Tag: guitar

Mark Erelli Had an Idea for a Special First Live Album: a String Quintet

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Just as spring began its soft awakening here in the Northeast, Mark Erelli breathed new life into his vast catalog with the release of Live in Rockport: Mark Erelli & His String Quintet. As if his 13 solo albums, three bluegrass albums, and a considerable list of collaborations weren’t extensive enough, Erelli’s newest album forages entirely novel innovations.

With the help of longtime collaborator Zachariah Hickman (bass, vocals, arrangements), Erelli dispenses a selection of nine songs from throughout his decades-long vault of material with an imaginative twist – each has been delicately rearranged for Erelli, his guitar, and a string quintet. Recorded live in the sonically apt Shalin Liu Performance Center of Rockport, Massachusetts, the painstakingly intricate layers of strings weave a dynamic backdrop for Erelli’s potent songsmanship.

Cinematic and profound, the resulting tracklist examines these illustrious songs through new textures and colors. With deep attunement to both past iterations and new arrangements, listeners are struck by the simultaneously transient and perpetual nature of a good song.

BGS had the pleasure of chatting with Mark Erelli about the musings and process behind his newest creation.

So tell me about what the inception of this project was like – what propelled you to make a live album with a string quintet?

Mark Erelli: I’ve wanted to make a live record for years. And the question for any artist is always, “When do you do it?” If you do it too early in your career, you don’t maybe have as much experience performing live and you’re maybe not at the height of your powers. Yet, if you do it when it’s been a long time between records, it can seem almost like an afterthought. So I’ve always wanted to do it, but I’ve really struggled with the “when” of it. And then I’ve also grappled with what the format should be, because I perform in a lot of different formats, but I think my native performance format is still as a solo acoustic singer-songwriter.

I’ve thought about doing that live since I don’t have any records where it’s just me and my guitar. I’ve actually tried to professionally record live shows, but I never really captured a show that felt magical, and that’s the thing about live performance, right? It’s such an ephemeral thing, that’s the beauty of it, and that’s the frustrating thing if you’re trying to capture it. As I got further and further in my career, I realized I didn’t want to do the kind of live record that is just a snapshot of me on a normal night. I decided if I was going to do it, I wanted to make something really special and I wanted it to be a classic moment that really transforms how you think about an artist.

One of my favorite live albums is At Fillmore East by the Allman Brothers Band – it’s a high bar to measure yourself against, but I really wanted a live album that showcased my work in a new light. That’s where the string quintet came in. I had worked with strings on my most recent three records or so and I started working with strings on my covers record in 2018 called Mixtape. Strings are such a novel, fun, really amazing element to be able to work with – they’re quite the extra color to paint with, but I always had used them in the context of a band performance, tracking the strings after to support and augment the band.

I started wondering, what would it sound like if the strings just were the band? I got the chance to figure this out when I re-released my debut record on its 25th anniversary and I re-recorded one of the songs with a string quintet. That’s when I realized, “Oh yeah, this is gonna work out great, we’ve got to find a way to document this.” We made the live record shortly thereafter.

What do you think changes about the music and the material when you intentionalize the context and the sound like this?

Strings are really unique in that they can support a very wide dynamic range. For example, if you’re playing with a rock band, it’s pretty easy to get and you can only really get so quiet. The drums can only be so quiet. Electric guitars can only be so quiet. But the strings can get as loud and as percussive as stirring as a rock band. There’s this extra part of the dynamic range at the lower end of the spectrum, at the quieter end, that is not really accessible in any other kind of band format. String players are really adept at playing very quietly, because sometimes they have to provide atmosphere and/or introduce tension. But then other times they have to have this totally, totally aggressive, intense kind of energy, like with Psycho. What I love about the string quintet is that they just let me keep the full dynamic range of my music on the table, as far as what kind of songs I can play and how I deliver them, meanwhile I don’t have to sing over a drum kit.

Could you talk a little bit more about that process of arranging with the quintet? And I’m also curious about song selection – what it was like picking and choosing which songs you’d arrange?

I mean, I can’t speak specifically to the arrangement process, because that is pretty much entirely the purview of Zachariah Hickman, who wrote all the arrangements. I’ve worked with Zach basically on every project I’ve done since 2008 in some capacity. He’s produced a lot of them. We do a lot of projects and side projects together, which is to say that we’ve built up almost 20 years of really intense, deep trust. Zach is a far more trained musician than I am and he just always knows what I want to hear or what I’m trying to strive for, even if I can’t quite verbalize it. And he wrote these string parts accordingly.

As far as which songs to do, I think some songs have a more cinematic quality to them for whatever reason, whether it’s the sweep of the imagery and lyrics or the interaction between tempo of the song and the chord changes. Some chord progressions just feel more majestic. Anytime there’s majesty and a big sweep of emotion involved, the strings are a no-brainer. The bigger challenge is to present the strings within the kind of fuller spectrum of what I can do. I didn’t want to just do a whole live record of ballads. I wanted some songs to be able to rock, and I wanted to show that the strings can rock too. “Is it Enough” and “Love Wins in the Long Run” are two songs I specifically commissioned for this record to have some rockers with strings, not just these beautiful ballads. As far as which songs to add strings to from my catalog, I feel like I’m not even done with this yet. I want more.

Yes, same here! What was it like practicing with the strings for this performance?

It’s interesting – when you have a rock band, the parts aren’t always necessarily written out. There might be specific hooks or chord changes that have to happen, but there’s a lot more freedom for improvisation in the performance. You just kind of play the songs together a few times, then you go out and you play them in front of people, and you see what happens. Oftentimes it’s very different with strings. All their parts are written out, so I’m the thing that changes every time. Zach’s bass parts are not written out either, so the two of us can kind of move together as a dynamic unit. If I move to sing something a certain way, or phrase something with a particular feel, he can match my feel and translate between what I’m doing and what the rest of the quintet is doing.

But for the most part, the form is set. If I don’t play the basic structure as their charts are written out, they’re lost and then it comes off the rails. But within the form, there’s a lot of freedom for me to phrase things a certain way. I can phrase behind the beat I can push my phrasing a little bit against how they’re voicing their parts. That’s where I think a lot of the best art comes from. Having complete freedom to create and improvise, unless you’re working with the highest, highest caliber of musicians, is just really tough. Having no rules and no parameters – it’s really hard to make that compelling, unless you’re a band of virtuosos.

To me, it’s the constraints that really let you play around with the other factors. Maybe that’s the scientist in me talking. Everything can change. Something has to stay the same. In the case of these string quintet shows, the structure of the song is the same every time, but the way that you color in those lines – there’s almost endless variations to play with.

I’m curious how your relationship to these songs has evolved throughout the years and then specifically within the creation of this record. How will this process inspire your artistry moving forward?

The first song on Live in Rockport is the last song from my most recent studio record. Then towards the end of the live record is the song “Northern Star,” which is from my debut that I re-recorded 25 years later. So there’s a huge spread there. It tends to be mostly focused on stuff from the last 10 years or so, but having that early song there has helped me see more of a through line within my body of work that I previously was less aware of.

I think of my catalog as falling into either side of a particular line, and that line being parenthood—or at least when I started to really think seriously about becoming a parent. The art that I made before I was a parent, or before I started considering it, that all feels sort of separate from the art I make now. Sometimes it’s been hard for me to relate to the kid that made that work and the kind of man that I am now that’s been changed in so many ways by all that new love in my life – not just marriage, but family. So to reach back across that dividing line and to take a song like “Northern Star” and treat it the same way that we’re treating some of these newer songs and have it come alive so vibrantly really made me think, “Okay, well maybe that was the same person all along.”

I was just growing all along. So in some strange way, the strings have helped me kind of reconnect with some of my earlier material when I would have never thought to even dream of having a string quintet on my records – I wouldn’t have had any idea how to do that. And if you’d asked me if the songs would support it or if it was appropriate for the songs, I would have said, “I don’t think so. “Hearing all the songs side by side like this from such a long period of time has made me connect with the fact that maybe I’ve always been the same kind of artist that I am now and it just took me a while to grow into that realization.

I think when the audience is hearing me with the strings, it can be pretty revelatory – they’re really learning new things about me as an artist. And when I’m on stage performing with the strings, I’m learning new things about myself in real time, too. To me, that’s the beautiful thing that made working with the strings just so amazing – it really was a growth opportunity all around, just like anytime you do something that affords you a new perspective, or a new appreciation of a particular dimension of what you do. You just can’t help but be a better artist on the other side of that. I have a lot to be grateful for, as far as the different configurations that I’ve been able to work with. And this, right now – this is one of my absolute favorites.

Photo Credit: Bri Gately

Guitarist Cameron Knowler’s Poetic Portrait of Yuma, AZ and the Gorgeous, Bleak Southwest

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s a warm, summery day in early April when I sit down with archivist, writer, and guitarist Cameron Knowler on the shores of Old Hickory Lake in Middle Tennessee. Both Knowler and myself happen to now live in Old Hickory, a small village in Davidson County that was formerly a DuPont company town and is nestled on the edges of the eponymous, manmade US Army Corps of Engineers lake on the Cumberland River.

