Sean Watkins and Sara Watkins have factored into some of the most accomplished and creative ensembles of the last two decades, while building a cool catalog of their own solo albums, too. Familiar to many as co-founders of Nickel Creek (with Chris Thile), the California siblings are once again teaming up as a duo for brother sister, their second album as Watkins Family Hour.
“From the beginning, our goal was to work on these songs to be as strong as they could be, just the two of us,” Sara says. “And with a few exceptions on the record, that’s really how things were. It was a tight little group of us, working dense days where we could squeeze them in.”
Sara won a Grammy earlier this year for “Call My Name” as a member of I’m With Her (with Aoife O’Donovan and Sarah Jarosz). In addition to producing, Sean has recorded with collectives such as Fiction Family, Mutual Admiration Society, and Works Progress Administration. Their appearances at the Los Angeles club Largo have inspired a number of impromptu collaborations on stage as well. Together, however, the siblings make a powerful unit, capturing a band sound with essentially two people — but incorporating a fresh perspective through producer Mike Viola.
“Mike brings a diverse musical history to his production work,” Sean says. “He’s worked with a lot of people [from The Figgs to Fall Out Boy] that surpass just bluegrass or folk, but his sense of the songwriting craft and melody is right in line with us. He was bringing ideas that we would have never had, and vice versa.”
Enjoy new tracks from Watkins Family Hour in our BGS Essentials playlist, plus choice cuts from throughout their brilliant careers.
Musical matriarch Mavis Staples is as active as she has ever been. Fresh off an Americana Award nomination for Artist of the Year, Staples was recently featured as a guest performer on Live From Here with Chris Thile. Her latest album, a release from May 2019, is a collaborative work with another extraordinary singer-songwriter and blues icon, one Ben Harper. The new record, titled We Get By, features Staples’ sultry singing over Harper’s compositions, and like so many magical musical matchups, the total of the project is somehow far more than the sum of its parts.
Speaking to the writing, Staples had high praise for her junior collaborator. “When I first started reading the lyrics Ben wrote for me, I said to myself, ‘My God, he’s saying everything that needs to be said right now,’” she remembers. “But the songs were also true to my journey and the stories I’ve been singing all my life. There’s a spirituality and an honesty to Ben’s writing that took me back to church.”
Staples’ performance on the Live From Here is just that — it’s like going to church. Watch as she performs the opening number from her newest record here.
Grace Potter possesses one of the most commanding voices in popular music — which is a good thing, because on Daylight she’s got something to say.
Potter co-wrote much of the new solo album with producer Eric Valentine, with whom she fell in love while still married to a member of her band — which is now broken up, too. After their divorces, Potter and Valentine married, started a family, and now live in Topanga Canyon, California.
The overwhelming emotions of these dramatic life changes are channeled into Daylight, with many of the songs written with Valentine, and on occasion, his longtime buddy Mike Busbee, who died in September.
“Love Is Love,” a potent opener to the project, grabbed immediate attention as the first single, but in this interview with BGS, Potter goes deeper into musical pathway that ultimately led her to Daylight.
“Release” is about the aftermath of the breakup. Who was the first person you played that for when you finished it?
Grace Potter: Eric. Busbee actually texted it to Eric but it was only half the song. Our voice recorder cut off before we finished. But he just wanted Eric to hear where we were at with the writing and Eric had to pull over the car because he was bawling listening to it. And Eric doesn’t cry easily. So that was a really important moment and one that I didn’t expect.
That song, I’d started it myself in the bathtub and it had sat in my voice memo bank for like a year and a half before Eric had heard it and was like, “Let’s not sleep on that one. Let’s pursue that and see where it goes.” Obviously it went and went and went and it’s definitely the one that gets under my skin, every time. It’s hard to play live actually.
And you’re setting yourself up as the character that set this all in motion, too.
Yeah. “I know that I caused this pain…” And that really is the full taking ownership and being accountable for your choices and knowing that those choices are not always this self-righteous, “I can do no wrong” thing. Humans are vulnerable. Humans do make mistakes. Humans change their mind. Lives and careers and happiness and financial fortitude – it all shifts and changes over the time that we live. And the more I’ve lived, the more I realize that it’s okay to give yourself permission, to be that vulnerable.
You quoted the opening line to “Release,” and the opening line on “Shout It Out” sets up that song’s storyline, too. I’ve always thought that those opening lines are something you do really well, but I didn’t realize until researching for this interview that you went to film school.
Oh yeah.
So I’m curious, do you think there’s a correlation there? Because when you make a movie, you have those establishing shots in the beginning, and in your songs you have those establishing opening lines.
And sometimes I like to mislead. I like that opening line to take you in, like, a Quentin Tarantino direction. But it’s actually like a Nora Ephron romance. But I really love storytelling. It’s the same thing I do when I’m writing my sets too. Every single song and every musical experience has to take you on an emotional journey. So there’s a launch point and there’s a revelation, which you know, within the first 20 minutes of a movie, you’re always supposed to basically set up the premise of the movie and potentially introduce one twist. For me, my life was full of so many twists while I was writing Daylight that it wasn’t hard.
