Tag: Jimmy Martin

The Story Behind a 1981 Masterpiece: The Bluegrass Album

Posted on by Editor

Tony Rice wanted to do a bluegrass album in 1981, but not just any bluegrass album.

It was time for another Tony Rice project for Rounder Records, though he had always made his bluegrass records along with those that featured his take on David Grisman’s genre-expanding musical experiment that Tony dubbed “Spacegrass,” such as Acoustics (1979), Mar West (1980) and Still Inside (1981).

By this time, Tony had also been part of many groundbreaking bluegrass recordings, including the legendary Rounder 0044, J.D. Crowe & The New South (1975), as well as solo albums such as Guitar (1974), California Autumn (1975), Tony Rice (1977) and the marvelous Manzanita (1979), which managed to become one of the best bluegrass recordings of all time without a banjo. In addition, he and Ricky Skaggs offered one of the best examples of early country duet styles on the inimitable Skaggs and Rice (1980).

The album Tony had in mind in 1981 would go on to be considered a masterpiece: The Bluegrass Album. It would also launch a franchise, with subsequent volumes in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1989, and 1996.

Tony didn’t yet have a name for the album but he wanted the new record to be a straight-ahead paean to the early bluegrass he was raised on, specifically the canon of Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs. The reason, to him was clear: 1

“I remember thinking back then very well that bluegrass music was really in the toilet. And it was. It was at maybe its lowest point in its history. It was a rarity to even see a good bluegrass band that used an acoustic bass back then. Bluegrass bands were spread out all over the stage, individual microphones ten feet apart and it was just like a different world. It wasn’t there anymore. And The Bluegrass Album was kind of a deliberate attempt to get back to that.

“And it worked; it hit the bluegrass music world with ten times the impact that I thought it would in terms of satisfying or pacifying any bluegrass aficionado. Even the more contemporary players liked it. The traditionalists really liked it. All of a sudden here was this sound again, and it hadn’t been done since Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe and [Jimmy] Martin and Jim & Jesse at their best, and [The Osborne Brothers’] Sonny and Bob at their best. And here was the music resurrected again in its purest form, maybe even a little more precision than the originals.”

When it came time to choose who would play on the record, he thought of course of J.D. Crowe, whose playing by this time was deeply embedded in Tony’s sense of rhythm and timing. He also thought of Doyle Lawson and Bobby Hicks “…because I thought that they could do it better than anybody that I could think of. I knew I was going to be doing a bunch of Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs stuff, and I wanted to do a bluegrass album that was just as pure as it gets.

“The banjo player was logical, but I needed a mandolin player and tenor singer that could cover both of those sectors of bluegrass and do it well. Doyle was the only guy that could have done it, who could have played mandolin like that. On a Monroe tune, he could give it a Monroe flavor, and he could give it a Monroe tenor. On a Flatt & Scruggs tune, he could give it that Everett Lilly or Curly Seckler flavor, tenor too.

“And back then, Bobby Hicks was really riding the wave of a bluegrass fiddle renaissance. I mean, there was the smoothness of Kenny Baker and the unusualness of Vassar Clements, but there was a fiddle player in Hicks that was almost like every damn bluegrass fiddle player from Howdy Forrester, Chubby Wise, all the way down through the ranks, rolled up in one. And not only that, but he could play it so hard and so deliberate. And when it came time to back up something, he knew exactly what to do. And you can hear that shit. That’s the reason his backup on those mixes, if you listen to it, it’s really loud. His backup is in your face as much as the solos are—it was too pretty not to have it out there.”

Tony recalled that “Bobby and I ended up recording on a record of Ricky’s called Sweet Temptation. I heard Bobby playing that fiddle in the studio and we became real good friends.”

J.D. Crowe remembered that it was his idea to include Lawson: “Tony was talking to me about who to get for tenor. There was [Jimmy] Gaudreau, there was Ricky, there was Doyle. I said, ‘Well, for what this project is… And we’ve played with Ricky. So I think probably Doyle.’ Now I love Gaudreau’s singing, but for this record, Doyle was the one to have, for the mandolin playing, and the timing, and tenor pull, the phrasing. And I don’t think Tony had worked with Doyle at that time.” 2

On bass, Tony turned once again to his constant musical companion in this era, Todd Phillips, a fellow alum of the David Grisman Quintet. While Todd had played second mandolin in that group, he turned out to be an amazing bassist, and he played on both Guitar and Manzanita as well as on Tony’s Spacegrass recordings.

As the band listened to the results, Tony began to rethink how the project should be branded: “The first Album Band album was slated to be a Tony Rice bluegrass album and then after I got everybody together and started hearing playbacks, I thought, no, I’m not gonna do that. This sounds too much like some sort of a band. It came out under everybody’s name. I didn’t invent the name ‘The Bluegrass Album Band.’ I’ve always detested it. Milton Harkey is the inventor of that name.

“By the time the band had decided to go on a tour, it had to call itself something. Nobody knew what to call it. I didn’t know what to call it. And by then, the buying public in the bluegrass world had been buying three volumes of this stuff, and they were calling it The Bluegrass Album. Milton’s logic, I think, was, ‘Well, this is The Bluegrass Album Band. This is not just the album, this is going to be the band.’”

The group’s early albums were recorded in Berkeley, California, at 1750 Arch Street, the studio where Tony had recorded most of the Grisman records as well as Tony Rice (his first Rounder solo record), Manzanita and his first Spacegrass recordings. The session was cut with no headphones and no overdubs.

Tony remembered: “The first three volumes there were no overdubs. The idea was that when you edit, you’ve still got the entire ensemble playing together rather than piecing it together one guy at a time or making tracks and going back to overdub vocals. No matter how much you edit, you’ve still got the band playing live.

“There were two rooms at Arch Street. There was a big, elegant room upstairs with a control room that was in this mansion of a house and the guy who owned it was the first violinist for the San Francisco symphony. He was getting old and he built this room after he retired so that he could play his violin and hear it. And that was the main room at Arch Street, but they also had an isolated, conventional studio downstairs that was adjoining the control room.

“So the first two volumes of the Album Band were done in the upstairs room, and you could hear a pin drop. When you get guys gathered around, you could just hear every little nuance working together. We were individually miked and then Billy (Wolf, the engineer) hung a Neumann quadraphonic mic over the top of the whole ensemble for the purpose of capturing the room sound.”

To Tony it was more important to capture the spirit and energy of the traditional bluegrass from the 1950s: “I will accept mistakes to be able to have it live if it’s got the spirit. Listen to those Album Band records—they’re loaded with mistakes: off-pitch harmony vocals and weird tuning discrepancies here and there; missed fiddle notes. But who gives a shit? It’s almost like the discrepancies have a value of their own.”

Although Tony had a definite idea of the kinds of material he wanted to record, he admitted, “It was kind of a collaborative thing, you know. I came up with a list of tunes before we went into the studio, a list of 20 tunes to pick from. And Doyle would bring out a couple other things, and then when we got in the studio, a lot of times we’d do just whatever came to mind.”

Doyle Lawson remembered in more detail how part of the material was chosen: “Most of the time, J.D. and I would fly out together, and we’d usually meet in Atlanta and fly from there to California. And we’d write down a list of songs. I’d say ‘What about this?’ And he’d say, ‘Yeah. What about this?’ And we’d make us a list. We’d have eight, ten or twelve, whatever. We’d have a whole slew of them. And then when we got out there, Tony would have his list. We’d go through and kind of pick ‘em out—‘Who knows this one?’ ‘Yeah, I do!’ We might run through them one time or so just to figure out what we were going to do, who was going to do what where.” 3

But these were not mechanical recreations of the originals. At various times, the players would be adamant about not playing breaks or certain signature phrases because they didn’t appear in the originals, yet they also needed to play to the strengths of this extraordinary set of musicians. For one, there were no guitar breaks in the originals, but then again, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they didn’t have Tony Rice.

Tony remembered: “I think it was Doyle who talked me into playing any guitar solo I played on the first couple volumes. I didn’t want to do any. But it was Doyle who kept kind of prodding, ‘Well, I don’t want to play a mandolin solo there. People are going to expect you to play a little bit.’”

Tony’s break on Flatt & Scruggs’ “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” has become such a classic that you will undoubtedly hear it in jam sessions today. Blue Highway banjoist Jason Burleson remembers hearing “Blue Ridge Cabin Home” and Tony’s break for the first time: “It was the first time I ever heard Tony play a solo. I had no idea it was a guitar. I distinctly remember thinking, ‘Wow that’s a cool mandolin break,’ until it got to the end and there was a G Run, and I thought, ‘There’s no way that was a guitar.’ I must have set the needle back 50 times trying to comprehend what I just heard. I really didn’t know that was even possible to do on a guitar.

“At that point I’d been playing a couple of years and all I ever saw a guitar player do was a G Run. I became instantly obsessed with that solo and his solo on ‘Molly and Tenbrooks’ on the same album, and ended up buying every record I could find with Tony’s name on it. At every festival, I went in search of anyone who could maybe show me a little bit of how to do that. I remember being really skeptical that anyone could actually play and sing that well. I thought it surely must be some kind of studio trick. Then of course I saw the Album Band in Denton [North Carolina] and it was even better than the record.”

