Tag: Jamgrass in July

A Jamgrass Chronology

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Dichotomy. The essence of jamgrass is the intersection of traditional and progressive ideals, techniques, and tones when it comes to the musical hot potato that is bluegrass – past, present, and future.

Throughout the generations, and within the structured lines of bluegrass, there’s a constant segment of the genre that remains eternally curious about what lies just beyond the horizon. It’s this sonic landscape of unlimited possibilities and creative fulfillment, one where the whirlwind attitudes of psychedelic rock, freeform jazz, classical music, and country gold were injected into the “high, lonesome sound,” ultimately conjuring this new melodic avenue to duck down.

The First Generation

When looking at the origins of jamgrass, the “Big Bang of Progressive Bluegrass” arguably occurred with the formation of New Grass Revival in 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky. Led by fiddler/mandolinist Sam Bush and banjoist Courtney Johnson, the outfit emerged from the ashes of another group, Bluegrass Alliance. This revolutionary quartet combined traditional bluegrass with contemporary influences from the popular rock, country and jazz of the period, the result being their self-titled debut album in 1972. In later years, bassist John Cowan and banjoist Béla Fleck would be added to the lineup.

By the early 1970s, the Earl Scruggs Revue was already well-established on the national touring circuit. With the Western North Carolina banjo great himself at the helm, Scruggs and his two sons, guitarist Randy and bassist Gary, embraced the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Scruggs not only was outspoken in his support of the anti-Vietnam movement, he also happily and genuinely welcomed those from other musical circles, including playing gigs alongside rock acts The Byrds and Steppenwolf.

Although not necessarily considered jamgrass, the Revue – with Scruggs being a vital pillar of the first generation of bluegrass as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys – opened doors into an often-heavily guarded realm of traditional bluegrass. One where the fear of outsiders taking over the scene without “proper knowledge or respect” to the unspoken rules and traditions of the genre could be seen as misguided intent versus building a bigger space for more folks to tap into the history of the music and evolve their own craft, the end result being the survival and perpetuation of bluegrass.

In April 1972, the Revue’s album I Saw the Light with Some Help from My Friends featured guest appearances by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Arlo Guthrie, and Linda Ronstadt. The sessions would inspire Nitty Gritty to eventually pursue its own collaborative project, which became the seminal album Will the Circle be Unbroken – the record now regarded as a pillar of the bluegrass and country music scenes in the decades since its release in November 1972.

That winter of 1972/1973 conjured the happenstance formation of acoustic supergroup Old & In The Way. Guitarist Peter Rowan and mandolinist David Grisman, longtime friends and collaborators, found themselves at the home of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in Stinson Beach, California. As expected, impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions ensued.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan told BGS in a 2022 interview. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

By the early 1970s, the Dead had become one of the premier rock bands in America. Even though he was now a bonafide rock star with a massive legion of diehard fans, Garcia yearned for a simpler time in his life, which was his existence before the band itself, when he was a young, hungry bluegrass musician in the San Francisco folk scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Soon after, the trio tapped bassist John Kahn and a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements) and booked a handful of gigs around the Bay Area in 1973. There were no expectations set or boundaries drawn. The gatherings were more about honoring musicianship and friendship, where all present could play joyously in the sandbox together.

Old & In The Way only lasted a little more than a year, disappearing in the spring of 1974 without any fanfare or real notice of its demise. The group was kind of like a comet flying by in the night sky — bright and stunning, and yet all too fleeting, but you counted your lucky stars you were able to see and appreciate it in real time, onstage and in the audience.

And that special time and place that was Old & In The Way would be forever captured in recordings of the live shows. In 1975, the self-titled debut album was released and became the biggest selling bluegrass album of all-time until it was overtaken by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000.

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

The final piece to the puzzle that is the first generation of jamgrass was filled when Hot Rize emerged in the late 1970s in Boulder, Colorado. Coming together while all being employed at the Denver Folklore Center, fiddler/mandolinist Tim O’Brien, banjoist Pete Wernick, guitarist Charles Sawtelle and bassist Nick Forster would become the pioneers of the Colorado jamgrass scene – ultimately launching countless bands in The Centennial State with their unique blend of traditional tones and innovative styles.

The Second Generation

Just like O’Brien, Leftover Salmon guitarist Vince Herman was also a West Virginia native who headed west to the Rocky Mountains in search of his musical destiny. In 1985, Herman dropped out of West Virginia University and decided to “go to Colorado and find like-minded players.” This single decision by Herman ushered in the second generation of jamgrass.

“And I knew there was a progressive bluegrass scene based around the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Hot Rize was in Boulder, which was a major influence on me,” Herman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, I figured Boulder would have a good progressive bluegrass scene. And it sure did, proven by pulling up and seeing a ‘Live Bluegrass Music Tonight’ sign [at a bar].”

That night in Boulder in 1985, Herman wandered in and crossed paths with multi-instrumentalist Drew Emmitt. The two were kindred spirits and immediately hit it off, with Herman eventually joining Emmitt’s Left Hand String Band. A year later, Herman launched his own band, The Salmon Heads. But, it would be New Year’s Eve 1989 when Leftover Salmon came to fruition, the ensemble being a combination of the duo’s respective band members.

“We stuck with Leftover Salmon for the first night, never knowing it would be any more than one night of a gig [in Crested Butte],” Herman says of the NYE show. “The older the tune, the more the bluegrass stomp kind of thing would go on, people would slam dance. We were like, ‘Something’s good about this.’”

