Tag: Doc Watson

Squared Roots: Scott Biram on the Legend of Lead Belly

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

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

Why Lead Belly?

Well, Doc Watson was taken! [Laughs]

[Laughs] Fair point.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, one of the times he went to prison …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yeah, I get ya.

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

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

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

You mean documenting history as it happens?

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

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

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

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

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

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: An Unbroken Circle

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In 1971, Richard Nixon was president and the United States was divided. It was an era marked by civil rights struggles, Vietnam War demonstrations, and labor union losses. The counterculture movement that evolved in the 1960s was continuing to take shape and was intrinsically linked to the outpouring of a whole generation’s worth of musical innovation. Amidst social upheaval, at a time when your music reflected your politics, a common ground was forged among unlikely sources. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s milestone 1972 album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken, single-handedly bridged generational and cultural gaps by pairing country music veterans with young hippies from Southern California.

“I don't think we realized the sociological impact that that record would have,” says Jeff Hanna, founding singer and guitarist of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. “On the surface, it looked like, 'What the hell are they doing making music together?'”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band formed in Long Beach, California, in 1966 and became a staple of the wave of California rock that included acts like the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, and the Eagles who were all exploring old-time country sounds in their own music. By the time the recording sessions for the Circle record began, the Dirt Band was fresh off the success of their cover of Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles,” which had become a Top 10 pop single. Record executives and fans, alike, were anticipating a follow-up in the same vein. But the band’s manger and producer, Bill McEuen — brother of band member John McEuen — had another idea: to get the band in the studio with the bluegrass and country musicians that had influenced them when they were coming up.

“I have a lot of respect for [the Dirt Band] for doing it, for going out on a limb, you know, and doing that kind of thing in the middle of a career that was just really on its way up at that point,” says multi-instrumentalist and longtime Dirt Band collaborator Jerry Douglas. “They were the famous people on the record and their guests were the people that they were introducing to their audience, you see. So it was kind of going out on a limb for them. You know, the record company didn't wanna do it. Nobody wanted to do it. They just kind of pushed it through and it was a success.”

When it came time to recruit a slew of Nashville greats for the project, the generational divide ended up working in the Dirt Band’s favor. Their friendship with the Scruggs family began when Earl Scruggs brought his children, who were fans of the band, to a gig they played at Vanderbilt University in 1970. Scruggs became the first artist they invited to guest on the Circle record. They snagged Doc Watson the same way: his son, Merle, was a fan of the band.

“One of the things that was really interesting with a lot of these acts is, their kids were fans of the band. There was kind of a stamp of approval from the younger generation,” recalls Hanna. “And Merle Watson said something like, ‘Well daddy you love the way they sing and play.’ And also the invitation was, ‘We've got Earl Scruggs.’ And Doc said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like fun,’ so there it went.”

Other guests included heavyweights like Jimmy Martin, Mother Maybelle Carter, and Roy Acuff.

“I mentioned to Bill McEuen, at one point, that I'd read this article about Roy Acuff where he said he'd play real country music with anybody anywhere. And we talked about that and Bill said, ‘Well, let's see if he'll put his money where his mouth is,’” Hanna says.

But Acuff wasn’t an easy sell: His initial meeting with the band didn’t go as well as they were hoping. It turns out that the idea of West Coast hippies in their early 20s recording in Woodland Studios in Nashville was a bit of a hard pill to swallow.

“[Acuff] came in and he was just largely unimpressed with us. He was kind of like — he wasn't totally negative — it's just kind of flat and he said later, ‘Well, I don't trust a man that I can't see his face,’ and we all had like massive beards and mustaches and long hair,” Hanna remembers. “Meanwhile, we got in the studio and recorded our tracks with Merle Travis and, lo and behold, Roy Acuff comes strolling in, or sort of quietly walks in the back of the studio at the end of the day. And Bill played him — it was either ‘Nine-Pound Hammer’ or ‘Dark As a Dungeon’ — one of those. And Roy got this big smile on his face and he said, ‘Well, that ain't nothin' but country. I'll be here tomorrow. Be ready.’ So we cut those tracks, so he was in.”

The result was a monumental cross-generational album that combined genres and styles.

