Artist:The Brothers Comatose Hometown: San Francisco, California Song: “The IPA Song” (featuring Ronnie McCoury) Release Date: October 5, 2023 Label: Swamp Jam Records
In Their Words: “There comes a time in every band’s existence when you have speak up and let the chips fall where they may. We realize that this statement is really going to split our crowd, but it’s time we say something. We can’t drink IPAs anymore! They’ve gotten too strong and too hoppy and we just can’t do it any longer. All we drink are light beers now and maybe it’s because we turned into more of a quantity, not quality type of band… or maybe we just turned into a bunch of beer wusses. Either way, no more IPAs!
“It all stems from us overdoing it back in the day when we were sponsored by a beer company and they delivered 3 cases (72 beers!) of IPAs to every tour stop. So there we were, neck deep in super strong, warm IPAs in our van and we were just trying to keep up. It’s kinda like how you can’t drink Bacardi anymore because of that one bad night you had in college. That’s us with strong and hoppy beers. The song started off as a joke because venues kept putting IPAs in our green room, but we would never drink them. It turns out the message really hits home with a lot of people.
“When we were planning to go into the studio to record ‘The IPA Song,’ our mandolin player Greg wasn’t available, because he was out on tour with another band at the time. It turned out our buddy, mandolin maestro Ronnie McCoury, was going to be in town playing a show, so we got him to come and play mandolin and sing high harmonies on the track. And being the legend he is, he truly delivered the goods on this one.
“We recommend cracking a nice, cold, non-IPA beer to enjoy while watching this video.” – The Brothers Comatose
Photo courtesy of the Brothers Comatose, Pavement PR
Artist:Kathy Kallick Band Hometown: San Francisco Bay Area, California Song: “Just Lonesome Ol’ Me & the Radio” Album:The Lonesome Chronicles Release Date: September 19, 2023 (single); October 17, 2023 (album) Label: Live Oak Records
In Their Words: “People of different ages will feel their engagement with radio in different ways. As part of a family gathered around the radio for a specific show, as a teenager listening to a transistor radio under their pillow, as a traveler on a long car trip with the radio tuned in to whatever signal it can find, or as a listener with that favorite show tuned in on a laptop from anywhere in the world, the radio means connection. In that bizarre time of lockdown, we all looked for ways to ‘be’ with other people, and a dear friend and I started having a listening date, tuning in to the same radio show from our separate places, and commenting to each other via email, text, or calling on the phone. It made us feel like we were having a little party!” – Kathy Kallick
Artist:Tom Heyman Hometown: San Francisco, California Song: “The Mission Is On Fire” Album:24th Street Blues Release Date: October 6, 2023 Label: Bohemian Neglect Recording Works
In Their Words: “I have lived on the Eastern end of 24th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District around the corner from SF General Hospital for more than 20 years now. I work at a bar near the corner of Mission and 22nd Street and a number of years ago (pre-pandemic), there were a series of devastating fires on Mission Street — two of them practically next door to my workplace, and another about three quarters of a mile south at 29th Street. Fires in a densely-populated city full of attached wooden houses are scary enough, but add in the scarcity of affordable housing, the simmering resentments around the huge influx of tech workers, and the white-hot real estate market and the overall effect was pretty unsettling.
“The phrase, ‘The Mission is on fire’ popped into my head and I knew there was a song there. I chased it down until I thought I had it. Around the time that I wrote it, I had another record coming out that it wasn’t really right for, but I knew that it was going to fit squarely into the group of songs that made up my new record, 24th Street Blues. It seems that San Francisco is in the news often these days and is struggling with all the things that an awful lot of cities are struggling with, but I deeply love my neighborhood – and most days I find it difficult to imagine living anywhere else.” – Tom Heyman
Artist:Julian Talamantez Brolaski Hometown: Goleta, California Latest Album:It’s Okay Honey Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): Julian & the Knockouts
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
JTB: Probably the poet William Shakespeare. I know that sounds cliché to say. I love the way he combines words which have their roots in Old English with words of Romance origin, like his line: “The multitudinous seas incarnadine / making the green one red.” He drank deep from the fount of English, and I’m grateful for what he gave us — language that sings.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
Poetry, in both its written and oral forms. I think of folk music as a kind of oral poetry. And I love to see the trajectories of the way songs are passed down, change, and mutate, like a game of Telephone. The song “In the Pines,” for instance, or “Wildwood Flower.” There are so many versions of those songs, and stories around them, wayward histories, misheard and remade lines. I like to think of my songs as operating in that tradition, rhyming and stealing, dressing up old songs in new clothes. My song “Goodbye Brother,” for example, is a rewriting of the Carter Family song “Lula Walls.” And “Covid-19 Blues” is basically a ripoff of “Long Gone Lonesome Blues” by Hank Williams.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
I do these vocal warmups before I sing that a teacher in Philadelphia taught me. They’re very annoying sounding, like a bratty baby crying, and then like a whining witch, and so I get kind of self-conscious doing them, but it really makes a difference. I meditate and try to get myself into a calm place, and focus on my intention to really be there with the songs, to sing them with my heart, and to give my all for the audience.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
My grandmother Inés told me whenever you are speaking or singing, always do it from your heart. Over the years, I came to understand that that is not a metaphor, that the feeling is actually quite literal, and bodily. So I try to feel that heartspace physically, and to remember to direct my songs from there. I think that’s a good piece of advice for life, too.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I live near the ocean in Goleta, California, near Santa Barbara. I love to sit and feel my toes in the sand, walk along the cliffs, smell the enmineralated air. I go to the ocean whenever I feel upset, and it always helps me. Sometimes, I write poems down there, or I bring my guitar and sit on my tailgate and watch the water. It’s very meditative to be in the water, too, swimming or surfing, and it’s humbling and exhilarating to feel the ocean’s power. I always get ideas in the water — if someone could invent a wetsuit with a zipper pocket for a waterproof notebook, that would be amazing.
Bob Warford remembers a lot about the vibrant Southern California bluegrass and old-timey scene of the 1960s. But he doesn’t remember exactly how he came to be a member of what proved to be the final lineup of the Kentucky Colonels, the near-mythic group anchored by brothers Roland White on mandolin, Eric White Jr. on bass and, at times, guitar magician Clarence White.
“My life was getting complicated at that time,” Warford, a banjo player, recalls. “I knew Clarence slightly. Roland slightly. I knew Eric. Maybe it was Eric who suggested me for it.”
