Tag: Hot Rize

Turning 30, eTown Plans b’Earthday Show and Enters Colorado Music Hall of Fame

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The long-running radio series eTown is famous for its finales, but upon reaching its 30th year, the focus is shifting to an upcoming all-star virtual b’Earthday concert on April 22 and the program’s deserving induction into the Colorado Music Hall of Fame. Of course there’s also an eagerness from everybody involved — staff, artists, and audience alike — to get back to staging shows at the beloved eTown Hall, a repurposed church that stands as a centerpiece of Boulder’s cultural community.

Community is key to Nick and Helen Forster, the founders of eTown. Their marriage has proved to be as sustainable as the environmental causes they support, and by never wavering from musical integrity, they have created a destination for musicians and music fans of every stripe. Helen carried a love of theater to eTown following her work with the early years of Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Nick Forster, who found acclaim in the band Hot Rize just before eTown launched, can recall browsing through microfilm in the library to do research for his guest interviews. Now, thanks to the internet, the whole world can feel part of the eTown tribe.

Calling in from Boulder, the Forsters filled in BGS about their ongoing creative venture, the common thread that all eTown artists share, and the warm family feelings behind the scenes.

BGS: What was the musical landscape of Colorado like back 1991?

Nick: In ’91, there were a lot of things that had come into their full power, including Telluride Bluegrass Festival, which is where Helen and I met. There was a pretty vibrant music scene in both Boulder and Denver, but if there was such a thing as the sound of Colorado, it was something around that lineup of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival or RockyGrass or Folks Fest. A loosely defined Americana vibe, with a little bit of a hippie slant. Colorado has always had that progressive, acoustic [feel]. … From John Denver on down, there has been a sense of Colorado being a place where a natural approach to music makes sense.

Helen, what drew you to bluegrass music?

Helen: You know, everything back then in Telluride was so organic that if you didn’t have a radio station, you got together and you started one. The festival started because these guys came back from the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas, and they loved it and said, “Why don’t we do this here?” So they did a Fourth of July celebration and a couple hundred people came. I think there were two or three local bands, and from that it grew into become an actual festival. By the second year of that, a couple of the founders had pulled out and I jumped in to just help, I guess. …

When I first got to Telluride, there were very few places to go, other than the bars. And there were some local bluegrass bands. That’s how I first discovered bluegrass. I was in my early 20s and we’d all jam into these basement bars and listen to the bluegrass. It caught my heart. It’s a beautiful form of music and I was so impressed with the talent and the ability of the players. Not only to play, but to jam. It was almost like jazz, in a sense, and it caught my attention then.

Nick and Helen Forster, 1991. Credit: Laura Lyon

Nick, around this time you had made your mark in Hot Rize, which was the first IBMA Entertainer of the Year back in 1990. So, with your background as a performer, how did you make touring artists feel at home at eTown?

Nick: I was in a unique position being on the road with Hot Rize for years. I had an understanding of what it was like from an artist’s perspective. We’d been lucky enough to play on the Grand Ole Opry, Prairie Home Companion, Austin City Limits, Mountain Stage, and all these shows. I was really enamored with live radio in front of an audience. And when I thought about all the gigs I played with Hot Rize, there were four things that I usually remembered: How was the sound? Was there a decent place to stay? Was the food good? And did the crew have a good attitude?

So, we started with that at eTown, recognizing that we were trying to do two different things. One, we were trying to help these artists basically promote their new records, because everybody who came to eTown was out there with a new record. But we also wanted to have the mission of why we were doing eTown be something they would connect with. And to be inspired by, or at least informed by. So the piece of our show that included conversation about climate change or community or sustainability was another thing that most musicians were really into. Musicians who were traveling have a good world view. A lot of them are avid readers and up to date on world affairs. This was not a giant leap for them to connect with the mission-related part of it.

Tell me about the spirit of collaboration at eTown. What do you like about having more than just the two of you putting a show together?

Helen: It’s interesting, because when I was a little kid, I was doing a lot of theatre. I came from that model that it’s not just the performers; it’s the stage manager, and the props mistress, and the person who manages the set changes. Everybody works together. It’s like a team experience when you do theatre, and having the great crew that we’ve had, I think it’s a great testament to eTown and the model that we created there of being open and [receptive] to our guests. …

That’s what a lot of artists would mention: “My gosh, what a breath of fresh air! We’ve been on the road dealing with disgruntled monitor mixers, then we come here and it just feels like family,” like you’ve been welcomed in. And quite frankly, since we closed the eTown Hall temporarily, now for over a year because of COVID, we all miss each other. Nick organized a Zoom call a couple of months ago so we could catch up and see each other. I know that our crew is really anxious for the hall to re-open so we can all come together again. It’s like a big, extended family.

What are you looking for when it comes to booking artists for eTown?

Nick: We’ve always tried to aim for music that is soulful. That’s music that has integrity, good songwriting, not too many bells and whistles. Not stuff that is overproduced, so you can feel the personality of the songwriter and the singer come through. Our booking philosophy was always, from the very beginning, about featuring some diversity. But for the first 600 or 700 shows that we did at the Boulder Theatre, that’s 800 or 900 seats that we tried to fill. So, sometimes it helped when we had people with name recognition as one of our guests.

We always tried to have one artist with name recognition and one artist that was emerging, and beyond that, maybe one band and one solo. Or one person is playing Americana music, and the other one is playing Celtic or Hawaiian or Afro-Cuban music. The diversity of artists was really important to us, particularly because of our finale. The end of the show was always a joint effort between our musical guests and a lot of times they didn’t know each other. They didn’t have a lot of common ground.