“Blue Ridge Cabin Home” is the obvious choice to begin this collection. The power and precision of both the playing and singing here make it a standout track, one that the group, once it began touring, kicked off almost every show with. When they performed at the very first International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) awards show in Owensboro, Kentucky, in September 1990, they became the only group in the history of the awards to earn an encore. From Crowe’s power pinch, fans knew they were in for a thrill.

Crowe recalled that the group didn’t need to spend a lot of rehearsal time on the material because they all knew it so well: “Just our phrasing, that was the only thing. And that wasn’t hard either, because we had all done ‘em so much and done ‘em together. Especially me and Tony. And of course, Hicks, he learned off the same thing we did. So it just fell together.”

To Doyle, who was busy at the time touring and building repertoire with his own new band Quicksilver, it “…was a joy just getting to be there and not have to do anything except play mandolin and sing tenor. For me, I was in seventh heaven.”

Perhaps the moment that best defines the power and drive of this record, and indeed, the whole series, is J.D. Crowe’s half break near the end of “Molly and Tenbrooks.” His slide seems impossibly long and his syncopated, bluesy phrasing syncs with Tony’s guitar to create one of the great moments in the history of the genre, even if it is only a few seconds long.

Once again, engineer Kevin Gray of Cohearant Audio has outdone himself for a new reissue on Craft Recordings with a stellar all-analog remastering with lacquers cut from the original stereo master tapes. With the album now available for the first time ever on vinyl, the first hi-res remastering is brilliant, bright and powerful—a must-have for any of the countless fans of these classic recordings as well as a new generation just discovering the magic of Tony Rice and his entourage’s Golden Age recordings.

Like so many of those other Tony Rice records, The Bluegrass Album’s versions of these classic songs became the standards that subsequent generations would learn and continue to emulate. Indeed, within a couple decades of its release in 1981, groups in parking lot and campground sessions were describing the songs from this record and subsequent BGAB projects as “old Bluegrass Album Band songs…”

And this continues today. It’s a measure of the legacy of this record and those that followed in the series. Tony certainly succeeded in bringing “the real stuff” back front and center in the music. The audience for this kind of music had never really gone away, but it was the 1980s that saw the first real neo-traditionalist flowering in the genre’s history, with groups like The Johnson Mountain Boys and Nashville Bluegrass Band hitting their stride. The first tap into that free-flowing keg of tradition was The Bluegrass Album.

1 Author interview with Tony Rice, 2006; other Rice interview material from Still Inside: The Tony Rice Story (Word of Mouth Press, 2010).

2 J.D. Crowe interview with Author, 2005.

3 Doyle Lawson interview with Author, 2008.

Billy Strings – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Editor

Billy Strings sits down with Tom Power for a special live episode of Toy Heart recorded at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the fall of 2025.

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Billy traces his journey from growing up playing bluegrass with his father to becoming one of the most influential musicians in the genre today. He talks about the moment he rediscovered bluegrass as a teenager, the artists who shaped his playing, including Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Larry Sparks, and Jimmy Martin, and how moving to Traverse City, Michigan, opened his eyes to the possibility of making a living as a musician.

He also reflects on discovering the improvisational side of bluegrass through bands like Greensky Bluegrass and String Cheese Incident, learning to appreciate the Grateful Dead and other forms of improvisational music, and why he believes a great song doesn’t need to be changed to connect with a massive audience.

Billy talks openly about poverty, addiction in his family, and the role music played as a coping mechanism and survival tactic. He explains why he isn’t chasing fame or Grammys as much as he is running away from the life he once knew, and why being an ambassador for bluegrass has become one of his life’s greatest purposes.

Photo Credit: Dana Trippe

50 Years of 0044: JD Crowe & The New South’s Landmark Album

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Writer Marty Godby called it “The convergence of 1975.”

The elements: a band that would only be together for 10 months, a benevolent venture capitalist who loved bluegrass, and an upstart record label from Boston. The resulting product was unprecedented and unforgettable: The New South, Rounder Records 0044. Bluegrass fans know it simply as “0044.”

The New South of this recording was J.D. Crowe on banjo; Tony Rice on guitar; Ricky Skaggs on mandolin; Bobby Slone on bass; and Jerry Douglas on Dobro. The impact of that configuration and the album were stunning. Yet, within a year of the recording, Rice would leave to become a founding member of the David Grisman Quintet. Skaggs and Douglas formed Boone Creek. Crowe and Slone continued performing together for years.

Rounder 0044 was influential enough to be preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2024 and was awarded induction into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame this year. This month, Real Gone Music will re-release the album on vinyl, as will Craft Recordings later this year on compact disc.

Both the origin story and legacy of 0044 have inspired great narratives, probably more than any other bluegrass album. Bill Nowlin, one of the three founders of Rounder Records, wrote three articles for BGS on the album’s 40th anniversary. They offer a step-by-step look at what happened in 1974 and 75, plus hilarious and poignant anecdotes and quotes.

David Menconi dedicated a chapter of his excellent book, Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music, to 0044. In 2016, radio host Daniel Mullins focused his college history capstone project on the album. Of course, it was 44 pages.

THE SHORT VERSION

 

J.D. Crowe, already revered for his banjo playing and baritone singing, led a band called The Kentucky Mountain Boys. From 1968, they had a six-nights-a-week gig at the Red Slipper Lounge in a Lexington, Kentucky Holiday Inn. Crowe added non-traditional bluegrass instruments and songs to the Holiday Inn repertoire. This was as much to please a diverse audience as it was to keep the musicians from getting bored. In 1971, Crowe changed the band’s name to The New South.

Of the name change, Rounder’s Marian Leighton Levy said, “It was obvious that this was a new kind of bluegrass.” From a broader view, “It was an era when the South was, in a way, trying to self-consciously reinvent itself as a new, modern place. And they [The New South] were kind of the musical representation of that wider political context.”

It was the ’70s, and change was brewing – even in the tightly controlled world of country music, Levy noted. Around the same time, Willie Nelson and his Outlaw Country compatriots were reaching out to new songwriters and moving away, physically and musically, from “the factory system of Nashville publishing companies.”

In 1974, lead singer Larry Rice left the New South and brother Tony took over singing lead. Ricky Skaggs’ pure tenor mixed with Rice’s unmistakable mid-range voice, creating a new, dynamic tension for their duets and trios. In the summer of that year, Crowe and the band toured without any product to sell. At the annual Gettysburg Blue Grass Festival, Crowe, his friend and manager, venture capitalist Hugh Sturgill, and the young founders of Rounder Records initiated “The Great Convergence” – an agreement for a studio recording. An innovative contract led to the first New South album.

THE BLUEGRASS WORLD EXPLODED

 

As soon as they heard the test pressing, the Rounder founders knew they had something remarkable on their hands. “Jack Tottle [who, along with John Hartford, wrote liner notes for the album] was stunned, and he kept saying, ‘This is one of the most amazing records ever made.’ And he was not given to exaggerating,” Levy said.

“It was clear. It was crisp … and the more you played it, the more you wanted to hear it.”

0044 came out in the spring of 1975. Levy said by festival season, other bands were playing the tunes from the record “pretty much note for note.” One observer said that at one festival, almost every band on stage played “Old Home Place.”

So, what is it about that record? Let’s start with the musicians. Skip Heller, who initiated the 0044 Real Gone Music reissue, said everyone in that group of players “would talk about it like it was high school prom and their first love … they had all been in good bands before, but this was the first time they had been in a band that was as great as anything in bluegrass music had ever been.”

Levy said, “They absolutely knocked each other out. … And I think that long before anybody heard the record, they knew the band would stand the test of time – because of all of them, not just one person.”

The record’s title was The New South. Only after the first printing sold out, three band members had moved on, and it was time to redo the cover (read about the cover photo – a great story in itself), was it retitled J.D. Crowe & the New South. Crowe, born in 1937, was the venerated elder and a banjo icon. After entering Jimmy Martin’s boot-camp-of-a-band at age 18, he developed impeccable timing, his own take on Scruggs-style banjo, and excellence as a baritone singer. And he knew how to pick his band members.

The influences of Tony Rice (age 24 at the time) on bluegrass and related music are limitless – from cementing the role of guitar as a lead bluegrass instrument, to modeling impeccable rhythm playing and singing, to excelling in so many genres outside the bluegrass boundaries. At 21, Skaggs had the instrumental chops, a stunning voice and the instincts to become successful in both country and bluegrass. Rounder’s Ken Irwin attributes much of 0044’s innovation to Skaggs, including bringing a teenaged Douglas into the mix.

Douglas is to Dobro what Rice is to lead guitar. Fifty years later, after 14 GRAMMY awards and countless other honors, he continues to inspire and encourage musicality and creativity in Dobro playing. Touring with Alison Krauss since 1998, it’s likely that he has been heard live by more people than any other resophonic guitar player. Of the veteran, Bobby Slone, Mullins said, “Everyone in the band wanted to make sure that Bobby got a lot of credit. … He was such a rock solid force on that band, not just on bass, but as far as camaraderie was concerned.”

By the time The New South entered the studio, Crowe, Slone, and Rice, later joined by Skaggs, had spent hundreds of hours performing together at the Holiday Inn. Individually, they were superb musicians. Together, they were as tight as a band could be.

