Basic Folk is thrilled to interview The Bluegrass Situation’s July 2023 Artist of the Month: Molly Tuttle! Quickly becoming the Bluegrass American Idol, Molly Tuttle’s new album City of Gold is hot off the heels of her Grammy-award winning 2022 record, Crooked Tree, which also got her a nomination in one of the coveted “Big Four” categories: Best New Artist. Aaaaand we know that WE ALL have had eyes on Molly for years, BUT since she’s fully embraced the bluegrass genre on these last new albums, Best New Artist makes a lot of sense. Bluegrass was the music she grew up with in Palo Alto, California, with her guitar-teacher father helping her soak in the vibrant scene. She’s also learning how to take control of the bluegrass narrative by telling her story and sharing her perspective through her new songs.
That rings so true with the new record, City of Gold, co-produced by Tuttle and Dobro-master Jerry Douglas (of Alison Krauss & Union Station fame), mostly co-written with her partner Ketch Secor (of Old Crow Medicine Show) and featuring her crack backing band, Golden Highway. She’s writing bluegrass songs that are fun and insightful at the same time. We get a bluegrass version of Alice In Wonderland, the story of a woman fighting for her bodily autonomy and not to mention that time she married Dave Matthews on a road trip (LOL J/K, but that is a real new song with the real Dave). She digs into her new album as well as finding her own way in the patriarchal world of bluegrass and leveling up about her alopecia, an autoimmune skin disease, causing hair loss. Molly Tuttle is a great hang, an inspiration for us all and has made a fabulous new album, City of Gold. LYLAS, Molly!
6:35pm – Billy Strings kicks off Night Two at the Hollywood Bowl with “Whiskey River.” It’s the same song as the first night but it’s a welcome repeat number (and face).
Billy Strings by Randall Michelson
6:39pm – Ethan Hawke opens the show, saying “Willie has always stood for equality,” so it’s no surprise to see the next guest…
6:40pm – It’s Orville Peck in a sleeveless vest (Aren’t his arms cold?! It’s freezing tonight) and his classic fringed mask. Performs “Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other.” Makes use of the full Hollywood Bowl stage – he is owning this moment.
6:45pm – Charley Crockett. “Yesterday’s Wine.” Lady in box next to me states loudly, “Now this is real country.”
6:49pm – Allison Russell and Norah Jones do “Seven Spanish Angels.” These two voices are so perfectly in sync… please call me as soon as they do a duet record together.
6:56pm – Chelsea Handler introduces Dwight Yoakam for “Me and Paul.”
7:05pm – Waylon Payne and Margo Price take the stage together for “Georgia On A Fast Train.” These two are having the absolute best time together. Their chemistry is off the charts. From the box next to me, I hear a fan whisper under their breath, “MARGO IS MOTHER.” Couldn’t agree more.
Margo Price by Randall Michelson
7:14pm – Particle Kid (aka Willie’s younger son, Micah) along with Daniel Lanois. “I went to the garage and got high as shit and wrote a Willie Nelson song.” The lyrics come from a phrase his dad said one day: “If I die when I’m high I’ll be halfway to heaven, or I might have a long way to fall.”
7:19pm – Dame Helen Mirren (!) introduces Rodney Crowell. Emmylou joins mid-song for “‘Till I Gain Control Again.” Crowd goes bananas.
Emmylou Harris by Randall Michelson
7:33pm – Rosanne Cash does “Pancho and Lefty.” Totally different interpretation compared to Night One (where it was performed by Willie and George Strait), but a universally beautiful song nonetheless.
7:46pm – Lyle Lovett melting hearts and brains on “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys”
7:53pm – The “Aloha State Statesman” Jack Johnson performs one of the only non-Willie catalogue songs of the night, “Willie Got Me Stoned and Took All My Money.” He wrote it after Willie got him stoned and took all his money (in a poker game).
Jack Johnson by Jay Blakesberg, Blackbird Productions
7:57pm – Beck (in sunglasses). First artist to acknowledge the unreal house band. “Can you imagine waking up in the morning and opening your eyes and realizing ‘I’m Willie Nelson’? It’s already a great day.” Performs “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.”
8:03pm – TOM JONES! One of the most unexpected joys of the night. His love for Willie shines through in his performance of “Across the Borderline.”
