimate vulnerabilities, I found writing music together was like by far the last tier.

Well, not to make it about me. But I write music with my husband. Co-writing and the kitchen are the only places we fight.

Oh, yeah, totally. It can get really impassioned. You are just opening yourself up on the table in this way, and it can just go so quickly to feeling under attack about this very personal thing.

You’re very prolific. Sounds like you got a lot of stuff in the pipeline to release.

When The Lumineers stopped touring, I kind of just rallied and tried to get everything done. I did a lot of the writing on the road with the band. There was a lot of downtime in hotels. For a long time, I was recording in hotel rooms with my phone on voice memos and stuff like that. But then I got into using Garageband on my cell phone and making more produced tracks. I released a record like that.

Ultimately, I found that my favorite thing to do was to find a band. If we have a few days off in a town, I find a band and go into a studio somewhere and see if we can just record five tracks. So that’s what I kept doing around the States during this Lumineers tour for the past three years. I had written all these songs over COVID. So we’d be in Cincinnati for three days and I’d find a band and record five songs.

When you say “find a band,” what do you mean?

I mean whip a band up. Ideally, find a band that plays together and they’re down to just like learn a song of mine.

Are you meeting them at a show or are these people that you’re like friends of friends with online?

Yeah, sometimes friends of friends, people that I’ve never played with. But for this record, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips, this is all people that I had never met. A friend who was going to be on the record but then left for a tour was like, “Well, they’re good people, you’re in good hands.”

It was fun to just use real old gear, old vintage mics and run it all through tape. We recorded everything live. Singing it live, that’s something I’m not as used to. But with this band from New Orleans, the magic was quick to come.

Did you know you wanted to cut it to tape before you headed down there? Or was that circumstantial?

That was circumstantial. It’s funny with tape right now, because obviously, everything just gets digitized. I was trying to think, “Is there a way that we can keep this off of ever touching digital?” And it’s almost impossible. You know it’s possible, but it feels impossible.

With the record I made on my cell phone, I only released it on cassette tape for a while, which was the reverse. So I should have tried to be true to form and release it just on vinyl and tape in analog form. But it’s 2024.

Well, tell me about self-releasing music. What does that feel like in 2024?

It’s like I finally figured out the releasing stuff. I’ve had help through Emily Smith, with the Alt-Country Show. There was a lot of logistical stuff that I was getting new anxieties about – a lot of social media.

You think you have it all figured out and then it’s just all about being a content creator. I feel like an old man. It’s so complex, but it’s true. I finally kind of figured out how to self-release and self-book shows and now that almost feels like an obsolete skill set. I’m doing a whole tour around the Northeast on this record for a few weeks and booked everything myself. Amazing that it like came naturally, just writing people and asking for help. But yeah, the content is a skill set that I forgot to put my 10,000 hours in on.

I feel that. For the tour, is the band that played with you on this album from New Orleans going?

No, they’re all gonna be in Spain at a sick residency that they do every year. The band goes to Spain once a year. They’ve done it for 3 years. Now this will be, I think, their fourth year. And there’s a huge following in Seville of American country and folk.

It’s interesting that country music is getting big. But in Europe right now, it’s getting huge and friends who do country tours in the States are having much more success in Europe right now.

It also feels like the genre is broadening. There’s obviously the stuff at the top of the pyramid that, depending on your ears, can be exhausting. But there’s more room for more kinds of country.

In that realm, I don’t know that I like the song for what it is, but “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X – to have a gay Black man put out a track at the top of the country charts, I think opened up the the floodgates to be like, “Anything goes.” I think that is an extraordinary gift to any realm of music, to do something so left field and find success for it. So bless Lil Nas X for that and maybe only that.

What’s a Tigernip?

What is a tigernip? I don’t know. I forgot. … I was just trying to think of something that wasn’t a Google trope. But I wanted the combination of very quick, ferocious, and sweet. We recorded half of the album in the space called the Tigerman Den so I was starting to call it “the Tiger Men.” But there were women in the project. I think I said “Tiger Dicks” at some point, and everyone was like, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

But then, something about a tigernip kind of sounded like a tiger lily or catnip.

I wanted it to be clear that the band that recorded on this record was actually a band and it wasn’t me just doing like solo songs. And how much the album was influenced by these relationships that we had over a very short few days. So, that’s why I was really set on trying to find a band name for us.