By 1993, another Colorado band came rolling down the ski slopes of Crested Butte and Telluride. Formed as a casual gathering of acoustic musicians and a percussionist looking to get together during après-ski and play some tunes for free lift tickets and cold beer, the String Cheese Incident took bluegrass and pushed it more into the jamband world than any other group who came before them. Nowadays, the sextet is a glorious kitchen sink of sound and scope – bluegrass to blues, rock to reggae, jazz to jam-tronica – especially through their highly popular annual festivals, Electric Forest and Hulaween.

Heading towards the end of the century, Yonder Mountain String Band appeared on the scene in Nederland, Colorado, in 1998. The quartet originally featured a mesmerizing frontman in the late Jeff Austin, an ambitious and endlessly curious mandolin player. The core of the band was based more in traditional bluegrass, but with a heavy focus on improvisation and just seeing where the night took them. The culmination of which led to Yonder finding itself in this unique position, one that allowed the group to be booked at both lawnchair bluegrass festivals and wild-n-out jamband gatherings across America.

The Third Generation

The new millennium signaled the third generation of jamgrass. On Oct. 31, 2000, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a casual Halloween gig consisting of college buddies (who played the local bluegrass open mic night at the Blue Dolphin) would parlay itself into the creation of Greensky Bluegrass – an ensemble equally obsessed with Tony Rice and David Grisman as they were the Grateful Dead and Phish.

A few years ago, when I was interviewing frontman Paul Hoffman about the initial intent of Greensky, he replied, “To play heavy metal music on acoustic instruments.” And in the quarter-century since its inception, Greensky has become a marquee act. They blurred the lines between bluegrass and jambands, ultimately setting the stage for every band who came thereafter with ambitions to rock big venues, all in the name of jamgrass exploration.

“I think that we just have a spirit to not be limited,” Hoffman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, if we want to emulate all the things we love – and we’d love a diverse amount of things, musical things – we honor the acoustic nature of our heritage as a band, but we want so much more. We want [things] to keep us interested and engaged. We’ve allowed ourselves that creative freedom to try anything.”

On the other side of the Great Lakes, in Duluth, Minnesota, Trampled by Turtles formed by happenstance in 2003 on a tiny stage at Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake. A hearty blend of bluegrass, indie-folk and alt-country influences, Trampled’s sound has been described as “Midwestern Gothic” – a musical signature ultimately straddling the barriers between genres of distinct sounds and approaches.

The third generation is rounded out by the Infamous Stringdusters, coming together in 2006 in Nashville. Consisting of longtime road musicians and recent graduates of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the group is a meticulous balance of tradgrass and jamgrass. With their core soaked in the principles of traditional bluegrass, the Dusters have never wavered from chasing their artistic muse towards the unknown horizon of Americana and rock influences that run deep in their sound.

“That’s what’s so beautiful about bluegrass music, in particular,” fiddler Jeremy Garrett told BGS in a 2026 interview. “You pass it on to the next generation and they take it and they do their thing with it. Luckily for us, we were around at a time that [that] was very important, and a transitional time in the industry.”

The Fourth & Fifth Generations

That transitional time in jamgrass of the early 2000s and 2010s sparked what is currently being considered the highwater mark of the genre – and also regarded as the fourth generation of jamgrass – as seen by guitar phenom Billy Strings bursting into the arena level, with Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull right in the mix when it comes to bluegrass spilling into the mainstream.

Also emerging from the same Michigan scene as Greensky Bluegrass, Strings’ rocketship ride from hardscrabble beginnings to selling out any size of venue from coast to coast is the stuff of legend. Only in the summer years of his career, Strings’ playful flexibility around “bluegrass rules” is mirrored by his genuine respect for those who came before him. His knowledge of the genre is as profound as the unknown depths of his skillset and ambition, something witnessed each night he performs for an endless sea of faces.

For Hull and Tuttle, they became the first female musicians to be given the IBMA award for Mandolin Player of the Year (Hull) and Guitar Player of the Year (Tuttle). To note, Hull has now been given the honor seven times in the last 10 years. Both artists are becoming well-known for genre-bending collaborations with a fearlessness in entering new artistic realms – Hull jamming alongside Slash and Cory Wong, with Tuttle shifting into the indie-folk and alt-country scenes as of late.

Where we stand at this exact juncture is considered the fifth generation of jamgrass – a level represented by young, hungry and immensely-talented bands eager to learn, eager to rise to the occasion on the live stage – with the likes of Mountain Grass Unit, Clay Street Unit, Shadowgrass, and Magoo putting down quickly-growing roots in the scene due to impressive appearances in front of massive crowds on the festival circuit in recent years.

“We’re a live band. It’s where we really shine through, and you can just feel the energy up there. We always try to say, ‘There are only so many Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights,’ and we want to elevate that and bring the energy and the emotion and let [the audience] loose,” Clay Street Unit guitarist Sam Walker told BGS in a 2026 interview. “We want to make sure at every show we’re bringing that to the table, our full attention to the energy and making sure that everyone’s having as good a time as they can.”

In the last 55 years or so of the jamgrass movement, the sheer beauty of the genre is the mere fact that many of the architects and torchbearers are still walking this earth, still touring and proudly collaborating with the younger generations, and always offering a real sense of encouragement to happily take risks and not be afraid of what could be, onstage and in the studio – for true gratitude resides in the ancient desire to find one’s truth and purpose.

Continue exploring our Jamgrass in July coverage here. This content brought to you in partnership with Preston Thompson Guitars.

Photo Credit: Leftover Salmon by Tobin Voggesser.