Tom Jones by Josh Timmermans
8:12pm – Surprise guest host Woody Harrelson takes the stage. “Not to self-promote, but just so you guys know, I did open a dispensary… seems like the right audience.” He introduces the legendary Bob Weir. Billy Strings and Margo Price join Bob on stage for a fun and enthusiastic “Stay All Night (Stay a Little Longer).” Margo is having the most fun tonight.
Billy Strings, Margo Price, Bob Weir by Jay Blakesberg, Blackbird Productions
8:18pm – Shooter Jennings and Lukas Nelson together! The next generation doing their fathers proud with own rendition of “Good Hearted Woman.”
Shooter Jennings, Lukas Nelson by Randall Michelson
8:22pm – Lukas performs a heart-wrenching version of “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.” Sounds so much like his dad yet simultaneously unique to himself. He has all 18,000 attendees in the palm of his hand.
8:29pm – The Avett Brothers. Wow. They sound so good, and fresh off the MerleFest stage just 48 hours prior. It’s been a few years since I saw them and gosh I missed them.
8:40pm – Chelsea Handler introduces Norah Jones, who performs an instrumental ode to Bobbie Nelson.
8:43pm – Norah brings on Kris Kristofferson (!) and helps him through “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” There’s not a dry eye in the house.
Kris Kristofferson, Norah Jones by Randall Michelson
8:49pm – Ethan Hawke introduces Nathaniel Rateliff. Not unlike the first evening (where he performed “City of New Orleans”) he steals the show with “A Song For You.” Rateliff is a national treasure who should be protected at all costs.
8:54pm – Sheryl Crow does “Crazy.” Crowd (rightfully) goes Crazy.
9:02pm – Dave Matthews, overflowing with sheepish charisma, tells an amazing story about getting high with Willie on his bus and how proud his mom was of that moment. The photo of that night is still prominently displayed on her mantle. He performs “Funny How Time Slips Away,” a song that seems to be the theme of the night.
Dave Matthews by Randall Michelson
9:18pm – Jamey Johnson and Warren Haynes perform “Georgia On My Mind.” From the first word Jamey sings, the audience goes wild. These two bring down the house.
9:28pm – The Children of the Highwaymen, including Lukas and Micah Nelson (Particle Kid), Shooter Jennings, and Rosanne Cash. One of the few moments during the show with technical difficulties.
Woody Harrelson, Willie Nelson by Randall Michelson
9:35pm – Woody Harrelson returns to the stage to introduce Willie. The man of the hour finally takes the stage. Willie performs “Stardust.” It is perfect. I am crying.
9:53pm – Willie duets with his longtime studio producer, Buddy Cannon, on “Something You Get Through” (which the two wrote together).
10:02pm – KEITH RICHARDS JUST WALKED OUT. I AM DECEASED. It’s hard to even remember what they performed because everyone is in such shock. (They performed “We Had It All” and “Live Forever”).
Willie Nelson, Keith Richards by Randall Michelson
10:10pm – All skate. “On the Road Again” of course. Willie wraps up the night by taking us all to church, ending with a medley of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “I’ll Fly Away.” It’s going to take an awfully long time to process everything from this weekend.
For the last decade, many queer singer-songwriters have doubled down on laconic melancholy, so it’s pleasant to hear Garrison Starr’s new album, Girl I Used to Be, has the ease of Dave Matthews or Sheryl Crow, but Starr is more open about her sexuality on this album than her previous work. At 45, she is older than a cluster of younger generation of performers (some queer, some writing about queerness) who are still working through experiences of gender, sexuality, and religion.
Listening to her new album, one can hear connections to work like Semler’s “Youth Group,” a small, pointed folk song about discovering that you are queer after a youth group lock-in, or Stephanie Lambring’s lacerating attack against homophobia, “Joys of Jesus.” There are also echoes of the joyous call for selfhood in some of Katie Pruitt’s best work. Starr has written with Pruitt, and “The Devil in Me” from Girl I Used to Be was at first intended for her.
“I was sure that would be a song for Katie’s upcoming record,” Starr tells BGS in an email interview. “But she didn’t take to it like I did, and truthfully, I’m happy because I realize how much that song really is a biography of my experience and of my questions as well. I love the curiosity in it and the sense of breaking away from something that doesn’t serve me anymore. I’m not sure where I fit in with Christianity at this point and even if I’m drawn to it, really. The hypocrisy and elitism, at least in the evangelical church, is repulsive to me, and though I think the story of Jesus’ love and redemption is the best thing about any of it, I’m still searching. I believe in a power greater than myself that I choose to call God — that’s all I really know.”