He had grown up in the college town of Claremont, about half an hour east of Los Angeles, where he fell into bands — the Reorganized Dry City Players and the Mad Mountain Ramblers among them — with such future notables as David Lindley and Chris Darrow. After starting college further east at the University of California Riverside, he was in a band that played festivals and on the popular “Cal’s Corral” TV show (hosted by flashy Western-fashioned car dealer, Cal Worthington), appearing on the latter alongside the Gosdin Brothers, the Hillmen (featuring future Byrds star Chris Hillman) and others.
In any case, at the end of ’66 or beginning of ’67, in the home stretch of his undergraduate work and with plans for grad school on his way to becoming an attorney, Warford was asked to join the Colonels for a series of gigs at the famed Ash Grove club in Hollywood over the course of a few months. And in that February, in the midst of the Ash Grove run, the band was recruited to go in the studio for sessions to be featured on the pilot of a radio show titled “American Music Time,” hosted by and featuring married couple Dave and Lu Spencer and with crowd sounds added to give the impression that it was done in front of an audience.
It seems to have aired that March, though Warford can’t confirm that. It was, however, released on an album in the late 1970s — without the Spencers’ parts or the crowd noise — with the title 1966. On June 30 of this year it was reissued by label Sundazed and doubled in length with previously unreleased recordings of the Country Boys, the pre-Colonels band the White brothers had in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
“These were not done with any high-tech situation,” Warford recalls of the two (or maybe three) sessions held for the radio show. “Everything was played live. We didn’t do a large number of songs.”
There are some bluegrass regulars (“Soldier’s Joy,” in short versions bookending the original release, Earl Scruggs’ “Earl’s Breakdown,” two Osborne Brothers tunes), some adaptations from country (Merle Haggard’s “The Fugitive”) and such. The performances are strong and lively, especially so considering that this was a reconstituted lineup of the band which had not played together a lot. In fact, before this run of gigs, the last official gig had been in October, 1965. Three of the five members were now new. Roland White was still there, and Eric was back, too, after having split from the ensemble some years before. Founding dobro player Leroy (Mack) McNees and banjoist Billy Ray Latham had moved on, as was ace fiddler Scotty Stoneman, who had played with the band in ’65.
“One thing this shows is that with or without Clarence, the Colonels was a good bluegrass band,” says folk music journalist and historian Jon Hartley Fox, who wrote the liner notes for the new 1966 release. “It’s sort of looked back on now maybe as the vehicle for Clarence. But they were a really good band in their own right. I think Roland White has historically been undervalued. Roland was a really good band leader. When it’s just Roland and Eric from the original band it’s still got the spirit and the same feel. The band was way more than Clarence and four other guys.”
As for Clarence, he’d begun his shift to a focus on electric guitar, picking up some major session work, which would lead to him playing on the Byrds’ country landmark Sweetheart of the Rodeo album and then later joining the band. But at that point, he was around some of the time, too. The band Warford joined now was filled out by fellow newcomers Dennis Morris on guitar and Bobby Crane on fiddle — though Morris’ last name might have been Morse and Crane’s first name may have been Jimmy. There’s a lot of uncertainty around this time, not least the status of the band itself, which was fine by Warford.
“I was still in college and was going to start grad school,” he says from his home in Riverside, where he settled into a successful law career. “For me, I wasn’t looking at anything long-term. I was thinking, ‘This is fun and these guys are really good players and we can do this while we do it.’ I didn’t have a view that it was about to end or that it could continue.”
As it turned out, it was about to end. The radio sessions would prove to be the last official recordings by the band. It also, in some ways, captures the last glimmer of that vibrant Southern California roots-music scene.
“If people think it’s tough to make a living playing bluegrass now, which it is, in 1967, especially in California, it was impossible,” says Fox. “If you look around the rest of the country, it was lean times for bluegrass.” Still, the Colonels had earned status.
“Even without Clarence in the band, they would’ve been the leading bluegrass band in California,” Fox says, crediting Roland White for keeping the Colonels alive as a band. “And in the national consciousness they were still one of the biggest things going. They really showed a kind of drive and ambition that a lot of people admired.”
But as time went on, that meant less and less — big fish, shrinking pond. Even at its peak a few years earlier, the scene in the area was not a way for musicians to get big paydays. But once the Beatles arrived and Dylan had gone electric, it was a different world. Locally, nothing captured the change more than Chris Hillman turning in his mandolin for an electric bass and co-founding the Byrds. Bluegrass just didn’t have much of a draw.
In 1961, the band, still known as the Country Boys, had what could have been a big break when it was hired to appear twice on The Andy Griffith Show. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an opportunity that fizzled. The producers wanted to have them back, “But the family moved and they couldn’t find them,” Fox says. “So they put an ad in the paper.”
And answering the ad was, yes, the Dillards, who auditioned and were hired, playing members of the mountain family the Darlings, ultimately performing 13 songs over the course of six episodes from 1963 to 1966 and gaining a national profile.
“In retrospect, I think the Dillards were much better suited to that show,” Fox says, citing again the Dillards’ bigger flair for showmanship. “The Colonels never had a show really,” he says. “They got up and played music.”
“The Dillards were such a mowing-down machine,” says Grammy Award-nominated reissue producer and annotator Mary Katherine Aldin, who worked at the Ash Grove starting in 1960. Through that latter role, she worked closely with the Colonels and later won the 1991 NAIRD Indie Award for producing and annotating the collection The Kentucky Colonels, Long Journey Home and wrote the liner notes for The New Kentucky Colonels Live in Holland 1973. Getting festival bookings became increasingly difficult, she says.
“It was, ‘We already have a bluegrass band, don’t need more,’” she says of the frustrations, and of course the one they already had was the Dillards, more often than not.
An exception was the Newport Folk Festival, and the Colonels did play there in 1964. But any momentum from that appearance was hard to sustain. By the time Warford joined, options had become fewer and fewer, not just on the festival level but on the local circuit that had been at least a steady, if unglamorous, platform.
“Now that I think about it, other than the Ash Grove, which was always a venue for folk and blues and old-timey stuff, there used to be pizza parlors and stuff with bluegrass bands on the weekends,” Warford says. “I don’t recall any still around then.”
