Tag: grateful dead

Clay Street Unit Chat Sin & Squalor and Excitement for the Future

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Since their inception in 2021, Clay Street Unit has quickly risen into the national spotlight. The rollicking Americana string band is garnering the frequent tag of “must-see” by their rapidly growing fanbase.

Formed in Denver, Colorado, the sextet is unique in sight and in sound. With a foundation soaked in bluegrass, the ensemble also includes a drummer and a pedal steel player – which often kicks the act into the realms of indie folk and honky-tonk. Ultimately, this lends them to a wildin’ out scene when placed in a packed room of fans and the curious alike, something that has become commonplace as of late.

It’s at this exact juncture – of deeply held dreams and aspirations coming to fruition – that Clay Street Unit will finally release their debut album, Sin & Squalor (out February 13 via Leo33). The 11-song LP is a perfect introduction to this band of melodic pirates as they currently navigate the high seas of the music industry. The record not only captures the essence of the outfit, it’s also impressive in nature, showcasing the vibrant energy of the group’s live show via the studio.

Produced by the Infamous Stringdusters’ Chris Pandolfi, Sin & Squalor is a sonic roadmap to the here and now of where jamgrass stands in the modern era. With members of Clay Street Unit hailing from a variety of places in the U.S. (Alabama, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Illinois), their multilayered influences lead to traditional acoustic aspects mirrored by modern sounds. Each texture a product of the unique environments from which these musicians proudly emerged.

Catching up with mandolinist Scottie Bolin and guitarist Sam Walker, the duo spoke at length with BGS about the group’s origin, how their sound came to be, and what’s in store for Clay Street Unit. The road seems to be wide open as this troupe has created quite a buzz, coast to coast, coming into 2026.

I was kind of curious about how 2025 wrapped up for y’all.

Sam Walker: I think 2025 was probably the most important year we’ve had yet. It was a huge year for us, as far as crossing off a bunch of big local goals and national goals. We got to play Red Rocks with some of our heroes and buddies, Leftover Salmon and Kitchen Dwellers. We got to play [our] biggest hometown show in Denver at the Ogden Theatre, and had the privilege of selling that place out and playing with our good buddies, Andy Hall and Chris Pandolfi from the Stringdusters. And then, we signed our record deal [with Leo33] and got to plan the rollout for this record and finally get it released.

I would surmise last year will really be setting the pace for 2026, justifying all the blood, sweat, and tears going into this.

Scottie Bolin: Yeah, absolutely. A ton of work went into making the album and getting the songs where you wanted them to be. And finally getting to tour a bunch last year has been really rewarding, getting to play these songs to live crowds and really hitting the road hard.

You guys have had a pretty fast trajectory for five years together. And I was wondering about the background of how the band formed and the timeline of how it all came together.

SW: Our former banjo player, Jack Klein, and I met one night at a brewery in Denver, a couple blocks from Clay Street and the house I was living in at the time. I played some guitar, picked tunes all night at my house, and ended up booking a gig over at that same brewery. It all happened really organically. We weren’t really trying to start a band. It just felt like the right people, right place, right time to try to get something going. We ended up meeting our former drummer and bass player, and then everything kind of picked up steam a little bit quicker than we thought.

We were playing The Patio [at Sloan’s], then [Cervantes’] Other Side, then the [Cervantes Masterpiece] Ballroom. People kept buying tickets, listening, and supporting the music. As things grew, some people weren’t really dedicated to being lifelong musicians in the band. I ended up going on tour and playing with Colorado [jamgrass] band Morsel that our bass player [Jack Kotarba] and Scottie had started. We all became really close buddies over that tour. And things kind of naturally shifted in a different direction for some members. We all kind of crossed paths at the right time.

SB: At the end of the day, we were all just kind of playing music with various groups and side projects in Denver, playing a lot of bluegrass. And things just clicked. Everyone got along really well. The band, at its core, is a group of good friends. And it just snowballed and grew from there.

SW: I moved out here to Colorado eight or nine years ago. And we had this big 4,000-square-foot party house. There were four or five guys living in it at any given time. It was just where everyone would kind of come through and hang, and we would play music all night. It felt like a revolving door of people in there. That house was kind of where everything started.

We got the band going and rehearsed. It felt like the origin of the band. We were listening to a ton of Tony Rice at the time. I kind of came into bluegrass the long way. I didn’t grow up being a huge disciple or anything like that. But, obviously, moving out to Colorado, I got a class in bluegrass culture pretty quick. We were just obsessed with that Tony Rice record, Manzanita.

Was playing in a band something you each wanted to do or is it just the way everything unfolded?

SB: I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia. I started [playing] in college [at the University of Colorado Boulder with] Morsel. We tried to make a go of it. We did a couple tours. [But], the touring lifestyle is hard and takes full dedication from the whole group. Some of the guys [in Morsel] didn’t wanna do that. So, I stepped away from that. Luckily, right around that time, I met Sam and all the Clay Street guys.

SW: I grew up down south in Montgomery, Alabama. I kind of came into it the opposite way. I played in a Widespread Panic/Grateful Dead cover band in college and just sang. Then, I moved out to Colorado and picked up the guitar. I’d always sang and written a few songs and loved live music. But, I really kind of fell into it. It wasn’t something necessarily in my early twenties I expected to be doing for a living.

All the dominoes fell in the right places and I was around the right people that gave me a lot of confidence to push the boundaries of what I was comfortable with. Playing in some side bluegrass bands around town really helped me feel more comfortable about being a part of the Denver music scene. Everything happened step by step. I wasn’t really trying to make it a career, but a few years later, it felt like something that made sense – to take the leap and try to push it as far as we can.

Your band is a huge melting pot of sound. Is that by design or just how it all just came together?

SW: I feel like it’s a little bit of both. We definitely didn’t set out or want to be a traditional bluegrass band. Obviously, when we added the drums and pedal steel and electric bass that decision was kind of made for us. It’s kind of a melting pot of everything we listen to and the music we like.

When Scottie and I go to write a song, we don’t think, “This is a bluegrass tune,” “This is a folk tune,” “This has an indie feel.” We let the music and everybody’s kind of flavor and influence on how the song’s going to sound. We don’t really try to have those guardrails of how it needs to sound or what vibe it needs to be.

When I was listening to the album, I kept thinking how I really want to see you guys live. And I think that’s a real testament to the band, to have that kind of sound radiating out of an album that encourages you to go to the live show, which I think is probably the endgame for you.

SW: Absolutely. At the core of our band, we’re a live band. It’s where we really shine through, and you can just feel the energy up there. We always try to say, “There are only so many Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights,” and we want to elevate that and bring the energy and the emotion and let [the audience] loose – life’s too short to not go out and enjoy live music. We want to make sure at every show we’re bringing that to the table, our full attention to the energy and making sure that everyone’s having as good a time as they can.

Is there any kind of ethos behind the title of the album?

SW: It’s our origin story. [When we started], we didn’t know how to do it or if we were doing it right, and we weren’t doing it with much, just trying to put it together piece by piece. It sounds a little heavy, but it’s more about the beauty of humanity, the nature of [life] we have all been through, and it’s a commonality of everybody. It’s the nature of our music and string instrument music – music that has a little more “down in the holler” feel. It all felt aligned with what we were trying to get out for the first record.

Why was Chris Pandolfi the guy you wanted to produce this?

SB: I had the opportunity to work with Chris before with Morsel, which was a little bit more of an electric rock jam with some bluegrass elements in there. He produced a few albums for [Morsel]. So, I knew what it was like to work with him. I knew that he was just a musical genius and the right guy for setting the vibe and making sure we were comfortable in the studio.

