Tag: Earl Scruggs

BGS Class of 2023: Our Year-End Favorites

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Year-end lists can be so problematic – pitting distinct sounds and music against each other, peddling absolutes, attempting objectivity in a demonstrably subjective field. Each year, as we consider the music that impacted us over the course of twelve months, we try to challenge ourselves and each other, as BGS contributors, to think outside the year-end round up “box.” 

For the BGS Class of 2023, our intention is to highlight music, songs, albums, and performances that have stuck with us, or that we know will continue to stick with us into the future. We wanted to deliberately look beyond the music and creators that merely have the resources, networks, and access to reach us; we wanted to utilize genre as a checkpoint or touchstone, but never as a blanket criterion; we wanted to broaden what forms of media or formats are included; and overall, we wanted to attempt a holistic look at what a year of listening, learning, watching, and hearing can look like to this particular group of people. 

You’ll find ravishing and large indie folk, earnest and literary – and raucous and silly – bluegrass, legendary legacy artists and brand new lineups, soundtracks and live shows, and more. Ultimately, whatever the year, we always want our retrospective lists to be a starting point, a springboard, for our readers, followers, and for roots music fans. This is not the end-all, be-all “Best of 2023” list. Instead, it’s a reminder of the music that scored a year absolutely filled to bursting with excellent, exemplary, ecstatic roots songs, albums, and shows. 

boygenius in Pittsburgh, June 2023

When I saw boygenius this summer, I was milktoast about the whole thing going into it. As soon as I arrived, I realized I was surrounded by young people – and not just any young people: All the beautiful freaks were out for Lucy, Julien, and Phoebe. The energy was palpable and something that I have not experienced in over 20 years. Everyone knew every word. They were FaceTiming friends who cried and sang along remotely with these heroes on stage. It was inspiring!

boygenius feels like an important band. I so wish they had been around when I was an outcast teenager feeling such confusing, wild emotions. Music has a way of helping the world make sense. boygenius radiates communion and it felt like an honor to be a part of their world. – Cindy Howes

Caitlin Canty, Quiet Flame

My favorite bluegrass album of the year is often an album that, through no fault of its own, ends up receiving little to no bluegrass radio airplay or IBMA Awards recognition, and as I listened to Caitlin Canty’s Quiet Flame over and over this year, I couldn’t help but expect it would end up criminally underrated by the general bluegrass community. It’s made by bluegrass pickers – Canty assembled Chris Eldridge (who also was the project’s producer), her husband Noam Pikelny, Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Sarah Jarosz, and Andrew Marlin for her band – and as a result Quiet Flame, more often than not, is just an unencumbered string band album that’s as much bluegrass as it is Americana and singer-songwriter folk. But while Mighty Poplar, with a similar lineup of folks, takes off in bluegrass circles, it raises an eyebrow that this impeccable, heartfelt, and complicated set of songs hasn’t seen the same trajectory. Not that that was Canty’s goal – it’s obvious her priorities in music making are grounded and community-minded, part of why this album is such a stunner. “Odds of Getting Even,” co-written with another BGS favorite, Maya de Vitry, is one of the year’s best songs, bar none. – Justin Hiltner

A Homeplace Pilgrimage to Earl Scruggs Music Festival, August 2023

L: Nina Simone’s homeplace in Tryon, NC. R: Earl Scruggs’ homeplace in Boiling Springs, NC. Both photos by Justin Hiltner.

BGS once again co-presented the Earl Scruggs Revue tribute set hosted by Tony Trischka at Earl Scruggs Music Festival, held just outside of Shelby, North Carolina at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in August. On my drive to the festival grounds, I made stops in Tryon proper, to visit Nina Simone’s childhood home, and also in Shelby, to visit the Earl Scruggs Center and to drive by both of the Scruggs homeplaces just outside of Boiling Springs, North Carolina. It was stunning to visit both homes on the same day, to realize the interconnectedness of so much of American popular music. Simone grew up with a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains from her front porch nestled in one of their hollers, yet we place Scruggs as an Appalachian musician and not Simone? 

The festival and Scruggs Center, for their parts, did an excellent job of demonstrating how broad, varied, and intricate American roots music is, even while focusing closely on bluegrass, string band, and Americana music. Listeners of our podcast, Carolina Calling, will know how much BGS loves North Carolina music history – the show features episodes on both Scruggs and Simone. Seeing that history in person, while heading to a first-class, banjo-heavy festival was a favorite musical moment of this year, for sure. – Justin Hiltner

East Nash Grass, Last Chance to Win

East Nash Grass seems to be all the buzz on the bluegrass circuit these days and those who have ventured to Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge on any Monday night since 2017 can certainly understand why. The band’s long-standing residency at the Madison, Tennessee dive bar has taken them from a weekly pick-up band to performing at the Grand Ole Opry, the Ryman Auditorium, and at bluegrass festivals across the U.S. Their sophomore album, Last Chance to Win, captures the band at their very best (albeit, without their lovable stage antics). Following a 2023 IBMA nomination for Best New Artist, it won’t be a surprise if we see this record, and these musicians, sweeping awards in 2024 and beyond. – Thomas Cassell

Alejandro Escovedo at Cat’s Cradle Backroom, Carrboro, NC, November 2023

There are countless good reasons why you should make a point of seeing the Texas punk/soul godfather if he’s ever playing anywhere near you. But what might be the best reason of all is it’s a lead-pipe cinch that everyone in your town worth hanging out with will be there, too – onstage as well as in the crowd. Escovedo was among a dozen stars drawn to the North Carolina Triangle for an all-star “Nuggets” tribute show overseen by Lenny Kaye in November. So, he came a night early and played a solo show, too, ably supported by local luminaries Lynn Blakey and Pinetops/The Right Profile guitarist Jeffrey Dean Foster. The love in the room was palpable on deeply moving originals like “Sister Lost Soul” and “Wave Goodbye.” And when Kaye and R.E.M.’s Peter Buck came on for a closing Velvet Underground cameo of “Pale Blue Eyes” and “Sweet Jane,” the circle was complete. – David Menconi

Ben Garnett, “Open Your Books” (featuring Brittany Haas and Paul Kowert)

Before I’d listened to the complete #BGSClassof2023 Spotify playlist and realized this track was one of our first additions, the app kept recommending “Open Your Books” to me – and it’s not hard to see why. From guitarist and composer Ben Garnett’s debut album, Imitation Fields, the track features bassist Paul Kowert and fiddler Brittnay Haas and is an example of what bluegrass music can be, and what traditionally bluegrass instruments can do.

The tune opens slowly, with guitar and mandola – provided by Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s own Dominick Leslie. Fiddle swells, orchestral arrangements, and dreamy acoustic production make for a piece that feels distinctly intellectual. It’s chambergrass, but it’s also highly listen-able. While there’s a strong melodic thread throughout, the surrounding instruments and their players are allowed to wander off up the guitar neck, throwing in trill-y banjo licks, and detouring outside traditional fills and solo styles. The record was produced by Chris Eldridge and also features Matthew Davis on banjo and additional guitar from Billy Contreras. I’d recommend this tune to low-fi lovers, roots music fans, and anyone looking for a chilled out moment. It’s perfect for an introspective drive or a rainy winter day spent drinking hot tea at the window. – Lonnie Lee Hood

Alice Gerrard, Sun to Sun

Never, over the course of her lifelong career in music, has Alice Gerrard stopped, having reached her musical destination. She has challenged herself, time and time again, not simply for reinvention’s sake, but because she is a consummate old-time and bluegrass musician, someone so solidly bitten by the string band bug that making music requires that constant movement, that aspirational looking into the future, girded by songs of the past. But Sun to Sun, her latest – and perhaps final – album, features songs decidedly of the present. A synthesizer of traditional art forms, Gerrard takes textures and colors we relate to “authenticity” and leverages them to serve the messages in these tracks. Aging, mortality, justice, apartheid, gun violence, community are all woven into this collection. Alice is their nexus point, around which the entire project revolves and reflects the cosmic light she continues to shine on all of us – and on roots music subjects too often hidden in the shadows. – Justin Hiltner

A Good Year for Soundtracks – Asteroid City, The Holdovers, and More

Between the Writers Guild and Screen Actors’ strikes, 2023 was a weird year for the entertainment industry. But for those releases that did make it to the screen, it was a great year for movie soundtracks, especially for roots music fans.

First up, Wes Anderson’s western sci-fi Asteroid City. In addition to the usual cadre of Anderson’s cast, the film was peppered with classic country and bluegrass recordings from the likes of Tex Ritter, Slim Whitman, Bill Monroe, and Johnny Duncan & the Blue Grass Boys (you read that right). That’s to say nothing of the incredibly catchy original ear worm, “Dear Alien (Who Art In Heaven)” which felt as classic as those twentieth century tunes of the frontier written decades ago.

Capping off the year was Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, a beautiful ode to a particular style of 1970s filmmaking that stars Paul Giamatti. Set in snowy western Massachusetts over a lonely winter break in 1970, the soundtrack plays like an old, soft blanket – familiar and warming.  Newer tracks from Damian Jurado and Khruangbin weave seamlessly alongside ‘70s AM gold and Mark Orton’s pensive, folksy score. But the real standout of this soundtrack is a rediscovery of British folk artist Labi Siffre. His music has been shamefully overlooked in U.S. folk canon. Hopefully this movie can help start to rectify that.

Finally, it would be criminal if I didn’t mention the key placement of Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine” in the biggest hit of the year, Barbie. Here’s to another generation of young women finding themselves in Amy and Emily’s music. Thanks, Greta Gerwig. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs

Kristen Grainger & True North, “Extraordinary Grace”

Take the anvil from my chest…

I am gasping for breath at this opening line. In her extraordinary, intimate voice, Kristen Grainger is pleading, letting us know she has lost hope. And we are right there with her. Whether we believed salvation came from the church or the Voting Rights Act, we believe no more. We are a fractured world, and it seems there is no bringing us together. Kristen’s melodies pull you in as much as her words, and I sometimes wake with this haunting song emerging from my dreams. Her bandmates’ graceful harmonies and instrumental accompaniment support the stunning words. 

I once believed in extraordinary grace
I put my faith in saints and saviors
In the mirror, I can’t bear to see my heroine
Killing time until time returns the favor.