There’s a frequent revisiting in the songs on this album to the theme of water. And I read that at one point you sailed from Hawaii to Seattle. Since you have this connection to water, I’d like to know about that sail and if you have an everyday connection to water?

It’s funny, I don’t necessarily buy into astrology, but being an Aquarius, I am appalled that it’s not a water sign. I feel completely more watery than airy. [My birthday is] the very last day of Aquarius before Pisces, which is a water sign. So maybe that’s why I’m compelled to lean into the water sign. And my Chinese zodiac is the tiger.

Back to the sailing trip! I did not want to play music before this time in 2008. I met this musician who invited me on this sailing trip and I just wanted to go on an adventure.

Meaning you didn’t want to play music in your life, or you needed a break from it?

I was playing in high school and I tried to go to college for it. I didn’t like it and I dropped out. I just wanted to travel. I had gone on a bike trip, I was hitchhiking a lot, and I was riding trains everywhere. If music could help me travel, I was open to it.

I traveled to Hawaii to pick up this boat that was famous in National Geographic because of this teenager, Robin Lee Graham, trying to sail it around the world in one go. He left his boat in California and it got moved to Hawaii. I had somehow signed up with a buddy that I barely knew to travel with this boat from Hawaii up to Bellingham, Washington, where it was going to sit in a boat museum for its historical significance.

At the time, this was the youngest boy ever to sail around the world alone. The record has since been broken by a young woman. [The boat] had so much repair work that had to be done on it. So we’re in Hawaii for like five weeks, during which I got arrested for shoplifting some food at Sam’s Club, because we’d run out of all of our money that we had saved up to do this journey. I decided, “Screw it. We’re we’re just gonna skip the court date, I’m gonna get on this boat and we’re gonna sail.” So we bail on this court date, establishing a nice bench warrant that I had to deal with much later on. We make it a week out and the mast busts, and we had to get rescued. And I have never sailed extensively since then.

While we’re at sea my buddy had this mandolin. We sit there, and we’re just trading verses back and forth, writing this kind of silly song as this joke idea that we’re these stranded pirates. We’re just coming up with lyrics. We get towed back to Hawaii; I was really nervous about going to jail. We go to the airport and beg these flight attendants to basically put us on standby to get us back to the States. The only flight that they could put us on was one that went up to Seattle. We’re like, well, “We can hitchhike home from there.”

So, we go up to Seattle and we have no money, not even bus fare, to get to my friend’s house that lived in North Seattle. So we sit in the airport and we play this song, making up words on this mandolin with a little hat out [for tips], just for bus fare. As soon as we get the bus fare, we leave and we’re at our friend’s house. We tell him the story and he’s like, “You know, we’re having a show tomorrow night. You guys should play your song at this show that we’re having in our basement.”

That was the first show essentially that I ever played. By the end of the trip, we traveled for another couple of weeks back to Colorado, we’d written an entire album’s worth of stuff. As soon as we got back to Colorado we already had a band name. We had all the songs ready to record and all of a sudden I was a musician again.

Wow! All because of a broken mast. That’s wild.

SU: The boat was called the Dove. And the book that was about the boat is called Dove. So we called our band Dovekins. Never looked back.

Photo Credit: Rachel Deeb

Laurie Lewis Chooses Tenacity Over Hope on New Album, ‘Trees’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Counting John Prine, Linda Ronstadt, and Wendell Berry among her fans, Laurie Lewis is arguably one of the most diversely influential figures in American roots music culture. She’s a songwriter, fiddler, frontwoman, performer, producer, teacher, and mentor. She’s been nominated for multiple Grammy awards and graced the stage at the Grand Ole Opry. The International Bluegrass Music Association has twice named Lewis Female Vocalist of the Year, and the association’s former executive director, Dan Hays, once called her “one of the preeminent bluegrass and Americana artists of our time and one of the top five female artists of the last 30 years.”

Lewis’s latest release — her 24th full-length record — pairs the artist’s musical mastery with her willingness and courage to face the full spectrum of life’s experiences. From personal grief to environmental despair, Lewis does not shield her eyes from difficult truths. In many ways, the album pays homage to its namesake, trees. When asked why, Lewis notes their tenacity. When something is tenacious, it grips firmly, with determination and persistence. Even in the face of immense challenge and uncertainty, trees abide in their purpose and work — and so does Laurie Lewis.