[Chris was] coming in with great arrangement ideas for our band, specifically, and being a great mentor all-around. [Clay Street Unit] actually had the pleasure of being his wedding band this last summer, which was awesome. I feel like the Infamous Stringdusters, Greensky Bluegrass, a lot of those Colorado bands, Leftover Salmon, have really kind of set the tone of what is “allowed” in that genre and for pushing the boundaries of what people want to hear. With the Stringdusters, I’ve seen them live for 10-15 years and they’ve really made a mark on the bluegrass scene, the Colorado music scene, and definitely a big impact on us.

You’re currently hitting the five-year mark together. What does that milestone mean to you right now?

SW: The last five years have been so much of a learning curve and going through so many different stages of figuring out who we are and how we want to operate. I feel like now we’re really starting to get a grasp of what we want to do and who we want to be as musicians, as a band, and as people. The last five years were such a blessing and such a great learning experience, but I think we’re just so excited for the next five years of just pushing this thing to the limit and, and trying to, to make the best music we can and, and really just enjoy every step of it together.

SB: It just takes a long time to get a group of people on a mission aligned and I think we’re finally there. Everyone’s on the same wavelength of what we want to get done and what we want to accomplish. We’ve got a really busy year ahead of us, and it’s kind of the culmination of the last five years of hard work that’s been coming to fruition – we’re pretty excited.

Photo Credit: Lead image by Robert Chavers. Alternate image by Tobin Voggesser.

Artist of the Month: The Infamous Stringdusters

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

During the Infamous Stringdusters’ recent holiday gig at The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina, the storied venue was packed out with jamgrass freaks, the performance itself a kickoff of sorts for the band’s 20th anniversary in 2026. I found myself standing sidestage when show opener Bronwyn Keith-Hynes came up next to me. A smile emerged on her face taking in the band and the audience.

“The Stringdusters made me want to start a band,” the GRAMMY-winning fiddler said, turning to me. “The Fork In The Road album was the most influential modern bluegrass album for me when I was at Berklee.”

Keith Hynes’ sentiment conjured numerous memories and moments I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of when it comes to the ‘Dusters. The first time I ever laid eyes and ears on them, it was the 2008 Targhee Bluegrass Festival in Alta, Wyoming. I was 23 years old and a rookie reporter for the Teton Valley News, based just down the mountain in Driggs, Idaho. By that point in my life, both personally and professionally, I was diving deep into the jamgrass world – the intersection of ancient tones, psychedelia, improvisation, and a collective love of the Grateful Dead.

The initial spark of the modern jamgrass movement was lit by Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon, and the String Cheese Incident, all three acts coming into the national spotlight by the end of the 1990s. A musical template had been formed, and the ‘Dusters would emerge in the early 2000s to throw gasoline onto that melodic fire, ultimately becoming a missing link (alongside Greensky Bluegrass) between jamgrass originators, those ‘90s propagators, and folks currently carrying the torch into new, exciting realms: Billy Strings, Sierra Ferrell, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, and more.

“That’s what’s so beautiful about bluegrass music, in particular,” Stringdusters fiddler Jeremy Garrett told me recently. “You pass it on to the next generation and they take it and they do their thing with it. Luckily for us, we were around at a time that [that] was very important, and a transitional time in the industry.”

In 2010, a couple of years after my introduction to the band at Targhee, when I returned to my native North Country of Upstate New York, I found myself covering a show at the intimate Showcase Lounge at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont. I was there to see the ‘Dusters once again. Their sound and energy immediately transported me back to the Rocky Mountains that I missed dearly. (Sharing the bill was another rising jamgrass act, Trampled by Turtles.)

I remember walking away from that gig feeling in awe and refreshed with a genuine feeling that something was happening. Something was on the horizon when it came to bluegrass and string band music. This wasn’t a traditional bluegrass band in matching suits, standing like statues. It was a rock show with acoustic instruments. Baseball caps and long hair, grins ear-to-ear. More provocative than standstill, more vibrant than just going through the motions of what past generations were instructed to do.

“Being able to showcase our own songs, in our own way, [our] writing skills, and making the decisions on what was chosen to play and how to play it [were] foremost for most of us at the beginning,” Garrett says. “Over time, we realized that we were actually growing a community. And after all these years, that honestly has become the most important part, the most important thing that we could possibly do.”

What I witnessed in Wyoming and Vermont years ago is what I’ve continued to experience with the Infamous Stringdusters, in person and in method, from Florida to Colorado and beyond. They set the pace then for where we stand with jamgrass right now, built on a full-throttle approach, one which remains sonically elusive as well as paying homage to the architects of bluegrass and those who broke from the pack and made something all their own.

Aside from the talents of the Stringdusters, either as individuals or the sum of their parts, you also have a unique setup. Alongside founding members, banjoist Chris Pandolfi and Dobroist Andy Hall, who emerged from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, you have the tradgrass pedigree of Garrett, who was born and raised in a traveling family bluegrass band hailing from Idaho. This fusing of road-tested grit and grace with conservatory-style techniques is at the heart of what this group does best: jam.

All of which circles back to the Asheville Orange Peel performance in late 2025. There were tightly knit melodies and freewheelin’ improvisational explorations. They broke down the invisible walls between themselves and the audience, maintaining a two-way street of momentum, energy, and inspiration from both sides of the microphone – a vortex of sound and scope, all revolving around a deep sense of community.

“The band is stronger than ever and making some of the best music we’ve ever made,” Garrett says. “But, the thing I see that is the most important being carried on is that community factor. We certainly didn’t invent that, but we took note and applied the philosophy to our scene, and hopefully the next generation realizes how important that piece is.”

Ultimately, this 20th anniversary celebration for the Infamous Stringdusters is a culmination of a tried-and-true effort to bring this hallowed music into the unknown and unfolding musical landscape of the 21st century. With their upcoming album, 20/20 (out February 13 via Ameriana Vibes) they continue their efforts to break new ground and forge ahead, together, whatever the next 20 years hold for jamgrass and the ‘Dusters.

The Infamous Stringdusters are our Artist of the Month. Below, enjoy our Essential Infamous Stringdusters playlist and stay tuned as we share brand new and archive content on the ‘Dusters throughout the month of February here on BGS – and across our social media channels. Like our exploration of their 20-year discography or our oral history of the band featuring all five members in conversation.

Photo Credit: Daniel Milchev

Jason Sinay’s Peace & Love Playlist

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s 2026 and the world remains deeply shaped by persistent conflicts and social divisions, making songs of peace and love an essential “universal language” for fostering unity. As global tensions in regions like Ukraine and the Middle East continue to create an us-versus-them mentality, music serves as a critical bridge that transcends cultural and linguistic barriers to remind us of our shared humanity.

These songs do more than provide comfort; they act as a tool for disarming hearts and promoting reconciliation in an increasingly polarized landscape. By lowering anxiety and increasing empathy – the emotional foundation for peaceful coexistence – music provides a rare space where diverse groups can connect without prejudice. Now more than ever, these songs are needed to shift the global narrative from division and “moral degradation” toward a future built on compassion, harmony, and collective resilience. The lyrics of these amazing songs epitomize “peace & love” and speak for themselves. – Jason Sinay

“Imagine” – John Lennon

This song still remains a timeless global anthem that serves as a “hymn for peace.” It transcends cultural and political boundaries by challenging listeners to envision a utopian reality free from the divisions of nationality, religion, and material possessions.

