Tag: Joe Newberry.

IBMA Awards 2020: See the Full List of Winners

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The winners of the 31st annual IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards were announced Thursday night via video awards show, hosted by Sierra Hull, Tim O’Brien, Joe Newberry, and Rhonda Vincent.

The “biggest night in bluegrass” was well-adapted to its virtual setting and boasted three Hall of Fame inductions, guitar and banjo tributes to Doc Watson and J.D. Crowe, a continent-spanning collaboration by Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley and Taj Mahal, and celebrations of the 20th anniversary of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and the 75th anniversary of the birth of bluegrass. Marking the occasion, Del, Ronnie, and Rob McCoury opened the evening from an empty Ryman Auditorium, regarded as the birthplace of bluegrass and a former home for the show.

Special performances were shot live at home, in studios, and at various small venues — as well as the Station Inn and the Ryman. Billy Strings paid tribute to Hall of Famer and Male Vocalist of the Year nominee, Larry Sparks, with a cover of “John Deere Tractor” — with double pickguards, to boot. In the Doc Watson tribute, each of the five Guitar Player of the Year nominees (Trey Hensley, Billy Strings, Bryan Sutton, Molly Tuttle, and Jake Workman) took their turn virtually swapping solos on “Black Mountain Rag,” with T Michael Coleman, Watson’s longtime friend and bandmate, holding them all together through the webcams and headphones. Many other unique collaborations, tributes, and performances were peppered throughout the award announcements. The most stunning performances, though — like Vocal Group of the Year and Entertainer of the Year winner Sister Sadie’s “900 Miles” — were from the mother-church setting of the Ryman, where in a pandemic twist, the bands each performed not facing an audience, but with the auditorium’s empty pews as a background.

As IBMA Executive Director Paul Schiminger put it in his speech from the Ryman stage, in a virtual conference year and a pandemic, returning to the birthplace of the genre was “an unexpected gift through it all.” 75 years of bluegrass were poignantly brought together beneath the rafters of the hallowed, though empty, Ryman Auditorium.

Here are the winners of the 2020 IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards, in the order they were announced:

New Artist of the Year

Mile Twelve

Instrumental Group of the Year

Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper

Gospel Recording of the Year

“Gonna Rise and Shine”
Artist: Alan Bibey & Grasstowne
Label: Mountain Fever Records
Producer: Mark Hodges

Banjo Player of the Year

Scott Vestal

Resophonic Guitar Player of the Year

Justin Moses

Fiddle Player of the Year

Deanie Richardson

Bass Player of the Year

Missy Raines

Mandolin Player of the Year

Alan Bibey

Guitar Player of the Year 

Jake Workman

Collaborative Recording of the Year

“The Barber’s Fiddle”
Artists: Becky Buller with Shawn Camp, Jason Carter, Laurie Lewis, Kati Penn, Sam Bush, Michael Cleveland, Johnny Warren, Stuart Duncan, Deanie Richardson, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Jason Barie, Fred Carpenter, Tyler Andal, Nate Lee, Dan Boner, Brian Christianson, and Laura Orshaw
Label: Dark Shadow Recording
Producer: Stephen Mougin

Instrumental Recording of the Year

“Tall Fiddler”
Artist: Michael Cleveland with Tommy Emmanuel
Label: Compass Records
Producers: Jeff White, Michael Cleveland, and Sean Sullivan

Vocal Group of the Year

Sister Sadie

Song of the Year

“Chicago Barn Dance”
Artist: Special Consensus with Michael Cleveland & Becky Buller
Writers: Becky Buller, Missy Raines, Alison Brown
Label: Compass Records
Producer: Alison Brown

Album of the Year

Live in Prague, Czech Republic
Artist: Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Label: Billy Blue Records
Producers: Doyle Lawson and Rosta Capek

Female Vocalist of the Year

Brooke Aldridge

Male Vocalist of the Year

Danny Paisley

Entertainer of the Year

Sister Sadie

 

Also honored during the broadcast were three inductees into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame: owner of the Station Inn, J.T. Gray, The Johnson Mountain Boys, and New Grass Revival.

The Industry Awards were held on Wednesday, September 30. Hosted this year wittily and absurdly in video format by Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn, the Industry Awards recognize outstanding professional work within the many arms and branches of the bluegrass industry at large. 

The Industry Awards recipients:

Broadcaster of the Year

Michael Kear

Event of the Year

Augusta Heritage Center Bluegrass Week, Elkins, WV

Graphic Designer of the Year

Michael Armistead

Liner Notes of the Year

Katy Daley, Live at the Cellar Door – The Seldom Scene

Writer of the Year

Derek Halsey

Sound Engineer of the Year

Stephen Mougin 

Songwriter of the Year

Milan Miller

The recipients of the Distinguished Achievement Awards, honoring lifelong contributions by forerunners and ambassadors for bluegrass music, were honored with presentations on Wednesday as well: 

Norman & Judy Adams, Adams Bluegrass Festivals

Darrel & Phyllis Adkins, Musicians Against Childhood Cancer

Darol Anger, fiddler/educator

Wayne Rice,  San Diego’s KSON “Bluegrass Special” host

and Jack Tottle, band leader and educator at East Tennessee State University.

