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Mason Via Returned to Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to Record His New Self-Titled Album

After a three-year run with revered bluegrass troupe Old Crow Medicine Show, Mason Via is breaking off on his own and returning to his roots on his new self-titled, 10-song album.

Out April 25 via Mountain Fever Records, the record finds Via toeing the line between the worlds of old-time and progressive bluegrass with hints of jamgrass mixed in, no doubt an homage to his father, revered picker David Via. Via initially presented nearly 100 songs for consideration to producer Aaron Ramsey – among them a bevy of solo cuts, along with co-writes from the likes of Boy Named Banjo’s Barton Davies, and Christian Ward, the newly minted fiddler for the Del McCoury Band and the Travelin’ McCourys – before whittling the material down to a fraction of that to actually record.

The resulting songs serve as a continuation of what fans heard from Via with Old Crow, particularly the band’s 2023 album Jubilee, where he wrote or co-wrote seven of the 12 tracks – including “Allegheny Lullaby,” “I Want It Now,” and “Belle Meade Cockfight.” According to Via, many of these new songs were even written with Old Crow in mind before he made the decision to step away and release them under his own name.

“This is an album full of stuff that, for the most part, I wanted to do while I was in Old Crow but never got around to,” Via tells BGS. “That being said, I was excited to get to put them on my album because these tunes are a deep dive into who I am as a songwriter from my time spent living in Nashville.”

Ahead of the album’s release and amid a run of shows through the Midwest and Southeast with Logan Ledger, Via spoke with BGS by phone about his path to Old Crow Medicine show, how a Virginia festival changed his entire career trajectory, how he came to love co-writing after moving to Nashville, and more.

You were joined by a trio of bluegrass royalty – Rhonda Vincent, Junior Sisk, and Ronnie Bowman – on the songs “Oh Lordy Me” and “Mountain Lullaby.” What did it mean to you having them join you on those songs?

Mason Via: It was very validating, because I’ve always felt that I circled around bluegrass and navigated on the outskirts or fringe of it, so to have those torchbearers of the genre sign off on this meant a lot. I didn’t know Rhonda as well, but Junior and Ronnie are old family friends. I hate when artists have other people as features, but they’re not really featured – it defeats the purpose of it all. Because of that I really wanted to go out of the way to showcase everyone. For instance, on “Oh Lordy Me” we all take turns singing lead on verses before coming together for the chorus [with Bowman and Sisk], whereas “Mountain Lullaby” is trio harmonies the whole way through [with Bowman and Vincent].

You mentioned Junior and Ronnie being old family friends. Is that a connection through your father, who was a bluegrass picker himself?

It is, they all go way back. They used to have big pickin’ parties every Tuesday at dad’s house in Dry Pond, Virginia, that they called The Blue Room. They’d pick all day and night, with the last person left awake taking home the coveted Bluegrass Buddy Belt, a WWE-style belt, for bragging rights.

In addition to growing up around them, Ronnie also cut a couple of my dad’s songs and Junior was often around Galax and the fiddlers conventions I grew up going to, which the song “Oh Lordy Me” is sort of an homage to.

Speaking of home, you returned to Floyd, Virginia, to record this new album. After spending time in Nashville in recent years, what made you want to go back there?

Floyd is about an hour from where I grew up. I remember going to the Floyd Country Store when I was younger and playing up there and it being like a little mountain getaway, which is exactly what going back to the area to record felt like. It was a bit more secluded than when I recorded in Nashville and elsewhere previously, which forced all of us – myself, producer Aaron Ramsey and all the players – to be in it all the way from start to finish.

However, people will soon be able to hear those different approaches when I release alternate versions of a few of the songs on this album that I recorded in Nashville before this bluegrass record deal happened. Two of them, “Falling” and “Melting the Sun,” are psychedelic indie rock ‘n’ roll – think War On Drugs meets the Foo Fighters – whereas “Hey Don’t Go” is one I released alongside my departure from Old Crow with pedal steel, drums, keys, and electric guitar. We also recorded a version of “Wide Open” with similar arrangements in the same session that we’ll be releasing soon as well.

Sounds like we have a lot to look forward to!

Sticking on the topic of Floyd, I remember seeing you for the first time at FloydFest in 2019 with your band, Hot Trail Mix, which finished runner-up at the gathering’s On-The-Rise band competition that year. What has that moment – and the festival in general – meant to your music career and trajectory?

I’d just gotten out of college and was working as a substitute teacher at a military academy when the opportunity to perform in the FloydFest competition came about. I grew up going to the festival, so finishing runner-up and getting invited back to play the main stage was a moment where I started to realize I should take this more seriously. Since the next year was 2020 that show never happened, so my next time back at FloydFest was actually in 2021 when I played the main stage on Saturday night with Old Crow.

So the festival played a role in you linking up with Old Crow then. How did that opportunity come about?