The Ash Grove did remain the prime location for the music, regardless, with such future stars as Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, and Taj Mahal citing it as a place where they could meet and learn from their heroes. The Colonels’ and the club’s legacies were very much entwined, right from the start. The White brothers, with their family having moved from Maine to Burbank on the Eastern part of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, started playing the Ash Grove shortly after it opened on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood in 1958 with folk and blues fanatic Ed Pearl at the helm.
A year before that, the band was known as the Three Little Country Boys, with Roland on mandolin, Eric on banjo, Clarence — barely in his teens — on guitar, and sister Joanne sometimes on bass. Soon they won a radio station competition and changed the name simply to the Country Boys, with Eric taking over the bass and banjoist Billy Ray Latham and dobro player Leroy “Mack” McNees added to fill out the lineup, though that would change, too, when Eric left and Roger Bush was recruited.
“It was 1959 when I joined them,” Bush says now. “Got a phone call one day from Leroy Mack, said he was playing with Billy Ray and Roland, and the brother Eric played bass fiddle. That is it. The whole little band. They were working, played a radio show and TV show with the car salesman who had live music. Playing at the Ash Grove, had a deal with the owner, if he could call us when somebody didn’t show up and we could come fill some time, we would have the full run of the building during the day to rehearse with the full sound system. Then [we played] every Saturday morning.”
The family dynamic had its tensions, it seems, and the breaking point that led to Bush’s entry was sartorial.
“Roland tried to put everyone in white bucks,” Bush says. “They got up one morning at home, the White family, there was a note hung on the bass fiddle from Eric that said, ‘I quit.’ They opened the back door and there was his white bucks that had been on fire. Leroy called me up, I said, ‘You know, I’ve never played the bass fiddle, but wouldn’t mind giving it a whirl. We did a show, a school or college. That was my first show. I hadn’t gotten together with them but one time. We did the first song, nobody stepped to the microphone. They looked at me and said, ‘Go talk to them.’ That was the beginning of me being the talker in the band. They didn’t call me Flutter-Lip for nothing. I was always the talker.”
This is the time period represented in the album’s expanded tracks. The recordings, raw but lively, show an exuberant, youthful ensemble with vibrant performances of mostly traditional material (“Head Over Heels In Love With You,” “Shady Grove,” “I’ll Go Steppin’ Too,” “Flint Hill Special”) and a modicum of hokum to boot (“Polka on the Banjo,” “Shuckin’ the Corn,” “Mad Banjo”). Fox stresses that these early recordings were before Clarence broke out as a star attraction.
“He wasn’t playing lead yet,” he says. “He didn’t really start playing any lead until Roland went into the army in 1962.”
For the older brother, that produced something of a crossroads-level shock on return. “Roland talked about how surprised he was coming home from Germany, and here was Clarence playing fiddle tunes [on guitar],” Fox says. “But his rhythm playing on the old stuff is great.”
It was around this time that they recorded an album and, at the urging of mentor Joe Maphis, took on the name the Kentucky Colonels, regardless of the geographical disconnect. The album, The New Sound of Bluegrass America, came out in 1963. Clarence’s flat-picking shined, making him, for many, the band’s star attraction – even more so with the instrumental album, Appalachian Swing!, with fiddler Bobby Slone added to the lineup, released by prominent LA jazz, world, and folk label World Pacific Records.
Katherine Aldin witnessed this transformation and Clarence’s emerging stardom up close at the Ash Grove: “One thing about them – Clarence, even in those days, overshadowed everyone in the band,” she says. “So you’d get a whole flock of people who would come in and sit at the foot of the stage. There was a long metal bar with single seats in a V shape around the stage. The Clarence fanatics would get there early and sit there and glue their eyes on Clarence’s hands for 45 minutes and when they were done, just go away. He would suck the air out of the room. The other guys were really good too and wonderful human beings. But Clarence was head and shoulders above the rest of the world.”
His presence went beyond his skills. “Clarence would sit in the front room — there was a concert room and front room,” Aldin explains. “And he would sit in the front room between sets and any kid who came up to him, he would show them anything. And there were a lot of kids. He would show them a lick, or let them play his guitar, or if they brought a guitar he would play with them.”
But momentum was hard to sustain. Mack left the group in ’64 (he’s only on a few of the Swing! tracks) to work in his dad’s construction business, then Slone left and fiddle star Stoneman came in and for all intents by the end of ’65 the band was inactive until that short, final ’67 stretch.
“I think the band just kinda ran out of work to do,” Bush says.
The members went on to other jobs, in and out of music. Clarence famously became an in-demand session player with his switch to electric guitar and supported by James Burton, one of the top guitarists on the scene and a veteran of Ricky Nelson’s band (and later the leader of Elvis Presley’s TCB ensemble).
“James Burton had heard Clarence and started offering him session work — ‘I’ve got more work than I can do.’” says Diane Bouska, who married Roland White in the 1980s and performed with him until his death in April 2022 at age 83. “So Clarence started doing electric guitar session work.”
Clarence found himself working on Nelson sessions, as well as the Monkees and as lead guitarist on the album Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, the first project for Clark after leaving the Byrds. Then Chris Hillman, still in the Byrds, brought him in to play on a couple of songs for the band’s Younger Than Yesterday album, which led to more work with the group (including on Sweetheart of the Rodeo) and ultimately full membership in the last version of the band.
As such, Clarence wasn’t around much for the 1967 Ash Grove shows or the radio sessions captured for this reissued album, though Fox says that he seems to be on at least one of the songs. Shortly after that, Roland was hired by Bill Monroe and moved to Nashville. He and Bush did reconnect in the early ‘70s in the proto-newgrass band Country Gazette, which also featured fiddler Byron Berline, an LA mainstay who had played a handful of dates with the Colonels.
Clarence made his place with the Byrds, showcasing his dazzling skills on a B-bender — a Fender Telecaster modified by him and Gene Parsons, the band’s then-drummer, with a lever attached to the strap allowing him to bend the namesake string to simulate the sound of a pedal steel. He also continued doing sessions for Joe Cocker, Randy Newman, the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Rita Coolidge, among others, as well as returning to his acoustic roots in Muleskinner, a progressive bluegrass-swing group with mandolinist David Grisman, fiddler Peter Greene, banjoist Bill Keith, and guitarist Peter Rowan, a precursor of the groundbreaking David Grisman Quintet.
Then in 1973, Clarence, Roland, and Eric came back together as the White Brothers (sometimes billed as the New Kentucky Colonels) for shows in the U.S. and Europe. Following a show in Palmdale in the Southern California, Clarence was hit and killed by a drunk driver as he and Roland were loading equipment into their car. He was just 29.