I come from the bluegrass world where, yeah, you’re just going to pick and jam and find a song and play. But particularly for songwriters who have been hiding in their bedrooms writing songs for three years, and then they come out and say, “I don’t know any other songs….” But the finale was always, in some ways, not just an opportunity to have something in real time. It had to be created that day, with those people, under pressure, to find a song, find a key, arrange it, split the words up, and rehearse it, then perform in a few hours later. It was pretty intense! But the other part of it was, eTown’s goal has always been about using music as a way to build community, and to remind people that our community is larger than we might think it is.

Over the last 30 years, music and technology have changed so much. When it comes to eTown, what would you say has remained the same?

Helen: There’s been an agreed goal of maintaining a certain amount of integrity and a certain amount of quality in the ultimate product that we have been putting out all these years, which is the radio broadcast and now podcast. Whether it’s the technical sound end of it, all the way to the content itself. I think that’s what’s kept it going as long as it has. There is this underlying devotion and striving toward excellence.

Lead photo of Nick and Helen Forster by Tim Reese

LISTEN: Bowregard, “High on a Mountain”

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Artist: Bowregard
Hometown: Boulder, Colorado
Song: “High on a Mountain”
Album: Arrows
Release Date: July 1, 2020

In Their Words: “Bowregard are all big fans of Colorado’s seminal bluegrass band Hot Rize, and love their rendition of Ola Belle Reed’s classic ‘High on a Mountain.’ When Max Kabat (guitar) got inspired to reharmonize a classic bluegrass song, this one seemed like a natural. Max and James Armington (banjo) created a new chord structure that emphasized the lonesomeness and desperation contained in the words of the original song, and put a soaring minor harmony in the chorus that played to the band’s fondness for tight three-part vocals. When it came time to record the track in the studio, things came full circle as producer Nick Forster — bassist and vocalist in Hot Rize — helped the band realize an inspired performance of the arrangement. The result is a haunting new perspective on a beloved standard of the bluegrass repertoire.” — Justin Konrad, Bowregard (resophonic guitar)

Photo credit: Chantelle Hegreness

BGS 5+5: Hot Buttered Rum

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Artist: Hot Buttered Rum
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Latest album: Something Beautiful

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Years ago, we were at Bean Blossom, Indiana. We were a very new band at that point and we played a set in the afternoon. We’d been hanging a bit with Peter Rowan, so he invited us to play in his set that evening. I stepped onstage to find myself next to Tony Rice! I felt completely out of my league, and by every measure, I was. At one point, solos were being passed down the stage. Tony took a ripping solo, of course, and then it was my turn. Yes, I had to take a guitar solo after Tony Rice. The audience was empathetic and gave me a sympathy clap. And Tony said “haw!” — Nat Keefe

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

Coffee is very important. Even if I have a set at midnight, 1 a.m. — whenever — I get good coffee in me an hour beforehand. No matter how much I drink before I play, I never have trouble burning through it on stage. I set myself up with a cup and I get my right hand going with the rolls. Caffeine with the left hand, banjo with the right. If I have time to drink that coffee slow enough and play those rolls fast enough, I walk onstage feeling damn near superhuman. — Erik Yates

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

“Give it up.” That’s about it. All the artists I love have their own way of talking about this. When I give, I end up creating so much more, instead of dragging down the next round of work with what I want, whether I’m good enough, whether I’m gonna make as big a splash as my friend or my hero or the new voice on the scene. None of that matters to the damn song. What matters to the song is that it gets made, that it gets out into the world and that other people get to hear it and do what they wanna do with it. Maybe they’ll walk down the aisle to it. Maybe they’ll laugh at it. Maybe they’ll close their eyes and sway back and forth when they hear it. All of that is fine, all of that is welcome. What I want is to give it up, give it away, set it free. — Erik Yates

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

Actually, it’s often the opposite. Early on, my dad challenged me to write songs from different points of view. It’s liberating! You can be an observer, and it’s not always about you and your feelings. A good example of this is my tune, “Desert Rat.” — Nat Keefe

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I’m a mountain person at heart. I think we all are, the band guys. That was how this thing started with us. Since bluegrass is from the old mountains in Appalachia, when we first started writing together we went up as high as we could in the new mountains out West, our Sierra, and listened as closely as we could to what those places were saying. We had this grand idea of making mountain music out here that could reach across time to the mountain music out there, and maybe tickle the Rockies too on its way past. Our best towns have always been mountain towns. This music speaks so well there. — Erik Yates

Photo credit: Matt Sharkey

Avi Kaplan Comes Full Circle to Folk Roots on Solo EP, ‘I’ll Get By’

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Growing up near the Sequoia forests of Northern California, Avi Kaplan gravitated toward the low-key albums by John Denver, Bill Withers, and Simon & Garfunkel in his parents’ CD collection. But in time, the term “low-key” took on a whole new meaning as his baritone voice dropped dramatically upon starting high school. Suddenly possessing a clear, thundering bass range, Kaplan discovered a newfound confidence and rare vocal ability that ultimately led him away from the dream of becoming a choral director to joining the a cappella group Pentatonix.

After six years as a member of that Grammy Award-winning group, Kaplan parted ways with Pentatonix in 2017 and essentially went off the grid for a year. Now living in a cabin in the woods outside of Nashville, he is ready to reconnect to his roots — as he did on his new album, I’ll Get By. With a speaking voice that’s as resonant as you’d expect, Kaplan caught up with BGS by phone.