Ashby Frank, a great bluegrass musician, suggested me to Donica Elliott, who worked with the band at the time, who then passed my information onto Ketch [Secor]. Eventually I got a call from him asking to come audition, so a couple weeks later I drove out there for a casual jam session where we played a bunch of old-time pickin’ tunes from fiddlers conventions with a couple of Old Crow’s songs sprinkled in. I came back and did the same thing the next day followed by [going to] Ketch’s house the day after to help move some furniture, which led to us writing the song “I Want It Now” [from Old Crow’s 2023 album, Jubilee]. I wound up getting the gig and next thing I know we’re recording an album. Even my first gig with them was the Grand Ole Opry – I was thrown into the fire, but loved every minute of it!

I had a great run with Old Crow, but the big reason for leaving the band was to pursue this album, because unfortunately you can’t do both. It feels a little like starting over, but I couldn’t be happier with where I am now. And who knows, 10 years from now I could be back in the band – the world is very cyclical like that. I saw Chance McCoy is back with them and they’ve been touring with Willie [Watson] again, which got me thinking about how the band is an ever-changing cast. We left on pretty amicable terms, so I think there’s definitely room for potential collaboration or a reunion in the future.

During your three-year run with Old Crow, what’s the biggest piece of music-related advice you learned from them?

I like to tell people that I think of my time with Old Crow as getting a Master’s degree in music. They taught me that you don’t need to play the craziest solo in the world or sing the wildest riff, you just need to be distinctly, uniquely you. I’ve been trying to lean into that more in my new material including this new album, which I think is some of my most personal material yet.

I know one thing you started doing a lot more with Old Crow that’s a regular part of your repertoire now is co-writing. What’s it been like opening yourself up to more of those opportunities lately?

When I first moved to Nashville, I’d never really co-written before, but when you get here you realize really quickly that that’s a huge part of the community there, similar to jamming with your buddies. It’s a great way to connect with friends and something I really enjoy because you don’t always get to do something like that on such a deep level. I’m also a very ADD type of person so I love the aspect of being intentional with your time and what you hope to create within it like that.

One of the people you co-wrote for this record with was Zach John King, who you first met in 2021 during your stint on American Idol. Tell me a little about your partnership with him that led to your songs “Wide Open” and “Fireball.”

We were set up to have a conversation together on camera for the show. That’s how we were first introduced and we’ve since gone on to become buddies long after Idol. When I got the Old Crow gig he reached out and said he was thinking of moving to Nashville and if he could stop by to ask me some questions about my journey and the process of going from American Idol to what I’m doing now. I was a mentor there for a second, but now it’s the other way around since he just signed a deal with Sony Music Nashville [in January]. He’s already got some songs doing well in the pop country world and is really about to take off. Connections like the one with Zach are reminders of just how small the music industry really is.

What do you hope people take away from listening to this collection of songs?

Every song is its own kaleidoscopic spectrum of emotions that I’ve felt in one way or another. I hope you can laugh and cry and dance and feel every emotion the whole way through, which I think is a trademark of a good album or show. Pairing those emotions with the feeling of what it was like for me growing up in the Blue Ridge Mountains with all my influences, from rock and roll to country or the string band music that was always present during my raising, was a special experience and something I hope folks enjoy listening to over and over again.

What has music, specifically the process of bringing this new album to life, taught you about yourself?

I love how [music] takes you places, it makes you feel like an astronaut or something. You get to travel to different worlds, get outside yourself and figure out who you are. Each song is like its own barn quilt that showcases the different patchwork that holds a place in my heart.

Photo Credit: Ashli Linkous

With ‘Do You Recall’ Dori Freeman Demonstrates Appalachia is Not a Monolith

One of the most stunning and enjoyable albums of 2023 was released in mid-November by Galax, Virginia-based singer-songwriter Dori Freeman. Entitled, Do You Recall, it’s a vibrant and energetic collection of eleven original songs that also feel cozy and down home, like a back porch jam or guitar pull – there’s a buzz in the air, but no overhanging urgency. It’s pure fun, but it’s also earnest and, at times, devastating.

That homey sense, pervasive and enveloping on Do You Recall, is thanks in no small part to Freeman and producer, her husband, drummer Nicholas Falk, having tracked the entire album in their backyard studio. But these tracks don’t feel antiquated or pastoral, and they certainly do not evoke a revisionist, white-washed, or sanitized rural ideal. There’s no preaching or authenticity signaling undergirding these songs, they’re simply genuine representations of Freeman and Falk intentionally following or guiding each song to its best, natural endpoint.

Freeman has decidedly re-centered her career and her music making away from so-called Music Cities – like Nashville and New York City – over the course of her five critically-acclaimed albums. She clearly feels no need to peacock or to raise a middle finger to the Music Industry, or play to “outlaw” narratives in country. Rather, she and her creative community have deliberately shifted the focal point of her songs and albums away from industry currencies and social or political structures bit by bit, click by click. As a result, her music truly shines – and certainly reaches audiences that see and appreciate that deliberation. Each of her prior albums are testaments to this growth and action, but Do You Recall may be Freeman’s best to date.

Our Cover Story conversation began discussing this shift away from music industry models and naturally and languidly, as the album, touched on agency, nuance and complication in Appalachia, solidarity and class consciousness, and so much more.