“Blowin’ in the Wind” – Bob Dylan

Dylan uses evocative symbols like the “white dove” to represent the enduring human quest for a world without conflict. Its series of rhetorical questions challenges listeners to confront social injustices and the “cannonballs” of war, suggesting that while the answers for global harmony are as ever-present as the wind, they require collective courage to grasp and implement.

“Get Up, Stand Up” – Bob Marley & the Wailers

Marley emphasizes that true harmony can only be achieved through justice and the active defense of human rights. The song challenges listeners to seek fulfillment and equity “on earth,” rather than waiting for divine intervention, serving as a global rallying cry for unity against all forms of oppression.

“Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)” – George Harrison

This amazing song’s lyrics act as a personal mantra for divine guidance, asking for the “light” and “life” necessary to heal a world filled with conflict and social burdens.

“Ripple” – Grateful Dead

“Ripple” promotes a sense of shared humanity by acknowledging that while every individual must walk their own path, we are all “in the same boat” and should reach out to help one another.

“Heart Of Gold” – Neil Young

Written while Neil was physically vulnerable and recovering from a back injury, he describes himself as a “miner” traveling across oceans and forests. The song emphasizes that the pursuit of a loving and compassionate soul is a lifelong, global journey that connects us all.

“She’s a Rainbow” – The Rolling Stones

This incredible tune captures the vibrant spirit of the Summer of Love through its whimsical, baroque-pop arrangement. It functions as a “pure love song,” departing from the Stones’ typically gritty style to offer a colorful, psychedelic tribute to femininity and universal beauty.

“Ophelia” – The Band

While this song is often interpreted as a lively, Dixieland-style track, it functions as a song of peace and love in exploring the deep emotional bonds and protective concerns shared between friends or lovers.

“Feels Like Home” – Randy Newman

This song truly captures the profound sense of safety and belonging found in a deep connection. The lyrics contrast a harsh external world with the sanctuary of a relationship.

“The Best Part of the Day” – Elton John & Leon Russell

This incredible tune celebrates the simple sanctuary of a deep, lifelong friendship. It portrays a serene “peace of mind” found in the presence of someone who has shared one’s “crazy ways” and provides comfort through life’s trials.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Artist of the Month:
Greensky Bluegrass

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Michigan music isn’t just Motown or the MC5, Bob Seger or (ugh) Kid Rock. While it’s seldom mentioned as a modern bluegrass hotbed, the Wolverine State has become an unlikely 21st century hub of the latter-day bluegrass offshoot jamgrass. And at the center of this upland strain of music is where you’ll find Greensky Bluegrass, a quintet that is our Artist of the Month for October.

The roots of jamgrass go back to the 1970s, when New Grass Revival took inspiration from the bluegrass adjacency of the Grateful Dead and other proto-Americana rock acts, injecting rock and roll overtones into their music. It was also during this period that Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia went back to his original folkie roots with 1975’s Old & In the Way, a super-session album that would stand as the top-selling bluegrass LP of all time until O Brother, Where Art Thou? a quarter-century later.

Fast-forward to the 1980s, when New Grass Revival banjo maestro Béla Fleck went in some truly idiosyncratic and worldly directions with his new group The Flecktones. Then came the 1990s-vintage H.O.R.D.E. Festival and a generation of bands like String Cheese Incident, Leftover Salmon, and Phish that further obliterated whatever boundary remained between bluegrass and rock.

That set the stage for Greensky Bluegrass, whose emergence in 2000 cued up another chapter of combining traditional bluegrass with rock-band theatrics (to the point of even including a bitchin’ onstage light show). Greensky originally formed as a trio of mandolinist/frontman Paul Hoffman, guitarist Dave Bruzza and banjo player Michael Arlen Bont, convening in the fall of 2000 after meeting at an open-mic show in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Greensky had plenty of traditionalist bona fides, covering classic bluegrass pantheon cuts by the likes of Stanley Brothers, Charlie Poole, and Bill Monroe. But they’d cover the likes of Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Prince, Talking Heads, and (yes) the Grateful Dead, too. That has continued over the years as their lineup expanded to a quintet with the addition of resonator guitarist Anders Beck and bassist Michael Devol. As an indicator of their eclectic tendencies, one of the studio producers Greensky has worked with is Steve Berlin (who handled 2016’s Shouted, Written Down & Quoted), best-known as saxophonist of the acclaimed Latino rock band Los Lobos.

One big milestone of Greensky’s first decade came at Telluride, the storied annual bluegrass festival in Colorado, where they won the band contest in 2006. They’ve steadily built themselves up as a live draw playing bigger venues, becoming a major presence at Red Rocks, the Colorado amphitheater that is the high church of jamgrass. This September, Greensky played the 20th headlining show of their career at Red Rocks.

As they progressed, Greensky provided an inspirational example for younger acts following in their wake, most notably a young guitarist from their home state of Michigan. Born William Apostol in 1992 in the college town of Lansing, he adopted the stage name Billy Strings as a teenager. Greensky was well-established by then and served as Strings’ mentors, collaborating frequently and giving him a choice opening-act slot on a 2018 tour. Strings has gone on to become a worldwide arena-level star, something like the jamgrass genre’s Nirvana equivalent to Greensky’s Sonic Youth.

Fittingly, Strings is one of the cameo guests appearing on the new Greensky album, XXV, which marks the group’s 25-year anniversary with all kinds of star power. Nine of the album’s 13 tracks feature guest appearances from some of the top names in the field.

Sam Bush, a co-founder of the previously mentioned jamgrass pioneers New Grass Revival, opens the first track “Can’t Stop Now” with one of his trademark lightning-speed mandolin runs. Americana stars Nathaniel Rateliff and Aoife O’Donovan turn up to provide lead vocals on a couple of songs. Other tracks feature String Cheese Incident drummer Jason Hann, New Orleans scion Ivan Neville and, from Trey Anastasio Band’s horn section, trumpeter Jennifer Hartswick and trombonist Natalie Cressman. Among the guests with Michigan ties are Phil Lesh & Friends pianist Holly Bowling and, from the Great Lakes State supergroup Sweet Water Warblers, vocalist Lindsay Lou.

Greensky has always been more than willing to expand tunes out to epic, near-galactic dimensions, and XXV has more than enough sprawling solos to satisfy the pickiest of jamgrass fans. Most notable is the 14-plus minutes of “Last Winter in the Copper Country,” on which Bowling’s rippling piano takes center-stage. Bowling also stars on “Windshield,” a longtime Greensky favorite that appeared on the band’s 2014 album If Sorrows Swim in an arrangement of just her piano and Hoffman’s powerful bellow – the closest thing to operatic bluegrass this side of The Hillbenders’ bluegrass take on The Who’s Tommy. That’s only one of the songs from throughout the Greensky discography that they reprise in (sometimes drastically) rearranged form for XXV.

In anticipation of the new album’s release date, which is set for Halloween, check out our Essential Greensky Bluegrass playlist below. Plenty of further Greensky content is also on the way, including a feature interview with the group and plenty of excellent picks from the archives, as well. Follow along all month here on BGS and on our social media pages as we celebrate Greensky Bluegrass as our Artist of the Month.

Photo Credit: Dylan Langille

Daniel Donato Has Many Horizons in Sight, Literal and Metaphorical

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Although names like Billy Strings and Sturgill Simpson currently corner the market at the intersection of country, jam bands, and bluegrass, rising star Daniel Donato has emerged in recent years with an out-of-this-world sound – and his newest project may be his best yet.

On Horizons (which released in August) the prodigy who as a child honed his skills on Guitar Hero and Nashville’s Lower Broadway turns a new page with an 11-song, hour-long compilation that brings his live and studio sounds together with drawn-out jams conjured up by his longtime bandmates from Cosmic Country – a moniker that describes both the group’s sonic and spiritual ethos.

