Tag: Guy Clark

Mixtape: Wyatt McCubbin’s Songs to Fill a Songwriter’s Cup

Posted on by Editor

These are a few of the songs I run to when I need to go back to the well. They inspire me to be more creative, honest and authentic because that’s exactly what they are. These songs also belong to some of the most important songwriters who have ever lived.

“I’m Leavin’ Now” – Johnny Cash & Merle Haggard

This song kicks off with my ol’ pal, Marty Stuart, playin’ the flattop guitar. I love songs that still have energy without needing huge productions. Don’t get no cooler than Cash & The Hag.

“Satellite Radio” – Steve Earle

Steve Earle is such a North Star for me and my music. He has always pushed the envelope and made such creative records throughout his career. This album (Washington Square Serenade) and this song are proof of that.

“Pontiac” – Travis Meadows

Travis Meadows is such a hero of mine. I have turned to his records a lot throughout my career. This song makes me feel 16.

“Best of All Possible Worlds” – Kris Kristofferson

“If booze was just a dime a bottle, boy, you couldn’t even buy the smell.” KRISTOFFERSON. Enough said.

“That’s Life” – Paul Thorn

I’ve heard Paul Thorn say in interviews that this song was inspired by a list of things he heard his mom say. There is so much simple wisdom in this one. Makes me want to call home and just let Mom talk.

“Leaving Souvenirs” – Chris Knight

I found Chris Knight’s music in the darkest time of my life. His albums The Trailer Tapes and Trailer II changed my life and made me want to lean into writing songs about what I was going through. This one is still hard for me to listen to, but I love it so much.

“I Need You” – Tony Lane

You’ve heard this song before, but maybe not this version… This is the incredible Tony Lane. The writer behind so many of country music’s coolest hits. He has been one of my biggest inspirations for years now.

“East Houston Blues” – Rodney Crowell

Rodney Crowell is the king of uptempo grooves in my opinion. “East Houston Blues” is just pure grit and swagger.

“Stuff That Works” – Guy Clark

I heard this song at a bonfire jam when I was 14 years old. I’ve been hooked on Guy Clark ever since. I am a fan of simple songs and this one hits that nail right on the head.

“Who’ll Buy My Memories” – Willie Nelson

It would be impossible for me to build a playlist around songwriters and not include Willie Nelson. This is easily one of my favorites from the Red Headed Stranger.

Photo Credit: Evan Harney

The Other 22 Hours: Rodney Crowell (Reissue)

Posted on by Editor

With two Grammy Awards, 15 number one singles, and a songwriting catalog recorded by legends like Emmylou Harris, Bob Seger, and Waylon Jennings, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame member Rodney Crowell stands as one of Americana’s most enduring icons. Yet, after 50 years in Nashville, Rodney’s relationship to his craft is grounded not in recognition, but in the quiet, daily act of showing up.

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In this conversation from 2023, Rodney reflects on the early years of roaming Nashville alongside Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt to evolving past the need for applause, the spiritual discipline of 7-day vision quests, and why a song can take 40 years to finally tell you what it wants to be.

In This Episode:

– Rodney Crowell
– Jedd Hughes
– Marty Stuart
– JD Miller’s Recording Studio
– The Wilburn Brothers
– Emmylou Harris
– Guy Clark
– Mickey Newbury
– Bob Seger

Go Deeper:

Watch: View this entire conversation above or on YouTube.
Explore: Find similar conversations in these themed playlists.
Connect: Join the conversation on Instagram.

The Other 22 Hours is hosted by Aaron Shafer-Haiss (producer, mixer, musician) and Michaela Anne (songwriter, artist, creative coach). More about Aaron’s work. More about Michaela Anne’s work.

Produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss. Original music written, performed and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.

Photo Credit: Neilson Hubbard

Thomas Csorba is Bringing Tender Country Back

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Thomas Csorba’s new album, Tender Country, is a tip of the hat to a gentler time in country music, when songs about family life and nostalgia were easier to find on the radio dial.

For this album, his fourth, Csorba (pronounced Chor-ba) drew songwriting inspiration close to home – specifically his wife and two young sons. Raised in Houston, Csorba naturally found an early affinity for Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, and Don Williams, all of whom came up in that city’s live music scene. In 2019, Csorba graduated with an English degree from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. It’s no surprise that his literary leanings are evident in his lyrics, while his low-key vocals fit right in with his musical heroes.

“I’m obsessed with Don Williams, and what I love about Don is that it sounds like he’s sitting down on every recording, every vocal delivery,” Csorba says. “The thought and spirit behind this album was like, ‘Let’s make a record like those Don Williams records that I want to listen to when I’m doing laundry.’ I’m not in the business of making ‘exciting music,’ or what the world says is exciting. What’s exciting to me is something disarming and something thoughtful.”

Now based in Dallas, Csorba will hit the road later this summer with fellow Texas artist David Ramirez. In the meantime, calling in from a family vacation in Colorado, Csorba chatted with Good Country about his responsibility to share good music with his kids, the revelation of Tony Rice, and his long-held Grand Ole Opry aspirations.

I like that kind of comfortable, relaxed feeling on this record. What was the vibe in the studio during these sessions?

Thomas Csorba: It’s funny how relaxed and comfortable it was, in contrast with how quickly we worked. Most people would think that when you’re trying to record 10 songs in two days it’d be pretty uptight and stressful, but the goal was really like, “Hey, I got two extra days, let’s go record whatever we can.” Because I felt so comfortable with the guys, because I felt so comfortable in the studio, and because the players are so damn good, I was able to say, “Hey, here’s the next song.” Everybody charts it and I’m like, “All right, you want to try it?” And by the third take, it’s like, “All right, that feels good.”

Obviously, we live in a world of perfect and auto-tune and Melodyne and AI integration into Pro Tools. And, for better, for worse, I can’t understand how and why. I just can’t see myself getting into that. I don’t have the time or energy, so I’d much rather turn and burn with guys in the band, overdub a couple things, and what comes out of it is like, “Oh, this feels nice.”

I was curious about “Homemade Margaritas,” because to me it sounds like the spirit of Guy Clark and “Homegrown Tomatoes.” Was he an influence on you?

Yeah, absolutely. When I was a kid, my mom sang Willie Nelson songs to me. The mother-son dance at my wedding was “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” She’s a Texas gal and loved Jerry Jeff Walker and Willie and all those guys. She knew about Guy, but my older brother, Will, who’s a phenomenal old-time player, who’s wicked smart and wicked talented – he’s the kind of guy that’s frustrated with me and doesn’t think I’m cool because I have words in my songs. He’s quite the purist, but he was the one who introduced me to Townes Van Zandt’s music when I was 14 or 15 years old. And my parents are rolling their eyes, thinking the older brother’s corrupting Thomas.

I fell in love with Townes and my brother was like, “Great, if you like Townes, you’ve gotta like Guy and Blaze Foley and Rodney Crowell.” Then I went down that deep dive and his response to that, he just kind of walked through with me and said, “If you like all these guys, and if Townes is your favorite and Guy is your favorite, you’ve got to like the people they were obsessed with.” So, Lightnin’ Hopkins and Blind Willie McTell, and this kind of lineage.

I don’t know how relevant this is, but the big through-line there is that everything I love, in some way, comes from the bedrock that is Black American music. Guy certainly embodies that, Townes certainly embodies that. Guy was a big influence, and Texas Cookin’ is one of my favorite records of all time. Especially on “Homemade Margaritas,” I’m like, “Man, let’s do something fun like that.” … Anything I can do as a songwriter to have somebody listen to my record and be like, “Oh, this reminds me of Texas Cookin’,” mission accomplished in my book.

Since Good Country is on the Bluegrass Situation, I do have to ask about “Tony Rice & Beans.”

Hell yeah! I wrote that song with Matt Tedder. He plays guitar for me and he’s a phenomenal thumbpicker. He can play Western swing stuff. He played all over my record, has toured with me, and has been a dear friend for ages now. Matt knows the songbook. If I get booked for a private gig, and I know I’m gonna have to play covers, I bring Matt because he knows every word to every Merle Haggard song, and I can just sit there in a cowboy hat and strum.

He can tell where I am musically and what I want musically and point me in the right direction. All that to say, over the past 10 years, especially, a lot of our heroes from the ‘70s, who made those recordings that I love, have passed away. Jerry Jeff and Merle and obviously Tony Rice. For half of these folks, like in memoriam, it’s like, “I’m going to go listen to Jerry Jeff today,” in honor of Jerry Jeff, and I know exactly what deep cut I want to listen to.

Other people of that era have passed away, and I’ve been like, “Man, I know ‘Church Street Blues,’ but why have I not done the deep dive?” That was Tony Rice for me. When he passed, I did the deep dive, and Matt was there to hold my hand and point me to the right records and tell me what to listen for, because I’m much less musically advanced, as a way to put it. So, he pointed me through those records and I just fell in love. It made me want to start trying to practice guitar again, and get better flat-picking, which I am still a beginner at.

I think it’s because I was so new to the idea of Tony Rice that I was like, “Why is there no song called ‘Tony Rice & Beans’?” So, Matt and I wrote that tune and tried to shoehorn about as many references from the country and American songbook as we could. In Matt’s favorite line, the fact that we fit “The mule and the grasshopper are eating ice cream” from “Stay All Night, Stay a Little Longer,” from Bob Wills and Willie… It’s like, “What the hell does that line mean?” I don’t know, but there it is in my song, too.

Is it fair to say that one of the obligations of fatherhood is introducing your kids to good music?

Oh, totally! Maybe this is hyperbole, but I’ll say it anyway: There’s no better feeling as a father than your kids sitting in the back seat and saying, “Dad, can we listen to ‘Working on a Building’ but the Stanley Brothers’ version?” It’s like, ‘Dude, you’re not even four. Why do I want to cry right now?” Our oldest son turns four in July, and he’s requesting Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt and the Trio records, and loves Doc Watson.

Obviously he wants annoying brain rot songs, as well. There’s this song called “Chicken Banana” that he’s obsessed with that’s just terrible. We listen to soundtrack stuff and even in movies, it’s like, “Yeah, let’s watch Robin Hood, and let me tell you about Roger Miller.” It makes it much more enjoyable for me. … I think our kids need to listen to stuff they don’t understand, and I think they need to sit there in adult conversations about music and about art that they may not understand. But they’ll sit there and they’ll absorb it.

I just think my responsibility as a parent is to put the right things in front of them and bring them alongside of where I am creatively, where I am socially, and not draw the line between what Dad listens to and “Dad music,” and what the kids listen to and what “kid music” is. Because it’s unfair to them. It’s unfair to me, too. So, that’s my spiel on kids listening to good music.

I did want to ask about “He Would’ve Loved This.” In country music, there are a lot of songs where Dad is talking about the lessons he’s learned, or saying something with wisdom, but this song has a list of action items that show love. He’s trimming the trees and checking the gravy, and so on. Who were you thinking about when you wrote that song?

I was thinking of my granddad. We called him Papa. He passed away when I was in high school. My oldest son carries his name, which is really sweet. The guy was a chain smoker since he was 12 years old, and worked drywall in Canada after he moved over from Hungary. He’s got this amazing story, and because of his history and his background, his whole spirit was kind of like, “Isn’t this awesome?” Even the little things. And that permeated through all of his life.