Lyrically there are places where Girl I Used to Be points to the woman she is now, while still drawing on the memories of her childhood in Mississippi, trying to fit in. This merging of past and present give Starr an authority which leads to a commitment to declarative sentences via a voice that is often plainer and clearer than younger queer performers. She is most declarative about issues of sexuality and geography, particularly on her best West Coast songs.
On “Downtown Hollywood,” Starr tells the story of a runaway that gradually shifts from third-person into first-person. She sings about how “they were raising and they were failing” and trying to “cash it all in.” It has a jab against kids with so much privilege that they didn’t need to grow up, and thus, is a grown-up song, almost burnt out, almost jaded about a town Starr still claims to love.
“My only advice to anybody is to find your authenticity, lean into it and never look back,” she says about her adopted hometown. “Los Angeles is a funny place… it’s changed so much and it hasn’t changed at all. The homeless situation here is definitely worse since I came in the late ‘90s. Some of my favorite old haunts aren’t there anymore, but new stuff has popped up in its place. The hustle, the funkiness, the freedom and the hills haven’t changed, and that’s really what made me fall in love with it in the first place.”
Starr grew up in the Deep South, spending some of her undergrad years at Ole Miss, where she was in a sorority. Feeling restricted in that environment, she moved to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. Her major label debut, Eighteen Over Me, was released by Geffen in 1997, and the sudden attention was complex for this queer songwriter. She has mentioned in an interview with Mississippi Today that in her mid-1990s heyday she was told by handlers not to butch it up too much, to avoid the tomboy aesthetic.
Her subsequent career was as an independent touring artist and a successful jobbing musician. She has sung back up for Mary Chapin Carpenter, worked with Josh Joplin, covered the Indigo Girls, and ended up on the soundtrack to multiple television shows, including The Fosters and Grey’s Anatomy. In 2019, her song “Better Day Comin’” was featured in a trailer for the Oscar-nominated Mister Rogers biopic, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. In addition, her production credits include Margaret Cho’s Grammy-nominated comedy album, American Tragedy. “Margaret is one of the most generous and down to earth people on the planet. I am grateful to know her and have had the opportunity to work with her,” Starr says.
Girl I Used to Be builds upon all of this complex history, while at the same time, provides a way into the future.
“I’ve spent a lot more time in my studio, working on production and mixing, and I’ve been able to continue to create content,” she says about the past year. “My business hasn’t been dependent on touring, thank god. I realized a while ago that if I want to make a living in this business, I gotta figure out how to diversify. So, I write a lot of songs with a lot of people, and I make sure some of them make it into TV and film so I can afford to be an artist for a living.”
Like many contemporary singer-songwriters, a paradox exists between the authority she shows in her music and the helplessness she felt about the political situation as she was writing the record. She says that the song “Dam That’s Breaking” is a response to the administration of the 45th president. He was, she says, “empowered and embraced by evangelicals, even though they knew it was wrong. It’s definitely about religious hypocrisy as well as greed and power, cowardice, selfishness and everything else that makes you feel like the walls are closing in on you and you are powerless to stop it.”
What Starr has to say about long-won battles, about landscape, and about power, through the lens of knowing, has something to teach younger queer artists, and can be an example for a young artist striving to write with a strong sense of place, delicate emotion, and a talent for observation. For example, her song “Train That’s Bound for Glory” is inspired by a remark by her late grandfather at his birthday party.
“He loved to goof around and he loved to pick on you,” she says. “They were singing him ‘Happy Birthday,’ and he carried on about not being around for his next birthday and that it was ‘probably gonna be my last birthday. … He ended it with, ‘Yep, I can hear the whistle on the train that’s bound for glory, calling me home.’ I knew of the Guthrie song, but I had honestly never heard it until after I wrote my version.”
As a whole, Girl I Used to Be answers the question of who the girl is now: a queer woman attempting to reconcile her history and her present. She embodies a queer desire to reinvent oneself in another space. You can have a career anywhere these days, and stories of the Midwest and the South have become central to new LGBTQIA stories — and so the exile motif in Starr’s work might be another kind of lived-in quality. Her experience shows that finding home does not mean exile.
One such example is “Make Peace With It,” among the album’s most trenchant moments. Starr says, “Well, the lyric is, ‘If I’m ever gonna live this life, I gotta make peace with it.’ I was thinking in that moment about how much I was struggling to hold onto blame for the rejection I experienced in the church, for the way I felt like my career wasn’t working like I wanted it to, and name whatever else I felt victim to for a long time in my life. I finally got to a place, through what I’m calling grace, and I’ll explain that in a second, where I realized I’d rather be happy than be right. (Thank you, Alanon.).”