“I want there to be a Cosmic Country sound where you can hear it right away, you can hear the first eight bars of any song and say, ‘That’s it!'” says Donato.

“Some of it is technical, like using the same microphones and the same studio as the last record. And some of it’s just in the way we approach it – and that’s something we get better at every time.”

Sitting on the back of his month-old tour bus affectionately referred to as “The Snowman” prior to a recent show in Lexington, Kentucky, Donato spoke to BGS about his Lower Broadway roots, creative freedom and restraints, and the catalysts for Cosmic Country.

We already touched upon your similarities with Billy Strings, but what about your parents’ influence – I know they played a big role in your musical foundation as well?

Daniel Donato: Everything when I was younger came from my parents. My father had a certain disposition for great rock and roll music like Pink Floyd, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Led Zeppelin. But to be honest, I really don’t know where all of it comes from, because if you and I listen to a record we’re both going to hear it in different ways. For that reason I think a lot of this just comes from something that’s already dwelling within us and we’re just expressing from within that place.

For example, when I first heard Marty Robbins, I loved all the great guitar on it. And when I heard the Grateful Dead play “Big River” and make it eight minutes long in a really artistic and authentic way, I love that too. They’re all influences, but they start externally and creep inside you to the point that you take them with you everywhere you go and create from that place of soul, which is a combination of the body, the mind and the spirit.

Ever since I started playing guitar, I’ve always felt like I sounded like me and that “me” is constantly changing and revealing itself more and more. It’s like what Bob Dylan said – “I contain multitudes” – and it’s true. There are multitudes of self that just keep getting revealed through this authentic expression.

Was there a specific moment that served as the catalyst for you picking up the guitar and pursuing a career in music?

There have been many, but arguably the biggest was when I first saw the Don Kelley Band at Robert’s Western World and was in a state of shock – I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about it. That moment of hearing them and seeing how they interacted was amazing and was a big motivator in me wanting to do that too. It was a call to adventure and a reminder to believe I’m capable of anything, which is what ties all of these moments together.

That is not a self-assertive belief, that is a belief grounded in an authentic desire to make something beautiful so I can be of service. It was a big turning point in my life when I first started conceptualizing and receiving that, because then you can give it and then it turns into the cosmic circle of all things.

Some might perceive it as arrogance, but I think there’s a lot to be said for having the confidence to know what you’re doing is worthwhile and constantly chipping away to get better and reach your goals, whether that’s in a musical sense or wherever else life takes you.

I had already tried other forms of expression in my life before it, like sports. I also tried skateboarding and really loved video games like RuneScape, World of Warcraft, and chess. Even so, there were so many things I was bad at and I didn’t have beliefs that I could do them. But with music and the guitar, I could intuitively feel the potential I had with it and immediately locked in.

Artistry nowadays is parasocial on a lot of levels because of this immense amount of connectivity that we have on the various social platforms. [They] make it so anyone can get into the business of needing the world to give them permission to say something or express something real, when in reality the world does not need to give you permission for any of that. I’m not saying you should participate in any of the unspeakable, ungodly things we see happening to humans around the world, but if you want to express something artistically and you feel it’s true to you, then why should you need to get someone else’s approval to do that?

That idea to the mind is [like a] letter to the Pony Express – it needs to be delivered and it needs us to exist in flesh so we can externalize these internal values and expressions. It doesn’t need other people, it needs you, but at the same time it does bring people together – it’s so strange. It’s the thing that comes from most within an individual, but it’s also the thing that is the most unifying to an external community. It’s this weird “as above, so below” reflection that is purely righteous, so as I get older I feel I have more grace in relation to that particular part of existence.

The communal element seems to be a huge driving force behind not only your live show and fans, but this new record as well. Whereas some artists opt for a more straightforward studio approach, what made you want to emulate the energy from a gig on Horizons?

Cosmic Country records, to me, are like movies. The most enduring elements of certain movies that I love are the really long ones that have a very dynamic and rich storyline with a lot of drama and comedy in an attempt to scale the human experience. Like in A Fistful of Dollars, Django Unchained, or The Hateful Eight. The art is asking a lot of you during these three hour-long films, but it’ll give you a lot, too. There’s reciprocity there and our community is always willing to take the trip, which is equal parts liberating and terrifying. [Laughs]

If you were asked to write the score for a film, what would you want it to look like?

It would have to be a very truthful opportunity for me. I have always wanted to do that, even when I was really young. I always wondered where music and movies came from. But for now, we put out our records, and we play a lot of shows.

Speaking of the new album, you’ve been playing most of the songs on it live for a while now. What kept you from holding some or all of these songs back until the project’s official release, which it seems more and more singers are doing nowadays?

I like to look at our music as living music. It’s liberating in potential, but it’s also liberating because it gives you a framework to operate and create within. Every day of your life is different, so why wouldn’t the music that accommodates your life every day be different? These new songs are no different than a young child – they do better when they get to go out and be around people so they can grow spiritually.

That’s why it’s also important to share stories that everyone knows, which is why we incorporate a lot of covers into our shows and even recorded a volume called Cosmic Country & Western Songs in 2021. It gives people context and I love doing that. My favorite part of playing at Robert’s was we only played covers all those years so I’ve always loved making other’s songs my own – because if a song is good enough, you can play it with an original feeling.

But with Horizons every song I had my hand to the pen, even “Hangman’s Reel” – a traditional Celtic fiddle tune that the band and I fit into the Cosmic Country framework.

You’ve mentioned Robert’s Western World a couple times now. A couple weeks ago you returned there after making your headlining debut at the Ryman. What was that like?

We’ve done what’s never been done down on Broadway – going from cutting your teeth on the street corners and at places like Robert’s to topping a bill at the Ryman. It’s a common storyline for folks in Nashville to get their starts down here. Some go on to become songwriters, others become singers on stage and some become session musicians, but it all starts down on Broadway.

What I learned down there led me to getting in the door at Robert’s and leaving my blood and sweat on that floor there – like a dojo – before carrying us all the way to the Ryman. It was incredible getting to do a full headlining set up there and then going back home to where it all began at Robert’s and doing another set of music for their fans. We’re actually planning to release both soon as live recordings, so stay tuned!

With Horizons you placed parameters on how many times you’d go back to record and work on each song. With how open-ended so much of your creative process seems to be, what made you opt to place constraints there?

If your personality has a disposition for conscientiousness and open mindedness, it becomes that individual’s responsibility to see the trends of that because it can help optimize the way you engage with human relationships when creating projects. When we went and did Reflector we spent a lot of time on things we didn’t need to because I didn’t know better at the time.

When it came time to record Horizons I knew we could take half the amount of time to make it because we play it every night and shouldn’t need a bunch of tries to get it right. So I decided we’d just aim for three takes of a song to be more efficient. There’s a liberating faith that comes with knowing that’s good enough. If you know you have seven chances, you’re probably going to take seven – but we’re trying to work to ensure it only takes one.

You were talking earlier about creating living music, and stuff like this seems like it helps to keep what you do in the studio just as fresh as what you’re doing out on the road.

They’re two very different things. One’s a picture of a person and the other one’s a person. A picture can do a lot, but it’s not that person, especially when it comes to thinking about a picture of someone that you love who is no longer alive. Even then it’s not the same as them being in the room with you again to hug you.

For instance, I know that there will be a day where I have a gig and I won’t be able to call my dad to debrief – that’s gonna be a tough one. So the live thing is almost like a conveyor belt trying to make it an exact replica of what’s going on on the albums. There are people I see do that and I really respect how they do it because it’s authentic to them, but it was never for me.