You know, he was certainly a crotchety old man at times, but there was a sense of gratitude that was kind of unfathomable, literally. I couldn’t understand it, even if I tried, just because of where he came from. All he wanted was to survive and start a family one day, and there he was watching me grow up and taking me to baseball practice, and trying to correct my attitude on the golf course as a 10-year-old. It’s like, the fact that he was there embodied that gratitude.

So, as my wife and I are watching our boys grow up doing all these menial, seemingly throwaway things, I have to remind myself that if Papa was here, he would be beaming with joy.

You’re not even 30 years old yet, and I know time passes fast, but do you consider yourself to be a nostalgic or sentimental person?

Yeah, I’m a “hoarder lite.” I hang on to things. On this record cycle, I’ll be transparent here, it’s like my big dream – if there’s any record I’ve put out so far, this is the one that would bring me to the Opry. I think it just fits the spirit of the history of the Opry. That’s been a dream for a long time. I’ve wanted to do that, and my manager and I talk about it, literally, every phone call.

The other day, my wife said, “I understand the historical significance, but what’s the deal? Why do you want to do the Opry so bad?” In the same way I talk about these records being handed down to my kids, I was kind of like, “I really want to have done it. I really want my kids to be like, ‘Dad played the Opry!’” Not to look cool, but mostly as a nostalgic thing, to get them to come and stand side stage, whether they understand it or not.

Those moments of nostalgia, in conjunction with the moments of nostalgia around the house, paint a really idealized, probably, but really beautiful picture of what I am up to, what I want to do, and how I want to show my kids I’m going about life.

Photo Credit: Alex Csorba

20 Years Old, Then Again by Rodney Crowell Is Remarkably Current

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Some records arrive exactly when they’re meant to. Others wait patiently in the dark, gathering meaning with every passing year. For Rodney Crowell, Then Again belongs to the latter category.

Recorded in 2006 but quietly shelved for nearly two decades, the album was never abandoned because Crowell doubted the songs. Instead, time itself became part of the recording’s story. When he eventually rediscovered the tapes, he wasn’t simply listening with older ears. He was listening with a different heart.

“I heard a record I wasn’t tired or bored of,” Crowell said with characteristic candor. “I was no longer tired and bored with myself. That’s what 20 years will do for you.”

It is a remark that says as much about life as it does music.

At 75, Crowell has little interest in nostalgia. He speaks instead about perspective – about learning to regard the younger man he once was with affection instead of criticism. The years have softened neither his standards nor his curiosity, but they have granted him something perhaps more valuable: compassion for himself. Then Again sounds less like an archival release than a conversation between two Rodneys separated by 20 years yet bound by the same restless artistic spirit.

That spirit was forged long before Nashville embraced him as one of America’s premier songwriters.

Crowell’s education began in southeast Texas, where songs traveled not through record collections but from one human voice to another. His father, who grew up on a sharecropper farm in western Kentucky, possessed an extraordinary gift for remembering music.

“He had a butterfly net to catch songs,” Crowell recalled. “Once he had them, he knew them.”

As a boy, Rodney sprawled across the floor while his father sang old Appalachian ballads, heartbreaking country laments, and weathered tales passed along through generations. There were no carefully cataloged albums lining the walls, no elaborate stereo system. The music lived in memory, carried from person to person through an oral tradition stretching back decades. Those songs became Crowell’s first inheritance. When he left home at fifteen to join a band, his father’s advice proved surprisingly prophetic.

“Tell them you write your own songs.”

Rodney didn’t write songs yet. He promptly claimed an Otis Redding classic as his own before the rest of the band recognized the bluff. The deception didn’t last, but the challenge did. His father had planted an idea that would eventually shape American songwriting.

Those early years unfolded across Legion halls, rodeo dances, Gulf Coast clubs, and small-town gathering places east of Houston. The humid Texas evenings smelled of beer, cigarette smoke, and dusty dance floors. Bands moved effortlessly between Beatles tunes, country standards, and surf instrumentals, playing whatever kept couples moving beneath strings of lights hung over community halls. The venues have mostly disappeared.

“I went looking,” Crowell said of one former dance hall. “The location was there, but the building wasn’t.”

Like so much of America, those landmarks surrendered to suburban expansion, leaving only memory behind. Memory also carried Crowell to Nashville, where another education awaited. He arrived knowing few original songs but possessing something the city’s finest writers admired: an encyclopedic knowledge of old country music learned from his father. Around late-night gatherings with Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Mickey Newbury, Crowell discovered that his familiarity with forgotten ballads earned him a place among extraordinary company.

Guy Clark became a mentor as much as a friend. Crowell remembers first hearing Clark’s name from an unlikely source before unexpectedly finding the legendary songwriter asleep on the bed he had been renting. Their friendship blossomed into an apprenticeship unlike any classroom could offer.

“Guy was a curator of early Nashville songwriting,” Crowell said.

Clark introduced him not merely to songs but to standards. He played Bob Dylan recordings. He encouraged deeper language. He challenged Crowell to pursue authenticity rather than cleverness.

“Your language has got to be that real.”

Townes Van Zandt provided another kind of lesson. Late one night, around one in the morning, Van Zandt quietly announced he had written something new. Then he played “Pancho and Lefty.” Crowell sat stunned. Inside, he remembers thinking, “This is what you’ve got to do.”

Van Zandt possessed a competitive streak, unveiling masterpieces that simultaneously inspired and humbled everyone fortunate enough to hear them first. Clark, by contrast, nurtured younger writers with generosity. Mickey Newbury demonstrated that lyrical sophistication could coexist with a soaring tenor voice, freeing Crowell from believing every great songwriter needed the baritone gravity of Cash, Kristofferson, or Billy Joe Shaver.

Together they became an informal graduate school of American songwriting. Years later, Crowell would write songs that entered the same conversation. Yet success brought its own hazards.

When a remarkable run of No. 1 country hits made him one of Nashville’s hottest writers in the late 1980s, Crowell sensed something unsettling happening. Walking into rooms, he realized people no longer saw Rodney Crowell, the songwriter. They saw Rodney Crowell, the hitmaker. He began constructing, almost unconsciously, a version of himself shaped by other people’s expectations.

His ego, he says now, became a dangerous collaborator. “If you let your ego get involved, you can get hurt,” he reflected. “It would rather sabotage the art.”

Rather than feeding celebrity, Crowell deliberately resisted it, sometimes awkwardly. During promotional radio appearances, while enthusiastic hosts tried to sell records to morning commuters, he answered questions with monosyllables, refusing to play the role expected of him. Looking back, he laughs at his own stubbornness while recognizing the lesson beneath it: fame is fleeting, but authenticity demands constant vigilance.

That understanding would prove invaluable during another extraordinary chapter of his life – one lived within the orbit of perhaps the most recognizable voice in American music. As Johnny Cash’s son-in-law, Crowell could easily have embraced proximity to legend. Instead, he did everything possible to establish himself as his own man.

“I ain’t coming around here because you’re Johnny Cash,” he remembered thinking. “I’m around here because I love your daughter.” Cash understood. More remarkably, he respected it.

Years later, after his marriage to Rosanne Cash had ended, Crowell discovered just how deeply those family bonds still ran. When Johnny and June learned that Crowell had begun dating Claudia, the woman who would become his wife of more than three decades, they invited the couple to dinner. Driving home, Claudia couldn’t understand why Johnny and June had worked so hard to make her feel welcome.

“I said, ‘Because they love me.'”

It remains one of Crowell’s favorite memories – not because it involved two American icons, but because it revealed the generosity beneath their fame.

Cash also delighted in gently puncturing Crowell’s youthful swagger. Looking back now, Crowell smiles at the younger version of himself who insisted on proving his independence every chance he got. Rather than embarrassment, he feels something closer to tenderness.

“I’ve developed a compassion…for that me,” he said. “Good go, young Rodney. You were just trying to establish who you were.”

It is difficult to imagine a better description of Then Again itself. The album captures an artist still determined to prove himself, while the older Crowell who finally released it understands that proving oneself eventually gives way to understanding oneself. Time didn’t erase the younger man’s ambitions; it simply placed them within a larger frame.

That perspective echoes throughout one of the album’s most affecting songs, “If I Could Speak to Leonard.”

Written years before Leonard Cohen died in 2016, the song has become something more profound with time. What began as an expression of admiration now sounds almost like a farewell whispered across generations of songwriters. Crowell insists it was never intended as an imagined conversation.

“It was a love song,” he said simply. “It’s expressing my love for his work.”

For Crowell, Cohen represented far more than literary songwriting. He offered a blueprint for aging with artistic purpose. While many performers spend their later years revisiting past triumphs, Crowell watched Cohen continue reaching toward new creative heights. Albums like Old Ideas and You Want It Darker became, in his words, breadcrumbs showing how an artist could continue growing even as the body inevitably slowed.

“I want to continue to create art at a high level as I wane,” Crowell said. “I don’t want the art to wane with my physicality.”

That aspiration permeates Then Again. Although recorded years ago, the album feels uncannily current because Crowell himself has finally caught up with it. Songs once left behind now carry fresh emotional resonance, illuminated by experience rather than youthful urgency. The years have also sharpened his awareness of time itself.

“I’m 75,” he reflected. “Time is more precious. I don’t have much time to waste.”

There is no trace of resignation in those words. Instead, they carry the quiet urgency of a man determined to spend his remaining years loving his family well, encouraging younger writers, and pursuing songs that continue asking difficult questions.

He speaks often of longing – not for youth, but for continued artistic growth. That philosophy shapes the songwriting workshops he still conducts, where he finds himself most energized by young writers willing to rethink a lyric or reshape a narrative. Their openness reminds him that songwriting remains an act of discovery rather than certainty.

For Crowell, certainty is often the enemy. The same conviction explains his skepticism toward artificial intelligence creating music. Songs, he believes, are more than carefully arranged words and melodies. They carry the fingerprints of the people who lived them.

As a child listening to worn Hank Williams records spinning across the living room floor, Crowell wasn’t merely hearing music. He was beginning a relationship with another human being. That relationship later extended to Buck Owens, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, and eventually Leonard Cohen. Great songs invited listeners into another person’s emotional world, something Crowell doubts machines can genuinely replicate.

“I want to wrap my arms around the artist,” he explained.

It is an observation that also reveals why Then Again feels so personal. These are songs created by a younger Rodney Crowell but embraced by an older one, each version reaching across time toward the other. Crowell often compares an album to an art gallery.

“When you walk into the room that is this record,” he said, “there are ten or eleven paintings hanging on the wall in the form of music.”

It is a beautiful metaphor because it captures the experience of listening to a complete album. Each song occupies its own space while contributing to something larger. Rather than rushing past individual tracks, listeners wander from one canvas to another, discovering unexpected connections along the way.

That idea feels increasingly radical in an era dominated by playlists, algorithms and abbreviated attention spans. Crowell remains committed to albums as immersive experiences, invitations to linger rather than scroll. Perhaps that explains why Then Again never sounds like an artifact rescued from storage. Instead, it resembles a gallery whose doors have finally opened. The paintings were always there.