“Just to put it in context: You've got Merle Travis's Travis-picking; you've got Earl Scruggs' Scruggs-style banjo; you've got Maybelle Carter, Carter scratch; and Doc Watson — even though flat-picking isn't named after him, it should be,” says Hanna. “I mean, just all these guys that were just so big in our world.”

The Dirt Band’s love of country and old-time sounds goes way back, so it was a natural progression for them to want to honor and record with these musicians.

“A lot of us got into bluegrass because of the folk boom in the mid-60s. A lot of us also had older siblings and they'd bring home these records by Peter, Paul, and Mary or the the Kingston Trio,” says Hanna. “When I first started playing guitar, I bought a Pete Seeger instructional LP and book that had a section about the Carter Family and Maybelle Carter and her playing style, as well … I was a huge fan of the Everly Brothers. We all were. The Everlys, Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Chuck Berry, Little Richard: that stuff killed us. But I think something we all had in common was our deep love of the sounds of Appalachia. And blues for that matter. But a lot of it was acoustic music, I've gotta say.”

Singer/songwriter Jackson Browne joined the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when he was 17 years old, after meeting them at a gig at the Paradox club in Tustin, California, a little town in Orange County. “Getting to play with them was a huge installment in my musical education because I got to sit there and play these really intricate songs,” Browne recalls. “I mean, they were all better players than me, so I learned a lot.”

What struck him immediately about the band, he says, was their vast musical palette.

“The Dirt Band was great because they were true music fans and music aficionados. They weren't just kids that were playing folk music that they heard. They dug deep, is what I'm saying,” says Browne. “They found recordings of the Memphis Jug Band and those things were hard to find. I mean, like that wasn't just lying around. And they were kind of musicologists even then, from the very beginning.”

This year, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band celebrated their 50th anniversary as a band. In commemoration, they returned to Nashville for a star-studded concert at the famed Ryman Auditorium last September, which aired on PBS and was released on DVD. Aptly titled Circlin’ Back, the show was both a nod to the first Circle record and a career retrospective that incorporated the musicians that have impacted the band’s history. Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, Rodney Crowell, Jerry Jeff Walker, John Prine, Jerry Douglas, and Jackson Browne were among the handpicked guests.

“What was even cooler to me than playing the show that night was the rehearsals that we had before,” Douglas recalls. “The first time you do a run-through of one of those songs is so magical. It has all of this extra spark and fear and everything in it. So there were sparks flying in the rehearsal hall when we were doing these things and trying to figure out who played on what.”

Just as the Dirt Band introduced their audience to their earlier influences on the first Circle record, the Circlin’ Back anniversary show connected the next generation of artists and fans together. Musicians like Vince Gill and Jerry Douglas, who remember buying the first Circle record when it came out, are now considered “little brothers” of the Dirt Band. Although they are each musical powerhouses in their own rights, the anniversary show was an opportunity for them to play with some of their heroes.

“I think the first time I played on the song with Jackson Browne that I played lap steel on, I held my breathe through the whole thing,” Douglas says. “I'm such a fan of all of those guys and then they bring Jackson Browne in, and I'm playing on this thing with Jackson Browne and I'm just going nuts inside. So much raw emotion that's happening.”

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band has always had the ability to tap into emotion. Through their shared love of traditional music, they impacted legions of listeners by bridging generations and styles. Their legacy is littered with stories of parents and children bonding over the first Circle record, which is arguably one of the most significant releases in the history of music. At a time of cultural unrest, it showcased music’s ability to bypass divides and cross boundaries. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was Americana before Americana had a name, and their genre-bending illustrates the most important facet of music: how it connects us all.

Photo of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the early 1970s courtesy of the artist.

Everyone’s Doing It: Bryan Sutton in Conversation with Billy Strings

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Bluegrass is a small community. Bryan Sutton and Billy Strings hail from opposite ends of the country — North Carolina and Michigan, respectively. There’s about a 20-year age difference between them, with Sutton enjoying the crest of a long career and Strings (birth name: William Apostol) just starting out. Sutton just released his fifth solo album, The More I Learn on the legendary Sugar Hill label; Strings recently self-released his first solo EP. Aside from a love of Doc Watson that borders on obsession and a mastery over the acoustic guitar, these two guys would seem to have little in common.