THE SONGS

 

Long before 0044, Crowe had blasted out from under bluegrass constraints, incorporating songs like Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin,” and at Larry Rice’s suggestion, The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Sin City.” The songs on 0044 were just a small set of a huge repertoire. While the unconventional musical choices sparked controversy among traditionalists, they also sparked a flame of excitement that spread quickly and widely.

In 1975, Mullins said, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Jimmy Martin, and Bill Monroe were still “killing it” at festivals with their first generation bluegrass sound. “On the other end of the spectrum, Seldom Scene recorded Live at the Cellar Door,” an immensely popular recording, that year. Like the Country Gentlemen, the Scene had been recording songs totally out of the bluegrass box, using bluegrass instrumentation, but with an emphasis on rich melodies and harmonies, rather than just the drive of traditional bluegrass.

Mullins said, “You go to Crowe, who’s got the street cred from all his records with Martin, but he’s also looking ahead, and so he’s able to get it all in there. A lot of bands were playing to one side or the other … but to have one that hit right in the middle, right at that time, was unreal.”

“When they saw J.D. Crowe’s name up front, and they knew that he had played banjo with Jimmy Martin on all those records they had loved for 20 years, it probably made some of those hard-edged fans pay more attention,” he said.

Whatever the dynamics of the time, The New South became synonymous with great bluegrass. And 0044 made Ian Tyson’s songs forever acceptable in bluegrass jams.

ON AND ON

 

Kristin Scott Benson, six-time IBMA Banjo Player of the Year, was born the year after 0044 came out. Benson said she was about nine the first time she saw J.D. Crowe. He was playing with the Bluegrass Album Band, “and that was a formative experience. That band was so explosive, and the crowd had an air of chaos, because everybody was so excited to hear the band. Every time Tony Rice ended a solo, you couldn’t hear any music.” (Because of the crowd noise.)

It would be four years until she picked up the banjo, and two more years until she learned about The New South album – and what it meant to a banjo player.

On 0044, she says, “If you just talk quintessential banjo solos, you’ve got ‘I’m Walkin’ and ‘You Are What I Am.’ His tone is aggressive. It’s just such confident, groovy, greasy, pristine banjo. It’s impossible to overstate how good it is and how influential it is.”

“But I think you should listen to his contributions on the less banjo-friendly songs [‘Home Sweet Home Revisited,’ ’10 Degrees’], because Crowe was great at that. He was a magical backup player.”

Billy Failing, who currently plays banjo with Billy Strings, agrees. Failing started out his banjo life drawn to more progressive players like Béla Fleck. But, he said, “As time goes on, the more I circle back to J.D. Crowe. I think of how much of a gold standard he is for bluegrass banjo, and how interesting his playing is.”

“He’s considered a traditional player,” Failing continued, “but then I’m always hearing some lick that surprises me. It’s been a gradual thing, but it becomes more meaningful as time goes on. I was just listening to The New South album, and on ‘Cryin’ Holy’ – it’s just so slamming! He’s turned it up to 11 constantly on that one.” And, like Benson, he points out what he calls Crowe’s “intricate touch” on banjo.

“It’s such a cool kind of push and pull between whether he’s out front or whether he’s playing backup … it catches your attention in such a cool way.”

Benson said, “It’s easy just to be drawn to those obvious picks [like ‘Old Home Place’] but the album is so much deeper than that. This particular band presented a tightness and a level of execution that was new – I don’t think there had been a bluegrass record up until that point that was so well done.”

“The vocals, the arrangements are so well thought out. Everybody’s playing so well together. It was just a special moment and a special group of people, and I think it raised the bar for bluegrass albums,” she said, and made an imprint on so many contemporary musicians.

Benson poses the question, “Who’s the most influential modern bluegrass guy? It would have to be Tony Rice, because he affected the genre with his rhythm guitar playing, which is phenomenal. And that type of rhythm playing affects the entire groove of the band. It became the new standard, what most people go for.”

“Never discount the importance of his rhythm,” she continued, “and then obviously his lead playing, but also his singing and his material choice … so if someone pinned me down and I could only name one, he might be the guy.”

Failing, speaking of his bandmates, said, “Everybody’s inspired by The New South. I hear Billy [Strings] constantly talking about his inspiration by Tony Rice, and Jarrod [Walker] by Ricky Skaggs.” (Walker wrote liner notes for the Real Gone Music re-release.)

Mullins noted that the Rice/Skaggs blend – a lead singer with a baritone-range voice coupled with a high tenor – established a hair-tingling blend that continues to be emulated, from Ronnie Bowman and Don Rigsby in Lonesome River Band through Alison Krauss’ duets with Dan Tyminski and Russell Moore.

Benson said, “It’s an important record for the genre as a whole, and it’s also an important record to me, personally, and really, to any banjo player who is serious about learning. It’s one of those essential albums.”

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

 

First, how did it come to be widely known as 0044? Well, nobody’s sure. Irwin and Levy remember being in the very early stages of their operations at the time – with both a new label and a new distribution company. All three Rounders had been totally immersed in music, but they were learning the business as they went, developing it on their own terms.

Levy speculated, “It is possible that it went back to when we were just calling records by their numbers,” when there just weren’t that many products. “So, it may have been something we started when we were talking, and other people picked up on it, not intentionally. And we thought it was sort of humorous.”

And how did members of Emmylou Harris’ Angel Band get left off the credits, as well as the fact that J.D. played guitar on it? John Lawless goes into depth in his fascinating Bluegrass Today article.

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY

 

As the liner notes to the Real Gone Music re-release say, “Virtually no other album anywhere in history is known to its audience by its label number. Not Kind of Blue, nor Pet Sounds, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, none.”

That says quite a bit about the recording’s importance. So does the fact that two labels are issuing re-releases this year.

The Real Gone Music edition is pressed on gold-colored vinyl for its golden anniversary. Both re-releases contain two cuts not included on the original product: “Why Don’t You Tell Me So?” and a version of “Cryin Holy” with Emmylou’s voice in the mix.

Failing sums up what 0044, J.D. Crowe, and the musicians he surrounded himself with mean to him and to many of the pickers making the best music today.

“Every time I circle back to the Bluegrass Album Band, The New South, and J.D. Crowe, I’m reminded, ‘that’s how it’s done!’”

Photo Credit: Phil Zimmerman

Wear your love for 0044! Shop our exclusive RR 0044 tee on the BGS Mercantile here. 

You Gotta Hear This: New Music From Liam St. John with Molly Tuttle, the Faux Paws, and More

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Hop aboard another edition of our weekly roundup of new music and premieres!

This time, we’re grabbing a ride on a Greyhound with blues rocker Liam St. John and Molly Tuttle for a special live performance video of “Greyhound Bus Blues” that’s a truly lovely roots duet. There are a few more stops for this bus, though, so hold on! Next, the Faux Paws take us to New York City and while that city (never) sleeps they cover Jimmy Martin’s “Night,” a new single and video, shot by Dylan Ladds.

Trad bluegrass innovators Chris Jones & the Night Drivers turn a familiar idiom on its head with “Plenty Ventured,” their latest single which drops today. And, Jones’ fellow Canadian Jadea Kelly brings an endlessly smooth and soulful original Americana song that sets a peaceful and calm tone for the weekend, entitled “Friday.” It’s a special track you can find on the deluxe issue of her most recent album, Weather Girl.

Don’t miss up-and-coming bluegrass and folk string band the Wilder Flower from the mountain-y portions of the North and South Carolina line. They close out our round-up this week bringing us back to Molly Tuttle, who with Jon Weisberger wrote “Every Time the Rain Comes Pouring Down.” The Wilder Flower successfully make the song their own.

It’s a perfect musical journey, all right here on BGS. You know what you gotta do? You Gotta Hear This!

The Faux Paws, “Night”

Artist: The Faux Paws
Hometown: Springfield, Vermont
Song: “Night”
Album: No Bad Ideas
Release Date: May 9, 2025
Label: Great Bear Records / Free Dirt

In Their Words: “When Andrew unearthed this great Jimmy Martin tune we all knew the groove hidden within would be well-served by our treatment. It slaps from the first note. We linked up with great filmmaker Dylan Ladds and all decided to head to New York to shoot this video. Jimmy may not have been thinking about ‘night’ in the city that never sleeps, but we love how open the lyrics of this song are and sometimes the loneliest place being surrounded by 23 million people, right?

“We’re really excited to release this along with the single from our upcoming record and tour all spring and summer to some of our favorite towns and festivals!” – Chris Miller, banjo, sax

Video Credits: Dylan Ladds, Filmed at Epiphany Recording Studios, Long Island City, New York.

