A Minute In Wilkesboro with the Kruger Brothers

Welcome to “A Minute In …” — a BGS feature that turns our favorite artists into hometown reporters. In our latest column, the Kruger Brothers take us on a tour of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, from a courthouse to a courtyard.

We make our home in Wilkesboro, the county seat of Wilkes County, North Carolina. This county is known as “the heart of American folk music.” Wilkes County lies the northern area of the Yadkin Valley, on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We were drawn here by the music, and then fell in love with the people and the beautiful landscape.

Blue Ridge Parkway. Photo credit: RD Hill Photography

BLUE RIDGE PARKWAY: This is a very diverse region of the Blue Ridge. Of course, we love the sounds of roots music and the many festivals in the area. When we’re not playing music, we enjoy the apple orchards and vineyards in the area. There are so many recreational opportunities, such as W. Kerr Scott Reservoir’s camping, boating, bird watching, hiking, and mountain biking trails. The Yadkin River runs between the towns of Wilkesboro and North Wilkesboro, offering miles of rippling water for kayaking and canoeing. This area is also popular for trout fishing.

Carolina in the Fall. Photo credit: Wilkes Chamber of Commerce

CAROLINA IN THE FALL MUSIC AND FOOD FESTIVAL: We are proud to host this annual event which features some of the world’s best folk, bluegrass, and roots artists. As Uwe sings in his song, “… in the hills of Carolina, folks have opened up the door and, for the first time in my life, I’m not a stranger anymore.” There are no strangers here as we get together for two days of food, music, and more. Food trucks from around the region bring their unique offerings and compete for the Food Truck Championship trophy. Regional vineyards and craft breweries provide a taste of the area’s best beverages. Also included are the North Carolina Banjo Championship (a favorite for Jens, of course), the Chad Lovetts Memorial Trail Run and Ride which supports the American Cancer Society, and a silent auction supporting an afterschool music program. The festival also includes Contra and clogging dance classes, artist workshops, and nightly jam sessions at the Yadkin Valley Event Center.

Doc Watson Mural. Photo credit: Kruger Brothers

DOC WATSON MURAL: When Doc Watson passed unexpectedly in 2012, the world lost an amazing and inspiring talent, our community lost a hero, and we lost a treasured personal friend. We were pleased when students in the Wilkes Art Gallery’s annual Summer Honors Art Program participated in the creation of this mural depicting Doc along with Stone Mountain, the Yadkin River, and W. Kerr Scott Lake. Doc would’ve loved this program which pairs professional artists with talented, local high school students to create works of public art. The brightly colored mural was designed by local artist Wes Gregory and covers the entire east façade of Royall Custom Framing, a building located at the corner of Main and Bridge Streets.

Early morning MerleFest main stage. Photo credit: Kruger Brothers

MERLEFEST: And speaking of Doc … ! Our friend continues to be honored annually on the last weekend of April at the festival created to remember Doc’s son, Merle. The four-day MerleFest, on the campus of Wilkes Community College, features music from all over the world, and we are always honored to play this special festival. It was, after all, playing MerleFest that first introduced us to this town that we now so proudly call home. The history of performers since 1988 reads like a “who’s who” of the entire world of music. Uwe took the early morning photo on the first day of MerleFest this year, hours before the gates opened. There was an air of anticipation in the misty morning light, with rows of chairs so neatly placed in expectation of the crowds to come. It is one of the premier music festivals in the country, yet MerleFest still retains that special feeling of a family reunion for fans and for those of us who perform.

Wilkes Heritage Museum. Photo credit: Kruger Brothers

WILKES HERITAGE MUSEUM: The Old Wilkes County Courthouse, built in 1902, has been restored and houses the Heritage Museum for Wilkes County History. It is a beautiful example of classical revival structures. Inside is a rare collection of artifacts and images that tell stories of early settlers, military history, industry, agriculture, and so much more about the history of our town and county. Behind this building is the old Wilkes County Jail, now a museum, as well. It is one of the few remaining mid-19th century jails. One of its inmates was Tom Dula or Dooley, famous for the 1866 murder of Laura Foster, and made more famous by the old North Carolina folk song “Tom Dooley.”

Open air market. Photo credit: Kruger Brothers

OPEN AIR MARKET: Downtown Wilkesboro is enjoying a revitalization project that includes a new performance stage in the Open Air Market. The Wilkesboro Open Air Market is held on Fridays, from May through September, providing local and regional farmers and artisans the opportunity to sell fresh farm products and handcrafted items. There is also live music throughout the market season. The stage will be used for many of the festivals and events in town, and we’re looking forward to playing here.

Raffaldini Vineyards. Photo credit: Wilkes Chamber of Commerce

RAFFALDINI VINEYARDS: This is a favorite escape just outside of Wilkesboro in Rondo, North Carolina. Raffaldini Vineyards & Winery is a surprising winery that will make you feel as if you’ve stepped out of the Yadkin Valley and right into Tuscany. They have delicious wines made from authentic Italian varietals. The 102-acre estate is surrounded by the serenity of the Yadkin Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. The patio is a perfect place to enjoy lunch, a glass of wine, and the picturesque countryside. It is also an ideal place to relax and reconnect with our lovely wives when we are not on the road.

MIXTAPE: Casey Campbell’s Mandolin Masters

With his latest release being Mandolin Duets, Vol. 1, who better than Casey Campbell to put together a Mixtape of mandolin masters for us? No one. That’s who. He has studied them all — and played with many — so take his carefully selected collection to heart (and ear).

Bill Monroe & Doc Watson — “Watson’s Blues”

Where else to begin but with the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. There are hundreds of recordings to choose from, but I’ve always been a big fan of this duo album of Bill and Doc Watson entitled Live Recordings 1963-1980: Off the Record Volume 2. It features some great duet singing from Bill and Doc, as well as a bevy of short, sweet, and to-the-point instrumentals. I am partial to “Watson’s Blues” not only because this particular recording features the writer (Bill) and the inspiration for the tune (Doc), but also because it is a bluesy little number (and I like my bluegrass to be bluesy).

Ronnie McCoury — “McCoury Blues”

Ahhh … it was the mid-2000s. MySpace was all the rage, and we had yet to discover fidget spinners, stick basses, and Netflix. You know, the good ol’ days. I came across “McCoury Blues” while scouring through Rhapsody (the Spotify before Spotify existed), and, in my opinion, it is a 21st-century take on “Watson’s Blues” with Ronnie’s smooth tremolo and Del McCoury’s powerhouse guitar runs. More importantly, this song led me to the Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza album. This project, spearheaded by Ronnie and David Grisman, is a mandolin goldmine including Ronnie, David, Sam Bush, Ricky Skaggs, Buck White, Frank Wakefield, Bobby Osborne, Jesse McReynolds, and Del McCoury on rhythm guitar. Of course, growing up in the bluegrass world, I had heard all of these players before, but this album was my introduction to the concept of musical style and the intricate differences between musicians. Throughout my mandolin obsession, I have continually returned to this album to draw inspiration (read: steal licks). If there is one album I would recommend to any mandolin fan, it would be Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza.

Mike Compton & David Long — “Tanyards”

If you haven’t picked up on the pattern yet, I’m a big fan of duet recordings. A large part of that came from this album by mandolin masters Mike Compton and David Long. My mother picked me up from middle school in her silver PT Cruiser — yes, we were that cool — with a copy of this album in the passenger seat. We listened to it on the way home, then I listened to it again, and again, and again. Mike and David have such fluid playing styles, and you would be hard-pressed to find other players that could replicate the chemistry on this album. This track does a great job of showcasing each player and also letting the two intertwine as they swap licks. It is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder — “Crossing the Briney”

Adding a little Irish flair to the list, here is a song that starts out bare and ends with a full-on orchestra with all of the bells and whistles (literally). This song is featured on Ricky Skaggs’s Instrumentals albums and, in my opinion, is the standout hit. I mean, where else can you hear instrumentation like this, AND a kickass Andy Leftwich fiddle solo in the middle? This song also opened my mind to how to take what is essentially a pretty standard Irish fiddle tune and raise it to a new level. Admittedly, Ricky doesn’t really get to stretch out on this tune, so it’s not the best representation of his great mandolin playing. But don’t worry: He is one of the best players mixing modern and traditional styles together, and there are plenty of great examples on this album.