And yet, they’ve jammed a few times, usually backstage at a show or during off hours at a festival. They’re both steeped in the other’s work and even hang socially from time to time. Before they started interviewing each other for the Bluegrass Situation, Strings asked Sutton to recommend a restaurant to him, some place he could take his girlfriend and get brownie points (Café Rakka, if you’re curious about Sutton’s answer). Both Sutton and Strings will be in Raleigh, North Carolina, next week for World of Bluegrass.

How do you two know each other?

Bryan Sutton: I first heard about Billy Strings from Chris Eldridge — the fantastic Critter.

Billy Strings: Actually, the first time I met you was when we were playing somewhere in Pennsylvania. Maybe it was at the Sellersville Theater. You were playing with Hot Rize, and we played the front room before the show even started. They let us set up out there and sell some merch, then we hung back with you guys. I remember watching you warm up. I was a fly on the wall.

Sutton: We had a good chat. I remember talking about rhythm and keytars. One of the highlights of this year was our backstage jam session at MerleFest. I went to that festival with the intention of making that happen, finding some time to pick with you.

Strings: That’s why I moved down here — to be able to pick with badass musicians all the time.

Sutton: When I moved to Nashville, it wasn’t quite the scene it is now. There were good players. David Grier was here; Roland White would hang out of a lot. But it was nothing like it is now as far as the amount of players. It’s really exciting.

Why did you move here?

Strings: The reason I moved here was, I was getting ready to leave Michigan, where I had lived my whole life. I was just ready to check something else out. My friend Lindsay was like, "You have to come here. You can just pick all night and hang out. Don’t even think about Denver. Screw that. Nashville!" She was just putting it in my head. She even found the house I’m living in, which is literally next door to her house. But I would sit around and think, "I don’t have anybody to pick with." I’d play along with videos on YouTube or pick by myself, but you can’t interact. I was in a weird spot. I wasn’t getting any better.

Sutton: I’m not good at that. I’m not good at playing at home with records. I know you had some experiences picking a lot with friends and family. That really does get under your skin. You really need that.

Strings: When I was younger, I always had my dad to pick with, and I got to play with other people and sing harmonies with them. Playing solo is hard for me. I really like having other people to interact with. You figure out ways to make cooler music doing that.

Sutton: Definitely. But you spent some time playing with Doc’s records, right? You learned note for note and did some diligent Doc work?

Strings: Not necessarily. I never actually learned anything note for note. I just hear it. I just listen to it so much that I can try to emulate it. But I don’t know if it’s note for note.

Sutton: The way you talked about this the other day, the pocket of your crosspicking is as close to what Doc Watson would do than anybody I’ve ever heard. The emulation of that is really spot on — and not in an effort to copy it for the sake of copying. It’s a spirit and the groove.

Bryan Sutton

Strings: Nobody will ever touch him, as far as I’m concerned. I’m as big a Doc Watson freak as anybody out there. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. I listened to Bill Monroe and Lester and Earl and other bluegrass stuff. But my dad was spoon-feeding me Doc Watson … “Beaumont Rag,” “Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down,” stuff like that. I was learning to play the rhythm to those tunes, and my dad would play the lead. Whenever I play “Beaumont Rag,” I try to put my dad’s flavor in there. He does the same thing. He’ll emulate Doc, but he puts a little bit of his own thing in there. And that’s part of my thing now, too. I think it’s a rock 'n' roll thing, the way he plays. You can hear him playing some classic rock licks, the way he bends the strings. It’s really cool.

Sutton: It comes out new. I remember one of the cooler Christmas morning things for me was about four Doc Watson records and a record player. That was big time. That was a good one. That was my first exposure to the Southbound record. Do you have a favorite doc record? Southbound’s the one for me.

Strings: I don’t think I have a favorite. They’re all the best. But they’re all so different. Later on, he was doing some rockabilly stuff. I’ve been digging into that Milestones thing hard. I’m so excited about it — all this new information that I didn’t have before, all these new tunes I haven’t heard Doc play.

Sutton: One of the more intimidating things in my life was to be around him and just interact. I wanted him to like me as a player, but my goal was just to get to know him and be on a first-name basis. I didn’t get to spend tons of time with him, but I think it got there.