Only, the artist needed twenty years before he could walk through the room without judging every brushstroke. For Rodney Crowell, that may be the greatest gift age has offered. Not perfection. Not certainty. Simply enough grace to recognize the younger man who created these songs and enough wisdom to appreciate what he had accomplished before he knew it himself.

Some records capture a particular moment. Then Again captures two. In an industry that often celebrates novelty over endurance, Crowell has offered something rarer: proof that good songs, like honest friendships and enduring love, are not diminished by time.

If anything, they become more fully themselves. And perhaps so do we.

Photo Credit: Claudia Church

Survival of the Heart and Survival in Alaska

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

During the Klondike Gold Rush, the Red Onion Saloon in Skagway, Alaska, operated as a thriving brothel and a rare (sometimes) source of autonomy for the women who worked there. More than a century later, Juneau-based singer-songwriter Taylor Dallas Vidic found empowerment at the old bordello too, by offering feminist tours in character as Madam Anya Johnson. Innuendos loosened up tour groups, forging a connection that made them receptive to some serious history lessons – alongside dick jokes.

“What working at the Red Onion did for me was make me feel really comfortable about being a human in front of other humans, and to talk about things that often feel taboo or uncomfortable, and to normalize them,” Vidic says. “It’s translating from making sex jokes to feeling comfortable standing in front of a lot of people and saying, ‘Hey, here’s what it felt like when I broke my heart or when someone else broke my heart.’”

Vidic’s songwriting is warm and vulnerable. She’s equally capable of belting above sultry and coy jazzy tracks, carrying intricate, stripped-down folksongs on her magnanimous voice alone, and building grand theatrical numbers, as well. She does all of it on her debut album, Cat & Mouse, a collection of 13 (mostly) love songs that deliver an expansive, playful representation of what is perhaps humanity’s most perplexing and intoxicating experience. And it’s all rooted in the same multifaceted understanding of shared humanity that Vidic used to bond with strangers on those summer stints in Skagway.

Beyond an exceptional, arresting voice and range, Vidic’s songwriting conveys an acuity of emotion which pushes what is superficially an album of love songs well beyond predictable tropes. “They tell you it takes time, you’ll see/ To remember who you use to be/ Remember how to sit in the quiet/ On your own,” she sings on the album’s opening track, “Falling Out of Love,” which lays out in minute, closely felt detail the experience of returning to self after a breakup:

I’ve learned to fill the space that
I’d kept for only you, dear
I smile at all the faces
Walk past all the places
We used to go
Each breath a little deeper
Each song a little sweeter
Now that the scent of you doesn’t linger on my pillow
Anymore

Heartbreak might be age-old song fodder, but Vidic extends it far beyond breakups to many kinds of aches (loss, longing, unbearable certainty) with an alluring immediacy. In her hands, the simple mechanics of falling in and out of love – or wishing to fall in love, even if just for the evening – become a comforting exercise in self-discovery and relatable human experience.

There’s “In a Song,” about a crush that’s missed its moment. “High,” which yearns for the good parts of a past entanglement. And “In Your Arms,” a cinematic, self-aware disquisition on a relationship’s irreconcilable differences: “I said it’s a big ole world/ The place we could go, the people we’ll see/ Just imagine the strangers we could meet,” Vidic sings, adding: “He said/ My corner’s just fine with me.” By song’s end, Vidic is off on the grand adventures she dreamed for them both, solo.

Part of Vidic’s remarkably evolved approach to love songs derives from practical necessity. Juneau, Alaska – population 32,000 – is small and isolated both from the rest of the country and even the state, by geography; with no roads out of town and flanked by impenetrable mountains, ice fields, and the Gastineau channel, it’s accessible only by boat or plane. Living within those few square miles, it’s impossible to avoid running into an ex regularly. In the same way that Vidic’s ethos accepts humanity’s many facets, so too she’s maintained love and respect for her exes. Indeed, most of them were invited to – and attended – her album release show.

“Finding ways to actively reframe relationships when they have run their course is a matter of survival of the heart. And it would be such a loss to not get to continue to care for the people that I have loved, that have loved me,” Vidic says. “I don’t know if I’m just lucky in that I’ve found people that are willing to do that – even though it is messy and hard at times and a little confusing at times, too, and uncomfortable; we spend so much time with people that we choose to love and we share so much…I really like holding onto those moments.”

Juneau’s geographical limitations and eccentricities crop up on the album in other ways, as well. “I let those mystery boys get me every time/ When the stakes are low I’m better at not losing my mind/ An hour is too far when an airplane is in play,” Vidic sings on “Muse.” Nothing quite as bittersweet as unrequited love, specifically one that’s unwanted.

“Twice a Day,” the album’s opening foray into its folk/Americana B-side, is the only song that doesn’t overtly take place in Alaska, written during a few months in New York City. On it, Vidic, a consummate observer of the world around her, contemplates the near-infinite possibility for human interaction in a big city surrounded by so many more souls than in her hometown: “Maybe I would make you laugh each day/ Maybe when it ended I’d be begging you to stay/ Maybe we’d grow old and see, we’re as happy as we’d ought to be/ But we’re always a platform away.”

First albums are always special. Often, they represent the culmination of years’ worth of a musician’s best and hardest fought work – John Prine’s eponymous debut, Emmylou Harris’ Pieces of the Sky, Guy Clark’s Old No. 1 – and Cat & Mouse is no exception. Written over more than a decade (Vidic penned its oldest song, “Muse,” at 21), the album is, for Vidic, a scrapbook of her life and formative early adulthood.

“I think most people can agree that songs take us back to moments in our lives, be it a playlist that was on the radio a lot when we were in middle school, or that particular song that helped you get over a breakup or a song that makes you think about your parent,” she says. “And these songs do that for me, but they are snapshots of my existence and of the people that I’ve come across.”

From her delivery on stage to the studio production of Cat & Mouse, Vidic also brings the banter and cheek of her madam tour guide gig, as well as the showmanship she’s cultivated as part of burlesque troupe, The Nude & Rude Revue, and through many community arts events she’s helped organize. Leaning into her life’s dualities, Vidic made the album with two distinct sides; Cat, the album’s A-side, is jazzy with a big band sound; Mouse is a stripped-down, folksy, and sparsely-instrumented B-side. It’s a concept that easily could have been sonically incongruous, but both sides flow together through the power of Vidic’s voice, aided by the album’s title track, which she rendered in both styles and delivered at the end of each side, respectively.

Juneau’s geographic isolation can be a mighty impediment for musicians, but it’s also a blessing that breeds collaboration and allows musicians a certain freedom to grow and flourish without the pressures of bigger music cities in the U.S., says Juneau-based musician Andrew Heist. Heist has played in a myriad of bluegrass bands in Alaska over the last 20 years, and lends his scintillating mandolin to “Falling Out of Love.” He also shares stages with Vidic as part of their songwriting group, the Muskeg Collective.

“Without the pressure to get a product out there to build her name in a competitive scene, there’s this community familiarity that is so rare and amazing in Juneau,” Heist says. “It’s sort of like the old soul version of hearing somebody sing, there’s a depth to the way that she brings her music forward.”

Most of Vidic’s songs are exceedingly personal, yet she manages to spin the exquisite pain of heartbreak into something universally relatable, and she’s equally vivid when singing about someone else. Vidic wrote “Wet Tennis Shoes” in part thinking about a friend whose father left when she was too young to remember him. The song effuses not just ache, but a crushing loss of innocence, as well: “Boats made of paper float on the pond/ A little girl playing wonders where you have gone/ You took all the sunshine and made her skies grey.” And though the paper boats do not actually dissolve, the song’s omnipresent drizzle – “Rain on her window/ Rain on her head/ Rain on the rooftop as she lies in bed” – evokes the dissolution even more effectively.

After spending most of the album exploring feelings’ small intricacies, Vidic’s final track before the “Cat & Mouse” reprise is “Stockades,” a showy, declarative pop number about the enormity of falling head over heels. “The Stockades fell/ When he touched my hips/ And he kissed my lips in ways they’ve never been kissed,” she cries before continuing: “Lord knows it took one night to tear this empire down/ The walls we built, they’re falling faster than Jericho to the ground.” Still, kingdoms fall and so do powerful loves; and again by the end of the song, Vidic is reminding herself how to get back up and stand on her own two feet. Now, and always, too.

The strength of Alaskan songwriters’ connections extends beyond helping each other and into the community at large as well. As part of her album crowdfunding (Cat & Mouse was also partially funded by a prestigious local grant), Vidic asked for funds to bring music into the state’s network of nursing homes, a goal inspired by visiting her mother in a long-term care facility and a few concerts she’s already given.

Memorably, Vidic recalls how at a Christmastime performance she stepped offstage to sing among the audience to bring herself into focus for them. Next to a man she’d noticed never uttered a word on previous visits, Vidic sang “Silver Bells.” Part way in, the man joined her, singing along with words he’d learned long ago.

Nursing homes are often undesirable performance locations; they’re sterile, poorly lit, and underfunded, their residents not the most attentive or engaging audience members – yet, Vidic observes, those people deserve live music, joy, and respect, as much as anyone. She plans to rework her stage performance into a version with which to bring music to those spaces where it’s rarely heard, and sorely needed.

“That again brings me back to my time at the Red Onion and finding that shared humanity with strangers, and just feeling like we’re all just human beings doing our best, sharing spaces and trying to find joy and make moments worth living,” Vidic says. “What’s the point without it?”

Photo Credit: Sydney Akagi

A One-of-a-Kind Conversation with Jonny Fritz

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It is deeply joyful sitting with Jonny Fritz at a restaurant he suggested (Pollos Puebla #1) in an area of Los Angeles he’s an expert on (Pasadena/Altadena border) and talking about subjects he thinks about a lot, ranging from rebirthing ceremonies to alimony to how…“different” Nashville is now. He’s keenly honest about his life, his work, and his thoughts about any question thrown his way. Nothing is out of line or off limits. Nothing is filtered by a publicist or an agenda. It is off the cuff and real and wild.

We met over grilled chicken, rice, and beans to discuss his newest work, Debbie Downers (Woodwinds), a reimagining of the original 2025 album Debbie Downers. The conversation unfolded much like the album, with unexpected turns and humor that expose raw nerves about an unfriendly music industry, the beauty of PG Tips, the subtlety of serving a song, and the goal of taking a ride on the wave of a sliced open above-ground pool.

Well, let’s talk about Woodwinds. I’m a huge woodwind fan. How’d this come about?

Jonny Fritz: Oh, yeah? Me too. I love woodwinds. I’ve always loved them. I think they’re so great.

It’s so expensive making a record. It’s just stupid, you know? For example, the last record I made, Sweet Creep, I made it pretty cheap. I think it cost about 12,000 bucks. But ATO Records had an option on it so they could pick it up. They bought Dad Country, the record before that, for 5,000 bucks. It cost me five grand to make. “We’ll pay you five grand for it.” All right, fine. And then, hidden in the contract – or at least hidden to me – they got the option on the next one. Same deal. So when I made Sweet Creep they picked up the option. So for $5,000, they got this record that cost me $12k. I was like, “Jesus, man, this business is so rough.” And I just knew it was going to be something similar with the next one.

By this one, Debbie Downers, I thought, “What do I really want to do?” I might as well just do what I want, because there’s nothing worse than having something be expensive and unsatisfactory. I just decided I really wanted to make the record over and over and over again. I have a bunch of different visions for how it should go and I wouldn’t call any of them the one.

