Tag: john oates

WATCH: Onoleigh, “Walls”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Onoleigh
Hometown: Mahomet, Illinois
Song: “Walls”
Release Date: November 29, 2023

In Their Words: “This song is personal for me. It’s about going through ups and downs throughout childhood and growing up. There were a lot of tough times in my own life where I felt societal or personal pressure to be someone that I wasn’t, and my childhood bedroom was my safe space. It was the place where I could reflect and think about who I was and who I was supposed to become. So, the idea that the walls could hear what I was thinking and could watch me grow up was something that I wanted to write about. I took this to my co-writers John Oates and Nathan Chapman, and we came up with this beautiful song that tells my own personal journey, and I feel like others will be able to relate.” – Onoleigh

Photo Credit: Allister Ann

When Springtime Comes Again: 12 Bluegrass Songs for Spring

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We hope, wherever you’re reading this from, that snow, frost, and the cold are truly retreating, giving way to longer days, warmer weather, and the gorgeous, humid, cicada-soundtracked days of summer. But, before we get to full-blown bluegrass season – and, hopefully, our first live music forays since COVID-19 shut the industry down in early 2020 – let’s take a moment to intentionally enjoy spring with these 12 bluegrass songs perfect for collecting a wildflower bouquet, romping and frolicking in the meadow, and pickin’ on the back porch while the evenings are still cool. 

“Wild Mountain Flowers for Mary” – Lost & Found

A classic via Lost & Found, bluegrass certainly does not lack metaphors and analogies for love built around spring and the flowers re-emerging – see “Your Love is Like a Flower” below – but this somewhat melancholy track is an exceptional example of the form. And that banjo solo by Lost & Found founding member Gene Parker will stop you dead in your tracks.

“There Is a Time” – The Dillards

Famous for the rendition sung by Charlene Darling of the ever-popular Darling family on The Andy Griffith Show, this haunting, seemingly timeless folky melody from The Dillards – who also played members of the Darling clan – cautions, “…Do your roaming in the springtime/ And you’ll find your love in the summer sun.” The suspensions in the banjo roll linger on the minor chord, echoing this sentiment and categorizing spring not by its own, shining qualities, but by the darkness in winter and fall. A true classic.

“Little Annie” – Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, Kimber Ludiker, Missy Raines

A staple of impromptu pickin’ parties and jam circles, “Little Annie” is properly ensconced within the bluegrass canon, but is infused with new life in this application by Tuttle’s lead vocal, a slight queering of the lyric that’s perfectly at home in the hands of this veritable supergroup, assembled by D’Addario at Folk Alliance International’s conference in 2018. 

“Texas Bluebonnets” – Laurie Lewis 

Laurie Lewis is effortlessly, archetypically bluegrass even, if not especially, in applications that infuse other genres into the music, like this Tex-Mex flavored, twin fiddle arrangement of “Texas Bluebonnets” that truly never gets old. Yes, that’s Peter Rowan and Sally Van Meter guesting, and Tom Rozum jumping onto lead during the choruses so Lewis can utter the tastiest tenor harmony vocal. Stick around for the Texas double-fiddle break and do yourself a favor and bookmark the track for easy reference. You’ll be returning to it often, as this writer does. 

“The First Whippoorwill” – Bill Monroe 

The birds returning in spring are a sure sign of the seasons changing and the warm weather returning, though the whippoorwill’s role in folk music has always been as a bittersweet harbinger, never quite viewed without at least some semblance of suspicion, perhaps an acknowledgement of the whippoorwill’s mournful tendency of singing long into the dead of night. This recording of “The First Whippoorwill” is a tasty example of Monroe’s iconic high lonesome sound, with acrobatic breaks into entrancing falsetto woven into the harmonies. 

“Sitting on Top of the World” – Carolina Chocolate Drops

Whether you know this common blues, old-time, and bluegrass number from the Mississippi Sheiks, Doc Watson, John Oates, the Carolina Chocolate Drops, or any other of its many, many sources the fact still stands: Don’t like peaches? Don’t shake the tree. Demonstrably a song for spring, summer, and beyond.

