Folks in the bluegrass world have been watching Molly Tuttle’s star rise since long before her Grammy-winning 2022 album, Crooked Tree, has added even more momentum to the award-winning flatpicker’s career. Though we first crossed paths much earlier, we spoke to Tuttle initially in 2017 for an edition of Deep Sh!t that put her and guitarist James Elkington on the phone together. Even then, Elkington went out of his way to laud Tuttle’s playing, placing it on the same level as his own. (Tuttle, in a turn of mutual admiration, praised Elkington’s picking above hers, of course.)
This is a consistent phenomenon in musicians, songwriters, producers, and instrumentalists who encounter Tuttle’s work: They are all astounded by it; They all feel and hear genius within it. Tuttle is sometimes – no, often – your favorite musician’s favorite musician. Certainly your favorite musician’s favorite flatpicker.
At numerouspoints over the years since that first interview, the BGS team has latched onto songs and recordings by Tuttle. We’ve had the privilege of inviting her to join BGS lineups and stages and we’ve published more than a handfulofinterviews, as well, watching and documenting a career and creative output that continue to enjoy rapid-yet-meaningful growth. From our earliest premiere of “Good Enough” all the way to anchoring a BGS Cover Story, as Tuttle has advanced through the music industry, we’ve watched and written about those changes and the distance she’s traveled.
It’s fitting, then, as Tuttle and her band, Golden Highway, ready a second album on the heels of the wildly successful Crooked Tree, that they should at last be named BGS Artist of the Month. We know listeners and fans, whether brand new or veteran, will understand and appreciate how much pleasure and joy we have gained over the years from Tuttle’s songs, her creative vision, her passion, and perhaps above all, her fiery picking. It makes naming Tuttle our Artist of the Month that much more gratifying, highlighting the real reason we make BGS in the first place: our community.
After having a star-studded roster on Crooked Tree helmed by producer (and guest artist) Jerry Douglas, Tuttle has focused her vision slightly for City of Gold, which releases July 21 on Nonesuch Records. Douglas returns as co-producer. The new album, like the former, drips with the imagery, mythos, and mystique of California, drawing on West Coast influences like the Grateful Dead, Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, and folk revival, troubadour singer-songwriters. But, instead of a rotating cast of characters and besides a stout handful of featured artists, this record centers Tuttle and her full-time road band, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), Dominick Leslie (mandolin), Shelby Means (bass), and Kyle Tuttle (banjo).
This lineup and the material of the Golden Highway era all seemingly mock the rare critics and naysayers of Tuttle’s music, who, especially in the earliest days of her career, could sometimes be heard describing her songs and singing as toothless or lacking energy or grit. At their sold out theater and club headline shows or in front of thousands at music festivals, Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway’s performances are jaw-dropping, electric (literally and figuratively), and enormous – fully realized. It’s jamgrass without valorizing toxic masculinity; it’s “MASH,” but with taste; it’s a shredfest, but it’s also emotive and vulnerable and theatrical.
That Tuttle’s found her stride while “returning” to bluegrass – whether intentionally, subconsciously, or merely as a framing and narrative device – is striking and impressive. There are many songs, stages, and Artist of the Month features yet to be conquered down the Golden Highway.
Watch for a special Artist of the Month episode of Basic Folk later in July featuring Tuttle as well as an interview with her band, Golden Highway. For now, enjoy our Essential Molly Tuttle Playlist.
Artist:Gary Brewer Hometown: Louisville, KY Song: “Old Brown Case” Album: House of Axes Release Date: May 26, 2023 (single); June 30, 2023 (album)
In Their Words: “This is the main axe I’ve carried on the road with me all these years. It’s a 1941 D-28 Herringbone. All-original. You can see she’s got quite a bit of wear on it. One of 183 ever made and she’s still doing good. A good and strong guitar. Going to see if I can go way back and do an old Norman Blake song I recorded a number of years ago. It’s called ‘Old Brown Case.'” – Gary Brewer
Singer-songwriter and guitarist Gordie Tentrees didn’t begin his career as a globe-trotting performer until he moved to a vibrant, supportive music city – that is, Whitehorse, Yukon. In a town of approximately 40,000, there’s long been a bustling musical economy, one that supported Tentrees even before he had released any recordings.