She concludes, “What I mean by grace is that there have been so many times in my life where I have been accepted, as I am, by people who truly love me, when I’ve been at my absolute worst. That is what I mean when I say grace. Grace is love, no matter what.”
The spring is often the peak time for artists to drop a new release — the festival season is just warming up, and a new album can bring about immense plans for an exciting year on the road. But for many road warriors like Danny Barnes, who released a new album in March 2020, release tours were turned upside down by the pandemic. Fortunately, in his true spirit, Barnes has managed to stay as creative as ever.
Man on Fire is Barnes’ 10th major solo release, not to mention his ‘barnyard electronic’ Bandcamp work, and an extensive collaborative discography including the likes of Bad Livers and David Grisman’s Dawg Trio. Though he often utilizes taste over flash, Barnes has been long recognized among the top banjo players — for example, he was the 2015 recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. The new record, though released during an unprecedented time, garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album.
BGS caught up with Barnes to talk about recording Man on Fire, how he’s filled his time during the pandemic at home in Washington, and his major creative methods, from finding the right collaborators to populating his songs with characters who will surprise you.
BGS: With the release of Man on Fire last March, how have you managed to best stay creative during the pandemic?
Barnes: One great thing is not spending so much time in transit. I was flying three weekends a month for decades, really. The amount of time I spent in a hotel, rental car, or airplane was astronomical. So when you pull all that out of the equation, I can just make stuff like crazy. I’ve been writing a bunch of songs, studying music like crazy, studying art, I just make things like crazy. I have a lot of ideas, you know.
I’ve heard you talk about using the banjo as a pencil. Can you explain that idea, and how it informs your creative process?
If you’re trying to play an instrument, say if you take up the saxophone or something like that, you spend a lot of years just chasing the instrument. I’m in my 50th year of playing [the banjo], and after a few years of working on it, it sort of gets where you can go the other way with it, where you’re expressing things through it. It’s like a different operating system; typically it takes a lot of years to get that familiarity with something. Over time, you develop this atomic understanding of things, a really good objective look, you know. I use the banjo to get ideas out.
There’s so much music in the banjo itself that’s untapped… In the traditional styles it has a certain role, like the shortstop on the baseball team. There’s a lot of guys like John Hartford that pointed the way before me. My experience was, I spent a lot of years just trying to wrench something out of it. With a pencil too, it’s a really simple thing, but you can do incredibly complex things with it. Similar to a 5-string banjo, it’s real simple in a certain way. Spending time figuring out how to play the banjo gives you a way of putting energy out the other way.
You’ve done a lot of collaborating with folks throughout the years. Can you tell me about some of the friendships that went into Man on Fire?
A lot of those guys I’ve known for a long time. I guess I met Bill [Frisell] right when I first got up [to the Pacific Northwest], I met Dave [Matthews] shortly after that, and I’ve known John Paul Jones since around there too as a matter of fact, early 2000s. I’d never met Geoff [Stanfield], who produced the record. I was talking about making a record and Dave suggested Geoff, who’s a friend of his. He’s a Seattle guy, so I could work here, I wouldn’t have to fly to L.A. or something like that.
I’m really blessed to have really close friends that care about me, and are super-elevated in the art where they really have another way of looking at things. It’s been a real honor to be able to work with those guys, I’ll tell you that. It’s tough when you’re in the music world, because everybody is involved in it. There are certain subjects that people just in general don’t have opinions about, say for instance like microscopes or something. Music though, people are so used to manning the ship as it were. I’m talking about the audience, people that would potentially listen. So you’ve really gotta think about how you want to stage things and get things out.
The trick about music is that it’s tough to get really really good opinions about stuff. Sometimes guys will make criticisms about stuff just because they want to work on it, you know what I mean? So you still don’t know anything. There’s a lot of ego. What I’ve found is that you have people that know you really well — I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of what I call true masters of music, guys who are super elevated in my field. Those guys, when they have something to say, you can really count on it. Especially if they love you and care about you. If you know them and their kids, you know… it’s relationships. It’s not like you met them at Folk Alliance or somewhere and you’re just gonna make a record with this guy.