Still, there is cause for hope: the promise of more music from True North. – Claire Levine

Angélique Kidjo at New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, April 2023

“We can’t hear! We can’t hear!” Not what a performer wants to hear an audience chanting – though Angélique Kidjo didn’t hear it for a couple of songs at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April. She was giving it all, singing and dancing with vigor and verve, as she does. But the Benin-born star’s voice and all but the drums and percussion from her band were not reaching the crowd, that had already waited out a 45-minute rain delay. Finally, the stage crew got the message, but it still took some time to get things working. When they did, Kidjo betrayed no frustration – just pure, joyful release as she packed a full set’s worth of spirit into the handful of songs she could squeeze in the remaining time slot, including a few highlights from her re-infusion of Talking Heads’ Remain in Light album. Closing with her idol/mentor Mariam Makeba’s signature “Pata Pata,” she was radiant, as was everyone who stuck around to see and hear her. – Steve Hochman

The Lemon Twigs, Everything Harmony

This album is, without reservation or exaggeration, one of the most beautiful records I have heard in my entire life. Building on inspiration from ‘60s/’70s pop-rock (think the Byrds,Todd Rundgren, the Beach Boys, the Flamin’ Groovies), the Lemon Twigs achieve a layered delicacy of nostalgia and innovation. Their creative impulses are so detailed, articulate, and inspired that the entire album feels unfathomable; how could music reach such timelessness that it tickles at the preterhuman? Brothers Michael and Brian D’addario share the songwriting credits for pieces that feel distinctly matured from much of their earlier work. They’ve pared down the theatrics, tightened the sprawling lyrics, and created from a place that strikes a quintessential balance of self and influence. Their result is something oceanic – music that calls upon its ancestry in a way that is pervasive, striking, and sublimates the query of eternity. – Oriana Mack

Ronnie Milsap’s Final Nashville Concert, October 2023

Ronnie Milsap’s final Nashville concert will resonate with me for many years to come, both because of the multiple memorable performances and because it represented the best of country music from the standpoint of diversity and inclusion. Various performers from across the musical spectrum covered Milsap hits, with songs from every arena – honky-tonk and straight country tearjerkers, reworked doo-wop, R&B, and pop classics, love songs, and slice of life retrospectives. The roster of artists who displayed their love and affection for Milsap’s music crossed racial, gender, and sexual orientation lines, and it was also great to see the legend himself conclude the proceedings. While the Nashville audience and community will miss Milsap’s performances, this last outing provided plenty of wonderful moments and lots of great music that will never be forgotten. – Ron Wynn

New Dangerfield’s Debut at IBMA Bluegrass Live!, September 2023

For years a growing number of Black musicians have entered the trad scene and reclaimed Black traditions key to its development and evolution. Their work has run the gamut from preservation to experimentation. Audiences at this year’s IBMA Bluegrass Live! were introduced to a new Black string band that does it all: New Dangerfield. Made up of powerhouses Tray Wellington, Kaïa Kater, Jake Blount, and Nelson Williams, New Dangerfield has, in their own words, “risen to carry the torch.” In their premiere performance the band delivered an eclectic set of early jazz, early blues — and even a cover of R&B musician H.E.R’s “Hard Place,” led by Kater’s deliciously lush vocals. Each member, proficient instrumentalists in their own right, also showed off their technical chops and drew whoops from the crowd. Their set was something historic, and I’m excited to see what comes next from New Dangerfield. – Brandi Waller-Pace

Railbird Festival, June 2023

Set in the heart of Lexington, Kentucky, under a deep-red Strawberry Moon, the 2023 Railbird Festival was an under-the-radar masterstroke, highlighting the confluence of roots music and the mainstream. Held June 3 and 4 on the spacious lawn of The Infield at Red Mile, a sold-out crowd of 40,000+ enjoyed a non-stop lineup of performers from across the “Americana” pantheon, expertly curated and spread out over three stages. With 32 acts in total, country, rock, folk, bluegrass and more were all represented, as headliners Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan topped a bill including Charley Crockett, Whiskey Myers, Morgan Wade, Nickel Creek, Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – even Weezer and Sheryl Crow. Combine all that with a well-thought out fan experience and an off-the-beaten path vibe, and the weekend was an ideal kickoff to festival season. – Chris Parton

Sam Shackleton at the Horseshoe Tavern, October 2023

Country fandom has always been ideological, but in the last few years the genre’s politics have felt plainer – clear villains and clear heroes, but also messy interior politics. Through this time, I’ve mostly been listening to folk music far away from the fighting at home, from musicians like Sam Shackleton, a genius singer and banjo player from Scotland. He was supporting the Mary Wallopers, the radical Irish party band, in Toronto in October. Shackleton was great, working the audience, singing his songs, and classic folk tracks. The crowd was restless, the beer he was offered on stage seemed pro forma, but he tried. There was a version of “All You Fascists (Are Bound To Lose)” that gave me hope for a few minutes. We step out for a smoke, and Shackelton is on the patio, nursing a lager. I tell him I loved the show and that I wanted vinyl. He hugs me and thanks me. Walking back in, the room is filled with Irish expats who are singing along to the Wallopers in ways that feel a little hostile. I leave early, going for Chinese food. These couple of hours were country/folk in 2023 for me – inclusive, exclusive, hand shakes, hugs, and isolation – plus enough physical/emotional distance from the world that I didn’t ask exactly how the fascists would lose. – Steacy Easton

Sleeping in the Woods Festival, May 2023

At a time when money in the music industry is at an all time low, and expenses are at an all time high, I have immense gratitude for anyone starting new community projects to showcase and uplift musicians and songwriters. I was lucky enough to get to be a part of Nicholas Jamerson’s Sleeping in the Woods Festival in Cumberland, Kentucky in May of 2023, and this event makes my best-of list. The festival bills itself as songwriter specific and showcases many lesser known Kentucky songwriters and bands. The strategy is to create a listening environment and bring together a Southern audience hungry for more straight-shooting roots music and hard hitting lyrics after becoming fans of Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, and of course, Jamerson himself. After a successful first year, the festival is poised to grow exponentially and become a beloved annual event for all of those involved. – Rachel Baiman

Billy Strings at Bourbon and Beyond, September 2023

After five years of programming the BGS stage at Bourbon & Beyond, the Louisville-based festival has become something of a homecoming for our whole team. But nothing was more special than this year, when we got to see Billy Strings headline the main stage in front of over 50,000 people. It seems like just yesterday (in reality it was more like 2018) that Billy played our own stage inside the Bourbon Tent, a memory made all the sweeter by his surprise appearance this year on our stage during Michael Cleveland’s set. Hopefully it’s one of many happy returns to B&B for Billy, his fans, and BGS for years to come. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs

Sunny War, Anarchist Gospel

Nobody sounds like Sunny War. As her profile has risen over the past decade, Sunny has held onto her punk rock politics and direct lyricism, grounding her artistry in the blues. Listening to one of her songs is like looking at a diorama of a nearby planet, similar to our own, but with none of human society’s bullshit. 2023’s Anarchist Gospel features Americana heavyweights David Rawlings, Jim James, Allison Russell, and Chris Pierce, but always sounds exactly like Sunny. Her hypnotic guitar work and precise songcraft shine. Her vocals walk a fine line between eerie and inviting. And at the end of a year when riot grrl aesthetics have gone mainstream, Sunny War is a rare reminder of what the real thing sounds like.  – Lizzie No

Photo Credit: Angélique Kidjo by Fabrice Mabillot; Billy Strings by Christopher Morley; boygenius by Matt Grubb.

 

Bluegrass Memoirs: Visiting Rusty York (Part 2)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s note: All inset photos by Carl Fleischhauer.)

In my previous memoir I described what I knew of Rusty York when Carl Fleischhauer and I arrived at his Jewel Recording Studios in Mt. Healthy, Ohio, on the afternoon of August 15, 1972.

We had walked into the midst of a recording session. In the studio was the Reverend Bobby Grove (née Musgrove), his wife Fayette, oldest son Bobby Junior (a drummer), some other friends, and five studio musicians – Eddie Drake, lead guitar; Junior Boyer, pedal steel; Bob Sanderson, bass; Jack Sanderson, rhythm guitar; and Denzil “Denny” Rice, piano.

L: Rusty York in the studio control room recording overdubs by Bobby Grove, seated. R: Bobby Grove during a recording session. At the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

Later I wrote in my notes:

Grove has made 35 LPs. Has a “club” – he mails out each record to a list of 10,000, with a request for a minimum contribution of $4.00.

Originally from Kentucky, the Groves now lived in Hamilton, Ohio, where Bobby had opened his own church about four years earlier. I noted:

Rusty makes up soundtracks for him from the LP masters which are minus the voice tracks – he uses these in personal appearances.

Bobby’s wife Fayette described this process to me. “Really cuts down on the expenses. He just takes the soundtrack along. It’s really marvelous,” she said.

The studio was probably about a fifty-foot square, with the master panel occupying a quarter, the studio space an “L” around it… In the recording room, where I set up my cassette (it looked ludicrous!), was an 8 track, a 16 track and a 2 track. The recording was being done on 8 tracks.

Recording session at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972. At left, Bob Sanderson, bass guitar; right, singer Bobby Grove.
Recording session at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972. Performers shown here include Fayette Grove, Eddie Drake, Bobby Grove, Junior Boyer, and Bob Sanderson.

I ran the cassette intermittently trying to get snatches of conversation and brief interviews between phone calls, takes and visitors which never seemed to ruffle Rusty’s feathers. Obviously, he is a person of tremendous energy and talent, starting with his musical abilities (from rock to ‘grass) going to his present recording activities.

During this session Bobby had his bible tucked under his arm during every “take.”

After recording several songs, he asked Rusty: “Would it be all right, these next three songs, if I just sang the words — the country words — and then come in and do ‘em, like that? Then I’ll write ‘em. That way I’ll do something that we know real quick and we’ll just go through it and I’ll go home and write ‘em. And when I come in and mix it down just dub it in real quick?”

Rusty said, “Yeah that’s fine.”

During a break at a recording session at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972. Rusty York, recording engineer; Bob Sanderson; Jack Sanderson. In the background, Eddie Drake.
Tape box from the recording session for singer Bobby Grove at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

In the five years since I had seen him, York had expanded…to two studios (the other, bigger, in Hamilton) with loads of sophisticated equipment.

Rusty: “I bought a professional recorder in ’61, just in my garage. In fact, you know, you were out there.”

“So, you got into it kind of gradually,” I respond.

He nodded: “I didn’t just go and buy a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment like a guy I knew here in town. He’s hurting; but I’m booked, you know, all the time.”

“Since you do this all the time,” I said, “you probably get rates from the pressing people, and so on?”

“I’m their biggest customer, yeah.”

What drew him into recording, I wondered.