How did your approach to bringing Horizons to life differ from how you tackled Reflector and other projects previously?

We had two years of intense experience constantly working on these songs between albums. It made me a different person on some level because I had a better idea of what to aim for and what not to aim that really allowed us to hit the bullseye this time compared to Reflector. And I’ll probably be saying the same thing again when the next record comes around, which will be a lot different than Horizons.

You just alluded to going a different direction with your next album. Someone else known for that who I know has heavily impacted your musical trajectory is Sturgill Simpson. How’d you get sent down the rabbit hole of his music?

Man, I remember when Sturgill Simpson worked at the Turnip Truck in the Gulch in Nashville, I would always see him there and thought nothing of it until one night when I was at The 5 Spot and heard him on stage singing for the first time. Then when Metamodern Sounds In Country Music came out I was in my friend Harrison’s basement. We had gone to Grimey’s to buy the record, we smoked some weed, turned it on, and listened with headphones on. It was and still is a defining moment in my listening experience of music – that record is so special.

Looking back I can see why Sturgill wanted to make a bunch of 180s, because from SOUND & FURY to Sailor’s Guide each album is its own thing. Most successful artists have one signature piece of work, like Tyler Childers’ Purgatory, Chris Stapleton’s Traveller, Tom Petty’s Wildflowers, the Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead, or Neil Young’s Harvest. Unless you’re someone like Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson where you have over 100 albums out. There’s usually one record where you’re like, “that’s the one.” With cosmic country we don’t have that album yet, but I think Horizons could be it.

What has the process of bringing Horizons to life taught you about yourself?

The concept of a Horizons is two-fold. There’s a literal, geographical, physical, material horizon where the land meets the heavens. Then there’s the metaphorical one, and we’re always pushing the cosmic country horizon. But there’s also a psychological horizon where you’re meeting your potential that the sky is symbolic of.

As Alan Watts would say, “there’s a dance to those things,” and I feel that since we put out Horizons that the band and I are on the verge of new horizons. It truly is the dawn of a new day.

Photo Credit: Jason Stoltzfus

BGS 5+5: Grain Thief

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Grain Thief
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Latest Album: House of the Dog (out August 1, 2025)

Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?

We’ve sort of faced the “genre-bending” thing throughout our career, so by now you’d think we’d have a good idea of how to summarize ourselves and our music. The beauty is, though, that we don’t really have to put ourselves down for a genre for anything more than maybe a drop-down menu or an intake form.

We’re from Boston, Massachusetts, an area that’s not typically known for its bluegrass scene (think Aerosmith, Dropkick Murphys, and Marky Mark). But through playing together in the early stages, we landed on this instrumentation that would be typical for a bluegrass band. So, does that make us a bluegrass band? Not really.

We welcome our individual musical backgrounds into our collective creative process. Alex (fiddle) went to school for classical music while Mike (bass) played drums in a punk band. Zach (mandolin) grew up in the PNW old-time scene while Patrick (guitar) studied English and developed a knack for songwriting. Tom (resonator) is a hell of an electric guitar player and is ready at the drop of a hat to play any iconic lead guitar riff that you might’ve just made reference to. We’re a mess. Sometimes, it’s a beautiful one.

What this all translates to is that we have a wide range of musicality within our crew and we allow all of that into our creative process and see what we come up with. Sometimes that could be called bluegrass or maybe even derivative of classical. Sometimes it’s lyrically poignant while other times it’s an angsty punky notion. Sometimes it’s, “This bridge kind of sounds like Weezer!” Thankfully this process has allowed us to grow a wide audience and allows for opportunities that are inside and outside of the bluegrass genre.

What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?

We’re a group of friends who are all just about the same age, so we’ve all grown up along the same cultural timeline – regardless of the fact that we all first met in our 20s. When we’re making any kind of cultural references together, whether satirically or literally, things generally land with the other band members. We all watch similar series and movies and someone might make a reference from childhood that’s stood the test of time. Other times we’re in the van looking for things to talk about and someone asks, “Hey have you seen Dune 2 yet?” while the odd-man-out immediately goes straight to “earmuffs” mode.

We’ve got hobbyist photographers and not-so-hobbyist visual artists within the group, so we share our work and inspirations with each other which leads to art direction brainstorming for band projects (album art, merch, etc). Many of us enjoy literature and some of us can barely read music. Not bad! While we haven’t necessarily organized the thought before, we certainly draw inspiration from other art forms and that spills into our music and our relationships together as bandmates.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Prior to making a record we generally go away for a few days (as much as time allows for) while we are on a break from playing shows to take a creative writing retreat. This has taken place now before our albums Gasoline (2020) and House of the Dog (2025), which are the two from our catalog of the past few years that are complete original compositions. This time together allows us to get away from the outside world and work distraction-free and it allows a significant amount of time for creative collaboration or to bring works to the group for arranging. This time together also acts as an opportunity to share meals together, check in, strengthen friendships, and generally just appreciate the role that we collectively play in each others’ lives.

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

Sadly we all have other jobs, too. Yay music industry life of 2025! Among us are skilled computer programmers, web developers, carpenters, general contractors, bartenders, sound engineers, CAD engineers, teachers, and more. Is anybody hiring for those positions? It’s literally no rest for the wicked. Yet here we are and we are grateful that there is still a place for being a professional musician in our lives at all.

We try to really make it count when we get to do this, and it has never felt like something that we have to do.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

We’ve all got excellent taste in both food and music, so it’s going to be hard to pick a single pairing that would apply for all of us. Sometimes we can’t all even decide on the same place to eat on the road. But, I’ve got two words that are abundantly clear with this one: “Jerry” and “Dogs.” So, probably a night of grilling hot dogs to the soundtrack of Grateful Dead bootlegs.

Photo Credit: Lead image by Toan Trinh; alternate image courtesy of the artist.

Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Remembers Tabla Genius Zakir Hussain

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“I am here. I’m ready to play.”

That, Mickey Hart recalls, is the first thing Zakir Hussain said to him when the young Mumbai-born tabla player, having recently arrived in the U.S., knocked on the door at the Grateful Dead drummer’s Marin County ranch.

“Oh, okay,” Hart says he replied. “Here we go.”

That was 1970 and go they did, forming a deep musical and personal bond that lasted from that day until Hussain’s death from lung disease on Dec. 15 at just age 73. Hart had been studying with Hussain’s father Ustad Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s long-time tabla partner.

“His father said, ‘I can’t play with you because I play the quietest instrument in the world and you play the loudest,’” Hart says, laughing in the den of his ranch house on a recent Zoom chat. “But he said, ‘My son, he could play with you. I will send him to you.’ And so he did.”

And? “It was just magic,” Hart says, beaming with the memories.

Soon Hussain moved into the barn studio facility at Hart’s ranch. And they played. And played.

“We played for four hours one time,” he says, then realizing that was nothing. “We played for four days and nights! Four days and nights! We really got to know each other and played every day. He was the crown prince of tabla, and when his father died he became the king.”

Father and son, in fact, duetted on Hart’s first solo album, Rolling Thunder, released in 1972. Soon other collaborations followed, including the creation of the Diga Rhythm Band, which grew around a multi-cultural percussion ensemble Hussain formed at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley. The group’s lone 1976 album also featured Hart’s Grateful Dead mate Jerry Garcia on two tracks.

“He loved Jerry, they just loved each other,” Hart says. “Their personalities were very similar. Jerry was really kind, loving, thoughtful, and so was Zakir.”

Hart and Hussain sparked creative energy in each other and an eagerness to explore.