The Woodwinds one was something I’ve always just wanted to do. So I’m pretty pleased with it. I got this amazing guy in Highland Park who does film and TV stuff. There’s not a lot of work going on right now, so he was willing to do it. And the first couple of arrangements that he came up with, I was just giddy. I couldn’t believe how cool it was.

Were there any revelations for you? When you heard them in that arrangement, was there anything that shocked you about it?

Hmm… Yeah, some of the versions with the woodwinds really lent themselves to the winds better than any other version. I wrote this song called “Have You Seen Her.” I wrote it coming off of anesthesia. I was out of my mind. I got a hip replacement at UCLA 10 years ago. You know, coming off anesthesia affects people in weird ways. I’m one of them. It really got me, I wrote this song and I felt like it was the most brilliant thing.

It was so embarrassing. I wrote everybody who I knew who was high up at Rolling Stone, and all the Newport Folk Festival team, and all their PR team. I mean, I wrote everybody. And I wrote these really incoherent emails. I haven’t actually looked at them in a long time. I looked at them right after I wrote them and I was so ashamed. But I wrote all these emails being like, “You’re gonna want to get Scarlett Johansson down here. I need to perform this for her. And you need to get Joaquin [Phoenix] here, too.”

I’m not a social climber, but there was something in me that was like, “You need to make some moves. Call out a lifeline.” I was so ashamed of it for so long, because it was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life, for sure.

All of that to say, I didn’t want to play it or record it. I had to overcome it, admit it, and start talking about it. When I heard it with the woodwinds, I was blown away.

Years ago, I worked with Chris Crofton on a comedy event at Third Man Records that involved a compilation of found video footage that was submitted. There were so many submissions of people coming out of anesthesia, and I remember Chris immediately going, “No, that isn’t funny.” It really isn’t; you aren’t in your right mind.

God bless that man. He always knows exactly what the fuck is up. He is driven by pure heart and knows exactly where his morals should be. He’s incorruptible.

Do you spend a lot of time on social media? What is your relationship to it as a creator?

Pretty passive. I like social media. I feel like I’m kind of floating above social media. By like eight feet, just kind of looking down at it. Like, “What are you guys doing? That’s insane.” Then I dive into it to interact, and then just kind of get out of it. I get a little hooked on it for sure, but I hear about the addictions and the stuff that people fall for, and just like the amount of engagement. But it’s like engagement versus quality of life. I get so much fulfillment from everything else. I like playing with it. I always have fun with it, but I try not to let it get sticky.

Well, one of my favorite social media posts in the past bit is the one with your kiddo singing “Tea Man.”

Oh, wasn’t that so sweet?

So sweet.

She’s 6.5 now. She was like 2.5 then. And I just was like, I can’t post this. It felt so…I don’t know…

Personal?

It was personal, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I definitely want to protect her, you know? But that’s not her anymore. She doesn’t even look like that. She’s like doubled since that song came out. But then I was like, “Oh, fuck yeah, I’m posting this!” There was no risk of seeing her in public and recognizing that she’s the girl from the video.

Are you a tea man? In real life?

I got a PG Tips tattoo. I really like tea. I drink enough tea to float a canoe every day.

Really? All caffeinated?

Usually. Well, when I’m on tour, yeah. I get so tired. I can’t really mess with coffee. It just makes me so jittery. But I can just drink tea all day.

Are you an equal opportunist, or is it mostly black tea?

Oh, I like it all. Really like it all, but I love the black stuff, though. I think it happened when I was on tour 10 years ago with Josh Hedley. We were in England somewhere on a train, and they came down the lane with a steaming cart and it was £1 for a cup of tea. I don’t have an addictive personality. I don’t care about alcohol or anything. But I felt like, “Oh, I’m in trouble.” Just sitting on a cold, rainy train going through England with a cup of PG Tips.

It reminded me of something I heard about Andy Warhol. Although I’m not a big fan, I don’t know much about the guy. But what I do know about him is that one thing that made me really like him. I heard that he doused his whole world in a certain scent for a season. For example, in the summer of ‘63, he would just cover everything with lavender oil. And then come winter, it would be a totally different scent. And you’d put lavender away, and it’d be bergamot. So then the sense memory of whatever happened around that time would be so strongly connected to that scent that you could be completely brought back. And I really love that.

I think there’s something to it with the tea thing, because that tour was really big for me. It was a fantastic time. It was a really, really wonderful, lovely tour, and drinking PG Tips like that, I just got into English culture too. Everywhere you go, somebody’s like, “Well, you want a cup of tea?” Like, yes, I fucking do. I decided I’m never turning down a cup of tea. And I never have since.

Tell me about writing “Hot Chicken Condos” with Jordan [Lehning] and Skylar [Wilson]. I deeply connect with that song because I also left Tennessee, and for many of the reasons you list in the song.

Yeah, that was the point. Everybody who really gets this place will really understand these things, even like Pit Bull puppies in parking lots.

And humidity.

Fucking unrelenting humidity.

Were those things you were storing? How did that song come about?

God, why I love writing with Jordan and Skyler is because they don’t bring any ego to the write. They don’t fucking care. They’re just such good vibes. I’m really pretty neurotic about writing and also I’m pretty protective of my words, too. When I get into the writing space, I’m just so sensitive about what’s being said. So if somebody says or suggests the wrong thing, I can quickly be like, “This is the wrong association.” I can be a little trigger-happy.

But with Jordan and Skylar, they’re always just like, “Just play what you got.” And they usually edit everything that I have. With that song, one of the lyrics was “Mustard in the corner of his tiny little mouth.” And Jordan said, “Why don’t you say, ‘Mustard cracking in the corner of his tiny little mouth?'” And it was perfect. Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and almost the right word was the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

It’s so true.

I got to hang out with Guy Clark once in Nashville, and it was like one of the best moments of my Nashville career. I was going through really bad writer’s block. And I asked him, “Do you ever get stuck?” And he said, “Yeah… Do you ever write with other people?” And I told him, “I don’t like the idea of giving somebody 50% of the song just because they’re sitting in the same room.” He leaned over and he goes, “Well, you never would have fucking wrote it if they weren’t sitting there.”

I was like, “Damn, old man schooled me.” Because so much of writing, I feel like, is picking up on something else that’s happening. And who’s to say you don’t owe somebody credit just because they’re sitting there?

The other thing that Jordan suggested for [“Hot Chicken Condos”], which was so right on, was that he asked me how high I could go on the Tennessee part. I told him I could go falsetto, and he told me to try it. I hit it and he said, “That’s it.” He took an idea of a song and made it a song. I just so appreciate those guys.

I just feel it is like a pedal steel player who plays about eight notes per song. That’s the best player in town, ‘cause all the other players are nonstop. Same with fiddle. Take Josh Hedley. The guy just stands there most of the time, then he pulls out something incredible, and he sets it back down. He doesn’t overplay. If you don’t overwrite and you don’t overplay, those are heavy attributes.

Those are both things to do in service of the song, not in service of self.

Absolutely. You know who I saw last night was Erin Rae. Kevin Morby and I were standing next to each other, just like, ”Oh my god, she’s so good.” One of the most amazing things about her is that she underplays the guitar. She’s playing the whole time, but if you really focus on how much she is actually playing, it is barely. It’s just enough to fill in where she’s not singing and she works the mic so well.

All those things are so important, but nobody teaches them, you know? You have to kind of know it. It’s innate, right?

Or you got to learn it trial by fire. And you have to be playing with players who know what they are doing to learn that.

Yeah. That’s right. Sometimes people are technically good, but they just don’t stop noodling, and it sucks.

You took a long hiatus from music, huh?

I did. I took nine years between records. I didn’t mean to. And I didn’t actually think that I was doing it. I was playing shows here and there. I blame it on real estate. I got into real estate because my heart got broken from music so many times from wanting to do better. Wanting to succeed more. Really, really caring what people said and thought and comparing myself. All the things you really shouldn’t do ever in any aspect of life. I mean, if you did that in a relationship, then your therapist would be like, “That’s your problem. Stop. Don’t do that.”

I couldn’t get out of it. I just felt so bad about how it was going. And I know what I’m doing is not for everybody, and it’s not gonna take off. But I love what I do. I’m not putting myself down, but I just knew my ambition was a lot faster than everybody’s interests. It was just wearing on me and I needed to do something that’s purely about money and doesn’t have anything to do with creativity, because I’m just getting my feelings hurt. And I got polyps in my vocal cords. I was touring too much. It just wasn’t going well.

So I thought, “I’m just going to pivot. I’ll still do shows and if somebody asks me to do something, I’ll do it. I love music.” I stopped prioritizing writing. I stopped prioritizing recording, and then the pandemic happened, and I had a kid, and real estate took off, and I looked up, and it was 9 years. It really was like, “Oh, crap, how did that happen?” It shocked me.

What’s your writing process like typically? Do you write everywhere?

I write everywhere. I use my voice memos a lot. I really love just making up new country songs and fake country songs – like, really bad ones. I find that if I can get them out, I can expand upon them or delete them and move on.

I was writing with Skylar [Wilson] one time and we were trying to write a song called “Remember the Alimony?” We wrote for hours and hours and it was a stupid song and it didn’t go anywhere. It went, “I’m just a poor man. All I eat is beans and write checks to my ex, one and only. I rolled the dice, but I lost my wife. But I remember the alimony.” So stupid. God. But we were writing all day and just hanging out, and neither of us thought to finish it. It just didn’t work. But then I got home and I had like 6 other song ideas that went on Sweet Creep. It’s that muscle thing that everybody talks about.

I’m also a pleasure seeker to the nth degree. If things aren’t fun, I just drop them so quick. I’m really bad about that. So I just make sure that it’s really fun and get the idea out quickly. I try to stay hovering above it, just stay light. Because as soon as I dig into it, that’s when I’m like, “Oh, my God, right. I don’t know how to do this.” Just keep it fun and it will grow. But I like to write all the time, every day.

Do you wake up and do it?

It is in the shower, on the way to school, washing dishes. You know, when you have a great idea and no way to write it down.

Soapy hands! Sometimes it happens when there’s an absence of anything else and those ideas pop up.

I have to really protect myself when I’m diving in. I wash all the dishes, do all the laundry, sweep up a bit, and make sure no one is going to ask me for anything. I’m really self-conscious about that. If nobody is home, I’m going to the basement and putting on Ken Burns’ Civil War, and I turn the radio on at low levels where it is just kind of humming. I drink a tremendous amount of caffeine. That’s my favorite.

But it is intense. I can get really emotionally rocky after diving in pretty deep.

I was thinking about Roger Miller when you were talking about the “Alimony” song. I’m drawn to that kind of writing because you can get really dark while staying very light.

People think that the meat is deep, but the nerves are on the surface. There’s meat down there, but it’s dead. I feel like the most cutting and incredible songs kind of sound like an email to an old friend. My favorite Lucinda Williams songs all sound like they were written to a buddy.

Or she’s talking to somebody over tea.

So true. And John Prine, too. Everyone’s like, “How did they do it?” They just did it. They’re just talking.

Will you play any live shows with the woodwinds?