He explained: “It just happened. It was really nice to make fifty extra dollars on Sunday, you know, by doing our own album, you know. Or some kind of session. Still, I still play music, I thought that’s what I want to do, you know. It got to be a, where I could make so much more money and not be the big hassle, like getting stoned every night that you played, chicks all over your body.” [Laughter]

Rusty York at the mixing board at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

Rusty appeared to be paying only scant attention to the recording session but every once in a while, would pinpoint out-of-tune instruments (…he can isolate mikes from the fairly well-baffled studio and hear exactly who’s doing what), suggest drum riffs, etc.

Rusty explained to us that his connections with Bobby Grove reached back to his earliest days in Kentucky:

“Yeah, we’ve all worked together at one time or another. Willard and I worked at Bobby’s father’s, he had a little barn dance and that, the Stanley Brothers –”

Grove’s son interjected: “Grandpa!”

Rusty said, “Huh?”

“You met my grandpa.”

“Yeah, probably before you was born.”

I asked: “What was his name?” “Jason Musgrove,” Rusty said.

Grove’s son recalled the venue well: “Did you know in that barn he had a sign, said no alcoholic beverages allowed in this area? He stayed drunk there all the time.”

“No!” Rusty replied in a mock serious whisper.

“That’s right”

“Well, we had a bottle or two out in the front of our car all the time.”

Grove: “I can picture him wrestling a bear.”

Rusty: “We saw a bear-wrestling match in there.”

Grove: “Was you there when that happened?”

Rusty: “Yeah. Were you around?”

Grove: “No, that was when I was born. ‘56” [Laughter]

Bobby Grove recording session at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972. Left to right: Eddie Drake, rhythm guitar; Junior Boyer, pedal steel guitar; Bob Sanderson, bass guitar; Bobby Grove, vocal.
Guitarist Jack Sanderson and singer Bobby Grove at a recording session at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

Rusty explained: “His grandpa ran a, what did he call it? Green Valley Barn Dance. And right now, that place is worth millions of dollars, and he lost it cause he couldn’t make the payments or something. Forty-two dollars a month payment.”

Grove: “Kent Valley Lake”

“Now it’s, you know, you could probably get twenty, thirty million dollars for the place. Got a big lake –”

“I started playing, I guess, when I first come to Cincinnati, about ’52. I just picked up an old guitar. My father bought me an old five-dollar guitar.”

“I went to see Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs first time up in Jackson theater in about ’53, I guess. And I just couldn’t believe man, anybody could play a banjo like that, I just… Boy! I stayed for both shows that night… I mean it was just like heaven then, ‘cause nobody, you couldn’t never see it. There’s so much of it now, you know. Everybody can play good now, you know. But then, it was only him. I had a tenor banjo, I put fifth key on it. It was a Mastertone too, Gibson. Four-string.”

Folklorist Neil V. Rosenberg and recording engineer Rusty York at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

The only five-string banjo style he’d known before Scruggs was that of his Grandma. He recalled that she’d made the head of her banjo from a groundhog skin.

“Willard Hale was from Somerset. Where I met Willard, I stopped into a little bar out in Cincinnati, and they had music. They set up a little amplifier and the mandolin with the guitar. Willard and this other fellow were singing duets and one guy played the mandolin. I set in with my banjo and then this one guy left and I – every weekend, I’d go out and play with them. Like Friday, Saturday night. Boy, free beer! I couldn’t believe it, you know, getting free beer and a, I found out later that this guy was getting paid for me all the time I wasn’t getting any bread.”

“Willard and I used to just stand on the stage, two of us, and play banjo and guitar and sing duets. Then Elvis came along and they started saying, ‘Hey you know “Hound Dog”’ and you know, man, ‘You from the country, you shouldn’t be asking for a song like that.’ And even country boys started liking Elvis, you know. And we had to switch over to electric guitar and a guitar and then switch over to bass, and we finally had to add drums, then turned into modern country. Although we were the highest paid ones in Cincinnati for a long time, just Willard and I. …Our salary was on ten-fifteen bucks apiece a night, but the kitty would be the kind of money, might be fifty bucks a night. And that was a lot then.”

“The highlight of our whole night was when we got the banjo and upright bass and Martin guitar out. And boy people really dug it, but we didn’t give ‘em too much of it, cause they still like to dance. [Otherwise] I played electric guitar and the other boy played bass. And we might play, sometimes an hour of bluegrass. Really it was a treat, you know, a change for the people.”

“I played banjo – ‘Down The Road’ and things like that. And every, the whole place would swarm the floor, you know. They’d do this soft-shoe backstep buck and wing hoedown. That’s what I call it. It’s almost like square dancing without any organization. Everybody just doing their own thing. But it, it’s that clog, what I call – the soft-shoe backstep buck and wing hoedown.”

I was curious about “Sugaree,” that jukebox single I’d bought in Oberlin back in 1960. Rusty explained:

“I was doing, you know, some bluegrass stuff and this guy came to me, said — that’s when the Chipmunks were popular [1959] — he said let’s go and record this ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain’ we’ll go ‘She’ll be dum da da, Do diol lu’ (etc. — imitates twangy guitar doing first line of that song) and the Chipmunks go ‘Cha Cha Cha’ (high pitch).”

“On the way out there [to the studio] he says, what are we gonna do on the other side? I says, I don’t know. He said, well do ‘Sugaree’ or ‘Long Tall Sally’ or something, I said I don’t even know that. That was just decided on the way out to the studios. It was a bad record – shoo! I, I can’t stand to hear it.”

Rusty York at the mixing board at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

“We recorded it at King records studio. Paid for the session ourself. Forty bucks it cost. We tried to peddle it to everybody – RCA and Mercury – and nobody wanted it. So, we put it out ourselves on my [own label], started Jewel. It got to be number two in Cincinnati, and they said something must be happening, you know we pressed the thousand, sold them, pressed a few more and this guy, Pat Nelson negotiated with Chess Records and we leased it to them.”

“I did another record and they never released it. I died, as far as — I did the Hollywood Bowl, and American Bandstand with Dick Clark.”

I was also curious about those “Bluegrass Special” EPs he’d done in the early ’60s. Did he still have copies?

“Ah, I’ve got ‘em on tape, but I don’t have the actual records. You know, those sold a lot of records. Like 200,000… Used to hear Jimmie Skinner and I on that fifteen-minute thing [Wayne Raney show on WCKY], selling the package.”

Rusty told me about the next chapter in his story, which was new to me at the time:

“I went with Bobby Bare; you know I was front man for his show. Played Reno, Las Vegas and just about every state in the Union and I went to Europe, about ten countries. … in ’64 and ‘5. It don’t seem that long ago.” …

I replied, “It doesn’t to me either.” I asked, “You’re not playing any, now, then, are you?”

“No, I started back playing about two months ago in one of the biggest nightclubs here. I just couldn’t take it, ‘cause I’d have to get early do a session and I make 90 buck an hour here, over there I might make – I was playing for the door. Sometimes we would make six hundred bucks a night for the band and sometimes a hundred, split five ways. So–”

“I enjoy just sitting around and playing, but I don’t know, as far as getting before a crowd and doing a thing, I’m not crazy about it. It’s really work, to me. … Most people, I’ve found, have an ego problem. I don’t know if it’s ego or insecurity, but they want to get up before a crowd and sing and–”

“Work it out, up there?” I interjected.

“Yeah. Most, most people that are in the business are very insecure and [play to/depend on] the crowd a lot. Bobby Bare was … he was a nice guy but he was kind of a, well was insecure. He’d like to sleep maybe eighteen hours a day, escape from reality.”

I was struck by York’s insightful comment about musicians having an ego problem. In later years I’ve characterized it in this way: the musician, selling himself or herself, is both product and salesperson. It’s a vision that has stuck with me, like “Don’t Do It.”

Since my research was focused on bluegrass, I was eager to hear what Rusty had to say about it. He began by talking about recording bluegrass.

“Here I don’t do a lot of bluegrass now. Most of them don’t have the money to afford to record. … I try to give ‘em a real good break. Something that’s gonna be around for a long time, I mean a bluegrass record is gonna be around forever, because there always will be somebody that likes bluegrass. I charge them a flat rate you know – sixteen hundred bucks or so for a thousand albums. In other words, they could not afford to pay studio time and do an album and pay for the tape and the mix so I just give them a flat break, price.”

I suggested, “You must know most of the good bluegrass musicians in this area.”

“Yeah, I do. They all want to record with me because they, I understand it a little bit better than some engineers.”

He told me that it’s the most difficult stuff to record, explaining:

“Well, most of ‘em play and sing at the same time. You got a mic for the banjo over here and voice up here — you got two mics, you’re gonna have phase cancellation between them. A mandolin player, you’re gonna have to do the same thing. The bass leaks into the voice mics, cause he’s got to sing too, and it’s really difficult. … And they want to get, this space is big and they all like to get right together.” Pointing to the spread-out, country sidemen working with Grove in the studio, he said: “See how far apart these guys are now? And they won’t overdub. It’s a real challenge, I’ll say that. To get a real group in here, that’s really got good harmonies, you know that’s really nice. I’d almost do it for nothing.”

I asked, “Do the country DJs around here play much bluegrass?” “The Osborne Brothers,” he said, adding “Paul Mullins plays a lot of bluegrass. He’s very well liked and a lot of people listen to him. He’s got little witty – you’ve heard him – little witty sayings and he’s about that… Yeah, I’ve got an album by him coming out by him. It should be out any day now, that he cut here.”

Rusty York at the mixing board at the Jewel Recording Studios in the Mt. Healthy suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, August 15, 1972.

I closed my notes for that day summarizing the work at Jewel:

Rusty’s operation involves packages – he sells 1,000 finished LPs for $1600 (more or less, depending on studio time, number of tracks – the latter a function of tape since 16 tracks takes 2” tape, etc.) and he sees to recording, mixing, pressing, printing, art, etc. The musician who is buying the package pays for the sidemen though Rusty often (as in Grove’s case) sets up the session sidemen too. He assigns master numbers, keeps records of his operation, etc.

In Bartenstein and Ellison’s book, Industrial Strength Bluegrass (Illinois, 2021), Mac McDivitt devotes a section to Jewel, saying that by 2008, when Rusty retired, “Jewel had cemented a reputation as the ‘go to’ place to record in the Cincinnati area” (53-55). Selling the business, York moved to Florida. He died in 2014. Bear Family has released two CDs of Rusty’s rockabilly recordings.

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg. All other photos by Carl Fleischhauer.

Edited by Justin Hiltner.