BGS: I wanted to start by asking you about how your priorities maybe have shifted in relation to the music industry? I sense that there’s this insulation between you and the capital M, capital I, “music industry,” whatever that means, right? It feels like you care less about what matters to the industry and more about what matters to you. And that feels so tangible in the music. Do you agree or disagree with that?

Dori Freeman: I do agree with that. I think I kind of always have written music from a perspective of not really caring – I never approach music through the lens of what would please a record label or what is going to be a song that people want to play on the radio or anything like that.

But I do think that perspective has only gotten stronger as I’ve gotten older. The longer I’ve written music, [the more] I write music that means something to me and that I hope will resonate with other people, because I find that the music that I’m drawn to is written in that same way. It’s music that is honest in the best way possible.

That honesty you’re talking about feels so homey, so grounded in your everyday. I think that’s part of what makes it feel like you’re not just giving a middle finger to the industry. It’s more that you’re re-centering what you do away from the industry record by record.

I would agree with that. It’s not that music isn’t a big part of my life – I mean, it obviously is, it’s the career that I’ve chosen – but as far as day to day goes, the majority of my life is spent living in a small town and raising a young daughter. That’s [why] I write a lot about both of those things. I don’t necessarily think those are really topics that record labels are begging to have more songs about, but that’s just what my life is and so those are the things that I write and sing about.

Can you talk a little bit about where you live? You live in Galax proper, yes?

Yeah, I live in Galax proper. I’m actually the last house on the street that I live on that’s technically still in Galax. The population in Galax is around 10,000, so it’s not very big. I’ve moved around a little bit in my life, but the majority of my life I’ve spent here in Southwest Virginia. And Galax in particular is a town that’s known for music. It’s like the self-proclaimed old-time music capital of the world, and we have a Fiddler’s Convention every year that’s one of the oldest. It’s known for music.

I mean, even the way that we – my husband and I – made this album [was] literally in our backyard. He built a timber-frame studio during the pandemic, so we recorded it here too, and at a much slower pace than I’ve ever had the privilege of making a record. In the past I’ve always had a strict timeframe, we have these four or five days and we have to have everything recorded in that amount of time. This time, it was just much more relaxed, and we could go out to the studio and work on one song for a couple days and then do another one the next week. It was just really refreshing to be able to approach it that way, compared to the way I’ve done it in the past. There are things that are really fun about recording in both of those ways. The pressure can be good, too, but it was nice to have a change of pace.

It may just be the time of year where all I want to do is cook something simmering on the stove all day long, but “Soup Beans Milk and Bread” — there’s so much in it that I, and I’m sure other listeners, can relate to. Especially the line, “You can’t lose something you don’t have.” That line bitch-slapped me, for real. In the best way. Can you talk about writing that one and where that line and that song came from for you?

I always find it a little difficult to articulate when I’m talking about Appalachia, just because I find it easier to write about it in song form, but I will do my best to try to talk about that.

It’s such a nuanced issue. I wrote that one – and then there’s another song on the record that’s also about growing up in Appalachia – and about the different layers of that and the different experiences you have here. The good and the more complicated.

In particular, the line, “You can’t lose something you don’t have.” I wouldn’t say I grew up poor, but I grew up not necessarily having a ton of stuff. But, in a lot of ways, I feel like I had a really happy childhood. Part of that line [is positive]. I mean, you can take it in a negative or more sad way, but it’s also, “Well, you can’t be unhappy about something that you didn’t ever have.”

If you grew up with less, a lot of times you just make the most of that and it ends up being better for you in a lot of ways. That line is definitely meant to be a double-edged sword. This area has been so taken advantage of by the government and by big business that it’s clear, yeah, you can’t lose something you never had, because we were never allowed to have it in the first place.

Another one that was my a favorite on the record is “Why Do I Do This to Myself.” I feel like I asked myself that question all the time!

It’s just such a universal feeling, I think. We all do these things to ourselves, certain things are good for you, certain thought patterns aren’t good for you – and you just can’t help it.

What you were hoping to accomplish musically and sonically with that one? Because it reminds me of classic Patty Loveless or like Terri Clark, very trad ‘80s or ‘90s country. Can you talk a little bit about what you were trying to get out of the production style on that?

Well, ‘90s country was definitely what we were going for with that one. I’m glad that came across with that track. I’ve got to give Nick a lot of credit for the production on a lot of these songs and for just picking out the musicians and for directing and deciding what the vibe would be for a lot of these songs. Our guitar player, Adam Agati, Nick hired him and they both came up with that real country lick, they kind of led the charge on that one.

You’re really playing with agency, I feel like it’s such a character in these songs – what are you choosing for yourself, what is being chosen for you, what’s being handed down to you, and how the speaker in your songs is kind of dancing around these things and talking about them.

I don’t know if I consciously approached it in that way, but I do think that it’s interesting – ‘cause you’re not the first person to bring that up. Someone else that I did an interview with said they felt the songs sort of felt like short stories that were part of the same book. After the fact, sometimes it’s like that. Sometimes you just write the batch of songs and then afterwards it becomes clear.