The Origins and Evolution of Jamgrass – And Where It Goes From Here

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Whether it’s Bill Monroe, Sam Bush, Sister Sadie, or Billy Strings, bluegrass has always pushed boundaries. At the forefront of that movement sits jamgrass, which brings together a barrage of influences performed with grassy, stringed arrangements and an improvisational sensibility that makes each song and show feel like a living organism – and results in each performance having its own qualities and quirks.

However, despite many tying the origins of jamgrass to ’90s upstarts like Leftover Salmon and Yonder Mountain String Band, its roots actually go back at least a half-century – and in some cases to the very origins of bluegrass music itself.

“When Bill Monroe started the Blue Grass Boys and they came on the Grand Ole Opry with that band, they were so far removed and different from other string bands of that same era even though they had the same instrumentation,” says Bush. “They were light years ahead of all the rest of the music on the Grand Ole Opry in terms of progressiveness and innovation, so in his own way Bill Monroe was a rebel. The Opry audience was just astounded with the way they played, and then when Bill introduced a great fiddler like Chubby Wise and the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs, that’s what kicked what we call bluegrass into gear.”

That same trailblazing spirit of Monroe could also be found in Bush himself several decades later, with the formation of the Bluegrass Alliance and, shortly after, New Grass Revival. The latter went against the grain of traditional bluegrass in nearly every way imaginable, from covers of Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Marley, and The Beatles to their long hair and the tie-dye they dressed themselves in. All more akin to Deadheads and the hippie movement than bluegrass at the time. Per Bush, the group was inspired by bands that had already deviated from the old-time ways of bluegrass like the Osborne Brothers, Jim & Jesse, the Country Gentlemen, the Dillards, the Greenbriar Boys, Area Code 615, and even John Hartford – who he’d later pay tribute to with his 2022 album Radio John.

That being said, New Grass Revival and the movement they helped spark also held the tradition of bluegrass in as high regard as anyone, even as the band pushed the music in a direction it had never been before. “We always said that if you want to play newgrass, you first have to know how to play bluegrass,” recalls Bush.

The band’s rise gave way to the progressive leaning newgrass movement that saw an influx of outside influences and experimentation flood into the music that Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys made famous, with one of the most notable being Leftover Salmon. Formed in 1989 – the same year New Grass Revival first broke up – in Boulder, Colorado, Salmon brought together acoustic and electric arrangements with percussion to create an offshoot of newgrass they coined “Cajun slamgrass.” The outfit’s hybrid sound was an instant hit, and by the early ’90s the band found itself on the H.O.R.D.E tour with rock and jam bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, Spin Doctors, and Blues Traveler. This further connected the worlds of bluegrass and jam, resulting in what many refer to as the official launch of the jamgrass movement later in the decade when Yonder Mountain String Band burst onto the scene.

In fact, Yonder’s bassist, Ben Kaufmann, recalls attending that H.O.R.D.E tour and credits it for sending him down the rabbit hole of bluegrass. But being from Boston and growing up a Deadhead, he knew that any music he’d go on to create would be radically different from what had come before it.

“We didn’t grow up in the rural South,” explains Kaufmann. “We were suburban kids, which was critical to whatever Yonder ended up achieving. If we weren’t, the band likely would’ve leaned much more traditional. We thought the music of Flatt & Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and the Stanley Brothers were the coolest things ever, even though it was born out of an environment that’s not ours.

“That, combined with the influences of our formative years, helped to mold our own little version of what a bluegrass band could be, even though not everyone thought it was the ‘right’ way to play it. For a while the bluegrass community didn’t want any part of us, which made me realize that if people weren’t going to invite us to their party that we’d create our own, which is exactly what we did.”

From there, Yonder integrated their high-strung and energetic live show even more than the jam band circuit, piecing together the foundations of what would soon become the jamgrass scene in the process. That momentum reached a fever pitch for the band in the late 2000s when the band was headlining bigger rooms than it ever had before and landing opening slots on arena tours with the Dave Matthews Band and Widespread Panic, similar to the gigs New Grass Revival had opening similar venues for Leon Russell in 1979.

Thinking back on that era of the band, Kaufmann says it made him understand the full potential of what jamgrass and bluegrass could achieve if given the opportunity, which he says is now being realized with artists like Billy Strings, Mountain Grass Unit, and others.

“Even in the late aughts when Yonder was at max room capacity and opening these arena shows, we wondered if bluegrass would ever work in rooms this big. And, to our amusement, it did – you just needed to fill the venue with the right people. We didn’t know if that would be us headlining those places one day, but playing those gigs showed us it was something that could happen.

“With that in mind, it’s no surprise to see a young gun like Billy Strings come along and set the world on fire. In the little amount of time we’ve spent together it was obvious that he is a special talent, so observing his rise and all he’s done for this kind of music has been mind-blowing.”

Yonder’s success lit a spark for the jamgrass movement that’s been burning ever since, with countless performers crediting the band for the influence they’ve bestowed upon them. One of those people is Kyle Tuttle, who grew up following the band around on tour in the early 2000s before eventually landing a spot playing in founding member Jeff Austin’s band after Austin departed Yonder in 2014.

“I was just starting to see real bluegrass and already loved the Grateful Dead, so when Yonder Mountain String Band came along and overlapped with those two worlds, it was like a dream come true,” Tuttle explains. “I’d been seeing all these suit-and-tie bands playing straight bluegrass and loved it, but at the same time I was also wondering where I fit into it. Then Yonder pops up and it feels like what I’d been waiting my whole life to discover.”