BGS: I’ve read that you had an early interest in folk music, so I was curious to know if you’d consider this is a full-circle moment, coming back to the music that you grew up loving?

AK: Oh yeah, absolutely. I grew up listening to it and it’s always the music that I’ve listened to throughout my life. And it’s always the music that I’ve written as well. I had a departure when I went and did the Pentatonix thing, but it definitely is a full-circle thing. It’s really surreal for me.

You released “Change on the Rise” about a year ago and it sent you on the path to this record. Why did you choose that song to usher in this stage of your career?

In the past I’ve written a lot of songs that are softer and maybe on the prettier side. A little fire, a little less power, and more about the soft, serene beauty of folk music. I really wanted to come back with something that just had a little more fire in it, because it was really reflective of where I was in my life. I felt like I really got my fire back. I didn’t want to come back with something people had already heard from me. Even then, people hadn’t heard much from me in general, when it came to a solo voice, or my voice out of its lower register. So I wanted to come back strong.

What was on your mind when you wrote “I’ll Get By”? That seems like an anthem of this record.

Thanks, man. Whenever I write a song, I don’t listen to it for a while. Then I come back and listen to it again so I can hear it on fresh ears, without the critical ear. When you’re in the writing situation, you’re criticizing everything you’re doing, so I had to get myself out of that. And when I listened to it again, I got emotional. It was something that really felt special to me. It felt really strong to me. It felt like it was conveying exactly what I was going through at that time, and hopefully something that would help other people get through the same type of thing.

On another song, “Chains,” there’s a lyrical reference to needing peace, and phrases similar to that. Were you needing peace and quiet to keep on going?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I was living in L.A. for about seven years and I’m just not a city guy in general. But when I wasn’t in L.A., I was touring non-stop. I was always going, so I really feel like I lost myself and I lost touch with the things that I loved the most – hanging out with my family, being in nature, all that stuff. … It was about a year after I left the group that I really started delving into writing. I wanted to do some healing first, but even through that, I was still healing just from a lot of stuff I was going through. So yeah, absolutely I was in that spot.

What did that healing process look like for you? What were you doing that year?

Well, I left the group and I just took some time to do the time to do the things that I’ve been longing to do. So I camped a bunch. I moved out of L.A. and moved into a cabin in Tennessee. But before that, I went back out to the Sequoias, where I’m from, and did a camping trip there. I did a lot of time in the Eastern Sierras and the Mojave Desert, and up in the mountain lakes.

I also went to Holland. I went to Germany and did a bunch of nature stuff. Then I went to Israel and I went hiking out there as well. So, I kind of went all over and just got away from everything as much as I possibly could. I just sought out to heal and find myself again, and just do work on myself. It was really important at that time. It was something that I needed more than I even knew.

Why did Tennessee become the place you ultimately settled?

I knew that I wanted to do music still. And really Nashville is the only music city where you can drive like 15 minutes outside the city and be in the country. And that’s where I wanted to be. That was a huge reason and also my sister lives out here. Also, with the music that I’m doing, I would say it’s more of a hub than I would say L.A. or New York anyway.

So, all signs pointed that way. I never had a doubt in my mind either. It was like, “OK, now it’s time for me to move out to Tennessee. I need to get a cabin out there and be in the forest.” It was all very clear to me what I needed to do. I didn’t exactly know how I was going to get into a place where I was good again, but I knew that’s where I needed to go to do it.

You mentioned earlier that you’re singing in a different part of your range on this record. But not a lot of people can sing as low as you. When did you realize you can do something that very few people can do?

It was my freshman year of high school. I joined the choir when I was in eighth grade but I was a baritone back then. And over that summer between eighth grade and freshman year, my voice changed big time. So I remember coming to the choir room and my choral director was extremely excited to hear my voice because it’s hard to find basses and that’s very much needed in choir. So he was a huge inspiration for me and a huge advocate for me. He helped me realize how different it was and how I could utilize it. I owe a lot to him, definitely.

It sounds like music education in your school is a cornerstone of your development.

That’s huge for me. Now I run a summer camp for high schoolers based around harmony and a cappella, music, songwriting, and all that, because that was such a huge inspiration to me. It changed the course of my whole life. It’s always been something that’s been important for me. Before I joined the group I was on track to be a choral director. I was also studying opera, but being a choral director was the dream, just because it had such an impact on me.

Was country music an influence for you growing up?

I didn’t listen to actual country, like Garth Brooks and that type of thing, but I loved bluegrass. I loved John Denver. Bluegrass is more of what I listened to when I was younger. And the Sons of the Pioneers, old-school country. There was actually a band in my hometown that was very similar to them called that Sons of the San Joaquin that I listened to a lot.

What was your entrance point into bluegrass?

I really started delving into it when I was a bit older. What’s funny is that I got on the Bluegrass Situation’s YouTube channel and I just went down a rabbit hole. I was blown away by some of the newgrass that was going on, and by some of the old-school. I think one of my favorite videos that you did was the one of Tim O’Brien. That blew me away. I love it so much! I would watch it all the time.

Then I started getting into Hot Rize, and an album with Tim O’Brien with Darrell Scott, and then I got into Elephant Revival, then Mandolin Orange, and I kept going down and down and down. I really delved into it and fell in love with it even more because it felt like my roots. I had grown up with that kind of thing, but I had gotten into more of the contemporary modern folk with Iron & Wine and Bon Iver.