So I do see that in hindsight, but I don’t know necessarily if I was looking at it that way when I was writing songs, because I just write songs so individually. I’m not thinking of a theme when I approach writing songs for an album. It’s more just work on the songs individually and then hopefully they sort of come together in some sort of cohesive way.

Another thing, which I actually think has been a blessing in disguise, is that I’ve only had one album on an actual label. The subsequent four I’ve self-produced and put out on my own little label at home. I think that’s actually ended up being a good thing, because it has just left me without a lot of boundaries or feeling boxed in. I feel like I’ve had a lot more freedom to write about the things that I wanted to. It may be a smaller audience that I’m reaching and it may be a slower growth and a slower track, but actually, in the long run, I’m glad that I have done it the way that I have.

There are a couple more songs I wanted to ask you about. One is “Movie Screen.” It’s the one that feels most bluegrassy to me in some ways, and it feels very “mountain music,” which is always a nebulous term to me. “Movie Screen” is a story song, and it feels very specific, but it also feels so general and zoomed out and aspirational. It kind of reminds me of Dolly [Parton] and the way that she’d write songs about wanting to be the girl in the movie or on the radio or on stage.

[Laughs] Thank you for the Dolly comparison. I mean, I will always take that.

Yes, that is a really specific song. I wrote that song after becoming really obsessed with, during the pandemic, watching Peaky Blinders on Netflix and just having such a crush on Cillian Murphy, the lead actor in that. It’s pretty funny, because I wrote the song and my husband is one of the first people, if not the first person, I always share songs with. I play him this song and he immediately was like, “Oh, okay– so this is about that guy from Peaky Blinders?” Which is just so funny, because, my husband has brown eyes and there’s a very distinct line in the song about blue diamond eyes. It didn’t take him long to put that together. He likes to give me a hard time over that song. But it’s also about entertainment and movies and TV shows and books, as like an escape from reality and anxiety and all those things.

The other song you mentioned as being about growing up in Appalachia, “They Do It’s True,” it reminds me of Charles Booker’s political action group in Kentucky, Hood to Holler. There’s a line: “If you’ve ever lived on a mountain side/ in a little shack or a double-wide/ Then there ain’t no seat at the table for you.” That line is so striking, especially because it then continues by naming solidarity with women and with Black and Brown folks. It mades me think of Hood to Holler and this idea that in the holler and in the hood, we are more similar than we are different. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that line in that song and where it came from for you?

That’s definitely what I was trying to write about in that song. I think one of the tactics that conservatives and people in higher positions in government love to use is to pit poor white people against poor Black people just to use that for their own gain. It’s another perspective that I think gets lost when people talk about the Appalachians. They think it’s just 100% white and people have this very specific idea of what it is, but there’s a large Black population. West Virginia has one of the most concentrated populations of transgender teens. There are Appalachian queer film festivals – there are a lot of things that get lost in that bigger message, because people [in power] don’t want us to have solidarity, because that would mean there would be actual change.

Another example of that is the way prisons often end up in poor and working class white communities, and then that’s how they pit Black and white people against each other again, because the white people are afraid of losing the work from the prison. So they want it to stay there, and it’s just a very vicious cycle. I think that it’s something that we should talk about more, because I think the wider audience doesn’t realize a lot of these things about Appalachia.

The class consciousness in the album and the way that you wove class into these songs feels so artfully done.

Appealing to the commercial side of things has never been something that I’ve felt the need to do. That goes back to what I was saying as far as having the freedom to write about what I want to and not being beholden to record labels or anything like that or agents. But it’s also because those are all just important things to me. I grew up in a really rural area and I’m bringing up my daughter in a rural area. I don’t ever want to romanticize the area in an unrealistic way, but I do think it’s important to have conversations as much about the negative things that we do need to improve as all the positive things.

I think that’s it’s really important for people from the area to continue to talk about all of this. In music and writing – and whatever other mediums. So that the rest of America can see that [Appalachia] is not just one stereotypical picture that they have in their heads.

Photo Credit: Kristina Lynn

Danny Paisley & Southern Grass Find a Family Blend on ‘Bluegrass Troubadour’

After nearly 50 years in bluegrass, Danny Paisley has reached something of a breakout moment. He won Male Vocalist of the Year honors at the 2020 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards — his second time in the past five years and his third IBMA trophy overall.

Paisley started performing bluegrass music as a teenager when he joined the Southern Mountain Boys, a band his father Bob co-founded with Ted Lundy. Lundy’s sons, TJ and Bobby, played in that group too, and now are in Southern Grass, the band Danny now leads. The lineup also features his son, Ryan, giving this traditional bluegrass group a unique two-family, three-generation legacy. Earlier this month, the band released Bluegrass Troubadour, their first album for Pinecastle Records. They recorded it last fall with producer Wes Easter, whom Paisley praises for his good ideas and good vibes, sharing that “after every session we were just happy and couldn’t wait to go back the next day.”