Strings: When you were hanging with Doc, were you an established player?

Sutton: When I played with the Ricky Skaggs band, toured with him starting in 1995, that’s when I first played MerleFest. I was one of thousands of people who shook Doc’s hand that weekend, but as a I continued to hang around, a mutual friend had put together some benefit concerts, and I got to play with Doc and talk with him. That’s when I got to know him a little better. That was around 2003. When I was playing with him, I didn’t want to pick anything too fast. You’re sensitive to that kind of thing. He was getting on in years, and it’s weird to be around a hero like that when you know he’s not what he was on those records from 40 years ago. I had a similar experience with Earl Scruggs. You know it’s still there, and sometimes it comes out in their playing.

Strings: Listening to those older-generation players, they slow down a little bit, but just the knowledge in their playing is amazing. David Grisman still has a lot of years left, but he’s an excellent example of that. You listen to him play nowadays and he plays the coolest notes. It’s really spaced out and thought out. But you listen to his early stuff and he’s just ripping it up, really fast and crazy. Your stuff, too, man. Your new album in comparison to Into My Own, it’s a little more laidback. It’s not like you’re trying to prove anything.

Sutton: That was part of the goal. Going into the record, I was just trying to be honest and real. That was the agenda.

Strings: That comes across. That’s what I love about Doc’s playing, too. You can do all this fancy stuff, but you play those melodies pretty straightforward.

Sutton: It’s really hard for younger players … well, to be more precise, it continues to be hard for me to just trust the tune. Trust the melody.

Stinrgs: I’m guilty of that, too. I go out into outer space with my stuff, sometimes. But if I’m sitting there playing a tune, most of the time I just play the melody. But sometimes I’m just trying to put on a show for the folks.

Sutton: I agree, it is a weird space. I’m always intrigued by the balance of playing a melody and doing your own thing with it. John Hartford has that great phrase — “playing with the music” — which I think is really cool. Your effort is not to just break it down and rebuild it, but to leave it as it is and shift some things here and there.

Strings: I just love that freedom. In the last year, I feel like I’ve been accepted by bluegrass folks and jam band folks and the festival circuit. It feels good to not be pigeon-holed — not bluegrass or this or that. I can just play music. It’s boundary-less. I think it comes from playing some metal. Being onstage, I get up there and I’m looking out at the audience and thinking, "Let’s rock these people’s lives."

Sutton: There’s a huge amount of parallel between the energy of metal and bluegrass, especially when you look at old-time stuff. Not necessarily modern bluegrass. Are you an anti-Metallica guy?

Strings: Definitely not anti-Metallica. I used to not like them, but as I’ve gotten older, I can appreciate it. It’s like AC/DC. I never liked them — the same three chords and the same annoying vocal sound. But when I came back to it and just listened to it, that shit rocks. It rocks. Same thing with Metallica. You can’t sit here and say that doesn’t rock because it absolutely does.

Sutton: There’s a lot of the metal crowd that likes to be anti-Metallica. I have a tough time with that because I’m a fan. I finally got to see them live at Bonnaroo. That was the coolest thing in the word, to see them out in a field in front of 40,000 people. It was so big. It was huge. That’s what I like about it.

Strings: I miss the metal scene a little bit, because we would have our own shows. We would rent out a VFW hall or something like that, and we’d make everybody pay a few bucks so we could bring in a cool band. It was totally underground. Everybody’s just moshing and running off the stage, and the band members are jumping around and everybody’s covered in sweat. It’s so powerful.

Sutton: I almost got a gig with the guys that I played with in high school. We almost had a gig at this union hall, but it never happened. These were dudes that I went to high school with, and they were were a little more legit than I was. We would get together and play after school. It was the late ‘80s, so we had had a lot of AC/DC and Metallica, but there was a lot of Skid Row and Guns N' Roses. A lot of Ozzy Osbourne in there, too.

Strings: Do you play shredder guitar?

Sutton: I can sort of do that. It’s been a while. I learned the solo to “Crazy Train.”

Strings: I wanna hear you play that shit, dude.