TREES is a long-play collection of songs that tenderly, earnestly, and sometimes joyfully explore what it means to exist on a vulnerable planet through times of loss and love. Supported by a band of masterful collaborators — Haselden Ciaccio (bass, vocals), Brandon Godman (fiddle, vocals), Patrick Sauber (banjo, vocals), George Guthrie (banjo, vocals, guitar), Tom Rozum (vocals, cover art), Andrew Marlin (mandolin), Sam Reider (accordion), and Nina Gerber (guitar) — Lewis dives into the deep end of sorrow and change with tenderness, authenticity, and Americana storytelling prowess.

In the album’s liner notes, Lewis shares that TREES is the first project she’s made in nearly 30 years without the mandolin accompaniment of her partner Tom Rozum, who recently developed Parkinson’s disease. “This collection represents a difficult transition in my musical life,” Lewis shares. “Think of it as ‘Music Minus One.’”

From bright bluegrass tracks like “Just a Little Ways Down the Road” to the somber invocations of “Enough” and “The Banks Are Covered in Blue,” this album is intricate and complex, much like a healthy forest. The album brings us “Quaking Aspen,” showcasing Lewis’s characteristic lyrical fiddle style, and title track “Trees,” an a cappella bluegrass-gospel ballad that gently yet hauntingly denounces the violence of industrial civilization.

Always looking to the natural world for strength and guidance, TREES is about love — for life, for land, and for people. But love isn’t a purely hopeful or romantic thing; it encompasses both loss and pain, and Lewis gracefully and vulnerably reckons with both on this album.

You just returned from a string of shows playing songs from the new album. Where did you go?

Laurie Lewis: My string of shows was actually mostly a river trip. So I did play every night, but I was mostly spending the days in the canyons… On the Yampa River, which starts in Colorado and goes into Utah and flows into the Green River. It’s a really, really beautiful canyon.

I love that. When you were playing shows, how did it feel to share these new songs with the world?

I’ve been doing a lot of songs from the new album, yeah, and I’m really enjoying that. But also, in any of our sets with my band, we pull out the old ones, too.

Speaking of the older stuff, I listened to your first solo record, Restless Rambling Heart, directly after listening to your newest record from start to finish. The first thing I noticed was that the tempo has downshifted quite a bit from that first release. Does TREES feel more introspective to you than other records you’ve made?

Oh yeah, it definitely does — especially compared to Restless Rambling Heart.

You’ve collaborated with the great poet, writer, and activist Wendell Berry — he asked you to set some of his poems to music. What was that experience like?

It was really fantastic. I’m such a fan of Wendell Berry’s writing. It came about because I was putting out a songbook and the publisher said, “Well, you need to get some blurbs for the back.” I happened to be at a writing workshop and one of the writers there said, “Hey, do you know Wendell Berry?” And I said no, and he said, “Well, he’s a big fan of yours.” [He had been] at a writing conference with Wendell and Wendell asked if he knew me and, you know, small world sort of thing.

So I thought, Well, how do I get in touch with him? Maybe he could write me a blurb, who knows? But [Wendell] famously doesn’t do e-mail or anything like that, so I got his mailing address and wrote him a long-hand letter on one of those yellow legal pads, you know, and I sent it off to him. And lo and behold, he wrote back. He said, “Well, I really don’t know anything about music, and my wife says I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so hadn’t I better say no to writing a blurb?” And I thought, Well… that’s a question, so it deserves to be answered. So I wrote back and said, “Of course you should say yes, because really, the only prerequisite for saying you like something is that you actually like it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a background in music. It’s a personal response.”

And he said, “Well yeah, okay. I’ve been telling people I’m not writing blurbs anymore because too many people ask me, but didn’t I write something in that first letter that you could take out [and use]?” And there was this really nice thing…

So we just ended up having this back-and-forth conversation. He sent me some books. I sent him some CDs. I finally got a chance to meet him, but eventually I just felt like this is a person who is so conscientious, he’s going to respond to whatever I write. And he’s so busy, and he’s got so much stuff to do, I don’t want to bother him anymore. So I kind of dropped the correspondence. I wish I hadn’t, but it felt like the right thing to do. I just didn’t want to be that pestering voice that he felt he had to write back to.

Did he get back in touch with you at some point? Is that how his request came to light?