Speaking to BGS from his home in Landenberg, the southeastern Pennsylvania town where the singer-guitarist grew up, Paisley talks about how his not-strictly-traditional sound was shaped by that area’s rich musical history and how the new generation is rethinkng bluegrass.

BGS: You’ve been a bluegrass professional almost your entire life. When did you join your father’s band?

Paisley: I started playing with my father and traveling the rooms around 1974-75. Ted Lundy and my dad had a band for years. Ted’s sons, TJ and Bobby, started playing and I started playing, so we became a family group within the two families. Totally like a big family. Their mom is like my mom. And they call my mom “mom.” We grew up together. Basically all our lives we’ve been playing music together. That pretty much carried all the way through, because the Lundy brothers are back playing with me.

How was it being in a band where your dad was the boss?

Sometimes I would say to my dad, “I have this great idea.” Ever patient as he was, he always knew how to handle every situation. He’d always look at you and go: “That’s great, that’s great, when you get your own band you can try that.” To this day, I laugh about that. And I use that, too, on my son.

Now you have a similar situation with your son Ryan in Southern Grass. Does he bring a different generational perspective?

He wants to do more things [with technology], where I’m still old school and like to do things my way. He has good ideas and it makes me have to rethink… Young minds are sometimes way better than old minds. It’s hard for the younger generation today — for the third generation of bluegrassers to relate to the “Blue Ridge Cabin Home on the Hill.” They love the song, but not that theme of the cabin on the hill and things like that from the old days. I have heard of that from my grandparents. Now with the next generation, it is washed down even more.

The area where you grew up seems to have been a great musical influence.

I was very lucky. I grew up in a place here where there was a country music park, Sunset Park. On Sundays, they would have a major country or bluegrass artist… Bill Monroe, Mac Wiseman, Osborne Brothers… I got to see all of my heroes within five miles of my house. Down the road about 15-20 miles was another park called New River Ranch. It had the Stanley Brothers, Jim & Jesse, Reno & Smiley. Any given Sunday within 20 miles, you could go somewhere and hear some incredible music.

When I was very young, Flatt & Scruggs came and everyone was there to see Earl Scruggs. He was god to every banjo player and rightfully so. I remember that day leaving with this impression of Lester Flatt — just how calm he was and how he talked from the stage. He was in control of the whole thing so easily. … Del McCoury lived the next county over from me, so we often played shows with him. I loved his rhythm guitar playing and his voice. He could play that rhythm guitar and keep that band in time – he’d drive that band with that guitar. There was nothing like hearing him live.

Your music has been associated with “Baltimore Barroom Bluegrass” What was that scene like?

When I got older, there were all these bars and clubs in Baltimore, which is about 30 miles from home. I ended up playing in these clubs, four or five nights a week… you’d played from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., sometimes four or five sets. You got your chops in. You had a broad repertoire and you were playing to people who knew the music because Baltimore became a hub for Southerners who moved up from Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky for work. They were hard-living, hard-drinking, and hard-driving bluegrass fans. There’d be fights. There’d be carrying on, but boy you could have fun!

And another regional musical influence on you was the Galax sound, right?

Galax is a town in southern Virginia, on the state line of North Carolina and Virginia, and the Old Fiddlers Convention there draws thousands from all over the world. The Galax sound features a lot of fiddle — maybe not your standard bluegrass fiddle tunes, but a lot of different fiddle tunes that made their way into bluegrass music. …

Their banjo players had a certain sound to their playing. Ted Lundy had it. He came from Galax and my dad’s family came from over the state line in Ashe County, North Carolina. So naturally they would be drawn together when they got up here. Ola Belle Reed, who wrote “High on a Mountain,” lived a few miles from where I’m at here. She was from that same region. The driving banjo — there is a certain style in their hands and in their noting. You can tell they are from the Galax area. I play [guitar] with a thumb pick where a lot of the bluegrass guys play with a flat pick. That was from my dad also.

So Southern Grass’ driving rhythms are like a handed-down legacy?

Yes, of that area and of our fathers. We keep the rhythm sort of pumping, but you’ve got to play to each song. We’ll work the song. As the singer eases off singing, the rhythm will pull back, too, and then you can build back up. We do a lot of stuff like that dynamic. That’s what I like about my style of music, knowing and feeling the song.

Bobby Lundy used to play the banjo in the band and decided he needed some time off. When he said he was able to play, I needed a bass player. I call him my utility man of bluegrass, like he could play any position on a baseball team — he’s that talented. Because he has known me for so long, he knows what I am going to do on a guitar. He knows what I am going to do singing. He can walk me right into the singing with his bass. He can lead me right into the voice. He can just push the band and keep that timing from not going too fast or too slow. He can just keep it rock steady.

How did you pick songs for your new album?

Two of them [“He Can’t Own Them” and “I Never Was Too Much”] were written by Eric Gibson of the Gibson Brothers. He’s always one of my favorite writers. He sent a gang of songs he had not recorded. Every one of them was a great song. Those were the two that fit my style. Brink Brinkman — another excellent bluegrass songwriter — told me, “I have a song that I’d like you to hear.” As soon as I heard it [“Date With an Angel”], I wrote back: “I want it!”