Place – whether rural northern Canada, or the far reaches of New Zealand or western Europe or Australia – informs so much of Tentrees’ writing and music-making, especially on his most recent release, 2021’s Mean Old World. With a global perspective and a local level of care, he unspools big, often daunting political and social questions with humor, intention, and aplomb. Child welfare, Indigenous rights, solidarity, working class issues, and more are packaged in tidy honky-tonking, blues-inflected, string band songs, making these sometimes gargantuan pills that much easier to swallow.
That Tentrees prioritizes community, building bridges, and human connection in his music makes it that much more compelling. He uses his rural, multi-ethnic hometown as an entry point, a doorway, through which he not only brings folks into his own world, but brings his world to them, too. And in doing so, even with an album titled Mean Old World, he reminds us that living on this earth doesn’t always have to be so forbidding, exclusive, and mean. BGS connected with Gordie Tentrees via phone, while he picked up his Indigenous daughter from school on his bicycle, to discuss this recent album.
BGS: I wanted to start by asking you about place. I’ve been obsessed with place these days, especially as it relates to music and music-making. I was struck by the fact that you didn’t begin songwriting or performing until you moved to the Yukon. How did moving there inform your music-making? To me, it feels like there’s a strong sense of place on this record.
Gordie Tentrees: Well, I blame the Yukon – I credit the Yukon as well as blame it [Laughs] – for the path I’m on. It is a good conduit and supportive community that encourages the arts. Writing songs and playing an instrument is something that’s seen as a valued occupation, one that’s sort of embraced and lifted up. It’s not hard to get on the stage here. Early on, when I started playing, I hadn’t even made my first record yet and I was headlining some northern festival stages. [The Yukon] really gives you a chance to get on a stage and expose yourself to audiences like that. I really believe if I had lived anywhere else in Canada or the world I wouldn’t have been given so much time on the stage.
The other thing is that a lot of people spend their time creating art here and writing songs here – there are a lot of songwriters here. It’s a highly valued thing. I live in a community full of writers and songwriters. That’s really supported and endorsed. You can knock on someone’s door if you want to learn an instrument and they’ll show it to you. There aren’t barriers for those that are aspiring to be songwriters or musicians. It’s quite wonderful.
At one point, in our little community of 40,000 people – Whitehorse, Yukon, where I live – we even had up to 25 music venues at various points, all happening. One thing about Whitehorse that not many people know is that it has the highest number of musicians per capita that actually make a living from music in Canada.
As much as the Yukon has informed your music-making, you travel so much and you play so many shows all around the world, so while there’s this strong sense of place in this album, Mean Old World, I do sense that it’s also informed by your travels. “Danke” clearly references this. How has the cross-pollination of the Yukon and your travels created the musical aesthetic you have now?
I think that’s attributed to what I do, as far as being a performer and musician. I get to go to different parts [of the world] because I’m not just a songwriter and play various instruments. For example, if I play in English-speaking countries they like the songs and the stories. Countries where English is a second, third, fourth language they rely more on melody and stuff like that, so if you have a show that sort of hits people both ways, it allows you to travel as much as I have. Which I really sort of figured out early on, you can play in all these different markets and do different things because you’re not just a one-trick pony.
As far as playing different genres, there are so many genres of music here in the Yukon; it goes from jazz, blues, and hip-hop to funk music. I get often put into a country festival, bluegrass festival, or a folk festival as the guy who’s kind of on the edge of all those things. But it also touches on all those things. That’s allowed me to travel all over the place and sort of steal genres from all of the artists that have inspired me, whether it’s Southern and Delta blues music or Eastern Romanian dirges.
We are The Bluegrass Situation, so I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about the bluegrass influences I hear on Mean Old World. I wonder where they stem from for you? It sounds like that type of rural bluegrass that is genre-less and draws from many influences.
Because I’m a guitar player, I’m drawn to flatpicking. I went, “Okay, bluegrass, this genre is like high-speed chess.” Like high speed math along with jazz. We have a local bluegrass festival up here so it’s all around. String band music is quite popular up here. Where I live in the Yukon you’re exposed to it from the jazz scene to the bluegrass scene. If you know music from those genres at all, that’s sort of enveloped and absorbed by the people who live here.
