Tag: Country

BGS Class of 2017: Albums

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Way back in January, we proclaimed 2017 to be the “Year of the Banjo” and predicted it would be a stellar year for women in roots music, as well as the more justice-minded songwriters in our midst. All these months later, our intuition proved correct on all counts. And we are thrilled by that. Having Alynda Segarra and Rhiannon Giddens reign supreme in our BGS Class of 2017 is an absolute honor. Both women took on tough thematic terrain with grace and gravitas, and we couldn’t be more proud to support them and all the other fantastic artists who make the BGS roots community so artistically inspiring and culturally important. — Kelly McCartney, BGS Editorial Director

Co-Valedictorians: Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Navigator / Rhiannon Giddens, Freedom Highway

In a year rampant with talk of division — coasts vs heartland, white vs people of color, red vs blue — many artists, thinkers, and activists have attempted to bridge these divides by zooming out and broadening perspective, pointing to the core commonality of our humanity. With The Navigator, Hurray for the Riff Raff accomplishes this same unifying goal, but with the exact opposite approach. Led by Puerto Rican-American Alynda Segarra, they zoom in, viewing these divisions, these cultural and societal rifts, through a microscope trained on New York City, magnifying a Puerto Rican neighborhood and a fictitious young Puerto Rican girl, Navita. The album’s concept — granular, focused, and minute — doesn’t alienate listeners with this specificity. Rather, it plays like a colorful movie entirely enclosed within its own soundtrack, relating Navita’s heart, soul, and story to an audience that, for the most part, would feel they could never relate to a woman like her. Segarra and Hurray for the Riff Raff demonstrate through The Navigator that we ought not shy away from the intensely personal, singular, individual aspects of identity and identity politics for the sake of “coming together.” What’s more, they’ve posited a record that, taken separately, the message, concept, and music each stand on their own respective feet, but together, amplify and augment each other. The message is incredibly clear: We need not gloss over the intricate elemental parts of our differences to understand, appreciate, and love each other. Pa’lante! — Justin Hiltner

If 2017 saw an influx of banjo-centric projects, it also turned out to be a year when music’s political stakes rose ever higher. Singer/songwriter Rhiannon Giddens pairs both, using her instrument as a historical beacon that traces a line from slavery to the growing spate of police brutality. Through narratives about slave mothers, church singers, young men in the crosshairs, and more, Giddens uses these personal stories to explore their ongoing political resonance. Beginning with “At the Purchaser’s Option” — written from the vantage point of a slave mother forced to contend with her baby’s future as a commodity rather than a consciousness — Giddens sews together a quilt of American roots music that is as varied as the stories it encompasses. She explores old-time songs, reels, blues, funk, gospel, and more, stitching her way into and through the rich traditions that inform her craft and comprise her heritage. “Better Get It Right the First Time” blends funk-blues, a rap intersection, and Giddens’ authoritative vocals to challenge how states view and police Black male bodies, while the instrumental “Following the North Star” says everything about that experience through a rhythmically charged dialogue between banjo, drums, and castanets. The relationship between art and politics on Giddens’ new album is not an explicit call to action, but a reminder about the power of stories — both melodic and lyrical. As Giddens admits on “Birmingham Sunday” — about the 1963 church bombing — “All we can do is sing you a song.” — Amanda Wicks

Best Travel Buddy: Becca Mancari, Good Woman

Becca Mancari’s debut album is a world unto itself. Over the course of 33 minutes, the Nashville singer/songwriter crafts atmospheric Americana imbued with a haze that brings to mind the faded edges of a sepia-toned photograph. Born in Staten Island, raised in rural Pennsylvania, and having spent time in Florida, the Appalachian region of Virginia, and even India, Mancari has experienced firsthand the significance of place. It’s only fitting, then, that on each of the album’s nine tracks, Mancari has created an environment to get lost in. It’s a notion that extends beyond Good Woman’s sonic palette and is carried out visually in the album’s music videos. In the video for the title track, Mancari embarks on a snowy walk in the Arizona wilderness with the plaintive landscape providing the perfect backdrop for her rumination on what, in fact, constitutes a “good woman.” Mancari seemingly walks right out of that snow storm and into Arizona’s breathtaking sunny expanse for the accompanying video for “Golden,” while the slow-burning “Arizona Fire” also finds its staging area in Arizona’s canyons. On the standout “Summertime Mama,” which waxes poetic about a warm-weather crush, Mancari sticks closer to home by offering a glimpse into a carefree summer day she spends in Nashville with her girlfriend and fellow songwriters Jesse Lafser and Brittany Howard, with whom she plays in a side project dubbed Bermuda Triangle. Cruising with the windows down en route to an impromptu fishing trip and then onto a nighttime gig, Mancari’s adventures mirror the song’s breezy veneer. Just as Good Woman expands and contracts across terrains, Mancari crosses sonic bounds with her dream-like reflections, making her one of the most significant songwriters to come out of Nashville this year. — Desiré Moses

Best Reminder to Stop and Breathe: Bedouine, Bedouine

There’s no point in talking about Bedouine’s self-titled debut in anything other than colors. Between the rose-tinged “Heart Take Flight,” the dusty blue “Back to You,” the gold-flaked “Summer Cold,” and the silver-inflected “Solitary Daughter,” singer/songwriter Azniv Korkejian’s album hangs like a painting. That’s all thanks to her dusky voice, an easy, somnambulant tone that fits colorfully against Virginia label Spacebomb’s trademark strings. In between songs about her native Syria and her life in Los Angeles, the nomadic Korkejian details a romantic relationship that caught her off guard and encouraged her to stay. Rather than train her gaze on her lover, though, she holds up a mirror to herself and traces the effect love has on her. She defiantly projects her independence on “Solitary Daughter,” gives herself permission to enjoy new love on “Heart Take Flight,” and inevitably questions her lover’s commitment on “Skyline.” Bedouine reflects notes of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, and other poetically driven but somber-toned singer/songwriters, but in the end, its creator has captured a colorful mood that remains solely her own. — AW

Most Likely to Kick Your Ass While Breaking Your Heart: Caroline Spence, Spades & Roses

In a year that kicked off with the Women’s March and seems to be ending on scores #MeToo moments, Caroline Spence‘s “Softball,” from Spades & Roses is an anthem for any woman who is sick of battling on a different playing field. In the hands of the Nashville-based Spence, this is done through the artful metaphor of softball: an unnecessarily gendered sport that keeps women from even having a shot at the big leagues. With a delicate chug of guitar and the soothing coo of Spence’s voice, it’s just one timeless moment from Spades & Roses, a collection of stunning folk songs that explore both the world inside of her own bedroom and the world at large. Spence is self-aware in romance on “All the Beds I’ve Made,” ready to surrender on “Slow Dancer,” and eager to fight on “Softball,” showcasing a keen knack for folk songs often dripped in rock and packed with poetic, artful lyricism. Produced by Neilson Hubbard (The Apache Relay, Matthew Perryman Jones) and featuring Grand Ole Opry fiddler Eamon McLoughlin and cellist David Henry, the album puts Spence’s pitch-perfect, breathy vocals at the center of songs which effortlessly jump from personal confessions to feats of narrative storytelling. “I’ve been playing shows out West with no guarantee that anybody’s ever gonna give a damn about me,” she sings on “Hotel Amarillo,” a track that encapsulates the experiences of any musician who’s slugged through date after date with barely enough money made to keep on the road. But, in her hands, it’s also a study of choices, and all that we’re left to leave behind when we follow our dreams. It’s well worth giving a damn about, indeed. — Marissa Moss

Best Addition to the Time Capsule: Casey Campbell, Mandolin Duets, Vol. 1

Bluegrass is unique among genres in that its living legends — the men and women who helped create and shape it — have never been set apart from the fans, amateur players, and up-and-coming talents. They not only mingle and interact freely with all of the above, but they actively facilitate the future of the music and the greater community, as a whole, by mentoring and shepherding young people. Mandolinist Casey Campbell quite literally grew up at the feet of a host of these living legends, so it’s fitting that, for his first album, Mandolin Duets, Vol. 1, he called upon 11 of these heroes and mentors, each showcased in their own intimate, beautifully pared-down duet. The record is a treasure trove of bluegrass mandolin and the players who have pioneered the form. Grand Ole Opry members Jesse McReynolds and Bobby Osborne hold down the traditional end of the spectrum, while David Grisman and Sam Bush test the waters on the fringes of bluegrass, with all iterations and styles in between represented. Campbell’s own Monroe-infused, clean, studied picking anchors each track, providing the perfect artistic sounding board for each of his guests. This is, by all accounts, a niche album within a niche genre, but the music doesn’t necessitate a bluegrass history lesson or individual bios for each mandolin guru to be fully appreciated. If the future is fair, this record will join the ranks of Skaggs & Rice and Bill Monroe & Doc Watson’s Live Duet Recordings as one of the most important bluegrass duet records ever made. — JH