It is hard to extricate the Colonels’ legacy from that of Clarence.
“The main thing was Clarence White’s guitar playing,” says country star Marty Stuart in an email. Stuart is arguably the leading authority on all things Clarence White, not to mention the owner of the original B-bender, which he played alongside Byrds founders Hillman and Roger McGuinn on the 2018 tour marking the 50th anniversary of the Sweethearts album.
“To me they are still influential because of the level of musicianship and they remain as the beloved founding fathers of the Southern California bluegrass scene. I had dinner with Gene Autry one time and he said, ‘I didn’t say I was the best singing cowboy, but I was about the first and the rest don’t matter.’ I would place the Colonels as field correspondents, national ambassadors for the world of bluegrass music in Southern California when barely anyone else was there to help out. They also introduced bluegrass music to an entirely new generation of listeners that old timers might not have gotten to.”
But there’s more to it than just Clarence. McNees, who wrote several of the few original songs the band did in the early days, found that out when he learned that modern country-rock band Blackberry Smoke had done a version of one of them, “Memphis Special,” on the 2003 album Bad Luck Ain’t No Crime.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” he says from his home in Thousand Oaks, north of Los Angeles. “I got a phone call [a while later] from an accounting firm to make sure I was the writer. Lo and behold, a couple weeks later I got a real nice check for royalties not being paid and after that another. After that I became an acquaintance of the singer [Charlie Starr]. Then they were coming to Los Angeles to play the House of Blues. I couldn’t go so my son went for me. I said, ‘Ask where they got the song.’ He came back and told me, ‘Well, he said that when he was nine years old he was watching The Andy Griffith Show and saw these guys playing bluegrass and asked his father to buy our album for him. Glad he did.”
And glad it wasn’t one of the Dillards’ episodes.
Is it any surprise that there is still enough interest in the Kentucky Colonels to merit this new release? Marty Stuart has one crisp, pointed word to answer that question.
“No.”
Album cover illustration by Olaf Jens, courtesy of Sundazed.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc. — inform your music?
Surfing. It is a wonderful mirror to playing music. It’s the same spiritual exercise, but it’s played out more on the physical plane. It’s spontaneous, super immersive, and requires deep concentration and awareness of your environment. The best wave riding experience is just like a really good jam. And in my best musical moments I feel like I’m gliding across a wave with the same grace.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
Before a show we all do a lot of stretching. I feel like it’s the best way to release stress and tension and get the blood moving, and get your chi meridians all dialed before you make music with everyone. Ten minutes before we go on the green room is a bunch of dudes getting all bendy and weird.
What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?
Some of the best advice I’ve been given is just maintaining a foundation of gratitude. When life gets really challenging or confusing, just putting one foot in front of the other is much simpler when you take a moment to count your blessings. And on a lighter note, another piece of advice that’s stayed with me is one time my friend Ben told me my guitar was too beautiful to have a plastic capo or tuner clipped to the headstock, so since then I always keep those resting on my amp or in my pocket when I’m done using them.
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
I spend a lot of time in the ocean and in the sun when I’m home and I feel like that keeps my body pretty relaxed, and I think that keeps a lot of the music I end up writing on the mellow side.
Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?
I think the dream scenario would change depending on the season, but being that it is summer I would love to see Ledward Kaapana playing with a traditional slack key group, with a large serving of sushi and some iced tea and fresh fruit juice.
Over the course of her lifelong career in bluegrass, Americana and roots music, we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing and connecting with Grammy Award winner Molly Tuttle on quite a few occasions. When we selected Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway, as our Artist of the Month, we wanted to open a space to discuss her career and music in a fresh light – and we could think of no better context for such a conversation than Basic Folk.
We asked Basic Folk podcast hosts Cindy Howes and Lizzie No – who featured Tuttle on the show once prior, in 2022 – to sit back down with the International Folk Award and Americana Award winner to discuss her brand new album, City of Gold, and to dig deeper into the creative output of this buzzworthy guitar player, songwriter, and business woman.
Watch for the full podcast episode to drop later this month, but for now enjoy these excerpts from Cindy and Lizzie’s conversation with Molly Tuttle.
Cindy Howes: Molly Tuttle, welcome to Basic Folk again. It’s so great to have you back on the podcast.
Molly Tuttle: Thank you so much for having me back. It’s great to be here with you guys.
CH: Before we start our interview, I want to set the tone for our conversation. Molly Tuttle is being highlighted as Bluegrass Situations’ Artist of the Month, which is so awesome. The tone of our interview today is LYLAS. Do you know what LYLAS is?
Lizzie No:It’s spelled L-Y-L-A-S.
MT: LYLAS. Okay. I don’t know that.
LN: What it means is: “Love you like a sister.”
CH: Oh yeah. So we are total LYLAS. This is like a fun trip to the mall. This is like a really fun cruise around the harbor with your gal pals.
MT: Oh my gosh, that’s so fun. Well, it’s perfect because I’m actually in a hotel outside of Missoula. And there’s a strip mall nearby. So shopping has been on my mind today. Great.
CH: We’ll all get mani pedis together.
LN: Yes. French tip.
CH: So, when approaching the writing on City of Gold, you asked yourself, “How do I tell my story through bluegrass?” Which I can relate to, as somebody who’s sort of tried to distance themselves from folk music for a really long time. And now I am fully leaning into it. So, I take [it as] you asking that question of yourself, like “How can I fit my Molly Tuttle-ness into a world that can be rigid, patriarchal, and maybe different from what you stand for.” So how true is that? And how have these songs helped you take control of the bluegrass narrative and tradition?
MT: I think that’s something I’ve always kind of struggled with. I remember when I first started writing songs, I just thought, “I don’t know how to write a bluegrass song.” I can write a song, but they never ended up sounding like bluegrass to me and I just didn’t feel like my story fit into the bluegrass narrative of the songs that I grew up singing.
I always loved songwriters like Hazel Dickens, who wrote bluegrass songs from a woman’s perspective, wrote songs about the struggles that she had as a woman in the music industry and as a working woman, and songs about workers’ rights and things she believed in. I grew up with two really strong role models, Laurie Lewis and Kathy Kallick, out in the Bay Area. I remember early on I would go out to [Kathy Kallick’s] house and she would make me tea and listen to my songs. She always told me that when she was first getting started writing bluegrass songs, she kind of felt the same way as me. Like, maybe her story didn’t belong in the genre. But she met Bill Monroe, and he encouraged her, “Don’t try to write a song that sounds like a song I would have written, write a song from your own perspective.”