Yes, actually, April 14, we’re doing a free show at Zebulon. It’s going to be good. I have this giant golf ball, it’s like a concession stand, and I’m bringing that to the show. The whole point of it is to give away free tea. It’s my tea ball. The tea is free, just buy a house from me!

What will the live configuration look like? How many players will you have?

Four, but they play multiple winds. It’s the players on the record. They’re such pros. They’re all symphony kids.

There’s something about stripping it down to just woodwinds; it’s so cinematic. It takes you directly to the meat and it makes you lighter when it is time, as music does for film. It helps direct your emotional experience.

I like that. I’ve always loved demos of songs. Sometimes I just want to hear someone play the songs, not the record. Or just hear someone sing it. As close to the song as I can get, I’m most happy. I love a cappella stuff. Sometimes the most powerful way to arrange a song is to remove everything.

With winds, too, it’s nice because that’s pretty much it. There’s the vocal and then there’s some wind behind it. I love that.

At the top of my notes that I took while listening to the record, I have the words “jello rebirth” scribbled down regarding the song “Polished Turd.” Can you tell me more about that concept?

For this record, it was a bit of a cynical and fatalistic career thought, but I wanted to make a record of real estate songs. The whole idea behind it was that people would hear it and would say, “This sucks.” And my reply can be, “Yes. That’s what happens when you give up on your dreams.” Music really suffers when you just write about what you’re doing. It’s like this martyrdom thing.

You know the three D’s in real estate are like death, diapers, and divorce – all the things that make people sell their homes. So I wrote one that went, “Death, diapers, and divorce. And the lottery, of course.”

During the pandemic, I had this fantasy of buying someone an above-ground pool. Have you heard of rebirthing ceremonies?

No.

Oh, rebirthing ceremonies are a thing. A fucking thing. People simulate a mother’s vagina in like a mega fucked up Christian ceremony. They make you relive your birth so you can be reborn and let go of all your childhood traumas. They have a gelatinous vagina and people push themselves through it. So anyway, I got that in my mind and thought, “What the hell is this world?” But I could see that for real estate, like a used car salesman going, “We are doing rebirthing ceremonies, come on down!”

And I have always wanted to slide through the tsunami of an above-ground pool that gets sliced open.

Yeah, that does look fun.

Right, who hasn’t wanted to do that? But then I want to turn it into jello. And then I thought maybe I should do that for my clients or have a commercial about it. I could cut a slice in the pool with a katana sword, then they’d ride in slow motion through the incision of the above-ground pool, I could hand them the keys, and they’d be reborn into home ownership. Follow me?

Yep.

That is a song very near and dear to me, but it is a hard one to explain. What was your experience with it?

Well my first thought was that wherever it was coming from and whatever it meant, you have thought a lot about it.

Fair enough, that’s true.

Photo Credit: Bobbi Rich

BGS Class of 2025: Best in Bluegrass

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

If you’re looking for a definitive, qualitative, and deliberate ranking; a firm and scientific rubric; or an unbiased, sterile reckoning of the best albums made in bluegrass this year, this roundup may not be for you.

Truthfully, as someone who’s worked, been acquainted, and become friends with many of the artists on this list in various capacities – from bio writing to onstage performances to media coverage to pickin’ parties to recordings and beyond – objectivity isn’t something I, personally, could establish anyway. And such year-end or other merit-based lists and collections aren’t all that interesting, are they, if not just to argue with their curation and selections.

I would not even attempt such things, because to me – to many of us – that’s not what bluegrass is about anyway. Bluegrass is about a feeling. It’s about innovation. It’s about virtuosity. It’s about tradition, loving it or retooling it or coaxing it or turning it upside down. It’s about adrenaline and a high pulse – and passing a mason jar around. It’s about feeling downtrodden or alone, shedding tears into that very ‘shine, and wailing along with the high lonesome sound. It’s folk music as much as it’s abject commercial country in “poor people drag.” It’s endlessly interesting and complex, but pretty damn simple, too.

Anyone with even an ounce of sense knows and understands that bluegrass can’t ever be objective. So indeed, why try? Why not acknowledge that bluegrass is always a matter of taste, of preference, of whimsical or capricious or convicted opinion? Bluegrass is always debatable, because, after all, bluegrass is always in the eye of the beholder.

In the eyes – and especially ears – of this particular beholder, these albums released in 2025 were the best, the most memorable, the most engaging. These collections stick to ribs like ham hocks, or stick in your throat like the tastiest clod of emotional peanut butter. They each advance, subvert, perpetuate, or wrinkle our core ideas of what bluegrass is – and what it can be.

Are each and every one of these LPs the best in bluegrass from 2025? Perhaps not… But also definitely yes.

Big Richard, Girl Dinner

In January, we gobbled down a heaping helping of Big Richard energy with the nourishing and nutritious Girl Dinner. The project may have been the band’s album debut, but this Colorado all-women quartet had already been making remarkable waves in the bluegrass, jamgrass, and string band scenes – and each of the members had extensive and glitzy musical resumés before they even convened. With a new album, Pet, on the horizon for February 2026, a signing with Signature Sounds, and an upcoming co-bill tour with fellow femme outfit Della Mae, we can tell this Girl Dinner is set to become an ongoing traveling feast.

Shawn Camp, The Ghost of Sis Draper

I remember attending Station Inn shows in Nashville in the early 2010s and sitting with rapt attention – like Martha’s sister Mary at the feet of Jesus – as Shawn Camp performed his suite of Sis Draper songs with his star-studded bluegrass bands. Often you’d hear just “Magnolia Wind” or just “Sis Draper.” Sometimes he would perform a more complete handful of the tracks he had written, individually and with his hero and mentor Guy Clark, about the mythical roots music figure from his home state of Arkansas. Now, he’s collected the slate of material – what could easily become a musical or multi-disciplinary theatre work of some kind – into one commanding, lovely, and visceral album. These are timeless songs, written and rendered as only Camp could.

Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland, Carter & Cleveland

Every now and again a new collaborative duo album comes along and makes you think, “Oh! This must have been what it felt like when Skaggs & Rice was released.” Or Tone Poems. Or Ralph Stanley and Jimmy Martin’s First Time Together. A monumental occasion, captured for posterity’s sake in the studio. When fiddlers Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland released their duo debut, that was the feeling. History made in the present, a work that will be regarded as seminal ages into the future being enjoyed in real time. Carter and Cleveland have collaborated quite a bit over the decades they’ve known each other, but what a gift to have that musical friendship ensconced forever on this album. We hope there is more to come.

Wes Corbett, Drift

Look, if all modernist banjo players sounded like Béla Fleck and Noam Pikelny, that would certainly be great. But thankfully there are dozens of five-string pickers continuing to expand on the Fleck (and Pikelny and Munde and Keith and Trischka) school of Scruggs-style, each in their own veins. Corbett is one of the best. Though he blends effortlessly into Scott Vestal’s former role in Sam Bush’s band – or into any number of recordings and one-off pick-up bands that boast his playing in newgrass and bluegrass and beyond – Corbett is a true idiosyncratic banjo player and composer. Drift, his latest, often employs traditional techniques as tools for innovation and contemporary tunesmithing. He recalls the great melodic pickers while always sounding first and foremost like himself.

East Nash Grass, All God’s Children

A few years ago, if you had told me the ragamuffin band holding down Monday nights at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Tennessee, would in 2025 release an album you’d describe as “heartfelt, contemplative, and intentional,” I would have probably laughed. East Nash Grass were just as jaw-dropping good then as they are now, but with that down-home silliness and clumsy charm all the great bluegrass bands born of indentured residencies have had. All God’s Children finds the band all the way grown up (but not really), and they never forsake their banter-rich, never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get roots. That overlap – of silly and heartfelt and virtuosic and not too serious – is where most (if not all) of the best bluegrass is born, anyway.

Sierra Hull, A Tip Toe High Wire

Every single time Sierra Hull releases a new album, journalists and critics love to talk about how she’s now “found herself” and “found her sound.” This writer, however, disagrees. I first saw Hull perform when we were both in our mid-teens and then as now I knew, wholeheartedly, this is someone who knows who they are. Granted, Hull has done plenty of finding herself along the way, as we all do, but the songs and tunes of A Tip Toe High Wire were obviously not born of someone just locating her voice, musically or otherwise. They don’t feel experimental or out on a limb, they are each solidly in her wheelhouse. They do still push the envelope, though, and they all tell personal stories, draw on individual experiences, and chase those treasured Hull-ian melodies wherever they lead.

I’m With Her, Wild and Clear and Blue

Perhaps all future I’m With Her albums should be made while basking in the “Ancient Light” of a total solar eclipse, given the striking sonic successes of Wild and Clear and Blue. Is that cosmic magic why their second full-length release feels so distinct and metamorphosed from their debut? Is it all the years and personal growth in between recordings? It’s not like they reinvented the wheel, they’re the exact same band – but something feels different here. Whatever the special sauce may be, all of I’m With Her’s offerings over the course of the band’s lifespan have been stellar, but this latest full-length project stands apart. As long as Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins are making music together, we will be unendingly grateful they offer us these recorded windows into their creativity.

Kissing Other ppl, Kissing Other ppl

Bluegrass and old-time birth new projects, bands, and collaborations all the time. Some are purposefully momentary, some are unintentional flashes in the pan, some are such long strings of last names ampersand-ed together you know there’s no future for them. We hope Kissing Other ppl are here to stay. Rachel Baiman and Viv & Riley joined forces on the album – and band – turning mainstream and pop songs into bluegrassy and old-timey string band arrangements that positively vibrate with passion and life. “Sad boi” covers these are not, though you may at times find them subdued or tender or mild. Long may this old-time Americana musical polycule reign.

Cameron Knowler, CRK

If you’ve been craving a contemporary storyteller and poet who utilizes the guitar as their medium – like Norman Blake or Doc Watson or Tony Rice or so many others – I am so pleased to step onto my soapbox to tell you about Cameron Knowler. Also a writer (at times for BGS), archivist, photographer, and visual artist, Knowler’s guitar-centered album, CRK, is almost anything but a “guitar album,” despite each and every composition centering on the instrument. The LP paints vivid and haunting musical portraits of a place Knowler loves, longs for – and despises or begrudges, too – Yuma, Arizona. Knowler wouldn’t even pretend to compare himself to Norman Blake or state that he’s deliberately taking up Blake’s heavy, heavy mantle in the 2020s, but I’m saying he is. Thank goodness.

Bryan McDowell, Bryan McDowell

You may recognize multi-instrumentalist Bryan McDowell from his time performing, recording, and touring with artists like Claire Lynch, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, and many, many more. He’s an incredibly talented sideman and session player, so when I first received his new self-titled solo album, I imagined the sort of formless instrumental project most pickers with similar resumés create. What a pleasant surprise to find a fully fledged, well-rounded, complete song sequence chocked full of original songs and McDowell’s lovely, honeyed singing voice. (I know Bryan and I didn’t know he sang like this!) It’s on me, really – I shouldn’t have been surprised at all – but McDowell’s skill set is clearly no longer just geared towards backing others up. I am looking forward to seeing what’s next.