The Whites (Buck White) — “Old Man Baker”

Buck White is a national treasure. Not only is he one of the sweetest humans I’ve ever had the honor of spending time with, but he is also one of the swingin’-est mandolin players you will come across. Whether he is kicking up his heels as a special guest with the Grand Ole Opry Square Dancers or playing mandolin on one of his many iconic albums with the Whites, there is no doubt he has a huge smile on his face and joy in his heart. This tune, written for fiddler Kenny Baker, is one that I often play when I am warming up on the mandolin. It’s a tough tune, for sure, with plenty of pinky work and string-jumping, but it is undoubtedly the most fun song on this list to play. Buck’s playing is just like his personality: bouncy, memorable, and always tasteful. If you are at all interested in hearing some Texas Swing mandolin playing, check out more of his catalog.

Strength in Numbers (Sam Bush) — “Texas Red”

Picking one song from the Strength in Numbers album is like picking a favorite child. People in the music business like to throw around the word “supergroup” for every other band, in hopes that it will create some kind of buzz or increase sales. Strength is one of the few occasions where the term accurately applies: Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Connor, and Edgar Meyer. Between the late ’70s and mid-’80s, each of these trail-blazing musicians had helped to established a new frontier of acoustic music. Here they are, together in their prime, with one of acoustic music’s most influential instrumental albums of all time. PS: This album is Sam Bush Rhythm 101. Class dismissed.

David Grisman & Doc Watson — “Kentucky Waltz”

When I am teaching lessons or at a camp, it is without a doubt that I’ll get asked about mandolin tremolo. What is it? How do I do it? How do I make it better? All of these questions (and more) can be answered with Doc & Dawg’s version of the “Kentucky Waltz.” It is one of the most beautiful, simplest recordings of a mandolin and guitar I have come across. For the uninitiated, David Grisman is an icon in the mandolin and acoustic music worlds, heavily influencing today’s top mandolin players like Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, and Ricky Skaggs. With dozens of must-have albums spanning throughout his 50-year career, David led the way to the frontier of “new acoustic music” during the ’70s and ’80s. Even today, at 72, he is still going strong. touring with the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, the David Grisman Sextet, and as a duo with Del McCoury. Despite all of his ground-breaking compositions and albums, when it comes to keeping it simple and making the most of a melody, David is still the king.

Radim Zenkl — “Memory of Jaroslav Jezek”

I couldn’t consider this list finished without introducing you to something a little outside the box. For his Galactic Mandolin album, Czech Republic mandolinist Radim Zenkl (pronounced Ra-deem Zeen-kl) experimented with different mandolin tunings for each song. Because a mandolin has four sets of strings (eight total), it is normally tuned GG-DD-AA-EE. This particular tune has the mandolin tuned in minor thirds. When I first heard this tune, I felt like it was a crazy of mixture of big band jazz and harp music, or something I might’ve heard on the original Nintendo version of The Legend of Zelda. I’m kind of mesmerized by its weirdness.

Andy Statman — “Pale Ale Hop”

While we are spending some time outside the box, now would be a good time to introduce you to Andy Statman. If there is a musical genre out there, Andy has covered it: bluegrass, jazz, Irish, klezmer, rock ‘n’ roll, etc. “Pale Ale Hop” showcases his rockin’ mandolin playing, transforming into something you might hear at a surf-rock dance party in the ’50s. My favorite thing about Andy is that, for all of his experimental compositions, he is a true student of all music and can play the most traditional bluegrass style you could imagine, then turn around and play a John Coltrane solo. If you’re interested in more of Andy’s left-of-center music, check out his earlier LPs, like Flatbush Waltz or Nashville Morning, New York Nights.

Jethro Burns & Tiny Moore — “Flickin’ My Pick”

Here is a classic album with two of the best jazz and swing mandolin players of the past century. Jethro Burns is known primarily as one half of Homer & Jethro, one of the great country comedy duos of the 1930s-60s. Despite all of his joking around, Jethro was a serious musician, playing anything from classical to bluegrass. On this particular song, he is playing the acoustic mandolin and taking the second solo. The other player you’ll hear is Tiny Moore, a pioneer of the electric mandolin. Tiny played with Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and Merle Haggard’s band, the Strangers. Together, these two legends recorded Back to Back, which would become one of the definitive albums for jazz mandolin enthusiasts.

Norman Blake — “Valley Head”

Getting back to the roots of old-timey mandolin music, here is a tune written and played by Norman Blake. Although he is known mostly as one of the great bluegrass guitarists, both Norman and his wife Nancy are great mandolin players and have recorded quite a bit of mandolin music over the years. Similar to the “Kentucky Waltz” earlier on this list, the thing I love about Norman’s playing and this track, in particular, is the simplicity. Sure, this tune might have a lot of notes, but Norman sticks to the melody the entire way through, letting the song speak for itself. For those interested in more of Norman and Nancy’s mandolin playing, check out Natasha’s Waltz, an album that features a slew of great mandolin tunes.

Chris Thile — “Watch ‘At Breakdown”

Sometimes you’ve got to give the kids what they want … and they want Chris Thile. Between his work with Nickel Creek, Mike Marshall, the Punch Brothers, Michael Daves, the Goat Rodeo Sessions, Edgar Meyer, Jon Brion, Béla Fleck, and Brad Mehldau, among others, Chris has traversed just about every inch of the musical landscape. As if that weren’t enough, he is now the host of A Prairie Home Companion, collaborating with a new lineup of musical guests every week, including Jack White, Jason Isbell, Lake Street Dive, and more. With such a long and diverse resumé, he has become one of the most popular and influential mandolin players in the realm of Bill Monroe, David Grisman, and Sam Bush. “Watch ‘At Breakdown” is the starting track on Chris’s How to Grow a Band album, and shows off his bluegrass chops, while hinting that there are no bounds to his abilities.

Doc & Merle Watson: Play ‘Never the Same Way Once’ on New Box Set

Owsley “Bear” Stanley was a hero of the psychedelic counterculture, notorious for both his production of high quality LSD and his engineering work for the Grateful Dead. (He built their famed concert sound system, known as the Wall of Sound.) But his contributions extended far beyond the psychedelic revolution. By plugging his recorder directly into the sound board and placing microphones on and around the stage, he became a transformative force in the landscape of capturing music. Upon his death in 2011, he left behind 1,300 reel-to-reel tapes of shows he recorded in venues around San Francisco in the 1960s and ‘70s. Last month, the first of these recordings — known as Bear’s “Sonic Journals” — was introduced to the world in the form of a seven-disc box set titled Doc & Merle Watson: Never the Same Way Once. Released by the Owsley Stanley Foundation, a non-profit organization founded by Bear’s son, Starfinder Stanley, the box set captures Doc and Merle’s four-night stint at the Boarding House in San Francisco in 1974.

“The idea is that this is all preserved for future generations to discover,” says OSF board member and executive producer of the box set, Hawk Semins. “Our primary mission in real time is to keep these [tapes] from disintegrating, from deteriorating and being unlistenable and, thereby, having lost an important segment of modern American musical history.”

The OSF’s preservation efforts are dedicated to digitizing all of Bear’s reels. So far, 200 reels have been digitized with the help of their Adopt-A-Reel program, in which anyone can pick a show to have preserved in their name for $400. Once a show is selected, the Grateful Dead’s sound engineer, Jeffrey Norman, pulls the tape, follows a digitizing protocol approved by field experts, and returns the tape back to the archive.

“We have a policy that we do not recreationally listen to any of the reels. We treat each reel as though the time that we preserve it is going to be the last time it’s going to ever be played because we don’t know what condition it’s in until we start running that reel,” Semins says. “I don’t want anybody to think we’re just sitting there with our headsets on enjoying all this great music to ourselves. We don’t listen to it until it gets digitized. We don’t know what’s on the reels until it actually gets digitized and we play it back.”

As a dedicated Doc Watson fan, Semins had some sway when it came to selecting Doc and Merle’s shows for universal release. His fandom aside, Semins says the decision can also be attributed to the combination of sound quality and the caliber of Doc and Merle’s playing. Plus, the arrival of Doc in San Francisco is not without historical significance. Psychedelic musicians — including the Grateful Dead — held Doc in high esteem for his authenticity.