Willie Nelson’s ‘Bluegrass’ Underlines His Lifelong Relationship with the Genre

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“He was exceedingly cool and easy,” long-time Bill Monroe bassist Mark Hembree remembers about Willie Nelson’s presence at a 1983 recording session where Nelson sang and played with Monroe. “I never had a say in Bill’s mixes, but they had Willie’s guitar way up and as we listened to playback he mentioned it, then turned and asked what I thought,” Hembree wrote in a recent exchange of messages. “I agreed, a little surprised he would ask me.”

People who hear about Willie Nelson’s latest album, Bluegrass, before hearing the music might ask, “Wait, what? What does Willie Nelson have to do with bluegrass music?”

Upon listening, at least two answers come to mind: 1) Much more than you might think. 2) Don’t worry so much.

With tunes by Nelson, one of the best American songwriters, played by notable pickers, the record contains strong music that should sound welcome to fans of Nelson, of bluegrass, and of the field with the loose label, “Americana.”

It’s a given that in more than 60 years of major-label recording, Nelson, 90, has been better known for presenting his own songs, enduring tunes such as “Crazy,” “Hello Walls,” and “On the Road Again,” the last of which is heard here in a new version. But he’s also made his name with notable covers – like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Seven Spanish Angels,” “Blue Skies,” and others – in a welter of styles, including blues, pop standards, and even reggae. Nelson’s core music enfolds ‘40s and ‘50s country, traditional fiddle tunes, four-square gospel, ragtime, some swing flavorings, and definitely a heap of blues. The mix also includes more contemporary pop. Subtract some of that last bit of material, throw in some lonesome mountain banjo and ballads, and you’ll find, in different proportions, foundational bluegrass as designed by chief architects like Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.

Legacy Records, the Sony division putting out Nelson’s Bluegrass disc, says the style “was given a name by Kentucky songwriter/performer/recording artist Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, whose post-war recordings profoundly influenced Willie’s songwriting sensibilities and the direction of American country music in general.” They go on to say, “Willie chose songs combining the kind of strong melodies, memorable storylines and tight ensemble-interplay found in traditional bluegrass interpretations of the roots (from European melodies to African rhythms) of American folk songs.”

And it’s pretty much on target. But what else speaks to Nelson’s involvement with bluegrass?

Let’s return to the early ‘70s, when he famously abandoned a Nashville scene where he had achieved songwriting fame and a recording career. But Music Row had flagged in creativity and opportunity, he and others thought. And yes, at the end of 1969, his house had burned down. By 1972, Nelson’s persona was changing as his new approach revisited his Texas roots. The year saw new-breed stars like Kris Kristofferson showing up at the first Dripping Springs Reunion, a Texas country music festival. The show, which was to morph int0 a string of outdoor throwdowns known as Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic, presented a bluegrass contingent led by Monroe, with foundational figures Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt leading their post-breakup bands, as
well as additional notables including Jimmy Martin.

Jo Walker, executive director of the Country Music Association, told the Austin-American Statesman that the trade group was delighted to hear about the Dripping Springs Reunion. “So many of the rock festivals and similar events have reflected so unfavorably on the music industry that we are particularly happy that your reunion will be a Country Music show.” But with Nelson embracing a new, youth-driven fan base and a long-haired, bandana-ed look, what did country music even mean?

There was a growing correlation, it seemed, between the increased popularity of bluegrass and the emergent outlaw (read: long hair, free-thinking, whiskey-drinking, dope smoking, etc.) movement in country music, led by Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Its bluegrass surge was sparked in part by the Earl Scruggs Revue’s broad acceptance in non-traditional venues like college campuses and hot sales for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Back in Nashville, in 1973, wider acceptance of bluegrass also meant that Monroe, his former Blue Grass Boy Flatt, the brilliant wildman Jimmy Martin, and the great brother team of Jim & Jesse McReynolds would join Nelson amid the crowd of stars at CMA’s second annual Fan Fair celebration.

In 1974, both Scruggs and Monroe, as well as Grand Ole Opry stars Ernest Tubb, Jeanne Pruitt, and Roy Acuff appeared on stage singing with another wildman, country-blues rocker Leon Russell. That’s documented in a photograph of this period, likely from a Willie’s Picnic. Quite a lineup.

A version of the picture found on the web says the shot is from A Poem is a Naked Person, a documentary on Russell by esteemed filmmaker Les Blank shot between 1972 and 1974, but not released until 2015. Nelson appears in the movie to sing “Good Hearted Woman” – also on this new album – playing guitar bass runs that would work fine in bluegrass. He also backs up fiddler Mary Egan, of the Austin “progressive-country” band Greezy Wheels, on an energetic version of the bluegrass-country perennial “Orange Blossom Special.”

In 1974, Nelson went to work in the soul-music capital of Muscle Shoal, Alabama, to record a milestone disc on his road to making records his own way. The album, Phases and Stages, which won over both fans and critics, contains prominent five-string played Scruggs-style on the hit “Bloody Mary Morning,” which also returns on Bluegrass.

The 1983 Bill Monroe session referenced above came after a last minute February 22 phone call from Nelson to let Monroe know he was available to appear on the in-progress Bill Monroe and Friends album for MCA Records. That’s according to a passage in the indispensable book, The Music of Bill Monroe, by bluegrass scholars Neil Rosenberg and Charles Wolfe.

“[Engineer, Vic) Gabany recalls that on February, 22, 1983, Monroe called the studio and asked if it was free that afternoon,” Rosenberg and Wolfe write. “Willie Nelson was in town, and he wanted to rush in and cut the duet with him. Fortunately, it was. Moreover, the Blue Grass Boys were all available, and Haynes was able to round up studio musicians Charlie Collins and Buddy Spicher.”

Monroe’s original tune with Nelson, “The Sunset Trail,” shows the impact of another style, cowboy music, that both men favored. Nelson reaches into his upper range to sing below Monroe, who’s going way up there, as was his wont. “It’s a thrill of my life to be here with you,” Monroe says as he and Nelson exchange praise in the track’s introduction.

In 1990, Monroe accepted Nelson’s invitation to perform at the April 7 Farm Aid IV concert in Indianapolis. “We’re glad to be here with Willie Nelson!” he said to kick off a set marked by powerful singing, crisp mandolin picking, and a little crowd-pleasing buck dancing. The show placed Monroe, 79, in a lineup that included stars such as Elton John and Lou Reid. The Indianapolis Star estimated the crowd at 45,000.

During Monroe’s last years — he died in 1996 — he often spoke to Nelson on the phone, according to a person who didn’t want to be identified, but often spent time at Monroe’s home on the farm outside Nashville during that period. “He valued their friendship immensely,” the person said.

Bluegrass‘s 12 songs contain several Nelson compositions that became standards of his repertoire, along with less familiar tunes that also fit in the recording approach overseen by Music Row’s Buddy Cannon. A songwriter and producer, Cannon is known for delivering big songs, like “Set ‘Em Up Joe” for Vern Gosdin, and chart hits for more recent mainstream acts such as Kenny Chesney, John Michael Montgomery, and Reba McEntire. A frequent Nelson collaborator, Cannon assembled a list of Nashville co-conspirators: Union Station members Barry Bales, on bass, and Ron Block, on banjo; former Union Station member and current rising star Dan Tyminski on mandolin; fiddler Aubrey Haynie; Dobro man Rob Ickes; Seth Taylor also on mandolin; as well as harmonica player Mickey Raphael, who’s worked for decades in Nelson’s band.

The music mostly doesn’t come off as hard-core bluegrass in the mode of, say, the Stanley Brothers. But it leans on the elements that Nelson has in common with the style — lonesome melodies, classic country, swing and blues.

The mournful “You Left Me a Long, Long Time Ago,” from 1964, reflects the straight-country songwriting to which Nelson and others brought a terse, modern beauty in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. It was a time when bluegrass enjoyed a closer co-existence with mainstream country, as opposed to straining against the tight format borders that limit today’s music business. Among the many artists who crossed back and forth freely were guitarist-songwriter, Carl Butler, fiddler Tommy Jackson, and Cajun star Doug Kershaw. They all worked with Monroe.

A new version of “Sad Songs and Waltzes” mourns in tones not too different from Monroe favorites ranging from “Kentucky Waltz” to “Sitting Alone in the Moonlight.” The song also recalls the 3/4 time Lone Star tunes that Nelson might have heard at the Texas Fiddlers Contest and Reunion.

That show got going in 1934 in Athens, Texas, just one year before Nelson arrived on the scene in Abbott, less than 90 miles away.

The fiddle contests that influenced so much of Texas music beginning in the 19th century, had parallels in the 18th century Southeast, where contests featured both the fiddle and the banjo, with its African roots. This music went around, and it still comes around.

The sock-rhythm backing of “Ain’t No Love Around” recalls early Blue Grass Boys recordings such as “Heavy Traffic Ahead,” recorded September 16, 1946, and featuring Earl Scruggs’ first recorded banjo solo. Elsewhere, the laidback favorite, “On the Road Again,” gets a more intense reading from Nelson, with some vocal and instrumental improvisation to spice it up. The mystical “Still is Still Moving to Me” leaves plenty of room for pickers to range far and wide on banjo, mandolin, fiddle and Dobro.

“You give the appearance of one widely traveled,” Nelson sings in “Yesterday’s Wine.” He’s singing from a faraway spot in time, in myth, in history. It’s a stance that’s earned a place on bluegrass playlists for more recent songwriters such as Guy Clark, David Olney, and Gillian Welch.

“Bloody Mary Morning,” from Phases and Stages gets the most recent of several revivals from Nelson, who led a jam-grassy version in the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose and later sang it in a duet with Wynonna Judd. The song’s forthright tale of fighting the blues by having a highball on a plane seems somehow classier than the constant tales of beer and pickups that populate country radio.

In the end it seems clear that for decades, both Willie Nelson and bluegrass music have served, in different ways, as a conscience of country music. Just as the Solemn Old Judge, WSM radio announcer George D. Hay, commanded, they “Keep her close to the ground, boys,” although their paths have diverged, at times.

In any case, this new collection brings Nelson together with bluegrass pickers for music that might even work to serve that same worthy purpose.

Photo Credit: Pamela Springsteen

PHOTOS: Earl Scruggs Music Festival Shows Broad Influence of Earl Scruggs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The 2nd Annual Earl Scruggs Music Festival was held over Labor Day weekend at the Tryon International Equestrian Center just outside of Tryon, North Carolina, in Mill Spring. The gorgeous festival grounds, nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, were the perfect setting for the sunny and warm event, featuring glamorous cabins, manicured campsites, brick-and-mortar restaurants and shops, horse-jumping demonstrations, workshops and two stages chocked full of bluegrass, old-time and roots music. The festival is a partnership between Tryon International, roots radio station WNCW and the Earl Scruggs Center just down the road in Shelby, North Carolina, the county seat of Cleveland County – Scruggs’ ancestral home. Over four days, the event showcased the broad, varied and lasting influence Scruggs and his playing have had on American roots music as a whole, especially in North Carolina.