I wanted to ask you about the stories that went into “Mean Old World” and “Every Child,” not only your own experience in foster care, but also your experience of raising your Indigenous daughter and how that’s informed these songs. Partially because I think these are really heavy sort of big topics, but the way you approach them feels very grounded and very real.
It was all inspired by one song that I wrote, the title track, “Mean Old World.” The song was really about the best interests of every child, which I believe are health, safety, and happiness. Regardless of your background, politics, or the current state of the world, I think those are the most important things. That song is inspired by that, following my journey as a foster child from a broken home and going through the social services system and then also becoming a foster parent to our daughter six years ago. We had no idea [what we were doing], it was a really educational experience. Where I live in the Yukon, 50 percent of the community is Indigenous. I’m not Indigenous, my background is actually Irish. We’re very lucky that we’re educated and exposed to these experiences and our families and our communities – Indigenous or non-Indigenous – are affected by it. So we come together and support each other.
Through my daughter, being a parent of a female is one thing. It’s difficult for females in this world, [especially] one with brown skin. I think I keep it really simple and I think about what she faces every day and how she would get passed over or looked upon as a child that might need more work or more time, even if she was ahead of everybody else, because of the color of her skin and because of her background. Once that’s in your home, and you’ve experienced that, it’s pretty alarming! At the same time, we’re so grateful that we’ve had this experience and have realized that as parents we are here to bridge the gap between my daughter and her birth parents and her birth family. To build that human capacity to bridge that space that’s been created due to trauma.
You also bring a lot of lightness – levity, humor, and joy – into your music-making. Why is that important to you in the context of these kind of bigger, sometimes daunting topics?
When I was a kid, humor was a defensive coping mechanism to get through all the darkness. There were always pretty dark situations that were absurd, and if you could bring some light to it, it always made it easier to deal with. I felt like I was a witness and a passenger to my broken childhood and an observer. I watched it all and would kind of make light-hearted jokes about it even though it was painful, to get through it. I find that humor is my constant companion, also recognizing that even though I use it a lot I still have to deal with some of the reasons that I use it.
One of my favorite writers from early on was John Prine. I heard him in my house when I was a kid, and the way he can use heavy subjects: “There’s a hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes.” Everything from that ranging to, “Swears like a sailor when she shaves her legs.” That kind of humor in his songs is something as a kid that I grew up knowing was possible. You can use humor for these heavy subjects. I have a song on my last record called “Dead Beat Dad.” I felt it was ahead of its time because it shocked the audience, at least until I had them in my hand. I would shock them, a little jolt. Just to push them, give them a little poke. Now that song, those taboos are more behind us now. I want to take people down those roads, but I also want to bring them back, usually with humor.
The quality of the music, being that sort of honky-tonk country meets a back porch jam, really communicates that your priority is establishing these relationships with your audiences so you can have these bigger conversations.
A lot of my audience is a rural audience, teaching, sharing with them that yes, you can grow up in those places and it’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay, you’re going to be okay. You’re going to grow and it’s never too late to learn. It’s just never too late. Once you stop learning, that’s when we’re all in trouble. I’ll have these conversations, most of my audience is rural communities and they’ll expect me to do this hillbilly, honky-tonk, “hold my beer while I kiss your wife” nonsense and I can open the door with that and then they’ll be like, “Wait a minute, he’s not singing about beer, he’s singing about… Whoa!” I love having that effect. I love going through that doorway.
I recognize my role when I go around night to night in whatever country it is, I realize I walk in and I can lift, change, alter a lot of people’s lives in a short amount of time. I can do it over and over again, repeatedly, and I get to go to bed at night and go, “Wow. That felt pretty good.” I’m really enjoying it. I’m enjoying it more now than I have in the sixteen years I’ve been doing this. I feel really grateful that there’s a place for me – I feel like there’s more of a place for me now than there’s ever been. I’m just so lucky. I get to be a small helper in a larger community.
Billy Strings has had his foot on the gas since he was a teenager, bringing his prolific picking to hundreds of shows around the country each year and winning over a throng of devoted fans in the process. His bluegrass bona fides may be obvious from the outset — he’s quick to cite such greats as Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, and the Stanley Brothers as some of his first musical influences, and no honest spectator could deny his talent on the guitar and mandolin — but astute listeners will also note elements of rock, jam bands, and even heavy metal in his performances, especially as Strings bounds around the stage.