“He taught me various ways rhythms could be used, exposed me to rhythms that I could never imagine, which I took to immediately, and I wanted to learn them,” Hart says. “When we did Diga Rhythm Band together, that was the first time I had to learn composition. He composed half of it and I composed the other half.”

If Hart had to learn new discipline, Hussain had to unlearn some.

“When he came to America he kind of picked up on some American traits, and he liked the looseness of my style,” Hart says, slipping back and forth between talking of Hussain in the present and past tenses with the freshness of this loss. “It freed him from the strictness of Indian classical music. My gig was a little serpentine, you know. His is straight down the pike. As accurate as he could be, it is like a machine. He’s the Einstein of rhythm, so playing with Einstein was really cool. But I didn’t have that sensibility. That’s not the way we did it in the Grateful Dead, right? And he loved that. He really took to it. And that’s what he said I taught him. It was a wonderful combination, a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the hearts.”

The meeting, and the mutual growth and openness to new vistas, continued as Hussain had key roles on Hart’s 1990 album At the Edge, 1991’s Planet Drum (which won the first-ever GRAMMY Award for World Music), 1996’s Mystery Box, 1998’s Supralingua and 2000’s Spirit Into Sound. Each brought together a world-circling community of percussionists on stage as well as in the studio.

With 2007’s Global Drum Project, the Planet Drum ensemble coalesced around a core of Hart, Hussain, Puerto Rican conguero Giovanni Hidalgo and Nigerian talking drum master Sikiru Adepoju, the quartet mounting several dazzling concert tours and coming together again for the 2022 album In the Groove. The joy they brought each other was clear to anyone who saw their shows.

The same spirit sparked much exploration throughout Hussain’s life. Around the same time he was creating Diga, he teamed in Shakti with jazz guitar boundary-breaker John McLaughlin, Indian violinist L. Shankar, and Indian percussionists Ramnad Raghavan and T.H. Vinayakram, rooted in traditional styles but reaching to new territories. Hussain and McLaughlin teamed regularly through the years with several other lineups (at times called Remember Shakti) and a triumphant final Shakti album and tour in 2023.

Hussain also had his own regular tours and recording projects with different ensembles under the name Masters of World Percussion, as well as a 2015 tour leading an East-West ensemble with veteran jazz bassist Dave Holland inspired by the oft-overlooked world of Indo-jazz.

Taking another tack, with Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer he created a banjo-bass-tabla triple concerto, “The Melody of Rhythm,” crossing lines of progressive bluegrass and both Western and Indian classical as documented on a 2009 album with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The three came together again in 2023 for the album At This Moment, which also features Rakesh Chaurasia on the Indian bamboo flute, the bansuri.

Other collaborators, among many, included Yo-Yo Ma, Van Morrison, George Harrison (Hussain played on the 1973 album Living in a Material World), Bill Laswell, and even Earth, Wind & Fire. He also had a long association with saxophonist Charles Lloyd that produced several wonderful albums, including 2022’s Sacred Thread, a trio with guitarist Julian Lage. And, of course, he made countless concert appearances and recordings with the top artists of Indian classical music.

“No one has crossed more borders than him,” Hart says. “Yeah, I’ve crossed a few myself. Not like him. He’s gone beyond me or anybody else I’ve ever met or heard of. He took to the air and went to all these different places, interacted magnificently with all these different cultures. What an incredible ambassador of music.

“And he was very kind when he played with you. He never overplayed, which he could do in an instant. But he was so kind, such a great person that he reserved himself. He never tried to show you up, he was never in competition with me. He was harmonious and rhythmically blissful, in a way. I guess you could call this bliss, bring the bliss word into this.”

Can Hart hear Hussain in some of his own and the Dead’s music?

“Oh God, yes!” he says. “Think of all the Grateful Dead rhythms.”

He cites “Playing in the Band,” for which he wrote the music with Bob Weir, adapting a piece called “The Main Ten,” a version of which appeared on Rolling Thunder.

“That’s 10/4 rhythm,” he says. “Nobody played 10/4 then! And there was ‘Happiness Is Drumming,’ which became ‘Fire on the Mountain.’ That was one we did in Diga. And the 7/4 on ‘Terrapin Station,’ and a lot on Blues for Allah. That was what we were playing in Diga and Phil Lesh picked up on it and everybody picked up on that rhythm and that became ‘King Solomon’s Marbles.’ No one did that in rock ‘n’ roll.

“So Zakir influenced me in so many ways, subtle ways and obvious ways. He was a big influence on the Grateful Dead. And he loved the way Bill [Kreutzman] and I interacted. That became kind of a model for him in some ways because it made it, I don’t know how you’d say it, legal for him in a way. He said, ‘Oh! Now I can do this! This is okay!’ Because only two drummers could do something like that.”

With all that, where would Hart recommend someone wanting to get to know Hussain’s music start? At first he insists that he couldn’t possibly narrow it down.

“I’d rather not,” he says. “Anything he ever played on is a wonder.”

But he gives it a little thought, mentioning several of the cross-cultural albums they made together, before focusing on Venu, a very traditional session he recorded in 1974 featuring Hussain in duet with Indian classical bansuri flute player Harisprasad Chaurasia. This came about when George Harrison’s “Dark Horse” tour, which featured the Indian all-star ensemble Ravi Shankar & Family (including Hussain’s father) as well as Western musicians, did shows in the Bay Area. Harrison and Shankar arranged for a private concert to be held at the historic Stone House, a granite building in Fairfax.

“We brought a bunch of them back to Marin County,” Hart says. “I had just got a 16-track machine from Ampex, threw it in the back of my pickup with a bunch of hay and all that. We went there and did the first 16-track remote recording.”

The music on the album is gripping, two long pieces featuring the venerable Rag Akir Bhairav, a devotional melody meant for the early morning hours, unfolding with grace and power. The first part is largely Chaurasia solo, with Hussain coming in for the second half, the pairing at times delicately rippling, at others building to frenzies, always in perfect, empathic sync.

Hart also cites Sarangi, a second album which he and Hussain co-produced at the same event with Ustad Sultan Khan’s sinewy playing of the bowed instrument that gave the album its title, accompanied by tabla player Shri Rij Ram.

Legacy is a difficult thing to predict. But to Hart, Hussain’s artistic importance is found in the drive the two of them shared to experience all music and cultures and to bring them together.

“He brought together cultures that no one had ever dreamt of, from Egypt with me and [oud player] Hamza El Din, from Nigeria with [drummer] Babatunde Olatunji, with Airto from Brazil. We introduced into the Western world something filled with all these gems and wondrous rhythms. That’s something that will never be forgotten. And all the cultures he touched around the world for all these years. He made quite a difference. There is no place that he’s played that he is not revered.”

It’s talking on a personal level, though, that Hart becomes emotional, effusive, as he reaches back through time to that day Zakir Hussain came to play.

“We just fell in love with each other,” he says. “We really liked each other. He is such a kind man. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like him. I can’t say that about anybody else, actually.”

He throws his head back and laughs.

“He’s singular in that respect. And it reflected in his music and the way he played with other people.”

Photo Credit: Jay Blakesburg

Peter Rowan and Sam Grisman Project Will Bring Old & In the Way to the Ryman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On January 9, 2025, there will be a special performance – more so a once-in-a-lifetime celebration – of the groundbreaking music of Old & In the Way at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.