In the midst of all our back and forth, he sent me a poem in the mail and asked if I wouldn’t mind terribly trying to put it to music. So I did. That was “Burley Coulter’s Song for Kate Helen Branch.” It was quite a puzzle, because it’s not a standard rhyme scheme or anything. I had to make it loop around like a little crooked fiddle tune to make it really work.

Trees aren’t just the theme of this album — they’re growing all over your creative imprint. Your label is called Spruce and Maple Music, for example. What is it about trees specifically that inspires you?

I love the tenacity of trees — the way they just wait ‘til you get out of the way and then come back. … There are too many humans on the earth. We take up way too much space and way too many resources and we’re crowding everybody else out. And by “everybody else” I mean all the animals and plants and everything that also shares our earth. I just feel that, you know, trees are these beneficent beings that just wait and take their time and come back whenever they’re given a chance. They’re responsible for the oxygen we breathe and for taking in the CO2 we release. They’re sort of purifying everything. So it makes me feel very hopeful… If we just get out of the way a little bit, trees can come in and help set the planet right again.

Speaking of trees, the title track on this album is written from such a unique perspective. You literally embody the voice of the trees. How did this idea come about? Had you written from the perspective of the natural world before?

Well actually, “The Maple’s Lament” … I think that was the first time I tried to embody a tree. But I’ve done a few songs like that since. “American Chestnuts,” from my Skippin’ and Flyin’ album is from the voice of the American chestnut trees, which were the main tree along the Appalachian Mountains before the Chinese chestnut blight.

Have you read The Overstory by Richard Powers?

You know, I have, and I thought, Well, this is my song! [Laughs] But I wasn’t inspired by the book.

I personally take comfort in the knowledge that the world will go on spinning without us, despite how powerful we imagine ourselves to be. What sustains you as a sensitive person who feels the weight of what’s happening in and to the world? What carries you through?

Well, that’s that hope – [in] the other beings on the earth, their ability to repair the damage we’re doing. But I don’t hold out a lot of hope for human beings to rein in our excesses. I just don’t. I unfortunately do not see that happening in a timely enough manner to prevent, for instance, desertification of much of the earth’s crust. I’ve never said this stuff in an interview before, but yeah– I do not hold out a lot of hope.

I really appreciate you saying that. I feel like we’re often pressured to feel hopeful, but sometimes it feels more important to just be present with our grief about what’s happening to the world. Where did your deep relationship with and love for the natural world begin?

Oh boy, well, lots and lots of places. From ages three to eight, I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in this new subdivision a block from the country. I loved to ramble in the woods and just see the farms and stuff like that. When my family [moved to] Berkeley, California, it was really a shock for me, and I have to say, Tilden Park probably saved my life. It’s a big regional park that’s up over at the top of the Berkeley Hills. It’s a huge park — you could get lost in it for days. Being able to take the bus to the top of the hill and disappear into Tilden Park when I was a kid was the best thing ever, and it really helped me through a lot. So I would say Tilden was maybe the first place where I really sought refuge in the natural world.

In addition to environmental grief, you’ve spoken about the role personal grief played in the creation of this album, and the presence of these feelings is very tangible throughout. Has some part of you had to practice becoming more vulnerable as an artist over time, or did the process of sharing your pain through your songwriting come naturally?

I have been accused throughout my career of writing songs that are a little bit too easy to figure out, you know, where they’re from. They’re personal songs — people have noted that. [But] maybe they’re putting stuff in them that’s not actually there, and I believe that to be the case on some of the stuff. Writing has always been my best source of communication with the world and I think I’ve always just written from an emotional place. If my songs are deeper now, it’s because events in life are a lot harder when you’re 73 than when you’re 23 or 33 or 43.

One of the more uncommon forms of grief is the grief over the loss of one’s own voice. A few years ago, you lost your singing voice for six months. What was that experience like for you, as someone who’s spent so much of your life using your voice to connect with the world?

It was terrible. It was paresis, [so] the right side of my neck muscles were paralyzed, and I couldn’t move my larynx on the right side. It made singing very, very difficult, until it got to a point where my voice just quit. And I thought, I’m not gonna sing anymore. It took about six months to recover, and it hasn’t completely recovered. My voice is different now.

It was a very difficult time. I went to many doctors, and one said, “Well, you have about a 50/50 chance of getting your voice back.” And I’m going, “Those odds are just not good, you know? It could happen or not — it’s a coin toss.” That freaked me out.