“May I Sleep in Your Barn, Mister,” I learned from a guy named Cullen Galyean, a banjo picker and a great mountain singer from down in the Galax, Virginia, area. “Eat at the Welcome Table” is an old-timey spiritual song. When my dad moved up here to Pennsylvania, his neighbors were an African-American farming family. They had an old-timey string band and played gospel songs. They would sing that song. We put our own spin on it.

The album has an interesting mix of songs that come from different styles and influences.

That’s how music generally works for me. I love it all, and then I make it my own. My band is rooted in traditional music and traditional ways, but that shouldn’t hamper or restrict you. So, I keep my ears open to all kinds of things. You can sometimes take an idea from a non-bluegrass artist and use it in bluegrass.

It’s that way with my singing. I listen to everything from George Jones, Jerry Lee Lewis and Vince Gill to opera singers like Pavarotti – these guys all amaze me. How they control their voice and present it with such tone. For me that was lacking in my singing and I had to work at that… I learned to sing a little different as I got older – to take the edge off the high tenor part a bit. Things like that, and I noticed that people were responding better.

Congratulations on winning your second IBMA Male Vocalist of the Year win. Was the victory sweeter the second time around?

The first time I was so shocked. Any category when you are up there with Russell Moore, Del McCoury — all these guys that I enjoy. You’re shocked that people would appreciate what you do. The second time, it was like, “Oh my goodness.” It didn’t really set in until the next day or so. I love to go out and play to make people happy. I never thought of being something like Male Vocalist of the Year. It’s always the dream for everybody. It’s always a dream to play the Grand Ole Opry, but you’ve got to keep it realistic. A life lesson early on that I got from my dad: never get to where you think you’re better than anybody else. Because as soon as you do that, you’ll realize that you’re not.

Photo of Danny Paisley and Ryan Paisley courtesy of Pinecastle Records.

LISTEN: Jason Davis, “Modern Day Jezebel” (Feat. Dan Tyminski)

Artist: Jason Davis
Hometown: Galax, Virginia
Song: “Modern Day Jezebel” (Feat. Dan Tyminski)
Release Date: April 13, 2021
Label: Mountain Fever Records

In Their Words: “I first got the demo of this tune four or five years ago from Daniel Salyer. I loved it the first time I heard it and knew I’d like to cut it for my next record. Luckily, nobody had put it out in the meantime. To me it’s a great modern bluegrass tune. I think it’s a cool way of telling the story of a love gone wrong and I really liked the chord progression and melody. Dan played guitar on the session and I was especially excited when he wanted to sing it. It was an honor to get to track with all the guys (and gal). They really knocked it out of the park on this one. They killed it!” — Jason Davis

Photo credit: Donn Jones

Dori Freeman: From Appalachian Roots to ‘Every Single Star’

Dori Freeman has been hurt and felt torn. We know because she’s told us so, always with unblinking frankness in crisp pop songs with deep Appalachian roots. But even if we couldn’t understand her words, we’d hear the pain in her soprano, which rings out with melancholy strength only gained from living.

In her new album Every Single Star, the Galax, Virginia, native pushes her blend of familial mountain grit and mid-century-inspired polish even further into its own creative territory. Never one to shy away from truth, Freeman writes about motherhood, expectations, and relationships from a distinctly female perspective.

BGS: In the songs on Every Single Star we seem to hear real contentment. While there’s still some conflict, especially when it comes to having to be away from your daughters, there is peace, too. Was writing these songs a different experience than writing your first two albums?

Dori Freeman: Definitely. I had recently been married when I started writing a lot of the songs on this record. It was the first time I’d been in a happy, stable relationship, which obviously will have an effect on the themes in the songs you write. I was in a different headspace. For the previous two records, I was in different phases. Whether it was getting over a particularly difficult relationship or looking back on that and thinking what I didn’t want to have. With this one, I was with someone that I really love. So the songwriting was different.

I did a lot of imagining scenarios, which I didn’t do as much with the first two records. Those were based more on very direct experiences. On Every Single Star, the songs about my daughter are very direct and personal, but some of the other ones, like “Of Me and You” — that was a song that I wrote for a friend of mine who’d had a relationship that didn’t work out so well. I’ve had to look for different sources of inspiration this time around. When you’re happy, it definitely makes songwriting harder. [Laughs]

I’m happy you have that problem.

It’s a great problem to have. [Laughs]

Do you have a favorite memory of playing one of these new songs live over the past several months?

Nothing too specific stands out, but one of my favorite songs on the record is “All I Ever Wanted.” One of the things that’s nice about performing that song is almost every time I’ve done it, I’ve had women come up to me afterwards and say how much they enjoyed the song. That was the intention: to write a song fully from a woman’s perspective that other women could relate to. So it’s nice to have girls come up and tell me they liked it.

You’ve said you admire Peggy Lee and the mid-century aesthetic. What is it about the ’50s and ’60s sound that you like?