“There’s a 40-year gap between the time that that original roots music was being played and the time it was being archived and resurrected by Alan Lomax at the Smithsonian. Compared to medicine, it is like treating erectile dysfunction before and after Viagra. So we’re looking back 40 years, at this moment in time, and archiving this particular juncture of this icon of roots music going out to psychedelic San Francisco and letting it all hang out,” Semins explains. “And it shows in the looseness. I mean, the playing is tight, but in the looseness of the atmosphere, the attitudes. Doc’s clearly having fun, and, you know, he’s always charming, but there’s an ease.”

Bear most likely met Doc at the Marin County Bluegrass Festival a few days before these shows took place.

“Picture the two of them sitting down at a table having a hushed conversation where Owsley hands Doc a microphone and explains to him the process that he’s going to use and why he thinks it’s important for him to record the show and getting Doc’s buy-in on recording,” Semins explains. “That’s an unusual situation, right? Who but Owsley in 1974 could show up at a venue and say, ‘I wanna record you,’ and have that artist from a totally different idiom, not with the Grateful Dead, not with their scene, listen to him, hear him out, be persuaded to say, ‘Yeah?’”

Watson’s long-time friend and bassist, T. Michael Coleman, recalls watching this conversation in the liner notes of the box set. As he puts it, when he listens to the box set, he hears “a legend recording a legend.” Wrought with unique elements, Never the Same Way Once is an essential addition to Watson’s catalog. These shows mark the first time he played songs like “Hound Dog,” “Chicken Road,” and “Doggone My Time,” and his virtuosity is palpable. When the OSF debuted the box set at MerleFest this year, listeners immediately honed in on Watson’s energy.

“We started taking pictures of people listening to the headset that we brought and we’d put on ‘Black Mountain Rag’ from disc seven, and they’d look real serious and all of the sudden their eyes would pop up,” Semins recalls. “[Doc] gets so fast at the end of that ‘Black Mountain Rag’ that he ends up in a place where he doesn’t expect and it starts cracking him up …He laughs and he turns to Merle and he goes, ‘I don’t know what I done there,’ and then he starts noodling around with the guitar and he goes, ‘Oh I see, I see.’ It’s incredible.”

The OSF applied the same care and precision that Bear took while recording when they produced the rest of the box set. In addition to material provided by Coleman, the accompanying 16 pages of liner notes includes contributions from guitarist David Holt and the most contemporaneous photographs of Doc and Merle taken just three days before these shows. Sketched by Starfinder Stanley and adapted into cover art by Mike DuBois, the cover features Doc’s famous guitar, nicknamed “Ol Hoss,” multiplied and arranged in a circular design.

“This juxtaposition of the roots music meets psychedelia, it goes right to what we were trying to accomplish with the cover art,” Semins says. “That’s Ol Hoss as a sort of kaleidoscopic, psychedelic Appalachia meets West Coast. The idea was this is what happens when worlds collided, and the design … we call it Gallagher Mandala for the Gallagher guitar.”

When it came time to find the perfect name to encompass this momentous release, Semins and company took a note from Coleman. “We had no intention initially of ever doing a seven-CD box set as our first release, but we heard the stuff and we couldn’t decide what to choose,” Semins says. “And so we ran this by T. Michael Coleman, and we said, ‘Should we be concerned that you guys played “Tennessee Stud” all four nights?’ And T. Michael said, ‘Shoot, we never played “Tennessee Stud” the same way once, let alone four times!’”


Photo credit: Jim Morton

WATCH: Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road, ‘Ready for the Times to Get Better’

Artist: Lorraine Jordan & Carolina Road
Hometown: Garner, NC
Song: “Ready for the Times to Get Better”
Album: Country Grass
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “‘Ready for the Times to Get Better’ has always been one of my favorite songs. Whether it’s the Doc Watson or the Crystal Gayle version, the song never gets old. It was a great song to add to the Country Grass project. The Carolina Road boys did a great job playing on this tune. It’s one of our most requested tunes.” — Lorraine Jordan


Photo credit: Webster PR

8 Legendary Artists on Our Bluegrass Bucket List

It was 2012 which taught me that, even though bluegrass is a relatively young genre, I was taking that young age for granted. In just a few months, both Earl Scruggs and Doc Watson passed away before I had gotten the chance to see either of them live in concert. Being a banjo player, I was especially broken-hearted over never having met Earl and thanked him for everything he gave me, indirectly, via the banjo. Even though I resolved to catch shows by as many living legends as possible after that particularly devastating year, I have not done well enough. In order to learn from my personal shortcomings, here’s a list of the legends that we all simply must see and hear as much as we possibly can. There’s no time like the present.

Curly Seckler

Chances are, if you’re listening to a recording of Flatt & Scruggs, you’re hearing Curly Seckler sing the tenor. His singing and mandolin graced more than 100 songs during his tenure with the Foggy Mountain Boys. In the ’70s, he joined Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass and inherited the act after Lester passed on. After retiring more than 20 years ago, he continued to release albums and appear as a guest with nearly every bluegrass band of note, on stage and in the studio. He’s a Bluegrass Hall of Famer, an IBMA Award Nominee, and one of the last surviving members of the first generation of bluegrass.

Mac Wiseman

AKA “the Voice with a Heart,” Mac Wiseman got his start with Flatt & Scruggs and the Foggy Mountain Boys, and went on to join Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys before setting out on his own, carving out a solo career that continues to this day. Though he’s currently 91 years old, he just released a musical memoir, I Sang the Song (Life of the Voice with a Heart), on Mountain Fever Records and he has hundreds more songs backlogged for future release. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Bluegrass Hall of Fame inductee rarely performs these days, but musicians, writers, and fans continue to make the pilgrimage to his home just outside of Nashville where he holds court from his armchair — and still does his own vacuuming.

Jesse McReynolds

With his brother Jim, Jesse McReynolds toured and recorded some of the best brother duo bluegrass music ever created. A tireless innovator, Jesse has recorded an album of Chuck Berry covers, a Grateful Dead tribute album, and even appeared on the Doors’ Soft Parade. Lucky for all of us, Jesse still tours, playing festivals and concerts around the Southeast. He also performs quite frequently on the Grand Ole Opry and is the Opry’s oldest member. At 87 years old, he’s still got it — and you need not take our word for it, just catch him tearing through “El Cumbanchero.”

Eddie Adcock

Eddie Adcock is one of the wackiest, most joyful, ingenious banjo players to have graced bluegrass music with his playing. He, too, spent a stint playing with the Blue Grass Boys and went on to join the Country Gentlemen. He toured as a solo act with his wife, Martha, for many years. Their annual benefit concert for Room in the Inn, a homeless shelter network in Nashville, is always a highlight of the Christmas season. It’s worth attending just to catch Eddie, but the lineup is usually brilliantly star-studded. Interesting tidbit: Eddie had brain surgery to correct debilitating hand tremors and was kept awake during the surgery so he could play banjo and the doctors could determine to what extent they could eliminate the tremors. There’s video of this. Go find it.

Bobby Osborne

At 85 years old and after more than 60 years of performing professionally, Bobby Osborne filmed his first music video for “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” the single off his brand new record, Original. That’s right, it’s a bluegrass Bee Gees cover. And it isn’t the only surprising cut on the new record, either. There’s “They Call the Wind Maria” from the Broadway musical Paint Your Wagon and Elvis’s “Don’t Be Cruel.” The record plays like a walk back through Bobby’s — and the Osborne Brothers’ — highly influential career in bluegrass, country, and the folk revival. You can catch Bobby touring across the country with the Rocky Top X-press and on the Grand Ole Opry. It might be the only context in which you hear Rocky Top without being mad about it.

Larry Sparks

Larry Sparks got his start with the Stanley Brothers in the early 1960s and, after Carter Stanley passed away, he became lead vocalist, singing some of Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys’ most iconic songs. His own band, the Lonesome Ramblers, continues to carry the torch for traditional, straight-ahead, no-nonsense bluegrass music, but without the hubris and self-righteousness that these uncompromising bands sometimes espouse. Larry was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2015 and he is a two-time winner of IBMA’s Male Vocalist of the Year award. He’s still going strong with nary a sign of stopping. You need to do yourself a favor and see him live.