Most Likely to Cause Shivers, Sobs, or (Whiskey) Sips: Chris Stapleton, From A Room: Volume 1

Chris Stapleton’s magnetic vocals find new forms of expression on From A Room: Volume 1. Mainstream country songs like “Them Stems” prove he can play the game alongside fellow chart-toppers like Thomas Rhett and Luke Bryant, but he’s most successful when he bucks popular trends and follows his own proclivities. With emotionally strained songs like “Either Way,” which reinforce comparisons to George Jones, Stapleton not only shows off his magnanimous voice, but also its ability to communicate the most painful of experiences. “Either Way” examines the nebulous area in between love and loss, when two people realize the plateau they’ve reached as a couple won’t be overcome. Whether they stay together or decide to leave, Stapleton admits, “I won’t love you either way.” It’s the resigned dip in his vocals before he admits the line that rings forth with such agonizing honesty. He treads in a bluesy tradition with “I Was Wrong” and “Death Row,” both of which find his voice exploding past the rafters with howling pleas. Thematically, the album toes country music’s preferred line, touching on drunken nights, bad decisions, whirlwind love, and regret, but in Stapleton’s hands, these subjects don’t feel worn. His voice infuses them with an emotional mastery that creates chills. — AW

Most Likely to Hasten the End of the World: David Rawlings, Poor David’s Almanack

David Rawlings’ third solo album is as sure a harbinger of the apocalypse as any other musical release of 2017. Not because it’s so bad (it’s actually very, very good), and not because it’s that good, either (it’s actually not oceans-boil-over good). It’s because you could buy it on vinyl the day it hit stores and digital outlets. Poor David’s Almanack is the first Acony album to get a simultaneous LP release, which brings to an end Rawlings and Gillian Welch’s nearly 20 years of agonizing over pressings and sound quality. I predicted a global plague would precede such an occasion, and I’m relieved to lose that particular bet. So give these songs a spin on the turntable, which is obviously where they belong. Almanack is an endlessly inventive and lively collection of new folk tunes that sound old, as though Rawlings hadn’t written them but had found them in the back of some old antique store in the middle of nowhere. And yet, just like the old LP technology experiencing its own resurgence, these old-sounding songs somehow sound current, relevant, prescient: “Money Is the Meat in the Coconut” pokes fun at some of our swamp-draining politicians, “Good God a Woman” slyly inverts gender politics, “Come On Over My House” turns class warfare into a randy come-on. Rawlings knows these issues have been driving civilization since before we invented fire, and it’ll continue to drive the last handful of humans staving off the hordes of zombies. — Stephen Deusner

Most Likely to Soundtrack Your Next Roadtrip to Who Knows Where: Hiss Golden Messenger, Hallelujah Anyhow

M.C. Taylor’s favored subjects are home and hearth, family and faith, yet his songs are as much about the lure of the road as the comforts of home. His latest as Hiss Golden Messenger, recorded in a matter of days in North Carolina, is a highway record, an album about being lost out in America in the Anthropocene Age and trying to navigate by moral compass. What do we owe other people, strangers, and loved ones, alike? What do we owe ourselves? On “I Am the Song” and “Harder Rain,” Taylor understands those questions don’t have concrete answers — that they change from one song to another, from one person to another, from one highway to another. But that doesn’t diminish the importance of posing those questions. Instead, the slipperiness of these ideas enlivens his music, which plays with rock and folk history without putting a record collection between Taylor and the listener. “Gulfport, You’ve Been on My Mind” slyly rewrites Bob Dylan, while Van Morrison goes through the wringer of “Domino (Time Will Tell).” Best — or at least, most unexpected — may be the shoutout to the gloriously ridiculous goth act Sisters of Mercy. In his responsibility to his heroes and to his listeners, Taylor finds joy and humility and the special fulfillment of a noble calling, especially when he can rebuke a certain leader of the free world: “What’cha gonna do when the wall comes down?” he asks, not at all rhetorically. “It was built by man, and you can tear it down, tear it down.” — SD

Most Likely to Make You Buy a Shruti Box: House and Land, House and Land

When Shirley Collins recorded “The False True Love” 50 years ago, she made it sound crisp and mournful, as if she were looking out over a frosty morning. You can see her breath hang in the air, and you can sense sorrows as heavy as the clouds. When Louise Henson and Sally Anne Morgan tackle the song on their debut as House and Land, it warms up only slightly, thanks to the interplay between guitar and banjo. It’s less lonely, but no less sorrowful. It sounds more existential, as though romantic woes might blot out their souls. So call House and Land a supergroup: Morgan plays with the Black Twig Pickers and Pelt, two Virginia string bands redefining roots and folk music away from the Americana set, and Henson may be one of the most compelling folk guitarists to pluck a string in 2017. They’ve been collecting songs for a few years now, and they’ve assembled them into an album that mixes banjo, guitar, and rustic drones from a Shruti box in some ways that are familiar and other ways that are entirely new. Just as they straddle folk and avant garde, the duo also contemplate the spiritual crises of this life and the next. Songs like “The Day Is Past and Gone” and “Home Over Yonder” examine faith and its celestial reward, depicting the afterlife as a lonely place. “There was nobody there to answer for me,” they lament on “Listen to the Roll.” “I had to answer for myself.” — SD

Best Fireside Chat: Iron & Wine, Beast Epic

Sam Beam has a stately way of drawing the listener close. Beast Epic, Beam’s sixth project as Iron & Wine, opens with his whispered count in on “Claim Your Ghost” before launching into the warm reverberations of “Thomas County Law,” which boasts poetic musings like, “Every traffic light is red when it tells the truth. The church bell isn’t kidding when it cries for you.” In fact, each track on Beast Epic is rendered with such startling care and intimacy that the listener may as well be sitting fireside with Beam. With lush acoustic arrangements bound by touches of percussion, piano, harp, and cello, Beam wields a gorgeous album brimming with some of the finest songwriting to come out of Iron & Wine’s 15-year trajectory. One highlight, “Bitter Truth,” is packed with hard pills to swallow from a narrator who’s looking in the rearview mirror: “Our missing pieces walk between us, when we were moving through the door. You called ‘em mine, I called ‘em yours.” Those “pieces fall in place” on the album’s pinnacle and lead single, “Call It Dreaming.” By returning to Iron & Wine’s stripped-down roots, Beam reminds us that power can come from the quietest corners. — DM

Most Masterful Finger-Pointing: Jason Isbell, The Nashville Sound

When you make what people universally agree is an absolute masterpiece of a record fairly early on in your career, how do you ever again pick up a pen? Well, if you’re Jason Isbell trying to follow up 2013’s Southeastern, you set an entirely different bar for yourself to clear … which he did, with 2015’s Something More Than Free, and which he has done again, with The Nashville Sound. While both are filled with common-man character studies and captivatingly personal confessionals, The Nashville Sound uses some of those tales to take on politics and privilege in beautiful, bold ways. In both “Hope the High Road” and “White Man’s World,” Isbell points a finger of blame, including one at himself, to show how all of us are accountable to ourselves and to each other. Thing is, as part of the same motion, he opens his hand and extends it to anyone willing to grab on. Hard to think of other songwriters who could accomplish that feat while also rocking their asses off. It’s also hard to think of other songwriters who can switch gears so effortlessly to write some of the most stunning love songs to ever exist. As with “Cover Me Up” and “Flagship” before it, “If We Were Vampires” takes on love, Isbell-style, by turning it inside out. Dave Cobb has used the word “devastating” to describe various songs and songwriters he’s produced. In Isbell’s case, it is very often an understatement. — Kelly McCartney

Most Likely To Flip The Script: Laura Marling, Semper Femina

Since releasing her debut in 2008 at the mere age of 17, UK folkie Laura Marling has garnered a reputation as a prolific artist and a deep thinker. Her knack for intricate guitar work and lyrical allegory has solidified her place among music’s greatest storytellers, and her latest album, Semper Femina, is a layered masterpiece that serves to further bolster her prolific body of work. Here, she works to subvert the male gaze, just as she did in an interview-based podcast exploring women’s experiences in the arts called Reversal of the Muse. Only, on Semper Femina, she does so by taking up the perspective often employed by men in artistic traditions — that is, by admiring and lusting after the women who serve as the album’s centerpiece. But that’s not to say that the album lacks introspection. The collection is just as much an effort for Marling to tap into her core self, as it is an exploration of how women are viewed and portrayed in society. Sonically, Marling’s signature fingerpicking and warm vocals remain, but this collection of songs reflects a marked growth from her previous output. By playing with percussion and making use of space, Marling gives her ideas room to breathe and expand. Whether through bits of spoken word on “Wild Once” or elegant falsetto on the album’s standout “Always This Way,” each song beckons you closer and is imparted like a secret that you’re lucky to be in on. — DM

Most Likely to Soothe and Summon the Spirit of George Jones: Lee Ann Womack, The Lonely, the Lonesome, & the Gone