After the Nocturnals ended, you had to start a band again. What’s an audition process like to be in your band?
I just want to be around people I like first. Then hopefully they’re good at music. For real. Life is too short to be in a band with people that don’t fit into your ethos or feel, or just don’t feel right. You get these feelings, you get a sense when you’re in a room with someone, if they suck the air out of the room and they have that negative energy, it really changes your entire life and your entire demeanor.
You can feel yourself going kind of gray. I call it the Eeyore effect. You know, it’s this “uhhhhh” feeling. So I generally avoid Eeyores. Although an occasional well-balanced, calm person who doesn’t talk all the time is a wonderfully welcomed part of the road because we can’t all be psychotic extroverts. It’s enough with just me and my baby. But I really enjoy finding musicians who specialize in something that’s just one step quirkier than what you would expect.
Busbee, what I loved about him was that not only was he an amazing songwriter, he played the trombone. Just randomly, like, “I studied trombone.” Really? Eliza Hardy Jones, my keyboard player and singer in my band, is a next level, Olympic champion quilter. Quilting is her thing. She’s actually got a huge show in 2020. She’s doing a massive exhibition in Nebraska at the quilt museum.
Our new drummer, Jordan West, was working for Roland demoing the audio equipment, but actually was hiding in plain sight for so many people. I was looking for a female drummer who could sing, or a female bass player who could sing, or a female guitarist who could sing. I just wanted two female voices that could do all the Lucius parts. So it was fitting the puzzle pieces together for me. Instead of auditioning a bunch of people saying, “I know exactly what I’m looking for,” I just waited until I found a flow of people that felt right. And if they happen to play an instrument I needed, then you’re hired.
Kurtis Keber, our bass player, who’s been with us since last year, came into our world through my previous drummer, Matt Musty, who is now out with Train. We miss him all the time, but these happy accidents happen where you find your people. I saw Kurtis the other day. I was like, “Kurtis, what are you doing? Are you in the studio?” He goes, “No, no, I’ve been building. I’m helping do some carpentry.” My longtime guitarist [Benny Yurco] is now becoming obsessed with recording and becoming one of those crazy studio guys — from the humble beginnings of not even using one guitar pedal to this mad scientist lab they have in Burlington, [Vermont] now.
I like jack-of-all-trades people who like doing lots of things. Those are the things that attract me to people. Their strangeness. Their idioms, their specific obsession with just the tiniest little thing. You know, loose leaf tea. You can talk for an hour and a half about loose leaf tea? I’m in, count me in.
I read the lineup of your Grand Point North festival this year and you did an acoustic set on that Sunday night. What is it about that presentation that you enjoy?
Well, Warren Haynes from Gov’t Mule has been a longtime collaborator and it’s been something that we have talked about doing because we share a joy of being musical and not really knowing what’s going to happen. And not having the stakes be so high that there’s an entire band behind you train wrecking. You know what I mean?
Usually you have to rehearse and really gain a mastery over every single song and arrangement, but when you’re doing an acoustic set, there’s so much freedom to explore. Warren’s musicality and my musicality are complementary to one another where we can take it in a lot of different directions and kind of wring out the towel different every night.
We’d done it a lot backstage and not in front of people, but we felt like it would be a cool thing to share because so many musicians, they just get out there and they run the Ferris wheel, they crank the thing up and they do the same show night after night. There’s been nine years of my festival. People have seen me play with my band. They’ve seen Warren play. He’s played three times in my festival. So I really wanted to treat the audience to a different experience.
Is part of that perspective because you went to a lot of festivals growing up?
Yeah. I came from the jam band world. Warren really ushered me into it. I was very much standing in the shadows of some amazingly talented people who paved the way for me. The festival circuit is really the only way that I was able to break out on my own and be noticed and stand out. I think it’s because of those festivals that I have the sense of diversity. I can take it in a lot of different directions and it’s more fun that way.
And if you’d go to a music festival, you’re going to hear seven, eight, ten genres of music in one place and love every single one of them. I think my instincts took me in that direction, to continue on in my career through creating in the moment, more than creating for a forever thing. …
I think none of my records have ever done my musicality justice because it’s like a high school photo album. It’s this one moment — and maybe it was a very manipulated moment that isn’t even the real reflection of what I was feeling in that moment. So Daylight was the opportunity to completely break that down, take away that premise, take away this idea of having to bottle lightning, and package it and sell it to the world. And instead have an experience. Be vulnerable and open to it and see where it takes you.
As you were talking about festivals, I was wondering, did you ever get an ear for bluegrass?