Roland White

Too often eclipsed by the fame and influence of his late brother, Clarence, Roland White is the quintessential bluegrass living legend. He appeared on the Andy Griffith Show with his brothers in its first season, he performed with the Kentucky Colonels, the Country Gazette, and the Nashville Bluegrass Band, and he founded the Roland White Band in 2000, after nearly 60 years in the industry. He recently turned 79, but he still teaches at camps and workshops, tours across the country, and plays monthly at the World Famous Station Inn in Nashville. Over the past few years, he’s re-released two live albums by the New Kentucky Colonels: Live in Sweden 1973 and Live in Holland 1973. These recordings should be required listening. Go get them.

Norman Blake

Do you know what Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Joan Baez, John Hartford, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Tony Rice, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, and Inside Llewyn Davis have in common? Norman. Blake. To call his guitar playing “iconic” would be sorely understating it. His influence reaches beyond bluegrass to almost any player who has ever picked up a flat-top box, whether those players know it or not. His latest record is Brushwood (Songs & Stories), recorded with his wife and longtime musical partner, Nancy. It’s a folk album that channels the roots of the music, but with a political bent that’s as unapologetic as it is classically folk.


Eddie Adcock photo by Eddie Janssens. All photos courtesy of the artists.

MIXTAPE: Mark O’Connor’s Bluegrass Basics

From Bill Monroe on down the line, bluegrass has always stayed rooted even while it has reached its branches out to embrace each new generation of players. Fiddler Mark O’Connor knows a thing or two about that history, growing up listening to the greats and, eventually, playing with many of them. He collected a dozen bluegrass basic tunes for anyone wanting to explore the form.

Bill Monroe — “New Muleskinner Blues” (1940)
The virtuoso singer Bill Monroe introduced his new bluegrass sound in 1939 to the Grand Ole Opry with “New Muleskinner Blues.” Jimmie Rodgers also called it his “Blue Yodel No. 8” on his recording of the song 10 years earlier. In an Atlanta recording session in 1940, Bill and his Blue Grass Boys revved the song up with his high tenor voice, a faster tempo, and his trademark hard-driving rhythm. Along with his unusual lead mandolin solos and the bluesy fiddling by Tommy Magness, it set the pace for bluegrass to come. I am proud to say that I got to record with Monroe on one of his signature instrumentals, “Gold Rush” in 1992.

Flatt & Scruggs — “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” (1949 Mercury Single)
Flatt and Scruggs made bluegrass wildly successful, bringing it to the mainstream of television, the movies, and to Carnegie Hall. Lester Flatt had, perhaps, a more accessible country music voice than Monroe did, but it was his instrumental counterpart, Earl Scruggs, who lit the music scene up with the perfected five-string banjo roll he adopted from North Carolina banjo pickers. Forward, backward, and alternating, he was an absolute virtuoso on the banjo. I had the Scruggs book and tried to learn banjo the way he did it, as did thousands of others. A thrilling opportunity for me was to record with Earl on his second instrumental banjo album produced by his son Randy Scruggs.

Osborne Brothers — “Rocky Top” (1956)
When the mandolinist and virtuoso singer Bobby Osborne recorded “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?” featuring his astonishingly clear tenor voice, the bluegrass world had another standard-bearing tenor after Monroe. The brothers soon took “Rocky Top” to being one of the most successful bluegrass songs in history. Not many have the chops to sing “Ruby,” but our own Kate Lee sure can in the O’Connor Band! We recorded it in a loving homage to these greats from the 1950s.

The Stanley Brothers — “Angel Band” (mid-1950s)
My mother had nearly 30 Stanley Brothers albums during my childhood. Like with Mozart, mom thought that listening to the Stanley Brothers on the phonograph was good for her children. And it was. Ralph had the most alluring lonesome tenor voice in bluegrass music, and there is no one really close to him on that account. When the old-time mountain soul singer comes in on each chorus to join his brother Carter, Ralph’s was a lonesome, enchanting beauty. The sacred quartet singing of the Stanleys moved the soul.

Doc Watson with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — “Tennessee Stud” (1972)
When I was 11, this is the album that I actually took to bed with me at night. It replaced my stuff animal and security blanket, I loved it so much. I wanted this music more than anything else really, and so did a lot of people as the three-LP set went platinum. Besides the virtuoso performances on it by Vassar Clements and Earl Scruggs, I was transfixed by Doc Watson’s guitar playing and voice. He was a larger-than-life figure on this recording. I joined Doc on the road, along with his son Merle, for a few years in my early 20s on the fiddle and mandolin, and it gave me the mountain groove for a lifetime that I will never forget.

Old & in the Way with Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, and Vassar Clements — “Midnight Moonlight” (1973)
The folkies and hippies from the unlikely bluegrass stronghold of California were blowing minds in the ’70s. For the next generation like me, it appealed to my contemporary sensibilities. These rockers navigated the bluegrass byways with their long hair, virtuoso playing chops, and a modern attitude with the old music. While it was hard for Monroe to accept, this generation of bluegrass was among the best thing that happened to his music. It gave bluegrass music its future, and prevented it from becoming a museum piece. I must have played “Midnight Moonlight” on stage with former Monroe sideman Peter Rowan hundreds of times in the ’80s.

J.D. Crowe and the New South with Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, and Jerry Douglas — “Ten Degrees” (1975)
At the same time that the California bluegrassers were establishing the genre’s jamband future, Crowe ran his ship tightly with this group of new bluegrass virtuosos out of Kentucky. In much the same way that Monroe rehearsed his boys, the New South vintage 1975 album achieved perfection in bluegrass music for their time. Ricky became a superstar and Jerry became a person for which the dobro could have been renamed. And there was the legend in the making — Tony Rice. He was defining what bluegrass guitar was to become and, at the same time, bringing modern songs and singing into bluegrass repertoire.

David Grisman Quintet with Tony Rice — “E.M.D.” (1976)
When this album came out, it changed my young life and musical direction. I knew what I wanted to be, all of the sudden. Although I loved the old bluegrass, I could not see myself embarking on a career doing it. Tony’s switch to the DGQ from traditional bluegrass gave many of us bluegrass musicians permission to partake in swing and jazz, and that we did. I got to join the David Grisman Quintet just three years after this recording was made, replacing Tony as the lead guitarist and playing Dawg music.

Strength in Numbers — “Slopes” (1989)
Once upon a time, there was this group of bluegrass players that upped the ante from the swing, modern country, and rock explorations of its predecessors, bringing in modern jazz and classical sensibilities to the bluegrass music, successfully, for the first time. No one really knew what to call it or knew what to do with it, at the time. Decades later, the words “seminal” and “iconic” are ascribed to the five Nashville lads who dared to take it another step further.

Mark O’Connor — “Granny White Ridge” (1991)
This is one of my recordings and one of the biggest-selling albums I have released. Receiving two Grammys, this album put Nashville session musicians from the 1980s front and center. For a blistering track, the bluegrass and newgrass cats of Nashville were summoned: I called on Béla Fleck, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Russ Barrenburg, and Mark Schatz who all rose to the occasion and answered bluegrass’s call once again!

Alison Krauss & Union Station — “Every Time You Say Goodbye” (1992)
Alison made history as the first great female bluegrass star. With the voice of an angel and great bluegrass fiddling to match, she took a page from J.D. Crowe’s seminal bands and made bluegrass about smart, contemporary songs for a new generation of music lovers. Two of my best memories of getting to know Alison are when she beat me in a fiddle contest at age 13 and her parents apologized to me! And when I arranged the old tune “Fishers Hornpipe” for both of us to play fiddles with Yo-Yo Ma. Today we carry that arrangement of the old hornpipe into the O’Connor Band.

Kenny Baker — “Jerusalem Ridge” (1993)
I was like a kid in a candy store when I got to create an album that featured all of my fiddle heroes on it — all 14 of them! But the fun didn’t end there … I got to play fiddle duets with each of them on the album, and recording the very music of theirs that inspired me to play the violin in the first place. The largely out-of-body experience culminated in one of my classic records. For one of the cuts, I got to record with the bluegrass great Kenny Baker on a fiddle tune he wrote with his boss at the time — the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. Perhaps the greatest bluegrass instrumental tune of all time. We added the tune to the O’Connor Band repertoire as well with our three fiddles in the mix. Always a highlight, it is timeless.


