Tag: Flying Burrito Brothers

Marty Stuart: From Bluegrass to Psychedelia and Back

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Told that a song on his new album brings to mind The Doors, Marty Stuart is bemused, but open to the idea.

“Did it?” he responds during an interview. “That’s fine. If so, why not?”

“Nightriding,” from new album Altitude by Stuart and His Fabulous Superlatives, kicks off with droning guitars, then evolves to a riff somewhat like that of Jim Morrison’s “Roadhouse Blues”   

“Cadillac, sundown,” Stuart intones. “Think I’ll investigate this town.”

To be clear, most of the cuts on the Altitude are more evocative of The Byrds than The Doors. So, is Marty Stuart really a country music traditionalist, as many people perceive him? Yes. And also no.

“I’m totally fine with it,” Stuart says when asked if the country music purist reputation is OK with him. “It’s a self-appointed mission. But my comment would be that country music has broad shoulders.”

Dante Bonutto, who heads up Snakefarm Records, which is releasing Altitude, says that Stuart has earned the right to experiment. 

“Since he’s definitely someone who pretty much invented the wheel, he’s allowed to put different spokes on it when he wants to, I think,” Bonutto said. 

Stuart, who’s been a bluegrass prodigy, a mainstream country music star, and remains a prodigious collector of country music artifacts, was born in 1958, making him a child of the 1960s, with all that comes with it. 

“I still think of when The Byrds and Bob Dylan and all those guys came to Nashville to make their records in the late ‘60s,” he says. “That is like contemporary stuff to me. …That was the stuff that touched me when I was growing up, so it was just a part of country music to me.”

At a recent benefit concert for Northwest Mississippi Community College, Stuart’s base was definitely country — he and the group appropriated the whole history of the genre as their back catalogue, doing songs by Merle Haggard (“Brain Cloudy Blues”), Marty Robbins (“El Paso”), Waylon Jennings (“Just to Satisfy You”) and Stuart’s own hits from the early 1990s such as “The Whiskey Ain’t Workin.’” 

The casually virtuosic Fabulous Superlatives band (Kenny Vaughan on guitar, Chris Scruggs on bass and Harry Stinson on drums; all of them sing) wore matching glitter-flecked black suits, and Stuart’s performing style still owes a debt to his former boss and mentor Johnny Cash.

But that wasn’t all. During the hour-long set before a well-heeled audience dressed in tuxedoes and evening gowns, there was also a Woody Guthrie indictment of the rich, a mandatory gospel number, and a big helping of surf rock, obviously a favorite of Vaughan in particular.

“We hereby declare Senatobia, Mississippi, as the surf capital of the world,” Stuart announced before Vaughan launched into a Telecaster version of “House of the Rising Sun.” Also, “Wipeout” was played by Scruggs solo on the upright bass, with Stinson slapping out the drum solo on the cheeks of his face. 

“Well, it doesn’t really matter how people categorize us,” Stinson said. “If anybody’s interested in what you’re doing, then they listen a little bit deeper and find a much wider spectrum, in terms of the music. I think Marty is much more than just a traditional country artist. He came from that world and uses that as a place to plant himself, and then branches out in different directions.”

Possibly because the Altitude album hadn’t been released yet during the March 25 concert in Mississippi, that audience didn’t get a taste of its cosmic, sometimes psychedelic country music.

The album’s beginnings go back to 2018, when Stuart, Vaughan, Stinson, and Scruggs toured with Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the pioneering country rock album Sweetheart of the Rodeo by The Byrds. McGuinn and Hillman were original members, along with the late Gene Clark, David Crosby, and Michael Clarke. 

“That was Roger McGuinn’s idea,” Hillman recalled. “Roger had done some dates with Marty; he knew him really well. …He knew the Superlatives would be right on the money because he had done a couple of Byrds songs with them onstage.”

Hillman rates the Superlatives as “the best band probably in this country right now, if not the Western Hemisphere.”

“We had so much fun doing the Sweetheart of the Rodeo Tour,” said Hillman, who was also a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers and Desert Rose Band. “The arrangements were the same as we did on the album in 1968,” he said. “We played the songs better, but we didn’t change anything. It was a joy to go back out and do those songs, especially with the Superlatives.”