The setting is a far cry – geographically, topographically, and ecologically – from Knowler’s hometown of Yuma, Arizona, a place that serves as the inspiration, background, and foreground of his stunning new solo guitar album, CRK (released April 4 by Worried Songs). Knowler’s upbringing in Yuma was traumatic and bleak, not exactly a storybook experience by any measure. Still, like many roots musicians and creatives, the landscapes and dioramas of the wild west California/Arizona border town have become the guitarist-composer’s primary muse.

CRK sounds like the desert. Like hot, searing parking lots. Like mesquite and cactuses and roadrunners and mesas and red rocks. Stark flatpicked and finger-plucked melodies give equal consideration and immortalization to sweeping natural landscapes and small, depressingly human settings, too. Unlike so many of his subjects and inspirations in and around Yuma, this collection of compositions never moves to pave over the intricacies, nuances, and subversions Knowler finds in revisiting his hometown in music and memories. Still, the album is as gorgeous and transportive as any of our favorite famous paintings of the Old West, or soundtracks to iconic western films, or depictions of ancient pueblos. Perhaps his subject is a strip mall or a vignette of the proverbial “suburban hell,” but in this context each feels like an entire universe unto itself, a dreamscape – a home.

CRK opens with a gorgeous prose poem set to music, a track titled “Christmas in Yuma.” Immediately, the record is thereby attached through terroir and tradition to other western artists like Steinbeck and McCarthy. The album’s package is ornamented with gorgeous photographs, polaroids, bits of imagery, printed art, and poetry, further evoking artists we associate with the Southwest like Dorothea Lange and Linda Hogan. But the stories herein are told almost exclusively by guitar – usually Knowler solo as centerpiece, but sometimes joined by ensembles including guitarists Jordan Tice (who co-produced the project) and Rich Hinman, as well as other instrumentalists like Rayna Gellert, Robert Bowlin, Jay Bellerose, and more. The guitar is an instrument so pervasive and ubiquitous we often forget how aptly it can showcase these kinds of narratives, and how at home the six-string always feels in the West.

But with CRK, listeners won’t ever forget those facts. This is a narrative album. Is it also a technical achievement, intricate and intriguing and complex? Absolutely. But making an impressive guitar album was clearly not Knowler’s goal. Telling stories, with his medium being the guitar and the traditions that encircle it, was his chief aim. To say the project is successful in this regard would be an embarrassingly trite understatement.

And so, while watching the springtime water birds and snacking on lunch – with Knowler’s neck, wrists, and fingers dripping in Native-smithed silver and turquoise – we two sat down on the banks of a long, twisting lake on the Cumberland River in Nashville to discuss the guitar, the desert, and the little town on the banks of the Colorado River called Yuma – that Cameron Knowler once, and still, calls home.

I wanted to start by talking about place. I’m obsessed with how music has been slowly but surely divorced from its relationship to place over time. Your album, what jumped out at me immediately was it has such a strong relationship to place. How do you take something physical, tangible, geographical – a place like Yuma or Old Hickory Lake – and translate that into your medium? How do you think about evoking landscape or evoking an image with music?

Cameron Knowler: That’s a great question. I have like 10 ways of responding to that. As you said, music is getting divorced from place and I think it’s something of a cliche at this point that we’re losing regionalism. In the sense that, even with bow strokes– fiddlers in Galax, Virginia are different than fiddlers in northern Virginia. Not consciously, necessarily, but just as a colloquialism. As a part of their place. I didn’t [have] an old man or an old woman playing a fiddle who taught me tunes, I never had any of that [regionalism]. Instead, the “white kid from the suburbs” phenomenon happened. When I moved to Texas, I got connected with a regional fiddler in Terlingua, Texas – kind of [where the movie], Paris, Texas started. I learned his repertoire, which was interesting in that he learned a lot from Brad Leftwich when they were young and living in Santa Barbara. That was the void that I was missing. Not even musically, just in my life. I lost my mom, I lost my dad, I didn’t have family, so to me that was a cue, like a clue.

Then it flips, because there is a robust fiddle tradition of the Tohono O’odham [Nation] right there on the Yuma, Arizona/California border. But that’s not my culture. I could have gone in and said, “I’m gonna learn this tune” – or melody or whatever. Then that [could be] my way into the landscape. Instead of coming at it from an internal perspective, it was an external perspective, basically like a western painter. Like an oil painter painting Tucson or Walpi.

To answer your question, it’s slippery, ’cause you can’t go on stage and say, “Okay, this instrumental song is about a grocery store that I grew up driving by.” [Laughs] I can’t say that. It does come from that place, but I don’t say that. For me, the visual aspects of the record, I weigh them as equally, I would say, as the sonics. I think that’s where I can insert song titles – all the song titles on the record are related to Yuma.

There’s this tradition of stark solo or nearly solo acoustic guitar as an iconic sound of “the Wild West.” One of the first things I thought about listening to CRK is the score and soundtrack for Brokeback Mountain, so much of it is just solo plucked, tender guitar. Then of course in other music that evokes the West, you have sweeping strings and countrypolitan country and western. Even in that context you’ll often hear nylon-string guitar out front, solo. There’s something about unadorned guitar that is connected to landscapes.

But what I’m hearing you say is it’s not about translating the grandeur of Western landscapes at all. It’s about the grocery store, or it’s about the building that burned down, or it’s about a stretch of miles and miles of highway.

Totally. Yes. There’s so much programmed into the sound. David Rawling says, “The sound of a minor chord is a cowboy dying,” which is such a great way of saying that.

I believe this is true of the development of the flat-top guitar in general. At a certain point in 1934 or 1933, when the dreadnoughts start to get developed, there’s something about that that conveniently carries forward the agenda of interrelated musics – like Hawaiian music and bluegrass music for two totally different agendas. Then that [sound and body style] becomes the golden standard. But there were so many other brands and makers and thinkers from different cultures making guitars that, in an alternate universe not far from our own at all, would’ve been the golden standard. I feel the same way about the tradition of the music itself, right? And a dreadnought itself can do an infinite number of things, but just the format itself excludes a lot. As a constant instrument to play solo.

Another thing that David Rawlings says about his small guitar is that the smallest things sound the biggest, when they are in their own diorama – describing what he does with Gillian [Welch]. That’s his goal, to convince listeners that the “baby dinosaur” [small guitar] can actually eat them. Working in miniature, making little boats in glass bottles, you open yourself up, it’s an entire universe. The littlest things sound the biggest. In that way, there’s opportunity in the format itself.

I think people like Norman Blake and John Steinbeck are both hyper-regionalists who synthesize very eclectic sources to create something that is uniquely their own, but also totally comes outta left field. ‘Cause yeah, you think about Norman and certain people would say he is a flatpicker. Some people would say he was a pot smoking hippie who played with John Hartford – and they’re both equally true! Tying together otherwise disparate histories is a compelling format and is rewarding to the solo practitioner, I think.

We should talk about Steinbeck. We talked about it a couple of weeks ago when we first met by chance. But you starting the album with “Christmas in Yuma,” immediately I was like, “Oh, I know where we are. I know what we’re doing.” We’re in the West, there’s poetry/prose poetry happening. That song feels like it’s part of a longstanding tradition. Immediately I was thinking about a couple of my favorite Steinbeck passages listening to that.

Starting with poetry, starting with spoken word over that beautiful sound bed that you’ve created for it, what does that accomplish for you as an opening to a record?

Two things come to mind. Kenneth Patchen, who made these poetry records for the Folkways label in the ‘50s backed by a jazz band and it was almost comical, but he took it so seriously and it’s so convincing when you just forget what the format actually is. The great Texas – I don’t even wanna say outsider artist, but in terms of how he’s viewed – outsider artist Terry Allen, with some of his concept records like Lubbock (On Everything) with the pedal steel. You can do anything at that point. That’s why I started [CRK] out that way.

Also, quite frankly, Ice Cube’s records – I’m thinking of N.W.A. – start out with these sound collages of him getting arrested or walking down a cell block, or the imagined character is. To me, he could do anything after that point. He could make the amazing record that it became, or he could have done some something entirely different. I just think it’s an earnest way of saying, “I’m not trying to do what you [already] know.” We all know that everyone is infinitely complex, but in terms of what they release, it’s fine to not be infinitely complex?

For me, it’s not a flatpicking record. It’s not a fingerpicking record. I’m really not trying to make it a guitar record, so to speak. I wanted to make it a narrative record. [“Christmas in Yuma”] was just an earnest way of saying, “I’m not what you think I might be.”

It’s also a tradition in these roots and folk music spaces to play with expectation. People generally know what a solo guitar record is gonna sound like and what it’s gonna be and what it’s gonna do. I’m imagining a program director at a radio station putting on the record and doing the 30-second listen through – and the first song is poetry?!

I think maybe that’s what you’re talking about? Whatever conscious or subconscious projection you might have about what this album is in your hand, or what this is about to be as you put it on, you want to play with that projection. You’re saying, “I’m gonna tell you what this is.”

That is a beautiful point because, not to go too far back [in my history], but I was “unschooled” and I didn’t have a high school diploma or a GED. [Through all the hardships I’ve faced], I’ve learned this notion of leveraging. I surveyed how I was going to be able to reach people, and it gets more representative of myself as [time] goes. But it’s always been under the guise of leveraging unexpected muscle groups towards something else. That’s just built into this like fight or flight thing. I just have nothing to lose.