Chris Jones & the Night Drivers, “Plenty Ventured”

Artist: Chris Jones & The Night Drivers
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Plenty Ventured”
Release Date: April 11, 2025
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This twist on the old proverb ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ popped into my head pretty much out of the blue. The idea of putting too much effort or resources into a lost cause is certainly relatable, whether it’s in love or work or some other part of life. We’ve all been there at some point or another. Once I started working on it, it lent itself to a bluesy feel, and it really clicked for us in the studio. Mark Stoffel came up with the little melodic variation that starts the song.” – Chris Jones

Track Credits:
Chris Jones – Acoustic guitar, lead vocal, harmony vocal
Mark Stoffel – Mandolin
Grace van’t Hof – Banjo, harmony vocal
Marshall Wilborn – Bass
Carly Arrowood – Fiddle 

Jadea Kelly, “Friday”

Artist: Jadea Kelly
Hometown: Whitby, Ontario, Canada
Song: “Friday”
Album: Weather Girl (deluxe)
Release Date: October 12, 2024 (album); April 11, 2025 (deluxe release)

In Their Words: “This is a very simple, feel-good song about staying in and doing absolutely nothing on a Friday night. Since removing alcohol from my life two-and-a-half years ago and entering my late thirties, the weekend has a different mood and intention. It’s sacred, quiet, and filled with self-care. I also feel that the pandemic forcibly reintroduced us to home time in a new way. And I love it!” – Jadea Kelly

Track Credits:
Jadea Kelly – Vocals, songwriting
Peter Von Althen – Drums
Jim Bryson – Production, instrumentation

Liam St. John, “Greyhound Bus Blues” (featuring Molly Tuttle)

Artist: Liam St. John
Song: “Greyhound Bus Blues” (featuring Molly Tuttle)
Release Date: April 11, 2025
Label: Big Loud Rock

In Their Words: “Life as an artist is beautiful. It is unpredictable, it is incredibly fulfilling, and it is full of highs and lows. But there are moments in your career as an artist that act as pillars of affirmation. Moments that let you know you’re on the right track. For me, there are a few pillars: The first time I played a headline show where the crowd screamed every lyric with me. When I signed to Big Loud records. When I found out Molly Tuttle was going to feature on my song ‘Greyhound Bus Blues.’

“When I got the call that Molly was going to feature on this song, I could hardly believe it. I’m such a fan of her work and I admire her so much as a songwriter, singer, and musician. She elevates ‘Greyhound Bus Blues’ to another level with her world-class flat-picking and GRAMMY-winning bluegrass vocals. Collaborating with Molly, both in the studio and for the live recording, was a master class in combining professionalism and adoration of music.” – Liam St. John

Video Credit: Sean O’Halloran

The Wilder Flower, “Every Time the Rain Comes Pouring Down”

Artist: The Wilder Flower
Hometown: Brevard, North Carolina / Pickens, South Carolina
Song: “Every Time the Rain Comes Pouring Down”
Release Date: April 13, 2025

In Their Words: “As a group of developing songwriters, we couldn’t be more proud to release a song written by two distinctive stylists and heroes of ours. It blurs genre and generational lines, with the feel of fiddling ballads and bluegrass rhythm that colors our group. It’s a deeply emotional number that we connected with after the first listen. We’d like to thank Jon Weisberger and Molly Tuttle for the opportunity to take their work & make it our own.” – Danielle Yother

Photo Credit: The Faux Paws by Dylan Ladds; Liam St. John and Molly Tuttle courtesy of the artist.

The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys: “Everything That Is Traditional Now, Once Was Progressive”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Over the past decade, The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys have established themselves as a modern voice in traditional bluegrass. They are equal parts researchers, archivists, and artists, continually reframing what it means to be “traditional” – with a particular focus on the ways that bluegrass and roots music have always been progressive and boundary breaking.

For BGS, I spoke via video call to mandolinist CJ Lewandowski and fiddler Laura Orshaw around the release of their new album, Wanderers Like Me. We talked about their unique approach and mission for the group, we covered a lot of ground, and I left the conversation feeling inspired to put more thought behind my own mission in music making.

I see that you are coming up on 10 years as a band. Many years ago I had the pleasure of writing a bio for The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, and I’d love to know a bit about the way the band has developed and changed over the years?

CJ Lewandowski: I think we are all ten years older than when we started, for one, and that’s a lot. It started as four guys working at a distillery, you know, working a day job. … There was no traveling, no planning, no pushing to be something. And it naturally progressed. There were videos coming out and promoters started calling and asking us to come out and play.

A lot of people plan for stuff, and they push and push, and everything we’ve been involved with before this band was like that, plowing through clay. You push and you push and never get anywhere. Then this band just happened. We didn’t think we’d be traveling in a bus and going all over the world, but here we are!

Laura Orshaw: The coolest thing for me is seeing the material and the message of the band start to come together. Everybody is really interested in super regional groups from around where they grew up, or maybe just bands they got interested in, so the members have interesting and diverse listening palates.

For several years, the band was doing a lot of covers that people hadn’t heard before, drawing on that research. Then, for the past five years, we’ve been doing a majority of original material and I think that the conversations that it brings up within the band are new … like, “How did you come up with this?”

For example, a lot of the more recent songs are about traveling. … For me, I spin that from the women’s perspective, a lot of them are about mom or a woman waiting back home and I like to think about, “What if a woman sings this song?” I think a lot about those classic themes but making sure they’re relevant to the modern days.

You’re one of the few bands that has never changed their commitment to traditional bluegrass over the years. Tell me about that interest in maintaining your style and how to you resist the temptation to move in more commercial directions?

CL: We had a manager at one point and we were talking about different material we could cover, and I said, “I don’t know if that’s gonna fit us…” And he said, “Well whatever you play, you’re gonna play it the way you play, so it’s gonna sound like you.” I think about that a lot, because I think he’s right.

I try to stray from the word “traditional” and think more about “authentic.” It’s just the way we play, and the way we learned to play from the mentors in our home regions. Anything we do is going to sound like that. We just play and sing true to ourselves, it’s not a plan or an act, we kind of let it go with the flow

There has been pressure sometimes– maybe the band should push this way or that way, but all in all, it’s like, “Well, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it…” We are all just true to the way we play

LO: What CJ said, “whatever you do is gonna sound like you” – with the current album coming out, it’s the first time we’ve had a really heavily involved producer, Woody Platt (formerly of the Steep Canyon Rangers), working with us from pre- to post-production. I think five people are going to have their own opinion about every suggestion that comes up, but because of Woody we did try a lot of things that I don’t think we would have individually gone for. And after we all did them, we usually liked them.

CL: Woody had our sound in mind, and he said, “The main thing is, I want you guys to be you.” We spread our wings, we got a little more vulnerable. There’s a natural progression to all of this and this record is a great next step.

LO: It was just really refreshing to work with a producer and have that level of focus and excitement, having that external voice that studied and focused is huge.

Since the time I wrote your bio, Laura has formally joined the band, tell me about what she’s added to the group and how that came about? I think it’s such a magical fit, and really rounds out the sound of the band.

CL: Her first show with us was in December 2017 at the Station Inn and after that she did some sporadic shows with us and played on our next couple records. In January 2020, she joined full time and she has officially been with us for four/four and a half years now. We tried a lot of different fiddle players on the road and nothing fit quite like what she had on the table; the attitude, the drive, and the musicianship

I’m a huge fan of triple-stacked harmonies, like Jimmy Martin and Osborne Brothers, so she brought a completely different vocal opportunity to the group. There was us three guys, and we could do some three-part harmonies, but with her we could move to different keys and had a lot more flexibility. … And of course, her fiddle playing is sassy and full of energy.

A lot of people ask about the name, The Po’ Ramblin “Boys,” but there’s a tradition of that in bluegrass, with Bessie Lee playing with The Blue Grass Boys, and Gloria Belle with The Sunny Mountain Boys. I like playing into that. But it’s also the band saying, “Hey we aren’t limiting.” Like, whoever can cut the gig, we love you! We’re very open and try to be as inclusive as possible. There are a lot of demographics in the group and she just added another one. …

Bluegrass Unlimited dubbed us as being “progressively traditional,” and it’s true in that everything that is traditional now, once was progressive. I don’t try to stand on a soapbox, and it took me a long time to figure it out, but I’m a queer artist, and I didn’t have anyone to go to when I was figuring that out and I didn’t feel I had a place. So, a lot of the stuff we do today has an open mind to it. [I’m included in] an exhibit in American Currents at the Country Music Hall of Fame and I put a rainbow guitar strap in there just to say, “Hey we’re out here, and holler at me if you need something.” Because I didn’t have anyone to look up to in that way.

Can you tell me a little bit about the album art for this new record, Wanderers Like Me?

CL: The cover photo is a painting of a cowboy. It plays into the title and many of the songs on the record and goes back to the story of wandering all over the country. But that piece of art was painted by our bass player Jasper’s great-grandfather, who was a North Dakota scene painter born in 1900 who painted all the way until his passing. His artwork is in governors’ mansions, he was a very prominent artist and to include something like that for our album art is also another way of honoring tradition.

LO: The way I see bluegrass, it’s a truly American art form. just like painting scenes, it reflects the culture and the time that it was painted in. In a lot of traditional art forms, there’s a kind of preservationist stance, but I think as a band we don’t like to have that mindset as a way to hold up barriers, or to say we don’t like modern or progressive music. A lot of what is told about American and bluegrass history is through a very particular lens; it’s very easy to see a fuller picture when you start digging. We travel and meet a lot of people, we live in modern society, we all have a lot broader perspectives than the people creating music years ago.
So, we just see this mindset as a way to make the music reach its full potential. Preserve and broaden it by being aware of what’s going on around us, thinking about language and thinking about American art forms.