You have one of the most unique songwriting styles, between the vastness of your characters from beautiful love songs (“Fun” off of Rocket) and angry men mad at the world (“Bone” from Pizza Box). What is your inspiration behind creating the characters and stories surrounding them?
It’s really like being a poet or something like that. I feel like there’s something that happens to you, I’m not trying to brag on myself, but when you put out a lot of records over the years, there’s a place where you kind of meet yourself. And you go, “Oh, there I am, this is what I do.” If I wanna deviate from this, I now have something to deviate from. I figured out from my poetry that it’s sort of this southern outsider art, like art brut, the French saying for raw art. Kinda like Reverend Howard Finster, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, sort of southern gothic, bleak but funny at the same time. And that’s who populates a lot of my little movies. I find it fascinating, when you can make all these characters, and they can do all of these things and have all these experiences.
The video for “Hey Man” is one of my favorite pieces from the new album. What was your inspiration behind that song, as well as creating the video?
I got this idea from a friend of mine, who went out to his garage, whipped the door open, and there was a dude living in his garage. I just use stuff like that for songs. I thought about telling the story from the homeless guy’s view, and he’s trying to explain why he’s in there as he’s getting all his stuff and getting out of there. Like on that show Cops, they’re stuffing a guy in a car and he’s trying to explain how he got into this situation, and no one is really listening.
David (Dave Matthews) really liked that song, and he’s got this guy Fenton, his lighting guy, who’s really smart about imagery, along with a couple dudes from the DMB crew who are really into editing. We storyboarded the whole thing, shot it in a couple of days over in Seattle. We put a lot of work and time into it. I’m really proud of it. I’ve never been able to do a budgeted video before. It was a real honor to get that out.
Any major plans you’re looking forward to when things resume?
I’m always doing stuff with David Grisman. He and I have a record that we put out a year or so ago, and a whole new record written, just waiting for a good time to record it. The Bad Livers, we’re kinda working on a record. I’m working on this music for tuba and banjo, kind want to make a record build around that. I’ve been writing a bunch of music for the 12-string guitar. I kinda want to make another ambient record. I’ve always got a lot of ideas.
At BGS, we seek out roots music from all corners — for those readers encountering us for the first time, we’re not “just bluegrass.” With our annual year-end list, we’ve shaken off the “best of” title and instead gathered 20 recordings that inspired our staff and contributors. For many reasons (but especially the long-awaited return of live music and festivals), we look ahead to 2021, but first… here are the albums and songs that inspired us in 2020.
Courtney Marie Andrews – Old Flowers
Courtney Marie Andrews couldn’t touch my heart deeper. Her music has been the healing salve for the wounds of 2020. To me, she’s the true definition of an artist: A songwriter, a musician, a painter, a writer, a singer, a poet, an activist. My favorite song on her magical 2020 album is “Old Flowers.” It’s the perfect metaphor of resilience and rebirth after suffering, both in love and in life. Becoming whole again. If that ain’t a theme we could all grow from this year, I don’t know what is! – Beth Behrs
Anjimile – “Maker (Acoustic)”
Anjimile’s Giver Taker was the album I can’t stop (and won’t stop) telling people about in 2020. The full version of their single, “Maker” was a beautiful amalgamation of cultures and influences synthesized by an artist not constrained by cultural and creative preconceptions. To me, Anjimile’s acoustic version of the lead single distills the brilliance of their songwriting into its purest form. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Danny Barnes – Man on Fire
Danny Barnes’ Man on Fire was a worthwhile gift to us all this year. Over the last couple of years, I’d heard chatter of a project in the works with names like Dave Matthews, John Paul Jones, and Bill Frisell involved. I am constantly in awe of what Barnes can create using the banjo as a pencil. This record was no exception, combining his unique style and songwriting with an electrified crew. – Thomas Cassell
Bonny Light Horseman – “The Roving”
There’s an odd bit of sorcery in the first measures of “The Roving,” a new version of an old folk tune on this supergroup’s debut. It opens tentatively, the instruments falling into the song like autumn leaves: First an acoustic guitar, then cymbals, then piano, all coalescing into a windblown arrangement that’s both understated and sublime. – Stephen Deusner