Your point about the radio DJ – or whoever that’s listening to the poetry – I think that’s a unique opportunity. At that point, they’re suspending judgment. If I wanna listen to a guitar record, I’m gonna listen to Leo Kottke 6- and 12-String Guitar. It’s perfect. It does exactly what it needs to do.

People should continue to try to make records like that. To me, it’s not a push against that at all. It’s starting out on a different foot. You may end up in a place that, by design, is very different than you would if you just tried to hit it on the nose. You can still hit it on the nose. Then you might even have a chance to open it up to somebody. Sometimes people just don’t know who Norman Blake is. But then, there’s a tune like “Yuma Ferry.” Who plays like that? Norman plays like that. If I were to make a whole record of “Yuma Ferry”-style tunes, I think everybody listening would know that it was a Norman Blake type of thing.

Let’s talk about “Christmas in Yuma” a little more in detail, because I’m curious about how you created it. Was it the poem that made the music happen, or the music demanded to have a poem set to it? What was the creative process like for the track?

I woke up from a nap on December 21, 2021, and I just went to Google Docs and typed it out. It just came out like that. The recording process, I had my friends Harry and Dylan sit down with me in our friend Marshall’s studio and we just recorded improvisations with the loose framework. [It’s read by my friend] Jack Kilmer, who similarly grew up in the Southwest. His father, like my mother, was also Christian Scientist. Those are all the things that were vibrating around. I was like, “He has to do it.” He’s an amazing voice actor, amazing actor, and just a great musician. Very musical and a beautiful artist. I had him do it first.

Then we went to the studio and we just said, “This is how long the track is. We’re not gonna play to the track. We’re just gonna play.” There was one take that was like the perfect length of time and I just put it under there. All those sonic features that interact with the vocal are totally incidental.

The music of CRK is so evocative and so visual and is so good at text painting, but I wanted to talk about your work in other media and about how you curated the package for the album, too. You’re so multifaceted in what media you’re working in – archives, photography, visual art, written word, music, melody. How do you see all those forms converging and diverging with this project specifically? Because I see your eye for detail at every level. You can just tell from the package that the whole thing is art to you, not just the songs.

Photography, it is always fiction. That, to me, is the beauty of it. If there’s a picture of someone jumping, you don’t really know where they jumped from. Or if they smile, they are actually crying? Maybe this person crying is not the good guy. Maybe they’re the bad guy.

You can start to track things like that, as the smile gets “invented” throughout photography. But it’s this line of fiction that, if you spend enough time with it, you can infer things right or wrong in there. They can all take you to a different place. Movies are that way, but you lose a little bit with the moving image. ‘Cause then you see the speed at which they’re moving, even if the frame rate isn’t representative of reality.

But then, say you’re playing jazz standards and you’re playing things with semantic content that came from a show, a Broadway show in the ‘40s. You’re shackled by the semantic content of that. I think it’s a convenient metaphor, in my opinion, to see photography and instrumental music as this thing, where – back to working in miniature – smaller things give you more room to insert yourself into it. I shouldn’t say more room, but there’s more fiction to play with, I would argue.

There’s less to compete with.

Right? In terms of things being programmed to you. In movies, you have the aesthetics, you have the costumes, you have the music, you have all this stuff. With photo books, the way that they’re sequenced by gestures is such a fitting way of dealing with sequencing things that aren’t visual. There’s a lot of inspiration from the photo book as a tradition, in terms of sequencing. And how with photojournalism, we don’t really have an American, coalesced identity of the West without the photography of the Dust Bowl. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at FSA photographs and there’s some great Dorothea Lange photographs in Yuma from May of 1935 which can be seen via the Library of Congress. I actually licensed one of them that was not within the purview of her [federal] work from the Oakland Museum and that’s in the song folio for CRK.

Obviously, Norman Blake is a really important musician to you and Dave Rawlings is as well. You’re talking about wanting to make music, wanting to make a record that isn’t just another acoustic guitar, flatpicking, flat-top record. Norman and Dave are great examples of guitarists who make albums that aren’t just the same old same old, and aren’t just products, they’re art. Both showcase that simple solo guitar, that miniature world we’re talking about, can be so expansive and huge and lush. But who are the others? Who are the folks that modeled for you that having your own voice and perspective on your instrument was more important than just doing it to do it. Or to be “best” or to sell yourself as a product for consumption?

For banjo, I think John Hartford. I love the idea that Blake Mills said, he called guitar an instrument for assholes. [Laughs] What I love about that is, no matter how you look at a guitar, the guitar is always a toy. [Andrés] Segovia tried to institute a formal repertoire. The bluegrass people tried to, the rock people [tried to]. Is Jimi Hendrix the definitive repertoire for the guitar? AC/DC? But, it’s still a toy. It’s still marketed as a toy.

I don’t need a million people to listen to my music to make a living or to keep doing it. It’s all within the art/archives, how to make these raw ingredients that are embedded into everyone into something that’s not commercial, but digestible.

In terms of other people [who inspired me]. John Fahey. Leo Kottke, but I didn’t fingerpick up until about three and a half years ago. About 80% of the record is finger picking. To your point about the poem earlier, there’s more outside of the solo, acoustic guitar canon of stuff, too. People like Rambling Jack Elliot and Sam Shepard, yeah.

One final point, I would play these solo concerts in Texas of just flatpicking melodies, like four flatpicking melodies in four different keys. And I was just like beating my head up against a wall, trying to tell some sort of cinematic, fiddle tune-driven [story over an entire set of just flatpicking]. I wanted there to be an arc. Through stubbornness, I decided I was going to learn how to fingerpick convincingly, where I had control of each voice. It’s really hard. It was a pain in my ass to figure that shit out.

But yeah, I see them all as tools: the poetry, the flatpicking, the fingerpicking, the drumming. It could be seen as pushing back against commercialism or whatever, but in some ways it’s actually the opposite. I was like, “I want more. I want a diverse audience. I want as many people to listen to this as possible.” Not sheer numbers, but in terms of who they are and what their listening diets are. Not just everybody in the audience being someone who will already know each of those fiddle tunes.

Photo Credit: Steve Perlin

Basic Folk: Jon Muq

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Originally from the village of Mutungo, Uganda (near the country’s capital of Kampala), Jon Muq‘s journey to his current life of touring with an Austin, Texas, home base has been unconventional. Onboard the Cayamo cruise earlier this year, we talked to Jon about his childhood experiences, including fetching water with friends and hearing “We Are the World,” which was the first Western music he ever experienced. He also recounts the emotional reunion with his twin sister at the Cambridge Folk Festival, revealing how distance from his family has shaped his identity as an artist. He had not seen her, his friends, or any family before that for many years due to leaving originally to work on a cruise ship (the same line we were cruising on!) and work visa realities.

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Jon discusses the moment he first held a guitar at age 19, which felt like a natural fit. He shares how traditional Ugandan music influences his sound and how he began learning English through song before mastering the language. Jon speaks about his experience with food; growing up, his family was food insecure. When he started performing on cruise ships, he was overwhelmed by the amount of food available. He explained the ever-present googly-eyes on his guitar, which tie into learning about distinct cultural differences between America and Uganda. Like many countries, it is normal in Uganda for male friends to hold hands. This and many cultural differences were learned the hard way for Jon, so the eyes on the guitar symbolize an always smiling friend that will be there for him. He wraps up this episode of Basic Folk with a great lightning round giving us the inside scoop on the best food aboard Cayamo, his dream collaboration and, in his opinion as an industrial design student, what’s the most beautiful product in the world.

Photo Credit: Will Byington

Sierra Hull & Billy Strings Do Traditional Bluegrass Justice with a Duet on Austin City Limits

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Last week, Austin City Limits released an excellent bluegrass performance from their Austin City Limits Celebrates 50 Years broadcast, which debuted on April 4 on PBS. Mandolinist Sierra Hull and guitar phenom Billy Strings appeared on the special ACL show, performing a classic bluegrass number, “Midnight on the Stormy Deep,” a traditional song that entered the bluegrass canon via Bill Monroe himself. (Watch above.) It’s a popular duet, whether at jam sessions or on stage, and in this iteration finds the forward-thinking pair of Hull and Strings employing more retro sounds. Both are adept at these tones and textures, but tend to opt for more envelope-pushing picking on their own songs and creations. It’s lovely to hear both players in a bit more reserved a setting, with moments of star power shining through their tasteful playing and careful listening.

It’s striking how crisp, clean, and precise Hull and Strings render the song, but the grit and gristle that we tend to associate with bluegrass – and that “high lonesome sound” – are evident, certainly not in short supply. Hull’s solos are playful with zany touches and bluesy licks. Strings holds down the resonant lead vocal part while Hull adds the high harmony, both singing the lyric entirely in duet, because that’s how it goes! Strings pulls hard through his own solo with his signature confidence and boldness, while reminding his listeners how pivotal an influence Doc Watson has been across his career.