CJ: “Being you” is it’s own art form as well… There’s a lot to just making sure that you’re being yourself.

The people that we learned from, it’s amazing to learn at the knee or the foot of these incredible people, but it’s not a boundary. It’s something that you take and grow from and learn from. Not everyone is perfect or mindful… I learned good and bad from some of these folks. You learn what to do and sometimes you learn what not to do. You take it from spades and grow from that. We want to honor people, but also make this a better realm for everyone. Just because you play traditional music doesn’t mean you have to have a traditional mindset.

I think the fact that this record is coming out on Smithsonian Folkways says a lot about the timeless nature of the music you are creating. What do you hope that folks will get from your music now and also in the future?

LO: I think that one of the most neat things is knowing [Smithsonian’s] mandate around preserving music, knowing that everything that they have and archive will be there for ever. It will always be available.

CL: there’s a lot of good material out there that’s been overlooked. I call listening through it “digging for gems.” As an artist, I hope that one day when we’re gone… someone might find our music like that. I don’t have any kids, so I really think about how my music might be left behind for the next generation. With Smithsonian, we could be dead and gone and someone’s great-grandniece could ask for a copy of our record from the label and even if it’s out of print, they will print one copy and send it to them.

You have a lot of songs about the hardships and joys of travel and touring, do you guys see yourself touring for another 10 years?

CL: There’s a lot of different factors, I think we’d all like to go as long as we can, but within this 10 years we have fiancés, marriages, children, people living in different states. In 2018, when we got Emerging Artist of the Year [award] at IBMA, I looked at everybody and I said, “OK, if you want out, get out now.” And we all put our hands in and said, “We got this.” We all got together about how if one of us going leave, then we’d all let it go.

We never really felt like there was a place for us for a long long time, so when we found success we felt like, “Wow, we did this together…” I think the future is bright, especially with this new album.

Photo Credit: Michael Weintrob

AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s ‘City of Glass’ is Funny, Sexy, and Empowered

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

At 26, the prodigy phase of AJ Lee’s music career has passed. It might take a little more time for the tendency to confuse her with a professional wrestler using the same name to fade away.

“I think I could take her!” Lee — the singing one — gamely pronounces at the conclusion of an interview on the third album by AJ Lee & Blue Summit, City of Glass (out July 19 on Signature Sounds), prompting laughter from the band’s Scott Gates, who asserts himself on the new album writing three songs on which he sings lead.

Rounding out Santa Cruz, California-based Blue Summit are fiddler Jan Purat and guitarist Sullivan Tuttle, one of the children of educator-musician Jack Tuttle and brother of breakout star Molly Tuttle. Lee also got her start with “The Tuttles with AJ Lee.”

A keen sense of humor dots City of Glass, which was produced by Lech Wierzynski of “retro-soul” band The California Honeydrops. It was Wierzynski who suggested Harlan Howard’s “He Called Me Baby,” on which Lee delivers a notably sultry lead vocal. The reference point for her version of “He Called Me Baby” is soul singer Candi Stanton, rather than Patsy Cline or Charlie Rich.

“I was raised to sing pretty straightforward. I wanted to remove as much ego as I could, because I just wanted to sing and have fun,” Lee said. “I’ve learned to put a little bit more of my personality into it and that, I think, is making me a better singer overall, which is why we wanted to work with Lech in the first place, because he’s such a powerful singer.

“That really resonated with me and I’m trying to move more in that direction.”

Gates pipes up at this point: “AJ’s not going to say this, but Lech brought ‘He Called Me Baby’ to the table because he had the foresight, coming from that soul world, he recognizes in AJ’s voice the ability to do this kind of thing.

“The cross-pollination of these American roots, is a smart move from Lech, I think,” he said.

BGS caught up with Lee and Gates as they rehearsed in Nashville, Tennessee, and prepared to do some lip synching for a video. As a seasoned bandleader, Lee takes pains to spread the credit for her success around and steers some questions toward Gates to try and ensure she doesn’t dominate the conversation.

City of Glass is AJ Lee & Blue Summit’s third album. How do you view the progression that got you to this point?

AJ Lee: The first album, [Like I Used To], we were looking for what kind of sound we wanted as a band. Because at that time, it was only four members without a fiddle player. So on that one, we had some more electric instruments and more drums. The second album, [I’ll Come Back], we went more acoustic roots, because we just wanted to play more bluegrass, because that’s what we grew up on and that’s what we do best. For this third album, we’re confident doing bluegrass, roots, and country, sticking with more stringed instruments, but also branching out. With Lech’s involvement, we’re leaning a little bit towards soul, R&B, and keeping it interesting, but still showcasing ourselves and what we like to play and what we like to do.

Several songs on City of Glass are funny. There’s one, “Toys,” making fun of a men who act like boys, another about getting “Sick on a Plane” and a humorous take on busking, “Solicitor Man.” Why so lighthearted this time around?

Scott Gates: I grew up playing bluegrass with a lot of silly guys. There’s a bouncy kind of lighthearted feel in a lot of traditional stuff. … I noticed that a lot of songs that I had written were kind of getting down into my feelings and whatnot, and I wanted to write one that I knew would be fun for my friends to play.

Are there models in bluegrass you’re following with the humor?

SG: There is a history of fun stuff like The Louvin Brothers. I’m also influenced by Jimmy Martin. Jimmy Martin is one of the pillars of bluegrass music, and he’s hilarious.

“Toys” is about a young guy or maybe an immature man. Is it about yourself, Scott?

SG: A little bit, yeah, probably as a teenager noticing the involuntary methods by which young, dumb boys go about thinking of themselves. It was mostly born out of that phrase, “The man who dies with the most toys wins.”

The title cut, “City of Glass,” is about leaving an artistic legacy. Aren’t you guys a little young to be concerned about that?

AJ: Yeah, I’m pretty young. I’m 26 now, but I have been doing music since I was really young. Collectively, we figured out that the band has about 90 years worth of experience. I’ve been playing on stage since I was about four or five years old. So I’m young, but I have been doing it for a long time. Legacy is having something that you’ve made be around even when you’re not doing it anymore. That’s a big theme of “City of Glass.”

As you say, you got started very young as musicians and Jack Tuttle was a common mentor. How did that develop?

SG: I met AJ when she was four. I knew her older sister Molly, ‘cause she’s my age. So I knew her more. But [Sullivan Tuttle] was around, and Sully and AJ had known each other since back then. I was probably about seven or eight when I first started going to the Father’s Day Festival and the music camp. So I got an opportunity to learn and play from people like John Reischman and Mike Compton and see musicians like The Osborne Brothers and Earl Scruggs. The picking scene is incredibly high quality.

AJ, you were the only non-Tuttle in the Tuttle family band when you were very young. What was that like?

AJ: I loved it. As a young kid, it’s kind of hard to be in the moment and really appreciate what you’re doing. As a seven-year-old to fifteen-year-old, I went about it as like, “OK, we’re playing a gig, I’m going to practice here and I’m going to sing my song. I’m hanging out with my friends, and that’s it.” But being in that band was definitely instrumental in my progress as a bluegrass musician, because I got to work directly with Jack Tuttle. Everyone loves Jack because he’s such a renowned teacher in the community and obviously all of his kids are talented beyond measure. So I was able to play with people who were better than me and also equal to me. My mom, growing up, she always said, “You always want to play with people who are better than you, because that’s how you’re going to get better.” And so I got to have that opportunity for many years.

Is there any competition now between yourself, Molly Tuttle and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes now that you all are competing musicians in the marketplace?

SG: Absolutely! [Laughs]

AJ: No, no, no, definitely not. For me and Molly, we’re branching off and doing our own thing. We were in a band for however many years, and now we’re off doing our own projects. And Bronwyn is branching off and doing her own projects in a similar way.

So, it’s the same in any community or genre of music, you played together and now you’re doing your own thing. Molly’s singing on our album as well, on a song [“I Can’t Find You at All”] that her dad wrote.

AJ, you could pursue a solo career, why do you prefer a band situation?

AJ: It makes me happy. I like playing with other people. I don’t really like performing by myself. I feel like I have a lot to offer, but I also like playing with people who also have a lot to offer and are amazing talents. And, you know, people compliment our band on how many singers there are. I always think that the more singers the better, the more talent you can showcase the better.

Pretty much anyone in the band could peel off and do a solo career. But I think what makes us really unique and strong as a band is that we all can be individual musicians, but we choose to play together, because it just makes the creative juices flow more and it makes us want to even continue on more than I would as a solo musician.

SG: At some point, I’ll probably do my own project. But right now, all I care about is playing music with AJ and the boys and see where this goes. I try not to plan too much. I don’t really scheme. I probably should scheme a little bit more, but I just don’t.

How does the California bluegrass scene differ from the South?

SG: A lot of people think of California as the jammy stuff, the Deadhead stuff that comes out of there. But even to this day, the California Bluegrass Association is very traditional. It’s one of the most traditional associations out there and there’s also a huge focus on singing. The singers that come out of a place like Tennessee are extremely good at blending. There’s a school of singing, and a lot of them sound very similar. Their harmonies are incredibly perfect. But California tends to reward individuality and uniqueness. The unique voices are kind of put on a pedestal.

AJ, your singing style is more subtle than showy. Why?