Tuttle played his first gig with the Jeff Austin Band in 2016 and remained in the group up until the singer’s untimely death in 2019. He went on to perform with the GRAMMY Award-winning Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway from 2021 to early 2025. Now he leads his own collective, the Kyle Tuttle Band, where he intertwines original compositions with traditional bluegrass covers and other off-the-wall influences as he puts his own spin on what jamgrass is.

“It’s a common perspective for people to not want you to mess with their bluegrass and tradition, whereas the jamgrass world tends to be more wide open,” admits Tuttle. “Fans nowadays are ready to hear whatever interesting mashup you create, which makes for a really nice union.”

With how wide open the jamgrass has become, even bands outside its periphery have found their way into the community from time to time. Take Fruition for example, a band that began busking on the streets of Portland over 15 years ago with a mix of string instruments and a poppy folk sound that sits on the far outer reaches of the jamgrass spectrum. Similar to how Yonder struggled to be embraced by the bluegrass community in its early days, Fruition’s Kellen Asebroek said it was the jamgrass community that first embraced and welcomed the band when nobody else would. “There’s no telling where we’d be if they hadn’t welcomed us into their family.”

“I was introduced to [jamgrass] in 2002 before I even knew what it was,” recollects Asebroek. “My uncle was a big Leftover Salmon fan and gave me an audience recording from the ’90s to listen to that left me in awe wondering what the hell it was they were doing. I grew up in more of a punk, reggae and classic rock world, so that was the first time I heard something remotely grassy. It wasn’t until we started Fruition and were busking on the street that people began referring to us as a jamgrass band. That being said, Fruition tends to be on the more structured side, so much so that I wouldn’t even call ourselves a jam band. We’ve always been in a unique place in that world in the sense that the jamgrass community is who took us in as babies and showed us around even though we were on the fringes of it.”

Also on the fringes of jamgrass is Daniel Donato, who began picking country and bluegrass tunes on Nashville’s Broadway strip as a teenager before launching his own project, Cosmic Country, in 2015 after seeing shapeshifting country singer Sturgill Simpson at the Ryman. The sound that grew out of that moment is equal parts Simpson and the Dead, but Donato says that bluegrass legends like Bill Monroe are also critical to what he creates as well, even though he utilizes mostly electric instrumentation.

“Jerry Garcia also had a really sophisticated understanding and appreciation for bluegrass music,” compares Donato. “The arrangements of the Dead were not succinctly bluegrass, but there was a ton of bluegrass influence that went into the way he played, especially with Old & In The Way and the Jerry Garcia Band. My goal has been to tap into a similar feeling, but with a slightly more prominent country twang.”

Someone else who’s spent plenty of time in the jamgrass scene despite not always producing music that would be categorized as such is Sierra Hull. The mandolin prodigy grew up on a heavy dose of traditional bluegrass in East Tennessee, with acts like Blue Highway, the Seldom Scene, and Lonesome River Band being the soundtrack of her youth. While she’s tended to lean more towards “chambergrass” and singer-songwriter styles in her adult life, she also takes plenty of time to let loose and jam, whether it’s stretching out her own material or joining artists like Cory Wong, the String Cheese Incident, Greensky Bluegrass, Béla Fleck, and Sam Bush on stage. The latter of whom she credits – along with luminaries like Peter Rowan and David Grisman – for planting the seeds that later grew to become jamgrass.

“For people like me, [Sam] was such a huge gateway to a lot of these other musicians who were really open-minded about what they played and who they collaborated with,” confides Hull. “Coming from a more traditional background, what I’ve enjoyed most about getting out to these bluegrass and jam festivals [is] mixing it up with folks. I’ve become a fan of jamgrass from seeing it all happen up close, rather than having grown up on albums – which I feel is the case for a lot of fans of jam music. The recorded music is still awesome, but the live shows are where the spirit and energy of jamgrass truly live.”

Hull continued, stressing how despite the current momentum behind jamgrass it’s still a very niche genre that nobody gets into expecting to become famous from it, which makes the heights Billy Strings and others are taking it to that much more mesmerizing.

“There’s something really cool about seeing folks who maybe don’t know who Bill Monroe or Doc Watson is, but they can go to a Billy show and immediately connect to the authenticity of what the music is,” exclaims Hull. “We live in a day and age where people are ripping on their pedals and doing more progressive stuff than they ever have before with string music, but at the same time most all of these bands have their moments where they throw that all away and just play a straight-up bluegrass tune. Seeing people resonate with that is central to what this music is and does.”

Another woman staking out a career in and around jamgrass is Lindsay Lou, who first discovered the subgenre witnessing the early days of Greensky Bluegrass performing in Michigan. Although she’d already been vaguely familiar with Yonder and Leftover Salmon, Lou credits Greensky’s sound and proximity to her as the driving factors for introducing her not just their music, but jamgrass as a whole.

“Greensky was my gateway to the jam world, because we were both part of the same scene,” says Lou. “I started hanging with them and soon found myself at festivals with other like-minded bands that sent me diving into the music of the Grateful Dead and others.”

One of those artists she wound up connecting with was a young Billy Strings, who she’d grow close with and later live across the street from in Nashville. The two would even go on to co-write a number of songs together including “Freedom” and “Nothing’s Working,” which both appeared on Strings’ albums Home and Renewal, as well as the latter appearing on Lou’s Queen Of Time. “It’s been really cool having written songs with Billy and hearing him perform them to arenas packed with 30,000 all singing along.”