I’m a huge fan of bluegrass and I tell people all the time that bluegrass musicians are world-class musicians. They are truly virtuosic. So unbelievably talented. It’s amazing to hear music that I love with such virtuosic musicians. That is something that is always very inspiring to me – a musician’s musician, someone who is really amazing at their craft. And that is definitely what bluegrass is about.

I wanted to ask about auditioning people for your band. What are you looking for when you pick a band?

I’m always looking for vocals. Harmonies. That’s the most important thing to me. Especially with my music, it’s not the toughest stuff to do, instrumentally speaking. With this album, the drums are actually more complex than I thought they were going to be, but at the end of the day, it’s nothing crazy. The harmonies are really where I’m looking for the strength. Yeah, that’s it – harmonies, 100 percent, all the way.

Photo credit: Bree Marie Fish

WATCH: Bowregard, “The Henrys”

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Artist: Bowregard
Hometown: Boulder, Colorado
Song: “The Henrys”
Album: Debut to be released early 2020

In Their Words: “‘The Henrys’ is the tale of a desperate outlaw attempting to escape his fate in the Henry Mountains of Utah. Written by Bowregard guitarist and vocalist Max Kabat and led by a driving dobro and fiddle melody, ‘The Henrys’ is a barnburner that has become a staple of our live set ever since its debut at the 2019 Telluride Bluegrass Festival band contest, which we were honored to win.

“The video was recorded by Mineral Sound in Lyons, Colorado, live in one take around a stereo pair of mics with no edits or overdubs. We’re currently in the studio working with producer Nick Forster (of Hot Rize fame) on our debut album, which we plan to release in early 2020 and can’t wait to share with the world.” — Bowregard

Photo credit: Daniel Herman

Six of the Best: Musical Alter Egos

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Before we start, let’s just get this one out of the way: no one will ever do the musical alter ego as well as David Bowie/Ziggy Stardust/The Thin White Duke. But American roots has dabbled plenty with personas, often to pretty hilarious effect.

For example, comedian Rich Hall will be taking his own Tennessee jailbird-turned-singer-songwriter Otis Lee Crenshaw on the road this summer. (You can catch Otis in September at The Long Road Festival in Leicestershire, and for a couple of dates at the National Maritime Museum and Bush Hall in London.) But for now, we think it’s time to pay tribute to all those part-time musicians living in the fantasy fringes.

Hank Wilson / Leon Russell

It was a bold leap, back in 1973, for a California rocker and bluesman like Leon Russell to record a bluegrass and country album. No wonder he didn’t do it under his own name. Hank Wilson’s Back! was a return to his roots for Russell, who had grown up playing the standards in Oklahoma. And here they are all in their glory, including Bill Monroe’s “Uncle Pen” and Jimmie Rodgers’ “In the Jailhouse Now.”

It’s an album filled with special guest appearances, from Jim Buchanan and Johnny Gimble on fiddle to Tut Taylor on dobro, and the whole project was produced at Bradley’s Barn in Tennessee by JJ Cale. Hank’s version of “Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” even made it into the charts. Hank had such a great time, he returned over the ensuing decades, with no fewer than three sequel records — and a number one hit recording of “Heartbreak Hotel” with Willie Nelson.

Lester ‘Roadhog’ Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys / The Statler Brothers

If you’ve ever wanted to hear Buddy Spicher purposefully butchering “Wildwood Flower,” there’s only one place to go — the 1974 recording of “Alive at the Johnny Mack Brown High School.” The Cadillac Cowboys, fronted by Lester ‘Roadhog’ Moran, are truly one of the worst country outfits ever committed to vinyl, ploughing their way through “Little Liza Jane,” “Freight Train” and “Keep on the Sunny Side” with all the nuance and musicality of a herd of stampeding hippopotami.

They were, in fact, the Statler Brothers — with a little back up from Spicher and Bob Moore on bass — who had created the fake (dreadful) band for the B-side of their 1972 album Country Music Then and Now. Their nine minute comedy routine, based on their memories of local radio shows from their childhoods, was so popular that Roadhog Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys got their own record deal. “It won’t die,” said Don Reid later. “We can’t even drown it.”

Luke the Drifter / Hank Williams

If you’re going to have an alter ego, you might as well imbue it with all the qualities you wish you had. And that’s certainly what confirmed reprobate Hank Williams seemed to be doing with his “half brother” Luke the Drifter.

Not many would have suspected the infamous bad boy of country music of having a penchant for sermon-making. But in 1950, as the singer was reaching the peak of his popularity and his upbeat hits were being played on radios all over the country, he was also recording a series of “talking blues” records that hit an unexpectedly moralising tone.

“He had another side to him that he wanted to get out,” said his grandson Hank Williams III. “And a lot of people didn’t understand the Luke the Drifter side. That’s a dark side, man.” It was his record label who insisted on the pseudonym, worried that an unsuspecting punter might punch his dime into a jukebox and get a spoken-word dressing-down instead of “Move it On Over.”

The recordings had proverbial titles like “Careful of the Stones You Throw,” and some, like “I’ve Been Down That Road Before,” described the kind of bad behaviour and poor decision-making that Williams was known for in his own life. “I’ve learned to slow my temper down and not to pick no scraps no more,” said Luke. Sadly Hank didn’t always heed his words.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy / Will Oldham

Some will say Bonnie Prince Billy is just a stage name, but to Kentuckian Will Oldham it’s always been more than that. As someone whose career has lasted more than quarter of a century, Oldham has put out records under plenty of different names, including Palace Flophouse (named after a John Steinbeck novel), Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace.