Photo credit: mauxditty via Foter.com / CC BY.

Yep Roc Records Partners with Southern Folklife Collection for New Series of Releases

Record Store Day is right around the corner, which means the vinyl geeks among us are getting ready for what might as well be called Christmas in April. New releases, exclusive LPs, free swag … Record Store Day has it all, and we want it all.

One of the cooler releases on that April 22 holiday is a special Dolly Parton 45 rpm featuring “Puppy Love,” the first song the country legend ever recorded at the young age of 13. Paired with another Parton rarity, “Girl Left Alone,” the “Puppy Love” single is the first release from a new partnership between Yep Roc Records and the Southern Folklife Collection. 

An endeavor nearly four years in the making, the project will make some of the Southern Folklife Collection’s available in both physical and digital form, with production and distribution handled by Yep Roc. The music is culled from Southern Folklife’s massive archives, housed at the organization’s home base of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

“We were putting on a tribute to Reverend Gary Davis, and Glen and Billy from Yep Roc came to the event,” Steven Weiss, curator of the Southern Folklife Collection, explained. “We started talking about the possibility of doing something, and it grew from there.”

As Weiss explained, there are over 250,000 sound recordings currently housed in the collection’s archives. So far, Southern Folklife and Yep Roc have plans for three releases from those thousands, and left it up to Weiss to choose which pieces would make the final cut. In addition to the first release from Parton, the partnership will release a Cajun/zydeco compilation called Swampland Jewels on September 22 and a live album from Doc Watson either late this year or early in 2018.

“Some of them are things that have been in the back of our minds, in terms of projects that we’ve wanted to do for a number of years, that seemed like they would have commercial appeal,” Weiss says of the Yep Roc albums. “Two of the records are from Goldband Records, which is a record company whose collection is here. That’s a small, independent record company out of Lake Charles, Louisiana, that started after World War II. They were the first ones to record Dolly Parton. They recorded her when she was 13 years old, a song called ‘Puppy Love.’ That was her first single.”

While the Dolly Parton single is about to hit stores, Weiss is still at work on Swampland Jewels, the songs for which he is curating himself. Songs by Boozoo Chavis, Cleveland Crochet, Iry LeJune, Jr., and Jo-El Sonnier will be part of that package. “It’s like a greatest hits compilation of Cajun and zydeco musicians who recorded for the label,” Weiss says. “Those range from the 1960s probably into the ‘80s.”

The final offering in the first trio of albums from the partnership is a special one — a live performance by Doc Watson recorded at Club 47 in Cambridge, Masschusetts, in 1963. Several of the songs included on the album are otherwise unreleased.

“That just came to my attention within the last year,” Weiss says of the Watson record. “It was donated to the collection. It’s just so exceptional that we thought there was an audience for it, and that it fills a particular niche, as well as being a really nice addition to Doc’s catalog.”

So far, those three albums are the only projects with firm release schedules, though Weiss does note that there will be more albums coming from the partnership in the future, including an album by little known string band the Bluegrass Champs. “Some of the Stonemen family were in that group,” Weiss says. “They were basically teenage kids playing on the bluegrass circuit, playing small country music parks. This is a live performance from one of those parks. It’s just a really nice performance. They were a really high-powered group, and I don’t think there are too many recordings of them.”

Hillbilly Soul: An Interview with Darren Nicholson of Balsam Range

For some reason, North Carolina has long been the cradle of the Americana vanguard. In 1945, Earl Scruggs’ banjo sound created a rip-roaring hot rod of a genre called “bluegrass” (with Bill Monroe’s help, of course). In the ’60s, Doc Watson popularized a new guitar style while giving the folk revival a welcome dose of Southern authenticity. The “newgrass” boom of the 1970s owed a lot to a North Carolinian named Tony Rice, who became his era’s most important acoustic guitarist and, in turn, influenced a younger generation of fans, including Béla Fleck and Alison Krauss. Now fast forward to the 2010s and consider a Carolina string band called Balsam Range from a small mountain community in Haywood County, North Carolina.

If you approach Balsam Range with a discerning ear for key bluegrass ingredients, you won’t be disappointed. Great vocal harmony? Check. Killer instrumentalists? Check. Southern themes of home and hearth, with an accent to match? Check and check. But they also have something — a very important something — that an academic understanding of the genre tends to miss: They’re groovy. Balsam Range reminds us that bluegrass can be dancing music, hip-swinging music, backbeat music, as rhythmically hypnotic as all the plugged-in genres that formed in its wake. “It’s hillbilly soul!” says mandolin player Darren Nicholson. “It’s hillbilly funk and it’s hillbilly rock ‘n’ roll.” Not what you’d expect from the hills and hollers of Haywood County.

But Haywood County is just a stone’s throw from Asheville, after all, and maybe it’s not as culturally distant from that bohemian mecca as you’d think. Like so many hipster bourbon joints, whether in Asheville or Brooklyn, Balsam Range is playing with intriguing questions: How does Southern heritage fit into the present day? What can we learn from Appalachian traditions, and how can we carry them forward? Unlike these predictable bacon- and mason jar-themed bars, however, their approach to these questions shows some real originality, not to mention a deep knowledge of Southern music and a reverence for the richness of Appalachian culture as a whole — something they call Mountain Voodoo.

So y’all just put out Mountain Voodoo. I’ve been listening in the car. It’s a great record.

Yeah, it’s hot off the press. We’re really proud of it. I really feel like it’s the best thing we’ve ever done.

It’s clear right off the bat that you have your own style, your own sound. But I thought it was interesting that the description of Mountain Voodoo on your website mentions specific songs as if they’re different genres. It says there’s a “Tony Rice-style vocal song,” a gospel song, a honky-tonk tune, and others. How do you stay conscious of all those different styles and genres, but also just make something that sounds like Balsam Range?

Well, when you’re fan, when you truly love music, it’s like ice cream: You don’t like just one flavor of ice cream. So we can do a honky-tonk country song, we can do straight-ahead bluegrass, we can do a gospel tune, but the reality is that it’s always the five of us. You’ve got to get comfortable enough in your own skin to realize that, no matter what song you approach, it’s still us five.

I think that’s true. The whole thing sounds like one cohesive band.

Well, I hope so. We like traditional bluegrass and progressive bluegrass. We love the Americana stuff. We love playing to different crowds. We love playing to not just hippie crowds, but to any young crowd that has an open mind to music. And we try to express ourselves through different styles of music, but the reality is it’s going to sound like us. You could get George Jones to sing a Merle Haggard song, and it’ll be a Merle song, but he still sounds like George Jones! So, once you get comfortable doing your own thing — that’s the awesome part — it’s always going to sound like us.

So that’s what Balsam Range is doing, right? Focusing on having your own thing, not trying to be pigeonholed?

You’ll hear elements of all of our influences, of course. You’ll hear elements of Tony Rice or traditional stuff, but it’s about making the best music you can and being yourself. Bluegrass is like a curriculum. When you grow up playing bluegrass, it’s like learning your ABCs. You learn all that stuff, so it’s a part of you and it comes out sometimes, but that’s not what dictates who you are. You can show your roots, but you also have to do something that’s uniquely your own. Learning how … that’s a maturity thing. Once you realize how to blend that together, it can be a lot of fun.

That must be one of the hardest things to do in any style of music. You can learn the licks, you can learn other people’s songs, but how do you learn to sound like yourself?

I think that’s a problem with a lot of young musicians. Same as the problem with mainstream radio. They go with whatever is trending. You know, Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley or the Beatles didn’t just go along with whatever was trending. They stayed true to what they did. George Jones, Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs … they did their own thing. If you believe in it, then you keep hammering it out. It may take 20 years, it may take 50 years, but you have to stick with your thing.

It seems like some people treat bluegrass as a collection of licks that are supposed to be memorized and played in a certain way.

Well, the early generation really got it. Some of the newer bluegrass guys don’t — they’re trying to copy Tony Rice or J.D. Crowe. The first generation — Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, Jim and Jesse, the Osborne Brothers, the Stanley Brothers — they all wanted to sound different. Then, if you’re doing your own thing, you’re not in competition with anybody else, even within your own genre. That’s what we’re trying to do in the modern day. We find songs that we like, a sound that is identifiable as us. And people like that.