“It’s no surprise to me that Billy has brought so many people to jam and bluegrass music in the same way that Yonder and Greensky did for so many before him, including Billy himself,” she stresses. “It’s been so much fun watching a young hippie kid like him take a traditional song to places you never thought it could go due to him embracing the musical conversation that jam music is centered around.”

Someone at the heart of the Billy Strings phenomenon is Jarrod Walker, who’s played mandolin in the Michigander’s band since 2018. Similar to Sam Bush, Walker believes the roots of jamgrass can be traced all the way back to Bill Monroe, due to how he took popular songs of the day and breathed new life into them with stringed arrangements – similar to how modern day jam bands pull from influences far and wide to create something entirely new. And although he credits Sam Bush as being a central figure for the movement, he also holds the Seldom Scene – who recorded an extended version of the Grateful Dead’s “I Know You Rider” (simply called “Rider”) on its 1973 album Act III – in a similarly high regard.

“There have been a smorgasbord of different influences in jamgrass from the very beginning with Irish and English music and gospel and blues – all of it was an integral part of what Bill Monroe originally did,” says Walker. “Then someone like Jerry Garcia comes along and follows Monroe like people would soon be following the Dead, which led to Old & In The Way, continuing the prophecy that’s still playing out to this day.”

But even as that prophecy continues to play out, Walker is amazed by where it’s taken not just the Billy Strings band, but string music as a whole. Having been accustomed to gigging at performance art centers and other smaller, seated venues for most of his pre-Billy picking days, he says that the experience of performing at rock clubs and now arenas with fans going crazy for bluegrass music has been mind-boggling and a phenomenon he’ll never stop being captivated by.

“[Playing arenas] is something none of us saw coming and is a combination of being at the right place at the right time and the contributions of everyone who came before us that paved this path for us to do it,” states Walker. “Billy is also a fantastic musician and student of bluegrass whose love for the music combined with his other influences is emblematic of the cohesion that is core to jamgrass and everything it stands for.”

Like all forms of music, jamgrass is a living, breathing organism that is constantly evolving and bringing new ideas and influences to the table. Whether it’s traditional and progressive bluegrass or rock, blues, punk, soul, country and everything in between, it all has a place in the jamgrass setting and is without a doubt the biggest driving factor of the genre’s success. It truly is a “rising tide lifts all boats” scenario that may have been a long time coming to arrive, but now that it’s here and thriving shows no signs of departing anytime soon.

“It took a long time for listening tastes to catch up with this kind of music and these instruments, but it’s no surprise to me that someone as talented as Billy is having the success he’s having,” declares Bush. “It’s only natural that the music is going to grow, and it’s in a really healthy place right now. But even with the rise of jamgrass you still have good ole Del McCoury leading the pack with his Bill Monroe style of bluegrass, and the same audience that loves jamgrass loves him too.”

Continue exploring our Jamgrass in July coverage here. This content brought to you in partnership with Preston Thompson Guitars.

Photo Credit: Sam Bush courtesy of Crossover Touring; Sierra Hull courtesy of the artist; Ben Kauffman courtesy of Crossover Touring.

30 Jamgrass Sitch Sessions

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

What do you mean this whole time we could have been the Jamgrass Situation!?

Ever since the earliest days of BGS we’ve been posting about bluegrass, hosting bluegrass shows, and shooting bluegrass Sitch Sessions. Our often-viral performance videos have been the bread and butter of the brand. Along the way, with our borderless and wide open “rootsy” purview, quite a bit of bluegrass “coloring outside the lines” has been celebrated on our site and jamgrass has permeated everything we’ve done. As the years went on, the influence of bluegrass’s current biggest phenomenon became more and more apparent on the site.

You can see this fact – obviously! – throughout our archive of Sitch Sessions. It’s quite the collection of first-rate jamgrass. Over more than 15 years we’ve had dozens of Sitch Sessions and YouTube videos feature some of the best and most beloved jamgrass acts around. One of our very first viral sensations was a now-retired clip of Billy Strings himself. But so many more have featured on our site and channels: Yonder Mountain String Band, The Lil Smokies, Elephant Revival, Front Country, Punch Brothers, Fruition, Greensky Bluegrass, Town Mountain, Mountain Grass Unit, Lindsay Lou, AJ Lee & Blue Summit, the Travelin’ McCourys, the Hillbenders – and many, many more.

From rooftops in downtown L.A. to Falkenberg, Sweden, to DelFest in Cumberland, Maryland, to the powdery slopes above Lake Tahoe to Telluride, Colorado, and back again. Across the trajectory of BGS over time, jamgrass has been an indelible through line of the work we do and the content we create. And we wouldn’t have it any other way!

To celebrate Jamgrass in July, enjoy exploring these 30 jamgrass Sitch Sessions. And dive into the archive here and here to see even more! Just for today, just for this month – let’s be the Jamgrass Situation.

“Take a Chance on Me” – Yonder Mountain String Band

We’ve gotten the chance to collaborate with Yonder Mountain String Band quite a bit over the years, but this Sitch Session has always been a highlight of our content together. YMSB have been carrying the jamgrass banner for a long time; they are stalwarts of the subgenre, for sure!

“Miss Marie” – The Lil Smokies

But why did the Lil Smokies have to retire!? We miss them so much already. If you miss them as much as we do, check out our final interview with the group posted in April 2025 on the heels of their excellent last album, Break Of The Tide.

“Cedarwood Pines” – The Brothers Comatose

Across the decades and generations you can always count on the Bay Area to produce excellent jamgrass. The Brothers Comatose certainly fit that descriptor! “Cedarwood Pines,” shot on a picturesque DTLA rooftop in 2017, features a classic lineup of the group and (gasp!) electric guitar!? (That’s how you know it’s jamgrass.)