Stinson says the tour with The Byrds was “a joyous experience.”

“I got to play with some of my heroes,” he said. “I grew up on those records and so to get to play that music, especially the Sweetheart record, which was kind of groundbreaking. I got to go back through it and really dissect it, and then put it on stage. It was surreal for me.”

The Sweetheart of the Rodeo Tour, coming around the same time Stuart and the Superlatives were opening for Chris Stapleton and the Steve Miller Band, had a profound effect on Stuart’s songwriting. 

“It got me in the mood to write songs with all the sounds that were left hanging around in my head,” Stuart said. “We were hot on those ideas, and I just carried the inspiration in with me.”

Like a lot of albums released in the past year, Altitude was recorded while COVID-19 was at its height. 

“We rehearsed,” Stuart said. “Most of the producing of this record was done in dressing rooms and at soundcheck and trying songs out there in shows before we ever went to the studio.” The original plan to record was ruined by the coronavirus. 

“We were hot, we were ready to go to Capitol Studios in Hollywood (California), and make a record,” Stuart said.  “Well the pandemic crashed and Capitol Studios shut down, so we found East Iris Studios (in Nashville). We put on our masks and stood 6 feet apart and soldiered on.”

“I’m glad everybody agreed to do that, because I think this record would not have sounded like it does if we would have had to wait several months and relearn it.”

The album’s Byrd-like sound, complete with the jangling guitars that are McGuinn’s trademark, has Hillman’s endorsement.

“What they’ve done is not a tribute to The Byrds,” Hillman said. “It just has a few little nice, ever-so-tasty hints of what we did.”

Hillman thinks the driving “Country Star,” which also owes a debt to Chuck Berry, has the feel of Byrd’s songs such as “So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star.”

“There’s a lot of influence there — not overtly, but it just is there. Marty doesn’t stray far from the well, meaning the bluegrass well. I never did either.”

Stuart’s ability on mandolin shouldn’t be overlooked, Hillman said. “Marty is an unbelievably gifted musician,” he said. “I love Ricky Skaggs’ playing and Ronnie McCoury,” he added. “But I told Marty when we were on the road, ‘You got that machine gun hand.’ He says, ‘Yeah, that’s Everett Lilly.’”

Lilly (1924-2012), played mandolin and sang tenor with the Lilly Brothers and Don Stover. He also spent a couple years with Flatt and Scruggs.

“(Lilly) had that cool right hand and when he took a break on ‘Earl’s Breakdown,’ when he played with Flatt and Scruggs, it was great,” Hillman said.  Factor in Vaughan on guitar in the Superlatives, and “you can’t get any better,” Hillman says. “But it’s two different approaches to music.

“Marty really grasped ahold of the pulled string stylings of Clarence White (who played with The Byrds and Kentucky Colonels before his 1973 death)”, and then Kenny “is so good, all over the place.” 

“He doesn’t overblow; he plays just what is needed,” Hillman said of Vaughan.

While Stuart released his last album, Way Out West, on his own Superlatone Records, he’s partnered with Snakefarm, a subsidiary of Universal Music Group, for Altitude.

Bonutto, a journalist and record company executive, heads up the roots-rock focused Snakefarm and its sister label Spinefarm Records, which specializes in heavy metal. In addition to Stuart, Snakefarm has acclaimed Southern rocker Marcus King on its roster. 

“(Stuart is) obviously an artist I’ve always been aware of, because I love country music and I’m aware of its legacy,” Bonutto said. “The first time I saw him was when he played the Country to Country (music festival) in London, which is a big annual country music event. I thought his personality was fantastic and his playing is obviously unbelievably good.”

Bonutto wrangled a quick meeting with Stuart at the festival, but had to wait a while before Stuart and his management were ready to sign a new record contract.

“I’m trying to build the Snakefarm label into a global entity [in Americana music],” he said. “The best way you can build anything is to attach yourself to people who are legendary and iconic. Hopefully you do an amazing job for them and they speak well of you and they become part of the fabric of what you do.”

Bonutto noted that Stuart, who is also a photographer and working on a facility to display his country music artifacts, is not “a one-dimensional character.”

“He’s a man with a fantastic vision,” Bonutto said. “I think that comes across in the other things.”