Shelby Means, Shelby Means

Speaking of artists ready to step out of the role of sideperson or session musician. Bassist, singer, and songwriter Shelby Means’ debut solo album is fantastic. Since departing Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway, Means has already built striking momentum as an artist unto herself, and the quick success of her album has played a huge role in that. With originals, tasteful (and surprising) covers, and a star-studded roster of pickers – Tuttle, Ron Block, Michael Cleveland, and more – the project certainly doesn’t feel like a debut. And it shouldn’t, Means has crisscrossed the country and the globe for decades, she’s more than ready to step to the center of the stage. She’s done it before, she’s doing it again – and now a lot more frequently, I’d bet.

The Onlies, You Climb the Mountain

All the best bluegrass is old-time these days. (I say that over and over again, here’s what it means.) While mainstream bluegrass sounds more like ‘90s country played by a bluegrass string band, or jamgrass, or “MASH” – all of which depart greatly from the 1945/1946 sound of its origin – modern old-time becomes more and more of an audio swatch of essential parts of what bluegrass used to sound like and used to include. One album this year that epitomizes this phenomenon is the Onlies’ You Climb the Mountain. Is it phenotypical bluegrass? Oh, no. It’s not. But it also has plenty of textures and tones endemic to original bluegrass that are becoming increasingly rare in its modern forms. I shouldn’t sell the Onlies short, though, they aren’t here because they’re “better bluegrass” than bluegrass, or more authentic, or more “real.” They’re here because this album is excellent, on its own terms.

Danny Paisley, Bluegrass State of Mind

Danny Paisley is celebrating 50 years of bluegrass with his latest album, Bluegrass State of Mind. Still looking for new challenges and trying to add fresh sparkle to his dyed-in-the-wool traditional sound, the new LP includes Dobro (for the first time), drums (sacrilege!), and a bit of an Americana lean. (Don’t you dare call it “grassicana.”) To BGS readers, the project will most likely sound like straight down the middle bluegrass of the highest order. Longtime fans of Paisley & the Southern Grass, though, may notice that very sparkle Danny has been chasing, as he targets new audiences and still sets new goals, five decades into his career as a bluegrass tradesman. It’s the family business.

Missy Raines & Allegheny, Love & Trouble

Missy Raines is one of the winningest musicians in the history of IBMA, amassing 10 Bass Player of the Year trophies over the years and and a handful of honors in other categories, as well. She may have won her biggest prize, though, when she landed on her latest band lineup, Missy Raines & Allegheny, a few years ago now. Her second album with the group, Love & Trouble, continues building upon the chemistry and collaboration that dripped from 2024’s Highlander. They often rise to the occasion of my preferred nickname for them, Mashy Raines & Allegheny, but they remain a consistently dynamic group capable of gritty, barn-burning bluegrass and contemplative and emotive slow burners, just the same.

Red Camel Collective, Red Camel Collective

They began as Junior Sisk’s backing band, and like many of the great “spinoff” bluegrass bands of yore – Quicksilver (Authentic Unlimited), the New South (American Drive), and many more – Red Camel Collective have quickly shown they’ve got the chops to take the same route. Their debut self-titled album was released earlier this year and was made at Sisk’s suggestion – and with his blessing. (He regularly steps off the stage at his own shows to spotlight the Collective and their music, as well.) This band of lifelong pickers have clocked so many miles playing bluegrass and executing the visions of others that, when charting their own course as Red Camel Collective, they’re able to sound exactly like themselves. It’s tough to sound singular in modern, radio-inclined bluegrass. But Red Camel Collective do. Is that why they won New Artist of the Year at the IBMA Awards this fall? It sure ain’t coincidence.

Sister Sadie, All Will Be Well

Sister Sadie’s All Will Be Well is like dropping the needle on a 45-minute bluegrass therapy session. I don’t say it flippantly or sarcastically; it is indeed shocking the level of earnest contemplation, processing, emoting, and growth evident in the songs on this album. At the same time, when you hear the tracks played down at a bustling bluegrass festival or a packed rock club or a subdued listening room, they never feel twee or try-hard or sodden with greeting-card level sentiments. They never feel heavy, actually – this is fun, often hilarious, party-ready music. Dance-along music. Shout-along songs. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. (At the vocals alone.) These are real human ideas, thoughts, and feelings set to bluegrass. Imagine.

Larry Sparks, Way Back When

How does this album seem like it could have been pulled from any year, any decade of Bluegrass Hall of Famer Larry Spark’s sceptered career? Because it could have been, damnit. He’s Larry Sparks. Way Back When sounds warm and live, like listening to tape or vinyl over earbuds or cell phone speakers. Like being in the room with that resonant, vibrant, and patinated voice. The material is timeless, but never tired or lost in retrospection. Sparks is obviously making bluegrass in the present, as he always has. He just sounds exactly like this. And the way he talks about making music – as he did in a BGS interview set for publish in January 2026 – you can tell, for him, it’s essential to inhabit the present and inhabit the song. Bluegrass really is his calling, and we’re all all the better for it.

Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton, Live At The Legion

One of the best bluegrass albums of the year? Of course. One of the best live shows and tours of the year? Doubly, triply, quadruply of course. You’d think it would be brain-melting to listen to hours of two acoustic guitars and an electric bass pick through bluegrass, fiddle tunes, and Doc Watson classics, but it was divine. Trance-like – not with eyes glazed over, but on the edge of your seat. I wasn’t at that show at the Legion when they tracked the album, but was lucky enough to catch their show this fall at the Ryman in Nashville. If you weren’t so fortunate, don’t worry, ‘cause this isn’t an incredibly exclusive club. This record really does capture all that’s ineffable of being “in the room.” (No one is surprised.) Turns out, you can actually bottle and sell it, if you’re these two. Now if only you could buy the skillset, too…

Thompson the Fox, The Fox in Tiger’s Clothing, vol. 1 & vol. 2

Maybe once a year I trip over or into a new music discovery that gets me so excited I start getting annoyed with myself from having to hear me recommend them over and over again. With Thompson the Fox, it never got annoying (not to me, at least) and the excitement of turning folks onto their music still hasn’t worn off. So here we are, again. If this is your initiation, don’t thank me, thank the people who sent Thompson the Fox my way. Jazz, newgrass, bluegrass, bebop, ragtime, and oh-so-many more styles and textures combine in a completely fresh and distinctive form. I’ve never heard new acoustic music quite like this, yet it’s clearly rooted in that tradition. The simple math of xylophone, banjo, bass, and drums doesn’t quite math, but this group sounds resplendent, rich, and fascinating. Takumi Kodera on banjo is a revelation and Rie Koyama (xylophone), Akihide Teshima (bass), and Tomohito Yoshijima (drums) complete the Tokyo-based ensemble.

Cristina Vane, Hear My Call

Cristina Vane exists at an intersection of roots music that far too few inhabit, because very few can manage there. Vane can. She does blues, bluegrass, old-time, country, and Americana. Sometimes blended, sometimes compartmentalized. She’s got short-form, short-attention-span, vertical-video appeal for days, but her songs are never vapid or playing to any kind of commercial common denominator. Her instrumental skills and the passion for learning and song collection across roots and folk genres that she exhibits bring it all together. I’d not want to subject either woman to the corniness of comparing one to the other, but for folks who love Sierra Ferrell and are looking for more artists in a similar roots-meets-mainstream space, Cristina Vane can do it. She is doing it.

Vickie Vaughn, Travel On

Vickie Vaughn has won IBMA Bass Player of the Year for three years in a row and on the heels of that remarkable accomplishment, she’s released her debut full-length solo album, Travel On. Produced by Deanie Richardson of Sister Sadie, it’s Vaughn’s first recording under her own name released in 10 years. Original songs and covers are packaged in a sound that’s always trad bluegrass, but often infused with a dash of Osborne Brothers from the ‘80s or Jim & Jesse with a drum kit. It’s an Earl Scruggs Revue sort of flair, troubadour-steeped bluegrass-country. And it’s divine.

To conclude this long yet non-exhaustive and surely myopic list of the best bluegrass albums of 2025, let me leave you with this gentle reminder. What’s bluegrass and what’s best are always in the eye – and the ear – of the beholder.

What was your favorite bluegrass album of 2025? Let us know on social media. We hope you discover some new music to love in our BGS Class of 2025 and we can’t wait to make new discoveries with you, too.

BGS Staff contributed to this list.

Photo Credit: Shelby Means by Hunter McRae; Shawn Camp by Neilson Hubbard; Sierra Hull by Spencer Showalter.

Briscoe Hit The Road and Wrote a Country Album

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Through the windshield of their Ford Transit van, the duo Briscoe drew songwriting inspiration from the Southwestern landscape during a long, meandering road trip after graduating from the University of Texas. However, this trek was more than just a rite of passage, as band members Philip Lupton and Truett Heintzelman were launching their first national tour. In those seemingly endless miles between show dates, they would trade lyrical ideas to flesh out once they got back home to Austin.

Described by the band as “Texas folk-rock,” those cinematic songs have now surfaced on Briscoe’s second album, Heat of July. Produced by Brad Cook and released by ATO Records, the collection is a generally optimistic highway companion set against the backdrop of sunsets somewhere south of Alpine, Texas, long drives to Denver, and Mexican eagles circling overhead.

During a brief break from the road, Briscoe spoke with Good Country about how banjo fits into their sound, discovering bluegrass through YouTube videos, and the John Prine classic that set it all in motion.

I found it interesting that you were writing this album as you were driving around the country. You’re going 80 miles an hour as these songs are coming to you. Can you set the scene of what that looked like?

Philip Lupton: Yeah, that’s a great question. A lot of this record was written on the road just because we were touring hard on our debut album, West of It All. You’re in the van for so many hours a day that you eventually get tired of listening to music, no matter how much you like music. You just need some silence. I think that’s when Truett and I can find a little bit of inspiration. Like, “OK, cut the music.”

“Arizona Shining,” the second song on the record, is very much written as I’m taking in the landscape through the window. You just start to mumble a few things under your breath. And then you hold up your phone and take a little voice memo. You get back home in a couple weeks, you come back to that idea, and then, finally, get to put it to a progression and bring it to life.

When you’re out on tour, coming out of your hotel, and you see that van hooked up to a trailer, does it ever strike you, like, “We’re really out here making this happen”?

PL: Yeah, absolutely it does! There’s this old Hayes Carll song called “I Got a Gig.” I listen to that song and I’m like, “OK, we’re doing it. We’re road dogging it.” We’re staying at the cheap hotels and playing gigs for cash at the door and whatever. We’ve seen a lot of growth and success in a lot of markets, but when you’re taking it all across the country, up into Canada, there’s a lot of those same stories you can experience any time on the road.

The opening song, “Saving Grace,” seems to set a tone for the album. There’s a very positive tone in that song. Is that a fair statement, do you think?

Truett Heintzelman: Super fair, yeah. A lot of this record is written over the last year and a half to two years and one of the big components of that time for both of us is that we both got married. So that’s what we were wanting to convey. We view marriage in a positive light and, God willing, we’ll always view it in a positive light. “Saving Grace” was written about marrying our respective wives.

For me, that song was about meeting my wife and realizing early on, “OK, this feels different and I don’t want this to go away.” We just tried to write as much as we could about our lives and experiences and our time between now and the last record. And, obviously, getting married is something that takes up a lot of your brain, you naturally end up thinking about it a lot.