“If Something Breaks” – Front Country

Speaking of Bay Area jamgrass – and bands we wish hadn’t retired! Front Country may be no more, but we’re glad we have our Sitch Session memories. And of course, the members of FroCo have gone on to do even more excellent things in roots music. For instance, have you heard BERTHA? Now there’s some jamgrass, too.

“Wasting Time” – Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats

Sometimes a band that isn’t a jamgrass band is a jamgrass band, you know what we mean? Now, are Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats always a jamgrass band? Perhaps no. But here, in our Sitch Session, or in many of their live, all-skate jam or festival or collaboration set contexts? Could be jamgrass… It’s always in the ear of the beholder, after all.

“Winter to Pry” – The Deer

That time we shot sessions at Old Settler’s in Austin, Texas, was one of the best. Such a great range of acts, sounds, and styles. The Deer turned out a perennial favorite Sitch Session for us, which we returned to time and time again as winter would roll in. The outdoor Austin shoot and the Deer’s offering of the song would always warm us up.

“All Day All Night” – River Whyless

If you miss River Whyless, worry not, this band hasn’t retired, they’ve just slowed down a bit and re-intentionalized their performing and touring rhythms. We once featured the group on our stage at Bonnaroo and while their sound always defied perfect categorization, here on “All Day All Night” and on festival stages – and elsewhere, to be sure – they often fit the jamgrass bill perfectly.

“Hey Boys” – The HillBenders

Recently the HillBenders have slightly shuffled their lineup, but the Missouri-based band are still one of the most party-ready groups on the bluegrass and jamgrass scenes. Their work with Keller Williams and Tommy: A Bluegrass Opry are the jammiest of their offerings, but the threads and vibes of jams and jamgrass are woven throughout their work.

“Home In Your Heart” – Elephant Revival

One of our coolest Sitch Session locations ever! Out in the desert in Pioneertown, California, with Elephant Revival. This has always been such a memorable one. Here’s another group we greatly miss.

“Dance You Hippy Dance” – Tim O’Brien

What do you call a forefather who’s also a currentfather? That’s what Tim O’Brien is to jamgrass, a foundational figure who’s also active in the music and in moving it forward. And what would jamgrass be without dancing hippies? Nothing! It would be nothing!

“Burn Them” – Greensky Bluegrass

One of our most-viewed Sitch Sessions of all time, and it’s no wonder. Greensky Bluegrass epitomize the ethos of jamgrass – community, longevity, collaboration, and of course, jams. Every time we collaborated with Mason Jar Music, who produced this session, the results would be stellar. With 1.5 million views and counting… jamgrass is where it’s at.

“Death Comes Knockin’” – Fruition

When bands and performers would route through Los Angeles, we often jumped at the chance to link up and capture some content. In 2016, we met up with Fruition in Echo Park to shoot “Death Comes Knockin’” a rocking, macabre song that’s as old-timey as it is jammy. Fruition have always been good at infusing the traditional into their progressive sounds. An essential band of the modern jamgrass movement.

“My Oh My / Boll Weevil” – Punch Brothers

Okay, now just because they can also play classical doesn’t mean Punch Brothers aren’t a jamgrass band! It’s bluegrass, it’s jam band, it’s jamgrass. I mean, you can’t be a string band playing that many Radiohead covers and not be considered jamgrass, right? Right.

“Coming Back To You” – Town Mountain

North Carolina has birthed some high-quality jamgrass over the years. Another band we’d wish out of retirement if we could, Town Mountain combined jam band appeal with country twang and bluegrass drive (and silliness, too). They were jamgrass even before they added a drum kit and a pedal steel, but towards the end of their tenure there they seemed to creep ever closer to the jammy center.

“One Horse Town” – Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper Featuring Charlie Starr

Fiddling phenom Michael Cleveland is as traditional as they get, but whether in his work with Jason Carter or his many jaw-dropping features – with Béla Fleck, or Billy Strings, or Tommy Emmanuel, or whomever – he’s known to shred his way through some jamgrass, too. Partnering here with Charlie Starr of Southern rock group Blackberry Smoke, Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper are remarkably jamgrass.

“Billy in the Lowground” – Kenny G, Ed Helms, Bryan Sutton, and Gabe Witcher

A virtual jam for pandemic times creates virtual jamgrass of the highest – and most random – sort! One of our crowning achievements across the history of BGS will be getting Kenny G in on a COVID benefit bluegrass jam. For Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, our pandemic-era virtual variety show, the sensational wind specialist performed “Billy in the Lowground” with Bryan Sutton, Gabe Witcher, and our co-founder Ed Helms. ICONIC. If Kenny G is playing bluegrass, it’s gotta be jamgrass.

“Turn Around” – Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams

Calling Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams “jamgrass artists” would be woefully reductive and simplistic. Still, it wouldn’t be right to exclude them from this list. Across their varied and diverse careers they’ve collaborated, recorded, and performed with some absolutely seminal figures in Americana, jam band, and bluegrass. Here, we caught up with the duo while sailing aboard our favorite roots music cruise, Cayamo.

“How Many Times” – Rainbow Girls

Something about Rainbow Girls is just a perfect fit for a jamgrass playlist – and we don’t just mean the rainbows. Also captured aboard a Cayamo voyage, this Bob Marley cover by the Bay Area-bwased folk group encapsulates so many of the facets that we love about jamgrass, from the material to the joy they bring forth in the music to their humor and community mindset.