People who really know bluegrass are aware of the history, about Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers, like you’re saying. But when you’re playing mandolin, are you thinking, “This is a bit of what Bill would do?” Are you conscious of drawing from the history while you’re doing it?

There are elements of that, but, you know, I try to play what fits the song. If it’s a traditional-sounding song, I may put a Monroe twist on it. If it’s a modern, edgy kind of song, I may let the rock ‘n’ roll side of me come out. If you try to back up the singer and play to the song, you can never go wrong. If you get stuck in “I only play this style” or “I only play traditional bluegrass” or “I only play progressive bluegrass,” then you’re really limiting yourself. You’ve got to have an open mind.

So there shouldn’t be any problem combining Bill Monroe with rock ‘n’ roll energy?

He’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame! People forget this. He was an innovator. He was playing rock ‘n’ roll 20 years before Elvis. He influenced Chuck Berry. So he was part of the mountain music thing, the old timey fiddle music, but there was also a Black blues guitar player he grew up listening to named Arnold Shultz. That’s what makes bluegrass great. That’s what makes it uniquely American. Nothing was off limits to him.

People who are die-hard traditional Bill Monroe fans, they want to manipulate him into representing what their beliefs are. The reality is that he was open-minded. He’s the only guy in the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. That was the cool thing about the old generation: Whether it was Frank Sinatra or the Beatles or Bill Monroe, they all realized they had to do their own thing. Now, when there’s a hit, they try to make 10 others that sound just like that hit. They conform to whatever is trending. Those guys didn’t give a damn about trending. They wanted to be unique.

You mentioned all the influences that combined to form bluegrass music in the early days. Taken all together, how would you sum up what bluegrass is? What is it that you love about it?

It’s soul music. It’s hillbilly soul music! It’s hillbilly funk and it’s hillbilly rock ‘n’ roll. The things that I love about a great funk band or a great rock band or a great country singer are the energy and the heart, when somebody really makes you feel something. When a great bluegrass band hits the stage and melts your face off and makes you say “WOW,” it isn’t just a bunch of guys busking with a washboard — it’s the real damn deal. It high-octane music with some real substance behind it. And when there’s substance there, that overtakes everything else. Great bluegrass gets down to the raw power of music.

I’ve heard other musicians say that, when they watch a killer funk band, they’re watching the bassist. Or when they see a tight rock band, even when there’s a great vocalist, they’re watching the drummer. When you’re listening to a great bluegrass band, what are you listening for?

It depends on the band. There are some bands I like because they’re not polished. It’s that raw thing that I love. There’s other bands I appreciate because it’s so clean, so polished. Our band tries to bridge the gap. The way I see it, whatever the band, if someone is truly good, you feel something when you hear the music.

My son is a huge Beatles fan. I mean obsessed. And that’s awesome. I love the Beatles. So, this Summer, we went on vacation and stopped off in Cleveland and took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Bill Monroe is in there and Hank Williams is in there, as well as a lot of Black blues musicians. You can see the roots of where it all comes from. Monroe is in there all over the place. If you listen to his early stuff — there’s a song called “Bluegrass Stomp” — you can hear it, man! It’s like Chuck Berry 20 years before Chuck Berry. It’s clearly rock ‘n’ roll. So I was thinking, you know, you can’t move forward unless you can look backward at the early guys.

You think something’s different now? You think we’ve lost some of that early spirit or energy or whatever it was?

Yeah, it’s seems too commercial now, too focused on repetition. If Miley Cyrus has a hit, they want the next 10 singers to have a hit that sounds just like her hit. They don’t realize that competition is what makes it great.

I love that we’re covering ground from Bill Monroe to the Beatles to Miley Cyrus.

There you go! You know, American music from the ’30s to the ’70s, I just don’t think we’re ever going to see a period of creativity like that again. The machine of selling stuff has now gotten away from that.

 

How old were you when you got into bluegrass?

I’ve got pictures of me on stage at 18 months old. I’ve been around it all my life. My dad played old-timey music, country music. The people who grew up in Western North Carolina, Eastern Kentucky, Tennessee, we’re very fortunate to be a part of that Appalachian music tradition. Mountain Voodoo — that’s not just the title of our record; it’s what happens when you’re exposed to it. There’s a magic in this music that gets passed down from generation to generation. That’s what we hope to carry on. I can’t remember not being into music and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

I started learning guitar, including a lot of old folk tunes, Doc Watson tunes, when I was about 10. I have other friends who discovered bluegrass when they were 25. And then there’s your story — on stage at 18 months. Is there something different between growing up on it and learning about it later? What do you think it gives you when you’re really reared on it from a baby’s age?

Well, we all end up getting to the same watering hole. But how you appreciate it or respect it, that’s a different thing. It becomes a part of your blood. It’s not just something you do when you get off work on Friday — “Oh, I think I’ll go see a show at the Orange Peel.” Those folks enjoy it, but we wake up every day thinking about it, getting the instrument out of the case, and working at getting better, rather than something you do for fun on the weekends. It’s in the fiber of our being, a part of us. For some folks, it’s an outlet, and they enjoy it on that level, but it’s a question of what level you take it to. It’s like throwing a baseball in the yard versus working hard enough to be Greg Maddux. We all love and appreciate it. The question is, “Is music a part of your life or is it your life?”

Do you have a particular memory of being moved by music as a child and realizing you wanted to pursue it?

I remember getting a Louvin Brothers record — Charlie and Ira Louvin, early country music — and I would sit in my room when I was 10 years old and listen to these records. They were singing about dying, about working in the cotton fields, losing loved ones — nothing that I’d experienced — but I would just sit there and cry. I was just emotionally overtaken. They were singing so good, they were playing so good, and they were being genuine about what they were singing. That’s why I can’t get fired up about what’s trending in L.A. or Nashville. It feels forced.

Y’all are from the mountains of North Carolina, and it seems like that’s a big part of who you are. I’d love for this interview to help explain to people who don’t know tons about bluegrass how to place Balsam Range within the genre. Does being from North Carolina, or from the mountains, affect the way you play bluegrass, the way you relate to the music?

Sure, what we play is Carolina music. Also it’s mountain music. Bill Monroe, of course, was from Kentucky, but it didn’t sound like bluegrass until Earl Scruggs came into the picture. He was from Shelby, North Carolina. And there is a magic that happens here in the mountains. That’s the voodoo. It grows here, you know? So when we make music, we’re paying homage to the people who came before us. There’s a sense of nostalgia, sure. But, from our perspective, we’re just keeping in mind all those who influenced us and just trying to keep the bar high.

End of the Road: A Conversation with Norman Blake

Few would dispute Norman Blake’s place on the Mount Rushmore of acoustic guitarists. He’s spent 50 years defining a flat-picking style adopted by guitarists from Tony Rice to Dave Rawlings. He’s also been a translator of traditional ballads, an influential folk songwriter, and an A-list sideman for the likes of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Kris Kristofferson.

But the bullet point version of his career misses what makes him fascinating: a stubborn integrity in his approach to making music — commercial pressures be damned — and a bizarre serendipity that’s led him right into the center of some of folk music’s most important moments of the past half-century. Now he’s capping off his long career with Brushwood (Songs & Stories), an album of beautiful, spare folk that is jarringly modern and political. The songs would sound timeless except that Blake is singing about social media and the Internet — and he often sounds righteously pissed off. It’s hard to explain Norman Blake briefly, but the back-story is worth it.

Born in 1938 on a farm near the Georgia-Alabama line, Blake grew up without electricity, learning songs from a radio jerry-rigged to an old car battery. He dropped out of school at 16 to play in bluegrass bands, made it to the Grand Ole Opry in his early 20s, then was drafted into the Army where he played mandolin in a bluegrass group voted “best band in the Caribbean Command.” Fresh out of the service, he ran into Johnny Cash at a recording session in Chattanooga. Cash asked him if he played the dobro, and 25-year-old Norman said, “Well, yeah.” Cash hired him on the spot.

Then, on the seminal, tide-turning albums of the era, he was right there. It’s hard not to notice the Forrest Gump-ian serendipity of it all.