Stuart is a leading collector of country music memorabilia, and he’s working on a $30 million museum to display it in his hometown of Philadelphia, Mississippi. A 500-seat theater is already open, and 50,000-square-feet of exhibit space for 20,000 artifacts will be the second phase. An education center is planned after that. 

“I was a fan, going back to those country or gospel groups or bluegrass groups who come through my hometown when I was a kid,” Stuart said. “I’d always buy a record and ask for an autograph or ask one of the pickers if I could grab a pick.”

In the 1980s, he observed that “old timers, the pioneers, the people who had raised me, were being disregarded.”

“Their treasures, their personal effects, their guitars and costumes, were winding up in junk stores around Nashville,” he said. “I found Patsy Cline’s makeup kit for 75 bucks in a junk store on Eighth Avenue in Nashville. I couldn’t believe it.”

Stuart met Isaac Tigrett of Hard Rock Café in London, and he showed Stuart how that restaurant chain was investing in and exhibiting rock music memorabilia.

“Even though it was a hamburger joint, I understood the importance of them collecting and curating stuff from The Beatles and the Stones and The Who. … Beyond the Country Music Hall of Fame, I didn’t see anybody doing it, so it just became a self-appointed mission to start rescuing a lot of those things that were winding up in junk stores.”

Stuart’s collection includes treasures such as the handwritten lyrics of “I Saw the Light” and “Cold, Cold Heart” by Hank Williams Sr., the boots Patsy Cline was wearing during her 1963 fatal plane crash and Cash’s first all-black performance outfit.

Speaking of country music history, Stuart began his career in bluegrass backing up Lester Flatt before joining Cash’s band. He’d like to return to those roots and record a bluegrass album.

“I need to, I need to,” he said. “But it needs to be authentic. It needs to be the real deal, blood-curdling bluegrass.”

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen 

16 Summer Reads: New Books by Brandi Carlile, Mary Gauthier, and More

Posted on by Editor

My summer essentials list is pretty simple: A ball cap and sunscreen for a hike, driving directions and a trail map for a day trip, and more than a few reading options for the couch that’s inevitably waiting for me at the end of a long hot summer day. Gathering together all the new memoirs and taking some tips from my BGS colleagues, here are 16 top tomes to get us all — even the kids — through this sweltering season of 2021.

Rob Bowman, The Last Soul Company: The Malaco Records Story

Generous in its photography and its scope, this overview of Malaco Records explains how a pioneering independent label founded in 1962 brought a wealth of African American music to the world via artists like Mississippi Fred McDowell, Bobby Blue Bland, Z.Z. Hill, Johnnie Taylor, Little Milton, and James Cleveland.

Brandi Carlile, Broken Horses

This memoir satisfies the longtime fans who will learn what inspired the songs from her early albums, yet it’s also a candid and conversational statement about what it’s like to be a queer woman in roots music today. The cast of characters is charming, too, particularly her exchanges with Elton John and Joni Mitchell.

Brent Cobb, Little Stuff

Country tunesmith Brent Cobb has said he writes every album with his kids in mind, so transforming the song “Little Stuff” into a children’s book came naturally. But how many children’s books get their own music video? Whether you read it or watch it, the Georgia musician’s homespun wisdom shines through.

Robert Owen Gardner, The Portable Community: Place and Displacement in Bluegrass Festival Life

This scholarly look at bluegrass festival culture in the American West comes from sociology professor Robert Owen Gardner. It’s also an examination of how arts and music grapple with social and environmental change. A digital version of the academic textbook allows more room in the backpack for sunscreen and guitar strings.

Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting

More of a memoir than an instruction manual, Mary Gauthier tells the stories behind original songs like “Mercy Now” while leaving the mystical and magical aura of writing them intact. By sharing her intimate conversations and co-writing experiences, she offers both a creative and compassionate point of view.

Howard Grimes with Preston Lauterbach, Timekeeper

Known as Bulldog, Memphis drummer Howard Grimes has propelled R&B classics like Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together” and Ann Peebles’ “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” In this autobiography, he also explains how he wound up homeless for a time and how he’s been guided by the Bible. Fans of Stax and Hi Records won’t want to miss this one.