“House of the Rising Sun” – Peter Rowan, Sam Bush, and Friends

There wouldn’t be no jamgrass without these fellas! At MerleFest last year Sam Bush hosted the iconic Late Night Jam and there were quite a few Late Night-jamgrassy moments. Whenever jamgrass gets to the point of having its own canon of recognizable material, like bluegrass, old-time, jazz, and others, “House of the Rising Sun” will surely be found among those songs. Absolutely nonnegotiable.

“Takes So Long, Goes So Fast” – Lindsay Lou

Decked out in snow gear, in a gondola above Lake Tahoe, with a bunch of hippies and wooks and music fans at WinterWonderGrass? Yep, that might be jamgrass. Lindsay Lou has become a stalwart in the younger jamgrass generations, and certainly not just because of her many connections to Billy Strings. As a performer herself or a collaborator or artist at large, she’s a favorite at jamgrass festivals and events.

“Fishin’ in the Dark” – AJ Lee & Blue Summit

Jamgrass filtering down through the generations! A fantastic up-and-coming bluegrass band, AJ Lee & Blue Summit, offer their rendition of a jamgrass classic first recorded by Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Who are Nitty Gritty if not a jamgrass outfit? While AJ Lee and band are much more than “just” jamgrass, they fit that moniker oh so well. This Sierragrass Sitch Session has been a fan favorite.

“Lonesome Dove” – Mountain Grass Unit

Shouldering the jamgrass mantle for Gen Z, Mountain Grass Unit have jammed with everyone from Billy Strings to Kesha to Shania Twain. These fellas are making a name for themselves right at the very center of the jamgrass universe, but while still carving out their own sound and their own identity. An exciting act to be watching and following along with at this juncture, their new album is set for release in late August.

“The Missing Stair” – Big Richard

You know what’s a prerequisite for being or becoming a jamgrass band? Big Richard energy. This group of supremely talented women have got it. We’d love to see them on more jam band and jamgrass festival lineups – a welcome palate cleanser, indeed.

“Fiery Gizzard” – the Travelin’ McCourys

Del McCoury Band have been known to dip a toe in the jamgrass waters regularly, but when the boys are “released” from their duties with their father and bandleader and go out as the Travelin’ McCourys is when they really lean into the jams. Their live shows are some of the highest quality jamgrass out there, the most elite bluegrass virtuosity lent to the jammiest, rip-roaringest tunes and songs.

“The Road Is a River” – Jim Lauderdale

Country’s modern renaissance man Jim Lauderdale is oh-so-many things – and jamgrass is one of them. With Lillie Mae and Frank Rische at his side, that seems especially true in this Rootsy Summer Session shot in Sweden. With as much tai chi as Lauderdale does, of course he belongs on this list!

“High Country” – Leftover Salmon

Leftover Salmon are one of THE most important and impactful artisan purveyors of jamgrass around. We were lucky to finally get a Sitch Session with the group a few years ago at WinterWonderGrass in Colorado. WWG is one of the best jamgrass assemblages around these days, and the festival just announced BajaWonderGrass in Mexico for April 2027.

“Weight of the World” – Clay Street Unit

Another group on the cutting edge of jamgrass and actively building its future is Clay Street Unit. Born out of the fertile jamgrass territories surrounding Denver, Colorado, the band just released their debut album earlier this year. So there’s still ample opportunity to get in on the “ground floor” of a group that is certainly going places.

“These Chickens Eat Fascists” – Pixie & the Partygrass Boys

We’d like to thank Pixie & the Partygrass Boys for representing anti-fascism in jamgrass. It’s an important beat and we need more folks giving us such a hilarious point of solidarity as “These Chickens Eat Fascists.” Two things jamgrass is always going to be: open and accepting of everyone, and a goddamn party!

“Not Quite Spring” – Kyle Tuttle

A premier banjoist in jamgrass, Kyle Tuttle has performed with so many greats in the subgenre, from Jeff Austin and Molly Tuttle to Lindsay Lou to Leftover Salmon – and many, many more. His own solo albums and solo shows (which are, gratefully, becoming more and more frequent) are jamgrassy top-to-bottom. If you’re lucky, catch him at Bluegrass Mondays at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Nashville these days, where he’s often holding court with impeccable bands backing him up.

“Islands In the Stream” – Love Canon

A jamgrass tributary in the mighty jamgrass river coursing towards the roiling jamgrass sea is cover songs from outside of bluegrass and roots music altogether. Ever since the Earl Scruggs Revue, New Grass Revival, and others in the earliest days, this has been an important plank in the jamgrass platform. Love Canon are one of the bands who did it best, offering bluegrassified versions of absolute bangers – like “Islands In the Stream,” here featuring Lauren Balthrop on vocals.

Lead Image: AJ Lee & Blue Summit

Jamgrass in July

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In bluegrass and string band music in 2026, one thing is clear: jamgrass is the center of gravity.

Once a decade or so, give or take – this is bluegrass, not arithmetic – our cozy little niche genre and its neighbors enjoy a renaissance. Many experienced the O Brother, Where Art Thou? bump that bluegrass enjoyed after the hit film (and its beloved soundtrack) was released in 2000. Before that, the best-selling bluegrass album of all time was Old & In the Way, a self-titled debut album released in 1975 by Peter Rowan, Jerry Garcia, Vassar Clements, David Grisman, and John Kahn. That was another prominent spike on the bluegrass-popularity-line-graph.