Sutton: We should come up with an acoustic guitar duet version of “Crazy Train.” Were you ever hip to George Lynch, with Dokken? Dokken was a little more radio metal, so true, hard, metal guys probably would probably diss them. But George Lynch, I liked his tone. He had a good sound. When I was high school, I was heavy into Ibanez guitars. I thought those were the coolest things. I had a poster of Paul Gilbert [from Mr. Big] on my wall. He came through my town and did a little guitar clinic, which was cool. Steve Vai was another one. Back when he was playing with David Lee Roth, he had that guitar with three necks on it in the shape of a heart. He would tap on both necks with either hand. That was a real rock spectacle. It’s great. It’s show business.

So metal and bluegrass are pretty strongly connected for you?

Sutton: It’s all there. Think about the darkness of songs like “Little Sadie” or “Down That Lonesome Road,” Doc’s version. Just dark, heavy things. Most of the serious rock 'n' roll guys really understand how to respect bluegrass, especially the older stuff. That’s what it was when you listen to “Rocky Road Blues” and things Bill Monroe was doing in the 1940s. He’s hammering the mandolin like Chuck Berry. Bill Monroe was the Chuck Berry of the mandolin. Or Chuck Berry is Bill Monroe on guitar.

I think about those older guys being on the road almost constantly, playing shows every night. How do you feel about touring, especially since you’re both at such different points in your lives and careers?

Strings: I love being on the road. It’s an adventure for me. Every once in a while, I get tired, but it’s always fun.

Sutton: I have never been drawn to the road as much as other folks — or even as much as I probably should be. I’m always trying to figure out how to hang around the house a little more. But what I love about bluegrass is that it’s about playing with other people. You can do that in the studio and you can jam 'til you’re blue, but the stage thing has to happen. There’s a balance to it. That’s always been a little bit of a challenge for me.

Strings: You do a good business hanging around doing sessions.

Sutton: That’s the whole day job thing for musicians here in Nashville. I started doing it when I was really young. I was married by the time I was 23, so this year is our 20th anniversary.

Strings: Congratulations.

Sutton: I think that has made me think about why people get into music and why they stick it out, especially something like bluegrass and traditional music. You don’t get into it thinking you’re going to fill arenas and stadiums with 100,000 people. It’s about the small jam and the day-to-day grind.

Billy Strings

Strings: For me, it’s really about my childhood. Playing the tunes I was learning back then enables me to go back and revisit my childhood. Those were the finest days of my life — just sitting there playing with my dad, learning tunes and singing and being around him. He would sing songs all night long, and I love looking back on that. That’s how I got out of the metal stuff. I just realized that "Holy shit, this bluegrass stuff is really cool." For a while there in middle school, I didn’t exactly tell everybody that I played hillbilly music. It’s not that I was embarrassed by it, but everybody was into metal. So I went with that whole crowd. When I would break into “Beaumont Rag,” people would lose their shit. But it wasn’t something I thought was really awesome, just something I had done as a kid. Then I had this realization that I just love the music and I feel lucky to have grown up around it.

Sutton: Are you writing new stuff that you feel is inspired by those tunes you learned as a child? That’s where my head is right now. My head is full of the songs I’ve played all my life — other people’s songs or traditional songs trying to make that leap. Maybe I’ll have a particular idea … "Okay, then, how would I say that?" For me, the challenge of songwriting is trying to find that curious balance of what feels traditional and what feels unique.

Strings: Lately, I’ve been thinking more about giving myself some freedom to stop worrying about what the next line is going to be until I write it. If you listen to that early Hartford stuff, he was just so free with his pen. It was like he just took the pen and set it on the paper. When he lifted it, that’s when the song was done. The songs wrote themselves in a way. Maybe I’ll write a hundred songs and only five of them will work for this band. That being said, I can do whatever I want, really. I’m trying to give myself that freedom not to be so picky. But I’m still nervous about it, actually, especially showing people stuff.

Sutton: It’s a weird thing to get over. What helped me a lot was working with Tim O’Brien. It was really strange to sit in front of him and say, "Hey man, check this song out." Here’s a guy I’ve been listenin got since high school …

Strings: … who writes the most amazing songs ever.