Lee Ann Womack could win awards for her song selection alone: Throughout the course of her career, she’s sniffed out some of the finest scribes in country music and put tracks by Brent Cobb and Chris Stapleton on her records far before the rest of the world caught on to their powers. Like Linda Ronstadt and George Strait, it was the potent combination of her legendary vocal abilities and her nose for talent that left us with jewels like her 2000 hit, “I Hope You Dance.” Which is why it was surprising to see her own name listed in the credits more than ever on The Lonely, the Lonesome, & the Gone, a personal progression of a record that proves her pen is as mighty as her vocal sword. There’s a touch of mystery and melancholy across the songs of The Lonely, the Lonesome, & the Gone — from the gorgeous balladry of the title track to the simple plucks of “End of the End of the World” where Womack’s twang churns out on glorious full display. Produced by her husband, Frank Liddell, and recorded at Houston’s Sugar Hill Studios, the album lets Womack walk through classics old (a version of “Long Black Veil,” made iconic by Lefty Frizell, that is most welcome) and new (the album opener “All the Trouble,” which is a moody, gospel tour through her stunning range). It’s thrilling to see an artist this deep into her career prove that she still has treasure trove of surprises up her sleeve. — MM

Most Likely to Have Hats Actually Made in the USA: Margo Price, All American Made

On her debut LP, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, East Nashville’s Margo Price became one of country and Americana’s breakout stars with her honest-to-the-core songwriting that was never afraid of being uncomfortable. She spoke of devastating loss, disappointment, and being done wrong in one of the most revealing, personal albums in years. For her follow-up, All American Made, Price looks outward, surveying the world outside her tour bus window to tackle everything from wage inequality to the plight of rural America, brazenly using her voice to drive conversation in an increasingly perilous political environment. “No one moves away with no money. They just do what they can,” she sings on “Heart of America.” “To live in the heart of America, getting by on their own two hands.” Recorded at Sam Phillips in Memphis, Price weaves everything from gospel to R&B and honky-tonk into the songs, often co-written with her husband Jeremy Ivey, coming out with an album that captures the urgency of late ’60s protest anthems but with heaps of Tennessee soul. With one stellar duet partner, Willie Nelson, on “Learning to Lose” and help from the McCrary Sisters, Price bends and twists the shape of the genre into her own rock band-rooted form, centered around a dynamite set of pipes that can belt, howl, and softly whisper through whatever lies ahead of her. “Wild women don’t worry,” she sings … and Price doesn’t. Like Woody Guthrie, she’s a prophet of the people, not the establishment. — MM


Best Call to Order, Not Arms: Mavis Staples, If All I Was Was Black

Who could’ve known that pairing gospel/soul legend Mavis Staples with alt-country anchor Jeff Tweedy would be darn near perfect? On If All I Was Was Black, Tweedy’s production provides a wonderful warmth and gorgeous grit to match Mavis’s iconic voice. While last year’s Livin’ on a High Note showed Mavis off in all her feisty, funky glory, If All I Was Was Black turns that down a notch to make room for a more heart-centered approach. After all she’s witnessed in her life, Mavis somehow manages to hold fast to hope and continue pleading for peace. If she’s angry about the two-steps-forward-three-steps-back phenomenon currently overtaking the world, you would never know it from listening to her records. Now, that’s not to say Mavis doesn’t see the problems we face. She does. She always has. It’s just that she would prefer we muster all the love we possibly can, and use that to fuel our fire rather than rage. The compassion and patience embedded within “We Go High” — sparked by Michelle Obama’s comment of “When they go low, we go high” — is almost unimaginable in light of the utter cruelty and devastation being heaped upon marginalized populations in 2017. But there it is. Songs like “No Time for Crying” and “Build a Bridge” also lay it out in the clearest of terms. And, with the title track, she calls out the problem of judging people by their skin and not their hearts, as doing so causes us to miss the beauty and goodness that each of us has to offer. All through this album, Mavis implores us to let our better angels be our guides. What she may not understand is that she, herself, is our better angel. — KMc

Most Likely to Carry around a Battered Copy of My Side of the Mountain: Mipso, Coming Down the Mountain

Mipso find themselves at a moment in their lifespan when a rootsy band discovers that a bluegrass-driven aesthetic is no longer quite enough to channel all of their creativity and curiosity. (See: Nickel Creek, Sierra Hull, Mandolin Orange, etc.) But as they fully incorporate drums, electric bass, and guitar into their sound, they aren’t walking directly away from the North Carolinian acoustic traditions that have informed them all the way. This refining of their folk-rooted, definitively Americana sound refutes the idea that doing so means relinquishing the raw authenticity of bluegrass and old-time, by default. On the contrary, Mipso’s finesse allows the more subtle aspects of their constituent influences to shine through on Coming Down the Mountain, undaunted by the “electric” embellishments. The title track epitomizes this down-to-earth sheen with tales of fishing, disdain for the fools of the city, and pictures of rhododendron thickets in the mountain hollers, all dressed up in dreamy, effervescent duds. There’s honky-tonking, California vibes, train whimsy, sad ballads, haunting alt-folk, and much more woven into this record and these songs. With the love and care they’ve invested in its creation, it hits you like a beautiful kaleidoscope, rather than the dull brown of every color of paint combined willy-nilly. If the current commodification of “roots” music has sent you running for the hills, looking for a refuge and a respite, Coming Down the Mountain might just compel you to hang up your fishing pole for a while and come back to the city, even if for only 10 songs. — JH

Best Reminder to Bake Right with Hot Rise: Molly Tuttle, Rise

On the surface, it feels like 2017 was Molly Tuttle’s breakout year. In a matter of months, she went from releasing her debut LP, Rise, to winning the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year award — becoming the first woman in the organization’s history to ever receive the honor. But her poetic, evocative lyrics and her confident, firecracker flatpicking are unmistakable markers of what really has been a life-long career. The firm foundation laid by growing up in bluegrass, performing and touring from a young age, shines through each and every track on the record, assuaging the fears of would-be naysayers who could find the occurrences of lap steel, full drum kit, or electric guitar to be bluegrass disqualifiers. Her haunting vocals, at once ethereal and authoritative, are utterly confident, each artistic choice precise without falling into measured sterility. The distinct voice of Rise — whether emanating from Tuttle’s lips or her pick and strings — isn’t first-timer’s luck; it’s the product of a lifetime of work and expertly honed talent that is simply, at long last, reaching the ears of a broader audience. And, where other burgeoning artists may falter in their first few projects, attempting to pinpoint the perfect vehicle for their artistic personalities, we can sense, feel, and hear that no matter which stylistic direction she may take in the future, we will all be watching Molly Tuttle rise, unencumbered and unwavering. — JH

Most Heartfelt Look at the Heartland: Natalie Hemby, Puxico

Sometimes records sound exactly like you want them to: The songs, the singer, the production … everything just fits and flows. That’s Natalie Hemby‘s Puxico. Equal parts front-porch folk and heartland rock, this album was inspired by the small Missouri town where Hemby spent her childhood summers fishing with her grandpa George and dancing at the annual Homecoming. And it’s infused with the songwriting skill of Nashville where Hemby honed her craft writing cuts for Miranda Lambert, Lee Ann Womack, Maren Morris, Johnnyswim, and others. With Puxico, though, Hemby writes closer to home, metaphorically and musically. No commercial country artist like so many of her friends, Hemby is cut from the Sheryl Crow cloth (with some Tom Petty patches, to be sure). Her voice is warm and soulful, powerful and edgy, all at once. And the songs … the SONGS. From “Time Honored Tradition” to “Cairo, IL” to “This Town Still Talks About You,” the songs are rich with remembrances of lives, loves, and losses. Hemby’s deep, deep fondness for the people and places of her youth is filtered through the lens of time and distance, allowing her to trace the edges of what was and overlay that image upon what still is. The space between the two is where these songs live. — KMc

Best “Year of the Banjo” Brand Ambassador: Noam Pikelny, Universal Favorite

Punch Brothers’ co-founder Noam Pikelny takes “solo record” to another level, playing every instrument on his fourth LP, Universal Favorite. He even sets down the banjo a few times to try his hand at electric guitar — turns out he’s ridiculously good at everything he touches. And would you believe it … he can sing, too! Pikelny’s PB bandmate and frequent producer Gabe Witcher keeps a tight rein on the record’s crystal clear sound, but gives his friend plenty of room to explore and expand his musical horizons. While the songs range from trad/old-time to classical sounds, and include covers from the likes of Elliot Smith (“Bye”), Josh Ritter (“Folk Bloodbath”), Roger Miller (“I’ve Been a Long Time Leavin’ (But I’ll Be a Long Time Gone)”), amongst others, the virtuosic solitude that pervades this fully unaccompanied project allows the whole thing to feel cohesive, complete, and brilliant. — Amy Reitnouer