Bob Dylan – Rough and Rowdy Ways
Packed with jumbles of historic/cultural references and tall tales, bluesy swagger and prayerful romance, and climaxing with the shattered-mirror JFK assassination epic “Murder Most Foul,” Dylan’s first set of originals in a decade is breathtakingly masterful. It’s also, often, hilarious. Nearing 80, the Bard’s as playful as ever. And as poignant. And, justifiably, as cocky. – Steve Hochman
To me, Bob Dylan’s best era started in 1989 with his 26th studio album, Oh Mercy, and continues to this day with his 39th, Rough and Rowdy Ways. “Murder Most Foul” shows us that the master of his generation is as much in control of his folktale troubadour craft as he’s ever been. – Chris Jacobs
Justin Farren – Pretty Free
Knowing nothing about Justin Farren, I was immediately sucked into his evocatively detailed story-songs that involved returning diapers to Costco, getting a “two-paycheck ticket” while trying to impress a girl, and (in the all-too-appropriately-titled for-2020, “Last Year Was The Best Year”) a wild Disneyland adventure. Full of humor, sorrow, regrets and hope, Pretty Free was a musical world I visited often this year. – Michael Berick
Mickey Guyton – “Black Like Me”
Mickey Guyton’s lyrics illuminate the individuality and dilemma of any non-white vocalist in country music, and in particular the difficult journey of Black women in the field. Her performance is gripping and memorable, paying homage to many others who’ve faced ridicule and questions about why they’re daring to perform in an idiom many still feel isn’t suited for their musical style. – Ron Wynn
Sarah Jarosz – “Pay It No Mind”
Atop a Fleetwood Mac-style groove, Sarah Jarosz imagines the advice a distant bird might offer. But her songbird is no sweet, shallow lover. She comes with the weight and wisdom of something more timeless. Jarosz lets her fly via mandolin-fiddle interplay that personifies the tension between the endless sky and the “world on the ground.” – Kim Ruehl
Lydia Loveless – Daughter
“I’m not a liberated woman,” Lydia Loveless declares on her fifth album, “just a country bumpkin dilettante.” Don’t you believe it. Written in the shadow of her 2016 divorce and beautifully sung in a voice both epic and straightforward, Daughter finds this Americana siren at the height of her formidable powers. – David Menconi
Lori McKenna – The Balladeer
Lori McKenna‘s singular talent for capturing the joy in everyday details is on full display, from the church parking lots and hometown haunts of “This Town Is a Woman” to the stubborn tiffs and make-up kisses on “Good Fight.” But The Balladeer acknowledges the hard-as-hell times, too. With gentle accompaniment, commanding melodies, and McKenna’s signature lyrical wit, The Balladeer showcases a modern songwriting master. – Dacey Orr Sivewright
Jeff Picker – With the Bass in Mind
I love “new acoustic music,” but am often afraid I’ll be disappointed by it. Jeff Picker’s With the Bass in Mind immediately eases those worries by offering music that is creative, thoughtful, unexpected, and virtuosic while still feeling grounded and musical. All while effortlessly answering the once-rhetorical question: “What would a solo bluegrass bass album even sound like?” – Tristan Scroggins
William Prince – Reliever
William Prince‘s Reliever feels like the best pep talk I’ve ever had. In particular, “The Spark” finds him astonished with loving a partner who loves him back, no matter his own perceived flaws. As a whole, the album explores complicated emotions with a comforting arrangement (with duties shared by Dave Cobb and Scott Nolan). Sung with assurance by Prince, almost like he’s confiding in you, Reliever is both encouraging and excellent. – Craig Shelburne
Scott Prouty – Shaking Down the Acorns
We’d be remiss in our jobs as procurers of roots music culture to not include this stoically beautiful record on our year-end list of the very best. A hearty collection of 24 (mostly solo) old-time fiddle and banjo songs, there is something ever-present, comforting, and timeless about Prouty’s playing, and I have no doubt this is a record I’ll be revisiting like an old friend for years to come. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Emily Rockarts – Little Flower
Montreal-based songwriter Emily Rockarts’ debut album Little Flower is one to remember. Produced by Franky Rousseau (Goat Rodeo Sessions), the album features lilting cinematic ballads punctuated with dance-in-your-room indie anthems. Rockarts’ musicianship is undeniable; her stunning melodies and refreshingly earnest lyrics make for a remarkable combination that is unlike anything else I’ve heard. Run, listen to Little Flower now! – Kaia Kater
Sarah Siskind – Modern Appalachia