The Nashville-based, Michigan-raised musician’s latest album, Renewal, comes on the heels of an exceptional year: His Rounder Records debut, Home, won the 2020 Grammy award for Best Bluegrass Album. And even as much of the music industry was grounded from touring, his innovative approach to livestreams and digital performances moved the Pollstar Awards to dub him the Breakthrough Artist of the Pandemic. But that breakthrough was more than a decade in the making, and the forces that shaped Strings as a prodigious young picker are still at work today, pushing him creatively in the studio and on stage as well as calming him at home between gigs. Here, in the second half of our BGSArtist of the Month interview, Strings tells us about his upbringing, his latest influences, and the way he unwinds between shows.
BGS: Tell me about where you grew up. How do you see its impact on your work today?
Billy Strings: I was born in Lansing, Michigan on October 3, which is my grandpa’s birthday. My mother, who lived in Kentucky at the time, had gone up to Lansing to visit her dad on his birthday, and that’s when I decided to show up. [Laughs] So that’s why I was named Billy as well, because that was my grandpa’s name — I was his little birthday gift.
We lived in Morehead, Kentucky, for a couple of years before coming back home to Michigan, where I really grew up. I grew up in a little town called Muir, population 600. My dad is an incredible guitar player, so he taught me how to play. He was always showing me music when I was a little kid: Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Lester Flatt, Earl Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, Larry Sparks, and stuff like that — a lot of good bluegrass. We’d hang out at this little campground and play music next to the river by the fire. That was my childhood, man, just sitting there picking by the river.
It was real good until I got to be a teenager and started to turn sour. I had to run off and figure out a new life. I took what my dad taught me when I was a little kid, and all of a sudden I realized that bluegrass is actually pretty sweet and people love this shit — that maybe I could do something with this; that it’s not just something that I do with my dad that I should be halfway embarrassed about.
Who are the artists that you feel really inspired by right now? And are those different than the ones that you feel like you were listening to a lot when you were a kid?
For the most part, it’s still Doc Watson — he’s the main nerve — and Bill Monroe, and Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley and Carter Stanley, the Stanley Brothers. But I listen to a lot of different shit. I listen to death metal, and lately, I’ve been getting into this music from Mali that Béla Fleck was showing me — some really amazing stuff. And Memphis trap: I’ve been listening to Young Dolph a bunch. There’s just an energy to it. I grew up around crack houses. I’ve seen that shit that they’re rapping about. It just gets me hyped: He’s talking about coming out of nothing and becoming a self-made millionaire. I listen to it before the shows sometimes to get myself hyped up.
You played in rock bands in high school — groups with music that might not sound a lot like what you’re doing today. Is there any lesson or anything from that time that you feel like you still turn to or still apply to the music that you make?
Yeah, performing live. I never learned how to perform in a bluegrass band. I learned how to perform in a metal band. I learned music by playing bluegrass when I was a little kid, but by the time I was doing it on stage it was in a metal band — we were headbanging and running all over the place — and I still can’t help but get into the music like that. I can’t just stand there and play.
You have been in Nashville now for a little while. Has anything that has surprised you about it, good or bad?
I really love Nashville. A lot of your favorite musicians, that’s where they live. You’ll see your favorite singer in the grocery store. I get calls for sessions, and it’s from people who I grew up listening to and who I’ve idolized for my whole life. Like Béla Fleck’s record just came out, and I played a handful of songs on that. I was so honored to play with David Grisman, and Chris Thile, Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan, and Edgar Meyer — all these cats that are just… well, I don’t feel like I’m really in that league. It really was an honor. And there’ve been several things like that! I went from listening to these cats on a record to being on a first-name basis with them… texting and being friends. It’s a trip.
What’s one thing that’s brought you joy recently?
Fishing. I love bass fishing. I grew up doing that with my dad as well, but I didn’t do it for a long time because I was so busy. When the pandemic hit, I started fishing again. I go out there in rain or shine. I just like it for the solitude. Last night, I was in front of thousands of people, and to come home and go out on my boat and be alone in nature — to check out the blue herons and the fucking ospreys, eagles, fish, everything doing its thing — it’s brought me a lot of joy, brought me down to Earth. I put my boat in at 5 o’clock in the morning when the sun is just coming up. I like being out there alone at that time of day. It’s just good for my mind.