Most Likely to Not Give Any Fucks: Rachel Baiman, Shame

With the co-founding of Folk Fights Back in Nashville and the release of her second solo album, Rachel Baiman has earned a reputation as a radicalized bluegrass player, although neither of those labels is exactly apt. Her background is in bluegrass, and she’s a dexterous and sensitive fiddler, but that particular musical style is merely a foundation on which she builds songs informed by pop and folk and country, by Gillian Welch and John Hartford and Phil Ochs. And she barely even plays the fiddle on here, instead switching between banjo and acoustic guitar. As for politics, she tackles that topic only because she recognizes that it’s unavoidable. Being a woman and being an artist have become fundamentally radical activity in late-2010s America, which means Baiman is simply following Woody Guthrie’s old adage: “All you can write is what you know.” She knows touring, for instance, and turns that into the rousing “Never Tire of the Road.” She knows about writing songs and writes a song about writing songs, the sing-along “Getting Ready to Start (Getting Ready).” And she knows about old white men using religion as a bludgeon, and she not only makes that the central idea of the title track, but delivers the chorus with a steely defiance: “They wanna bring me shame. Well, there ain’t no shame.” On Shame, she sounds like the voice we need to hear right now, in roots or any other genre. — SD

Most Likely To Break Free: Ryan Adams, Prisoner

A case can be made that love and sex are the backbone of music, so it naturally follows that the other side of the coin carries equal weight. For every song written about relationships or lust, there’s one about the counter moment when everything comes crashing down. Ryan Adams is one of those artists who’s no stranger to the nuances of dissolution. After all, the North Carolina singer/songwriter made his solo debut outside of Whiskeytown in 2000 with a sweeping masterpiece dubbed Heartbreaker. Widely regarded as his best work, Heartbreaker received a deluxe reissue last year while this year saw the release of a companion album of sorts in Prisoner. Written as a means of salvation during Adams’ highly publicized divorce from actress/singer Mandy Moore, Prisoner is a foray into loneliness that embraces the post-breakup fallout headfirst. The mid-album stunner, “To Be Without You,” is a portrait of perfect songwriting that smoothly unfurls amidst lines like “It’s so hard not to call you. Thunder’s in my bones out in the streets where I first saw you. When everything was new and colorful, it’s gotten darker.” That just stings with familiarity. Elsewhere, “Broken Anyway” is a mature attempt at shaking off  the remains: “What was whatever it became? Whatever, we will still be together in some way. It was broken anyway,” sung by a narrator who acknowledges the pains of both inflicting and falling victim to heartbreak. Crafted with Adams’ penchant for the sonic flair of the ‘80s, Prisoner toils in the confines of human emotion and comes out triumphantly on the other side. — DM

Best Trip through the Bluegrass State’s Bardo: Tyler Childers, Purgatory

It can be difficult to stand up to Kentucky’s esteemed history of songwriters and performers — which includes everyone from the legendary Bill Monroe to Sturgill Simpson — but Tyler Childers lives up the legacy of his home state with as keen an eye for its past as for its future. On Purgatory, produced by Simpson and one-time Johnny Cash engineer David Ferguson, Childers emerges with a voice that can cut with the innocence of a child but the knowledge of an aged man and an eye for painting stories of people shaping their identities in small towns and searching for love amongst the ruins. In Childers’ hands, modern roots music can meld into some rock ‘n’ roll fury (“Whitehouse Road,” “Universal Sound”) or striking, chill-inducing romantic opuses like “Lady May,” always centered on those spectacular vocals and an uncannily creative lyrical sense: When he sings “get me higher than the grocery bill” on “Whitehouse Road,” he manages to rouse images of intoxication and the desolation of a segment of America where a simple trip to the grocery store can be a financial burden. Melding the bluegrass roots of his home state with Simpson’s abandonment of genre altogether, Purgatory is a coming of age record for everyone grasping at the space between shelter and freedom, between freedom and commitment to another, between commitment and the fragile promise of eternal love. — MM

Best Musical Evidence That Black Girl Magic Is Real: Valerie June, The Order of Time

Valerie June is an other-worldly artist with a seemingly cosmic connection to her muse. Her songs are full of whimsy, wonder, and wisdom, all grounded in a garden of earthly musical delights. Blues, folk, gospel, soul, country, and more all sneak into June’s work, colliding in a kaleidoscope of sounds and colors. Sputtering guitars bump into stuttering keys on one song, while ethereal strings ebb under ambient steel on another. Harmonium and horns?! Hell yeah. African rhythms and clawhammer banjo?! Ya damn right! She’s from the melting pot of music — Memphis, Tennessee — after all. Nobody else is making music like this. Listening to June’s records feels almost intrusive, as if peering into a private diary filled with poems and doodles that betray the artist’s inner world in its utterly pure, stream of consciousness form. Except that The Order of Time is more refined and restrained than that. Such is this album’s perfection, that it would be a fool’s errand to attempt choosing standout tracks. The booty groove of “Shakedown” or the gentle drone of “If And”? The mystical dance of “Astral Plane” or the bluesy sway of “Love You Once Made”? Not even Sophie could make that choice. Nor should she — or we — ever have to. — KMc

Best Open Diary: The Weather Station, The Weather Station

If other songwriters fight to fit their words within a song’s measure, Tamara Lindeman takes the opposite tactic as the Weather Station. Her verbose songs are chock full of words — their inflections adding rhythmic scope, their syntax unraveling deeply personal confessions. “I don’t know what to say, so I say too much,” she sings on “I Don’t Know What to Say.” Somehow, though, Lindeman keeps her music from feeling overcrowded. Her vocal cadence works in tandem with rhythm guitar (as on “Thirty”) or drums (as on “Complicit”) to reinforce a singular meter rather than stuff each song to the brim. With her self-titled album, she told the BGS that she focused on “figur[ing] out how to be okay when things are not okay.” A central relationship thrums at the album’s center, filling her with all manner of declarations. Lindeman is, at turns, self-deprecating (“My love is the heaviest thing” on “Keep It All to Myself”), regretful (“We never figured out the questions” on “You and I”), and adamant (“I guess I always wanted the impossible” on “Impossible”). But the album’s most devastating addition takes place at the close with “The Most Dangerous Thing About You.” It’s quiet for an album charging forward, either lyrically or rhythmically, and focuses on the aftermath of what she has spent the previous 10 tracks parsing out. For all the communicating Lindeman does on The Weather Station, words don’t offer a magical resolution, but there’s something fiercely beautiful about the effort to keep searching. — AW

Defying Expectations: A Conversation with Peter Rowan

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Peter Rowan is a serious wellspring of knowledge about 20th-century music. It’s a wild ride to interview him about a new project — in this case, his recent Hawaiian-inpsired album, My Aloha. In a half-hour conversation, we touched on the early Grand Ole Opry, varieties of New Orleans blues, Hawaiian mandolin playing, and plenty more. His obvious breadth of knowledge squares with a freewheeling half-century career: He’s studied with masters like Bill Monroe and Carter Stanley and collaborated with brilliant contemporaries like Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, and Clarence White, not to mention his forays into country, reggae, Tex-Mex, Irish, and now Hawaiian music. By now, his surprises shouldn’t surprise us.

We usually expect our bluegrass musicians to stick to bluegrass music, just like we expect B.B. King to play the blues. Try to imagine Ronnie McCoury or Tony Rice making a record with a Tibetan throat singer. But somehow Peter Rowan — a true bluegrass guru, if there is one — has managed to consistently defy this expectation. He’s made an identity out of idiosyncrasy.

And unlike some legacy artists who “collaborate” with peers solely for the sake of novel juxtaposition, when Rowan makes Irish music with Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill or Tex-Mex with Flaco Jiménez, he doesn’t just collaborate; he immerses himself. He absorbs. Bill Monroe told a young Peter Rowan, “If you can learn my music, you can play any kind of music.” Coming from Monroe, that sentiment could’ve been taken as territorial ego, as bandleader bluster. But Rowan took Monroe’s words to heart. He’s turned a foundation in bluegrass into a life-long dedication to diving deep into new musical languages. 

It’s tempting to conclude any survey of Rowan’s career by contrasting Monroe and Rowan as the founder vs the experimenter, the father vs the prodigal son. This sounds satisfying but largely misses the point, because the Father of Bluegrass didn’t respect genre boundaries, either. Combining influences from far-flung musical worlds was exactly Monroe’s bailiwick. Seventy years in the rearview mirror, however, his string band innovations are often taken for granted. It’s easy to forget that Bill Monroe, himself, stole mandolin licks from Hawaiians, studied blues with Black guitarists, reimagined fiddle songs from the old folks back home, and generally told the status quo where to shove it. So, if Peter Rowan’s new Hawaiian record makes you scratch your head, remember he’s just carrying on the family tradition.

I’ve been listening to your My Aloha record. It’s beautiful and spare and cohesive. It’s great. Even though I knew you did all kinds of projects and recorded a lot, this one surprised me. How did it come about? How did you decide to do a tribute to Hawaiian music?