BGS returned to ESMF for its second year, once again sponsoring the very special, fan favorite Earl Scruggs Revue tribute set, hosted by Tony Trischka – and his band, Michael Daves and Jared Engel. Listeners and fans packed the plaza surrounding the Foggy Mountain gazebo stage to hear Trischka and many special guests – such as Della Mae, Michael Cleveland, I Draw Slow, Twisted Pine, Tray Wellington, Greensky Bluegrass, Jerry Douglas and more – pay tribute to Earl’s and his son’s groundbreaking and innovative group, the Earl Scruggs Revue, and their Live! From Austin City Limits album.

Enjoy a collection of photos from the Earl Scruggs Music Festival below and make plans to attend the 3rd Annual edition of this first-class event in 2024 – the dates are set and tickets are already on sale for the August 30 to September 1, 2024 edition of ESMF!

Photos courtesy of Earl Scruggs Music Festival.
Lead image credit: Devon Fails
All other photos: Reagan Ibach, Eli Johnson, Rette Solomon, and Cora Wagoner. 

Preview: What to See & Hear at This Weekend’s Earl Scruggs Music Festival

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The BGS Team is excited to return to Western North Carolina for the second year of the Earl Scruggs Music Festival at the Tryon International Equestrian Center in Mill Spring. Held September 1, 2, and 3, the event will be hosted by Jerry Douglas and will include headline sets by the Infamous Stringdusters (Friday), Greensky Bluegrass (Saturday), and Emmylou Harris (Sunday) plus, on Saturday at 3:30 p.m., don’t miss the Earl Scruggs Revue Album Tribute hosted by Tony Trischka and sponsored by BGS. The showcase will spotlight an album by Earl Scruggs’ iconic late-’60s to ’80s group featuring his sons, the Earl Scruggs Revue, and will include appearances and performances by many special guests pulled from the festival’s expansive bluegrass and roots lineup.

In preparation for the festival this weekend and our trek to beautiful Western NC, check out a few of our preview picks for each day of the event:

Thursday, August 31, 2023

It’s the day before the real fun begins at the Tryon International Equestrian Center, but you’ve already pulled into town and you’re rearin’ and ready to go – what to do? Travel down the road about 30 minutes and visit Shelby, North Carolina, Earl Scruggs’ hometown, and the incredible Earl Scruggs Center. It’s open every day of the festival until 4 p.m., but hours vary some so check before you visit.

Not only does the Center co-present the festival, but it’s housed in the former Cleveland County Courthouse in the center of the Shelby town square. It’s an adorable small town with an outsized impact on American roots music – Don Gibson is from Shelby, as well; Nina Simone is from Tryon, just down the road. (Visit her homeplace on your way back to Mill Spring.) We focused on Shelby for an episode of our podcast made with Come Hear NC titled Carolina Calling. Listen to our Shelby episode while you drive!

Ready to head to the Equestrian Center to check out the festival footprint and do some reconnaissance? You’re in luck! The official festival events don’t commence until Friday, but on Thursday there will be a FREE concert on-site and restaurants and vendors will be open from 6 to 9 p.m.

Friday, September 1, 2023

The day is finally here! Gates open at 8 a.m. and the fun begins at 10 a.m. with restaurants, vendors, experiences, workshops, performances, and so much more.

Don’t miss “Secrets of Scruggs-Style” on the Legends Workshop Stage at 11 a.m. featuring Tony Trischka, Charlie Cushman and Pete Wernick – arguably three of the best living scholars and emulators of Scruggs – a perfect way to kick off his namesake festival. At 3 p.m. on the main stage, affectionately dubbed “Flint Hill Stage,” J.T. Scruggs and Jerry Douglas will do an official festival welcome leading directly into a Banjo Kickoff by Gena Britt, Charlie Cushman, Rob McCoury, Pete Wernick, Tony Trischka and Ben Wright.

We’ll also be making a point to catch Foggy Mountain Stage sets by Jake Blount (5:30 to 6:30 p.m.) and Shawn Camp (8:30 to 9:30 p.m.) plus Flint Hill Stage appearances by Sister Sadie (4 to 5 p.m.), Del McCoury Band (7:30 to 9 p.m.), and the Stringdusters closing out the night at 9:30 p.m.

Don’t go back to your campsite or your hotel yet, though! Foggy Late Night begins at 10:30 p.m. with Armchair Boogie.

Saturday, September 2, 2023

If your schedule is too-tight and you can only make one day of ESMF 2023, Saturday is the day not-to-miss. It’s wall-to-wall, superlative programming across all of the stages at the event.

On the Legends Workshop Stage we’re eyeing “High Lonesome Songs: Then & Now” at 11:30 a.m., a songwriting workshop featuring Louisa Branscomb, Celia Woodsmith and Jon Weisberger. But you may have to split your time between Legends Workshop and Flint Hill, because Tony Trischka’s tribute to Earl Scruggs – EarlJam! EarlJam! – begins on the main stage at 12 p.m. Stick around, because banjo phenom and innovator Tray Wellington brings his tight and tidy band to the main stage directly after EarlJam. Wellington’s languid drawl is only one of many traits of Scruggs’ he carries on with his innovative sound and truly traditional right hand approach.

We’re super excited to see our friends Della Mae (Flint Hill Stage, 8 p.m.) and Twisted Pine (Foggy Mountain Stage, 8:45 p.m.), but the highlight of day two for us will certainly be the Earl Scruggs Revue Album Tribute show on the Foggy Mountain Stage at 3:30 p.m. It will feature a star-studded lineup hosted by Trischka and his band and featuring songs from a classic Earl Scruggs Revue performance. (Hint above.) Our own managing editor Justin Hiltner will be emceeing and updating y’all on the event on our socials, so be sure to follow along.

At Foggy Late Night we’ll be dancing along to Della Mae past midnight! See you there?

Sunday, September 3, 2023

When Sunday morning rolls around, we, too, will be wondering where the weekend went so fast. But don’t worry, there’s still a full day of music and fun before the post-festival depression starts to creep back in.

Sunday begins, appropriately, with Gospel Brunch hosted by Darin & Brooke Aldridge and immediately following, singer-songwriter and host of Apple Music’s Color Me Country, Rissi Palmer will “take us to church” on the Flint Hill Stage, too. If you’ve never had the chance to experience Palmer’s heartfelt, modern, and soulful country stylings you won’t want to miss her set. For an infusion of a faith tradition less prominent in roots music, check out Zoe & Cloyd on the Foggy Mountain Stage at 4:30 p.m. Their latest album, Songs of Our Grandfathers, combines bluegrass, fiddle music, old-time and Jewish folk and klezmer.

On the Legends Workshop Stage at 1 p.m., get up close and personal with festival host and the worlds premier resophonic guitarist Jerry Douglas before his main stage set with his band at 3:45 p.m.

Then, to close out your weekend full of amazing music, excellent hangs, and so much fun, settle in for Emmylou Harris’s headline set on the Flint Hill Stage at 5:30 p.m. As her final notes fade into the Western North Carolina air, cheer up – you don’t have to go home yet! Reedy River String Band will give us one last hoorah for their Foggy Mountain Stage performance from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

As you drive back home after the second annual Earl Scruggs Music Festival we hope, like ourselves, you’ll be making plans to return next year (perhaps as you listen to Carolina Calling).

Find more information on Earl Scruggs Music Festival and purchase tickets here.

Graphic courtesy of Earl Scruggs Music Festival.
Photo Credit: Eli Johnson

Listen to an Exclusive Excerpt From Steve Martin’s Pushkin Audiobook

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s hard to ascribe a single title to Steve Martin. Throughout his nearly 50-year career in entertainment, Martin has been a stand-up comedian, leading man, art collector, TV star, bestselling author, and writer of a Tony-nominated Broadway musical. And then, of course, there’s his love affair with the banjo. Since childhood, Martin has been deeply connected to the instrument, and over the years he’s performed with everyone from Earl Scruggs to the Steep Canyon Rangers to Kermit the Frog.

Adding to that multi-hyphenate lineup, Martin has now released a new audio-only autobiography detailing his lengthy career with friend and co-author Adam Gopnik (longtime contributor to the New Yorker). So Many Steves: Afternoons With Steve Martin, New Yorker contains a year’s worth of conversations between Martin and Gopnik and was published in May of this year by Pushkin, a podcast and audio production company.

In ten chapters, the two men dive into a wide set of life experiences with the kind of vulnerability and humor reserved for old friends, with chapters ranging from Martin’s teenage years working in Merlin’s Magic Shop at Disneyland to selling out arenas on his stand-up tours. But perhaps most exciting to bluegrass fans will, of course, be the chapter in which Martin details playing “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.” In the early 2000s, Scruggs himself asked Martin to perform on a 75th anniversary album. When Martin showed up at the studio of his idol, however, he was at a loss. “It was so fast,” Martin proclaims, “I couldn’t believe it.”  Practicing for the record kickstarted the second chapter of his musical life, at a time when he’d almost completely walked away from the instrument. 

As a special exclusive, BGS readers can stream the an audio excerpt from So Many Steves (below) for a limited time. The full audiobook is available to download via Pushkin or stream on Audible, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Discover more here.

Lonnie Lee Hood and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs contributed to this writing.

Bluegrass & Roots Songs to Strike To

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Hot. Strike. Summer!!

It was just announced that hundreds of thousands of Teamsters driving for shipping and logistics company UPS will avert a strike after their negotiations came through, but even so, dozens of strike authorization votes are happening all across the U.S. as workers the world over watch WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, Amazon and Starbucks unionization drives, and smaller pickets like that at dinner theater Medieval Times. Union membership and public opinions toward unions are at highs not seen since the ’60s, and millennial and Gen-Z workers are joining unions, striking, and picketing at astronomical rates.

It’s important to remember that, although bluegrass in its modern iteration can often feel staunchly conservative, militantly patriotic, and delusionally nostalgic for “old-fashioned values,” it’s a genre that was born from the creativity of working class and impoverished Southerners, Appalachians, and immigrants – and it has always had a pro-worker, leftward bent. Singers, pickers, songwriters, and performers like Hazel Dickens, Ola Belle Reed, the Country Gentlemen, the Johnson Mountain Boys, Mac Wiseman, Earl Scruggs, and so many more were ardent supporters of the working class and hostile towards corporations, mines, and management. There are truly countless, never ending pro-worker, pro-labor songs to choose from in the bluegrass, old-time, and roots-music canon.