And yet it’s so clear from your performances that interacting with listeners gives you a certain joy, too. What are the forms of feedback that you value most from your audience when you’re playing live?
Sometimes when we finish a solo, everybody starts cheering real loud, the whole place gets real loud. That feels good. But sometimes I look out there and I look around and I see individual people and I literally play to them. Last night, we played in Montana and I was looking around and there was this one dude just standing there with his beer just completely still. I didn’t even know if he was enjoying it or not. So I just walked up to the front of the stage and stared directly at him and I just started playing right to him. [Laughs] So he started laughing, and then he took a drink of his beer and started bobbing his head a little bit. I think he just started getting into it by the end of the show.
I’ll look for things like that. The audience is really in control of how I’m feeling up there. Sometimes, when they’re just on fire, I can’t help but have a good time. They feed us the energy, and we give it back to them. It’s reciprocal.
From carving out a name for himself on the road as a teenager to winning a Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album (2019’s standout Home), the prodigious 29-year-old guitar player Billy Strings has cultivated a devoted following and collected an impressive list of accomplishments along the way. His latest Rounder Records release, Renewal, capitalizes on the confidence and artistic growth those experiences have delivered, with experimental new instrumentation, contemplative lyricism, and trademark picking. Produced by Jonathan Wilson (Roger Waters, Father John Misty), the sixteen-track opus offers a glimpse at an artist who is continuously rediscovering himself.
“I’m going through a part in my life where I’m looking through the windshield instead of in the rearview,” he says. “I think of a new day, the morning light, a spider molting, or a snake shedding its skin: It’s a renewal.” In the first of our two part BGSArtist of the Month interview, we caught up with Billy Strings about those new beginnings — on the stage, in the studio, and in his day-to-day life.
BGS: Renewal is mostly acoustic, but it pulls from a lot of different sources of inspiration — and not all of those are necessarily bluegrass. Is there any particular moment on the record where you noticed the influence of a genre that may be unexpected to some listeners?
Billy Strings: “Hide and Seek” is a song that maybe draws more from my influence of playing in metal bands — trying to write a song that’s more like a metal song, but with acoustic instruments… using odd time signatures, diminished chords, and avoiding the major scale. I grew up listening to a lot of death metal, and a lot of that music is just not verse-chorus-bridge, verse-chorus-outro. The songs are like 10 different parts. They’re hyper-composed, and that stuff’s sort of neat.
Was there anything that you did in the studio that took you out of your comfort zone?
I mean, I wouldn’t say it was uncomfortable, but it was different playing synthesizers and different instruments hands-on. I think I gained a little confidence when I won that Grammy — the next time I went into the studio, I was the one calling the shots: “Hey, do you have a triangle? Let’s all come together and do a singalong.” I was the one coming up with the creative ideas and feeling confident in myself to do that. On “Heartbeat of America,” I’m playing some old synthesizer, playing with the pitch wheel and stuff. That shit’s fun.
“Hellbender” stands out as a reasonably upbeat, fun song when you’re listening to it, but the lyrics are… kind of dark. What was going on in your head when you were writing that?
That song’s about a real bad headache and a real bad hangover — being lost in the demons of alcohol, not knowing where to stop, saying, “Fuck it, I’m going to drink until the night’s over.” I haven’t drank in over five years: I haven’t had a sip of alcohol because I had a real bad headache one day. So it’s not really about me, but I wouldn’t really call it a fictional song either. I have been there and done that: woken up like that. It’s about a guy who can’t freakin’ stop.
“Know It All” on the new album talks about learning from your mistakes. Has there been any kind of a difficult learning experience that you feel shaped you as an artist?
Well, maybe that headache I was talking about.
Oh yeah?
One day we had this awesome gig. A lot of people showed up, and we sold a bunch of merch, and I thought we were fucking rock stars. I had been up all night and drinking beer and liquor and a bunch of shit. We got to the bar after and I was all, “Old Fashioneds! Get one for everybody, on me!” I was raring and tearing. But the next day, we barely made it to our gig, because I was puking every 10 minutes. We made it there in time to set up our stuff and play — we had to set up our gear in front of the audience. This was at a time where my career was really starting to take off, and I saw that as an opportunity to draw a line in the sand.