That song “Uncle Jimmy” kind of explains it. When I was four years old, he came back from Hawaii, from New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where he’d been working with the Navy. He had a ukulele and grass skirts and coconut bras. He handed them out in our living room. There’s a photograph … I wish I had included it … with all of us decked out — him with his sailor cap on and he’s doing that vaudevillian knee-whacking thing they did back then, that visual comedy thing where you cross your hands in front of your knees and it looks like your knees are passing through each other. So that was Uncle Jimmy. He always said “hubba hubba ding ding,” and I never knew what that meant. When I was over in Hawaii meeting the two Hawaiian players on the record — you know, you talk in story over there — and as I explained Uncle Jimmy, they said, “You’ve got to do this! You’ve got to finish this song. This is really part of the story.”

So you decided to record in Hawaii. What was that like?

I sort of fell into their whole approach, is what happened. I’ve always gone to Hawaii over the years, and it’s so musical. And the land itself seems to have some sort of enchanted healings that themselves turn into music — what they call Mana. I’ve been playing the last few records of bluegrass and one twang record out of Texas. I was just thinking, why am I so attracted to this sound? Really it’s because I heard it first. I heard a ukulele before I heard anything else. Uncle Jimmy was playing ukulele, and I learned from him. I learned “Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and all these tunes. And Uncle Jimmy, he didn’t have a completely happy life. He didn’t pass on as a fulfilled person. But he had that willingness to go out on a limb. He even did some shows with me and my brothers.

So he was an influence on you during a really formative period.

Well, that’s the first instrument I learned, the ukulele. It had never dawned on me that it was going to open any doors. A few years ago a friend of mine made a baritone uke, a nice one, so I started playing it and songs started coming. When I would go over there [to Hawaii], you know, I’d hit the water and swim and then come back to the instruments and play. You’re in a zone. It’s a different zone. And the songs started coming. It’s more of a watery thing, a little bit sunbaked. That’s really why I did the project, because I was writing the songs.

They definitely channel that Hawaiian vibe, or what I think of as that mid 20th century Hawaiian sound. It sounds like it’s a tribute to a period of time, too, that era in the 40s when Uncle Jimmy was going over there.

They’re also more ragtimey chord changes like my parents would’ve listened to. Also there’s a strong connection to Jimmy Rodgers. I loved those chord changes from the 30s, those Jimmy Rodgers elements. I did a record with Jerry Douglas called Yonder, and we touched a little bit on this real old time sounding guitar and dobro songs. This reawakened that approach.

When Hawaiian people hear my interpretation of Hawaiian music, they sing along. They’re very humbled. It’s just like in bluegrass and old time music. There is a lineage of players, and I became fascinated with the history of the whole thing. It kind of cleared my palate to make this next project for Rebel Records, which is sort of my story as it relates to the Stanley Brothers. It helped. Singing Hawaiian music is so different. Singing falsetto is a tradition in bluegrass, too. In bluegrass you have to find that vocal break point with a harder, sharper edge. Hawaii gives you a soft break point. It also gives you more range — you can sing lower and then go into a higher range of falsetto singing. Bluegrass, you know, is very tight. You’ve got to jump through the hoop. It’s like that rabbit in a log with the hound dog after you — bluegrass chases you. You’ve got to make your breaks and vocal turns really fast. Hawaii just gives you a lot more time to make those vocal breaks. So different from bluegrass. It was like, “woah, where am I here?” [Laughs]

So it it was unfamiliar but in a comfortable way. A new project, a cleansing of the palate.

Yeah, and I like that because that’s where songs really come from. You bust out of one thing — you might not even know why you did — and you’re in a new frame of mind and you see things differently. Maybe you get a song. Also Hawaii is a mother. More cultures have come there and been absorbed into Hawaiian culture than almost anywhere. Especially Asian cultures, so there’s a strong Asian element. I just really wanted to go there.

Well, Hawaii as a place where lots of cultures have mixed together, that reminds me of bluegrass, too — bluegrass as this thing that Bill Monroe created out of all these different traditions. So you’ve got a lot of experience exploring a type of music like that.

Very true. I think I mention something about that in the liner notes. There is one inescapable fact, which is that “Kentucky Waltz” is a direct rip off of a 1915 Hawaiian song. And the mandolin playing on that song by Johnny Almeida is exactly how Bill Monroe would play the song 30 years later.

I never knew that. Wow. So what does that say about Monroe?

What is says is a great thing. Not only was Bill keeping his cards close to his chest, which was how you’d survive in those days — it’s what you could come up with that was unique, what you could incorporate into your own song. Bill would say, “I would never steal another man’s note, but I might write one song off another,” meaning ‘I would take his melody, but I wouldn’t steal his note!’

What did he think the difference was? Writing a song off another song but not stealing?

Well, that’s a just Bill Monroe’s deception talking. [Laughs] He would steal anything he could! That was the name of the game in those days. He sang Muleskinner Blues on the Opry and got six encores, then the next week Roy Acuff releases “Muleskinner Blues” with him singing it. That galled Bill. That was like, “ooh!” But that’s how it was in those days. You just don’t let on. You’ve got to keep the surprise to your advantage. He was really competitive.

He was also really territorial about the music he created, right? Didn’t it seem like he wanted it to be carried forward in a specific way?

You mean, the way he called it “my music?” Well, yeah. But he saw me coming along and he said, “If you can learn my music, you can play any kind of music.” I thought that was saying how bluegrass gave you the foundation, which it does, but he was also talking to me as a person. I wasn’t thinking of it as a personal advice at the time, but I think he saw in me — I think he didn’t quite know what to make of me. I mean, I knew too much. I didn’t just go hide from him and then show up on stage. I sought him out. I asked questions. I came from college where they teach you how to ask questions. Plus in those days, in the 60s, it was a time of inquiry. Why are we at war? What is going on in the world? Are they really going to drop the hydrogen bomb while we’re out here on the road playing bluegrass? You just wondered, what is going on? It re-stimulated Bill in his own way. He had a renaissance at that time with these 20-year-olds in his band. He was 53 at the time. That’s when I had a lot of contact with the Stanley Brothers, who were almost from a foreign country themselves, you know, that area in Virginia.

Deep Southwest Virginia, right.

Oh my gosh, yeah. And I just cut this song about Bill taking me to see Carter Stanley. You never know why at the time, you know, but we were all still dressed up for doing our show in Knoxville. We drove up and met Carter. He was dressed in a sport coat, too, because he was going to meet Bill. That’s how it was. You never dressed down in those days. You stepped right up there and put your good shirt on, you know.

It was a sign of respect, right. I mean especially for Monroe’s generation.

Exactly. Bill hated to see anyone sloppily dressed. When I asked him what his thing was with the clothes, he told me that the people he played with when he started out were farmers who might only have one shirt, one clean shirt. So you show your respect for them by dressing up for them, and that meant something. I’ll tell you something funny. John Prine tells a story — his parents told him when the Monroe Brothers came through Paradise, Kentucky, they thought the Mafia had arrived. All these guys in their hats and suits and cases. They were like, who are these guys, moonshine emperors? Are we having a showdown? [Laughs]

So you sat with Bill Monroe and Carter Stanley while they visited. What did they talk about? What was their relationship like?

I think their relationship was very decent. In Ralph’s book he said that Carter and Bill were very close. They were close in age, you know. Close to the same age, although Carter would’ve been a little younger. I had seen the Stanley Brothers play a lot and we had been on shows together. But for me to drive Bill…it was a special break from tour, you know, before we played Knoxville that night — we had to get a car after leaving the bus in Knoxville. We drove up there I think for two reasons. I think Carter felt his mortality. Within a year he would be dead. And when I met him I was a little bit shocked. He was weak and sick and, you know, he looked jaundiced. His eyes — in my diary at the time I wrote, “I’ve looked into Carter Stanley’s tombstone eyes.” He looked bad. I think he had been diagnosed with a liver problem and he wanted to see Bill. It was an exchange where Bill tipped his hat to Carter and said that he was one of the best singers he had ever worked with. You know, Carter wrote songs and Bill wrote songs and then they both recorded their versions of the same songs. So I started thinking a lot about Carter and over the years, you know — in Old And In The Way we did “Pig In A Pen,” “White Dove,” we did “Going To The Races.” The Stanley Brothers have been the backbone of a lot of what I’ve played. It was easy to play and fun to play, but it wasn’t until I went to make these recordings recently in Nashville that I realized how Carter is a deceptive singer. To go to the five chord and sing the third, that’s not easy. To put a blue note on the third of the five, it’s like, wow, wait a second. That’s what gives this whole thing its sound!

Right. Not very intuitive. But a cool, bluesy choice, very Stanley Brothers.

It is. And it’s very strange, I could only get those notes from coming on top of them. I couldn’t come up to them. Because with Bill, you know, the music was based on a sort of fanfare [sings a mandolin intro melody], a lot of upward moving lines. Then the downward lines are the bluesy lines [sings descending blues melody]. So that’s a challenge there, to combine those two feelings. Often the verse begins with a rising line and then the end of the line descends, that kind of dying fall, that bluesy fall.