Hull and Strings are no strangers to collaborating, and in many contexts. Remember that time they covered Post Malone together? And well before Postie’s country foray and Strings’ track features on it. Hull has been known to guest on Strings’ shows, and vice versa. Their backstage cover of “What Does the Deep Sea Say” taped at the Ryman Auditorium has hundreds of thousands of views; “Midnight on the Stormy Deep,” meanwhile, has amassed nearly 200,000 views since it landed on YouTube late last week. Plus, Strings fans will recognize the track, not only from the bluegrass songbook, as it were, but from Strings’ own discography as well. He dueted with bluegrass legend and Hall of Famer Del McCoury on a version of the number a few years back. We never tire of it.

Whatever the many factors that led to Hull and Strings picking “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” together on ACL, they all add up to a live performance that’s easy, confident, and fun, and ultimately speaks to the deep and wide roster of young and younger bluegrass professionals who are keeping this music alive and in the limelight. For the coming generations and as-yet uninitiated new bluegrass fans, too.

Read our recent Cover Story interview with Sierra Hull on her brand new album here.

Read our recent exclusive interview with Billy Strings here.

SURPRISE! Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton Release ‘Live at the Legion’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A year ago today, on April 7, 2024, the American Legion Post 82 in East Nashville was packed to the gills with rabid flatpicking fans, geared up for a special appearance by two of the greats: Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton. Far from their first show together or their first collaboration, it was still one of the hottest tickets in Nashville and fans lined up down the sidewalk and up the drive of the humble Legion for their chance to witness bluegrass guitar history in the making.

To the delight of the many hundreds of thousands who would have but couldn’t also squeeze into the cinder block building known for two-stepping, honky-tonkin’, and bluegrass jams, today Strings and Sutton surprise released a live-recorded album of that evening’s show, Live at the Legion. Available digitally – with CDs and vinyl on the way August 1, and physical pre-order open now – it’s a two-disc, 20-song collection of traditional tunes, medleys, covers, and two of the most personality-rich and unique improvisational voices on the instrument.

Strings makes it no secret that, like many younger guitar pickers in bluegrass and adjacent styles, Bryan Sutton is a hero. The two have collaborated often in the past, formally and informally, getting together for jams and lessons, Strings appearing at and attending Sutton’s Blue Ridge Guitar Camp, performing as a duo at the Station Inn, Sutton guesting on stage with Strings and band, and more.

These are two generational talents, understood within and outside of bluegrass to be standard-setters for the instrument and for flatpicking at large. Together, their musical dialogues are entrancing, exciting, and as charming as they are downright unpredictable. Billy’s power and aggression on the six-string ease, while each player listens ardently and responds to the other with comfortability, or a wink, or a tasteful counterpoint, or an outburst-inducing surprise. Sutton is endlessly lyrical, drawing out such responses from Strings. For their level of chops, the collection rarely strays into self-involved jamming or ego-driven ideas.

Later this year, in September, Strings and Sutton will perform a short series of intimate duo shows to celebrate Live at the Legion – and give any who couldn’t be there in East Nashville in 2024 for the taping of the album another chance to catch the magic. The pair will appear at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky; at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium; in Chattanooga, Tennessee; and in Boone, North Carolina with accompaniment by Strings’ bassist, Royal Masat. Due to anticipated demand, tickets for any/all of the shows must be requested by April 21, 2025, after which lottery winners will be notified. Sign up to request tickets here.

Bluegrass boasts many an iconic duo album, especially focused on the guitar. In the future, will we group Live at the Legion alongside other such definitive recordings as Blake & Rice? It seems almost inevitable. From Blake & Rice to Skaggs & Whitley, Watson & Monroe, and Grisman & Garcia – or even the just-released Carter & Cleveland – it seems immediately clear Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton’s Live at the Legion will be going down in bluegrass history. Tuck into this double album delight to see and hear why for yourself.

Photo Credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Tim O’Brien, Joe K Walsh, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

This week our roundup of premieres and new music is a special, “Oops! All Bluegrass!” edition of the weekly series. But still with plenty of variety herein.

Kicking us off, Infamous Stringdusters fiddler Jeremy Garrett unveils “Fly Away to Your Love,” a driving and bluesy modern take on how love can take command of your life, drawing inspiration from Romeo and Juliet. Garrett’s labelmates, Montana-based bluegrass band the Lil Smokies, continue with the theme of love, romance, and sacrifice with “Lay it Down for Love” – because investing in love always pays off.

Guitarist Cameron Knowler showcases “Mule at the Wagon” an acoustic guitar trio number from his new album CRK, which releases today and text paints the beautiful – and stark – Yuma, Arizona, its surrounding states, deserts, and the plains. Plus, mandolinist and professor Joe K. Walsh launches his new album, Trust and Love, today so we’re highlighting a lovely and vibey instrumental, “Oatmeal,” that he appropriately wrote over breakfast.

Bluegrass legend, multi-instrumentalist picker and singer-songwriter Tim O’Brien announces his upcoming album, Paper Flowers, today as well. The lead track from the project, “Lonesome Armadillo,” was written with folk icon Tom Paxton and O’Brien’s partner Jan Fabricius, who features across the new album. It’s a funny tale of a backyard critter trap and a surprise armored four-legged prisoner. Meanwhile, supergroup Sister Sadie bring us a devastating and heartfelt song, “Let the Circle Be Broken,” about interrupting cycles of generational trauma and finding redemption in ourselves and support systems. Written by Sadies Deanie Richardson and Dani Flowers with in-demand songwriter and artist Erin Enderlin, the track is moving and deeply resonant.

Each week of new music is its own adventure, but this roundup feels particularly superlative. You know what we think– You Gotta Hear This!

Jeremy Garrett, “Fly Away to Your Love”

Artist: Jeremy Garrett
Hometown: Drake, Colorado
Song: “Fly Away to Your Love”
Album: Storm Mountain
Release Date: March 28, 2025 (single); June 27, 2025 (album)
Label: Americana Vibes

In Their Words: “When troubles may come, in any relationship, the idea is to persevere – to overcome with grace. The hope of love eternal, or at least a love that stands the test of time. And in the end, like Shakespeare’s famous Romeo and Juliet, if it can’t be, then there is no hope of anything better. So, will it command your life? Is dying in hopes to be with the one you love better than life itself without that someone? Fly away to your love is a modern take, written in an old-time way, encompassing that passion and story in a song.” – Jeremy Garrett

Track Credits:
Jeremy Garrett – Lead vocal, fiddle
Chris Luquette – Guitar
Ryan Cavanaugh – Banjo
Travis Anderson – Bass

Cameron Knowler, “Mule at the Wagon”

Artist: Cameron Knowler
Hometown: Yuma, Arizona
Song: “Mule at the Wagon”
Album: CRK
Release Date: April 4, 2025
Label: Worried Songs

In Their Words: “‘Bull at the Wagon’ is a fiddle tune I sourced from The Lewis Brothers, a great old New Mexico-via-Texas string band with a sweet tooth for rambunctiousness. I changed ‘bull’ to ‘mule’ because, well, I’ve had a few donkey encounters out in West Texas, not far from where the Lewises cut their four sides for the Victor label in 1929. It’s one of those titles that popped into my life at the damndest times – while playing tunes with Frank Fairfield in Los Angeles, performing at a border crossing party in Terlingua, Texas, and visiting with Norman Blake at his home in Rising Fawn, Georgia. To my ear, its melody moves past some of the stylized landscape found in American traditional music these days; maybe it’s the way the four chord asserts itself in the second part, or the way the five chord lands so starkly and dominantly in the third; this mix of quick and static passages is highly generative for arranging and improvising.

“I wanted to see what this tune would yield in a lilting, sort of pastoral setting, so I called my talented friends Jordan Tice and Robert Bowlin who graciously agreed to record it with me at The Tractor Shed in Goodlettsville, Tennessee. Jordan tuned to open G (capo 2), I played out of standard (capo 2), Robert in standard with no capo. Mr. Bowlin and I are playing our old Gibson J-35s and Jordan is using his Preston Thompson OM. The performance found on CRK is one of the first takes.” – Cameron Knowler

Track Credits:
Robert Bowlin – Guitar
Cameron Knowler – Guitar
Sean Sullivan – Engineer
Jordan Tice – Guitar, producer

The Lil Smokies, “Lay It Down for Love”

Artist: The Lil Smokies
Hometown: Montana
Song: “Lay It Down for Love”
Album: Break of the Tide
Release Date: April 4, 2025
Label: Americana Vibes

In Their Words: “The greatest honor of my life is to have spent it fully immersed in music. That’s not to say it hasn’t come without cost. Words can’t carry the weight of the sacrifices required, though I’ve enjoyed trying to explain. All I know is that the loss and doubt I’ve faced has given me a more beautiful life than I ever imagined when I set out on this path. I wouldn’t change a thing. ‘Lay it Down for Love’ was written in some of the darkest days of my life, when there was no evidence that my wagers would come back to me. Today I hear it as a reminder that those days come and go, but investing in love always pays off.” – “Rev,” Matthew Rieger

Track Credits:
Andy Dunnigan – Dobro, vocals
Matthew Rieger – Guitar, vocals
Jake Simpson – Fiddle, guitar, vocals
Jean Luc Davis – Bass
Sam Armstrong Zickefoose – Banjo

Tim O’Brien & Jan Fabricius, “Lonesome Armadillo”

Artist: Tim O’Brien & Jan Fabricius
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Lonesome Armadillo”
Album: Paper Flowers
Release Date: June 6, 2025
Label: Howdy Skies

In Their Words: “There’s an awful lot of talk about migrants invading from the south, but nobody’s talking about armadillos. After we started trippin’ over little holes in our yard, Jan baited a raccoon trap, focused the security camera on it, and then we drove to Memphis to play a show. On the set break, we saw we’d caught the hard-shelled offender, but after the show we saw that he’d arched his back, bent the trap, and escaped. We told Tom Paxton about it the next week and he said, ‘Let’s tell his story.’