Sutton: What you learn about being around those guys is that they’re really no different. They’re just as nervous to play a new song in front of people as anyone else. It just comes back to freedom. It comes back to just keeping it going. Especially over the last year and a half of touring, I find that I do a lot of writing on planes. Sometimes the guitar makes it a little too … not predictable … a little too much of the same old shit over and over again. So it helps to give myself a little freedom with lyrics and freedom with what I think a band might do with a song. For whatever reason, I can disappear into this little bubble on a plane. I like being captive for an hour or two hours. I’ve got this whole file of ideas on my phone. I just keep going back to it and adding stuff. Sometimes I’ll get whole songs; sometimes it’s just a good chorus. It really works as a strategy. I’ve never been the kind of writer who has to get up and write something every day. Stuff comes to me. Sometimes I’ll get whole songs in five minutes. I don’t have a lot of the patience to sit around and really hash over lines over long periods of time. It’s more like a puzzle that I come back to every now and again.

Strings: There are just so many dimensions to it all. That is the thing … I have to sometimes remember that we’re playing for the audience here. We have to engage with them instead of closing my eyes and playing the tunes the best I can. But it certainly is fun playing guitar. I can’t believe they pay us to do this shit.

Sutton: It’s pretty amazing. One day they’re going to figure it out — how easy it is — and everybody will start doing it.

Illustration by Abby McMillen. Photos courtesy of the artists.

A Legend Past His Prime: Reflections on Aging Artists and Seeing Ralph Stanley Live

Posted on by Editor

In September 2010, I was supposed to see banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs perform at UNC-Chapel Hill with the Red Clay Ramblers. I had a ticket, but something came up and at the last minute I couldn’t go. Scruggs couldn’t perform anyway due to illness. The show went on without him, and his performance was never rescheduled. He passed away on March 28, 2012, and I never got another opportunity to see him.

Back in May, as I left work one night, I reminded myself to buy a ticket to see Doc Watson at the North Carolina Museum of Art (scheduled for June 30th) with my next paycheck. A few nights later, I got off work to find a text informing me of the guitarist’s death. Watson passed on the 29th, three days before that paycheck came.

So it was natural that, when I heard that the legendary Dr. Ralph Stanley was supposed to play at a small venue called the ArtsCenter just down the road from my house in Carrboro, I jumped at the opportunity to be there. Fortunately, there were no illnesses or falls to get in the way, and the show went on as planned. I had expected to be awestruck and delighted, but left feeling more guilty and heartbroken instead.

Don’t get me wrong — I felt honored to be in the presence of one of the last living pioneers of bluegrass. Chills ran down my spine when he sang  “O Death,” and my heart swelled during “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” and “Angel Band.” But the same time, all I could think was “You’re having a good time, but is he?”

Though the 86-year-old Stanley seemed genuinely humbled by the audience’s turn-out and enthusiasm, he didn’t seem entirely “there” for much of the performance. Arthritis prevented him from playing the banjo for all but a few songs. When he sang, it was mostly back-up; even then, he had to be constantly reminded of what song the band was playing. He forgot many of the words of “Amazing Grace.” And on a few songs, his grandson, Nathan Stanley, had to shout lyrics to him as the song was going on.

For the songs Stanley didn’t sing on, he stood quietly with his hands clasped in front of him while the band played and Nathan sang. The audience chuckled at his forgetfulness and the couple of times he sassed Nathan. The younger Stanley is himself a talented performer, with a voice that sounded much more mature than his age might reflect. But it wasn’t quite as fulfilling as hearing Ralph’s legendary timbre.

It was less of a show in the performing sense, and more of a experience that was telling me “aren’t you glad you get to be in the presence of Ralph Stanley?’  that is to say, the whole thing felt more than a little forced. Yes, I was glad. But it’s one thing to see someone who’s glad to be “there” in every sense of the word — physically, mentally, emotionally. It’s something completely different to see someone who’s standing on a stage for two 45-minute sets, mostly doing nothing.

None of this is to say that performers must be put out to greener pastures once they hit certain ages. I’m all for musicians creating and performing long as they can. But maybe sometimes they can’t, or even don’t want to anymore. And when that’s the case, shouldn’t we respect that? Even if that means I miss seeing another genre giant, I think — I hope — it means the image of their enormous talent lives on in our collective memory a little bit longer.