Chris Hillman, Time Between: My Life as a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond

You can’t tell the story of country rock without Chris Hillman. Time Between entered its second printing earlier this year, proving there’s still a curiosity about near-mythical bands like The Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Start at page one and turn, turn, turn to the get the whole story from this prolific Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.

Johnnyswim, Home Sweet Road: Finding Love, Making Music & Building a Life One City at a Time.

The ever-endearing Johnnyswim found an even larger following when Chip and Joanna Gaines chose the duo’s anthem “Home” as the theme to Fixer Upper. Now, Amanda Sudano-Ramirez and Abner Ramirez give fans a deep dive into their own family life with Home Sweet Road, their debut book brimming with photos, recipes, stories, and poetry.

Kimberly Mack, Fictional Blues: Narrative Self-Invention from Bessie Smith to Jack White

The story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the devil isn’t the only larger-than-life narrative in blues music. A scholar of African American literature and American popular music at The University of Toledo, Mack writes about how similar self-made personas resist racial, social, economic and gendered oppression.

Richard Marx, Stories to Tell: A Memoir

A late ’80s pop star whose catalog still holds up, Marx writes about his life and career, including a few interactions with era-defining figures like Olivia Newton-John and Kenny Rogers. He also gives his candid perspective of what the music industry is really like. By the way, can’t you totally hear Alison Krauss covering “Right Here Waiting“?

Willie Nelson with Turk Pipkin, Willie Nelson’s Letters to America

At 88 years old, Willie Nelson is a living legend with a modern point of view. Yet, rather than ranting on social media, he’s channeled his thoughts into a series of letters, even writing one to Texas and another to marijuana. With his classic lyrics reprinted alongside these letters, the book captures his conversational charisma.

Sinéad O’Connor, Rememberings

This Irish artist made an iconic music video by tearfully emoting into the lens, but there is much more to her story than “Nothing Compares 2U” and her infamous appearance on SNL. As The Guardian notes, “O’Connor also doesn’t need a ghost writer because she has, throughout all of it, rarely been at a loss for what to say.”

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovlich, Honey & Co: Chasing Smoke: Cooking Over Fire Around the Levant

In this cookbook and travelogue, the founders of London restaurant Honey & Co. are seeking out savory smoke flavors in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, Turkey, and Greece. And it’s not just grilled meat! Fruits, vegetables, breads and “Unmissables” are make their way into these pages, too. Find out more about the authors on BGS’s The Shift List.

Kim Ruehl, A Singing Army: Zilphia Horton and the Highlander Folk School

An activist and song collector, Zilphia Horton finally gets her due. Ruehl (also a BGS contributor) explains how Horton adapted folk music and hymns for empowerment and social causes, with “We Shall Overcome” as just one example. Considering the school’s ties to civil rights, this piece of Tennessee history merits the attention.

Bobby Rush with Herb Powell, I Ain’t Studdin’ Ya: My American Blues Story

A favorite on the blues scene since the 1950s, Bobby Rush remains a beloved figure in the genre, winning his second Grammy for Best Traditional Blues Album earlier this year. A well-traveled entertainer at age 87, this memoir follows his remarkable life journey from Louisiana to Arkansas, on to Chicago and ultimately the Blues Hall of Fame.

Paul Simon, The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy): A Children’s Picture Book

If you gotta make the morning last with little ones around, try this imaginative picture book. With song lyrics from the 1966 Simon & Garfunkel classic and vivid illustrations by Keith Henry Brown, the 24-page book captures the small details of city life by following a bunny on a bicycle — how groovy is that?

 

New Grass Revival: Four Members Look Back on Their ’80s Albums (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

A beloved band that was perhaps ahead of its time, New Grass Revival will be inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame during the IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards on October 1. In the second half of our oral history with New Grass Revival, we hear from band members Sam Bush, John Cowan, Béla Fleck and Pat Flynn. Read the first half of the interview, which is part of our celebration of the 75th anniversary of bluegrass.

In 1981, founding members Courtney Johnson (who died in 1996) and Curtis Burch left the band after a long tour with rock ‘n’ roll star Leon Russell. As a result, New Grass Revival began its newest incarnation with Béla Fleck and Pat Flynn.