Absolutely. I grew up listening primarily to Appalachian and Celtic music, which have so many deep connections. And from my family’s record collection, I was obsessed with traditional English, Irish, and Scottish songwriting because the storytelling has these archetypes in it. It’s like the Brothers Grimm. There’s these really intense, very dark stories of women that are shape-shifting and there’s these evil goblins, and then they turn into a beautiful woman. This is a combination of fantasy and reality and love and lust and danger and war. There’s all these amazing cinematic storytelling moments in those songs.
So I grew up around that, but then bluegrass came into my world because in the festival scene, there was so much crossover. I got to meet and be in a songwriter circle early on in 2006 with Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, Jim Lauderdale, and Buddy Miller. It was such a cool lineup, pulling all these people together from all these walks of life and just playing. And it was very humbling. It made me realize I got to get my shit together, my instrumentation, because these guys know how to hold it down.
I understand that you’ve moved from Vermont to Topanga Canyon, which must’ve made your inner hippie very happy.
Oh man! My inner hippie became my outer hippie. I walked to the store two days ago in a pirate shirt with a Burberry trench coat, sweatpants, Doc Martens, and a flower crown. And I didn’t even think about it until somebody sent me a photo of it and I was like, “I did what?” That was just my usual day-to-day getup. That’s Topanga. I live and breathe that lifestyle and those people really get me.
It’s a real community too. It’s a small, small group of people. And again, I think the thing I’ve been finding that I want in life is accountability. And in a big city like L.A., you can hit someone with your car, drive away and never see them again and not really ever worry about getting caught. But if I, or anyone in town, sees anything out of the ordinary, we check in on each other. That’s how tight-knit we are, and how much we care about one another. And it’s a really, really wonderful community to be a part of.
What do you hope that fans will take away from the 2020 version of Grace Potter on tour?
You know, everything about my life has been unexpected, even to me, so I certainly can’t tell people what to expect yet because I just — every bit of it has been this ride. And as I’ve gone on as a musician, I realized that my favorite part of being a musician is inviting people into that ride with me. Instead of presenting them with a packaged thing, that is what it is, I don’t know what it is! I don’t know how this is all going to work. I’ve got a baby now and my life has fundamentally changed in so many ways. I can’t wait to see how it manifests onstage. I guarantee you there will still be headbanging, that’s for sure!
With a new album released this past April titled I Love You. It’s A Fever Dream., the Swedish-born artist known as The Tallest Man on Earth has been touring the world behind the new music. In fact, he’ll play throughout the UK next week, followed by shows in Belgium, France, and Sweden, before returning stateside in March.
Full of passion and raw energy, The Tallest Man on Earth — also known as Kristian Matsson — brings a powerful performance of “I’m a Stranger Now” to Live From Here with Chris Thile, filmed at Green Music Center in Rohnert Park, California.
In public radio and podcast fandom Jad Abumrad’s voice is not only immediately recognizable, it’s iconic. As a host of WNYC’s hit show, Radiolab, Abumrad has explored myriad topics ranging from secret World War II missions to the social and cultural impacts of contagious diseases. He has a knack for storytelling, uncovering and contextualizing minute details that many other writers and journalists may have simply shrugged at or glossed over.
This instinct, a sixth sense that guides him to these subtle nuances that often rest undisturbed just below the surface or hide in plain sight, is focused on a new subject in his brand-new podcast (also produced and distributed by WNYC), Dolly Parton’s America. The nine-part series lives up to the oft-invoked, seldom accurate characterization of “a deep dive,” covering ground that even the most ardent Dolly experts and fans may have never trod.
A self-described “new initiate” of country music, Abumrad grew up in Nashville, but given Dolly’s standing as an almost omnipresent cultural touchstone he realized much later that during those Tennessee years he almost couldn’t see the Dolly Parton forest for the Dolly Parton trees. “I knew her music, in terms of the crossover stuff — ‘9 to 5’ and ‘Islands in the Stream,’” he admits. “But the first place I started was going back to ‘60s Dolly and ‘70s Dolly. That’s a very different Dolly.”
Though what he found in those early decades of her career was often unexpected, it was never truly shocking or surprising, especially given the pop culture monolith that Parton has become since those years. A monolith that Abumrad describes as being able to bring people together across all manner of divides — something particularly remarkable in this current global moment.
“You see these stories emerge of not only her changing over time, but what was happening around her in the south, in Appalachia, and in America,” he continues. “The early Dolly music and lyrics became almost like a portal that I could step through to talk about history, to talk about politics, to talk about culture, to talk about feminism. It’s all there in her music.”
And so, it’s all in the podcast. In the two already released episodes Abumrad et. al. cover topics as broad and varied as Dolly’s constantly being undervalued as a songwriter, her being “typecast” as a secondary character (a “dumb blonde”), her shift from the sad, forlorn songs of her early career to her jubilant, encouraging anthems later on, and even her own struggles with suicidal ideation.
