Tag: guthrie trapp

WATCH: Mo Pitney, “Old Home Place”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Mo Pitney
Hometown: Cherry Valley, Illinois (close to Rockford, Illinois)
Song: “Old Home Place”
Album: Ain’t Lookin’ Back
Label: Curb

In Their Words: “The opportunity to record this song, ‘Old Home Place,’ means a lot to me. The first time I ever heard this song was on a JD Crowe & The New South album when I was a young kid. It featured JD, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Jerry Douglas and Bobby Slone. I learned that version and would play that song with my dad and my brother when we were touring bluegrass festivals. When I was in the studio to record my current album, Ain’t Lookin’ Back, I stepped up to the mic to check it and I started playing ‘Old Home Place’ to warm up. My producer said, ‘Mo, let’s just play through that to get the jitters out and don’t freak out when the band comes in,’ and he recorded it. What was cool, about a week later my producer played it for Marty Stuart and he said he’d love to be on the track and then Ricky Skaggs agreed. We then wanted to recreate as much of the original project as possible and it became a compilation of my heroes playing bluegrass and country music. This track means the world to me and shows the evolution of the music that I want to make now, but also where I came from. I’m thankful for every opportunity I have to be able to do that.” — Mo Pitney

Photo Credit: Jeremy Cowart

I Guess I’ll Go Get Stoned: 16 Roots Songs for 4/20

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s a national holiday. Patron saint, Willie Nelson. And perhaps his heir would be Kacey Musgraves? Or Billy Strings. Or Margo Price. Or Snoop Dogg. We’ve got options. 

Bluegrass and country may be upheld as the pinnacles of wholesome, “American values” music, but in reality artists have been putting the GRASS into bluegrass since as long as that term has been in popular usage. (And damn, does it look good on a sweatshirt, too.)

We hope you ascend to new heights this 4/20, and while we’re at it we hope you enjoy these 16 high lonesome roots songs perfect for the occasion. 

Roland White – “Why You Been Gone So Long”

Roland White, his late brother Clarence, and the Kentucky Colonels are known for “Why You Been Gone So Long,” and in 2018 Roland re-recorded the number on his IBMA Award-nominated album, A Tribute to the Kentucky Colonels, with a star-studded cast of friends. 

Also known for his monthly shows at the World Famous Station Inn in Nashville (pre-COVID), every time Roland sings the line, “Nothing left to do, lord, so I guess I’ll go get stoned,” the crowd erupts with laughter. To this writer, though, that line feels less like a hilarious non-sequitur from a septuagenarian bluegrasser and more like sage wisdom. I guess I will go get stoned!

Selwyn Birchwood – “I Got Drunk, Laid & Stoned”

As modern bluesman Selwyn Birchwood put it in our premiere of this track, “This song proves that you can party to blues music.” That may seem like an obvious fact to a blues fan, but the uninitiated deserve to know the blues isn’t just about what you’ve lost, it’s about what you gain – through the music and otherwise. As Birchwood concludes, “‘I Got Drunk, Laid and Stoned’ is the epitome of what I feel is missing in a lot of blues music right now. You’ll find all of the rawness, edginess, and boundary pushing that I love…” That is the blues. 

Ashley Monroe – “Weed Instead of Roses”

No matter the occasion, when you’re reaching for flower… buds – reach for weed. Ashley Monroe makes a compelling case that men are certainly not the only ones in country who can live up to the outlaw moniker. Guthrie Trapp chicken pickin’ along is the cherry on top of this cannabis bop.

John Hartford – “Granny Wontcha Smoke Some Marijuana” 

For all those who’ve ever imagined hotboxing a steam-powered aereo plane, here’s a lazy, loping sing-along that kicks into barn-burning — or, grass burning? — country meets honky-tonk meets bluegrass. You’ll be calling it “mary-joo-wanna” now too. 

David Grisman & Tommy Emmanuel – “Cinderella’s Fella”

If you’re here, you must be celebrating 4/20, so you might know about Cinderella – a potent, hazy strain that Dawg attributes to his late friend Jerome Schwartz in Petaluma, California. If Cinderella were a princess instead of a strain of cannabis, Grisman would certainly arrive at her door with glass slipper in hand. Instead, we assume he fits her with a glass bowl instead? This performance by Grisman and Tommy Emmanuel is sweet, tender, and jaw-dropping. Classic “Dawg music.”