Blake played guitar on Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline in 1968, one of the founding albums of country-rock; on John Hartford’s Aereo-Plain in 1971, which marked the beginning of Newgrass; and on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken in 1972, which sold approximately as many copies as there were college students in America and introduced old-time country and bluegrass to a longer-haired generation. Thirty years and dozens of albums later, Gillian Welch recommended Blake to producer T Bone Burnett as just the guy to help introduce classic American old-time and folk to another, slightly shorter-haired generation. The O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, in 2000, won a truckload of Grammys, sold eight million copies, and made enough money for Blake — along with his wife and frequent collaborator, Nancy — to start his retirement from the road.

Now, in true Norman Blake style, he’s adding an unexpected chapter to his idiosyncratic story. The sound of Brushwood (Songs & Stories) is classic Norman and Nancy: guitar and fiddle and voices in harmony. But its content is mostly no-holds-barred fire and brimstone of the modern, progressive variety — as well as some instrumental rags, a couple of train ballads, and a spoken word ghost story. In other words, this 79-year-old master of the craft just put out an album of traditional folk songs about climate change, old time religion, the Koch brothers, train wrecks, the NRA, and Wall Street greed. He predicts it will be his last album, and damn. What a way to tie a bow on it. God bless Norman Blake.

I know, in your music, you’ve never shied away from being political, but it seems like, on this record, there’s a lot more explicitly political songs.

Yeah, I somehow just felt like doing that. I don’t know why. It just came out that way, some of the stuff that I ended up writing.

On some of these songs, like “The Truth Will Stand (When This World’s on Fire),” you’re combining observations about modern life — climate change, the NRA, billionaires running the country — with the spiritual language you’ve been using in traditional songs for a long time. Did that feel like a new thing to do? Or did that come naturally?

Yeah, what I write is just the way it comes out. There’s nothing calculated there. It’s just how I write, yeah.

Well, maybe I’ll go back in time a little bit here. I’ve read that the success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack allowed you and Nancy to stop touring, and you felt that was a welcome relief. I’m wondering what your feelings about performing were earlier in your career. Was there a time when you enjoyed touring, when it was an important part of making music to you? Or did you want to stop earlier?

I had considered stopping earlier, yes — 2007 is when I actually quit touring, quit the road due to age and things like that. You know, just getting tired of the actual road itself at that point. Of course, we did everything on the ground, driving. Just got to where we couldn’t stomach that part of it anymore.

I guess what I’m getting at is, do you think if money hadn’t been a part of the equation, your career would’ve been very different? Would you have traveled less, written more?

Yeah, money was a factor in why we did it. I suppose so, yeah. I had the artistic inclination to want to do it, but the money — certainly making a living … we had a family and everything and had to do something. A lot of times, when we made records through the years, the reason we’d make the record was, we had so much money from the record company — they’d give us x amount of money to make a record — and what we had leftover then that we didn’t spend, we’d usually use that to pay our income tax every year. [Laughs] So we made a record about every year, in some ways, you might say, to pay the income taxes. But it was also artistic at the same time.

So why do you make records now?

More for an artistic sense, I think. The way the world is now, the record business is nothing like it was when we started. It’s a whole different thing. My records have never been huge sellers, so they had to be artistic on one level, I guess. Now they’re more artistic, certainly.

At the end of this record, particularly with “Nameless Photograph” and “Stay Down on the Farm,” I couldn’t help but think it sounded like a goodbye.

It’s trying to be. I think maybe this might be my last one — my last full record that I’ll make. I’ll be 79 years old here in less than two months. So I’m pushing 80 years old. I had a light stroke four years ago, had artery surgery on my neck, and that kind of thing. I never was a great singer, as far as having a great voice, but that’s left my voice pretty gravelly. I just wonder, how long do you inflict yourself on the public as you grow old? [Laughs]

It’s a lot of work to make a record, and I just don’t have the inclination. I have vowed this year — like I said, we quit the road in 2007, but we’ve played a few gigs around home — but this is the first year that I have said that I will not perform this year in public. And I will say this: I may never again perform in public, if possible, unless it’s a money consideration and I have to. I may never perform in public again. That’s what I’m thinking.

Do you still enjoy making music at home?

Oh, I play all the time. I play every day. Oh yeah, yeah. I’ll never quit that. I’m totally committed to playing. But not in public. As you grow older, for me, it takes a lot more practice to keep the playing and the voice and everything to where it’s passable to make records. As far as the performing, that’s also something that’s getting to be too much for me physically. All of the getting ready for it, and all of the traveling that you may have to do, even if it’s around home. I just don’t weather up that good. And I just don’t need the performance pressure, with these medical conditions and things. And I will say this, not to belabor the point, but we — speaking of Nancy and me, both — feel very much that with the climate of the country right now, the political climate and the attitude in the country in general, I don’t feel like I want to entertain some people. I don’t want to go out and put my music before some of them.

That’s interesting. I remember your song from the early 2000s during the Bush administration, “Don’t be Afraid of the Neo-Cons.” I guess the natural follow-up would be, do you think we should be afraid of Trump?

Yeah, I suppose so. But I don’t know that I would go and do that. I feel like there are enough people — obviously, as we saw this past weekend — there are enough people speaking out. I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. The political climate we don’t agree with at all. So we maybe just as well stay home. That’s, like I said, that’s one reason I said I don’t feel like trying to entertain some folks. I don’t feel like putting myself out in front of them when I know that I disagree with them and they disagree with me so radically. The way that people are nowadays, there’s so much weird stuff going on, I feel like some — excuse my French, but I feel like some son of a bitch is liable to shoot us or any of us for being freaks or for playing hillbilly music or singing the wrong song at the wrong time. Somebody is liable to shoot you up there on a big stage in front of a big crowd at a festival. You never know what the hell’s going on now.

Well, a lot of folks have compared the current political turmoil to what happened in the late ’60s. You lived through that, and you were a musician then. So are you optimistic at all about the country now? I think a listener to the new record would hear that you’re not.

Am I optimistic about the country? No, I’m not, in some ways. In other words, considering what’s just happened, how can you be? I understand why a lot of people might have elected him, voted for him, but he took them for a ride. He’s a con man. He conned a lot of these people. And I feel like a lot of them that put him where he is today, how can they look at what he’s doing … it should be painfully obvious, just from the time he got into office, that he’s doing exactly the opposite to what he told them, in a lot of ways. So, no, I’m not optimistic about it. I feel like they really got snookered. Just a minute …

[Nancy’s voice in the background: “Democracy doesn’t come with a guarantee!”]

Nancy says that democracy doesn’t come with a guarantee.

That’s a good reminder.

Yeah, she has some good ideas. She says some good things. In fact, some of the songs on there are inspired by her. She helped write them. I get some good ideas from her!

Speaking of writing, I’m really curious about how you became a songwriter, because it seems like — and you can correct my dates, if I’m slightly off — but you became a professional musician in the late ’50s, early ’60s, but you didn’t make your first solo recording until ’72.

That’s right.

Were you writing songs all along, or were you learning along the way from the great songwriters you were playing with?

No, what singing I did then was mostly just singing harmony parts or something on the chorus in bands, things like that. When I got ready to make that first record — people were saying, “You should make a record” — when it came about that I had the wherewith to do that, with Bruce Kaplan — he was with Rounder at that point, then it became Flying Fish, but it was still Rounder at that time … I thought to myself, “Well, I won’t make a record unless I have some original material.” So I said, “Well I need to write some stuff.” So I started writing then.

Wow. Just like that. For a while after that, you toured pretty hard, and it seems like you didn’t write as much. Is that because you lost interest in it?

Too busy. Too busy driving and performing. And competing in the bluegrass world, trying to survive in the bluegrass world knowing we were playing something that was completely off the beaten track and away from what they were playing. So we just took too much time being professional and performing and driving and getting to gigs and all that. We just didn’t have time to want to be that creative.

What do you mean by competing?

When you sent me and Nancy and James Bryan [The Rising Fawn String Ensemble] out on a bluegrass festival with a fiddle and a cello and a guitar, you know, out there in five-string banjo world, so to speak, we were kind of an oddity. We were fish in a tree.

How did it feel to be so different at those festivals?