Sam Bush: Courtney and Curtis were older than me and John and they were just burned out. We had worked harder on the road with Leon than we’d ever worked in our lives.

Pat Flynn: New Grass Revival had established a following on the circuit in the late ’70s, but Leon Russell had sucked them into his orbit and taken them away from the bluegrass world. So by the time that band [lineup] broke up, they really had to start over.

SB: I had met Béla in a band he played in called Tasty Licks, and Béla had hired me as the fiddler on his first album, Crossing the Tracks.

PF: Béla was a smart kid. He thought, “If I’m going to come out with a solo album and nobody knows who I am, why don’t I hire high-profile people to play on it?” That’s a smart move!

Béla Fleck: I liked the original band when I heard it, but I admit I was attracted to smoother and jazzier stuff at the time. I have matured a bit since then and now I am a huge fan of the early band, their bravery and iconoclastic spirit, and a poetic expression of their time and place. They were committed to the moment and improvising, and taking the music to a new place that resonated with a lot of folks who loved bluegrass, but it didn’t totally represent them.

SB: Pat and his friend Scott Myers had opened for New Grass Revival on the Colorado tours we did. We loved his guitar playing because it wasn’t like the bluegrass players. He was a rock electric guitar player that could do it on acoustic.

PF: I’d moved from Los Angeles to Aspen, Colorado, and got to know the band at Telluride. Sam had a hand in writing some songs, but they really didn’t have an in-house songwriter. I had always written songs for the bands I was in. And Béla brought a unique and original instrumental vision. So all of a sudden you had two new people that could supply original material.

SB: They were the two musicians who could bring the next step of another sound for us. I called Garth [Fundis, the band’s producer] and said, “You’ve got to come hear these new pickers we’ve got, this is something, this is really good.” I knew it was too hot for me to handle — I didn’t feel I was qualified to produce the four of us. We needed another ear, an outside opinion, because we had so many ideas between the four of us.

PF: On the Boulevard was the first album we released in the US, but we’d done a live album in France almost a full year prior. Technically Live in Toulouse was the first album we made as a new band.

JC: We’re playing like a well-oiled machine; it’s really a good record. It has one of Sam’s instrumentals on there called “Sapporo” that might be 11 minutes long!

SB: The idea of “Sapporo” started when the band went to Japan for the first time. It was my favorite city over there; it was also my favorite beer. A mandolin player over there taught me a five-note Japanese scale and that is a recurring riff you hear us play as we jam.

JC: The first year we were together with Béla and Pat, the energy and the love and everything was way up, confidence was high. And On the Boulevard is one of my favorites. There’s no drums, it’s just the four of us.

PF: It was very fresh. I remember the recording sessions at Jack’s Tracks studio in Nashville. We had a decent budget from Sugar Hill, enough to record comfortably and take our time. I experimented with different guitars and arrangements. We were able to bring the music into the magnifying glass of a studio and really look at it in depth.

JC: The dynamic of the band had changed so much, because Béla was already miles ahead of everybody in terms of his ability to play. He practiced all the time. In the old band, I was in charge of shoveling coal into the engine and Sam was flying around on top painting whatever picture he wanted to paint. Courtney and Curtis, they were kind of like myself, advanced support players. But now you’ve got two other players who can play at the same level of Sam. So we could take this train anywhere. We could get off the tracks.

PF: I had brought some songs with me to the band and I was very happy with “On the Boulevard.” I had written it prior to joining. It was pretty much autobiographical. I’d been living in Thousand Oaks, California, and there’s a boulevard that runs through the middle of the Valley, and as I watched it from the window it was like its own little world, a parade of passing people. It was one of the earliest things we worked out.

SB: My songwriting partner Steve Brines had died a sudden death of a heart ailment he didn’t know he had. So Steve was gone and I was still writing instrumentals, but I lost my enthusiasm for songwriting.

PF: I was especially happy with “One of These Trains,” the way the material came out, and the band took to it so naturally. I was encouraged that I was in the right place with the right people. I loved Sam’s instrumental “Indian Hills,” and John did a great blues number called “Just Is.” We were discovering each other’s powers and personalities as musicians and friends. I remember it very fondly. We were struggling for employment to connect with the old fans and that album was a big help — when it came out, we created a pretty big buzz.