Peggy Lee is one of my favorite singers of all time. I don’t know what it is. I think for one thing, they still recorded in a more live situation, in a bigger room, so everything sounded a lot fuller on records back then. I also like the style people sang in in that era. My dad played a lot of that music for me growing up. Actually, he just made a record with mandolin, playing a bunch of swing tunes, so he’s really drawn to that music too. I think that it’s that I always listened to it, and I can’t help but have it influence what I do.

You grew up in such a musical family. When you were a kid, did y’all just sit around and play music together?

Yeah, definitely. I was always in choir in school. I didn’t really start to play guitar and sing in front of people by myself until I was about 15 or 16, but even when I was little, I would go jam at parties and festivals with my dad and grandpa, and then sit around and watch people play music.

As I got older, I started to perform with my dad and grandpa on stage. They used to have a little show on Friday nights at the frame shop that my family runs. So that’s one of the first places I really got some good practice performing in front of people. We still do shows together. We still play together as a trio with my husband as well, who plays drums with us now. So yeah, it’s still very much a family thing.

You’ve said that people don’t really talk about motherhood in the music industry. Are there specific experiences you’ve had or witnessed that made the great motherhood omission personally more evident to you?

Yeah, I can think of one in particular, when my daughter was not quite a baby, but not quite 2 years old — so she was still pretty little and motherhood was still a pretty new thing to me. It was also around the same time I was putting out my first record, so it was hard to manage all those things and to figure out how to balance them. I was at a music conference. I won’t say which one. They had this thing where they wanted a bunch of women to get together and talk about problems they faced in the industry as women. So people were raising their hands, going around, and sharing their experiences.

There was a lot we’d all been through, with sexism and dealing with men being inappropriate in a whole variety of ways. That is obviously a huge issue too. But I remember raising my hand and saying, “You know, it’s hard being a mom on tour, especially if there’s no green room, or you don’t have a babysitter to look after your child while you’re playing and then figuring out logistics — you can’t just stay anywhere after a show.”

I just remember crickets in the room. It got overlooked so quickly — everyone moved on. No one really seemed to care. And this was in a group of women. I think most of them, if not all of them, probably didn’t have children. I can understand why it didn’t seem important. But it was not a good feeling to share something personal and important to me and have it seemingly immediately overlooked and dismissed.

I can imagine. You’ve said it was cathartic to write songs about your daughter for this album. What kind of healing do you experience when you write songs about her?

I feel like she becomes more a part of what I’m doing, especially when she’s not physically present. If I can perform on stage and sing songs that are about her, I feel like she’s involved in some way. That makes me feel better because sometimes I’m on the road for four or five days at a time, which I know is not that long, but when you have a child — especially a young one — it starts to feel like a long time after a while.

It was really important for me with this record to write a couple of songs about her, and also to make sure that people knew when I was performing them on stage that they were about her. I always introduce the songs as being about my daughter. I want the audience to know she is an important part of my life. I want to feel like my daughter is involved, even when she’s not there. I guess it helps me feel better about missing her.

It helps you, but it also seems like talking about it openly — just saying, “This song is for my daughter” — could go a long way toward normalizing motherhood in music. Many women artists are also mothers.

Absolutely. I feel like in most industries, it’s hard to be a working mother, but being a musician brings a very specific set of challenges. One of the questions I get so often — and it’s one of my least favorite questions — is, “Do you travel with your daughter?” or “How come your daughter’s not with you?”

I just think, “Well, do you bring your daughter to a board meeting? Do you bring your child on your business trips?” I realize that music seems like fun and not a lot of work, but it is a lot of work. It’s a job, as much as I love it. So it doesn’t always make sense to have my child there, and I don’t think it’s fair to be judged for that.

You’ve stepped confidently into this tradition of strong Appalachian women — strong Appalachian women artists, in particular. Instead of me assigning a definition to what that means, how would you describe the particular strength of an Appalachian woman?

Oh gosh. That’s a tough one. I can give you one example: When I think of a strong, Appalachian woman, I think of my great grandmother. She was from eastern Kentucky and had seven or eight siblings that were younger than she was. She raised them from the time she was 13 on. When she was an adult, she went right into having her own children. She took care of everything. She did the housework. She raised the children. She killed the chickens to cook. It was classic, what you imagine when you think of Appalachia 70 years ago.

If her life had been different — if she’d grown up somewhere else or maybe with more opportunity or more money — she would have pursued music in some way. I know she really loved music. She loved to sing and play guitar. She taught my grandfather how to play guitar.

I feel like in a roundabout way, she has some part in my choice to be a musician. My grandfather has been such a big influence on me musically, and if it wasn’t for her passing on her love of music to him, then it wouldn’t have made its way to me. Even though she couldn’t pursue those things in her own life, she wanted to make sure she passed them on so that someone eventually could.