Well, we did a lot of musical crusading to survive in that world. And we managed to. But that’s something else — we grew tired of crusading musically over the years.

It seems like you’ve influenced a lot of people over the years that have become very influential in their own right. Might even say you’ve influenced people even more than the folks in strictly five-string banjo world. I’m thinking of Gillian Welch and others. Do you feel like your crusading kind of won in the long run?

Oh, I don’t know. I never knew who I really influenced in the long run. I do relate a lot to Gillian and David. They’re some of my friends, and I respect what they do. They do some great things, and I admire their grit to do it. But I never thought about who I influenced or didn’t. I was never sure about that. I guess I’m never sure of my role in any of it. I just was too busy trying to survive and make a living in the music business, and it was hard enough for any of us. Playing acoustic music has always been a hard way to make a living.

Sure. It seems like, from the outside, at least, that it must’ve taken a lot of backbone to do what you did just because you felt like it’s what you should do, rather than because it was lucrative or because there was a successful niche for it.

We always did what we felt like doing artistically. We played what we knew to play and what we could play and felt like playing. We didn’t really tailor ourselves into any particular thing. We never tried to be commercial in any sense.

Just doing what you felt like you needed to do — is that what it felt like to drop out of school at 16 to become a musician? Was that a popular decision with your family?

I was always pretty well supported by my parents in what I did musically. But they were never quite up for me leaving home at the point that I did starting off on it. I think that worried them a little bit. But they encouraged me, musically, very much in what I did …they were surprised by some of it, you know, that I’d had as much success as I’d had. They didn’t expect that! I think they always considered it as something you couldn’t make a living out of.

After growing up listening to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio in the ’40s, what did it feel like to get up on the Opry stage in your early 20s? To play on that program you grew up on.

Oh, it was a big deal. It was a big deal for us to be on it in any way back in the day. That’s back when it was down at the Ryman. It was the world. It was it. In fact, when I was real young, we couldn’t think past the Opry, hardly. That was the pinnacle, the top of the heap.

I’m wondering about your early guitar education. On the Opry, when you were growing up in the ’40s, there wouldn’t have been many lead acoustic guitar players, right?

No, no, it was not a thing you heard featured very much. It was in the bands. But Sam McGee was playing guitar. He was on there. He was playing solo-type guitar, playing with his brother Kirk. So I heard him.

Sam McGee? I’ve never heard of Sam McGee.

You’ve never heard of Sam McGee!

Well … [Laughs] I’ve heard of a good number of guitar players from back then, I think, but I don’t know of him.

Well, the McGee brothers. Sam and Kirk McGee, the boys from sunny Tennessee, they were billed. They played with Uncle Dave Macon. Sam played a lot with Uncle Dave, made records with him, and then he and his brother Kirk also made records. And then they played with Fiddlin’ Arthur Smith, band called the Dixieliners.

What was his guitar style like?

Sam was a finger-style guitar player, played guitar-banjo and played guitar, kind of a ragtime style. They were extremely good, some of my favorite people. I used to hear them on the Opry when I was a kid.

Did you study his style, learn to play like him?

I never tried to play their stuff that early on. I’m sure I play in that style, that same old finger-style playing — similar songs and stuff. They were very good performers.

Who else was an early influence on your guitar playing?

Mother Maybelle [Carter] was a big influence. Very much so. On those early records of the Carter Family, then later on when I got to know her in Nashville.

What did Doc Watson mean to you when you first heard him?

After I came out of the army in ‘63, I was giving guitar lessons in Chattanooga. One of my students asked me had I ever heard of him, and I said no. I had never heard of Doc. They brought me some records, loaned me some of his records to hear. I was doing mostly finger-playing at that point. I always had played mandolin with a flat pick. I had picked the guitar a little bit that way, too. Then I heard him, and he was getting popular, getting a lot of notice at that point, so I thought to myself, “My goodness.” I thought this was a novelty to play the guitar this way! I had learned from the old way, the thumb and finger style, but then I thought, “Well, I can do this too. This is something I know how to do.” So I started working on it more at that point …

Then, when I got to Nashville, the whole thing opened up. I realized there was a whole word of this going on, so I got right in the middle of it quick as I could. I went through a phase that played both ways. I played with a flat pick part of the time — did that with John Hartford — then I also played alternate thumb and finger style, you know, single string stuff. Ended up finally just pretty well flat-picking.

It’s interesting to think — I mean, a lot of folks listened to the Skillet Lickers back in the ’20s and must’ve known Riley Puckett’s style, and then also were familiar with Maybelle Carter’s melodic guitar playing, but then you said people thought more modern pickers like Doc Watson sounded like a novelty. Why do you think that is? What was the difference?

Well, they just weren’t used to hearing that much played on the guitar with a pick like that. The guitar was more in the bands. When it started becoming a prominent lead instrument, it created a whole new thing. And we never called it flat-picking. That’s a term that came on later. We always referred to a pick like that as a “straight pick.”

Did Doc ever teach you or give you any advice?

Well, I’ve always said I learned from anybody I ever liked. We played gigs with Doc. I’ve had the good fortune to hang out some with him, had some good conversations and things. Got along pretty good.

Compared to learning from folks you’ve played with and folks you listened to and by going on the road, nowadays a lot of young musicians — even folk and bluegrass musicians — are going to conservatory programs to study. Do you think there’s a big difference between those learning styles?

Nowadays, people do everything in a different way. They have to. There’s so much going on. They’ve got access to so much that we didn’t have. I guess any way you can learn it is what you do. We were a lot more rural in our approach. Nowadays, rural life is a lot less involved with it. It’s become more of a fad, in a lot of ways. But they just don’t come from the same world that we did. They didn’t grow up down in the country. A radio to listen at is all we had, and a handful of records on a wind-up Victrola or something. Nowadays, they can access anything that’s out there.

Do you think that access to everything, that lack of common influences, is changing the way people make music? It seems like older generations of musicians always talk about these common touchstones, like listening to the Opry on the family radio or watching the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show

Yeah, I don’t know. I wouldn’t know. But when I first started hearing music, we just had the Opry on the radio and a few other radio programs — of course, it was live music on the radio, on our battery-powered radio. We didn’t have electricity, when I was a kid, so we had a battery radio, a phonograph, a few records, and whatever you heard people playing around the community. That’s all we had to draw on.

Why did you decide to incorporate storytelling onto this record — I mean, spoken stories?

Just stuff I’d written. I figured, “Well, if I’m not going to make another record, then these things are never going to get heard.” Whether they should or shouldn’t. They were just things I’d written that weren’t a song, so I said, “Well, I’ll put them on there.”

Do you think younger folk musicians have a responsibility to tell it like it is, like you do, to talk about the modern world or politics in their songs?

I don’t think they have a responsibility to, no. They just have to do what they feel like. It’s their own decision. If they feel like that, they should do it … I always felt that I didn’t want to overdo that aspect of things, I mean politically. If I was really trying to entertain people like years ago, out where people would expect me to play the guitar, I didn’t feel like going out and getting too political — just like a lot of performers get too religious on stage. I think it turns people off, if they didn’t go there for that. If it’s a political rally and you want to be political, then that’s a different thing. But just to go out in a general manner to entertain people, I think politics and religion are some things that should be avoided to some degree. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t sing a religious song! We always did. But I mean, you shouldn’t go out and get on the stump, if people aren’t expecting it or didn’t go there to hear that.

So now that you don’t perform live, you feel free from those considerations?

Yeah, I put it on a record. I’ve always said I’ll use a record for any kind of soapbox I decided to get on. In public, I wouldn’t want to play this latest record. If I went out to play, I wouldn’t do that stuff!

Well, let me finish with one more question for you.

Go ahead.

I haven’t really heard anyone sing about social media or the Internet in a folk song before, and it was sort of … well, refreshing, I guess.

[Laughs] Well, thank you.

It strikes me as funny that most young folk musicians seem committed to using their parents’ and grandparents’ vocabulary and, as far as using modern words, you’ve beaten us to it.

Well, I feel like it’s all there, you know. The old stuff’s there and the new stuff’s there and it’s out in the world. It just fell out that way. It was not calculated, it just came out that way.

Squared Roots: Scott Biram on the Legend of Lead Belly

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!