SB: Toni Foglesong told her husband Jim, who was the president of Capitol Records Nashville, “I heard a band that makes a sound like nothing I’ve ever heard before.” So, Jim came to hear us and he said, “I want you guys to record. I don’t know how we’re going to sell you but I want you to be yourselves.”

Two studio albums followed: New Grass Revival in 1986, and Hold to a Dream in 1987.

SB: Every time new people joined, we encouraged them to bring their influences into the music. When Pat joined he was influenced by those Southern Californian songwriters like Jackson Browne, and the country-rock Telecaster picking he knew. One song where I specifically hear Pat’s southern rock influence is “In the Middle of the Night,” on the ’86 album.

PF: I was very involved in the country-rock sound like the Eagles and the Flying Burrito Brothers and the songs I wrote were well-fitted for a bluegrass approach. I didn’t have to make adjustments musically or lyrically, just in the area of arrangements. I had to make sure the songs I wrote had great solo spots for the instrumentalists and I had to fit the songs to whoever was singing, either John or Sam. So I started to instinctively shape my material where there was plenty of room for improvisational playing and also good range of vocals for those two.

BF: This band was full of guys with very different musical influences. If you didn’t want to be challenged, it was the wrong place for you. Some folks surround themselves with people that love all the same stuff they do, and that can work too. But in New Grass Revival, we were all into different stuff, which we brought to the band to see if we could get our favorite stuff included.

SB: Béla is a jazz player and when he came in his favorite musician was Chick Corea. I had his records, but they didn’t make so much sense to me until then.

BF: I think my interest in jazz gave me some cool tools to work with in a bluegrass context. I wrote a tune called “Metric Lips” [on Hold to a Dream], which was partly in jig time. I feel like that main melody had some Chick Corea influence. Sam was highly influenced by John McLaughlin and his great bands. One of them was Shakti, a collaboration with Indian musicians. This seemed to encourage his interest and ability in odd meters, which I also was quite fond of exploring. So if you look at “Metric Lips,” you have Irish music, Indian music, and fusion jazz represented, along with some raging bluegrass. It’s puzzling that it actually works, but in my opinion, it does.

PF: When you’re in a bluegrass band, it’s blend or die! You’re cramped inside a van together and you’re sleeping feet to nose. You’re in a very confined space together more than you are with your significant others back at home.

JC: We called our bus The Bread Truck. We’d bought it from a dry cleaning business. It wasn’t like the 36-footers I had in the Doobie Brothers; it was less than half of that, closer to a van.

PF: John slept half the time, I would be reading a book or writing a song, Sam would be listening to reggae or some weird eclectic thing, Béla was always fiddling with a new tune.

BF: For me it’s the intention and commitment to the ideas that make them work in this band. The same ideas might not work for a band that didn’t play so confidently. Of course we loved bluegrass and that was the common denominator. Each guy also played with a savage fervor or intensity, and perhaps that was another denominator.

PF: We could really charge each other up with the solos. We admired each other, and when somebody threw a flaming ball out there it would be a challenge. And in that exchange, gosh, we became so much better players. I remember listening back to tapes and thinking I lifted myself up and above myself. We all did.

BF: The new band with me and Pat was a somewhat cleaned-up version of the band. We still improvised and pushed hard, but we also were going for a supercharged, seamless tightness.

PF: The thing I remember that we developed between the first two albums was a hardcore consistency. We could turn it on and it would just come on full-bore despite whether or not there was a good sound system or the weather was bad or the crowd was sluggish. We could always count on each other to present a united front. There were no weak links. We just locked into that energy and never lost it.

BF: And we made singles for country radio, which is hard to imagine the early group doing.

SB: We knew we were going into a country market, but I think there’s a misconception that Capitol Records changed us, when in fact the change came from us. We were the ones that said, “We’ll try this song,” and maybe we wouldn’t have tried it in the past.

BF: We were still too out there for it to work, but we were trying to take the music closer into the mainstream, and that was bringing a lot of new people into the scene and showing them what bluegrass could produce.