Confirming, perhaps, that he has a thing for royalty, he picked Bonnie “Prince” Billy to differentiate his Nashville-style songwriting from his previous indie rock offerings. “The primary purpose of the pseudonym is to allow both the audience and the performer to have a relationship with the performer that is valid and unbreakable,” he said in an interview.

Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers / Hot Rize

There is arguably no more beloved sideshow in bluegrass than Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers. No Hot Rize live set is truly complete without the promise of these performers from “Wyoming, Montana,” the support act that has supposedly been travelling in the back of their bus, and occasionally emerges to play some of the ‘40s and ‘50s country tunes they learned from the jukebox at their local cafe.

One by one, Tim O’Brien, Nick Forster, and Bryan Sutton will leave the stage, only for a slightly familiar-looking Red, Wendell and Swade to reappear in the time it might take to, say, put on a cowboy shirt. Eventually, they’ll be joined by oddball Waldo on pedal steel – there’s no way that’s Pete Wernick under that accent – and the next 15 minutes will combine music and frankly wacky comedy in the vaudevillian style that was an integral part of the earliest bluegrass bands/

A comic appearance from Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers brings back the days when Bill Monroe would wear a dress and “Uncle Josh and Cousin Jake” provided laughs at Flatt & Scruggs’s shows. But then, Hot Rize have always liked to pay tribute to the old days.

Dirty Doug / Dierks Bentley

In Pennsylvania they were the Scranton Scrotum Boys. In Boston they were the Mansfield Manscapers. They’ve also been the Big Jersey Johnsons, the Michigan Mule ticks and the Bolo Boys Bluegrass Band, but while the act’s name might change, the bluegrass pickers who open for Dierks Bentley keep one thing the same — their guitar player, Dirty Doug.

Beneath his big hat and sunglasses, it normally takes even the keenest eyes in the audience a few songs before they spot the similarity. That guy acoustifying ‘90s country songs — that guy playing Dierks Bentley’s hit “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do” to a bluegrass groove — isn’t that… Dierks Bentley? Yep.

He started opening for himself on his 2017 What the Hell tour and it just made sense. “I’m crazy about bluegrass,” says Bentley. “You get the building for the whole day so why not take advantage of the fact you’re already paying to rent this place out?”

Photo credit of Dierks Bentley: Jim Wright

The Tim O’Brien Band Reaches Beyond

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Tim O’Brien is only half-joking when he acknowledges, “You know, I have not been known to show up with the same people from date to date.” True enough, considering he’s been with Hot Rize for four decades, played mandolin and sang on the first Earls of Leicester album, issued numerous collaborative albums with family and friends, and carved out a career as a Grammy-winning folk artist. Along the way, he’s also produced notable roots artists ranging from the Infamous Stringdusters and Yonder Mountain String Band, to Kathy Mattea and Laurie Lewis. His multiple IBMA Awards include two trophies for Male Vocalist (1993, 2006), and another for the 2006 Song of the Year, “Look Down That Lonesome Road.”

That road is less lonesome now that he frequently travels with his partner, Jan Fabricius, a mandolin player and singer who makes her leap into professional music with O’Brien’s new album, The Tim O’Brien Band. In an effort to find players adept at both Irish and bluegrass music, the impeccable ensemble is rounded out by Mike Bub on bass, Shad Cobb on fiddle, and Patrick Sauber on banjo and guitar. Released one day after O’Brien’s 65th birthday, the project leads O’Brien and his colleagues toward tour dates in his native West Virginia… and beyond.

O’Brien invited The Bluegrass Situation into his music room for a chat about being a traveling musician, a songwriter and (much to his surprise) a role model.

BGS: Pretty early on this record, you have some traditional tunes. Why did those songs seem right for this album?

O’Brien: Let’s see, we’ve got “Doney Gal” and the two reels, and we’ve got “Pastures of Plenty” – I guess that’s traditional now. You know, I didn’t write a lot of songs this time, and I revisited one that I recorded before. I had recorded “Crooked Road” solo in the past, but I thought it would be really good with a band, and I wanted to hear that. I was happy with the way it came out.

Whenever I started doing gigs on my own in coffee houses, I always mixed it up with traditional songs and covers and my own tunes when I started writing. So it’s kind of a continuation of that. It’s my style of making a record. I’m itching to write some songs, but I didn’t do it much this time.

When you need to round out an album, how do you decide what to record?

I go to the CD shelf over there. Nowadays, I glean ‘em every year and I get rid of the ones that I know I’m never going to listen to much. The ones I keep going back to, there’s often something on there that makes me go, “Oh yeah, I love this song. Maybe I can sing this song…” And I’ll try it. I have one of those Moleskine books that are filled with lyrics of songs that I want to know — and I’ll write the lyrics of the ones that I’ve just sung on a record and need to remember.

I have to say, I’m touched by your rendition of “Last Train from Poor Valley.”

Oh man, Norman Blake is my hero! I saw him first probably in 1972. He was on that first Will the Circle Be Unbroken record and some other friends that were playing bluegrass already knew about him. They had that first Norman Blake record, which came out around the same time. And when I started playing with Hot Rize, we’d play these festivals and we would meet up with him. We got to be friendly and it was like a regular ol’ friend that you’d see. That’s the great thing about the touring community. You see people week to week in the summertime months. That’s why it’s nice to live in Nashville. I used to go home to Colorado and you wouldn’t see those people in the grocery store or the post office. [Laughs]

Norman and Nancy are old friends, and I go back to see them every now and again in recent years. Their music is just so different from what I do, and what Hot Rize did, and yet all these years later, it’s a lot closer. Even though it’s still very different, it’s a lot closer than a lot of the other stuff that’s going on. But I just love the sentiment of that song, and I knew that song from when his record came out. I like to pay tribute to somebody like that. He’s not on the circuit anymore and I don’t want him to be forgotten.