Of course Monroe had learned a lot from the blues and taken a lot from the blues, but the Stanley Brothers, too. It’s like bluegrass is a branch on the blues tree. Do you think of yourself as carrying on that tradition?

Well, yeah. And remember this, about the Stanley Brothers — the last years of their recordings were done up at King records up in Cincinnati. King Records. They had two other groups: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who actually did some finger poppin’ on the Stanley Brothers’ “Finger Poppin’ Time,” which was their tune. And the other guy on the label, the only label that would sign this guy, his name was James Brown. So, I mean, look where they were coming from in their musical input.

From Southwest Virginia to King Records, that’s kind of a cultural leap, too.

Well, that was on their route, their circuit, you know. Go up to the Midwest and play for all those coal miners. In Ohio there were bars everywhere. Then what started to happen was in the 60s they started to play college campuses. That changed everything. That generation became a whole enlightened generation of bluegrass followers. They now had an audience. It wasn’t just 30 coal miners in a little funky bar hidden away in rural Ohio. It wasn’t a schoolhouse. Honestly, I played the end of that era — some of those gigs were still in play, is what I’m trying to say.

You were getting into bluegrass, when was it, the early 60s?

Yeah, that was right in the boom. And strangely enough, looking back at it, within five years we had Old And In The Way going on the West Coast. In those times, being young, you’d be going from one project to another — on Elektra records with me and [David] Grisman doing Earth Opera, out in LA doing Muleskinner for Warner Brothers. It was fast moving, and there weren’t many of us! I mean, there weren’t 150 bluegrass players on the planet. There were twenty-five. So, you know, you could have something different to offer for a musical project. But what I didn’t really understand was how to bring out the bluegrass. We did a little bit of that in Sea Train. We did Orange Blossom Special and Sally Goodin because they were crowd pleasers. But every time I tried to sing a bluegrass song it was shot down. These guys, they were from New York. They knew Blues, but maybe I couldn’t be convincing enough to do anything as lonesome as what came out of bluegrass. We got into that on Muleskinner after that period with Sea Train. Then with Old And In The Way we just went for it! With Jerry Garcia on our side, thank you very much. You know, ‘Call up Vassar Clements and let’s go!’ Jerry just wanted to play the grass. I think his version of White Dove is the most stirring.

Really? Interesting to think of Jerry’s version of bluegrass as getting to the heart of it, compared to The Stanleys. I guess you’re the only one who played with both of them…

Well, you know, when I sang White Dove with Ralph it was like, oh, surprise, we don’t do White Dove slow in this band — they would swing it. The mountain people, if they’re going to dwell on stuff, it’s going to be right to the cradle and grave. But when it gets down to the uplift of bluegrass, they weren’t trying to do it as art. They did it as a lifeforce support system. So there’s all these uptempo melodies, and even a waltz would be kind of bouncy. Bill, you know, had been to New Orleans. He had heard New Orleans music. Arnold Shultz, his black blues guitar partner, was from New Orleans.

Did you ever talk to Bill about Arnold Shultz?

I did, yeah. I talked to him about New Orleans, too. He said the first time he had his own band they went down to New Orleans and stayed for two months. So I said, “What kind of music did you hear there?” And he said, “A man could hear any kind of music at that time.” That would’ve been the 40s.

Would that have been with Charlie [Monroe], or with the early Bluegrass Boys?

Well, maybe ’48. That’s what I had in my diary, that it was with Flatt and Scruggs. That was sort of where he took them to train them. I don’t know, but that’s what he told me, so that’s what I wrote down. What he said was, in those days you had the sock time — think “True Life Blues” — you had jump time, and of course you had ragtime. And, he said, and then you have the slow drag. [Laughs] It’s a slow 4/4. So what Bill did was sped it up, kept the sock time in there, and if you want to think of the slow drag translated into Bill’s particular take, think of “Blue Moon Of Kentucky,” the original recording. Or “In The Pines.” These were musical genres within the blues of New Orleans.

Did you write down a lot of what Monroe told you?

I would keep a diary the whole time and listen to him talk. You know, we’d be riding along in the bus, a little disjointed, bouncing around, and he’s playing on the mandolin. He’d say, “That there comes from American Indian peoples.” Then he’d play something else and say, “Now that comes from New Orleans.” I was like, New Orleans? And he said, “Yes, sir.”

Photo credit: Amanda Rowan

Hee Haw’s Best Banjo Moments

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The first record I ever owned on vinyl was Roy Clark and Buck Trent’s Banjo Bandits. (Excellent record. Hokey, silly, bouncy, double banjo nirvana complete with bluegrass piano.) Roy Clark and Buck Trent eventually led me to Hee Haw, which gave me hours of entertainment and caused hundreds of that-joke-was-so-so-bad facepalms. The music, though, was first rate — and the ratio of banjos to literally everything else was exactly as high as it should be. Check out these amazing best banjo-y Hee Haw moments.

Jimmy Henley and Roy Clark — “Orange Blossom Special”

Jimmy Henley was a world champion banjo player at just 10 years old. Sure, “Orange Blossom Special” is an overplayed trick song, but dang, Jimmy could play fast and clean as a little kid.

Stringbean and Grandpa Jones — “Little Liza Jane”

Two of the classics of the Grand Ole Opry and Hee Haw — and they were neighbors, too, living in the same holler north of Nashville. Look at Stringbean’s face when he forgets they’re repeating the chorus the first time through it. Let us know if you happen to know who the unidentified dancer is.

Roy Clark and Bobby Thompson — “Bury Me Beneath the Willow”

The world needs more double banjo. Full stop.

Cathy Barton — “Redwing”

Now here’s some clawhammer! “Redwing” is a simple tune, but it’s executed expertly and tastefully. Cathy Barton still plays and teaches today, and she tours with her husband Dave Para.

 Grandpa Jones, Roni Stoneman, Buck Trent, Roy Clark, Bobby Thompson — “Pretty Little Bird”

How many banjos is too many banjos? There’s no such thing. Line ‘em all up in front of a haystack, and you’ve got a party.

Roy Clark & Buck Trent — “Dueling Banjos”

Leaving off right where we started, with the original banjo bandits, Roy Clark and Buck Trent pickin’ an absolute bluegrass banjo staple!

 

That Ain’t Bluegrass: The Del McCoury Band

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Artist: The Del McCoury Band
Song: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (originally by Richard Thompson)
Album: Del and the Boys

Where did you first hear “1952 Vincent Black Lightning?”

You know, I never heard it before on the radio, but a friend of ours heard this song on the radio in New York City or somewhere. He called Ronnie and said, “You guys ought to think about recording that song.” Like I said, I had never heard it before. Ronnie played it to me and it’s a great story. That’s what attracted me to the song. It was Richard Thompson — the guy from England — he was just playing acoustic guitar on that and he plays with his fingers instead of a pick. He had his own way of doing it, which is unique, too. But really what attracted me to it was the story. I really liked that story and I thought, “Well, you know what? We’ll see what key we can get it in.” I think he did it in Bb, but C kind of suited me better. And I thought, too, it would be good with banjo to tune it down in C and play it. We ran through it, and I didn’t get the melody exactly like he did it, I don’t think, in some spots. Either that or, since I recorded, it I’ve changed it a little. [Laughs] You kinda do that after recording a song: You’ll change little things now and then. But that’s actually the beginning of it right there.

There’s this tradition in bluegrass music of covering songs from outside of bluegrass — it’s kind of been done even since Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

Yeah, that’s right.

Why do you think that bluegrass artists like to cover these kind of pop or folk songs?

I’ll tell you what, with me, there’s something in that song that touches me or attracts me to it. It don’t matter where the song comes from, really. I think that’s what it is with most people that record songs from outside the bluegrass realm, I guess you could say. It’s either the story or a different melody that will hit your ear that you like — it’s really a complicated thing, I think. I know, with me, that’s mainly what it is. I either like the story in the song or the melody that’s a little different somehow.

A lot of people ask me, when I do interviews for people that write magazines or have a radio show or whatever, they’ll say, “When you go to record, what kind of songs are you looking for?” And I say, “Well, I never know what I’m looking for.” [Laughs] ‘Til I hear it, you know? I don’t have a certain thing in mind, when I go to record. People send me songs all the time now and they might send a whole CD of maybe 12, 14 songs. Sometimes you might find one in that bunch. And you never know what’s going to attract you, you know? It’s a funny thing.

What do you think makes this song a good bluegrass song?