So she wrote a song called “Broken Tie” about her parents getting a divorce. She said every time she was at a festival with Bill Monroe, he specifically requested that song. That was an inspiring story to me. But when I started writing songs for Crooked Tree, it was suddenly like a floodgate opened. I think I just found my people to write with, found my groove, and ended up with a collection of songs that kind of told my story, [told] about things I believed in, and [told] my family history and personal experiences. And then other songs that were just, you know, from a woman’s perspective, or from a perspective that I resonate with.
For [City of Gold], it was fun to kind of continue that and also expand it to be songs that I felt like were inspired by my band members, or inspired by experiences we’d had on the road. This felt more like a collective vision in a way.
LN: Okay, let’s talk about Crooked Tree. The title track from your last record was partly inspired by your experience living with alopecia. You’ve said that as a kid you would wear hats and then wigs, and then you learned to talk about your wig. Eventually, you started to get more comfortable going without. Now that you’re touring with Golden Highway a ton, you sometimes take your wig off when you play that song, which is such a powerful moment of joy, courage, and vulnerability. As a performer, I can relate to those moments where you bring a little bit extra of yourself and you share a part of yourself that you might normally keep private. How do you get to that right mood? How do you gauge if the crowd is like the right crowd to share about your alopecia experience?
MT: It’s also based on how I’m feeling. I took off my wig a few times last year. But I didn’t do it as much as maybe I wanted to, or maybe I should have, just because I wasn’t always sure what to say. I’ve had so many experiences of trying to explain alopecia to people and they still think I’m sick or still feel bad for me. And it’s so hard sometimes to put it in words that aren’t going to bring the mood down at the show, you know, I want people to be having a good time. I want it to be this fun, inspiring moment, not a moment where people can go, “I feel so bad for you.”
Recently, I performed and told my whole story [for] a keynote speech at this alopecia conference out in Denver, Colorado. I think that was such an important step for me. Just getting to share my story and reflect on the pain of growing up having this really visible difference, but also like, the joy and why it’s so important to me to share that with others and share the message that it’s okay to be different. It’s okay to be a “Crooked Tree.” This last weekend, we played in Michigan, and I did take off my wig and I felt like I finally nailed what I said and the perfect mood. Everyone was cheering and it was just a moment of celebration. I think I’m gonna just continue doing that more and more, but I find that it’s so helpful for me to check in with the alopecia community and feel that support from other people who know exactly how I feel. That makes me feel confident to share my message with the world and maybe sometimes be like, “I don’t care how it’s received, maybe I’m not sure how it’s gonna be received, but I’m going to do it anyway.” That just comes with time. And I guess I’ve had to grow kind of a thick skin. It used to be a lot harder for me.
CH: The new album, City of Gold, the songs were mostly written by you and your partner Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. What is the writing process like with you and Ketch? Like, how do you bring out the best in each other’s writing?
MT: We’re both quite different writers. He’s very fast paced. He throws out ideas and lines. [While I’ll] think it over. I’m kind of more internal. I think about the lines. We balance each other out in a way where I might think a lot about what exactly we are saying, and then he’s good. If I get stuck on something, [he can] kind of keep it moving. But our writing process is always different. It’s nice, because we’re together a lot. So we can write in a lot of different circumstances. Some of the songs we wrote in the car, like on a road trip, just throwing lines back and forth. Maybe he’d be driving, I’d be writing the lines on my phone. Maybe we’re talking about something at home or listening to music and sitting down with instruments, kind of more the conventional way of writing. I find it so hard to fit writing into my life, especially when I’m on tour and I’m on the go so much. [It’s so nice that] we got into a groove with it, where we were just doing it all the time, and it felt more naturally intertwined into my day-to-day life.
LN: The bluegrass community was a huge source of inspiration for you. Of this record, you said, “One of the things I love most about this music is how so much of the audience plays music as well.” And that you hope that people will sing along and maybe play those songs with their friends, almost like we’re all a part of one great big family. Now, how do you walk the line of making a sophisticated, bitchin’ bluegrass record, while keeping it simple enough for others who might not be musical geniuses to play along?
MT: The beauty of bluegrass music is that most of the songs have like three or four chords. You can play them really simple, you can just strum along and play as slow as you want. Beginner bluegrass musicians might go to a jam of people at the same level as them and play these songs in a lot simpler of a way. Then, as you get better and better you can play it faster, you can play more complicated solos, you can really play with the dynamics. There are infinite ways to make the songs more and more complex and sophisticated as you progress in your musical abilities.
On City of Gold, I did kind of stray away from that “three chords and the truth” format a little more than I did on my last record. It was fun, because we were working on these arrangements as a band, which was a lot different process than I’ve ever done before in the studio. I’ve always gone in with my songs and gathered musicians that I don’t normally play with on the road – studio musicians. I have a lot of my bluegrass heroes on the record, and you’re kind of learning the songs and playing them by a chart, but for this album, we really took the time to develop more complicated arrangements and add in new sections that stray away from the key. These songs are a little less accessible to the standard bluegrass jam. But I think there’s still a few that people could learn to play at any level.
• • •
CH: Okay, now we’re going to talk specifically about some of the songs on the new album, City of Gold, starting with the first song, “El Dorado.” Right now I am rewatching Deadwood, so I am super into this song. As a kid, you took a field trip to Coloma, the site of California’s first gold strike and it was the first time you heard about the legendary El Dorado, the City of Gold. In the song you sing, “El Dorado, city of gold, city of fools.” You said, “Just like gold fever, music has always captivated me.” So who are the characters in the song – like gold rush Kate from the Golden State – and how do you connect with these fools?
MT: I wrote the song with Ketch and I don’t know [exactly] how it came about… [But I told him,] when I was a kid, every school would send the kids off to gold country. You’d go to different places. The person who taught my class how to pan for gold, for some reason I have like a very vivid memory of him. He had this gold nugget on a chain around his neck and he showed us how to pan for gold. He was like, “You might find a flake of gold, but if you find an actual nugget of gold, we’re not gonna let you keep that, you have to give it back to us.” [Laughs] I remember being like, I really want to find like a nugget of gold and just squirrel it away and not tell this guy about it. So that kind of stuck with me.
CH: Literally every kid in your class thought that!