The Momentum Awards, handed out via video ceremony on Tuesday, September 29, focus on artists and industry professionals who are in the early stages of their bluegrass careers and the mentors who have helped them reach their young success.

The Momentum Awards recipients:

Industry Involvement

Kris Truelsen

Mentor

Annie Savage

Instrumentalist (2 recipients in this category)

Thomas Cassell

Tabitha Agnew

Vocalist

Melody Williamson 

Band

The Slocan Ramblers

 

The Transatlantic Sessions Hop the Pond for MerleFest

Posted on by Editor

Named in honor of guitarist Eddy Merle Watson, the 30th anniversary of MerleFest is taking place on April 27-30 at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Flat-picking legend Doc Watson founded the annual four-day festival in memory of his son, highlighting music that embodied the “traditional plus” moniker he ascribed to the genres they played together. Every lineup since has included a range of styles from bluegrass, folk, and old-time to jazz, roots, and blues. Keeping in line with this multi-genre approach, a special collaborative production is making its U.S. debut on the MerleFest stage this year: The Transatlantic Sessions.

The Transatlantic Sessions began as a series of televised musical performances produced by the BBC that brought together accomplished UK and North American roots musicians to play music from Scotland, Ireland, England, and North America. Since its inception in 1995, a total of six sessions have been recorded in various locations in Scotland and subsequently released on CD and DVD. Under the direction of dobro extraordinaire Jerry Douglas and Scottish fiddler Aly Bain, the core group of musicians who comprise the Sessions’ “house band” took the Transatlantic Sessions on the road throughout Ireland and the UK, rotating special guests in and out along the way.

“We all have so much fun with each other that we’re all kind of like a family at this point, after doing this many shows,” says Jerry Douglas. “And I think we have about 250 songs filmed and recorded in the can, and it’s quite a legacy for me and for everybody involved.”

So when the organizers of MerleFest approached Douglas and asked if he had any ideas for a special set for the festival’s 30th anniversary, he immediately thought of the Transatlantic Sessions.

“I wanted to bring it over here because people would completely get it here, you know, because of all the Scottish people and the Irish people that have immigrated to this country and are such a big part of it and have a lot of that blood running through their veins,” Douglas says. “And a lot of old-time musicians, especially at MerleFest, that music there, that was created in Scotland. So it’s nice for the people who live in North Carolina. I mean, you have a Highlands in North Carolina that still has Scottish games. And so there’s a huge connection between this country and Scotland and Ireland.”

In addition to the house orchestra, the Transatlantic performance at MerleFest will also feature special guests James Taylor, Sarah Jarosz, Maura O’Connell, Declan O’Rourke, Karen Matheson, and Joe Newberry.

“It’s all about collaboration — this whole thing — so the American guests, I tell them, ‘Just think transatlantic.’ You want songs that these musicians can relate to or you can hear them playing some version of some song of yours,” Douglas explains. “It’s the transatlantic style. You rehearse for that and some of it you remember and some of it you wing, but it’s always in the same spirit and it always turns out just great — everybody’s smiling. It’s a smiley kind of music. And then the Celtic guys, Aly [Bain] and Phil [Cunningham], and the fiddles and the pipes and all of that, when all of that starts going, it’s like blood-boiling music; it’s like viking music. But we’ve all got a little bit of that in us somewhere and it just kind of brings it to the surface, and it’s just impossible not to smile and not to just have a really great time.”

Seminal Irish guitarist John Doyle has been part of the Transatlantic house orchestra since 2000.

“One of the most beautiful things about it is, you get people who are very, very high up in the musical world to come in and play … and you’ll see them kind of be tense because there are 14 people looking at them going, ‘Okay, what do you have for us?’ But by the end of the first day of rehearsals, it’s just great fun,” Doyle says. “We just have a great laugh and enjoy ourselves and it’s become something more than music. It’s a collaboration of ideas and a collaboration of souls, in a way, and that’s what we love about it and that’s why we keep coming back to it because there’s something undefined about it that we can all sit down together and play music from any culture because it really is true that music goes beyond boundaries. And that’s the beauty and the joy of it: We communicate through music.”

The Transatlantic Sessions will make its Stateside debut on the Watson Stage at MerleFest on Friday, April 28, with musicians from the band playing additional sets throughout the weekend. Tickets for MerleFest 2017 are on sale now and may be purchased at MerleFest.org or by calling 800.343.7857. An advance ticket discount runs through April 26, 2017. Gate pricing begins on the first day of the festival.

Photo credit: Louis DeCarlo