You’ve got a cool banjo vibe on “Saving Grace” and a couple other songs on the album, too. Philip, what pulled you into the sound of the banjo?

PL: It goes back to learning guitar when I was middle school-age. I just had a desire to learn an instrument that was different and would allow me to jam with my buddies. So, I bought a banjo at a secondhand music store in San Angelo, where I’m from, for like 150 bucks, and I ended up really falling in love with the Avett Brothers. Back in the day, when Truett and I were both learning to play guitar and sing, I’d play the banjo and Truett would play the guitar and we’d cover the Avett Brothers. That was how we fell in love with playing together.

The banjo always had a strong presence. When we started writing, it was almost second nature to incorporate the banjo in some way. If Truett was handling most of the rhythm guitar, I picked up the banjo in lieu of a lead guitar. We just kind of rolled with that, way back when.

You mentioned middle school. Is that around the same time you guys met?

PL: Yeah, I was a year older than Truett in school and we met at summer camp. We just hit it off and we were both learning guitar and both interested in similar music. We saw each other every year after that at camp and became really close in high school. San Angelo is a smaller town and we’d have to go to a major city for any big need, like a big hospital system. So, my family would go to San Antonio quite a bit. I’d get dropped off at Truett’s house and we’d play guitar until my family was ready to go back to San Angelo.

Do you guys remember the first time you sang together?

TH: Oh yeah, that first summer we met at camp, we met on the first day of the session, which was two weeks long. We both brought acoustic guitars, so it was like, “All right. You play, I play.” “What do you like to play?” “Oh, I like that song too.”

We started going back and forth, kind of jamming all throughout that week. At the end of that week, we played “Paradise” by John Prine at our camp talent show, which was really just for us. We joke that I don’t think anyone else in that camp auditorium had any idea what we were saying, but they were just excited that we were singing and we were too.

How did John Prine hit your radar in middle school?

TH: There’s a guy named Joshua Lee Turner who’s in a band called the Other Favorites and he has this YouTube channel, it’s like a gold mine. He’s super talented, an awesome artist, and he and his buddies cover all these incredible songs. I owe watching Joshua Lee Turner on YouTube for a good chunk of the artists and the music that I love. I consume a ton of bluegrass music and a lot of that is because of him. The song “Old Home Place” is one that I fell in love with after watching him. When Philip and I put it together that we both loved him, that served as a blueprint, too, for us to start posting videos on YouTube.

How did you come up with the name Briscoe?

PL: Briscoe was my grandfather’s middle name. I never met that granddad, but I always loved that name. It’s a name that goes back in my family on that side a few generations. It was in consideration for my name before I was born, but my grandma on the other side of the family didn’t like it. I always liked the name and I started Briscoe in San Angelo before we got to UT, just as a name to put music under. I knew someday Truett and I would be able to do it together, so I just chose Briscoe and rolled with it and then we never had any reason to consider changing it. And that was that.

You guys have seen the whole country by now, touring coast to coast. What is it about living in Texas that makes you want to settle there?

TH: I’ll just get this out of the way now – when you’re born in Texas and raised in Texas, you’re just inherently proud of that. So, from the get-go, you probably have an inflated sense of pride to be from Texas. But we’re now at this place where we’ve gotten to see everything in North America, pretty much. There are so many beautiful parts of this country, and of Canada and Mexico. In all these cities, you’re like, “Wow, this is such a great city. It would be fun to live here.” But I have never found a place where I’ve been like, “I would rather live here than where I live in Texas.” This is where our roots are.

Philip, how about you?

PL: The older I get, the more I appreciate Texas’ contribution in the music world on all different levels, and especially this Texas country/outlaw kind of thing. To name a few guys in particular, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Lyle Lovett, and Robert Earl Keen. The more we appreciate them, the more that we want to resemble what they did. No matter what level of popularity or success they achieved as musicians, they never forgot where they were from. We respect those guys a lot for that, and how they blazed their own path.

We are very proud to be part of the greater Texas subgenre of Americana, folk, and country music, and we feel like that’s where we’re always going to want to be.

Photo Credit: Justin Cook

Shawn Camp Pays Homage to A Childhood Hero on The Ghost of Sis Draper

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

From the half dozen records under his own name to hits co-written for Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Blake Shelton, and Josh Turner; playing with Jerry Reed, Alan Jackson, Trisha Yearwood and the Earls of Leicester; or his work on Willie Nelson’s GRAMMY winning album, A Beautiful Time, in 2023, Shawn Camp has done just about everything in his 30+ year musical career.

But with his latest project, The Ghost Of Sis Draper, he’s able to cross off another box off his bucket list – making a concept album. According to the Arkansas native, the album’s origins trace back to the late ‘90s with his close friend and longtime collaborator Guy Clark, centering around a larger-than-life figure from Camp’s childhood named Sis Draper.

After laying the project’s foundation with the lead track “Sis Draper” one fateful day, the pair later penned “Magnolia Wind” soon thereafter with other songs slowly trickling out whenever they reconnected in the years that followed. Once the songs were all written, Camp took them to Nashville’s famed Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa – now the Clement House – where he knocked the entire record out in only one day.

Per Camp, the immediacy of his time in the studio helped to keep its collective sound cohesive – like Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger and other standout thematic country albums that came before it. And, by the sound of it, there’s more like it coming soon.

“I’ve got lots of ideas for concept albums and songs I won’t release until I have a record like that to include them on,” Camp tells BGS. “I’ve got about 14 songs on another that I started recording last year that were inspired by Johnny Cash and Cowboy Jack Clement that’ll likely be out next year as well. It’ll be a lot different from the Sis Draper stuff, because we recorded it like Johnny Cash & The Tennessee Two – stripped down with an electric and upright bass – but in a similar fashion all belong together.”

Ahead of the release of The Ghost of Sis Draper, Camp caught up with BGS to discuss his relationship with Clark, musicals, the album’s old-time ties and more.

When did you first connect with Guy Clark?

Shawn Camp: I had a country label deal with Warner Bros. Records in the early ‘90s and in 1993 the people there asked me if I could write with anyone in Nashville, who would it be? I shot for the moon and said, “How about Guy Clark?” and before I knew it I was sitting across the room from him writing [“Stop, Look And Listen (Cow Catcher Blues)”] from my second album, 1994, that Warner shelved until 2010.

Guy was known at the time for writing songs that in parentheses included a second title he’d refer to them as and that was one of them. When you go to the Country Music Hall Of Fame now his entire writing room and workshop is on display there and it’s exactly the way it was the day he died. You can walk up to the glass and see his writing tables, his ashtrays, his guitars and all of his work tapes that he would record the day he wrote each song. He would spin around and write the title on the spine of a cassette to stick on a rack on the wall behind him. If you look into that room right now you can still see the cassette for “Stop, Look And Listen” about waist-high two or three feet from the wall on the right. It’s just a real treat to see his work environment that I spent so much time in up close again.

Years ago, I remember Guy getting mad at a fiddle he couldn’t get into tune so he smashed it into smithereens and stuck it up in his attic in a fiddle case. He got to telling me about it one time and crawled up there and set it down on his bench and it’s still laying there to this day. It’s been wild to see how they number and photograph everything so they can get it back to exactly how it was – it was a real trip to see.

How did the idea for this Sis Draper album first come about a quarter century ago?

I was just sitting around with Guy trying to write a song, but got stuck. It led to us talking for an hour or so until I eventually got around to telling him about a lady I knew in Arkansas named Sis Draper. She had a big beehive hairdo and a fiddle she carried around in a coffin case that she’d shred these old-time fiddle tunes on. Before I ever saw her, my grandpa and Uncle Cleve built her up as such a superstar that she was a world traveler in my eyes, even though in reality I don’t think she did much traveling at all.

After telling Guy about her I remember him leaning back in his chair, taking a big drag off a cigarette, and saying, “That’s your story right there,” which led to us writing more songs about Sis Draper and my family that together make up this new record.

Were there any differences in how you approached writing or recording this project compared to your other non-conceptual work?

We recorded it all in one day with the same musicians, so when you listen it doesn’t sound like a hodgepodge of different sessions and trying to make them fit together, because it basically happened live. In the past I’ve spent eight or nine months just recording the songs, but with Sis Draper it was easier to streamline because all the songs already sounded similar and fit together.

What motivated you to keep returning to this project through the years?

It’s taken a long time to come to fruition. [Laughs] We first started in the late ‘90s and would work on it anytime we got together and didn’t have other stuff to work on. We’d always thought about it being a musical play too. I even have started writing dialogue to turn these songs into that. It’s always been in the back of my mind, but now that Guy’s gone it felt like I needed to go ahead and get it into this form.

What specifically interests you about a play format?

I’ve always loved acting, even though I haven’t done much of it. I’d love to do it more and a play would be a cool way to accomplish that.

Several of the songs on Sis Draper have roots in old-time music. What made you want to weave those influences through these songs?

We wanted to pull from those old fiddle tunes that I heard Sis and others playing when I was a kid during jam sessions. Like “Lost Indian,” which is what “Big Foot Stomp” was written around. The common thread of it all was always an old fiddle tune melody, so I wanted to reference those songs in any way I could.

You and Guy both collaborated a lot with Verlon Thompson through the years. With that in mind, what did it mean to have him aboard to co-write “Old Hillbilly Hand-Me-Down” with y’all?

Verlon is one of the greatest songwriters around and an even better person. I don’t do a lot of co-writing with him, but we’re the best of friends. I love making music with him because we play off of each other so well.

The only song on the album you weren’t involved in writing was “New Cut Road,” but even so it still ties back to Guy and your childhood?

Yes. Guy wrote the song originally about his grandaddy Coleman Bonner who played fiddle in Kentucky. On the play-version of this album there’s dialogue that ties it all together. But when I was a kid, I started playing fiddle at 15. I remember standing on a ladder holding up a piece of sheet rock to the ceiling in a house my dad and I were remodeling. We had a little Gilligan’s Island radio playing across the room and Bobby Bare’s version of the song featuring Ricky Skaggs came on. It really inspired me to be a fiddler even though I didn’t know Guy wrote it at the time. Six short years later I was in Nashville, so it just felt like it belonged in this Sis Draper suite of songs.

Another tune I wanted to ask you about was “Grandpa’s Rovin’ Ear,” which I understand you originally constructed as a poem?

Guy and I wrote all those lyrics in different places, but for the longest time didn’t have a melody to go with it, so I made one up before going in to record. Similarly, “The Checkered Shirt Band” started as a rap that we played without a melody, almost like a group chant. I put melody to that right before heading into the studio, as well and was inspired by the old-time tune “I Don’t Love Nobody.”

The guy’s names I mention on [“The Checkered Shirt Band”] – Rodney, Chuck, and Rodge – are all band members from my days with the Grand Prairie Boys in Arkansas. We’d dress up like Bill Monroe & the Blue Grass Boys. I recently went back there to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Arkansas Country Music Awards and got those boys together to play for the first time in years. We played that song and a couple others from the album and it was such a treat. It meant a lot to not only do that, but shout them out by name in the song as well.

The end of Sis Draper includes “Hello Dyin’ Day,” the last song you and Guy ever recorded together, sandwiched between “The Death Of Sis Draper” parts 1 and 2. What did it mean to you to include that one here?