I don’t even think about that — about it fitting. [Laughs] If I like the tune or the story, I just don’t think about it. I just think, “I could do that song!” I don’t think about where it came from. I know that once I sing it. I may have suggestions of how to do the instrumental parts, but for the most part, I don’t. I just let those guys come up with what they can with the melody. I figure I like for them to be creative, too, and do what they can with the song. I really don’t think about it that way. I just think, “I’d love to sing that.” [Laughs] See what I can do with it, whatever it is.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

That’s true, yeah! [Laughs] It ain’t bluegrass! I tell ya, Justin, I’ve thought about this a lot: All music is related. Somehow there’s a connection in all music. Pop, rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and whatever! In bluegrass, country, or hillbilly, they’re all connected in some way. People think — I used to think myself — for one thing, “Bill Monroe, he come up with this bluegrass music and he didn’t listen to anybody else.” But he listened to a lot of people! He listened to jazz down there in New Orleans and he used to go down there. He’d spend time down there when he was young, because he liked that music. I didn’t find this out, even when I worked for him I did not know that, but I found this out later. For instance, he grew up listening to Jimmie Rodgers. All those yodel things, he got from Jimmie. That was completely different, that was even different than country. I don’t know what you would class that kind of music as. Later in years, once he come to Nashville, he would cover a lot of songs that the country people were doing in those days.

I like that your perspective on it is, if you like it, if there’s something about the song that you like, that’s all it takes.

Because if you record that song, you may have to sing that song for 10 years or longer! [Laughs] So you better like what you’re doing! I’ll tell ya, Justin, through the years I have recorded songs that I really didn’t like. The producer would bring them. I needed songs, but usually, when that happens, I don’t sing them in public. [Laughs] I found out another thing, too: Sometimes you gotta think about a song that you put on a record that you don’t like, because there’s going to be somebody that they’ll buy the whole record for that one song that you did that you don’t like. I’ve witnessed that, too. Sometimes there will be a lot of people that like that one song you don’t like, so you might have to learn it and sing it!

Canon Fodder: John Hartford, ‘Aereo-Plain’

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In September 2016, I did an interview with banjo player and producer Alison Brown for the now-dormant Producers column, and she told me a little bit about her studio in Nashville. Compass Records is headquartered there now, but 40 years ago, it was known as Hillbilly Central, where numerous outlaw and outlier country albums were recorded. “If I’d known John Hartford recorded Aereo Plain here, I would have been even more intimidated than I already was,” she confessed. “You could set the bar so high for yourself thinking about the other music that’s been recorded in the room, but, at the end of the day, you just have to look at it as there’s great energy in the room, great vibes in the walls, and you have to tap into that.”

I had to admit I didn’t know the album or much about the man. I knew the name, but that had more to do with the namesake music festival near my home than with any of his actual music. With minimal research, I learned that he was most famous for writing the song “Gentle on My Mind,” a late ’60s hit for Glen Campbell that was covered by everyone from Dean Martin to Aretha Franklin to R.E.M. to (most recently) Alison Krauss to (most strangely) Leonard Nimoy. I learned that Hartford was influential in the Newgrass trend of the ‘70s, and I learned that two of his songs had been included on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, the Big Bang of roots music in the 21st century. I learned that he was an accomplished multi-instrumentalist who clashed with celebrity of any kind. He died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2001.

It’s always instructive to fill in these odd gaps in your musical knowledge, and the experience got me thinking about the roots canon, if there is such a thing. It’s a broad term that covers a wide range of styles and traditions and formats, from old-time field recordings to blues and gospel performances to the latest folk and country album releases to bluegrass classes in Appalachia. It’s almost impossible to connect all the dots, but it’s interesting to think about: Which record should every roots fan know about? What would a canon tell us about roots music in the 21st century? What would it say about American traditional music at a time when the entire notion of America is up for grabs?

Those questions became the foundation for this new column called Canon Fodder, so named because I like obvious puns. Each month we’ll examine a new album by an influential artist and explore its impact across generations. Hopefully this will allow us to approach some old artists in new ways, to hear familiar songs with fresh ears. If you have any nominations for albums to consider in this column, please leave them in the comments section below. I can’t promise we’ll get to each and every one of them, but I’ll definitely add it to the list.

In the meantime, it seems worthwhile to kick things off with Aereo-Plain. Brown is right: It does sound intimidatingly magnificent. There are only a few instruments on these songs, but they’re mic’d beautifully to capture the minute grain of Hartford’s banjo and the vibrations of every string on the strummed guitar. Even the goofball vocals at the end of “Boogie” — sung low and phlegmatic, as though making fun of the song that just played — are recorded lovingly and carefully, as though every mucus rumble were important. What makes the album remarkable isn’t so much the sound of the instruments, but the way they interact with one another. They’re alternately genial and hostile toward one another, supportive and undermining. The banjo plays a practical joke on the guitar; the guitar reciprocates. Especially on “Symphony Hall Rag” Hartford evokes a parallax quality in the production, with the rhythm guitar so deep in the background of the song that it sounds out of focus, which makes the song sound slightly askew.

Actually, all of Aereo-Plain sounds slightly askew … most of all Hartford himself. He comes across as something of a mad hatter on these songs — a Frank Zappa parodist for the roots set, pushing bluegrass as a countercultural force. He understands there’s power in wackiness and, even more than Pete Seeger, he believes the banjo can be a weapon against capitalism, complacency, the mainstream, the music industry, electrified instruments, or even conventional song structures. “With a Vamp in the Middle” is a meta song about itself: “I wrote this song with a vamp in the middle,” Hartford declares, but he never really gets to that vamp. He just keeps playing and singing.

If loneliness pervades these songs, it’s largely an effect of the times, an inescapable by-product of living in America during the early 1970s, when the hippie dream was curdling into something of a nightmare of violence and regress. Nixon was already a crook, but hadn’t been impeached yet. Altamont had killed the ‘60s, but the ‘70s hadn’t quite defined itself yet (at least not in America; in England, glam was already starting to define the era). Singer/songwriters like James Taylor and Cat Stevens were starting to make inroads into the mainstream, but no sound or movement defined the pop or country landscape.

Hartford sees not a land of promise or possibility, but a society gone to seed, eaten alive by progress: “It looks like an electric shaver now where the courthouse used to be,” he sings on “Steamboat Whistle Blues.” “The grass is all synthetic, and we don’t know for sure about the food.” It’s not that he wasn’t made for these times; it’s that the times aren’t made for human beings. “We’ll all sit down at the city dump and talk about the good old days,” but it’s the way he sings “city dump” that makes you think the phrase is redundant. He may decry the commodification of country & western on “Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry,” but Hartford understands that music may be our last connection to a more fulfilling past, and Hartford is content to sit down there among the refuse just pickin’ and strummin’ and singin’ and fiddlin’ while Rome burns.

These songs long for a return to the American pastoral, an escape from the pressures of progress and politics to a pre-industrial ideal and, for that reason, the album sounds alarmingly current. “Sittin’ on a 747 just a-watchin’ them clouds roll by. Can’t tell if it’s sunshine or if it’s rain, rain, rain,” he sings on the title track, his voice rising into a comical falsetto. “Rather be a-sittin’ in a deck chair high up over Kansas City on a genuine ol’ fashioned authentic steam-powered aereo plane.” It’s a dream and a mission statement — one that knows the very idea is an innocent impossibility.

Perhaps Hartford knew, or perhaps he didn’t know, that tinkerers and inventors had been trying to build such a contraption since the 1840s, when an aerial steam carriage was patented by the British inventors William Samuel Henson and John Stringfellow. Even before the Wright Brothers went airborne at Kitty Hawk, they had managed to fly a small craft on a steam engine, but they couldn’t reconcile the power of the steam with the weight of the engine. It was folly, and maybe that’s why Hartford longs for the freedom of such a fantastical vehicle. There’s power in folly, an unbridled joy in whimsy that sounds like an intense form of dissidence and defiance.

LISTEN: Jason Hawk Harris, “The Smoke and the Stars”

Posted on by Amy Reitnouer

Artist: Jason Hawk Harris
Hometown: Houston, TX
Song: “The Smoke and the Stars”
Album: Single
Release Date: April 28, 2017
Label: Free Man Records

In Their Words: “I’ve been writing music since I was 9. You could say that, all these years, I’ve just been waiting for this song to come out. It finally did. It clawed its way out of me and left me on the floor in a pool of blood, smiling like a lunatic. The lyrics themselves are the best explanation I can give. Explaining the song would be to offer a mediocre paraphrase. In general, I’m a fan of the idea that music is best experienced without pre-conceived notions. And with that, I’m going to shut up so you can listen.” — Jason Hawk Harris

LISTEN: Curtis McMurtry, ‘Loves Me More’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Curtis McMurtry
Hometown: Austin, TX
Song: “Loves Me More”
Album: The Hornet’s Nest
Release Date: February 24, 2017

In Their Words: “The narrator of ‘Loves Me More’ endorses free love in all directions, while remaining irreverent and competitive. I’m excited about the arrangement, especially the interplay between the cello and the muted trumpet. Using three-part vocal harmony added another layer to the lyrics, as well, since there are at least three people involved in the story (probably more).” — Curtis McMurtry

Photo credit: Todd V. Wolfson

The Essential Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Playlist

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The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were born out of the burgeoning Southern California folk-rock scene of the late '60s and early '70s. The band was the brainchild of the singer/guitarist duo of Jeff Hanna and Bruce Kunkel, who had worked together as members of the New Coast Two and the Illegitimate Jug Band. Along with Ralph Barr, Les Thompson, Jimmie Fadden and, briefly, Jackson Browne, the band started gigging around Long Beach, California, in early 1967.