AJ: I agree with you. I’ve always really appreciated the subtlety of singing to where it’s not, “Look at me. Look at how well I can sing.”

“Hillside” uses the metaphor of a hill that aspires to be a mountain. What does the metaphor represent?

AJ: “Hillside” is about women empowerment. The metaphor is that you are this hill that is bombarded by all these outside elements trying to knock you down. But your foundation has become so strong and nothing’s really going to topple you over.

Have you experienced a lot of sexism in your career?

AJ: I’ve experienced some, of course. Especially after shows, you know a lot of older gentleman say things to me that obviously they mean well, but it just turns out to be very sexist. I get a lot of the, “If I was 20-years, 30-years younger” sort of statements, and it’s just like, “Ooh, gosh.”

How about general discrimination?

AJ: Yeah, especially jamming in the bluegrass community, as a woman sometimes you’ll just get into those circles that have that male energy so present and it’s really hard for women to join a jam sometimes. But I’ve learned to try to just get myself in there over the years with support from my mom and other strong women who are also in the community.

Are you on the record on where the “Blue Summit” band name originates?

AJ: Our first festival we played was a Kate Wolf festival. We actually didn’t really have a band name yet that we were happy with. The original name we hated. Our original bass player at the time, Isaac Cornelius, came up with The Highway 17 Savages, which doesn’t really resonate with our band at all. We totally needed to change this name. So we made these recordings to send in to Kate Wolf at Isaac’s house, which he grew up on the summit in Santa Cruz. So we were like bluegrass on the summit. So we became Blue Summit.

Photo Credit: Natia Cinco

WATCH: Steven Moore & Jed Clark, “New Camptown Races”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Steven Moore & Jed Clark
Hometown: Jed Clark lives in Nashville, Tennessee, originally from Searcy, Arkansas; Steven Moore lives in Saint Clairsville, Ohio, originally from Bethesda, Ohio.
Song: “New Camptown Races” (by Frank Wakefield)
Release Date: June 26, 2024 (video)

In Their Words: “We are very excited to share our music video of ‘New Camptown Races,’ a tune by the late Frank Wakefield (June 26, 1934 – April 26, 2024) that has become a bluegrass standard. The idea for this video began at SPBGMA 2023, when we jammed to ‘New Camptown Races’ with both of us playing it in B-flat without using capos. We laughed and agreed that we needed to record it and maybe do a video shoot of it someday. It wasn’t until a year later at SPBGMA 2024, when we met up again, that we really solidified plans to make the video happen. Our hopes were to record the video and put it out on June 26, 2024 in honor of Frank’s 90th birthday. Unfortunately, the world lost Frank two months before he turned 90, but we decided to still aim to put out the video on what would have been Frank’s 90th birthday, in his memory.

“Frank’s prowess on mandolin, evident by his years performing with bluegrass legends like Red Allen and The Kentuckians, Jimmy Martin, the Stanley Brothers, and Don Reno, is often not discussed nearly as much as his personality. Frank was known for having an off-kilter approach to everything, from how he talked to how he approached the mandolin. Stories about Frank spray painting his mandolin red (an irreplaceable 1923 Lloyd Loar signed Gibson F-5) as well as baking that very mandolin in an oven in an attempt to enhance its tone are just a couple examples of his unconventional character. Our attempt to play this tune in B-flat without capos on guitar and banjo is a bit unconventional as well, and we hope that Frank would have liked it. Thanks, Frank, for the music, the stories, and this great tune!” – Steven Moore

Video, Audio, and Video Still Credits: Daniel Kelley and Bethany Kelley of Octopus Garden Studios.

Artist of the Month: Willi Carlisle

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s not hard to imagine Willi Carlisle’s latest album, Critterland, as a decrepit-but-lovable roadside attraction, but here, the side show has decidedly taken center stage. Carlisle, a folksy, pastoral poet and songsmith, has invited all of us inside the big tent he pitched with his last record, Peculiar, Missouri, and to celebrate all of the beautiful ugliness we find in the spotlight. Produced by Darrell Scott, Critterland finds redemption in proudly – and holistically – owning and just as often subverting expectations around rurality, authenticity, community, and belonging. It’s a deft and artful confluence of schtick and performance, vulnerability and obscurity, artifice and genuineness, that could only be accomplished by a creative like Carlisle.

In Ryan Lee Cartwright’s book, Peculiar Places: A Queer Crip History of White Rural Nonconformity, the author and academic makes an astonishing case for the American societal and imperial construction of the “rural idyll,” and thereby, the co-construction of its antonym: the rural “anti-idyll.” The rural idyll is our general understanding of how rurality and the American dream intersect; of goodness and work ethic and respectability, of insiders and good ol’ boys and our kinda folks. The anti-idyll is the amorphous, intangible opposite of those white supremacist and capitalistic constructs.

Critterland is a joyous and liberated inhabitation of the latter concept, reveling in queerness, counter culture, other-hood, and so many kinds of rural, agrarian, and American anti-idylls. What are queer folks, poor folks, Black folks, brown folks, disabled folks in the country – and in country music – besides, first and foremost, antithetical representations of the American dream? The overlooked, enshadowed folks who inhabit the American anti-idyll… who is singing music for them? Who is inviting those very folks to step into the spotlight?

Willi Carlisle is certainly one. Tracks like “When the Pills Wear Off” and “The Money Grows on Trees” synthesize broad, generational, socio-economic realities that are often discussed, understood, and intellectualized – but rarely with their subjects first in mind. Carlisle is clearly making these songs for the people most impacted by their content; any translation they have in more zoomed-out contexts or to wider audiences is simply an added bonus. Others, like “Dry County Dust,” “Two-Headed Lamb,” and the titular “Critterland” seem to wink at the rural cosplay worn by all songwriters and music makers in roots music, but again, winking first to those who already understand it was always cosplay, from the very beginning.

Whether inhabiting the character of his onstage persona, which often but not always aligns with the human himself, or merely reflecting the pantheon of folks in his own life and communities, there’s a quality to Carlisle’s music and to Critterland that’s saying, “This music is for our kind of people.” And in the words of another backwoods poet, Jimmy Martin, “It takes one to know one, and I know you.” That could almost be the entire thesis statement of the album.

Darrell Scott’s production – and his own multi-pronged relationship to the anti-idyll – makes the clumsiness and haphazardness of this set of songs feel fully like a feature and not a bug. This is Critterland, after all, these side show animatronics are on their last legs and that’s why we love them. This sort of charm is certainly carried over from Peculiar, Missouri – which has delightfully variable production styles across the tracks – and really from all of Carlisle’s releases to date. (Including, if not especially, his hugely popular sessions with Western AF.)

Critterland, in the end, may not be the most magical place on earth, but it doesn’t want to be. And, it’s still a place you’ll end up returning to again and again. Because Willi Carlisle’s big tent is really, actually big enough for all of us. On our best and on our worst days and on all of the many days in between.

BGS will spend all of February celebrating Willi Carlisle as our Artist of the Month. Watch for an in-depth feature by music journalist and author Steacy Easton coming soon and, for now, enjoy our Essential Willi Carlisle playlist. Plus, don’t miss Willi and Critterland in the debut issue of Good Country, a new bi-weekly email newsletter from BGS.

Photo Credit: Madison Hurley

Willie Nelson’s ‘Bluegrass’ Underlines His Lifelong Relationship with the Genre

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“He was exceedingly cool and easy,” long-time Bill Monroe bassist Mark Hembree remembers about Willie Nelson’s presence at a 1983 recording session where Nelson sang and played with Monroe. “I never had a say in Bill’s mixes, but they had Willie’s guitar way up and as we listened to playback he mentioned it, then turned and asked what I thought,” Hembree wrote in a recent exchange of messages. “I agreed, a little surprised he would ask me.”

People who hear about Willie Nelson’s latest album, Bluegrass, before hearing the music might ask, “Wait, what? What does Willie Nelson have to do with bluegrass music?”

Upon listening, at least two answers come to mind: 1) Much more than you might think. 2) Don’t worry so much.

With tunes by Nelson, one of the best American songwriters, played by notable pickers, the record contains strong music that should sound welcome to fans of Nelson, of bluegrass, and of the field with the loose label, “Americana.”

It’s a given that in more than 60 years of major-label recording, Nelson, 90, has been better known for presenting his own songs, enduring tunes such as “Crazy,” “Hello Walls,” and “On the Road Again,” the last of which is heard here in a new version. But he’s also made his name with notable covers – like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “Seven Spanish Angels,” “Blue Skies,” and others – in a welter of styles, including blues, pop standards, and even reggae. Nelson’s core music enfolds ‘40s and ‘50s country, traditional fiddle tunes, four-square gospel, ragtime, some swing flavorings, and definitely a heap of blues. The mix also includes more contemporary pop. Subtract some of that last bit of material, throw in some lonesome mountain banjo and ballads, and you’ll find, in different proportions, foundational bluegrass as designed by chief architects like Bill Monroe and Earl Scruggs.

Legacy Records, the Sony division putting out Nelson’s Bluegrass disc, says the style “was given a name by Kentucky songwriter/performer/recording artist Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, whose post-war recordings profoundly influenced Willie’s songwriting sensibilities and the direction of American country music in general.” They go on to say, “Willie chose songs combining the kind of strong melodies, memorable storylines and tight ensemble-interplay found in traditional bluegrass interpretations of the roots (from European melodies to African rhythms) of American folk songs.”