I like the feel of “Beyond.” It sounds to me like a hero’s anthem. What was on your mind when you wrote that?

I had the idea of writing something about, “Let’s get beyond the day to day.” It sounds like a gospel thing, and it fits in there, but if you could find enlightenment within your daily routine, or just get past the stumbling blocks that frustrate you and say, “Hey, man, things are going to be fine… We can go beyond this and look beyond this.” And maybe if we can live there, we can live life more freely while you’re going about the day-to-day.

Do you consider yourself an optimist?

I am an optimist, yeah. Musicians have to be! [Laughs] My friend Chris Luedecke – Old Man Luedecke, a guy I’ve produced some records for and toured with – he says, “Man, we’re the ultimate optimists. We keep getting up in the morning and trying again.” I suppose everybody does it, if you define it that way. We’re all optimists. But yeah, I’m an optimist and I think it’s possible to change, it’s possible to rise above your problems and get around ‘em somehow, and get beyond.

What is your response when younger musicians see you as a role model?

It’s a funny evolution. I guess it’s happened, that I’ve become this role model. It surprises you, but if you look at who my role models were, a lot of them aren’t there anymore. That means I’m getting closer to the checkout line, so I’ve become a role model because I’m still out there doing it. So I guess it’s an honor, but it gets to be intimidating to continue, because you think you’re not coming up with your best stuff all the time, and you wonder if you can even show it.

Hot Rize is that way. It’s hard to go and record a Hot Rize record because of nostalgia. People look at Hot Rize’s repertoire and go, “Sheesh! There are so many great songs!” But it took, I think, eight records to get all those together. It sort of magnifies things in a funny way, and it will intimidate even yourself, as you’re trying to repeat yourself. Hot Rize can repeat ourselves, but the idea of putting a new record out was like, “Oh man… we really need to be good! We better be as good as all that.” You do a lot of soul searching and you take it more seriously.

I wanted to ask you about writing “Hold to a Dream,” because that song has done well for you – it’s something of a standard, I would say.

“Hold to a Dream” is a good one. I had been into Irish music for a while, and that seemed like an Irish tune. The lyric is not necessarily very specific about anything. It’s a love song, I guess, but it’s like the theme of “Beyond” — it’s possible. We can get past everything and we can still do well. I like that one because it’s got a little rhythm, it’s got a little instrumental bit, and it’s got a little bit of a message – and it’s fun. And it’s got a nice chord progression. [Laughs] …

What I’m surprised about some of the songs that I’ve written that have translated so much, there is nothing heavy about them. But people are distracted by music and then they are allowed to think about other things while they are listening to it. And just a few words will suggest something. I think songs like “Hold to a Dream,” or other songs where there’s an instrumental section, lets people go, “Ah, yeah… hmm….” (laughs) You start singing and they might start thinking of something else.

Newgrass Revival does a magnificent version of that song, and you’ve also had cuts along the way by Garth Brooks, Dixie Chicks, Dierks Bentley, Kathy Mattea, Nickel Creek, and others. As a songwriter, what is that like to hear something you wrote come to life through another artist?

It’s really flattering when anybody sings your song, if they want to. There’s a monetary reward, which is nice, but mostly you’re just flattered. Then you realize, OK, what I’m doing is valid. It means something, so continue. That carrot is the one I really want to catch, knowing that what you’re doing is worthwhile.

Photo credit: Michael Weintrob

The Show On The Road – Tim O’Brien

Posted on by Chris Jacobs

Starting in the late 1970s with the pioneering string band Hot Rize, Tim O’Brien has trailblazed a quietly powerful and influential solo career that includes 16 albums and multiple Grammy awards, writing what many consider to be the new standards of bluegrass music.

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Now that he’s a bluegrass elder statesmen, O’Brien has made the time to produce albums for a new crop of festival headliners like Yonder Mountain String Band and the Infamous Stringdusters. He’s recorded and toured with Mark Knopfler and Steve Martin, had his songs covered by the Dixie Chicks and Garth Brooks — not bad for the small, bespectacled kid from Wheeling, West Virginia who dropped out of college and headed west with the idea that maybe, just maybe — if he learned enough songs — he could make it.

Hot Rize Turns 40: Nick Forster and Tim O’Brien Look Back

Posted on by Editor

He’s had 40 years to think about it, but it took Nick Forster a while to get to a real answer to some existential questions about Hot Rize, the bluegrass-rooted band he, mandolinist-singer Tim O’Brien, banjo wizard Pete Wernick and guitar master Charles Sawtelle formed in in Denver in early 1978. Just what is it that made Hot Rize, well, Hot Rize? And just what is it that make the band — which will host the 29th annual International Bluegrass Music Association Awards on Sept. 27 in Raleigh, North Carolina — still treasured, still distinctive, lo these two score years later?

Forster paused at the question, and then hemmed and hawed a bit before giving it a try. First he tried to break it down to the talents and sensibilities they each brought to the mix. Then he tackled the way they all interacted — the natural combo of O’Brien’s and Wernick’s instrumental skills, O’Brien’s voice, the instinctive guitar skills of Sawtelle (and later of Bryan Sutton, who stepped in when Sawtelle died of cancer in 1999). And then he looked at the balance of celebrating traditions and exploring new paths with choices of material. Blah blah blah. Whatever.