Bluegrass and old-time music, though entangled in a dense constellation of roots music and occupying space adjacent to folk music and the folk revival, were anti-corporate greed since before they had names, before Pete Seeger, before the folk revival itself. That legacy is important to place at the very center of bluegrass, a genre of music that was born out of industrialization (see also: Industrial Strength Bluegrass) as mountain folk, Appalachians, and Southerners migrated out of their rural homeplaces to urban industrial centers. Bluegrass was born from radio stations, railroads, from company towns and workers’ barracks. Whether rubber or auto plants in Ohio and Michigan, factories in Chicago, cotton mills and tobacco warehouses in North Carolina, or anywhere else in the region, as poor folks bled out of their ancestral homes to find work and upward mobility, they brought their music and their community mindsets. As bell hooks puts it in Belonging: A Culture of Place, the mountains and rural spaces are where mutual aid and anarchy are concrete, everyday practices, not just philosophies or concepts.

With those people and their music came a penchant for workers’ and labor rights, suspicion of management and company stores and towns, and a vehement, righteous anger at the injustices suffered by working class Southerners no matter where they migrated. It’s easy to find pro-Union songs, songs in support of workers’ health and agency, lyrics that espouse conservation and environmentalism in old-time, bluegrass, and string-band traditions. So easy, in fact, we quickly amassed a 4+ hour playlist featuring some of our favorite songs (bluegrass and beyond) for marching the picket line, raising a fist, and redistributing the power – and wealth – back to the world’s 99%.

Scroll to find the full playlist of Bluegrass & Roots Songs to Strike To. Below, enjoy a few selections from the list.

“In Tall Buildings” – John Hartford

John Hartford describes the doldrums of daily work as almost no one else can. (John Prine gets close with, “How the hell can a person/ Go to work in the mornin’/ And come home in the evenin’/ And have nothing to say?”) At the end of our 30-some years working, what will we have to show for ourselves besides a suit, haircut, and no more life left to give to our “retirement?” Plus, as any career musician can tell you, planning a life around retirement isn’t exactly a good option to begin with.

“Ain’t Gonna Work Tomorrow” – Wilma Lee Cooper

Ain’t gonna work tomorrow, cause it’s STRIKING day! Wilma Lee Cooper will, at long last, join the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame this September. A bluegrass forebear who saw broad commercial success before the genre had a name or an understood identity, she regularly landed tracks with decidedly bluegrass aesthetics on Billboard‘s early country charts.

“Lazy John” – Bruce Molsky

Under capitalism, laziness is a radical act! Be like Lazy John! If you’re working all week in the noon-day sun just for 16 cents, yes, it’s strike time.

“Cotton Mill Man” – Jim & Jesse

As we remember the life and legacy of Jesse McReynolds, who recently passed, it’s striking that although he and his brother Jim performed largely cover songs and tracks written by others, they were still able to express with great subtlety their own points of view through the material they chose. Like “Cotton Mill Man” and Prine’s “Paradise,” which was a hit for the duo, their catalog of recorded and performed material is dense with class awareness.

“Black Waters” – Jean Ritchie

A truly timeless classic that remains as relevant today as in the time of its writing, as clean water protections across the U.S. have been repeatedly gutted since 2016 – and before. Our country continues to show where its priorities are, beating down protests and demonstrations even as popular and supported as Standing Rock, in order to force us to acquiesce and give up protection of our waters. The lyrical hook is even more poignant to someone, like myself, living in Tennessee Valley Authority territory in the Tennessee River Valley – where coal ash and pollutants are still regularly dumped into our waterways. These tales, these experiences, are best told directly from their sources, as in Ritchie singing this song.

“Carpal Tunnel” – Tristan Scroggins

One can find many a recording of “Carpal Tunnel” from across the years, but mandolinist Tristan Scroggins, in his mid-twenties, pointedly places this track in the present, delivering the lament in stark a capella accompanied only by body percussion. He deftly ties the lyric to embodiment and agency and reminds all of us – especially in an age governed by devices causing carpal tunnel writ large – we’re all merely one injury away from bankruptcy. Musicians know this fear intimately, as many a livelihood has been threatened by tendonitis and carpal tunnel.

“Tear Down the Fences” – Ola Belle Reed

A perfect encapsulation of solidarity across our differences – differences constructed by the ruling class to keep us quibbling amongst ourselves while they amass their wealth. This sort of community awareness often feels like a pure byproduct of the internet’s version of globalization, but even a woman banjo player from a tiny town in rural Western North Carolina understood that “all we have is each other,” way back before the worldwide web. It feels obvious to state. It shouldn’t seem remarkable, except that we’ve accepted the narrative that such compassion and ideas couldn’t possibly be born from rural spaces or the South.

“Blue Collar Blues” – Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers

From the shop steward of Industrial Strength Bluegrass himself, Joe Mullins, a classic working-man-blues-style bluegrass number about that paycheck to paycheck life. An all-too-common reality for so many pickers! Though that might be more accurately described as blueGRASS collar blues.

“Dark as a Dungeon” – The Country Gentlemen

Bluegrass mining songs are just as iconic in the bluegrass songbook as train songs, cheatin’ songs, murder ballads, and singing about moonshine. This version of “Dark as a Dungeon” by the Country Gentlemen is one of the best examples of the form – many of which made it onto our full playlist.

There are so many more bluegrass, old-time, string band, folk, and Americana songs for striking. Check out our full playlist below and let us know: What is your favorite pro-worker roots song?

Playlist selections by Justin Hiltner, Shelby Williamson, Jon Weisberger, and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs.

Photo Credit: By John Vachon in 1938. “Untitled photo, possibly related to picket line at the King Farm strike. Near Morrisville, Pennsylvania.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

First & Latest: Special Consensus’ 40+ Year Career

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: BGS is excited to debut a brand new column and feature series, First & Latest, which examines the discographies of artists, musicians, and bands by comparing and contrasting their first album against their latest album.)

Chicago-based, long-running bluegrass outfit Special Consensus have been making records since 1979, when they released their debut, self-titled album. Since then, they’ve put out about 20 records – and they’ve criss-crossed the country and the globe spreading their modern-yet-traditional, hard-driving sound. Banjo player Greg Cahill, who is also a bluegrass industry leader and community builder, is the band’s sole remaining original member and, across those decades, has been the linchpin, the keystone of what has become a true legacy act.

To mark the occasion of their latest release, Great Blue North (released May 12 on Compass Records), we compare and contrast the band’s debut record with this new project with Cahill – it’s First & Latest, from BGS.

What goes through your mind when you hear a song from that first record, like “Like a Train?”

Greg Cahill: I cannot believe it was so long ago! This was our first time in a recording studio and we knew nothing about the process of making a record. It was truly a complete learning experience and we had a wonderful engineer who was a master at finding the exact place to punch in, and he even manually lined up and spliced the ¾” tape on one of the songs so we could use the first part of the one pass and the second part of a later pass. The album is pretty basic and far from top notch, but we did our best and actually sold a good number of that vinyl record.

At that point, did you ever think this band would have such longevity?

We had no idea about where our journey would take us. Special C actually formed sometime in 1973 – two of us were grad students and two had full time jobs. By 1975, I had finished my masters degree and was playing in local pubs and venues while working a full time job in social work, and all I wanted to do was play the banjo. It was 1975 when bass player Marc Edelstein and I decided we wanted to try playing full time – to play and tour as much as possible to get this bluegrass bug out of our system and go back to “real” jobs/life in a couple years. The other two members decided not to join us for this ride, so we found a guitar player and a mandolin player and quit our day jobs to devote full time to playing music. Marc left the band a few years later but the plan didn’t work for me – the bluegrass “addiction” only became stronger. I just “kept on keepin’ on” with no set time limit on my musical journey and now here I am today, never dreaming I would still be going strong with no set end time.

What do you think has been the key to your spanning the decades in bluegrass – besides yourself, that is!

I have been most fortunate to have had some great musicians/people in the band over the years – and still do have wonderful bandmates. Of course I have experienced the ups and downs of playing full time – it was always worrisome when a band member left or when there were slow times but we always found side jobs and teaching opportunities to keep us moving forward. I guess I am just too stubborn to even think about not playing because I love making music so much.

There’s an energy, a drive, even in this earliest recording that you’ve continued to carry with you. Where do you think that comes from? It reminds me of classic Seldom Scene and Johnson Mountain Boys, like you’re always leaning a bit forward into the groove.

I found bluegrass music through folk music (Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul and Mary; Limelighters, etc.) and eventually Pete Seeger – whose music prompted me to buy a long-neck 5-string banjo and then a 6-string guitar and then a 12-string guitar. I played in a folk trio with friends in college, and one day I heard “The Ballad of Jed Clampett” and immediately knew I had to learn how to play the bluegrass banjo. I found the Earl Scruggs book and was obsessed with playing the banjo every free moment of my life and it was his drive and perfect tone and timing that overwhelmed me. Then I heard J.D. Crowe and he became my model and eventually my mentor of sorts, even before I ever met him. This was in the early 1970s. New Grass Revival also grabbed my ear, and I spent hours trying to learn J.D. solos but also Courtney Johnson licks, determined to not lose the drive when playing non-Scruggs/Crowe licks because at that time many folks felt that Scruggs style playing was the only “right” way to play the 5-string. It has always been about the drive for me – and I learned that from J.D. as well – he always had drive, even on slow songs that he played with superb finesse.

“The Singer” feels like that classic move of a bluegrass band playing a country song, can you talk a bit about what you remember about choosing that track and recording it?

We were city boys playing in big city pubs and venues where the general public had no idea what bluegrass music was. Although we always loved the traditional bluegrass songs and tunes, we felt we had to play some material that the general public might recognize and eventually really like our brand of bluegrass music. So we included old rock songs, country songs, and jazzy swing songs in the repertoire along with the traditional songs. I would say we actually became more traditional over the years, because we were building a local and then national and then international audience while maintaining a varied repertoire.

When I heard “The Singer” I immediately wanted to include that song in our repertoire – the song is so well written, the words are so poignant, especially knowing that Neal Allen wrote the song about his father Red Allen and also that Neal died of pneumonia while on the road. As Bill Monroe would say, “It’s a powerful number.”

Now, about the latest album, Great Blue North, what inspired you to cross the Great Lakes for this album and do Canadian bluegrass?