And it’s pretty much on target. But what else speaks to Nelson’s involvement with bluegrass?

Let’s return to the early ‘70s, when he famously abandoned a Nashville scene where he had achieved songwriting fame and a recording career. But Music Row had flagged in creativity and opportunity, he and others thought. And yes, at the end of 1969, his house had burned down. By 1972, Nelson’s persona was changing as his new approach revisited his Texas roots. The year saw new-breed stars like Kris Kristofferson showing up at the first Dripping Springs Reunion, a Texas country music festival. The show, which was to morph int0 a string of outdoor throwdowns known as Willie’s Fourth of July Picnic, presented a bluegrass contingent led by Monroe, with foundational figures Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt leading their post-breakup bands, as
well as additional notables including Jimmy Martin.

Jo Walker, executive director of the Country Music Association, told the Austin-American Statesman that the trade group was delighted to hear about the Dripping Springs Reunion. “So many of the rock festivals and similar events have reflected so unfavorably on the music industry that we are particularly happy that your reunion will be a Country Music show.” But with Nelson embracing a new, youth-driven fan base and a long-haired, bandana-ed look, what did country music even mean?

There was a growing correlation, it seemed, between the increased popularity of bluegrass and the emergent outlaw (read: long hair, free-thinking, whiskey-drinking, dope smoking, etc.) movement in country music, led by Nelson and Waylon Jennings. Its bluegrass surge was sparked in part by the Earl Scruggs Revue’s broad acceptance in non-traditional venues like college campuses and hot sales for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s Will the Circle Be Unbroken. Back in Nashville, in 1973, wider acceptance of bluegrass also meant that Monroe, his former Blue Grass Boy Flatt, the brilliant wildman Jimmy Martin, and the great brother team of Jim & Jesse McReynolds would join Nelson amid the crowd of stars at CMA’s second annual Fan Fair celebration.

In 1974, both Scruggs and Monroe, as well as Grand Ole Opry stars Ernest Tubb, Jeanne Pruitt, and Roy Acuff appeared on stage singing with another wildman, country-blues rocker Leon Russell. That’s documented in a photograph of this period, likely from a Willie’s Picnic. Quite a lineup.

A version of the picture found on the web says the shot is from A Poem is a Naked Person, a documentary on Russell by esteemed filmmaker Les Blank shot between 1972 and 1974, but not released until 2015. Nelson appears in the movie to sing “Good Hearted Woman” – also on this new album – playing guitar bass runs that would work fine in bluegrass. He also backs up fiddler Mary Egan, of the Austin “progressive-country” band Greezy Wheels, on an energetic version of the bluegrass-country perennial “Orange Blossom Special.”

In 1974, Nelson went to work in the soul-music capital of Muscle Shoal, Alabama, to record a milestone disc on his road to making records his own way. The album, Phases and Stages, which won over both fans and critics, contains prominent five-string played Scruggs-style on the hit “Bloody Mary Morning,” which also returns on Bluegrass.

The 1983 Bill Monroe session referenced above came after a last minute February 22 phone call from Nelson to let Monroe know he was available to appear on the in-progress Bill Monroe and Friends album for MCA Records. That’s according to a passage in the indispensable book, The Music of Bill Monroe, by bluegrass scholars Neil Rosenberg and Charles Wolfe.

“[Engineer, Vic) Gabany recalls that on February, 22, 1983, Monroe called the studio and asked if it was free that afternoon,” Rosenberg and Wolfe write. “Willie Nelson was in town, and he wanted to rush in and cut the duet with him. Fortunately, it was. Moreover, the Blue Grass Boys were all available, and Haynes was able to round up studio musicians Charlie Collins and Buddy Spicher.”

Monroe’s original tune with Nelson, “The Sunset Trail,” shows the impact of another style, cowboy music, that both men favored. Nelson reaches into his upper range to sing below Monroe, who’s going way up there, as was his wont. “It’s a thrill of my life to be here with you,” Monroe says as he and Nelson exchange praise in the track’s introduction.

In 1990, Monroe accepted Nelson’s invitation to perform at the April 7 Farm Aid IV concert in Indianapolis. “We’re glad to be here with Willie Nelson!” he said to kick off a set marked by powerful singing, crisp mandolin picking, and a little crowd-pleasing buck dancing. The show placed Monroe, 79, in a lineup that included stars such as Elton John and Lou Reid. The Indianapolis Star estimated the crowd at 45,000.

During Monroe’s last years — he died in 1996 — he often spoke to Nelson on the phone, according to a person who didn’t want to be identified, but often spent time at Monroe’s home on the farm outside Nashville during that period. “He valued their friendship immensely,” the person said.

Bluegrass‘s 12 songs contain several Nelson compositions that became standards of his repertoire, along with less familiar tunes that also fit in the recording approach overseen by Music Row’s Buddy Cannon. A songwriter and producer, Cannon is known for delivering big songs, like “Set ‘Em Up Joe” for Vern Gosdin, and chart hits for more recent mainstream acts such as Kenny Chesney, John Michael Montgomery, and Reba McEntire. A frequent Nelson collaborator, Cannon assembled a list of Nashville co-conspirators: Union Station members Barry Bales, on bass, and Ron Block, on banjo; former Union Station member and current rising star Dan Tyminski on mandolin; fiddler Aubrey Haynie; Dobro man Rob Ickes; Seth Taylor also on mandolin; as well as harmonica player Mickey Raphael, who’s worked for decades in Nelson’s band.

The music mostly doesn’t come off as hard-core bluegrass in the mode of, say, the Stanley Brothers. But it leans on the elements that Nelson has in common with the style — lonesome melodies, classic country, swing and blues.

The mournful “You Left Me a Long, Long Time Ago,” from 1964, reflects the straight-country songwriting to which Nelson and others brought a terse, modern beauty in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. It was a time when bluegrass enjoyed a closer co-existence with mainstream country, as opposed to straining against the tight format borders that limit today’s music business. Among the many artists who crossed back and forth freely were guitarist-songwriter, Carl Butler, fiddler Tommy Jackson, and Cajun star Doug Kershaw. They all worked with Monroe.

A new version of “Sad Songs and Waltzes” mourns in tones not too different from Monroe favorites ranging from “Kentucky Waltz” to “Sitting Alone in the Moonlight.” The song also recalls the 3/4 time Lone Star tunes that Nelson might have heard at the Texas Fiddlers Contest and Reunion.

That show got going in 1934 in Athens, Texas, just one year before Nelson arrived on the scene in Abbott, less than 90 miles away.

The fiddle contests that influenced so much of Texas music beginning in the 19th century, had parallels in the 18th century Southeast, where contests featured both the fiddle and the banjo, with its African roots. This music went around, and it still comes around.

The sock-rhythm backing of “Ain’t No Love Around” recalls early Blue Grass Boys recordings such as “Heavy Traffic Ahead,” recorded September 16, 1946, and featuring Earl Scruggs’ first recorded banjo solo. Elsewhere, the laidback favorite, “On the Road Again,” gets a more intense reading from Nelson, with some vocal and instrumental improvisation to spice it up. The mystical “Still is Still Moving to Me” leaves plenty of room for pickers to range far and wide on banjo, mandolin, fiddle and Dobro.

“You give the appearance of one widely traveled,” Nelson sings in “Yesterday’s Wine.” He’s singing from a faraway spot in time, in myth, in history. It’s a stance that’s earned a place on bluegrass playlists for more recent songwriters such as Guy Clark, David Olney, and Gillian Welch.

“Bloody Mary Morning,” from Phases and Stages gets the most recent of several revivals from Nelson, who led a jam-grassy version in the 1980 film Honeysuckle Rose and later sang it in a duet with Wynonna Judd. The song’s forthright tale of fighting the blues by having a highball on a plane seems somehow classier than the constant tales of beer and pickups that populate country radio.

In the end it seems clear that for decades, both Willie Nelson and bluegrass music have served, in different ways, as a conscience of country music. Just as the Solemn Old Judge, WSM radio announcer George D. Hay, commanded, they “Keep her close to the ground, boys,” although their paths have diverged, at times.

In any case, this new collection brings Nelson together with bluegrass pickers for music that might even work to serve that same worthy purpose.

Photo Credit: Pamela Springsteen

Gloria Belle: A Woman “Sideman” Who Held Her Own in Bluegrass

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Gloria Flickinger’s first public singing engagement was at age three. Her parents placed her on a chair to reach the microphone at a radio station broadcasting a church program. 

More than 70 years later, Gloria – by then long known as Gloria Belle – was still singing the gospel music she loved in churches in the Tennessee region.

Between her first performance and her death on May 5, 2023, at age 84, Gloria Belle broke barriers as a multi-talented musician in the male-dominated world of first-generation bluegrass. She set a standard for all-around musicianship, independence and grace-under-fire for future generations of women in bluegrass.

Gloria grew up listening to the Grand Ole Opry and the Wheeling Jamboree on the radio – where her attention was caught early on by Little Miss Evelyn singing with the Bailey Brothers. She also was taken by the powerful voices of Mollie O’Day and Wilma Lee Cooper.