After Browne departed for his solo career and John McEuen signed on as a multi-instrumentalist, the band released their eponymous debut disc and won themselves enough attention to score a Top 40 hit, appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and open for a strange melange of performers that ranged from the Doors to Jack Benny.

The next several years were difficult for the band as they released a string of commercially unsuccessful records, struggled with disagreements about the band’s direction, and found themselves being treated much like a novelty act. That all changed in 1972 when Jimmy Ibbotson joined the band and they embraced the sound of traditional country and bluegrass. They released their most commercially successful album, Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy, won another Top 40 hit (“Mr. Bojangles”), and opened the door to recording what was their career-defining album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Tracked in Nashville, Will the Circle Be Unbroken was a monumental triple album that paired the long-haired, anti-establishment California boys in the band with country legends like Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, and Maybelle Carter. By making that record, the band effectively bridged the gap between two generations of country musicians … and produced amazingly beautiful music in the process.

By the early '80s, the band had changed its name (to just the Dirt Band) and winnowed its roster down to four key members: Hanna, Fadden, Ibbotson, and keyboardist Bob Carpenter (with McEuen leaving in ‘86 and returning in 2001). Musically, the band adopted a contemporary country sound that played well on the radio — and at the record stores — scoring themselves three Top 40 and two Top 10 albums. Their quirky left-of-center style remained even as their sound softened, as witnessed by their appearance in Steve Martin’s hit, “King Tut,” as the Toot Uncommons.

In ‘89, Will the Circle Be Unbroken II was recorded (with contributions from John Hiatt, John Prine, Levon Helm, and Bruce Hornsby) and a third Unbroken collaboration was created in 2002 with a guest list that included Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, Tom Petty, and Dwight Yoakam. In the midst of these collaborations, the band spent the 1990s and 2000s making records that blend country, rock, and string music into their own unique sound.

Herein, we offer a brief playlist of tunes that we consider essential to knowing the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, from their days as cosmic cowboys through their latter-day hits (and, of course, all three versions of "Will the Circle Be Unbroken.")

Squared Roots: Scott Biram on the Legend of Lead Belly

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Though Lead Belly was merely a man, his story reads like the stuff of legends. He had multiple encounters with the law, was sentenced to a chain gang, escaped, killed a relative, and got thrown back in the hoosegow, earned himself a pardon because the governor was a fan. But then he stabbed someone else and got put back in prison, this time in Angola, where Alan and John Lomax found him. He was released, again, after serving his minimum and pleading with the governor, but committed a second stabbing, in the late ’30s. All the while, he so impressed everyone who heard him that he also landed himself in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Known primarily for playing 12-string guitar, Lead Belly also played the piano, mandolin, harmonica, violin, and diatonic accordion on the hundreds of songs he recorded over the course of his all-too-brief career.

Texas songwriter Scott Biram grew up on those songs and, later, learned the stories that went with them. In his own bluesy, folky, soulful Americana style, Biram hears the inevitable echoes of Lead Belly coming through, including on his latest release, The Bad Testament. The influence is there in the miscegenation of musical styles, but also in the way Biram approaches his role as raconteur.   

Why Lead Belly?

Well, Doc Watson was taken! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fair point.

I would definitely say he’s among my biggest influences — Doc and Townes Van Zandt are my other two. Lead Belly has been in my life my whole life. My dad listened to him a lot when I was a kid. I have quite a few songs where I do a little rant in the middle, where it’s not really singing as much as it’s telling a little story or saying something. I think I got that from listening to Lead Belly.

Right. Must be nice to have parents who listened to cool music. I grew up on Barry Manilow and Dionne Warwick.

[Laughs] There was definitely a lot of Eagles and Crosby, Stills, and Nash at my house. But my dad listened to a lot of Doc Watson and Lightnin’ Hopkins and stuff like that.

I can see why he would gravitate toward that stuff. Lead Belly really did have a singular style — this mix of blues, folk, gospel, and country on a 12-string guitar. What was it that spoke to you in that mish-mosh or maybe it was the mish-mosh?

I think a lot of it had to do with just being a part of my life when I was a kid with my dad listening to it so much. We had this vinyl record that was the soundtrack to the film Lead Belly which is a pretty obscure movie, not really easy to find. I think they filmed it in ’76 or something like that. I was a little kid. They filmed it in the little town that I lived in and I was in my dad’s arms on the edge of the set while they were filming the scene where Lead Belly shot his friend and went to prison.

Well, one of the times he went to prison …

One of the times … yeah. [Laughs] So I heard that soundtrack a lot, which wasn’t actually Lead Belly playing on the soundtrack. It was Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and someone named Hi Tide Harris who I haven’t been able to find too much on, even with the Internet.

Once I got into roots music, when I was a little older and started playing bluegrass and started really playing the guitar a lot and learning blues, Lead Belly was just naturally somebody that I gravitated toward. And his story is so interesting. I read all the biographies. I read a lot of biographies on musicians that influence me so that I don’t just have a shallow knowledge of them. If I’m going to be playing some of their music, I want to definitely know as much about them as possible.

That’s awesome. I had never studied much of his life until prepping for this. But, I mean … the guy recorded hundreds of songs, worked with the Lomaxes, had a radio show on WNYC, went to Europe, and was in and out of prison multiple times — sang his way out of jail a couple times — all before dying at 50 or 51. That’s some hard living. Can you imagine spending even a couple years in his shoes?

No. [Laughs] I mean, I can imagine, but I’m probably not going to do a very good job of imagining what something like that would be like. I’m just a guitar player. [Laughs] Actually, he only sang himself out of prison once. There’s a legend about him that he sang himself out twice, but really, the second time was kind of exaggerated. I think he was in prison in Louisiana, at that time, and he got out on something called “good time” which is, I think, probably good behavior.

Right. He served his minimum and got out. Here was an interesting thing that I learned: He played at the Apollo, but the Harlem audience didn’t really resonate with him as deeply as the folkies did. He had a lot in common with Woody Guthrie, maybe more so than some of the old blues guys, but why do you think the Black audience didn’t connect?

First of all, he was a country guy. And I don’t mean country music; I mean from the rural South. So I’m not sure anyone from New York would really see it as anything but a spectacle, at that time. But, also, I wonder — and I’m just guessing here — I know that John Lomax used to kind of have him dressed up in a prison uniform and stuff like that, kind of clown him around out there and make him seem like he was just straight from the prison. I imagine that might have been a turn-off to some people in Harlem back then. I know Woody Guthrie, when he went to New York and was supposed to be on something and they wanted him to dress, as he described it, “as a clown,” he said he’d be back in a few minutes, went downstairs, and left. Didn’t even come back to the studio. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Yeah. I read that Life magazine did a three-page spread on Lead Belly and the title of the article is not something I’m going to repeat.

Yeah, I get ya.

And it was considered an honor that he was getting this prominent placement. But it makes sense that the minstrel thing wouldn’t fly.

It might’ve been a turn-off to people in Harlem. If there was anyone from the South who lived in Harlem at that time, they probably weren’t impressed by it because, to them, it was just a reminder of what they just left.

The other thing I love about listening to his stuff and pouring over his stories is that he lived through an era of history that was rife with huge moments and he documented history as it happened, writing songs about the Titanic, the Hindenburg, Jim Crow, FDR, Hitler, etc. Pete Seeger carried his style forward. Bob Dylan, to a certain extent. Who else do you hear carrying the Lead Belly torch?

You mean documenting history as it happens?

Yeah. Ani DiFranco does a bit, which she picked up from Pete Seeger.

Honestly, nobody comes to mind that is documenting current events in music so much that it’s actual historical stories in the songs. There are a lot of people saying their thoughts about the current states of everything, but I can’t think of anyone that actually sings a story about a tragedy.

Santiago Jiménez, Jr. — Flaco Jiménez’s brother — has a record called El Corrido de Esequiel Hernandez: Tragedia de Redford. The album is titled after the song about a kid in Redford, Texas, down in the desert on the border, who was walking his goats one day and the guys in the DEA or Border Patrol came and shot him because he had a rifle walking, like he did every day, with his goats. He was basically a shepherd and he got shot. That’s the only one I can think of that pops out and that’s not a popular artist or anything. [Laughs]

[Laughs] Right. I was just thinking Hurray for the Riff Raff does it a little bit. Rhiannon Giddens, a little. But no one to the same extent. I mean, if you read Lead Belly’s song titles, you can trace history.

A lot of the time you have to listen to it as “The Hindenburg Disaster, Part I” and “Part II” because they couldn’t fit the whole song on the single. They had to put it on both sides!