We are so fortunate to be on the Compass Records label and especially to have Alison Brown as our producer. When we begin preparations to record, the four of us and Alison begin our search for new material. We are basically on a bi-annual release schedule with the label and one of the songs Alison thought would be a good song for us to include on our 2020 release was “Blackbird,” written by the great Canadian songwriter/singer/guitar player J.P. Cormier. We loved the song but as we gathered material for that release the theme shifted to featuring a nod to Chicago, where the band has been based since beginning in 1975, because 2020 was the 45th band anniversary. Hence the 2020 “Chicago Barn Dance” release. We knew we would record “Blackbird” at some point, and after the pandemic shut-down we wanted to let folks know we were still alive and well and anxious to get back on the road, so we recorded “Blackbird” and Compass released it as a single. As we began the search for material for a new recording, Alison mentioned that it might be a good time to give a nod to our Canadian friends — since we have played there so much over the past three decades — and we all agreed. We then decided to include only songs written by Canadian writers and also to ask many of our Canadian musician friends to perform with us on some of the tracks.

Do you think being such a long-running Midwestern-based group informed the new album for you? And your connections to this material?

I think we may have had more opportunities to tour in Canada because of our Midwestern base. We did not play the big festivals when we first began touring there – we played shows for bluegrass associations and community centers in Toronto, Ontario (only an 8+ hour drive from Chicago), Winnipeg, Manitoba (13+ hour drive) and Calgary, Alberta (25-hour drive). We would head directly to Toronto or work our way through Minnesota to the Canadian gigs, which helped us get invited to the festivals. We also learned about the Canadian songwriters through so many of the great Canadian musicians whom we met and became friends with through this networking.

To me, a throughline between your first and latest albums is the arrangements, the way your band is always playing as a tight-knit ensemble, not just a handful of instruments sounding simultaneously. Where do you get the inspiration for the way your individual parts play off of and dialogue with each other?

I think we have always been focused on the power of tight and interesting arrangements. This again goes back to the fact that because we are from Chicago – not a bluegrass hub in the eyes of the general public – we had to make sure to keep the attention of the audience and not have songs begin to all sound alike. The arrangements give the band the opportunity to be more creative and to showcase the tight vocal and instrumental harmonies. I have always wanted an outside/non-band member producer to give us an objective opinion about the sound, the material and the performance. We have always had very good producers and I must say that Alison Brown is a phenomenal producer who has brought the band to another level. From our perspective, she basically considers each song on our recording to be unique and “special” – there are no “filler” tracks, and we spend however much time necessary to make each track stand out.

“Snowbird” will go down as one of Special C’s tastiest cover songs, do you have favorite covers from across the years? It’s kind of a hallmark of your band!

Although we try not to be seen as a cover band, we have chosen to cover some songs from artists that we feel we can make sound like a bluegrass song, and especially sound like a Special C song. We have been most fortunate to have been given some great songs by many great songwriters over the years and we have also chosen some songs from other genres that we thought we could have fun recording and that our fans would enjoy hearing. “Snowbird” was one of the first songs on our list once we decided on the Canadian theme after recording “Blackbird” – my wife had suggested that song many times and now it seemed like the perfect song to feature Greg Blake’s fabulous voice. Some of the covers we have done on past recordings include “Viva Las Vegas,” “Ramblin’ Fever,” “Dream of Me,” “I Cried Myself Awake,” “Big River,” “Sea of Heartbreak,” “Looking Out My Back Door,” “Sweet Home Chicago,” “City of New Orleans,” our entire Country Boy: A Tribute to John Denver recording, “Alberta Bound” and several other songs on the Great Blue North release.

I must say, that as the years pass so quickly and the time between the first record and the current recording becomes so long I realize how fortunate and blessed I have been to be able to keep making music with so many wonderful musicians/people/friends. At times I have felt that the first recording was below the professional level but because of this interview and going back to listen to it, I now truly understand that we can only do our best throughout this journey, be thankful that we are able to keep growing and learning and appreciate our accomplishments no matter how insignificant they may seem at any given time.

Photo Credit: Jamey Guy

Zoe & Cloyd Made a Traditional Album – But Not the Way You Think

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

If you were to try to typify bluegrass as being about any one singular thing, that one thing might be family. Not just biological family, but musical family, chosen family, and the way the music survives generation to generation, passed down as a folkway and aural tradition. Often, though not always, this music is a family tradition, passed along family trees like an heirloom or like more typical family businesses.

John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Zoe Weinstein, bluegrass duo and band leaders of Zoe & Cloyd, have made a brand new album that, on the surface, might just seem like a standard bluegrass album paying homage to the folks who came before them, their forefathers. But Songs of Our Grandfathers is so much more complicated and nuanced, wrinkling a format that’s as old as these genres themselves: the tribute album. 

On the new record, released in May on Organic Records, John and Natalya pull songs from the catalogs of their musician grandfathers. Miller’s grandpa, Jim Shumate, was a renowned Western North Carolina fiddler who played a stint in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and can be accurately credited with helping get Earl Scruggs the banjo gig that made him famous. Natalya’s grandfather, David Weinstein, was a working klezmer musician who fled unrest in Russia, moving to the U.S. 

The artful way this pair of musicians and life partners combine the styles of their families, of their youths, and of their present lives together, as touring, professional musicians, feels expansive, rich, and bold, like newgrass that’s never been newgrassed before. But, there’s a timelessness here, a patina, that speaks to the greater tradition this record can lay claim to perpetuating. (Thank goodness.) 

Songs of Our Grandfathers isn’t just nostalgia, heritage, lineage, legacy- and canon-building. It’s not just carrying on tradition for tradition’s sake. It’s effortlessly and wholly bluegrass because it innovates, it complicates, and it challenges its listeners to think outside of preconceived notions of what bluegrass, string band, and old-time music are. Because that’s exactly what bluegrass’s grandfathers, grandmothers, and grandparents were doing as they invented this music. 

We began our phone chat about the new album discussing each of their grandparents and their musical idiosyncrasies.

Can we start by talking about Jim Shumate? His presence is throughout the record and he’s influenced you both, can you tell us a bit about him and his music making? 

John Cloyd Miller: He was born in 1921 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on a mountain called Chestnut Mountain. He started playing fiddle as a young boy, as a teenager. His older brother Mac, who was 10 years older – the same age as Bill Monroe – got him his first fiddle, which is a fiddle he kept his entire life and we actually have, now. It’s an old Sears & Roebuck Strad copy, but he played some tone into it! His Uncle Erby played fiddle so he heard him a lot growing up and then he got into Arthur Smith and all that kind of stuff. He moved to Hickory when he got older, when he was a young man, and was playing on the radio down there when Bill Monroe heard him and asked him to be in the Blue Grass Boys. That was the time that Stringbean was in the band and Sally Ann Forrester, too.

When Stringbean decided to leave the band and go off with Lew Childre, Bill needed a banjo player and it’s now a pretty well known story that Jim knew a banjo player – he knew Earl Scruggs – and really pushed, begged him really, to audition for Bill. Earl was pretty reluctant to do it, but he did, and the rest is history. Later on, when Flatt & Scruggs broke off [from the Blue Grass Boys], Jim was their first fiddler, as you know. He recorded on their Mercury sessions. But he didn’t like touring, he wasn’t a touring kinda guy at all. He had four kids at home – three at the time, when he was younger, and one later. 

Natalya Zoe Weinstein: He liked Mama’s cookin’. 

[both laugh]

Jim Shumate, L (John Cloyd Miller’s grandfather); David Weinstein, R (Natalya Zoe Weinstein’s grandfather)

JCM: He did! He liked his own bed and grandma’s cooking, for sure. He liked to go up on the mountain. He worked in the furniture industry pretty much his whole life, but he also had his hand in the music. He ran a place called “Cat Square,” kind of a small town sort of Hickory Opry, a music show. He was always playing. I have photos of him through the late ‘40s and through the ‘50s with all sorts of people, Don Reno – all those guys. He made records and he had his own band called Sons of the Carolinas, which had George Shuffler in it and some other guys. He was always playing. He played with Dwight Barker and the Melody Boys; he did some sides with Don Walker, who he played with before he met Bill Monroe. He was always making music. 

After Flatt & Scruggs it was largely regionally, because he wasn’t out touring, but he said people would always come by. Any time guys like Lester and them were in town they would always drive the bus and park it right in the yard. He was always in the music, but his influence was not felt as widely later on, I think because he wasn’t out [touring]. He did come back to recording in the ‘90s and made five cassettes for Heritage Records and those got disseminated kind of regionally. Michael Cleveland cut one of the songs that was on one of those tapes a year or so ago. People know his music, but we enjoy getting his legacy out there a bit more. He’s got such a unique style and certainly was influential. 

He was a great songwriter, too! He was my main musical influence. I heard him play a ton growing up. He was so bluesy and slidey, he was a real master of syncopation, which is something that got ingrained in me. People always forget about his songwriting, but the way I grew up, I always thought that being a musician meant that you sing stuff, you write songs. You pick, too, but you do all of it. It was just part of being musical and I think that came from him as well. 

It makes me think of, well, I talk a lot about how the most “bluegrass” someone can be is being innovative and being themselves, whether that comes across as “traditional bluegrass,” genre-wise or not. 

JCM: That’s really insightful and it’s so true, when you look at those early players – everybody always looks at the first generation and, that’s good, that can be very grounding, but those guys were all unique! They were all unique artists, they had their own styles – sure, they were listening to one another, but Lester Flatt doesn’t sound like Bill Monroe who doesn’t sound like Carter Stanley. They don’t sound like each other!

Natalya, I wanted to ask you about your grandfather, too. If you could tell us a bit about the musical influences that represent him on this record, as well. 

NZW: He passed away when I was fairly young, my dad had me when he was fifty-one, so my grandfather was quite older than me – I think I was eleven when he passed away. [My father and he] had an interesting relationship; he wasn’t always a well-liked man. He escaped a lot of violence and poverty in Russia, so he wasn’t a very kind man and my dad didn’t have a very close relationship with him. I don’t have any audio recordings of his music, I have a couple of audio interviews that my dad and uncle did with him, but I don’t have any recordings of his music. 

My dad was moving a few years back and found all these old music notebooks from my grandfather. He asked me, “Do you want these old, handwritten, junky notebooks?” And I was like, “Yes!! Please give those to me!” [Laughs] That was the source, for me, for my grandfather’s music. I didn’t have one-on-one experiences with him, I didn’t have recordings of him, so these notebooks are really the only link to his music that I have. We have about five or six notebooks that have songs in them – they’re pretty hard to decipher, they’re forty or fifty years old. They have all different kinds of material in them, from klezmer to mambos and tangos even to “Tennessee Waltz,” which shows up in one of them as a jazz standard. He also played some classical music, he didn’t do just one singular thing. Klezmer players were like the wedding band musician of their time, where they had to play a bunch of different styles based on who their audience was. 