Led by the “Bluegrass Buddha” himself, Peter Rowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the group will be backed by the Sam Grisman Project. The gathering will also feature a murderers’ row of talent: Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie & Rob McCoury, and more.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan told BGS in an exclusive 2022 interview. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old & In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

To preface, Old & In the Way started as impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions in the early 1970s between Rowan, his longtime friend, mandolin guru David Grisman, and Jerry Garcia, iconic guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who reached for his trusty banjo during the gatherings at Garcia’s home in Stinson Beach, California.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan remembers. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

At the time, Garcia was searching for new avenues of creative exploration, seeing as the Dead were in the midst of taking a much-needed hiatus after years of relentless touring and recording. He was also, perhaps subconsciously, trying to tap back into his roots before the Dead, this landscape of the late 1950s/early 1960s where Garcia was heavily involved in the San Francisco Bay Area folk scene.

“And you realized that Jerry was an intergalactic traveler, just dropping in on the Earth scene for a little while, but he was totally at home,” Rowan says of Garcia’s restless penchant and lifelong thirst for acoustic music.

When Old & In the Way formed in 1973, the trio recruited bassist John Kahn, as well as a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements). Sporadic gigs were booked around the Bay Area, with the vibe of the whole affair casual in nature – the ethos one of camaraderie and collaboration, but without expectations or boundaries.

“I remember singing the ending of ‘Land of the Navajo’ at the first rehearsal and I looked over at Jerry,” Rowan recalls. “He kept nodding his head like, ‘go.’ It was like Jack Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at City Lights Bookstore – ‘go, man, go.’ Encouragement, encouragement.”

By 1974, Old & In the Way simply vanished into the cosmic ether, but not before capturing a handful of live performances that have become melodic sacred texts of a crucial crossroads for acoustic music. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.

As it stands today, Rowan, now 82 years old, is the only remaining member of Old & In the Way still actively performing. Garcia, Clements, Kahn, and Hartford have all sadly passed on, with the elder Grisman and Greene retired from touring. Grisman’s son, standup bassist Sam Grisman, is now carrying his father’s bright torch.

And although the tenure of the Old & In the Way was short-lived, the ripple effects of the band’s ongoing influence and enduring legacy remains as vibrant and vital as it was those many years ago, when a handful of shaggy music freaks kicked off a jam that will perpetuate for eternity.

In preparation for the upcoming Old & In the Way showcase at the Ryman on January 9, BGS recently spoke with Sam Grisman, who talked at-length not only about his continued work with Peter Rowan and the intricacies of Jerry Garcia, but also why a band Grisman’s father started over a half-century ago still captivates the hearts and minds of music lovers the world over.

You were five years old when Jerry Garcia passed away. You were really young, but do you remember anything that you hold onto?

Sam Grisman: Yeah, I have a very vivid memory of what our house felt like, smelled like, and just what the energy was like when Jerry was around. And I remember that sort of ease, just the way that he made people feel. It seemed like my parents were at ease when he was around.

And he probably felt at ease being around them. It was probably a safe haven at that house.

Definitely. And, you know, my parents smoked weed in the house. But, my mom was pretty strict about cigarettes. [She] wouldn’t let anybody smoke cigarettes in the house. But, when Jerry was around, he smoked cigarettes in the house. So, part of this smell in my blurry five-year-old memory is the smell of cigarettes. And Jerry would sometimes wear a leather jacket, maybe the smell of leather.

I remember the sound of his laugh. I remember all that music, and some of it I remember so vividly that I just know that part of that memory is reinforced by being there as a little toddler when they were working up [music]. Because they would often work on tunes upstairs in the living room and then take them down to the studio, put them on the mics and pull them.

You just wanted to be around it all and soak it all in.

I was a really curious kid.

With the Ryman show coming up, there’s been a lot of celebration of Old & In the Way as of late, especially with you touring with Peter Rowan and the current Jerry Garcia exhibit at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. You’ve been around those songs your whole life. But, when you think about the context of Old & In the Way, and what you’re doing at the Ryman, what really sticks out with why that was such a special time in not only bluegrass, but in the lives of those people?

I mean, what a lightning-in-the-bottle chapter of all those people’s lives, you know? I think 1973, ’73/’74, was a particularly fertile time for Jerry. He was playing a full schedule with the Dead. He had Jerry Garcia Band stuff. He was playing in Old & In the Way. He was playing pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It seemed like he really had an itch to go back to where his roots were, especially when you look at [the Grateful Dead album] Workingman’s Dead [that was released a] couple years prior.

For all of us, who are looking back on it 50 years in the future, it seems like this momentous, heady time that was just meant to be. But, for those guys in the moment, it was just total serendipity. And the quintessence of just going with the flow – Stinson Beach, California, vibes. They just kind of stumbled into this reality.

“Y’all wanna play?” “Sure, why not.”

Yeah, where it would just be really fun to have this bluegrass band that they didn’t take super seriously, which I think really comes across in the recordings, you know? Because there’s all this joy in that music that might not necessarily have been there if those guys were taking it super seriously or if they needed it to pay their bills. It was a very interesting circumstance.

And for them to call their hero Vassar Clements into the mix, on a sort of whim because Peter found his number on a card in his wallet. It was sort of like a fantasy camp for these guys. Like a bunch of hippies sitting around on the beach, smoking a joint, thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the world’s greatest fiddle player just show up?” “I bet you we could book a gig.” “Hey Jerry, you got these legions of people following you around, you could probably get us a gig, right?”

And that’s kind of how it happened. Those gigs were so magical, because they happened mostly for all of these Deadheads in Marin [County, California], for like 16 months or something.

So, if you really had your finger on the pulse of it and you were going to the Keystone [music club in Berkeley, California], to see [the Jerry Garcia Band] and you loved what the Dead were doing, you knew that they were going to take this time off, but you just saw Jerry the week before and he never took his guitar off. He just finished the [Jerry Garcia Band] set and walked backstage with his guitar on and was smoking a cigarette, and then you saw him 30 minutes later talking to somebody off the side of stage, still had his guitar on — you’re thinking, “Gee, this guy’s not going to stop playing music this year, so I better keep my eyes peeled for what’s next.” And they played all these little gigs mostly around the Bay Area — they kind of captured some lightning in a bottle.

With playing these Old & In the Way melodies not only throughout your life, but also extensively nowadays with Peter Rowan, what’s been your biggest takeaway on what makes those songs and the ethos/history behind them so special to you? What about in terms of musicality, technique, and approach?

It’s hard to articulate how special it is to be exploring these beloved songs that mean so much to so many folks, myself included, with Peter and a cast of some of my best friends and favorite musicians. It’s a catalog that’s got a lot of depth.

Old & In the Way would play anything from songs by bluegrass heroes like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, and Jim & Jesse to Vassar [Clements], Jerry [Garcia], and my pop’s instrumentals, to the tunes that Peter was writing at the time, which are some of my absolute favorite songs ever written.

Songs like “Midnight Moonlight,” “High Lonesome Sound,” and “Panama Red.” Playing these tunes with Uncle Peter makes me feel connected to the times he spent with David and Jerry in Stinson Beach in the early ’70s.

I grew up in Mill Valley and loved going to Stinson Beach with my friends, so I have a pretty vivid image in my mind’s eye. They played tunes, hung out, relaxed, took in the sea breeze, smoked a bunch of great weed, and developed a highly individuated “West Coast” approach to playing and singing this bluegrass music that they all loved and respected so much.

And then, they called one of my bass heroes, John Kahn, and their fiddle hero, the inimitable Vassar Clements and gave the world about one glorious year – I think around 50 shows – of a rare and lovable breed of bluegrass.

So much of everyone’s personality comes through in the music, and you can hear their camaraderie in the recordings. I guess my biggest take away from getting to play this music with Peter is how important it is to bring your own approach to these timeless songs that we love, while still honoring what it is that makes us love them in the first place.