It represents the deathbed confessions of Sis Draper. It just felt like The Ghost Of Sis Draper to me, due to the mood of it all. It’s her last words, but when we return to “The Death Of Sis Draper” in the medley it’s like Sis’ funeral, so it all just kind of belonged together in my mind. It’s about 10 minutes of music that all goes together, so hopefully it’ll be listened to that way and not dissected too much.

With that being said, what are your thoughts on song sequencing? It sounds like you designed this Sis Draper record as something intended to be listened to in order?

We’ve really gotten away from the arc of storylines on albums. It’s a two-minute world out there now, so if you can get just one single out that’s all a lot of people shoot for anymore. I miss those records like Red Headed Stranger that take you through all different kinds of moods and serve as an escape from the real world. I enjoy going on those little trips and hope listeners enjoy going on this Sis Draper adventure with us.

What has the process of bringing The Ghost Of Sis Draper taught you about yourself?

It’s taught me not to hesitate and to make the move to record stuff when it crosses your mind because if you don’t it may never happen. It initiated a whole new lease on life for me because I hadn’t put out a solo album since 2006. A lot in the world has changed since then just like it has in my own life, but I’ll never stop wanting to make music.

Photo Credit: Neilson Hubbard

The Must-See Bands and Artists of Earl Scruggs Music Festival 2025

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Earl Scruggs Music Festival is a one-of-a-kind event. BGS is incredibly excited to return for our fourth consecutive year of partnership with ESMF. As we’re packing our bags for Mill Spring, North Carolina, and making our festival plans and short lists we can’t wait to be back in the foothills on Earl Scruggs’ home turf celebrating bluegrass, old-time, country, and Americana of the highest order.

Held each year over Labor Day weekend at the gorgeous and luxurious Tryon International Equestrian Center, ESMF is co-presented by Tryon International, the Earl Scruggs Music Center – located just down the road in Shelby, the county seat near Earl’s hometown of Boiling Springs – and WNCW. This year, headliners include the Wood Brothers, the War and Treaty, Alison Krauss & Union Station, the Del McCoury Band, and a very special performance by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band to wrap up the stellar weekend. Of course, there’s plenty more amazing music from across the roots music spectrum set for the weekend, too (see the lineup below), plus plenty of great workshops and panels, jam sessions, and more.

The BGS team spends a lot of time attending, programming for, and covering roots music festivals, so it takes a lot for events to stand out from the crowd. With their lovely grounds, thoughtful footprint, excellent vendors, eclectic and traditional lineup, and all of the many connections this event has – with the Scruggs family, the surrounding area, and the artful communities of North Carolina, South Carolina, and the entire Appalachian and Southeastern region – ESMF continues to raise the bar for bluegrass festivals.

Below, check out a quick list of bands, musicians, and artists we can’t wait to catch at Earl Scruggs Music Festival this year. And make plans to join us – whether this year or in the future! – at one of the most enjoyable bluegrass festivals on the scene today.

Shawn Camp & Verlon Thompson: Songs & Stories of Guy Clark 

It’s always a treat when these two longtime collaborators and co-writers get together to pay tribute to their friend, mentor, and hero, the late great Guy Clark. As evidenced by this Suwannee Springfest video from 15 years ago, Camp and Thompson have been performing their Songs & Stories of Guy Clark show in some format for quite a while now, but this feels like a particularly timely chance to catch the pair performing from their repertoire of co-writes with Clark and sharing stories of their times collaborating and creating with the songwriting legend. Camp’s upcoming album, The Ghost of Sis Draper, features songs that he wrote with Clark – including one also penned with Thompson – and revisits the fantastic based-on-a-true-story narrative of a folk hero fiddler by the name of Sis Draper. We can’t wait to catch Camp, Thompson, and as many Sis Draper songs as possible.

Saturday, August 20, Silver Spoon Saloon, 12 pm to 1 pm, “The Silver Spoon Sessions with Craig Havighurst”
Saturday, August 30, Foggy Mountain Stage, 6 pm to 7 pm.

Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves

These days, sometimes the best bluegrass you can find is old-time. This incredible duo often falls into that category directly, with endless drive, expansive pocket, and a penchant for listening, responding, and following each other that’s nearly familial. We’ve caught de Groot & Hargreaves shows countless times and still never tire of these two instrumentalists, singers, and writers unspooling musical moments together and reweaving them in realtime. Though de Groot hails from Canada and Hargreaves grew up in the Pacific Northwest, this is one of ESMF’s acts whose music, and the traditions that have made it, is most deeply rooted in this lush artistic region of the world – Western North Carolina.

Saturday, August 30, Legends Stage, 9 am to 10:30 am, “Bluegrass Over Easy Breakfast.”
Saturday, August 30, Foggy Mountain Stage, 2 pm to 3 pm. 

Healing the Hollers featuring Unspoken Tradition

Western North Carolina-based bluegrass band Unspoken Tradition will host a special livestream and concert at ESMF on Saturday, August 30, featuring performances by Josh Goforth, Lance Mills, Laura Boosinger, Nest of Singing Birds, Zoe & Cloyd, and more. Healing the Hollers will shine a spotlight on the impacts and devastation of Hurricane Helene and the ongoing efforts of folks in the region – like each of the artists and bands on the show bill – to keep rebuilding their communities, neighborhoods, hollers, and homes. BGS is proud to be promoting Healing the Hollers, as well, and we’ll even be carrying the livestream of the set on our Facebook page. There’s plenty of work still to be done to heal and move forward after Hurricane Helene, but with a roster of artists like these and a community like that which surrounds ESMF, we know we’ll all get it done together. That’s the exact kind of Resilience Unspoken Tradition are talking about on their brand new album – which we hope we’ll hear from during Healing the Hollers, too.

Saturday, August 30, Foggy Mountain Stage, 3:30 pm to 5 pm. Stream live on Facebook.

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes

Oh, the places she’ll go! Award-winning fiddler, singer, and songwriter Bronwyn Keith-Hynes has not slowed down for a moment since her time in Molly Tuttle’s GRAMMY-winning ensemble, Golden Highway, came to a close earlier this summer. She’s got a packed tour schedule of sold-out or nearly sold-out dates across the country, rapidly building an engaged and energetic fan base behind her style of jamgrass built on a trad foundation. It feels like, in many ways, we’ve gotten to watch Keith-Hynes “grow up” as an individual artist so each time we get a chance to catch her band live, we enjoy marking the leaps and bounds she’s taken since the last time. She’s sure to impress and inspire yet again – and who knows what impeccable pickers she’ll have out on the road with her, too!

Saturday, August 30, Foggy Mountain Stage, 7:45 pm to 9 pm. 

Alison Krauss & Union Station Ft. Jerry Douglas

If you haven’t gotten to catch Alison Krauss & Union Station on their most extensive headlining tour in nearly fifteen years, Earl Scruggs Music Festival is your chance! With just over four weeks left in their continent-spanning Arcadia Tour, we’re the lucky ones for being able to catch the iconic band and their iconic songs at Tryon International. Social media videos from the tour show quite a few fan favorite tracks have made the set list alongside the bevy of new material from their brand new album, Arcadia. Veteran bluegrass picker and vocalist Russell Moore, who was just tapped this year to join the group, is certainly holding his own on this gig of a lifetime. We can’t wait for our evening with AKUS in North Carolina!

Saturday, August 30, Flint Hill Stage, 9 pm to 10:30 pm. 

(Alison Krauss & Union Station were our Artist of the Month in April. Explore our exclusive coverage here.)

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Heartbroken that the one and only Nitty Gritty Dirt Band are on their farewell tour at the moment? Us too! With only a handful of dates left in their All The Good Times: The Farewell Tour, the existential woe is creeping in fast. The best way to stave off the end-of-an-era scaries is to be there at ESMF for their headlining set, the culmination not only of a superlative festival weekend, but of a decades-spanning career of a seminal string band who took Earl Scruggs’ legacy places it wouldn’t have ever gone without them. There could be no better way to cap the main stage at Earl Scruggs Music Festival this year than with NGDB. Of all the “must-see” happenings at this year’s event, this set is truly top of the list. Once in a lifetime occurrences happen every year at ESMF.

Sunday, August 31, Flint Hill Stage, 7:45 pm to 9:15 pm.

Sister Sadie

You have not one but two chances not to miss this bluegrass supergroup at Earl Scruggs Music Festival this year. Fresh off the release of their new album, All Will Be Well, Sister Sadie are sounding better than ever – and these are IBMA Award-winning veterans, right here. Their new album is full of emotion, contemplation, and redemption while at the same time it’s just… plain fun. They strike a deft balance between heartfelt songwriting, gut-wrenching narratives, hair-raising harmonies, and bluegrass virtuosity that will make you hoot, holler, and dance. We can’t ever get enough of Sister Sadie, so you may catch us on the barricade for both of their ESMF appearances.

Friday, August 29, Flint Hill Stage, 5 pm to 6:30 pm.
Friday, August 29, Foggy Mountain Stage, 10 pm to 11:30 pm.

(Sister Sadie were our Artist of the Month in July. Catch up on our AOTM content here.)

Watchhouse

When you’ve been on the roots music beat like we have for more than 12 years, festival season isn’t just about festivals – it’s like a mobile family reunion. We can’t wait to reunite with our old pals Andrew and Emily – and in North Carolina, too! – for Watchhouse at ESMF. Like Earl Scruggs himself, Watchhouse carefully and intentionally synthesize so many different textures and inspirations from North Carolinian folk music through their own creativity and songcraft, creating something totally brand new that’s still deeply rooted in tradition and the region. That’s just one small reason why they’re a perfect lineup selection for this amazing festival. We’re geared up and ready to hear new music from their new album, Rituals, during the weekend. See you there!

Sunday, August 31, Silver Spoon Saloon, 3:30 pm to 4:30 pm, “The Silver Spoon Sessions with Craig Havighurst”
Sunday, August 31, Flint Hill Stage, 6 pm to 7:15 pm.

(Watchhouse were our Artist of the Month in June of this year. Dive into more on their new album here.)

The Wood Brothers

Blending blues, Southern rock, alt-country, and jam band music, the Wood Brothers have an eclectic and often psychedelic approach to roots music that’s all their own. They pop up along the roots music genre spectrum with ease at every waypoint, from string band folk to grungy, hard rock and roll – like the most exciting game of musical aesthetic whack-a-mole you’ll ever play. There’s something for every kind of listener in the Wood Brothers’ catalog of music and their brand new album, Puff of Smoke, is as entrancing and diverting as ever. We’ll be camped out in the grandstand for this set, for sure!

Friday, August 29, Flint Hill Stage, 9 pm to 10:30 pm. 

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These bands and artists listed above are truly just the tip of the iceberg for everything that’s going on this year at Earl Scruggs Music Festival. You also won’t want to miss Town Mountain, Sam Bush, Sierra Hull, the John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Tony Trischka’s EarlJam, Fireside Collective, the Earls of Leicester, the Del McCoury Band, and still many more.

Check out the full schedule of panels, chats, performances, and acts here on the ESMF website and make plans to join us this year or in the future in Mill Spring, North Carolina, for a lovely weekend of bluegrass and roots music.

Lead image: Tanya Tucker performs on the Flint Hill Stage during ESMF 2024, shot by Jess Maples.