Courtney Marie Andrews – “Table For One”

Everyone self medicates, whether they’re aware of it or not, it’s just that touring musicians — by the very nature of their jobs — face their self medications, “crutches,” and vices everywhere they go. Courtney Marie Andrews, a lifelong Americana nomad, captures the depression and melancholy of touring perfectly in this haunting song, which reminds the listener that you don’t really want the life of the person on stage, no matter how glamorous it might seem. If the sometimes foggy dissociation of weed smoking were bottled and infused into a song, it would be this track.

New Lost City Ramblers – “Wildwood Weed”

Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What if Mother Maybelle smoked pot?” With this song — a Jim Stafford hit — The New Lost City Ramblers kinda did! 

New life side quest unlocked: smoke weed from a corncob pipe. 

Kacey Musgraves – “Follow Your Arrow”

It’s April 20th and your arrow is pointing directly at your bong. F*CK, water pipe. Follow that arrow, babies! Do you! Light up a joint. (Or don’t.) 

Nah, do. 

Charlie Worsham feat. Old Crow Medicine Show – “I Hope I’m Stoned (When Jesus Takes Me Home)”

We’ve loved Charlie Worsham and the bluegrass bona fides underpinning his brand of modern country for quite a while, but it’s extra perfect when he sits in and otherwise collaborates with the fellas in Old Crow Medicine Show. Heaven’s golden streets? Overrated. What about its fields of pot?! I mean… it will have amber waves of cannabis, will it not? It’s called “heaven.” 

Margo Price – “WAP”

She’s partnered with Willie’s Reserve to release her own branded strain of weed, “All American Made,” and she’s infamous for smokin’ and tokin’. But in this Daily Show with Trevor Noah spot featuring comedian Dulce Sloan, Price is called upon to prove the point that if “WAP” were a country song, the universe would still be as upset at its radical centering of female pleasure and agency. (She’s right, of course.) Thank GOD for Sloan and Noah making this point, because it’s given us this country-rendition of Price singin’ “Need a hard hitter, a deep stroker/ a Henny drinker, need a weed smoker.” Perfection. 

Chris Stapleton – “Might As Well Get Stoned”

Look, you can’t mess with the hits. This list wouldn’t/shouldn’t exist without this song on it. Chris Stapleton, perhaps the biggest crossover artist — crossing over from bluegrass to mainstream, of course — in roots music since Alison Krauss proves his allegiance to whiskey and weed in this jam from his smash major label debut, Traveller. 

It’s like he took Roland’s advice! Might as well…

Peter Rowan – “Panama Red” 

Peter Rowan’s career has been well-peppered with southwestern and Latin folk-flavored bluegrass, but did you know he wrote “Panama Red”? This live recording is suitably trippy for 4/20, with a slight atonal warble as if the record were slightly warped on the turntable and the pickers holding on for dear life to Peter’s delightfully languid phrasing — that somehow drives as much as it lays down for a weed-induced siesta. Everybody’s acting lazy…

Billy Strings – “Dust In A Baggie”

He means kief, right? Right?? 

Guy Clark – “Worry B Gone” 

How every “worried man” in Americana, country, and the blues still has a job when “worry B gone” exists is perplexing, isn’t it? Granted he was not a medical professional, but Guy Clark’s endorsement surely must stand for something. Don’t give me no guff, give me a puff!

Willie Nelson – “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”

Did you know that funerary and embalming processes are actually incredibly harmful to the environment and often non-sustainable? But this style of cremation must be ideal. Do it for the earth. Think green. HaHA!

John Prine – “Illegal Smile” 

Love that plant peeking from behind John Prine like a shoulder angel. Let’s all do Prine proud and don illegal smiles today, how about it? 

With that in mind, let’s not celebrate today without also striving towards decriminalization, decarceration, and the expungement of criminal records for anyone currently imprisoned on marijuana charges. Illegal smiles no more!

Pictured: Limited edition BGS herb grinder. Want one? Let us know in the comments and we might add them to the BGS Mercantile!

My Love Will Not Change: Four Versions of a Modern Classic

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“My Love Will Not Change” — but my favorite version of this song just might. (And yours might, too!)

The tune, penned by consummate songwriter, bluegrasser, and country stalwart Shawn Camp and his rockabilly collaborator and friend Billy Burnette, has had versions recorded and performed by both writers as well as Bluegrass Hall of Famer Del McCoury. Today, another iteration has hit the airwaves and digital shelves from Americana rocker Aubrie Sellers. The track, which features harmonies from Steve Earle, will appear on Sellers’ sophomore release, Far From Home, set to drop on February 7, 2020.