But some amazing things happened in that time. I have an annual gig, the concert I do at the Freight & Salvage here in Berkeley, my hometown, over Thanksgiving weekend. When I had no voice, I didn’t want to give up my night, so I asked my friends to come and sing my songs. I put together a folder of tons of songs and nobody picked the same song. It was amazing. It was the most incredible healing night of music for me. I mean, it was really the best Laurie Lewis show ever and I never opened my mouth except to speak a little bit. It was really lovely. Out of anything, I think that helped me get my voice back.

I’m honestly tearing up a little hearing you talk about that. It really speaks to the power of community. Speaking of community and audiences, who do you write music for? When you’re writing a song or recording an album, do you have a particular listener or audience in mind?

Just myself, really. It’s very selfish. [Laughs] I mean, I just write for myself, what I’m feeling or what I’m observing. … That’s always the starting point. If I think up a story, it’s because I want to tell the story, you know? I want to hear the story. If it’s an emotional thing, it’s because it’s something I’m dealing with or going through. But after the initial thought, I try and use my craft to make the songs better so that somebody can actually understand what I’m singing about and talking about in my music. And that’s really the most gratifying thing, when a listener really responds. It’s just great.

You’ve described your music, particularly on this album, as a way of interpreting the voices of the landscapes you adore. How do you experience or receive the voices of the natural world? How did you learn to listen for these much-needed voices?

I’ve always been a fairly quiet person. I listen more than I speak. I’ve had to actually learn to speak, you know, out loud. But I think I just have an observational approach to the world. I would rather listen and observe people talking to me than jump in and add my own spin or make a lot of noise myself. The same thing is true in my relationship with the natural world. I’m an avid walker and I find that walking and listening and looking in the natural world is my favorite thing to do.

Do you have a favorite song on the album?

I like a lot of them actually. You know, they’re different moods. Speaking of walking, “Just a Little Ways Down the Road” I find to be just so fun to sing and play. And of course, “Enough.” It’s heart-wrenching for me. It’s still hard for me to play that song in public. It requires a really different audience. It’s not a festival song. It’s much quieter, so I hold it back a lot. I just love the sound of the instruments on that cut. But I really like them all, from “Just a Little Ways Down the Road” to “Rock the Pain Away.”

It depends on the mood too. If I talk about John Prine and I sing that song [“Why’d You Have to Break My Heart?”], that really goes over well with audiences. I truly appreciate that people connect with that song.

Do you have a favorite tree?

[Laughs] No. I do not have a favorite tree.

Fair enough. [Laughs]

The California buckeye – I think it’s the prettiest little tree ever. But then I see another, you know? I was just out in Colorado among the junipers. That was the main tree alongside the river, junipers and cottonwoods. Every one of those trees was astoundingly beautiful – and so tenacious.

Is there somewhere special close to home where you’ve been going recently to be with the trees?

Well, yes. I stick around home quite a bit, because I have a lot of caregiving to do with my partner. We had to cut down a tree in our yard a couple of years ago and I was very, very sad about cutting down this great big old blackwood acacia. But we had to do it – it was gonna fall over and wreak havoc. But it cleared the way for me to view these two enormous birch trees that are like four-stories high in the neighbors’ yard. Those two trees are just remarkable, through all the seasons. They’re so graceful, and they change so much. I’ve been enjoying those trees a lot from the kitchen.

And Tilden Park is still my go-to. It’s five minutes up the road, so I can get out and walk amongst the oaks and the laurels and, unfortunately, eucalyptus, which is an invasive fire-hazard tree around here, but they’re still beautiful.

It’s so special that you still get to spend time in the same place that meant so much to you as a kid. There’s really so much we could talk about, but is there anything else you’d like to share about the album?

I did it mostly with a very small group of fantastic musicians – my bandmates Hasee Ciaccio on bass, Brandon Godman on fiddle, Patrick Sauber on banjo, and then George Guthrie also on banjo and some guitar. It’s just been really great working with these wonderful people. What they bring to the songs and how they help shape the music, they really are part of the fabric of what makes this album what it is, and it feels important to me to share that.

Photo Credit: Irene Young

AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s ‘City of Glass’ is Funny, Sexy, and Empowered

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

At 26, the prodigy phase of AJ Lee’s music career has passed. It might take a little more time for the tendency to confuse her with a professional wrestler using the same name to fade away.