With such an entity as Parton, a bystander might assume that any approach to unspooling the many tendrils of her vastly variable and dynamic career would be insufficient, myopic, and/or excruciatingly intimidating. Abumrad faces this daunting task with aplomb, acknowledging the many ways such a project can go awry, but not allowing that acknowledgment to dissuade him. Rather than shy away from storytelling that might open him and the podcast up to criticism about omissions or oversights or missteps, he leans into the humanity that allows for those scenarios. “This is a project where I was trying to see Dolly through other people’s eyes, so that I could understand them and understand their lives and their experiences… I wanted to understand Dolly not simply as a performer and an icon, but as somebody who’s created all this culture… Why do they love it? What do they see in it? What is it about it that calls them? I felt like that was a way to understand the country at this moment.”
BGS editor and contributor Justin Hiltner spoke to Abumrad on the phone about Dolly Parton’s America; the two took turns picking their favorite Dolly tracks, as if standing in front of a Dolly-only jukebox in a Dolly-themed dive bar.
JH: If you and I were standing in front of a jukebox full of Dolly Parton songs what would be your “pick” if you were asked to play Dolly Parton for a room full of people? What would be the first song you would think of?
JA: I think [with] any jukebox selection you have to disclaim: There’s no way to be comprehensive, so any selection you make is going to be one tiny sliver of a tremendous catalog of thousands and thousands of songs.
But, I think the first one I’m going to have to pick is “Muleskinner Blues.” I think it was 1970? I think that’s right. 1970. I would play this one because that song is just… it is pure fire. The rhythm section is so badass and her on top of it, you just cannot — you have to move when you hear it. And I say this as somebody who didn’t grow up with this genre. I grew up in a house full of opera and bad hair metal. Country music was not my jam. But this is one of the first songs that when I heard it I was like, “Oh my god. This SONG.”
The moment that she ad-libs, “I’m a lady muleskinner–”
Oh my god, it’s so good.
It’s so good! And I think about it all the time. When we talk about bluegrass, [people like to say,] “Oh, you know, we don’t have that many women forebears, we don’t have many [women] to point to.” I hear that [ad-lib] and I hear her telling the history of women in roots music and American music. “I’m a lady muleskinner” is like, “I’m not just singing this song that’s always been sung by men, this song is MINE now.” I love that.
Let me follow that inspiration, because one of the things that I think about that song is where it falls in her history. She was on the Porter Wagoner show, right? She’s this crazy prolific songwriter, but she’s kind of under the thumb of this guy, who’s a legend and an amazing hitmaker in his own right, but he was kind of holding her back. At that point she’s starting to bristle. We talked to a bunch of people… I think of them as “Dolly-ologists,” these new academics who think about Dolly a lot, before this song it was a lot of sad songs, often sung from the perspectives of little girls, about something that had been done wrong to them. This is the first song that she grabs her power, in some way.
When she holds that first note she holds it as long as she wants and the band has to follow her. So she’s like, “Y’all gonna follow me.” Then as soon as she lets go the band follows her. It’s literally her taking charge of the band. You feel that power, you feel that energy. It’s such a good song. I’ve been listening to it non-stop.
I think my first jukebox pick, what might be my favorite Dolly cut ever, is “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind” with Chet Atkins. Have you heard this?
Yeah!
It’s just two guitars, it’s just them. They’re kind of conversing while they play. There’s this subtle moment where Chet makes a joke like, “Why don’t you pick one, Dolly?” Then he continues to pick a solo and Dolly laughs like, “That’s not me, that’s not me!” But there’s this sort of respect in his voice, where he’s telling the listeners that she’s a picker. Like, “Don’t forget, don’t sleep on Dolly Parton. She can play guitar!” She’s the real deal.
They mix up the words at one point, they aren’t singing the right harmonies together. Then at the end, they’re just laughing together, and Dolly sighs, “Oh, I love you Chet.” He’s like, “Oh, I love you Dolly.” I think it’s my all-time favorite Dolly Parton recording ever. And for a song that she’s re-recorded so many times, to hear it pared down like that — definitely my number one pick.
Wow. That’s awesome.
What’s another one for you?
Let’s see, I’m really zoned in on ‘70s Dolly right now. I hope you don’t mind that most of my picks are going to be in that era.
Nothing wrong with that!
I just love the moment that her songs go kinda funky and percussive. I’ve always been less of a lyric guy and more of a music/tambour kind of guy. I love from “Jolene” on when she starts adding different instrumentations to her songs.
I have a couple of picks here… let’s go with “Joshua.” Again, it’s a song she did right after “Muleskinner” and I feel like that’s the moment when she truly becomes [a star] — if you want to look at her ascent to global superstardom, I think it begins in those few years and “Joshua” was her first number one. I just love the production of the song, I love how her voice was recorded, it’s a little bit distorted. I love how all the instruments are panned hard left or right. The rhythm guitar is over on the right and Dolly’s voice is on the left — or maybe it’s vice versa. I love the whole ‘70s production of it.