“I love bluegrass, and I thought it would be fun to bring a song with unmistakable mountain soul like this into my world a little bit,” Sellers relates in a press release. “It’s the only song [on the album] I didn’t write, but it’s something I wish I’d written. I live for straightforward, emotionally-driven writing like this. When I envisioned the sound for the track, I knew there was no one else who could do it like Steve.”

It should come as no surprise that bluegrass influenced this hard-and-heavy, rollicking rendition of the song — and not simply because Camp wrote it and the Del McCoury Band originally recorded and popularized it. In 2015, Sellers appeared on a Stanley Brothers classic, “White Dove,” with her mother Lee Ann Womack and Dr. Ralph Stanley himself on Ralph Stanley and Friends: A Man of Constant Sorrow, which was the final album released by the bluegrass forefather before his death in 2016.

In honor of the newly-minted Sellers and Earle cover, we thought we’d lay out a handful of this modern classic’s cuts and performances, posing the question to you, our BGS readers: Which one is your favorite?

The absolute original. If you’ve never had the pleasure of having your face peeled off by Shawn and company at one of his many Station Inn shows, where he routinely cobbles together just such a mind-blowing bluegrass-meets-trad-country band, you maybe haven’t really ever had a truly “Nashville” experience. Is that bluegrass organ? Let’s call it that. You can hear the influence of Camp and Guthrie Trapp’s chicken-pickin’ shredding in the Sellers cut, too. And you’ll notice, across all cuts of this song, no one tries to emulate Camp’s vocal phrasing, which outright refuses to snap to any semblance of a grid, because it can’t be done.

 

A more languid, loping style that reads as honky-tonk and rockabilly and “shuffle across them polished-smooth floorboards” all at once. Nashville legend and Fabulous Superlative Kenny Vaughan is on guitar, once again reinforcing the inextricable role of the Telecaster in this song. That is, until we get to its next version…

 

And suddenly, all of our perceptions about what this song is and what it should be are thrown out the window. Whether it’s “Misty” or “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” or “Nashville Cats,” Del has a way of taking a song and immediately making every listener forget that it ever could’ve had a version that predates him. The definitive cut? Perhaps. The counterintuitive intervals between the harmony vocal and the lead (notice how Ronnie’s tenor sounds eerily similar to his father’s voice), the subtly dissonant melodic hook, and Mike Bub’s relentless rhythm — that doesn’t just reside in the pocket, it’s freakin’ mayor of the city of the pocket — are icing on the cake. Splendid.

 

It’s remarkable that the Sellers and Earle version doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel, while simultaneously covering almost entirely fresh ground. The skeletal structure is still here, with hallmarks from Camp’s, Burnette’s, and McCoury’s versions each, but this take is original. The grungy, harder rock flavors don’t blow out the more subtle touches, either. Sellers gives her own melodic embellishments and her own twists of phrasing as well, with Earle matching, but again referencing the there-are-no-rules feel of the harmonies in the other cuts. For something so seemingly disparate from the others, it is equally charming and unabashed.

Perhaps it doesn’t so much matter which one is preferable over the others? We’ll gladly take them all. Pardon, while I scroll back up to the top and start again.

Photo credit: Scott Siracusano

Guthrie Trapp, ‘Crossing the Bridge’

Posted on by Editor

If you live in Nashville, if you’ve ever been to Music City, and you have not yet had the pleasure of having your face peeled off by the fiery chicken pickin’ of Guthrie Trapp, you have not truly lived. Trapp’s telecaster — whether at bluegrass club the Station Inn, a lower Broadway honky tonk, a ritzy theater, or the Ryman Auditorium — gives any/all listeners a visceral reminder of how electric country guitar playing ought to sound: immediate, raw, and wild. While his picking carries the Nashville-signature heavy dose of machismo, it’s never without finesse and above all, taste.

On his second solo album, Life After Dark, there’s plenty of this style of playing, but it’s certainly not the only motif on the menu. Ripping tele is juxtaposed with more vibey, trance-adjacent compositions, whining blues, and refreshing, acoustic, bluegrass-inflected tunes. On “Crossing the Bridge,” which features bluegrass virtuosos and powerhouses Stuart Duncan and Sam Bush, Trapp brings his telecaster attack to the flattop with bluegrass locomotion; a veteran Nashville audience member will recognize this as a more rare iteration of his creativity and talents. Hearing flat-picking that references bluegrass six-string deities like Tony Rice and Clarence White without straying into unoriginality or mimicry reminds that Trapp has a truly original voice on his instrument, no matter the genre or musical phenotype. What’s more, the artistry of the tune and the players is what shines through first and foremost, shredding sans ego … but not without self-confidence.