“Jan and I started weekly co-writing sessions with Tom in the spring of 2023 and twelve of the fifteen songs on our June 6th release, Paper Flowers, come from those Wednesday afternoon Zooms. It’s our first real collaborative project and a narrative of Jan’s and my life together runs through the record – from courtship to growing old together, with a road trip, the armadillo, and a granddaughter’s wedding in between.” – Tim O’Brien

Track Credits:
Larry Atamanuik – Drums
Mike Bub – Bass
Jan Fabricius – Mandolin, vocal, songwriting
Mike Rojas – Accordion
Justin Moses – Resophonic guitar
Tim O’Brien – Guitar, vocal, songwriting
Tom Paxton – Songwriting

Sister Sadie, “Let the Circle Be Broken”

Artist: Sister Sadie
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Let The Circle Be Broken”
Release Date: April 4, 2025

In Their Words: “Dani Flowers, Erin Enderlin, and myself wrote ‘Let the Circle Be Broken’ right after my Dad passed away. He was an abusive man who verbally, emotionally, and sexually abused me for most of my 18 years living at home with him. When I confronted him as an adult, he said that it had been done to him as a child. This song is about that generational trauma and abuse that keeps getting passed down. The continuing of that trauma and abuse stops with me. It doesn’t go any further. It was such a healing and therapeutic experience to write this with Dani and Erin. The recording session for this was so emotional for me. I felt like I was talking to my Dad at the end during the instrumental fade. He was there and he heard me. That circle is officially now broken.” – Deanie Richardson, fiddle

“Deanie, Erin, and I wrote this song about generational trauma, which each of us have experienced different levels of. This song is about how we’ve decided that these cycles that have been repeated over and over in our families end with us. I was born into a family of some of the worst types of people to ever exist in this world and it is sometimes so hard to sit with the fact that you come from a line of people who are capable of doing such awful things to others — to you. While I can’t say the same for many of my family members, I can say for sure that my children will never experience from me what I experienced from my mother and what she experienced from hers and what she experienced from hers.” – Dani Flowers, vocals

“The song ‘Let The Circle Be Broken’ touches us all within this band because of its very personal nature. We feel it every time we perform it on stage. Deanie, Dani, and Erin wrote an incredible song that touches the audience. It’s not uncommon to look out and see tears streaming down people’s faces. As a creator, it’s very overwhelming.” – Gena Britt, banjo

“I resonate so deeply with the message of ‘Let The Circle Be Broken’ and I find myself a little emotional every time we play it. As someone who is actively working to heal my own generational family trauma, seeing the strong women around me working to do the same makes me feel hopeful, grateful and connected.” – Rainy Miatke, mandolin

“I think ‘Let The Circle Be Broken’ is a beautifully written song that a lot of people need to hear. It has a very important message about stopping generational messes and I cry almost every time we play it. I love Deanie so much and I know this song means so much to her, as it does to all of us. ‘Let The Circle Be Broken’ I think could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, too, and that’s the sign of a fantastic song. Dani Flowers, Deanie Richardson, and Erin Enderlin crafted an amazing piece of art.” – Jaelee Roberts, vocals

Track Credits:
Deanie Richardson – Fiddle
Gena Britt – Baritone banjo
Dani Flowers – Lead vocal
Jaelee Roberts – Harmony vocal
Mary Meyer – Mandolin, piano
Maddie Dalton – Upright bass, harmony vocal
Seth Taylor – Acoustic guitar, electric guitar
Dave Racine – Drums, percussion

Joe K. Walsh, “Oatmeal”

Artist: Joe K. Walsh
Hometown: Portland, Maine
Song: “Oatmeal”
Album: Trust and Love
Release Date: April 4, 2025
Label: Adhyâropa Records

In Their Words: “There are so many tunes that I love that are comprised of an entirely (or almost entirely) diatonic melody which has been harmonized with non-diatonic chords. Some favorite examples are ‘Moon River,’ ‘Someone to Watch Over Me,’ David Grisman’s ‘Dawg’s Waltz,’ Pat Metheny’s tune ‘James,’ and Matt Flinner’s tune ‘Fallen Star.’ I’ve taught a tune-writing ensemble at Berklee for many years, with the idea that each of member of the ensemble writes and presents a tune every week, and I like to use this idea as a prompt for the students. This tune was one I wrote over breakfast in response to this prompt one morning before heading to Boston for school.” – Joe K. Walsh

Track Credits:
Joe K. Walsh – Mandolin
Rich Hinman – Pedal steel
Zackariah Hickman – Bass
John Mailander – Fiddle
Dave Brophy – Drums

Photo Credit: Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius by Scott Simontacchi; Joe K. Walsh by Natalie Conn.

BGS 5+5: Countercurrent

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Countercurrent (Brian Lindsay and Alex Sturbaum)
Hometown: Olympia, Washington
Latest Album: Flow (released March 3, 2025)

Which artist has influenced you the most – and how?

It’s a three-way tie for me between Great Big Sea (gateway drug into trad music, consummate performers, wonderful harmonies), early Solas (dazzling musicianship, tight arrangements, and an unmistakable guitar style) and the Grateful Dead (fearless improvisation, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible while keeping one foot firmly in folk). – Alex Sturbaum

Chicago fiddler Liz Carroll has probably had the most comprehensive influence on me – she is a master of creative interpretations of traditional fiddle tunes and composing new tunes in a trad idiom. Much of how I think about melodic improvisation and variation around a melody is influenced by her playing. Her recordings over the years showcase some incredible arrangements and beautiful production, ranging from very minimal, traditional-sounding, to lush and modern tracks. – Brian Lindsay

If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?

“Play ’em happy, sing ’em angry.” We want our music to inspire joy and resilience and to generally make folks feel good. However, we also want to call out the injustice we see in the world every day and use our music to aid the fight against fascism in whatever way we can. – AS

“Every tradition is a living tradition, if we participate.” Musical traditions don’t thrive when we only admire them inside a glass case, they benefit from curating the archives of the past, honoring the figures who have shaped it today, and welcoming new contributions that reflect today’s influences (cultural, political, technological, etc.). Most importantly, music communities thrive when we make music that we really love to listen and move to. – BL

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

We draw from a lot of different folk traditions – Celtic, old-time, maritime, jam-band music, and more – but fundamentally, Countercurrent is a dance band. We cut our teeth playing for contra dancing, that’s still the main thing we do, and everything we play is built around groove and drive. One of our favorite things in the world is bringing our music to venues outside of folk communities and getting an audience to unironically throw ass to fiddle tunes. – AS

In a nutshell, “modern fiddle tune dance jams.” Our focus is to create music that moves people, both physically and emotionally, and our vocabulary comes from the genres of Irish, American old-time, and adjacent fiddle and song traditions. We add our own compositions using that vocabulary, but incorporating our musical influences from genres like jam bands, funk, electronic, and rock that we love. – BL

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

We both really enjoy the offbeat songwriter Dan Reeder. We had the pleasure of getting to see him and his daughter Peggy in Seattle recently – one of their rare tours from Germany – and we have been enjoying singing his songs together in green rooms and tour vehicles. I also have a sizable soft spot for Owl City. – AS

I’m very fond of the music of blues singer and instrumentalist Taj Mahal. I got some of his recordings when I was quite young and got to see him live near my home when I was in high school. I also love Moon Hooch, who essentially make saxophone-based EDM with live drums (I have an unabashed love for the saxophone, and brass instruments in general, though I don’t play any). – BL

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

I once had a Thai meal with roasted coconut and pork belly right before seeing Gillian Welch perform The Harrow and the Harvest in its entirety, and to be honest I have been thinking about both ever since. – AS

A meal consisting entirely of East Asian dumplings of every variety, with Kishi Bashi, whose music I adore and also appears to be an incredibly interesting and kind person. – BL

Photo Credit: Molly Walsh

Tommy Emmanuel’s Fiery Guitar Picking Is Not Just for Musicians, It’s for Everyone

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Tommy Emmanuel is in his happy place: spending a Thursday afternoon at Nashville’s Gruhn Guitars in anticipation of recording a new solo album. “I’m here getting a new pickup system featured in one of my guitars, buying strings, hanging out with the guys, and getting a little Gruhn mojo from the shop,” he says. “The weekend, I’ll spend stringing up and playing my guitars, making decisions about which guitar I’ll use for what song, and stuff like that.”