It’s such a weird story! It’s [about] an orphan girl meeting a crazy old man living by himself in the woods and they fall in love. There’s something kind of offbeat and oddball, but also kind of poetic about it. When it modulates, it goes up a semitone, like somewhere in the middle. It’s just cookin’. I love it.
My next pick, and really this is hard, I would probably pick something off of The Grass is Blue. And I think that my favorite one is “Train, Train.” I mean, you can’t be upset at a bluegrass song about a train, for one, but also that album means so much to me. You have this woman who has conquered every genre, has hits on so many different charts, and for her to come back to bluegrass — and I always make sure to emphasize the “back” to bluegrass because she’s been based in this. Her music since day one has been bluegrass music, the mountain music, as she calls it.
And the band on that record, the band that she toured with doing promo for that record, they were ridiculous! Chris Thile was in the band, if Chris Thile wasn’t, Sam Bush was. Jim Mills — it’s everybody. Jerry Douglas. This stacked roster of bluegrass pickers and then she takes that band to like, the CMA awards. To see bluegrass in primetime, in the mainstream like that always means so much to those of us who have always loved bluegrass first and foremost. I keep beating the drum of, “Induct Dolly Parton into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame! Induct Dolly Parton into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame!” I think it’s a no-brainer, and “Train, Train” is the perfect distillation of that for me.
Totally! You know, it’s interesting, what I remember is being in the UK — we went to the UK to shadow her for the premiere of 9 to 5 the musical — and on the way to the show I had to be in the car [with her] posse from the Dollywood Foundation and the Imagination Library, like David Dotson and some of these folks. They all were echoing basically what you just said. That album, more than any other album of hers, is most meaningful to the people around her. I think a lot of people feel like you feel. I don’t want to say it was one of her less successful [records], but it didn’t have the crazy crossover [appeal.] That album meant a lot to a lot of people.
Do you have another one? Maybe to close us out? One more for you, one more for me.
Sure, let’s see. I’ll give you a choice and you can tell me which one will be more interesting. “Love is Like a Butterfly” or “He’s Alive.”
Oh shoot, do both.
Okay, I’ll do both in one shot. So, “He’s Alive” is not the kind of song I’d ordinarily choose to put on, as a — I’ll be completely transparent — godless liberal. I come from a country that was torn apart by religion and my parents are scientists, so when we came from Lebanon my parents were like, “Don’t you damn set foot in a church!” [Laughs]
The first time I heard “He’s Alive” I got goosebumps. I hadn’t been that moved by a song in a long time. We were driving from Knoxville to Dollywood, actually, with one of Dolly’s biggest fans, and she put that song on for us. It was crazy, driving through the hills seeing signs like “Jesus saves you” and “Jesus loves you.” Then that song comes on and, as you know, the first few minutes are kind of a little bit overblown and orchestral and there’s this bombast going on, but when the chorus and the gospel chorus come in? Oh my god. That is more intense than any techno DJ drop. We were all just pinned to our seats for that. It feels like she’s alive, right? [Laughs]
I played it for my wife and my family the other day and they were like, “You like this?” But when it gets to the chorus they were like, “Oh, I get it.”
I’ll throw in “Love is Like a Butterfly” because when she had a string of number ones going from Dolly the “girl singer” to being Dolly the superstar, that was one [important song.] I don’t know, there’s something about her voice on that song. She’s describing this almost trance of love, she’s in love with someone and she’s weightless and entranced the way a butterfly is in the wind. The song isn’t as poetic as some of her others, but there’s something in the way she sings it that I just feel what she’s describing without even hearing the words. Something about her voice that is so… it literally flies. It’s like a butterfly. Her voice captures that. I’m so mystified by her voice on that recording.
I think my last choice would be, “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That,” not only because it’s just a really good jukebox song — it is a perfect rollicking country song for a night at the dive bar. But also I realized — I’m openly gay, I’m a career banjo player who happens to moonlight (during the day) as a music writer, and so I went through this whole dynamic [when I was younger] of discovering my sexuality after I had already been in this music for my whole life. I realized, “Oh wait, I don’t think I belong here. I don’t think this space is for me. I play banjo, I love bluegrass.”
Something that I really appreciate about Dolly, from long ago, before I even knew she was a queer icon — and rightly so! — I could project my queerness onto and into her art and see myself in it. There’s something about “Why’d You Come in Here Lookin’ Like That” that’s just like, “Why does this straight man have to come up in my business and remind me that he’s unavailable to me?” That’s what I hear listening to that song, and it’s funny that I could go down a list of like ten other Dolly songs that feel like that to me. That feel like the queer experience realized through Dolly’s lens.