“I think I could take her!” Lee — the singing one — gamely pronounces at the conclusion of an interview on the third album by AJ Lee & Blue Summit, City of Glass (out July 19 on Signature Sounds), prompting laughter from the band’s Scott Gates, who asserts himself on the new album writing three songs on which he sings lead.

Rounding out Santa Cruz, California-based Blue Summit are fiddler Jan Purat and guitarist Sullivan Tuttle, one of the children of educator-musician Jack Tuttle and brother of breakout star Molly Tuttle. Lee also got her start with “The Tuttles with AJ Lee.”

A keen sense of humor dots City of Glass, which was produced by Lech Wierzynski of “retro-soul” band The California Honeydrops. It was Wierzynski who suggested Harlan Howard’s “He Called Me Baby,” on which Lee delivers a notably sultry lead vocal. The reference point for her version of “He Called Me Baby” is soul singer Candi Stanton, rather than Patsy Cline or Charlie Rich.

“I was raised to sing pretty straightforward. I wanted to remove as much ego as I could, because I just wanted to sing and have fun,” Lee said. “I’ve learned to put a little bit more of my personality into it and that, I think, is making me a better singer overall, which is why we wanted to work with Lech in the first place, because he’s such a powerful singer.

“That really resonated with me and I’m trying to move more in that direction.”

Gates pipes up at this point: “AJ’s not going to say this, but Lech brought ‘He Called Me Baby’ to the table because he had the foresight, coming from that soul world, he recognizes in AJ’s voice the ability to do this kind of thing.

“The cross-pollination of these American roots, is a smart move from Lech, I think,” he said.

BGS caught up with Lee and Gates as they rehearsed in Nashville, Tennessee, and prepared to do some lip synching for a video. As a seasoned bandleader, Lee takes pains to spread the credit for her success around and steers some questions toward Gates to try and ensure she doesn’t dominate the conversation.

City of Glass is AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s third album. How do you view the progression that got you to this point?

AJ Lee: The first album, [Like I Used To], we were looking for what kind of sound we wanted as a band. Because at that time, it was only four members without a fiddle player. So on that one, we had some more electric instruments and more drums. The second album, [I’ll Come Back], we went more acoustic roots, because we just wanted to play more bluegrass, because that’s what we grew up on and that’s what we do best. For this third album, we’re confident doing bluegrass, roots, and country, sticking with more stringed instruments, but also branching out. With Lech’s involvement, we’re leaning a little bit towards soul, R&B, and keeping it interesting, but still showcasing ourselves and what we like to play and what we like to do.

Several songs on City of Glass are funny. There’s one, “Toys,” making fun of a men who act like boys, another about getting “Sick on a Plane” and a humorous take on busking, “Solicitor Man.” Why so lighthearted this time around?

Scott Gates: I grew up playing bluegrass with a lot of silly guys. There’s a bouncy kind of lighthearted feel in a lot of traditional stuff. … I noticed that a lot of songs that I had written were kind of getting down into my feelings and whatnot, and I wanted to write one that I knew would be fun for my friends to play.

Are there models in bluegrass you’re following with the humor?

SG: There is a history of fun stuff like The Louvin Brothers. I’m also influenced by Jimmy Martin. Jimmy Martin is one of the pillars of bluegrass music, and he’s hilarious.

“Toys” is about a young guy or maybe an immature man. Is it about yourself, Scott?

SG: A little bit, yeah, probably as a teenager noticing the involuntary methods by which young, dumb boys go about thinking of themselves. It was mostly born out of that phrase, “The man who dies with the most toys wins.”

The title cut, “City of Glass,” is about leaving an artistic legacy. Aren’t you guys a little young to be concerned about that?

AJ: Yeah, I’m pretty young. I’m 26 now, but I have been doing music since I was really young. Collectively, we figured out that the band has about 90 years worth of experience. I’ve been playing on stage since I was about four or five years old. So I’m young, but I have been doing it for a long time. Legacy is having something that you’ve made be around even when you’re not doing it anymore. That’s a big theme of “City of Glass.”

As you say, you got started very young as musicians and Jack Tuttle was a common mentor. How did that develop?

SG: I met AJ when she was four. I knew her older sister Molly, ‘cause she’s my age. So I knew her more. But [Sullivan Tuttle] was around, and Sully and AJ had known each other since back then. I was probably about seven or eight when I first started going to the Father’s Day Festival and the music camp. So I got an opportunity to learn and play from people like John Reischman and Mike Compton and see musicians like The Osborne Brothers and Earl Scruggs. The picking scene is incredibly high quality.