How so?
I think it’s about being conscious of my surroundings, being aware of the vibe that people are giving, and also being aware of the vibe that I’m putting off. I don’t want to be a drunk asshole when some fan comes up to me and says, “Hey man I really enjoyed the show.” I want to be there. I want to be able to say, “Thank you, man. Thank you for coming. I fucking appreciate it.” I just came off four gigs back-to-back. We played Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Seattle; and then somewhere in Montana. And right now I’m on my way to Salt Lake City. I can’t do that if I’m drinking. It’s all I can do to take care of myself. There’s no time for that shit.
You won Breakthrough Artist of the Pandemic from Pollstar —probably the first time anybody was awarded something like that. What motivated you to try new things when you lost your outlet on stage? Was there anything that struck you as a special moment even remotely connecting with your fans?
I’ve been doing this since I was 19 and I went on my first tour across the country. It’s all I’ve really known, just keeping this going. I’ve been “striking while the iron’s hot” for 10 years. [Laughs] So when all of a sudden I don’t have anything to do, it’s like, “Well shit. We need to keep doing something to engage the fans. We can’t just stop.” We started doing little streams at my house, and then that moved to doing a streaming tour around venues and stuff, and then eventually the whole Capitol Theater run, which was six nights, including this whole experiment where we tried to interact with our fans through telekinesis. That was really special. Even though there wasn’t anybody there, it felt like we were really connected with the audience.
You are out there day in and day out, and I’ve also seen you talk candidly about having anxiety and nerves before going on stage. Is there anything in particular that you do to manage that?
I mean, it’s been a journey. I hit the road when I was 19, playing 200 gigs a year, and for a while there, I was invincible, untouchable. I thought I could drive the van, sell the merch, book the hotels, settle up at the end of the night, write the songs, perform the shows, do everything. It was all on my shoulders. But I hit a wall where all of a sudden, instead of being confident, strong, and untouchable, I was fragile and scared of the world. Anxiety really fucked me up. I started having these crippling panic attacks where my whole body would go into convulsions.
I’m not trying to be a tough guy. I’m trying to be an honest guy. It’s uncomfortable for me to pretend like I’m feeling any way that I’m not, so if I’m angry, sad, anxious, mad? You’re going to know it because I don’t want to hide that shit. I’ve been going to therapy ever since 2019 and it’s helped me a bunch. I had a lot of trauma from my childhood that I had to sort out so I could keep moving forward and stop looking back. That’s what Renewal is all about.
Simple and strong, this live performance of “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” encapsulates so much of what we love about bluegrass. A style-defining voice and top-shelf front man, Del McCoury sings tenor and strums his signature rhythm guitar on the tune as Billy Strings leads from behind a mandolin — a lesser-known instrument for the fiery flatpicker whose name and music have become synonymous with modern bluegrass.
A timeless bluegrass standard, McCoury and Strings’ fresh take on “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” is reverent and quietly respectful of the music’s traditions. The breaks and fills are baked into the sound of bluegrass while the forward, bright vocal tones of the two friends could be the textbook definition of traditional harmonies. Some might say that McCoury and Strings could hardly be any more different as artists, but their mutual respect and appreciation is evident in this figurative, bluegrass passing of the baton. Don’t miss their in-studio performance of “Midnight on the Stormy Deep.”
Billy Strings takes things up a notch for Renewal, a long-awaited collection of original songs produced by Jonathan Wilson. But is it bluegrass? Or is it rock ‘n’ roll? Perhaps more on the psychedelic side? Truly there’s no right (or wrong) answer to these questions. As Strings himself puts it, “I’ve learned, you’ve just got to let the song do its thing. So that’s what I try to do — write songs and let them come out however they do.”
Billy Strings is no stranger to the festival circuit, bluegrass or otherwise. His career trajectory over the last few years has netted him international acclaim, a handful of IBMA Awards — including Entertainer of the Year at this year’s IBMA Awards show — and even a Grammy for his 2019 album, Home. A Michigan native who now lives in Nashville, Strings says, “I called my last record Home, and then a few months later that’s where we all got stuck. Right now, we’re heading back into opening back up, and doing some more touring with real concerts and real shows. Hopefully we can renew everything. I think it’s an interesting word. It reminds me of how every morning is a renewed day and another chance.”