That’s really interesting… how so many of her songs create that space, so you can read it that way. I love that you have a list that goes beyond that. I might have to call you back and ask you to elaborate on that. [Laughs]
It was something that I really didn’t want to have this conversation happen without mentioning. I mean, even if you don’t count the rhinestones and the false nails and the big boobs, and everything. Boiled down to just nuts and bolts, and thinking of her as just a songwriter, she’s still allowing space for people to see their own experiences in her music. That’s not a very common thing in country. It is because heartbreak is all through country and everybody’s heart gets broken all the time, but other than that it really takes that sort of [approach] — well, what you’re talking about through this whole entire project. She touches on all of these issues that are sort of endemic to our culture, in a way that’s so organic that we ingest them almost without realizing it until now, in retrospect, I look back thinking, “Well of course she’s a queer icon, she’s creating space for us to relate to her music.” Even if it’s coming from such a specific place.
She, as a songwriter like you say, has created that space. Even without having to look at the persona in any way.
She still has not gotten her due as a songwriter, and it’s painful at times. To see that be such a big part of what you’re doing [is important.]
Yeah, I appreciate that, that’s where we start the series is taking her seriously as a songwriter, cause I agree. Robert Oermann said in one of our episodes that if she had been born two hundred years ago she’d be Mozart. (I think maybe he means more than two hundred.) Because she’s that touched by that creative spirit. That’s never been acknowledged. Bob Dylan gets it, Johnny Cash gets it, but she hasn’t.
Photo of Jad Abumrad: Bo Jacober Illustration: Christine de Carvalho
Bluegrass has an undeniable fascination with prodigies. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard an excited story about a pre-pubescent Chris Thile at a run-of-the-mill bluegrass festival campsite jam session or a story about receiving a pre-fame autograph from a young, curly-headed fiddler named Alison Krauss.
All hands raised? Yes. It’s a thing. Bluegrass loves its pickin’ kids, especially the ones with otherworldly, unfettered talent. But an even more remarkable phenomenon relating to these prodigious youths, especially since the advent of kids in/on bluegrass programs across the U.S., is the ever more frequent occurrence of young people, veritable prodigies, who are effortlessly and distinctly musical. They don’t just shred, they have taste, they have singular musical voices, they have all of the trappings of their elder counterparts.
An example of one such not-just-a-prodigy is banjo player Matthew Davis, whose 20 years of age superficially belie the fact that he’s not only a former National Banjo Champion, he’s also a graduate of the prestigious Acoustic Music Seminar at the Savannah Music Festival, and he’s released four albums. The most recent, Outlander, dropped early August of this year.
Even a handful of projects into a recording career, albums made at age 20 aren’t supposed to sound like this. “Ektorp,” the final cut on the record — with Ethan Setiawan on mandolin, Grant Flick on fiddle, Jed Clark on guitar, and Jacob Warren on bass — demonstrates the astonishing maturity with which Davis composes, thinks about, and executes his art. Furthermore, for art music, and heady, technically rich new acoustic music at that, it’s impressively accessible, while remaining rooted in bluegrass. If the “kids” are sounding this good this early in their lifetimes the future of “the music” isn’t just in good hands, it’s destined to be innovated and reinvigorated time and time again, with folks like Matthew Davis leading the charge.
Just the day before, his Nashville house was filled with them, as well as with a few dozen kids. It was the 6th birthday of the eldest of two children of the three-finger-style banjo maestro and his clawhammer-style counterpart, frequent recording and touring partner and wife Abigail Washburn.
But the days surrounding this have also had a party vibe. He’s been in rehearsals with his cohorts in the beloved jazz-and-way-beyond Flecktones, in preparation for a tour marking the band’s 30th birthday.
Working again with harmonica player/pianist Howard Levy, bassist Victor Wooten, and the singular electro-acoustic percussionist known as Futureman (a.k.a. Wooten’s brother Roy), digging deep into their group catalog of complex flights of fancy mixing daredevil chops, musical depth, and persistent whimsy has been a blast.
“They’re the same guys they were when I first met them,” he says, speaking from home. “Curious, interested, ever-expanding, ever-pulling me with them. There’s a very special bond we have together. I’m realizing it more and more as years go by, one of the great relationships in our lives, musically and personally.”
They’re even pulling out such rarely played and decidedly difficult gems as “Jekyll and Hyde (and Ted and Alice)” from the band’s second album, 1991’s Flight of the Cosmic Hippo. It’s challenging and exciting, enlivening the qualities that made this alchemical combo of characters special from the very start. Futureman, he says, is an “empath and enabler — musical enabler, brings consciousness underneath you.” Victor Wooten too. Levy is “the crazy ideas on top. He’s the brains of the outfit.”
Fleck’s role? “Somehow I thought I was the heart of it, limiting it but making it more understandable for the common man — I was the common man in the band, surrounded by these crazy guys.”
But with a moment to reflect on their collective history and achievements, he finds descriptions of the magic they work together to be elusive.