AJ, you were the only non-Tuttle in the Tuttle family band when you were very young. What was that like?

AJ: I loved it. As a young kid, it’s kind of hard to be in the moment and really appreciate what you’re doing. As a seven-year-old to fifteen-year-old, I went about it as like, “OK, we’re playing a gig, I’m going to practice here and I’m going to sing my song. I’m hanging out with my friends, and that’s it.” But being in that band was definitely instrumental in my progress as a bluegrass musician, because I got to work directly with Jack Tuttle. Everyone loves Jack because he’s such a renowned teacher in the community and obviously all of his kids are talented beyond measure. So I was able to play with people who were better than me and also equal to me. My mom, growing up, she always said, “You always want to play with people who are better than you, because that’s how you’re going to get better.” And so I got to have that opportunity for many years.

Is there any competition now between yourself, Molly Tuttle and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes now that you all are competing musicians in the marketplace?

SG: Absolutely! [Laughs]

AJ: No, no, no, definitely not. For me and Molly, we’re branching off and doing our own thing. We were in a band for however many years, and now we’re off doing our own projects. And Bronwyn is branching off and doing her own projects in a similar way.

So, it’s the same in any community or genre of music, you played together and now you’re doing your own thing. Molly’s singing on our album as well, on a song [“I Can’t Find You at All”] that her dad wrote.

AJ, you could pursue a solo career, why do you prefer a band situation?

AJ: It makes me happy. I like playing with other people. I don’t really like performing by myself. I feel like I have a lot to offer, but I also like playing with people who also have a lot to offer and are amazing talents. And, you know, people compliment our band on how many singers there are. I always think that the more singers the better, the more talent you can showcase the better.

Pretty much anyone in the band could peel off and do a solo career. But I think what makes us really unique and strong as a band is that we all can be individual musicians, but we choose to play together, because it just makes the creative juices flow more and it makes us want to even continue on more than I would as a solo musician.

SG: At some point, I’ll probably do my own project. But right now, all I care about is playing music with AJ and the boys and see where this goes. I try not to plan too much. I don’t really scheme. I probably should scheme a little bit more, but I just don’t.

How does the California bluegrass scene differ from the South?

SG: A lot of people think of California as the jammy stuff, the Deadhead stuff that comes out of there. But even to this day, the California Bluegrass Association is very traditional. It’s one of the most traditional associations out there and there’s also a huge focus on singing. The singers that come out of a place like Tennessee are extremely good at blending. There’s a school of singing, and a lot of them sound very similar. Their harmonies are incredibly perfect. But California tends to reward individuality and uniqueness. The unique voices are kind of put on a pedestal.

AJ, your singing style is more subtle than showy. Why?

AJ: I agree with you. I’ve always really appreciated the subtlety of singing to where it’s not, “Look at me. Look at how well I can sing.”

“Hillside” uses the metaphor of a hill that aspires to be a mountain. What does the metaphor represent?

AJ: “Hillside” is about women empowerment. The metaphor is that you are this hill that is bombarded by all these outside elements trying to knock you down. But your foundation has become so strong and nothing’s really going to topple you over.

Have you experienced a lot of sexism in your career?

AJ: I’ve experienced some, of course. Especially after shows, you know a lot of older gentleman say things to me that obviously they mean well, but it just turns out to be very sexist. I get a lot of the, “If I was 20-years, 30-years younger” sort of statements, and it’s just like, “Ooh, gosh.”

How about general discrimination?

AJ: Yeah, especially jamming in the bluegrass community, as a woman sometimes you’ll just get into those circles that have that male energy so present and it’s really hard for women to join a jam sometimes. But I’ve learned to try to just get myself in there over the years with support from my mom and other strong women who are also in the community.

Are you on the record on where the “Blue Summit” band name originates?

AJ: Our first festival we played was a Kate Wolf festival. We actually didn’t really have a band name yet that we were happy with. The original name we hated. Our original bass player at the time, Isaac Cornelius, came up with The Highway 17 Savages, which doesn’t really resonate with our band at all. We totally needed to change this name. So we made these recordings to send in to Kate Wolf at Isaac’s house, which he grew up on the summit in Santa Cruz. So we were like bluegrass on the summit. So we became Blue Summit.

Photo Credit: Natia Cinco