You’ve known Peter Rowan since you were born. But, what has this latest endeavor together meant to you, to play the Old & In the Way catalog to not only lifelong fans, but also a whole new generation of acoustic music fans and bluegrass freaks?

It means the world to me to get to spend some time out on the road sharing space and time in service of this music with Uncle Peter. Getting to meet all of these folks who care so much about this music and feeling their appreciation and gratitude for Pete has been truly special.

There are so many people from so many different ages and different walks of life for whom this music has been the soundtrack to many fond memories, and I’m honored to be one of them. It’s also been a joy to see fresh faces in the audience and some folks taking in this music with a new perspective.

In your honest opinion, what is the legacy of Old & In the Way when you place it through the prism of the history of bluegrass and the road to the here and now, especially this current juncture where the torchbearers are selling out arenas and creating this high-water mark for acoustic, traditional and bluegrass music?

For many folks who know and love the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Old & In the Way has been their first exposure to bluegrass. So many people over the years have told me how listening to Old & In the Way led them to further explore bluegrass music and its roots and branches. And others have told me how it inspired them to become pickers and start bands of their own.

I think Old & In the Way has been pivotal in bringing a wider audience with a more adventurous musical palette into the bluegrass universe. The legacy of Old & In the Way is one of exploration and preservation, and they certainly paved the way for many of us to walk a similar path — honoring the music that we love, while exploring its boundaries and finding our own voices and approaches.

It’s wonderful to see my friend Billy Strings out there playing for so many folks on such a big scale simply being himself, playing his own songs with a great group of friends, and also honoring the material that made him the musician that he is — maybe that’s a part of the legacy of Old & In the Way.

Photo Credit: Elliot Siff
Poster Credit: Taylor Rushing

9 Bluegrass Covers of Grateful Dead Classics

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s certainly true that the Grateful Dead were never a bluegrass band, starting with the fact that their lineup had not just one drummer, but two. And yet it also can’t be denied that the group’s musical DNA has a wide streak of bluegrass deep within, both in terms of licks and improvisational flair.

In large part, that’s due to the late Jerry Garcia – “Captain Trips” – who started out as a banjo player before finding his most famous calling as the Grateful Dead’s lead guitarist. Before that, Garcia played in folk circles for years, and his many extracurricular collaborators included David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Don Reno, Chubby Wise and other titans of the genre. More than a quarter-century before O Brother, Where Art Thou? took bluegrass to the top of the charts, Garcia’s 1973 side project, Old & In the Way, stood as the top-selling bluegrass album of all time.

Garcia and the Dead’s bluegrass bona fides are solid indeed, as shown by artifacts like the Pickin’ on the Grateful Dead series (not to mention Grass Is Dead, a tribute act). But maybe the strongest testament to the strength of the Dead’s bluegrass-adjacent side is what other artists have made of their catalog. Countless bluegrass musicians have covered Dead songs in ways that would appeal to even the staunchest chair-snapping purists. Here are some of the best.

“Friend of the Devil” – The Travelin’ McCourys (2019)

This rounder’s tale is the granddaddy of ’em all, a bluegrass staple from almost the moment it appeared on the Dead’s 1970 proto-Americana classic, American Beauty. Long a picking-circle staple at festivals, it’s been covered by everybody from Tony Rice to Elvis Costello. But here is a fantastic cover by one of the finest family bands in all of bluegrass, captured onstage at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in 2019. In contrast to the manic pace of the original, this version proceeds at more of an elegant glide. But it’s still got plenty of get-up-and-go, with killer solos over walking bass and a great Ronnie McCoury lead vocal.

“Dire Wolf” – Molly Tuttle (2022)

Among the most acclaimed young artists in bluegrass, Molly Tuttle is a two-time Guitar Player of the Year winner from the International Bluegrass Music Association. She also won IBMA’s Album of the Year trophy for 2022’s Crooked Tree, which included the 1970 Workingman’s Dead standard “Dire Wolf” as a bonus track. Equal parts folk fable and murder ballad, it’s something like “Little Red Riding Hood” with an unhappy ending. And Tuttle’s vocal is even more striking than her guitar-playing.

“Wharf Rat” – Billy Strings (2020)

Possibly even more acclaimed as a guitarist is William “Billy Strings” Apostol, another IBMA Awards fixture (and multiple Entertainer of the Year winner) who is frequently likened to Doc Watson. But few guitarists have ever conjured up Garcia’s sound, spirit, and all-around vibe as effectively as Strings. A song about a lost soul in a seaside town, “Wharf Rat” first came out on the Dead’s eponymous 1971 live album. Strings’ 2020 live version from the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, is amazing, as Strings doesn’t sing it so much as inhabit it. The money shot is his guitar solo that begins just after the five-minute mark.

“Scarlet Begonias” – The Infamous Stringdusters (2020)

Gambling is one of the Dead’s recurrent tropes and “Scarlet Begonias” gives it a playful spin with a loping guitar riff. The original dates back to 1974’s From the Mars Hotel and it’s been widely covered in oddball styles by the likes of electronic duo Thievery Corporation and the ska band Sublime. But “Scarlet Begonias” has never had it so well as in this excellent bluegrass version by The Infamous Stringdusters, shot onstage at Seattle’s Showbox just ahead of the pandemic in early 2020.

“Ripple” – Dale Ann Bradley (2019)

More often than not, vocals tended to be the Dead’s weak link. But that is not a problem for Kentucky Music Hall of Famer and five-time IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year Dale Ann Bradley. The elegiac “Ripple” began life as the B-side to the “Truckin’” single and was also a show-stopper on the Dead’s 1981 acoustic live album, Reckoning. Bradley covered it on her 2019 LP, The Hard Way, with Tina Adair providing truly lovely vocal harmonies.

“Uncle John’s Band” – Fireside Collective (2022)

One of the Dead’s folksiest numbers, “Uncle John’s Band” kicked off Workingman’s Dead at an easy-going amble – a clear departure from the psychedelic excursions of the Dead’s earliest work. This live version by the young Asheville, North Carolina, band Fireside Collective reimagines “Uncle John’s Band” as sprawling jam-band fodder.

“Cassidy” – Greensky Bluegrass (2007)

“Cassidy” first appeared on-record as a Bob Weir solo tune on his 1972 side-project album, Ace, but it’s been on multiple Dead live albums over the years. It’s always been something of an enigma, inspired by a young girl as well as Neal Cassady. Michigan jamgrass ensemble Greensky Bluegrass gets to its beat-poet heart on this version from 2007’s Live at Bell’s.

“Tennessee Jed” – Front Country (2018)

A frequent theme for the Dead was being in motion, whether traveling toward something or running away from it. So it follows that homesickness would be an aspect of their music, perhaps most overtly on this wistful song from the double-live LP, Europe ’72. California’s Front Country put “Tennessee Jed” through its paces in this 2018 version from their “Kitchen Covers” series.

“Touch of Grey” – Love Canon (2014)

If the Dead wasn’t a bluegrass band, they most definitely weren’t a pop band, either. But the group had occasional brushes with the Hot 100, most famously with the 1970 statement of purpose “Truckin’” and its “what a long strange trip it’s been” tagline (even though the group had only been together about five years by then). “Truckin’” stalled out at No. 64 and was later eclipsed by its 1987 sequel “Touch of Grey” – an actual Top 10 hit with its bittersweet conclusion, “We will get by, we will survive.”

From Charlottesville, Virginia, Love Canon strips away the ’80s pop keyboards and covers the song well as straight-up bluegrass on 2014’s “Dead Covers Project.”

Photo Credit: Old & In the Way, courtesy of Acoustic Disc.