MT: Yeah! Like, we’re gonna strike it rich at this goldmine!
We were kind of doing some research on Coloma and found that it’s in El Dorado County. That seemed like a good place to start with a song just inspired by that character, but also thinking about all these characters who came together and we’re all trying to strike it rich. I feel like that is such a theme in our society. You know, we have these like little, mini gold rushes – everyone being like, “This is the next big thing. We’re all going to make so much money off of this.” But for me, I didn’t get into music thinking this is gonna make me rich, but it is something I’ve chased after for many years now.
CH: What do you think is the current gold rush? Is it dispensaries? Vape stores?
MT: The thing that just popped into my head, it’s a couple years old, maybe like a year past its prime, is crypto currency. I think I don’t know where that stands. But I think we’re a little bit past that.
• • •
LN: The second track on this album is “Where Did All the Wild Things Go?” Which is a song about gentrification’s corrosive effect on the character of once-vibrant neighborhoods nationwide – which I can very much relate to living in Brooklyn. I’d love to hear about your neighborhood where you live now. Is there a specific tradition or neighborhood institution or restaurant or store that is so special about your neighborhood? That you’re passionate about preserving? And how are you and your neighbors trying to keep your neighborhood weird and wild?
MT: Well, my neighborhood is East Nashville, and before I got there, it was totally different. It’s just in constant flux. It really changed so much when we had the tornado hit [in 2020] that took out tons of the local businesses that never returned. A lot of people moved out. The pandemic just kind of sped all of that up. Coming out of lockdown I was like, “Whoa, this is so different. Like, where do I even live anymore?”
I don’t really know how to answer how I’m trying to preserve it. I feel like I’m living in a different city every time I come back from tour, basically. Nashville’s always changing, just constantly growing, so many businesses are moving here. I do feel like there’s this constant sense of everyone missing the old Nashville. I don’t think that I was even around for the like “old Nashville” as many people who grew up in the city know it. So maybe I’m part of the problem in a way, really. I moved there just eight years ago…
• • •
CH: The next thing we want to talk about is “San Joaquin,” a new, old-style railroad song. There’s such a romance surrounding trains in song. You’ve always loved singing about trains. There is that long tradition of trains and folk songs. What do you think it is about trains that have captured artists’ hearts since they’ve been around?
MT: I think as artists, especially as musicians, we kind of have this roving spirit, where we want to see the world, we want to travel. I feel like a lot of musicians, myself included, we romanticize trains as this early way of getting across the country. And still, you’ll see musicians from time to time doing a train tour. Of course you have buskers who might hop on a train across the country and play all over the place. Now, I’ve never done that, but I think it’s just this thing that’s romanticized, especially by musicians. I’ve always loved singing [train songs]. There’s so many bluegrass train songs, but I didn’t know a specifically California bluegrass train song, so I felt like it was time to write one.
CH: What’s your favorite train song?
MT: That’s such a good question. The first one that popped into my head was Larry Sparks’ song, “I’d Like To Be A Train.” He doesn’t just want to ride a train. He wants to be a train.
• • •
CH: The song “Next Rodeo” you say, “…Reflects the miles I’ve put in with my band, Golden Highway, which has clocked in well over 100 shows.” That’s in the press release, so it’s probably 200+ shows at this point, and we’ll give a shout out to Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. Let me know if I’m mispronouncing anyone’s name–
MT: We have so many nicknames for Bronwyn in the band. We saw a YouTube comment on one of our videos where I introduce her and someone said, “What’s the fiddle player’s name? I couldn’t catch that.” Someone wrote “Ron Winky Pies.” We often call her Ron Winky Pies.
CH: Yes, that sounds right. Well, she is a hell of a fiddler. Also Dominick Leslie on the mandolin, Shelby Means on bass, and Kyle Tuttle, who is playing banjo. Can you talk about the ease and connection you feel with Golden Highway? What’s the feeling that you get when you’re on stage – and, when did it start gelling for everyone?
MT: After I made Crooked Tree, first I started thinking about who I wanted to take the songs on the road with. On the record I had the band name Golden Highway, but I didn’t actually have a band yet, so it’s kind of funny. I did it in reverse a little bit.
Dominick played on the whole record. I called him and I was like, “Hey, do you want to play with me next year?” And he said yes. So I had one band member. I was just trying to fill in the rest of the band thinking like, “Who’s gonna bring the most personality to this project? Who’s gonna bring a unique voice?” The whole record was all about being who you are, [about] individuality. I wanted to choose people who I felt like their personalities really shine through – and their music and their playing and their stage presence.
I got my dream band. We’ve all been friends in one way or another for like the past decade, so it was a cool experience. I’ve never had that before where I have this band in my head, I imagine the people playing together, and then it happens and it’s better than I could have imagined. It felt really cool. In the past I’ve had wonderful bandmates, but it’s never been this kind of brainchild where I’m trying to concoct my dream bluegrass band that will have this unique personality to it.
We all got together and everyone already knew each other and already played together in different configurations just through the bluegrass scene over the years. It all kind of started gelling really quickly. Our first couple shows we’re just kind of like, “Wow, this is something special!”
• • •
CH: We do want to ask a question about Jerry Douglas, who co-produced the record with you and is the master of the Dobro. How has your relationship with him as a producer shaped how you think about your own recordings?
MT: On this record, especially on “Stranger Things,” I just felt like I needed to hear him play on it. We had this funny thing we’d say in the studio, “Make us AKUS” – make us Alison Krauss and Union Station – cause they’re like our heroes. [Laughs]
When we got to that song we’re like, “We need that iconic Jerry Douglas dobro part.” It’s such a spooky song and he just knows how to accompany a song [like that] so well and that’s part of why I felt like he was the dream producer. He understands the musicianship side of things. He’s such a master of his instrument, but then he also has this deep connection to songs and vocalists and just knows exactly what to play behind the vocal.
That’s something I really kind of leaned on him for, just getting the best performance out of everyone, instrumentally. He has just the greatest ear. He hears a pitchy note here or like a wrong note there and really pushes everyone to do their best performance, but then he also has this side of him that’s extremely tasteful and he knows how to get behind a song and not overpower it.
LN: I want to talk about “Down Home Dispensary,” which is such a fun song. I’m fascinated by the way you’ve framed this issue, which is very hot in the news… legalizing marijuana. The way it’s framed in “Down Home Dispensary” is like a very fun political pitch about how Southern culture can evolve and is evolving. Why did you feel it was really important to frame this as a “Down Home Dispensary?” And do you notice an evolution in the way that Southerners and your audiences, more broadly, are relating to marijuana use?