Sarah Siskind brought her luminous, Nashville-honed songwriting back home to North Carolina a few years ago and let the mountains speak through her. Leading an all-star Asheville band live off the floor at iconic Echo Mountain studio, she’s made a heart-swelling set of songs that gather her special melodic signature, her meticulous craft, and her insight into how a rich musical region is evolving. – Craig Havighurst
Emma Swift – Blonde on the Tracks
Emma Swift reminded the music world of the power that artists have to control their work when she self-released Blonde on the Tracks, an eight-song collection of Bob Dylan covers. Her interpretations are as powerful and innovative as her methodical and thoughtful initial distribution sans streaming services. – Erin McAnally
Julian Taylor – The Ridge
Mohawk singer-songwriter Julian Taylor resides in what is now referred to as Toronto, but his masterful country-folk record, The Ridge, hits your ear as if plucked directly from Taylor’s childhood summers spent on his grandparents’ farm in rural British Columbia. Refracted through Taylor’s crisp, modern arrangements and undiluted emotion, The Ridge seamlessly bridges the elephant-in-the-2020-room chasm between rural and urban — musically, familially, lyrically, and spiritually. – Justin Hiltner
Molly Tuttle, “Standing on the Moon”
2020 has handed us its fair share of cover albums, with stay-at-home orders urging many to reach for the familiar — but none have meshed a variety of musical sources so creatively as Molly Tuttle’s whimsical …but i’d rather be with you. Her version of “Standing on the Moon” is the nostalgic and homesick, Earth-loving galactic trip of my pedal steel-obsessed, Deadhead dreams. – Shelby Williamson
Cory Wong – Trail Songs (Dawn)
A record that I didn’t know I needed came in early August when Vulfpeck guitarist Cory Wong released Trail Songs (Dawn). A change of pace for Wong, it features predominantly acoustic instrumentation and organic sounds. The album kicks off with “Trailhead,” which sounds like a Dan Crary instrumental until the groove drops in the second verse. BGS standbys Chris Thile and Sierra Hull make appearances as an added bonus. – Jonny Therrien
Donovan Woods – “Seeing Other People”
We may seem unsentimental, stoic, unemotional — especially when faced with something like a partner moving on, or a breakup, when it may be easier to seem fine, have a pint, and download Tinder. Donovan’s gift in this song is to show those complicated “yes, and” internal thoughts and emotions. It is beautiful. – Tom Power
Most likely to succeed? That’s of no interest to the Likely Culprits, an easygoing group of bluegrass cut-ups who just released one of the most entertaining albums out of Nashville this year.
With four of the band’s members bantering inside a forgotten conference room at IBMA, they readily confess that their name derives from an ongoing conversation within the band: Who’s the most likely to end up behind bars? It’s currently a seven-way tie between Brandon Bostic, Ronnie and Garnet Bowman, Melonie Cannon, Ashby Frank, Deanie Richardson, and Austin Ward. The informal happy hour vibe of this conversation lends itself to proceed on a first-name basis.
“We’re all pretty rowdy,” Deanie says. “We’re all a bunch of hillbilly rebels and we were like, ‘Well, one of us probably get arrested eventually.’ And it was just, which one of us was going to go to jail, and who’s the likely culprit?”
Turns out, that unpredictability is the album’s greatest strength. When pulling together its dozen tracks, they wanted to ensure that all five of the band’s vocalists had a chance to sing, and that nobody’s favorite song was left out. The result is something like listening to a stereo with a seven-disc changer, but with a throughline of excellent musicianship and a high caliber of songwriting.
For example, Melonie unearthed album cuts from Bonnie Raitt, Lucinda Williams, Brandy Clark, and Matraca Berg, while Ashby reconfigured pop star Gavin DeGraw’s melodious “Where You Are.” After years of singing it at the band’s Station Inn shows, Garnet finally recorded “Tennessee Blues,” a deep cut from Keith Whitley. That tearjerker is immediately followed on the album by Brandon’s version of Dave Matthews Band’s “Gravedigger.” Listening to the self-titled album as a complete body of work, it somehow fits.
There might be a shorter version of how the Likely Culprits all met, but here’s one way to tell the story: Deanie and Melonie have been friends since childhood, and when Melonie married Deanie’s brother, they’d host guitar pulls with their mutual friends. Garnet would come to those parties, forging a bond among all three women that’s lasted 25 years. In the years ahead, she would marry Ronnie, who cultivated his bluegrass reputation in the ‘90s with the Lonesome River Band and as a solo artist. He also produced Melonie’s solo albums with her father, Buddy Cannon.