Alison Krauss & Union Station brought hundreds of thousands of new listeners into these genres in the ’90s and ’00s – as they continue to do, to this day. Many count AKUS as another such inflection point for bluegrass. As well as the (capital F, capital R) Folk Revival, Flatt & Scruggs appearing on The Beverly Hillbillies, and even the earliest days of the genre when Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys were superstars, electrifying audiences on the Grand Ole Opry, over the airwaves, and across the country. Since the genre’s earliest days, bluegrass enjoys these periodic notoriety tidal waves in mainstream, popular culture driven by its charm, virtuosity, and “wholesome” perception.

In the 2010s and 2020s, the most striking inflection point for bluegrass is certainly jamgrass. While the genre’s popularity in the new millennium has been demonstrably multivalent – in the social media age, the music’s fanbase has grown by leaps and bounds no matter the genre or subgenre – jamgrass still stands out as the primary popularity driver in the space. And even more so as an economic driver. As vertical video advances across the internet as the most commonly ingested content format, jamgrass is proliferating right along with it, young folks and acolytes connecting, combusting, and fueling the jamgrass charge.

Billy Strings is surely the zenith of the form at this point in time, as we all know, but – as he himself readily will admit – he stands on mighty shoulders, the roots of jamgrass reaching far, far back. By some measures, its seeds were planted in the Big Mon’s time, too, but it really only began to coalesce as a slang term, subgenre, and an informal set of style points and signifiers from the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s. In the early days of bluegrass, decades prior, many acts we see as legends and forebears – and many inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame – were just as likely to call their music “country” or “hillbilly” or other terms as they were to use “bluegrass.” Similarly, in jamgrass, the earliest acts to pioneer these sounds often didn’t use the term at all, or still to this day aren’t routinely categorized as jamgrass. But wherever bluegrass jams were brewing – especially at bluegrass and music festivals, where lineups were often eclectic and creative cross pollination was common – jamgrass was being grown.

Who was the first jamgrass band? Was it the Earl Scruggs Revue, when Earl and his sons grew out their hair, played anti-war songs, and toured colleges? Was it the Country Gentlemen or the Seldom Scene? Was it New Grass Revival – a choice candidate, yes, but their music could indicate they are a generation (or two or three) further evolved than jamgrass’s missing link would be. We have many fine specimens in this historical record, but who is the common ancestor of the form? John Hartford? Mmm… not quite. Or perhaps it wasn’t the Revue, but Flatt & Scruggs themselves, when their material began to shift towards the end, and Lester started eyeing the door…? Or was it the Grateful Dead? Well, it certainly wouldn’t exist as a genre or subgenre without them, but were they the first to do the thing? No.

David Grisman, Tony Rice, Clarence White, Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, Tony Trischka, and so many other pickers who learned at the feet of the first generation – literally and figuratively; or on stage beside them – would go on to become gems in the crown of jamgrass and foundational figures. But none perfectly fit underneath the moniker’s umbrella. (That’s certainly a beauty of the format, it almost always requires one foot in bluegrass, old-time, and string band and the other foot as far afield as hips will allow.) Very few of these examples would use the term, ever, across their careers.

As the generations further unrolled, into the future, Tim O’Brien, Leftover Salmon, the String Cheese Incident, Railroad Earth, Bela Fleck & the Flecktones, Sam Bush Band, and more gave rise to Greensky Bluegrass, Yonder Mountain String Band, the Infamous Stringdusters, Trampled by Turtles, Hot Buttered Rum, Fruition – and suddenly there wasn’t just a critical mass of acts making Bonnaroo-ready bluegrass, it was becoming a tradition unto itself. As these things happen, jamgrass has snowballed, its exponential growth bringing us to 2026 and a veritable golden age of the form. But it’s still just getting started.

Billy Strings may be the one filling arenas, but wherever you take a sample of bluegrass across the States, around the world, at festivals or venues, or on TikTok or reels, jamgrass is going to be there. Mountain Grass Unit are quickly on the rise, and Bronwyn’s live shows are excellent, charming, infinitely ingestible jamgrass. Molly Tuttle brings psychedelia and the Grateful Dead with her into her new pop-inflected era, Sierra Hull jams out with Cory Wong on tour, and Tatiana Hargreaves guests with the Dave Matthews Band – who, it turns out, were themselves a jamgrass band the entire time. AJ Lee & Blue Summit aren’t quite a jamgrass band, except they totally are – especially in the way they infuse California and the Bay Area into everything they do, drawing a direct line from Garcia, Grisman, Rowan, et. al. to their own songs and sounds today. Like Sam Grisman Project, too, who interconnect jamgrass generations and all the many circles of its Venn diagram.

Magoo, Clay Street Unit, Fireside Collective, Kitchen Dwellers, Shadowgrass, and countless others have never known pre-jamgrass identities as bands. They’ve always been jamgrass bands. It’s fascinating. We may forget this fact in the face of its obviousness, but we’re watching the conception of a new genre of music happen in real time.

It’s truly a golden age of jamgrass and there’s oh-so-much-more to explore. We’ve barely begun to scratch the surface.

All month long, we’re celebrating Jamgrass in July on BGS! Check out our Essential Jamgrass Playlist below – and please let us know who we forgot and what songs we missed! – dive into our collection of 30 Jamgrass Sitch Sessions, read about the origins and evolution of jamgrass, check out our chronology of jamgrass, and stay tuned for everything else jamgrass all month long, right here on BGS and across social media.

Photo Credit: Sam Bush by Shelly Swanger Photography; Bronwyn by Alexa Stone; Billy Strings by Dana Trippe.