Finally, almost sheepishly, he mentioned one other thing: “Also maybe, I don’t know if it came through sonically, but we were having fun!” he offered. “We were pretty young and had a sense of humor and were having fun!”

Well, there we have it. For fans, for anyone who’s heard the band, there’s no “maybe” about it. From the very first gigs through the three-night anniversary celebration at the Boulder Theater in January with guests Sam Bush, Stuart Duncan and Jerry Douglas — commemorated on the new 40th Anniversary Bash album, recorded in January at the Boulder Theater — it’s that ineffable spirit that stands out, even if we can’t really identify it any better than Forster did.

But let’s let O’Brien have a stab at it as well.

“I don’t want to compare to Bob Marley or anything,” O’Brien says, risking those dangerous waters anyway. “But he was trying to make country music and rock ’n’ roll, and that’s what came out. He had his thing and place and time and what he did. We were too hippiefied and too Western or something to play it like the guys from the Southeast, I guess. We were a Boulder band, a college town band. But we were also a reaction to the Newgrass movement. We adjusted the steering a bit. That was a little too far to the left of us. So we went to the center, but we were still a good deal left of center. … So I don’t know,” he concludes. “It was a weird recipe that seemed to work.”

Not that they followed any recipe, let alone a long-term game plan.

“We thought we’d just play for the summer,” says O’Brien, pulling one right out of the Famous Last Words file.

That was the view from their first gig, in Denver, on May 1, 1978, growing out of jam sessions at the Denver Folklore Center, where they all had found jobs. From the very start there was something different, distinctive about them — the first song the four of them remember playing together was not bluegrass at all, but “Wichita Lineman.” Just two weeks after the May Day gig they were up in Minneapolis booked to play on a new public radio show called Prairie Home Companion, and a month after that they were on the bill of the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. And without even thinking about it, they found themselves in a full-time proposition.

“The fact that we didn’t have a long commitment meant we would just be a band for as long as we had gigs,” Forster says, noting that Wernick, a.k.a. Dr. Banjo, served as de facto booking agent as well as band member. “So we kept saying, ‘Yes.’ Pete would say, ‘Do you want to play this wedding? This party? This club?’ ‘Yes!’ We had a goal of trying to make $100 a week take-home pay each. That was a lot of pressure on Pete.”

It was quite the time. Forster and O’Brien were in their mid-20s, Wernick and Sawtelle in their early 30s, all having found their way to Colorado from various points on the compass, meeting through working at the Denver Folklore Center. Fairly quickly, jam sessions grew into something more solid. Forster was recruited to play electric bass (which packed into a car trunk more easily than an acoustic bass), though it was an instrument he’d never played before. As soon as they hit the road they found themselves in the middle of some amazing settings.

“It was an incredible time to be in a bluegrass band, in my view,” Forster says, a time when many of the founding fathers of the form were still going strong, while a new generation — the “newgrass” crowd — was searching for fresh ways to expand the bluegrass lexicon. “I don’t know that we’re fully the third generation of bluegrass, but maybe two-and-a-half. So if we played festivals in the late ‘70s, and because there weren’t as many bands then, a lot of times you’d play the whole weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, two shows a day. So Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley and Jim & Jesse, and [such younger bands as] Seldom Scene and Hot Rize would do two sets a day.”

That was just a part of the vibrant world in which they found themselves.

“Between the sets, you’d sit at your merch table and there’s Bill Monroe sitting at the merch table, and Jim & Jesse, and you’re at someone’s farm in Oklahoma or Georgia, so lots of personal hang time with everyone.”

They didn’t exactly become pals with the old-timers, but a community quickly formed among the younger musicians, particularly after Hot Rize became a client of booking agent Keith Case, whose roster included Newgrass Revival (featuring Sam Bush), John Hartford, autoharp magician Bryan Bowers and Norman and Nancy Blake. Case took advantage of any opportunity to have two or more of those acts sharing bills as much as he could.

“That was so incredible,” Forster says, “to be part of this rolling band of gypsies. Almost every other weekend you’d run into one or even three or four of them.”

Gig by gig it kept going, and kept getting bigger, abetted by their association with their, uh, friends, Western swing ensemble Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers. (“Oh yeah,” Forster sighs. “Those guys.”) By 1990 it had gotten so big that Hot Rize was named Entertainer of the Year in the very first IBMA Awards. But it had also gotten so big that O’Brien and Forster in particular found themselves reassessing things.

“Three things happened concurrently,” Forster says. “We achieved so many of our original goals, frankly. We got to make records, got a bus, got to play the Opry and Austin City Limits, could play any festival. Spectacular. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but we felt a little like, ‘Okay, we’ve done this. This is the end of a chapter.’ Pete and Charles, being older than Tim and me, said, ‘You guys, you don’t understand! This is the brass ring! We hit the jackpot! We’re a band and we can play together and it’s going to get better.’ And we being in our mid-30s rather than mid-40s thought, ‘That’s cool, but we’re going to do other things.’”

And so Hot Rize went into “rest mode,” as Forster puts it. O’Brien, who had established himself as an in-demand songwriter, signed a solo deal with RCA and recruited Forster, who had gone on tour with Sam Bush and John Cowan, to join his band. In the course of that, Forster came up with the idea for a radio show combining roots music and discussion of environmental sustainability, about as Colorado a concept as you could find. That show, eTown, launched in 1991, with its demands ultimately being too much for him to stay on the road with O’Brien.