MT: I think like the South is still the holdout. It’s not legal in most places in the South, but I feel like it’s become almost a bipartisan issue, where people are getting behind it. We play it and we’ve been playing it live and people are cheering no matter who they are. They’re like cheering for the “Down Home Dispensary,” because it’s this thing that’s become normalized in our society, but it still is technically not legal. That was one that Ketch and I originally wrote to be an Old Crow [Medicine Show] song and then they didn’t cut it. It’s so much fun!
CH: It’s sort of like a book end to “Big Backyard.” The world can be your down home dispensary, your backyard. You can make home and freedom anywhere.
MT: I thought it was like a funny angle to to go about it. You’re talking to a politician and just being like, you should really do this, because you’re gonna make a lot of money like this is in your best interest.
LN: How has living and working in Tennessee changed how you see your responsibilities as a feminist artist?
MT: I’m confronted with things in Tennessee that I never imagined would happen. Where I live, abortion is not legal in Tennessee at all, it was one of the first states to basically ban it for any reason.
That was really like a dark moment in our history as a country to just be going backwards completely. It’s something that I’ve feared since I was a teenage girl, like, what if this got taken away? And what if I couldn’t make decisions for my body? I can’t [access this healthcare] in the state where I live, I could maybe travel somewhere else if needed, but who knows if [someone else] could. They could make it more and more impossible to have access to this. It just breaks my heart for all the people who now don’t have that choice and don’t have the privilege of being able to go somewhere where they can get this health service.
[When writing “Goodbye Mary”] I was thinking about a story my mom told me growing up of my grandmother, whose name was Mary. She had a friend who was in an abusive relationship and she wanted to leave this relationship, but she ended up getting pregnant. So my grandmother and her friend, she would push her friend down the stairs, they would try anything to get rid of the baby. It’s a really, really dark story. But it’s somewhere that we’re going again, as a nation. When we were writing it, we were talking about my grandmother. That’s not something that happened to my grandmother personally, but it’s something that her generation had to deal with.
LN: I think it’s so important to link abortion access to women’s experiences of intimate partner violence. A lot of people who claim to be pro-life don’t want to admit that access to abortion is also access to freedom and the ability to leave an abusive situation. It’s just one more way of actually having freedom in your own body. That’s a really powerful story. It’s just so important, I think, for musicians to be talking about this issue, especially those of us that live in Nashville or are working in country and folk and bluegrass.
MT: It’s really scary to talk about, I was so scared to put that song on my record. Jerry was the one who was like, “We have to.” It was his favorite song. He was like, “If we’re gonna record one song, it needs to be this one.” And I was like, “I’m scared.”
This issue is one I care about so deeply. And it’s one of the most important social issues to me. But it’s also like, you get kind of the most backlash for it.
LN: Have you played this live yet?
MT: We haven’t, no. We’ve worked it up. And once the record is out, I think we will start playing it. But we haven’t tried it live yet.
LN: You got this.
MT: Yeah, totally. Thank you.
LN: Thank you. Thank you for this telling this story. I think that the bluegrass community needs to hear it and the world needs to hear it. I think it’s really important.
• • •
(Editor’s Note: This conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for flow and grammar. Cindy Howes’ and Lizzie No’s full Basic Folk conversation featuring Molly Tuttle will be available next week on BGS – or wherever you get podcasts.)
Artist:Painted Mandolin Hometown: Santa Cruz, California Song: “Shine On” Album:Sweet Rain Release Date: August 1, 2023 Label: Blender Logic Arts
In Their Words: “‘Shine On’ was the first song I wrote for our record, Sweet Rain. Written early during the pandemic, there is a sense of those times – a collective consciousness of the unknown, being alone and wondering what’s to come; lots of questions. I tried to answer those feelings with a sense of hope, beauty, and what brings us together. A deep confidence that we can survive and thrive, with the help of our community. Nature really comes through and I was inspired by that beauty during these times. It was quieter, so the bird songs seemed louder. I remember gathering outside that fall to see the comet together – that was uplifting – and spending time on my friend’s land, and swimming in the creek, that reminded me: ‘Talk to me, shed your fears, shine on.'” – Larry Graff (guitar, vocals)
“Larry’s eloquent description and interpretation of the lyrics of his song ‘Shine On’ sets a stage of images, hopes and dreams, framed by the music we created. A tender and optimistic groove provides a happy cadence to the improvised solos of mandolin and guitar, only to modulate at the end into a conversation with overlays of musical thoughts towards a positive resolve, as we all navigated our feelings throughout the pandemic.” – Joe Craven (mandolin, violin, percussion, vocals)
Folks in the bluegrass world have been watching Molly Tuttle’s star rise since long before her Grammy-winning 2022 album, Crooked Tree, has added even more momentum to the award-winning flatpicker’s career. Though we first crossed paths much earlier, we spoke to Tuttle initially in 2017 for an edition of Deep Sh!t that put her and guitarist James Elkington on the phone together. Even then, Elkington went out of his way to laud Tuttle’s playing, placing it on the same level as his own. (Tuttle, in a turn of mutual admiration, praised Elkington’s picking above hers, of course.)
This is a consistent phenomenon in musicians, songwriters, producers, and instrumentalists who encounter Tuttle’s work: They are all astounded by it; They all feel and hear genius within it. Tuttle is sometimes – no, often – your favorite musician’s favorite musician. Certainly your favorite musician’s favorite flatpicker.
At numerouspoints over the years since that first interview, the BGS team has latched onto songs and recordings by Tuttle. We’ve had the privilege of inviting her to join BGS lineups and stages and we’ve published more than a handfulofinterviews, as well, watching and documenting a career and creative output that continue to enjoy rapid-yet-meaningful growth. From our earliest premiere of “Good Enough” all the way to anchoring a BGS Cover Story, as Tuttle has advanced through the music industry, we’ve watched and written about those changes and the distance she’s traveled.
It’s fitting, then, as Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway, ready a second album on the heels of the wildly successful Crooked Tree, that they should at last be named BGS Artist of the Month. We know listeners and fans, whether brand new or veteran, will understand and appreciate how much pleasure and joy we have gained over the years from Tuttle’s songs, her creative vision, her passion, and perhaps above all, her fiery picking. It makes naming Tuttle our Artist of the Month that much more gratifying, highlighting the real reason we make BGS in the first place: our community.