For the next hour, however, he’s upstairs in the store’s amp room, settled in to discuss his two new albums – the just-released Live at the Sydney Opera House, recorded over the course of two performances in May 2023, and a solo album in the works – along with many other topics. Highlights from that conversation follow.

I was trying to find a starting point for this interview, which is challenging because there are so many. I listened to your January interview with Rick Beato and had a “stopped me in my tracks moment” when you said you spent three days listening to Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department. I thought, “Tommy Emmanuel is a Swiftie! We’ll start there.”

Tommy Emmanuel: Taylor, as a writer, is definitely a big influence on me. Someone who achieves what she achieves is doing something beyond the norm. Even beyond talent, it’s a spiritual experience, it’s big, and it’s deep, and I like to observe, listen, and learn from people who achieve like that.

You described her songwriting as “crying from the heart.” That stood out because that’s really what music is – it comes from the heart. We always hear that tone is in the hands, but is the heart not at the core of that?

Exactly. I was [writing a new song] and trying to find something that could give me the right melody to say with the chorus what I wanted to say without words, making the melody this cry from the heart. It’s– [sings melody], the chords change underneath, and so there’s movement, but there’s this cry from the heart right in the middle of everything.

Can you tell us more about this new solo album?

Normally, I record here, fly to LA, mix and master it with my friend Marc DeSisto, and I’m the producer. With this album, I’m working here in Nashville with Vance Powell, the busiest guy on the planet. We start on Monday and we’ve got to get it all done in four days.

I have eight new songs, including this piece we’ve been talking about, “A Drowning Heart.” There’s “Black and White to Color,” “Young Travelers” – I’ve got some interesting titles. The songs are different to what I’ve written in the past. There’s a couple of typical fingerpicking tunes that I really like. They’re a little more folk-influenced. The other ones I’ve been talking about are much more ’80s rock and roll style. I have a song called “Scarlett’s World.” The introduction and ending sound a bit like Dire Straits. I did that on purpose, because it’s such a cool sound. That song is inspired by the movie Lucy with Scarlett Johansson. I love that movie. I love her work. My granddaughter is like Scarlett and she is a force of nature. I got the idea to call the song “Scarlett’s World” when I was with her.

I’m enjoying this phase of my life. Whatever page I’ve turned to get to this stage has been worth it, because some songs have come to me in this last six months that I really love playing in my shows. Playing new songs live gets rid of anything that doesn’t need to be there, because sometimes you can write a song, you’re trying to be clever, you’re trying to be creative, you’ve got all these good ideas going, and then you play it for somebody and you realize, “Oh, this part here is not necessary.” You throw it out and get to the meat and potatoes. Forget all the other stuff. Just tell me the story. Take me somewhere. That’s why I like to perform my songs to an audience before I record them. Your instincts are on a hundred. When you walk on stage, your physical and spiritual instincts have risen up and they’re ready to serve you.

Of course, you’ve also just released your live album. You’re known for working without a set list. With such a rich repertoire, how do you sequence your shows, and sequence them so that the performance speaks both to musicians and non-musicians?

That’s so important to me. My music is not for musicians; it’s for everybody. I’m trying to be an all-around artist, entertainer, writer, player, performer. I’m trying to give people a bit of everything. [The show] has to be a journey, a story, entertaining, and when it’s over, I want people to think, “I’ve got to see that again.” There’s a passage in the first Indiana Jones movie that I never forgot. One of the characters says, “What are you going to do now, Indy?” Harrison Ford says, “I don’t know. I’m just making this up as I go along.” That’s me. That’s how I live my life.

Your history with Maton Guitars goes back to your days playing electric guitar. The common trajectory is the player begins on acoustic, and then goes on to electric. True to originality, you did the opposite.

I started on electric. When I was starting to be a songwriter and making my own records, I was mostly writing on electric, 60 to 70 percent, and the rest was acoustic. I started doing solo shows on acoustic and all of a sudden I realized, “Holy smoke, this really works well.” So I started writing more songs to play as a solo acoustic player. It was more pop and rock and roll music, funky, all that sort of stuff.

The record company wanted me to do something we could get on radio, so I made some jazz-oriented records. I got a lot of airplay on jazz stations and that kind of forced me into that direction for a while. It was good, because I learned to write and perform that way. When I moved to Nashville, I wanted to be on the Opry and play the Ryman, so I focused on being more country- and bluegrass-based, which is my roots. My biggest influences when I was a kid, before Chet Atkins, were Jimmie Rogers and Hank Williams. They were my first two loves of music.

What are the biggest challenges of doing what you do the way you do it?

Everything comes down to commitment. How committed am I to be a better player? I often tell people who want to talk about my technique, “I don’t talk about my technique. It’s invisible.” The music is what counts, not how I do it. My abilities fluctuate because I’m a human being. I’m not a robot; I’m not going to be exactly the same every time.

If you want it to be good, to flow, and to be wonderful to watch, then there’s a lot of work ahead. You’re going to have to work so hard to make it that way. I never stop working on my abilities, because it’s so important. My role model, Chet Atkins, worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen at practicing and making sure that every little detail was so smooth. I will follow that with adding that my age is challenging me as well. There are things I could do twenty years ago that I can’t do today and I have to be okay about that. I have to find new things to replace some of the things that I physically can’t do.

I’ve just come off a five-week tour, which was grueling, long, lots of travel, not a lot of chance to do some serious practice. Every day was like, get to the venue, get my guitar out, start playing, work on some songs that maybe I didn’t play the night before or the night before that, remember some of my other songs that I haven’t been playing, put them in the show, and constantly find ways of making it different and interesting from the night before.

I’ve got to be in good shape physically, mentally, and spiritually to get up there and play my heart out for nearly two hours and throw my whole life into it. I’ve got to eat well, rest well, and have enthusiasm for what I’m doing. I can’t remember a time where I was standing on the side of the stage and thought, “Not this again.” That never has entered my mind. I’m like, “I can’t wait to get out there. I can’t wait to play. I can’t wait to see how this night is going to go and what I’m going to do that’s going to surprise me.”

You’ve told us a bit about your introduction to bluegrass, coming to acoustic guitar from electric, and your passion for jazz. Can you draw a through line between all those genres? How do they shape what you do?

It’s about musical abilities and musical ideas. When I play with Ricky Skaggs, or Molly Tuttle, or anybody, it’s about me fitting into what they do and serving the music as best I can. There’s a bit of bluegrass in everything I play. There’s a bit of blues in everything I play. I don’t feel like I need to be in a box or have a style stapled to me. It’s all music to me.

When I play with Billy Strings, I can hear Doc Watson and Tony Rice, of course, but I can also hear little bits of Stevie Ray Vaughan, B.B. King, George Harrison. You know, we’ve all got it in us. It’s all styles of music together. Bluegrass is such an open-ended thing to me. If I’m playing “Highway 40 Blues” and I take a solo, I don’t necessarily think, “Oh, I’d better tap into Tony Rice.” I just play what I feel at that moment.

A number of musicians have told me that they sometimes get sick of their own playing. Does this ever happen to you, and if so, how do you climb out of that rut?

I get tired of myself sometimes and usually something comes along that lifts my faith in my gift. Right when I think I’ve had enough of me, I need a break, something happens and somebody needs me to play for them, and they remind me, “Don’t forget – you’re here for a reason. You’re here to serve others. When you play, people feel something. They feel happy. So get out of your own head and do it for someone else.”

There are times when you definitely need a break. I just had a week after the tour I finished in Zurich a week ago. I flew into England to be with my grandchildren and my daughters and I didn’t play much. I played a little bit after the girls had gone to bed. I made my dinner, played a little bit, and then watched Netflix and chilled out. It was good. I needed that break.

When your colleagues talk about you, they always describe you as a good guy, a nice guy, a mentor. How much of that comes from the kindness and mentoring you received from Chet Atkins?

I’m just trying to hand on what was handed to me. When you’ve been loved on by a guy like Chet Atkins, you know you’ve been loved. When you’ve been loved on by someone like my mother, who led by example her whole life … what a great soul, a great spirit.

When I moved to the big city when I was young, I was so used to people being almost aggressive towards me, because they thought I was showing off or thinking I was much smarter than them. And it never entered my mind. But they were full of jealousy or fear or whatever, I don’t know. So when I got to the big city and I saw musicians who did things I couldn’t do, when I got to know them, they were so encouraging to me. They were so honest with me. They treated me with a dignity that other people didn’t. And so I just want people to feel good when we play together, because it’s a very honest experience.

Who is your dream artist to work with?

Marty Stuart. What a talent! He’s a free spirit and the kind of guy I like being around. I would love to work with Marty.

You’ve spoken openly about your long battle with addiction. You are in recovery and you’ve also done the work through therapy. What part has guitar played in your recovery journey?

The guitar has always been my go-to thing to help me get through stuff. When I went through my first divorce, we’d been married for 15 years and I thought we were doing great. Everything was wonderful, I’ve got two little daughters, then my wife wanted to separate and then she was with someone else. I had to let her go and I went through a painful divorce.

I was broken beyond measure and my world went upside down. It was during that period that I wrote some of the best music I’ve ever written. It came to help me and gave me something good to focus on. Next thing I know, people are loving the music I’ve written, and I’m out, I’m starting again, I’m off on a new road.