With Renewal, Strings seizes upon the opportunity to surprise his listeners and to expand his own musical horizons. By winning the Grammy, he discovered a newfound confidence to consider every creative path that presented itself. Because he’s bringing in his touring bandmates Billy Failing (banjo, vocals, piano), Royal Masat (bass, vocals), and Jarrod Walker (mandolin, vocals, guitar), as well as guests John Mailander (violin), Spencer Cullum Jr. (pedal steel) and Grant Millikem (synth), Renewal is far more than just a singer-songwriter record, even if it exposes his own mindset more than any of his material to date.
“I listen to this album now and it’s emotional,” he says. “I could sit there and tweak it forever, but there’s a point where it’s like building a house of cards. Yeah, I could add an extra tower on top, but it might collapse. I’ve always doubted myself, and I still do, but this album makes me think, ‘Hey, you’re doing all right, kid. You just need to keep going.’”
Read our exclusive two-part interview with Billy Strings here, and enjoy our BGS Essentials playlist below.
Artist:Jordan Tice Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “River Run” (Featuring Paul Kowert) Album:Yesteryears Release Date: October 1, 2021 Label: Padiddle Records
In Their Words: “‘River Run’ started with a little lick I had been carrying around in the key of D — a speedy little cascading thing that felt good to let roll off the fingers that I’d find myself playing in idle moments. I slowly built upon it while sitting around during lockdown and my dear friend, Paul Kowert, tied it all together with his wonderful bass part. To me, the song evokes the lightness and constancy of a swiftly moving river as it passes over rocks, rounds curves, and speeds and slows as its channel widens and narrows. Hope you experience the same sense of motion while listening and are able to glean a little bit of levity from it.” — Jordan Tice
Artist:The New Acoustic Collective Hometown: San Jose/San Francisco Bay Area Song: “Old Gray Coat” Featuring Wyatt Rice Album:Art of Acoustics Release Date: September 20, 2021
In Their Words: “Tony Rice’s ‘Old Gray Coat’ has a special place in The NAC’s repertoire. This specific project came about when artistic director of Bay Area nonprofit Music in Place, Aaron Lington, contacted us and wanted to include us in the list of amazing musicians featured in a remotely-filmed music video production during the COVID-19 pandemic. I began to give Aaron some suggestions on song ideas and he really enjoyed ‘Old Gray Coat’ by Tony Rice. I thought if The NAC was going to record ‘Old Gray Coat,’ I’d like to feature a special guest, Tony’s brother Wyatt Rice. To have the opportunity to collaborate closely with both our NAC members and Wyatt Rice as a special guest was a dream come true!
“The fun and challenging part of this project was that it was all distanced and used with a click track, which started with me tracking my rhythm guitar part. Afterwards, Wyatt recorded his parts and then The NAC featuring Alonso Sanchez (double bass), David Boyden (fiddle), and Nathaniel Grohmann (cello) layered their parts and solos from there. Overall, the creative partnership between The NAC and Wyatt Rice was particularly rewarding and we are all grateful to work with him along with Music in Place, a nonprofit with an amazing mission!” — Jason Keiser, The New Acoustic Collective
Artist:Cameron Knowler Hometown: Yuma, Arizona & Houston, Texas Song: “Done Gone” Album:Places of Consequence Release Date: July 16, 2021 Label: American Dreams
In Their Words: “‘Done Gone’ exists as a mission statement for the album: examining early fiddle music etymologically, rendering it meditatively, with a slow tempo and low tuning. In some ways, this is meant to problematize the history of flatpicked guitar, wherein guitarists learn fiddle tunes from other guitarists as opposed to fiddlers. This version borrows from a number of early fiddle sources while paying homage to my hero, Norman Blake, whose guitar playing is a broad synthesis of early country music, while pushing far beyond the scope of the genre’s canon. Recorded on a late ’30s plywood guitar, I hope the listener is directed toward the inconsistent and unwieldy qualities of the instrument, a factor that shapes the performance just as much as my sources. This track is in conversation with an Easter egg found on the record.” — Cameron Knowler
Photo credit: Laura Lee Blackburn
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