Meanwhile, Wernick started Live Five (sometimes known as Flexigrass) with some Klezmer-meets-Dixieland approaches, while Sawtelle worked with Peter Rowan and opened a studio, taking on production gigs. There were many calls for reunions, and now and then they would get together for one-offs or a few gigs. When Sawtelle was diagnosed with cancer in 1996 there was a feeling that they needed to do something bigger and took on a full tour, resulting in a live album. After Sawtelle died in 1999 there were occasional shows with several guitarists stepping in, including Peter Rowan a few times. Then Sutton came on board as a full-time member in 2002, though “full-time” was still fairly sporadic, peaking with a 2014 album, When I’m Free, and the first real tour since the sorta-hiatus.

And then they saw that 40th anniversary looming and it was too big to overlook.

“The approach was frankly just celebratory,” Forster says of the concerts. “This is a milestone and it should not go unnoticed. So let’s just do something fun and have a party.”

Photo credit: Jim McGuire

eTown: Come for the Music, Stay for the Message

Posted on by Editor

Wife/husband duo Helen and Nick Forster have experienced first-hand how music can facilitate a connection. Both performers, they met backstage at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado 30 years ago. While Helen had served as the co-owner and co-producer of the festival from its inception, Nick was a founding member of the acclaimed bluegrass band Hot Rize, which was on the precipice of a long-term hiatus. The couple bonded over music and shared values — including a concern for the environment. In 1991, they launched eTown, a nationally syndicated, independent, nonprofit radio show integrating conversations with community organizers and researchers along with performances and Q&A sessions with musical guests.

“If you imagine what happens at a bluegrass festival, there’s something very fundamental, which is that everyone comes together from disparate backgrounds and walks of life and there’s no vetting of philosophy or political party or socio-economic alignment or anything like that,” Nick says. “They have a shared experience … [and] a common focus … their hearts are being opened by music, which is a very real and palpable and powerful thing … There is that sense of connectedness which means that, by Sunday night, as things are starting to wrap up and people are thinking about heading home and going back to their jobs the next day, going back to their normal concerns and cares, there’s a wistfulness. There’s a little bit of sadness about, ‘Man I was part of something this weekend.’ I think, to a large extent, a community that’s connected like that is also going to do a couple of other things, including looking out for each other. And they also tend to look out for their space … and so all of those things are a part of the DNA of eTown.”

The program’s tagline defines eTown as a place where people come for the music and stay for the message.

“We wanted to give people a place to go where the music brought people together, where everybody was welcome, where the music would be both the connection point and uplifting, but more importantly, we would also stimulate dialogue in conversation about how do we take better care of each other and the planet,” Nick explains.

eTown is recorded weekly in front of a live studio audience at eTown Hall, a 17,000-square-foot converted performance space in the middle of downtown Boulder, Colorado. Once a church, the building features state-of-the-art recording studios, production rooms, and camera and lighting equipment, allowing Nick and Helen to navigate the shifting media landscape. eTown films the performance portion of each show and posts the videos on their website. When deciding which musicians they will feature each week, Nick and Helen say diversity is key.

“We wanted to have musicians who were soulful. We didn’t necessarily want to have any from a particular style. I think we do tend to focus on vocal singers, you know. We don’t do as much instrumental music, for example, because I don’t think it really fits with our show as well as others,” Nick says. “We’ve always tried to feature one well-known act and one less well-known act, so that people can get excited about hearing the person they know, but then get more excited about the discovery piece … We try to mix it up further, so we have one band, one solo, maybe one male, one female, maybe one from one musical tradition and one from another, because at the end, everybody plays together for the finale and so we want to make sure that the finales are kind of like, ‘Wow that’s a weird combination.’ You’ve got a singer/songwriter and a hip-hop artist, or you’ve got a bluegrass musician and a blues guy, or you’ve got a Cajun band playing with a Latina band from Los Angeles or whatever it is.”

The other segments of the show address social and environmental issues — from homelessness and hunger to air pollution and compromising the oceans. But in 1991, eTown was ahead of the curve when it came to these discussions. Climate change and global warming weren’t even concepts at the forefront of public or political discourse.

“There was a lot of apathy at the time, and people are not apathetic because they’re bad people. It’s usually because things seem overwhelming and you don’t feel like you have any power to do anything,” Helen explains. “So we wanted to bring people in and give them some food for thought. We wanted to inform them and, most of all, we wanted them to be inspired to get involved. We wanted to bring our skills together in order to create something that was really welcoming across the board: Wherever you were, you’re in eTown.”

This idea led to the creation of the eChievement Award, which Helen gives to one winner each week, inviting them to speak about their work on the show. Nominated by other listeners, eChievement honorees are citizens who are actively trying to improve their communities. “We’ve tried to be solutions-oriented,” Nick says. “We’ve tried to highlight the problems but also think about things that are working and things that are positive in the age of Trump and those things are welcome. We hear from listeners that are like, ‘Thank God, there’s something positive out there in media.”

After 26 years, Nick and Helen believe eTown is just getting started.

“The reason for doing eTown, I think, is more important now than ever because we are entering into this time in our nation’s history where politics have become so divisive and so violent, frankly, and the idea that we need to come together particularly around some core issues that are relevant and important for all of us. I mean, it is absolutely critical that we find some common ground,” Nick says. “And we are more committed than ever to making sure that we can use music to bring people together — but not gloss over the details — and talk about what’s important and talk about what we can all do, each of us, to try to address these issues that are absolutely critical for our future. So I’m super pumped about both our history and our legacy, but especially about our future.”