The thing I love [about sobriety] is being clear. I’m present. My love of music and playing in general has grown so much since I’m not ruled by drugs or alcohol. I’m [five years] free and I’m so grateful. What I do now is better, it’s more honest, it’s more real. I don’t feel self-obsessed, self-absorbed, or feel sorry for myself for all the bad things that nearly destroyed me.

I know what addiction is now. I know how to deal with it. It’s finding what the problem is, being willing to talk about it, put the work in, follow the steps, and keep doing the work that has made my life so beautiful and so much better. Sometimes I think, “How the hell did I ever survive that?” I’m guessing that my maker was with me all the way. I’m totally free today, but I don’t take it lightly. It’s living one day at a time, and it’s beautiful.

And finally, what is the difference between playing guitar and being a guitarist?

Being a guitarist is being a gun for hire. Being a guitar player is a way of life. A guitar player is someone who loves to play for people and who loves his instrument deeply.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Rapt Reflects On Life’s Many Endings With ‘Until the Light Takes Us’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Jacob Ware is a bit of a weirdo. Known onstage these days as Rapt, the singer-songwriter has a way of coming up with an album title and writing the entire record around a central sentiment. His fifth studio album – titled Until the Light Takes Us – serves as a direct response to a 2008 heavy metal documentary of the same name.

“I just thought, Until the Light Takes Us is such an evocative title. A few people have commented on that over the years as being unhinged – that I come up with the album name first and then write the album,” he says, adding that the documentary details “all the horrible shit in the ’90s of the black metal scene in Norway.”

From the gentle trickle of one-minute opener “Over Aged Borders” to the dreamy “Fields of Juniper,” Rapt’s latest album drenches in the notion of endings and existence. Heartbreak. Death. Suffocating blackness. Each song, as heavy as it might be, seems to coat the album with both dark and light – stemming from his confrontation with the end. 

Rapt’s delicately-spun indie-folk is awash in luminescent piano, aching between flaky layers of acoustic guitar. Ware finds himself scattering like a tumble weed, squeezed somewhere between the throaty ache of Carrie Elkin and scratchy pangs of yearning (akin to Bonny Light Horseman in their rawest form). His head swims in thoughts of death, leading his writing to root around in the afterlife. It’s a far cry from his heavy metal days, a sharp red underline to this chapter of his life. “I’m always slightly aware of mortality because I’ve had a lot of health issues, in my teenage years and early twenties, like epilepsy. It’s wild. It pulls the rug out from under your life daily, and you don’t know when the next seizures come in,” he says.

“I haven’t had a seizure for eight years now, so I’m blessed. But that shapes you on a subconscious level,” he adds. “It sets up your foundation to be ready for the next thing to happen. In a way, the next thing that happens is an end of something, so I think my subconscious has always thought about the finality of things. That’s probably where that sort of writing interest has come from. In a way, every single song I’ve ever written is about that. I don’t really know how to move away from that.”

Hopping on a Zoom call, Ware spoke with BGS about the afterlife, how the album grew, and the varied creative fulfillment compared to heavy metal music.

Does writing around a title help you stay focused on what you want the album to be?

Rapt: I think so. I’ve definitely done this where I write that phrase and put it up around wherever I’m living. Even if I’m not listening to music, I’ll walk past the album title a few times a day. The edge of my wardrobe is visible and the title I’m responding to now is written on it. One of the last things I look at at night and one of the first things I wake up to in the morning is… I don’t want to reveal it.

[Until the Light Takes Us] is not a breakup record by any means. I’ve noticed a few bits of press here and there, which may have lent it to being that, but it absolutely isn’t that. I feel like a completely different person to my music. I don’t relate to my own music. I would say it’s an album of endings, really. More so than a sort of breakup album. By the time I’ve finished one thing, something else is usually well on its way. And it’s always been like that for me.

What is your feeling about the afterlife?

I tried to look into religions a few years ago, but I have no faith system. I was brought up in a house without a faith system. It’s very hard for someone to start to believe in something unless it was in their very formative years from a caregiver. I expressed it in the title track. I’ve always thought that the afterlife is a sort of peaceful black. I have a sneaky suspicion that the afterlife is a hell of a lot like what it was like before we were born. I quite like to imagine this sort of sizzle reel, where you hang out with your highlights. That’s what I hope is going on.

Science doesn’t ask, science doesn’t answer everything. There are things that science gets pretty fucking close. But there are things that science can’t touch. I try and be mindful of that; I would call myself an agnostic. I think being 100 percent atheist is actually ignorant. We don’t know – we’re 99.9 percent sure. There’s just that 0.1 percent that I think is worth thinking about sometimes.

That’s touched on in the title track. I don’t know where I’m going, but I know that I’ll see my neighbor and my loved ones. I like to think that there’s a highlight reel. And that’s it, really. I’m talking about this as if I planned to write it. I didn’t. It’s the only successful time I’ve ever managed to just write something without thinking about it and letting my subconscious go. I cannot just open my subconscious.

I find lyric writing takes me months. The title track probably took a year to write. Very occasionally, I can get half a song written in an afternoon, but that happens about once every three years. The song “Until the Light Takes Us” is quite insular, and it’s almost says everything that you could say within a song about the afterlife.

“Until the Light Takes Us” is one of the seven-minute songs on the album. Did you have that intention or did it sort of grow by itself?

I just think I couldn’t make it any shorter. I don’t think I really tried to fight it being seven minutes, but I’m sure that there’s been a longer version of it. I just whittled it down and down, until I couldn’t whittle it down without doing it disservice. And I knew it would suffer for that. I just think that song is destined to be heard when it’s needed.

With endings, there’s always grief. Does that grief still linger with you or has songwriting helped you exorcise that?

That’s hard to answer for me, because I don’t recognize the human that wrote a lot of the songs. I think it might be an epilepsy thing. The medication I take for epilepsy gives me very odd memory and I remember weird little things. I have no memory of so much of my life, and I mean that in the present, as well. The word “remember,” if I really think about that, it’s just like a blur of things. I don’t remember things vividly.

One big thing for me is I cannot paint images in my head. If I shut my eyes and try and picture my best friend’s facial features or a partner’s facial features, or even a fucking apple, at best it’s a Van Gogh-looking painting, so I think it’s quite hard for me to answer that question.

I’m sure it does happen on a subconscious level. I’m sure I do successfully process things through creativity, but it doesn’t help that much. I’ve still got my shit in my head, but a lot of the record is very positive for me. I had depression up until my mid-twenties. I don’t have it anymore. I just don’t. I think life is a beautiful thing. And I think there’s a lot of positive in the record. I think it’s a very odd record in that it’s not… I don’t think it’s depressing and negative. “Until the Light Takes Us” is a positive song. It starts and ends with a letter to myself.

That song is about growing apart from someone because you bonded with them through a shared depression and when one of you isn’t depressed anymore, that bond breaks. That’s what that song is about. But all of this is hindsight. I wrote this in 2022 to 2023. So this all feels very considered and fucking artistic and it’s not. I’m just looking back and trying to work out what the fuck was I was thinking.

Now that you’ve been sitting with the album for a while, what is your takeaway from the creative process?

I guess, just to trust my instincts. I didn’t write it consciously… I think, in a way, I never cared about this record, because I had a lot of stuff going on in my personal life. This was just me keeping the engine going creatively, and then I turned around one day and had a record done. I didn’t know what it was about at the time. I sat on it for a year until I was ready to release it. My biggest takeaway is probably just I don’t fucking care anymore. Just don’t overthink it. If I had to give a tagline to that question: I’m too old to make it as a fucking fresh-faced person and I’m too young to be wise.

I’m right in the middle and when you’re stuck in the middle, you either quit or you just don’t care anymore. And I think I’m in the “don’t care anymore” phase. I’m not going anywhere. The only other takeaway is that I’m not going to do an album for a while. I never thought I’d say that, but I’m going to just do singles for the next two years. I say that, but I’m excited. It feels liberating. When you’re in album land, you’re there at least a year and a half. It’s interesting. I think that might change my writing a bit because I’m not trying to fit a song into a collection of songs.

With your past work being metal, how does the creative fulfillment differ from your current style?

I think metal is very good for connecting with people’s frustrations in life. And it’s good anger management shit. When you’re playing some real heavy fucking music and you slow it right down and you get a groove going, then you look up and the audience are like throwing each other around the room. There’s something cool about that. I think the biggest difference with metal is that the ceiling is a lot lower and reachable with metal. And I think there’s something really special about that.

My biggest thing I enjoy is my audience is far wider in this genre. Metal is very male-dominated and you get used to just looking up mostly at a room full of dudes, beards, and black shirts head banging long hair. And that’s great. That’s a beautiful thing. But I think I slightly prefer the more diverse crowd that I’ve played to. My last thing is also the age thing. There’s a huge age range in the people that turn up at the shows I play now. And that’s a really beautiful thing as well. In France, I had a very elderly lady come up to me and she said, “‘Fields of Juniper’ made me think about something I’ve not thought about in 50 years.” If there’s a reason to keep going, then that’s it.

Photo Credit: David Nix

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From David Starr, Darren Nicholson, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For our final New Music Friday of February and as we look ahead to March, here are a half dozen brand new songs and videos you simply gotta hear.