Meanwhile, Ashby met Garnet and Melonie when he was playing in Ronnie’s band. Later on, when Deanie and Ashby crossed paths a party, they recognized that they’d found kindred spirits in each other. Then, as happens in Nashville, they had an idea to form a band, admittedly with no real intentions of taking it on the road. Instead, the priority would be simply making good music. So, together they rounded up Melonie and Garnet, while Ashby recruited two of his friends, Brandon and Austin. And just as the band was hitting its stride, Ashby took a temporary job as a musician on a cruise ship.
“We were having so much fun, it was like, man, we don’t want to stop,’” Garnet recalls. That’s when Deanie asked Ronnie to take Ashby’s spot, not sure if he’d even want to.
Ronnie explains, “Not that I don’t enjoy being in the band now, but I enjoyed not being in the band back then, because I could actually go to a place where I wasn’t expected to play, and I could see these guys play. I mean, I loved them. And by the time Ashby left, I knew all the songs.”
“I knew he was having fun coming and hanging out, drinking a few beers without the pressure of getting up there,” Deanie says. “But he said he would do it and then it just felt amazing. It felt like it should. He’s one of my heroes and I love him to pieces. Just to get him on stage with us was a big dream of ours. So I’m honored he agreed to do it. Ashby eventually came back from the boat and we thought, ‘Well, let’s throw everybody in there.’ And we did. We played a few shows and said, ‘Let’s do a record, why not?’ So here we are with the record.”
So, what makes the Lonely Culprits click anyway? To borrow a title from the album, “Everybody’s Got Something They’re Good At.” Deanie is an exceptional fiddler, while Melonie and Garnet possess warm, instantly identifiable voices. Ronnie sings and plays guitar, and also serves as co-producer (with Buddy Cannon). Brandon provides vocal, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar, and Ashby sings and plays mandolin. Austin keeps the Likely Culprits moving along on upright bass.
Though it sounds like a long-lost Harlan Howard composition, “Everybody’s Got Something They’re Good At” happens to be a Ronnie Bowman/Dale Dodson original, with Garnet singing lead. (Lee Ann Womack recorded it first but her version never came out. Alison Krauss plays fiddle on this version.)
Just after that throwback country tune, Ronnie sings another of his compositions, “Won’t Do That No More,” with such poignancy that it’s no surprise at all that he’s won multiple IBMA male vocalist awards. He’s also an accomplished songwriter who has placed major hits with Brooks & Dunn, Kenny Chesney, and Chris Stapleton.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that Deanie earned an IBMA award this year as a member of Sister Sadie. She’s also toured, along with Brandon, in Patty Loveless’ band. Asked what it feels like to have a lead vocal that keeps changing, she immediately replies, “Oh my gosh, I love it because with Sister Sadie it’s bluegrass. With Patty Loveless, it’s country. But with these guys, it’s all of it.”
That bond has only strengthened since the band’s first show at Station Inn in 2012. It remains a special spot for the band, who listened to the album in its entirety for the first time over the club’s sound system. (Yes, they rang the bell.) They’ll also play an album release show there on November 15.
Thinking back to those days, Brandon recalls, “I moved to town and I didn’t know a single person. I took a job playing in a bluegrass band and moved up on a whim. I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of the house, I’ve got to meet some people.’ So I started hanging out at the Station Inn and I found a group of people that are my family now. We’re all pretty much on the same page and we’re like-minded with music and what we like and what we don’t like. Playing with them, it’s like coming home all the time.”
One of the band’s biggest champions is Jamey Johnson, the country singer-songwriter who made it his mission to get the Likely Culprits’ new album into the world. He’s also invited them to open a series of shows this week in the Southeast, part of his ongoing effort to support female artists in country music.
While Jamey’s fans are devoted to his singular approach to songwriting, it’s just as likely that they’ll appreciate the perspective from these seven musicians, too. Because Melonie is already a familiar presence at his shows as a harmony vocalist – and because Jamey comes to all the band’s shows — there’s a certain comfort zone already in place for the Likely Culprits, one that doesn’t involve prison guards or enforced curfew.
“This is us sitting in a living room with somebody saying, ‘Ronnie, pick a song,” Deanie says. “Ronnie might pick one, and Garnet might pick ‘Tennessee Blues,’ and Brandon might pick ‘Gravedigger.’ It’s what we do, man. It’s great. I love these guys. I’d go all over the world with them.”
“I would too,” says Brandon, says as Ronnie chimes in with a “Yeah.”
“Same here,” Garnet concludes. “We all feel the same way.”
Photo courtesy of the artist
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