This is where the balloons come in.
“It has to have heart, has to have melodies, some harmonies,” says Fleck, who turns 61 in July. “Couldn’t just be a groove or a shred-fest. That’s the power of the band. The tunes are strong, good things to pour everyone’s musical power into. Like a balloon. It’s an empty piece of rubber. But these tunes I’d written, we filled them up with Futureman and Victor and Howard — the balloons get real handsome. With the balloons at the party, it occurred to me that you fill them up and they become joyful. That’s what this music is.”
They’ll be sharing that joy on the road now, including two shows of particular import. This 30th anniversary tour began with a big “Friends and Family” kickoff May 30 at Red Rocks near Denver, the friends and family here including Washburn, saxophonist Jeff Coffin, Dobro genius Jerry Douglas, and the Colorado Symphony. And on June 8 they will be taking a cherished headlining slot at the Hollywood Bowl’s vaunted Playboy Jazz Festival.
The Playboy slot is, to Fleck, a particularly meaningful recognition.
“It’s one of the neat things to being around 30 years,” he says of that booking. “From the start I was begging to play it and they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll put you on at noon’ and we’d play once every four years or so. Now we’re in the headlining slot and we’re legacy artists.”
Sure, the Flecktones have had several albums go to the top of the jazz sales and airplay charts and they have won two Grammy Awards for contemporary jazz album, with Outbound in 2000 and The Hidden Lands in 2006. And last year the band was given the prestigious Miles Davis Award by the Montreal International Jazz Festival. And Fleck has found himself partnering regularly on recordings and tours with some of the greats of jazz, one in particular in an ongoing partnership. “I’m playing with Chick Corea, which is ridiculous, on a regular basis,” he marvels, having just returned home from a tour with the ceaselessly groundbreaking pianist.
But, while belated acceptance in the jazz world is frustrating, he understands. See, banjo is pretty much standard in any jazz band… in 1919. In 2019, not so much. Even after 30 years of forging a path for banjo in modern jazz, Fleck remains singular. Asked about others doing anything comparable today, he’s kinda stumped.
He cites New Orleans’ veteran Don Vappie, but he’s generally in the mode of traditions going back to those earliest years of jazz. There’s Matt Davis, a converted jazz pianist who’s on the faculty of the University of Michigan. And there are others who use some jazz chops and sensibilities while not strictly playing that style of music, notably Tony Trischka, Noam Pikelny, Alison Brown, and Pat Cloud.
“But yeah,” he says. “They’re rare.”
Not to mention that the Flecktones as a whole is anything but standard jazz, with a truly eccentric approach and reach into a lot of styles. The 3-CD Little Worlds set from 2003 showed a boundless range that felt to some at once excitingly delightful and confounding.
On the other hand, not fitting in any category is par for the course for Fleck. He’s made a career of it, holding the record for the most categories in which he has been nominated for Grammys, 16 total. The most recent win is a best folk album trophy in 2016 for Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn.
He’s a charter member, he quips, of the “Modern American Attention Deficit Disorder Musicians.” There are really only two others he’d put in that association: Jerry Douglas (whose fusiony Jerry Douglas Band may be the only thing out there comparable to the Flecktones) and Chris Thile (who’s resumé runs from Nickel Creek to ongoing collaborations with classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau).
There’s one side of his musical hexadecagon he’s underserved for a while now, though. Ironically, it’s the one that first brought him fame when he emerged as a precocious New York City musician in the ‘70s and ‘80s.
“On the bluegrass side, people go, ‘Whatever happened to Béla Fleck? He could have been a great bluegrass player.’” he says. “Someone told me he had heard that. That was when I was at the top of my game, selling out stadiums with the Flecktones on tour with the Dave Matthews Band.”
Well, it has been 20 years since his last true bluegrass album, the on-point-titled The Bluegrass Sessions. And the one before that, the breakthrough Drive, came in 1988, a year before the Flecktones genesis. Well, as it happens, Fleck has a new bluegrass album in the works with a cast of musicians including such longtime buddies as Douglas, mandolinist Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, bassist Mark Schatz and fiddler Stuart Duncan (all of whom were on the 1988 album) and a mix of fellow veteran stars (bassist Meyer, mandolinists David Grisman and Chris Thile) and relative newcomers (fiddlers Billy Contreras and Michael Cleveland, mandolinist Dominick Leslie, and guitarist Cody Kilby).
The timing? Just seemed right, he says.
“Now the years have gone by and I didn’t have a place for bluegrass to fit in,” he says. “But I had these tunes burning a hole in my pocket and thought I would really love to have a place for them. These sessions have been a knockout. These are hard tunes. And we’re having a blast. It’s as good as I’d hoped.”
The results will be out sometime next year. But first there’s this Flecktones balloon to float.
“One thing I will guarantee you is you will never hear anything else like it,” he says. “There is nothing else like the Flecktones in the world. I promise that. And I am very proud that were are that, and that we are back together.”