Photo Credit: Kristina LeBlanc

WATCH: Willard Gayheart, “Ern & Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog”

Artist: Willard Gayheart
Hometown: Galax, Virginia (born in Hazard, Kentucky)
Song: “Ern & Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog”
Album: At Home in the Blue Ridge
Release Date: May 24, 2019
Label: Blue Hens Music

In Their Words: “My granddaughter Dori [Freeman] put this on her second album and she likes to joke that even with all the great songs she’s written herself, people always want to hear this one. It’s just a funny song about a couple of bachelors named Ern and Zory Grigbsy who lived down the road from me when I was a kid. They had a store on one side of the road and their house on the other. We had to walk everywhere we went back then as there weren’t many automobiles. So, walking that road past their house, I was always so scared of that dog they had. And I was just thinking about that and decided to write this song. We put that on that first Highlanders record we did with Bobby [Patterson].” — Willard Gayheart

Photo credit: Kristen H Photography

A Minute In Galax with Wild Ponies

Welcome to “A Minute In …” — a BGS feature that turns our favorite artists into hometown reporters. In our latest column, Doug Williams of Wild Ponies takes us through the town of his youth — Galax, Virginia. It’s also the town where Wild Ponies recorded their latest release, aptly titled Galax.

Galax, Virginia, is a little mountain town and is pretty much the undisputed center of the old-time and bluegrass music world. It’s the home of the Crooked Road and the Galax Old-Time Fiddlers’ Convention (82 years and running). It’s hard to get it down to just a minute in Galax — this might be more like a minute-and-a-half. There’s so much cool stuff, it’s hard to choose what to leave out — like the historical Rex Theater (hosts bluegrass bands every Friday night and broadcasts them live on WBRF, but also where my dad spent Saturday afternoons as a kid watching Westerns while his dad worked in Pless’s hardware store). I’ll do my best to give you an honest spin around the town and sneak in as much as I can. — Doug Williams

The Dairy Bar: Get a hot dog basket and a lemonade. Killer burgers, too. When my mom was a kid, she’d get the lime float. This is a real old-school drive-in, and they’ll bring the food right out to you. You can sit in your car or get out and sit on the deck, which gives you a bird’s eye view of Felts Park. So, if you’re there the second weekend of August, you can look down on the mayhem of the Fiddlers’ Convention while you chew.

Barr’s Fiddle Shop: It’s hard to believe, but there’s only one music store in Galax. Barr’s is more than a fiddle shop, though; it’s also a small museum and an incredibly important place in American music history. It used to be a barber shop and, in the early 1920s, it was the place Al Hopkins formed his band that became known as the Hill Billies. This was the first ever use of that term, and actually has a pretty decent claim to the real foundation of country music. These guys were recorded in 1925, and the Bristol Sessions didn’t happen until 1927. Either way, at least we got the word “hillbilly” out of it.

Roy’s: Directly across Main Street from Barr’s Fiddle Shop is Roy’s Jewelry. I’ve got to include Roy’s. They have some cool stuff. You can get custom Galax leaf jewelry here. Be sure to ask for Judith when you go in. Her father, Hazen Burnette, was one of my grandfather’s best friends. Hazen spent more time on horseback around Galax than anyone else. There was even an article about it in Western Horseman. Judith helped my grandfather pick out a LOT of jewelry for my grandmother over the years and, for that, she deserves sainthood. She’s also a huge part of the personality of WBRF. You can tune in and listen to her Blueridge Backroads show in the evenings. She’s great!

City Gallery: While we’re still wandering around on Main Street, you’ve got to stop by City Gallery. It’s sort of a local artisan center — paintings, handmade jewelry, just all kinds of cool stuff. We’re friends with a lot of the artists who sell things here, and it’s always fun to duck in and see what’s new. Becky Guynn’s paintings of local musicians and places in Galax really capture the spirit. Karin Carlson-Muncy’s copper work just blows me away. I could go on … just trust me.

Creek Bottom Brews: This is a new place — it’s only been around for a few years — but it’s a welcome addition. It’s definitely not the place to go, if you’re just trying to breeze through town real quick and not let anybody know you’re there. You will be spotted. But that’s okay; we love our Galax family and friends. Creek Bottom has WiFi, which is great because my cell phone doesn’t work in Galax. They also have their own beer, which is really good, and a pretty huge assortment of other brews on tap and in bottles and cans (just clap your hands). Even if Creek Bottom didn’t have Wifi and beer, I’d still go for the pizza. They’ve got a big brick oven and they just keep cranking them out. So, so good.

The New River Trail: It would be hard to not mention the New River Trail. It’s part of the Rails-to-Trails program. This particular stretch runs 57 miles, from Fries to Pulaski, and goes right through downtown Galax. It also goes right by my grandfather’s farm at the Gambetta Junction. (We spell it “Gambetty,” but whatever.) When I was a kid, we’d ride horses along the train tracks before it was converted into a state park. The trail follows along beside Chestnut Creek and then the New River. It’s a gorgeous place to ride bikes, horses, or just hike and look for Galax leaves. When we were making the Galax record at the farm, it just got too hot to play music and we all went down to the trail and hiked around a bit and played in the creek.

The Shed: I’m not going to tell you exactly where this is, but it’s not far from the New River Trail. This place used to be home to the best song circles and old-time jams anywhere in the world. Turns out, it’s a pretty good temporary recording studio, too.