After having a star-studded roster on Crooked Tree helmed by producer (and guest artist) Jerry Douglas, Tuttle has focused her vision slightly for City of Gold, which releases July 21 on Nonesuch Records. Douglas returns as co-producer. The new album, like the former, drips with the imagery, mythos, and mystique of California, drawing on West Coast influences like the Grateful Dead, Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, and folk revival, troubadour singer-songwriters. But, instead of a rotating cast of characters and besides a stout handful of featured artists, this record centers Tuttle and her full-time road band, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo).
This lineup and the material of the Golden Highway era all seemingly mock the rare critics and naysayers of Tuttle’s music, who, especially in the earliest days of her career, could sometimes be heard describing her songs and singing as toothless or lacking energy or grit. At their sold out theater and club headline shows or in front of thousands at music festivals, Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s performances are jaw-dropping, electric (literally and figuratively), and enormous – fully realized. It’s jamgrass without valorizing toxic masculinity; it’s “MASH,” but with taste; it’s a shredfest, but it’s also emotive and vulnerable and theatrical.
That Tuttle’s found her stride while “returning” to bluegrass – whether intentionally, subconsciously, or merely as a framing and narrative device – is striking and impressive. There are many songs, stages, and Artist of the Month features yet to be conquered down the Golden Highway.
Watch for a special Artist of the Month episode of Basic Folk later in July featuring Tuttle as well as an interview with her band, Golden Highway. For now, enjoy our Essential Molly Tuttle Playlist.
When a craftsman pauses to reflect, students of all skill levels benefit from the lesson. Alison Brown’s latest album, On Banjo, released May 5 on Compass Records and is a masterclass; it’s also a study on where the instrument has been and where it’s going.
Brown is a Compass co-founder and a GRAMMY Award-winning artist and producer. A self-described “lifer” in the bluegrass community and an IBMA “First Lady of Bluegrass,” she eagerly explores what the five-stringed instrument can do outside typical genre parameters. The new record is packed with star-studded duets with comedian Steve Martin, mandolin player and fellow First Lady of Bluegrass Sierra Hull, and fiddle legend Stuart Duncan.
The result is a varied, rich track list we couldn’t wait to ask Brown about.
BGS: Let’s walk through some of the tracks and collaborations on On Banjo. What kind of music inspired the duet with Anat Cohen?
AB:Anat Cohen is a clarinetist; she was born in Israel and lives in New York, but she’s well-known in jazz circles for Brazilian choro. I actually watched lots of videos of Anat on YouTube.
I reached out. I said “I know we don’t know each other, but would you consider doing this?”
What’s it like working with a famous comedian like Steve Martin in a musical context?
I’ve had the good fortune to go out and do some shows with him and Martin Short. There’s inevitably some time to jam in the dressing room, so it’s fun to play with Steve in that context, too.
Steve’s a great banjo player with a really beautiful touch and a delicate, sweet tone. He loves playing in double C tuning. Banjo players usually tune to a G, but you can drop the fourth string to a C and tune the second [string] up to a C. It’s an old tuning that clawhammer guys use a lot.
The way “Foggy Mountain Breaking,” came about is I wrote the A section. It was during the pandemic. I asked Steve, “Do you wanna write a B part?” He sent me a perfect B section 24 hours later. We figured out a bridge together. It’s named after a lyric in a John Hartford song and is obviously a riff on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
How does it feel to work with younger bluegrass talents like Sierra Hull? Is it gratifying to have a feminine duo on that track?
I wrote that tune hoping Sierra would be up for learning and recording it with me. I’m a huge fan of her mandolin playing; she’s another one with such a delicate touch. Her fingers just really dance over the fingerboard.
It required her to play every fret on the first string of the mandolin and she did it flawlessly. She said she’d never had a chance to work on such complicated music with another woman. So it’s a really special thing. It’s always a delight to play with Sierra, but to do a duet with her was like chocolate and more chocolate.
How do you balance two strong, independent main instruments like banjo and fiddle together, such as with Stuart Duncan?
Banjo and fiddle are just so complementary. They say a banjo and fiddle make a band, and they do.
I’ve known Stuart since he was 11 and I was 12. We go way back. And on this tune I want to give a tip of the hat to Byron Berline and John Hickman. Growing up in Southern California when we did in the ’70s, those two were the guys that everybody worshiped at the feet of. I wanted to try and capture some of that spirit, and I wanted to do it with Stuart.
Who is this album for, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?
That’s the existential question of the banjo player. And it is a bit of a challenge when you take the five-string banjo and go somewhere else with it. Earl Scruggs perpetuated a style and brought it to the masses that was just so electric. Most people think that’s all the banjo does and they don’t worry about its history before that. There’s a lot of voices inside the instrument; the bluegrass one has become the loudest one most recently.
It’s so interesting because at the beginning of the 1800s the banjo was found on plantations. Then white people appropriated that music in minstrel shows, performing in blackface. It’s deep in terms of what it says about our history and America’s original sin. It went from being a Black instrument to being a white lady’s instrument. The Black voice of the instrument and the female voice of the instrument were both disenfranchised. There are gorgeous old photos of women in the 1890s holding banjos, and there were female banjo orchestras. I’m excited to see that re-emerging.
You started Compass Records with Garry West almost three decades ago. What’s on the horizon, and what are your goals?
All the labels were run by business people, not musicians. We said, “Why can’t musicians run a label for other artists?”
The other part is really wanting to build a label that can have a cultural impact and Garry and I are both invested in roots music. I’ve been a member of the bluegrass community since about 10 years old. I’m a lifer. The whole economy of the record business has been turned upside down and stirred and shaken eight times. We want to make sure this music not only survives but thrives into the future.
You mentioned growing up in SoCal. How is bluegrass there different from Appalachia?
There would be Eagles’ songs in set lists. It was wide open. When I first came east with Stuart and his dad, we drove around and did the festivals in 1978 or so, but it was rooted in the first generation bands’ repertoire.
On that trip we entered a band contest in Oklahoma and we played something we learned from a Richard Green record. It was a funky fiddle thing in E. I remember somebody coming up afterwards and saying “We don’t appreciate you knocking the music.”
What did you learn while making On Banjo?
The deep dive to find new melodies, and that process of discovery of the instrument, is the process of self-discovery. You get to the end and it teaches you something new about yourself.
Photo Credit: Russ Harrington
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