Our April Artist of the Month is Andrew Bird, and the fascinating thing about him — besides the fact that he’s both indie music star and violin / whistle prodigy close to the level of Chris Thile — is if you really dig into his 20+ year career (his first album was released in 1992!) he often incorporates and records Irish / Scottish fiddle reels, traditional country (“Richmond Woman” “If I Needed You”), and string arrangements that would be just as fitting on a Punch Brothers record as they would be among his adventurous electronic looping, poppy hooks, and deeply layered tracks (and whistling, so much whistling.)
Later this month, we’ll have an exclusive interview with Bird, who stopped short of nothing — well, almost nothing — in order to recreate a classic painting for the cover of his newest album, My Finest Work Yet. Amid the historical references, he’s approaching modern political topics, too: extremism on both sides, self-sacrifice for the public good, and the way in which we engage with our enemies
He explains, “The trick of writing a message song in 2019 is finding a way not to turn off a jaded populace. That’s the real challenge. After the election in 2016, people were saying we have this sacred duty as artists, but it’s not quite that simple. If you’re too on the nose, you lose people. I had to figure out what the vocabulary was going to be for these songs, how history might play into them. If you start naming places and people ad current events, you lose people.”
For now, get primed for the month ahead with a collection of some of his best work in our new Essential Andrew Bird playlist on Spotify:
Ah, Nickel Creek. The originally-a-bluegrass band, almost-bluegrass band that defined and fostered an entire generation of young roots music fans. Their five album catalog is chock-full of incredible songs, but for our purposes we’re going to rank their greatest hits as released on their 2006 compilation album, Reasons Why (The Very Best). Let’s start at the bottom, just to stir the pot right off the bat.
14. “The Fox”
When your audiences eventually universally devolve into nothing better than a non-Newtonian fluid that aggressively shouts “THE FOOOOOOOOOX” incessantly, it’s time to maybe consider that a “hit” isn’t necessarily a good thing. And if you ever attended a Nickel Creek concert during their heyday and you weren’t one of the ones yelling, you probably came to that conclusion, too. The band certainly has. And that poor goose…
13. “The Lighthouse’s Tale”
Look, you knew it was next. If Chris Thile himself openly mocks the song onstage, perhaps it doesn’t deserve a higher slot. Personification of a lighthouse though. Groundbreaking. Or should we say, sand-breaking. (Too soon?)
12. “Somebody More Like You”
Just because Sean’s early 2000s, punk-esque vocal choices are somewhat… jarring.
11. “Helena”
This song doesn’t seem to have aged well… A man uses not one, but two women and he’s so goddamn flippant about it. Is that love?? Dang if it’s not a catchy song though. Number eleven feels right.
10. “Can’t Complain”
Another in the “As a teen I shouted along with the words from the bottom of my heart and now I take pause” category. “…Made her wanna die / But she can’t complain she can’t complain.” Can’t she!?
9. “Should’ve Known Better”
See numbers eleven and ten. They should’ve known better. HaHA!
8. “You Don’t Have to Move that Mountain”
A cover that was previously unreleased by the band, this one is neither lackluster nor exactly awe-inspiring. Solid, for sure, but eight feels like the right spot. Especially given its “hit” status being ascribed only by its inclusion on the album alone. Are we all good with this praxis? Great. (Check that Mark Schatz bass solo though, okay?)
7. “Out of the Woods”
So vibey and lush. Spooky and ethereal. Like the woods from a Bronté novel. It’s a good one, perfect for the middle of the pack.
6. “Reasons Why”
Why number six, you may ask? I have my reasons why: mainly the space-age neo-folk vocal arrangements, with those tight tight tight harmonies. Makes me want to shake fists at the sky!
5. “This Side”
“You dream of colors that have never been made” was perhaps the deepest, most profound line on the Grammy-winning album, This Side, by the opinion of this writer, who wore out the CD oh, almost two decades ago.
4. “Smoothie Song”
Not as good as “Scotch & Chocolate” or “Stumptown,” but still. A bop.
3. “When in Rome”
Asking the tough questions, one by one. A manifesto for teenage bluegrass fans exploring music on the fringes of the familiar. Also, stomping in puddles. When in Rome, after all…
2. “Jealous of the Moon”
Devastatingly melancholy, but with a hopeful message. Pure poetry. Just remember, you don’t need to call anyone to save you. The problem is simple: “There’s nothing you can do / If you’re too scared to try.”
1. “When You Come Back Down”
One reason we could count this as the number one song in and among Nickel Creek’s greatest hits is that IT ISN’T AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY. Travesty. The true reason, though, is that this is unimpeachably the best of the trio’s greatest hits. Sure, it can read like a song ripe for overuse at high school graduations, but it’s beautiful, it’s simple, it’s straightforward, and it’s almost literally uplifting. Take every chance you dare.
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