JCM: We definitely got a little bit of a sense of who he was from these audio interviews that her uncle and dad had made with him. We got to hear his voice, you know he didn’t speak English very well so it’s mostly in Russian and Yiddish. You get a sense of some of the stuff he saw, in these interviews. You can tell it hardened him. 

NZW: He had a tough life for sure, he struggled a lot and music was really the only thing [he did]. He wasn’t really educated. He talked about how when he came here [to the U.S.] he tried to be a plumber and he tried to be an electrician, but he kept making mistakes. He said, “I couldn’t do anything except play music.” He felt almost like he was stuck with it. He loved it and he was passionate about it, but I got the sense that it was his only option. 

There’s a similar energy from both grandfathers around being musicians, but not just in a traditional touring, “road dog,” sort of lifestyle. 

NZW: You’re right, and they were both kind of skeptical of the past. 

JCM: They both came from very humble beginnings. My grandfather didn’t have any education, either. Natalya’s grandfather, apparently, escaped the Bolshevik revolution on a hay wagon. He was a teenager and they were trying to conscript him into the army to fight – it’s crazy stuff! 

Bluegrass is always considering lineage and tradition and how those things are passed along. One of the things that I think is really interesting about it is there aren’t a lot of marginalized identities represented in the historical record of bluegrass, but there are Jewish identities represented. There’s not a whole lot of representation as you go back through the years, but it’s there. How do you connect the music you’re making, that’s infused with Jewish influences and has that cultural identity, to past Jewish music makers in bluegrass and string bands? You’re clearly thinking about lineage and family with this record, and that’s so bluegrass, but through a different lens with your Jewish identity and the other cultural music styles on the album, too. 

NZW: David Grisman was one of my biggest musical influences early on, he was a big bridge, for me, between my dad – who plays jazz – and the bluegrass connection as well as the Jewish connection. We talk about how this album was inspired by Songs of Our Fathers, the 1995 album by David Grisman and Andy Statman. Andy Statman, who played on the record, is another one – one of the first shows that John and I went to see when we met in Asheville in 2005 or 2006 was to see Andy Statman at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, which is this tiny little listening room. It was an incredible show, I remember just being blown away. I remember thinking, “Wow! What a cool fusion.”

JCM: That was the first time we heard that fusion with klezmer music. He was also playing clarinet, he was playing mandolin. He is the bridge between these kinds of music. David doesn’t do as much klezmer, but those two guys together for sure. 

NZW: John and I both came into bluegrass through the Grisman/Garcia connection then I kind of worked my way back from there. Someone gave me a burned CD of Bill Monroe and I was like, “Oh my God, what is this!?” [Laughs]

JCM: So many people have stories like that. That Old & In The Way album was such an influential record, it was like the number one selling bluegrass record for a long time. 

NZW: Yeah, the way I got into bluegrass, I was out in Tacoma, Washington, for an anthropology conference in college and somebody at my hotel was like, “I’ve got an extra ticket for Wintergrass, which is happening right next door.” I said, “Okay, cool!” So we go and I saw Old & In The Gray there [Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, Grisman], it was an incredible experience. I didn’t really know what I was seeing at the time, because I was so new to bluegrass, but that was my “Ah ha!” moment. Someone handed me a fiddle and I dunno, I played “Angeline the Baker” and that was it! [Laughs]

JCM: When I first heard Grisman play mandolin, his tone and everything, that was like sinking a hook into me. That’s why I even wanted to play mandolin. I wanted to work on getting tone like that! He was a huge influence on so many of us.

Going back home one time, when I had been living out West or whatever, I was listening to Old & In the Way or something and I asked, “Grandpa, do you know this stuff, like ‘Pig in a Pen,’ and all this?” And he was like, “Oh yeah! I know everything on this record!” And he would play them, and that was so cool to me. I hadn’t quite made the connection before. He asked me, “Who’s playing fiddle on that record?” And I said, “Vassar Clements!” He says, “Oh yeah, that’s a good friend of mine!” I was like, “WHAT!?” 

[both laugh]

JCM: I was just this stupid, deadhead college kid – I mean, I’m still a deadhead – but it really clicked. This is a bridge between grandpa’s world, which had always seemed like something in the past, to my world as a young, coming-of-age musician, realizing, “Oh, it’s all the same stuff!” 

To an uninitiated listener, they might hear your record and they might hear the influences that aren’t “traditional bluegrass” as modern cross-pollinations, as something that’s coming from you both and your generation and your own creativity. But, I really wanted to unpack the lineage of the music, because I can sense even in the playing on this album that colors “outside the lines,” it’s clearly part of this bigger tradition in bluegrass of being a bridge between these kinds of disparate parts. Even this “nontraditional” album you’ve made is based on so much tradition – familial tradition, cultural tradition, musical tradition. 

NZW: I think we wanted to honor those traditions and where these songs came from, but we also wanted to put our own spin on it. We hope our grandfathers would have liked that! 

JCM: [Jim Shumate] was very much a traditional musician, but he was always innovative at the same time. Some of the things he did in the ‘50s were very jazzy, with electric guitars playing with him. And he always loved Natalya’s playing. You know, Natalya came from a classical background and anytime she would play something classical for him– 

NZW: Or a waltz. 

JCM: He just loved to hear her play. They didn’t sound like each other, they had very different styles, but he was always very open and he loved everything. 

NZW: I think he would like [the album]. John’s mom texted us yesterday as she was listening to it and said, “I think grandpa would’ve enjoyed that!” So hopefully our grandparents aren’t rolling over in their graves. 

[Both laugh]

Photo Credit: Sarah Johnston

Alison Brown: Record Label Founder and Bluegrass “Lifer”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

When a craftsman pauses to reflect, students of all skill levels benefit from the lesson. Alison Brown’s latest album, On Banjo, released May 5 on Compass Records and is a masterclass; it’s also a study on where the instrument has been and where it’s going.

Brown is a Compass co-founder and a GRAMMY Award-winning artist and producer. A self-described “lifer” in the bluegrass community and an IBMA “First Lady of Bluegrass,” she eagerly explores what the five-stringed instrument can do outside typical genre parameters. The new record is packed with star-studded duets with comedian Steve Martin, mandolin player and fellow First Lady of Bluegrass Sierra Hull, and fiddle legend Stuart Duncan.

The result is a varied, rich track list we couldn’t wait to ask Brown about.

BGS: Let’s walk through some of the tracks and collaborations on On Banjo. What kind of music inspired the duet with Anat Cohen?

AB: Anat Cohen is a clarinetist; she was born in Israel and lives in New York, but she’s well-known in jazz circles for Brazilian choro. I actually watched lots of videos of Anat on YouTube.

I reached out. I said “I know we don’t know each other, but would you consider doing this?”

What’s it like working with a famous comedian like Steve Martin in a musical context?

I’ve had the good fortune to go out and do some shows with him and Martin Short. There’s inevitably some time to jam in the dressing room, so it’s fun to play with Steve in that context, too.

Steve’s a great banjo player with a really beautiful touch and a delicate, sweet tone. He loves playing in double C tuning. Banjo players usually tune to a G, but you can drop the fourth string to a C and tune the second [string] up to a C. It’s an old tuning that clawhammer guys use a lot.

The way “Foggy Mountain Breaking,” came about is I wrote the A section. It was during the pandemic. I asked Steve, “Do you wanna write a B part?” He sent me a perfect B section 24 hours later. We figured out a bridge together. It’s named after a lyric in a John Hartford song and is obviously a riff on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

How does it feel to work with younger bluegrass talents like Sierra Hull? Is it gratifying to have a feminine duo on that track?

I wrote that tune hoping Sierra would be up for learning and recording it with me. I’m a huge fan of her mandolin playing; she’s another one with such a delicate touch. Her fingers just really dance over the fingerboard.

It required her to play every fret on the first string of the mandolin and she did it flawlessly. She said she’d never had a chance to work on such complicated music with another woman. So it’s a really special thing. It’s always a delight to play with Sierra, but to do a duet with her was like chocolate and more chocolate.

How do you balance two strong, independent main instruments like banjo and fiddle together, such as with Stuart Duncan?

Banjo and fiddle are just so complementary. They say a banjo and fiddle make a band, and they do.

I’ve known Stuart since he was 11 and I was 12. We go way back. And on this tune I want to give a tip of the hat to Byron Berline and John Hickman. Growing up in Southern California when we did in the ’70s, those two were the guys that everybody worshiped at the feet of. I wanted to try and capture some of that spirit, and I wanted to do it with Stuart.

Who is this album for, and what do you hope listeners take away from it?

That’s the existential question of the banjo player. And it is a bit of a challenge when you take the five-string banjo and go somewhere else with it. Earl Scruggs perpetuated a style and brought it to the masses that was just so electric. Most people think that’s all the banjo does and they don’t worry about its history before that. There’s a lot of voices inside the instrument; the bluegrass one has become the loudest one most recently.

It’s so interesting because at the beginning of the 1800s the banjo was found on plantations. Then white people appropriated that music in minstrel shows, performing in blackface. It’s deep in terms of what it says about our history and America’s original sin.
It went from being a Black instrument to being a white lady’s instrument. The Black voice of the instrument and the female voice of the instrument were both disenfranchised. There are gorgeous old photos of women in the 1890s holding banjos, and there were female banjo orchestras. I’m excited to see that re-emerging.

You started Compass Records with Garry West almost three decades ago. What’s on the horizon, and what are your goals?

All the labels were run by business people, not musicians. We said, “Why can’t musicians run a label for other artists?”

The other part is really wanting to build a label that can have a cultural impact and Garry and I are both invested in roots music. I’ve been a member of the bluegrass community since about 10 years old. I’m a lifer. The whole economy of the record business has been turned upside down and stirred and shaken eight times. We want to make sure this music not only survives but thrives into the future.

You mentioned growing up in SoCal. How is bluegrass there different from Appalachia?

There would be Eagles’ songs in set lists. It was wide open. When I first came east with Stuart and his dad, we drove around and did the festivals in 1978 or so, but it was rooted in the first generation bands’ repertoire.

On that trip we entered a band contest in Oklahoma and we played something we learned from a Richard Green record. It was a funky fiddle thing in E. I remember somebody coming up afterwards and saying “We don’t appreciate you knocking the music.”

What did you learn while making On Banjo?

The deep dive to find new melodies, and that process of discovery of the instrument, is the process of self-discovery. You get to the end and it teaches you something new about yourself.

Photo Credit: Russ Harrington