Kicking us off, JD Clayton reminds himself and all of us that the speed of the internet, the news cycle, and social media is too damn fast. His new video reminds us of the power of “Slow & Steady” with a glitzy and gritty alt-Americana sound. A modern blues picking icon David Starr brings a new video for “Hole In The Page” as well, writing the book on lost love, lessons learned, and a liberal dose of longing with wailing organ and plenty of licks. Rounding out our videos this week is a frolic by Miss Georgia Peach, “Dusty,” that was inspired by her independent Maine Coon cat, Dusty Springfield, but ultimately celebrates autonomy and agency soundtracked by Americana meets Southern rock.

From the bluegrass realms, Darren Nicholson and band perform an original that Darren penned with Charles Humphrey (Songs From the Road Band). The pair regard their number, “Any Highway,” as a “modern classic” – and we think you’ll agree when you’ve heard this propulsive traveling song. Nicholson’s labelmate, Jaelee Roberts, can be found with a new track below, too. This gospel selection, “He’s Gone,” was written by Kelsi Harrigill (formerly of Flatt Lonesome) and features special guest vocalists Ricky Skaggs, Sharon White, and Cheryl White Jones joining Roberts.

You won’t want to miss a new single from new acoustic-infused Colorado string trio Salomé Songbird, who debut the lovely and contemplative “I’m Alright.” It’s a bit of a musical mantra, pushing through darkness and precipitous mental health to find strength with mandolin, violin, and guitar lending bluegrass and old-time touches.

It’s all right here on BGS and You Gotta Hear This!

JD Clayton, “Slow & Steady”

Artist: JD Clayton
Hometown: Fort Smith, Arkansas
Song: “Slow & Steady”
Album: Blue Sky Sundays
Release Date: February 28, 2025
Label: Rounder Records

In Their Words: “‘Slow & Steady’ is about a young carefree couple taking life easy in the summertime, living in the moment, fully content with living the slow life. My generation is crippled by depression and anxiety with me chief among them. We’re addicted to our phones and the attention we receive from strangers on the internet. I can’t go more than five minutes without checking to see if someone texted me or shared my post. I don’t want this for my life anymore. I want to change. I know things can be better! ‘Slow & Steady’ is more than a song, it’s a mindset. It’s a movement. I’m going to love and live in each moment. Slow and steady, easy does it. This is going to be the greatest summer of our lives.” – JD Clayton

Video Credits: Drifters Productions
Directed by Hannah Gray Hall.
Director of Photography – Ryan Mclemore

Miss Georgia Peach, “Dusty”

Artist: Miss Georgia Peach
Hometown: Saint Paul, Minnesota
Song: “Dusty”
Album: Class Out The Ass
Release Date: February 14, 2025
Label: Rum/Bar Records

In Their Words: “Technically, this song is about our feral, gorgeous Maine Coon cat, Dusty Springfield. The song practically wrote itself, following the opening hook, ‘Dusty’s goin’ out tonight,’ which came to me as she ran in looking perfectly happy and unworried after being gone for a number of days. The lyrics are for any wild independent beauty who can’t or won’t be tamed and knows what’s best for herself. She’s going out all night, doing exactly what she feels like doing, and despite your worries, she knows what’s what. She is mysterious and unknowable and incredibly fascinating. The music conveys love and frustration, confusion and devotion. The one left [at] home is the one going crazy and trying to figure out what’s going on, not experiencing the adventure Dusty is having. The video puts it in the context of a teenage girl living with her grandma in the country, testing her boundaries, wondering when her life will start. Like most teens, I felt trapped at home, ditching school and running wild at night with my friends. I was home in the morning and for dinner, but the in-between times were mine.” – Miss Georgia Peach

Track Credits:
Miss Georgia Peach – Vocals
Ruyter Suys – Guitar, backing vocals
Blaine Cartwright – Guitar
AJ Srubas – Fiddle
Mark Hendricks – Bass
Travis Ramin – Drums
Heather Parrish – Backing vocals

Video Credits: Directed and shot by Miss Georgia Peach.
Edited by Wendy Norton, Norton Video.

Darren Nicholson, “Any Highway”

Artist: Darren Nicholson
Hometown: Canton, North Carolina
Song: “Any Highway”
Release Date: February 28, 2025

In Their Words: “‘Any Highway’ is one of the first songs I ever wrote with Charles R. Humphrey III. Not only is it one of my favorites, but the No Joke Jimmy’s always had this one in the set list, so I felt I needed to get a good studio recording of it. It’s a story of a man who is so heartbroken by a free-spirited young lady he feels compelled to leave immediately. No plan, no direction, he just knows he has to go elsewhere. Sometimes, the best way to get over a heartache is by just getting to a place where you don’t have to stare it in the face it anymore.” – Darren Nicholson

“‘Any Highway’ is the first song Darren and I wrote. We had met years ago in Alaska while playing in separate bluegrass bands together. I was, and still am, a long time admirer of Darren’s singing, picking, and larger-than-life personality. These are qualities I look for in co-writers. In my opinion, the song itself is a historical fiction account of ‘the one that got away.’  The song style pays tribute to the bluegrass greats that perfected the hard-driving slick style of playing. I think it’s a really cool song, and it’s been the start of a fruitful co-writing friendship with Darren. ‘Any Highway’ is a modern day classic!” – Charles Humphrey III

Track Credits:
Darren Nicholson – Mandolin, lead vocal
Zach Smith – Upright bass
Colby Laney – Acoustic guitar
Deanie Richardson – Fiddle
Kristin Scott Benson – Banjo
Tony Creasman – Drums
Kevin Sluder – Harmony vocal
Jennifer Nicholson – Harmony vocal

Jaelee Roberts, “He’s Gone”

Artist: Jaelee Roberts
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “He’s Gone”
Release Date: February 28, 2025

In Their Words: “As the songs were coming together for my new album, I was still in need of a gospel song to record so I reached out to my very dear friend and mentor, Kelsi Harrigill, to see if she had written anything recently. She sent a few songs to me that I really liked but none of them felt like ‘the one.’ However, a few days later while she was vacuuming, she was inspired to write the song ‘He’s Gone’ and I knew after the first listen it was absolutely the one for me to record. This gospel song tells the incredible story of how Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose again. ‘Praise God the tomb’s empty, He’s Gone.’

“I am so happy that I got to record this special song and thrilled to be joined by amazing musicians: Ron Block (banjo), Stuart Duncan (fiddle), Cody Kilby (guitar), Andy Leftwich (mandolin), Justin Moses (dobro), and Byron House (bass/producer). To top it off and make a dream come true, three very special people in my life came to the studio to sing with me – Sharon White Skaggs, Cheryl White Jones, and Ricky Skaggs. I feel very blessed and honored to have their voices on ‘He’s Gone.’ I love this song so much and I am thankful for the message of ‘He’s Gone’ and I hope that each of you will love it, too.” – Jaelee Roberts

Salomé Songbird, “I’m Alright”

Artist: Salomé Songbird
Hometown: Colorado
Song: “I’m Alright”
Release Date: February 28, 2025

In Their Words: “Broadly, ‘I’m Alright’ is about being stuck someplace and needing to escape. It is full of imagery from every place I’ve ever been desperate to leave. There are a lot of references to following the sun or heading west, which would be a return home in my mind. On a personal level, this song is about suicide. I hope anyone listening who is also feeling that kind of darkness feels a little less alone. There is always someone who wants to help you and there is always another door that’s not that one.” – Joy Adams, songwriter, mandolin, vocals

“‘I’m Alright’ is a song that has been an important part of finding our voice and an audience that voice resonates with during live performance over the last couple years. I’m glad it’s now one of the first songs we’re releasing as a band.” – Bryan Dubrow, guitar

Track Credits:
Joy Adams – Songwriter, vocals, mandolin
Ariele Macadangdang – Vocals, violin
Bryan Dubrow – Guitar

David Starr, “Hole In The Page”

Artist: David Starr
Hometown: Cedaredge, Colorado
Song: “Hole In The Page”
Album: Must Be Blue
Release Date: January 24, 2025 (song); February 28, 2025 (video)
Label: Quarto Valley Records

In Their Words: “I am so excited to share my first release with Quarto Valley Records! It’s kind of ironic, because this song was the last song written for the album that happened by accident. The idea came about because of something I misheard on a radio show, thinking they said ‘hole in the page,’ which got the wheels turning. While I can’t remember what they actually said, I am so grateful for that spark of creativity. It’s funny that this song then turned into being the one to kick off the rest of the project. I love the energy of the track and that it packs a punch. Jason Lee Denton and I have collaborated on a number of videos together and I knew he would knock this one out of the park. I love the direction he took, it is the perfect visual representation of the song!” – David Starr

Track Credits:
David Starr – Acoustic guitar, vocals
Greg Morrow – Drums
Jeff King – Electric guitar
Mark Prentice – Bass, keyboards
Michelle Nicolo Prentice – Background vocals
Joe Starr – Electric guitar

Video Credits: Jason Lee Denton, Solar Cabin Productions

Photo Credit: David Starr by Jason Lee Denton; Darren Nicholson by Jeff Smith.