PF: We would laugh about that in a sad way. The jocks would come to us and say, “I love your stuff, I listen to it at home,” and we’d say, “What about playing it on air?!” They’d say “Yeah, but it’s bluegrass….” We finally got “Callin’ Baton Rouge” into the top 40 which opened up a lot of shows and airplay for us. But we ended up disbanding before we could really bring that home.

SB: For our last album, Friday Night in America, Wendy Waldman became our producer and we really tried all kind of things on that. It’s hard for an athlete to know when to stop, but I really think our last record might be our best one.

PF: I saw a deepening musically. John’s vocals had got better and better, but he also doesn’t get the props for his bass playing. He was a terrific player — listen to his work on Friday Night in America, see how he connected the melodies, the tone he got and the way he tied together the four instruments. They would get noticed, but the glue was John.

SB: John and I had been together 15 years and we were burned out. We lived on the road and I was suffering responsibility overload. And we couldn’t possibly accommodate all that Béla was writing, the type of tunes he was writing. I physically couldn’t play them and neither could the rest of us! We all loved each other, but it was time for him to go on, he needed to express himself. Because at that point it’s not about making money, it’s about musical happiness and your satisfaction.

PF: We’d got together in 1981, and we played our last job as a band on New Year’s Eve, the last day of 1989. We were opening for the Grateful Dead at the Oakland Coliseum, 10,000 people inside and 5,000 outside. That night was particularly memorable — on the right side of the stage sitting nearest Béla was Bonnie Raitt, on the left side, near to me, was Jane Fonda — and I’d always thought what a shame we didn’t release that. Years later someone walked up to me and said, “Remember when you guys opened for the Dead?” I said yes. He said, “Have you got a copy of that set?” I said no. He said, “Do you want one?” A tape of our concert had leaked out among the Dead fans. I contacted a friend at Capitol Records and then that set was remastered and released on a two-CD set called Grass Roots, which has stuff you wouldn’t find on our records. It had its rough spots as a live tape, but you’ll hear that energy and visceral connection we had with each other on stage, you sure will.

(Editor’s note: Read part one of our New Grass Revival Bluegrass 75 feature.)

 

BGS Long Reads of the Week // May 1

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s gonna be… May! Welcome to a new month of long reads, where each week we look back into the BGS archives for some of our favorite content from across the years. If you haven’t yet, follow our #longreadoftheday series on social media [on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram] and as always, we’ll put all of our picks together right here at the end of each week.

Our long reads this week are southern rock and blues, bluegrass and rock and roll, Americana and country, and a dash of… hard-to-put-a-finger-on-it, too. Read on:

Marcus King: A “Young Man’s Dream” Come to Life

A cover story from earlier this year, our conversation with 23-year-old singer/songwriter/guitarist Marcus King digs deep into the creative processes that shaped his debut album, El Dorado — his first project outside of his critically acclaimed group, The Marcus King Band. With Dan Auerbach producing and an absolutely stacked roster of studio musicians, the project came together “on the fly,” yes, but that turned out to be a pretty natural pace. [Read the entire interview]

Canon Fodder: The Flying Burrito Brothers, The Gilded Palace of Sin

Given the canonization of Gram Parsons over the last few decades, as well as the gradual breakdown of genres and styles over time, it’s easy to forget just how contrarian it would have been for a West Coast rock band to embrace country and bluegrass. But that’s exactly what the Flying Burrito Brothers did. This edition of Canon Fodder explores their first album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, which despite its near-flop at the time of its release is perhaps their most important work. [Read more]

Linda Ronstadt Talks Bluegrass

One of the most important vocalists/artists in rock and roll and popular music over the last century, Linda Ronstadt also knows a thing or two about bluegrass — as evidenced in this 1996 interview from Bluegrass Unlimited magazine. We pulled this fascinating article out of the BU archives to commemorate the release of the documentary film, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice last year. It’s a two-parter, so we spread it out over a couple of days this week!
[Read part one] [Read part two]

John Moreland Figures out How to Love Music Again

Turns out there are drawbacks to any career – even when it’s your dream job – and you can confirm that with dark-folk and Americana favorite, John Moreland. The Oklahoman singer/songwriter released his latest album, LP5, earlier this year. The project surprised some listeners by exploring new sonic territory for Moreland — new territory that revived the spark that got Moreland into writing to begin with. [Read our conversation]