At age 11, she picked up a mandolin that she said her mother “had never learned to play like she wanted to.” She learned basic guitar from her mother, as well, and learned to pick out melodies by listening to Mother Maybelle Carter and Bill Clifton.

When she was 13, her parents took her to a Bailey Brothers performance at Valley View Park in Pennsylvania. In a 2006 interview, Gloria said, “When I saw that show, I said, ‘That’s it.’” She was going to be a musician. At 15, she dropped out of high school, saying, “I don’t need a high school education to play music.”

After leaving school, Gloria took day jobs (most notably in a potato chip factory). She honed her instrumental skills, played for a time with a local band and continued singing in churches with her parents – who were enduringly supportive of her music. 

During that period, a teenaged Tom Gray (legendary bass player with the Country Gentlemen and Seldom Scene, as well as others) jammed with Gloria in a parking lot in West Grove, Pennsylvania. He said, “She impressed everyone with her singing. What a strong voice. And she could play most of the instruments. Our mentor, Bill Clifton said, ‘There is a woman who can sing like Molly O’Day.’”

One family vacation, the Flickingers drove to a showing of the Farm and Home Hour – live broadcast programming started by entrepreneur Cas Walker to promote his Knoxville retail businesses. Danny Bailey, formerly of the Bailey Brothers, invited Gloria and her mother to perform a few tunes.

About six months later, Bailey wrote to Gloria, asking her to come to Knoxville as soon as possible to replace departing performers.

On the way to Knoxville, the family stopped in Huntington, West Virginia, so Gloria could meet her hero, Molly O’Day. The older woman received them graciously, recommending which of O’Day’s songs Gloria should incorporate into her repertoire. 

One of these was “Banjo Pickin’ Girl”– which Gloria would play in seven shows a day, six days a week during one long, North Carolina summer.

Jump ahead to 1959, Gloria was 21.

Almost immediately, Gloria began breaking new ground as a bluegrass musician. Beyond being the “girl singer,” she was establishing herself as an instrumentalist and harmony partner, as well as a lead singer.

For five years, Gloria played with Cas Walker’s live radio and TV programs. Walker dubbed the singer “Gloria Belle,” because he couldn’t pronounce Flickinger.  

Gloria sang duets with Danny Bailey, as well showcasing on banjo and twin mandolins. During this period, she recorded two singles, becoming only the second woman (the first was Donna Stoneman) to record a bluegrass mandolin solo.

After leaving Walker’s organization, Gloria easily found other work. She spent a season at the Ghost Town shows in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. It was there she played ‘Banjo Pickin’ Girl’ so often, she said, “I felt like a robot.”

She then performed with Betty Amos and her All-Girl Band, playing country and bluegrass.

In 1967, Rebel Records released Gloria Belle Sings and Plays Bluegrass in the Country. She was only the fourth female bluegrass artist with her own album, and the first woman to play lead instruments (banjo, guitar and mandolin) on a solo project. 

On two later solo albums (A Good Hearted Woman, 1976, and The Love of the Mountains in 1986) she preferred to concentrate on her singing, only playing one stunning mandolin solo that kept up with the speed of her stellar back-up band, the Johnson Mountain Boys.

Around this time, the band Bluegrass Travelers invited Gloria to join them as band leader. Gloria again broke new ground, fronting an all-men’s band. She also demonstrated her strong sense of values by insisting that all band members, including herself, receive the same pay. 

In her important book on women in bluegrass, Pretty Good for a Girl, Murphy Henry wrote, “What we are seeing here is a picture of the quintessential bluegrass side musician, only this had never been done before by a woman in bluegrass.  . . . Gloria Belle went where the work was.”

Occasionally, being a female musician could open doors in bluegrass. The audience appeal of a “girl singer” encouraged Jimmy Martin – one of the top names in bluegrass – to invite Gloria to join his Sunny Mountain Boys.

While he never took full advantage of Gloria’s instrumental abilities (she played snare drum before moving to bass with him), Gloria’s voice shone as a harmony singer, including on high baritone parts of trios and quartets. While Martin discouraged her from playing on recordings, she sang on many tracks, adding harmonies that Henry described as “spine-tingling.” 

Gloria distinguished herself in other ways. As a tiny woman on stage, she held her own with grace, kindness and gratitude for doing the work she had always wanted to do. (And she hauled her upright bass across the stage effortlessly.)

As a boy, Mark Newton saw Gloria perform with the Sunny Mountain Boys. “She held her head high. She was confident. She was determined.” And he remembers the passionate gleam in her eyes when she played and sang.

Timmy Martin (Jimmy Martin, Jr.) met Gloria when he was a young boy playing in his dad’s band. He bought his first – and still favorite – car from Gloria at age 14.  

Gloria was assigned to ride shotgun when the teenaged Timmy drove the bus, entertaining him with conversation during long hours on the road. “She was always really, really nice,” even during stressful episodes – like when the band had to sleep on a broken-down bus somewhere near Kansas for days.

A frequent comment about Gloria’s days with Jimmy Martin’s band was, “It can’t have been easy.” But Gloria seems to have laughed off the wisecracks and insults. 

Author Bob Artis quoted Martin as joking, “She’s not very good, but we let her sing with us ‘cause we feel sorry for her.” Whether he garbled her name during an introduction or deliberately distracted the audience during her solos, Gloria didn’t let it bother her: “I was just doing my job.” 

Gloria left the Sunny Mountain Boys for several years, during which time she played with an all-female country dance band and later in a duo with Charlie Monroe. In 1975, she returned to Martin’s band, recording with him a final time in 1978.

Gloria returned to Cas Walker in Knoxville, taking other jobs in the region as time permitted. Eventually, she moved to Florida, where she took temporary day jobs, jammed and for a short time performed with an all-female group called Foxfire.

Until this time, Gloria had remained single by choice. But after crossing paths musically with luthier and guitarist Mike Long for many years, Gloria married Long in 1989. Until then, she said, “I wasn’t going to marry somebody who would stop me from playing music.”

The couple formed Gloria Bell and Tennessee Sunshine. Based in Virginia, they toured and recorded five albums, three of which were entirely gospel. Nancy Cardwell, Executive Director of the International Bluegrass Music Foundation said, “Gloria …was definitely the band leader, and Mike treated her like a star…”

During her later years, Gloria remained visible in the bluegrass arena. Murphy Henry notes two memories of the Gloria at IBMA gatherings that stand out particularly: “…a Women in Bluegrass performance at Fan Fest, where she played killer mandolin on the rapid-fire instrumental ‘Dixie Breakdown,’” and “a Women in Bluegrass workshop where she and Hazel Dickens stole the show by singing a hair-raising version of ‘Banjo Pickin’ Girl.’”

In 1999, Gloria was the first person Mark Newton contacted when he planned his duet album, Follow Me Back to the Fold, a tribute to women in bluegrass. In 2001, Newton’s project was named IBMA Recorded Event of the Year. Henry wrote, “At the IBMA Awards Show… Gloria Belle participated in the grand finale… When she stepped up to the [mic] to belt out her verse of the title song, the audience broke into spontaneous applause for her energetic performance.” 

Also in 1999, Gloria became only the ninth woman to be awarded the IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award. And in 2009, she won another Recorded Event of the Year award for Proud to be a Daughter of Bluegrass.

The IBMA Foundation’s Cardwell said, “That ‘She Persisted’ T-shirt that was popular a few years ago could have been inspired by Gloria Belle. She was one of the first women in bluegrass during her era to tour, perform and record professionally in well-known groups . . . as a side musician who wasn’t a part of a family band or married to someone in the band. 

“She played lead and rhythm instruments well  . . . and pulled her weight musically as a band member . . .  she was a role model and an inspiration for all the great female instrumentalists, singers and band leaders that have come along in bluegrass music in later years.”

Acclaimed bassist and band leader Missy Raines remembers her reactions to Gloria’s stage appearances. “Her impact on this young girl was real. She always dressed for the stage – lots of sparkle. She sang great and played everything. She endured Jimmy Martin’s stage banter with grace and fortitude that can only come from a true professional.”

Becky Buller, a much-lauded singer and fiddler who also worked her way from side musician to band leader, believes she had much to learn from Gloria. She conducted a long search to find her, but only succeeded after Gloria was too ill to speak. But the 2006 video brought Gloria’s personality to life for Buller. “I especially loved her laugh.”

Friends remember how close she was with her parents, who were a constant source of support and kindness. After her father’s death, Gloria’s mother continued to be a presence at Gloria’s performances as well as in her home.

Barbara Martin Stephens, who first hired Gloria for Jimmy Martin’s band and who stayed friendly with her and Mike, had nothing but praise for Gloria: “She was always a kind person,” she said, who never spoke ill of anyone. “And she was a happy person,” Barbara said. “You just don’t find many people like that.”

Editor’s Note: To honor Gloria Belle, the IBMA Foundation will establish a scholarship fund in her name. Foundation board member Becky Buller said the foundation provides around $50,000 in grants and fellowships annually for a wide range of educational and research pursuits. Buller recognizes that in the last decades of Belle’s life, she may not have gotten the recognition she deserved. She hopes an enduring scholarship will keep Gloria’s name and spirit at the forefront of the bluegrass community.