“Roses in the Snow” – Emmylou Harris

Though BGS calls sunny southern California home – and BGS South is relatively temperate and mild in Nashville, TN – we know there are climes across this continent where spring promises snow as reliably as thaw. Emmylou Harris released her iconic bluegrass album in 1980 and its title track is another homage to love bringing warmth, newness, and growth even in the cold: “Our love was like a burning ember/ It warmed us as a golden glow/ We had sunshine in December/ And grew our roses in the snow…”

“Each Season Changes You” – The Osborne Brothers

Love is as fickle as the breeze! There’s a small irony in the song’s central conflict, that the singer’s love changes their mind as often as the seasons change – which, when taken whole, seems like a much more stable, predictable love than most? Even so, and done in so many different iterations, the central metaphor still holds, forever baked into the vernacular of these folk musics.

“One Morning in May” – Jeff Scroggins & Colorado

If you’ve been a bluegrass fan over the past five to ten years and you don’t immediately hear Greg Blake’s voice singing “One Morning in May” whenever it pops into your head, something must be awry. During Blake’s stint with Jeff Scroggins & Colorado, this spring-centered track was a highlight of their live show, a clean, modern rendering of what’s a properly ancient folk lyric. Lost love, war, nightingales, and yes, springtime – it has everything! 

“Your Love is Like a Flower” – Flatt & Scruggs

Perhaps the song that defines the form. Flatt’s languid, lazy phrasing seems to underline the leisure of spring that grows into the laziness of summer. The rhythm of love, tied to the seasons and the budding blooms. Another timeless sentiment, distilled into a favorite, stand-by bluegrass number.

“Springtime in the Rockies” – Lead Belly

You know the film and the country hit, but have you heard Lead Belly himself tell the story of hearing the tune from “Gene” coming by and playing him some music? Worth a listen and worth inclusion on this list, which would suffer if it didn’t include “When It’s Springtime in the Rockies” in one form or another!

“Spring Will Bring Flowers” – Balsam Range

Processing grief and loss through the ever- and unchanging seasons is a common thread through rootsy songs about spring. This more recent recording from powerful North Carolina bluegrass vocal group Balsam Range hearkens back to springy, ‘grassy numbers from across the ages – its intermittent banjo licks a call back to Jimmy Martin’s “world filled with flowers” in “Ocean of Diamonds.” 

Background photo by velodenz on Foter.com

WATCH: David Starr, “Rise Up Again”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: David Starr
Hometown: Cedaredge, Colorado
Song: “Rise Up Again”
Album: Beauty and Ruin
Release Date: October 18, 2019 (single)
Label: Cedaredge Records, LLC

In Their Words: “‘Rise Up Again’ is one of the songs inspired by the places, characters, and situations in my grandfather Fred Starr’s novel, Of What Was, Nothing Is Left. This song found its way into the new project by way of a very vivid dream I had while in the hospital for surgery in August of 2018. My father and grandfather came to me in that dream as if to tell me that things would be all right despite the life-threatening nature of my medical situation. I sent a rough draft demo to John Oates with a brief narrative about the song. He took it to another level with his arrangement and sensitive lyrical additions. The song has come to feel almost anthemic when I play it. It feels inexorably connected to the book and to the whole journey of making this record.” — David Starr

Photo credit: Jason Denton

Hangin’ & Sangin’: John Oates

Posted on by Editor

From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today at Hillbilly Central, John Oates, the one and only!

Pleasure to be here, thank you.

So glad to have you. Your new record, Arkansas, out February 2.

Yes.

Which is …

Coming up soon!

Two weeks!

Yeah, we have a lead track that’s out — the actual title track, “Arkansas,” is out right now, with a video. I’m really excited about the record. It’s been getting a lot of good feedback so far, and I’m very proud of it.

I love that you describe it as “Dixieland, dipped in bluegrass and salted with Delta blues.”

[Laughs] Well, I was forced to come up with a description! But one thing about the record is, there’s an incredible group of musicians playing on this record.

Absolutely.

Sam Bush, Russ Paul, Guthrie Trapp, Josh Day, Steve Mackey, Nat Smith. And I assembled this group of musicians and I knew them all. They’re all buddies, and we’ve played together in various configurations, but I didn’t know what was gonna happen. And when they started to play — and everything was live pretty much on this record — it reminded me of Dixieland, where all these great players [have] these interweaving musical ideas and no one is stepping on anyone, but yet it’s all complimentary. And it’s all like a beautiful chaos, I guess you could call it. And that’s why I said it reminded me of Dixieland, in a way. It’s kind of like bluegrass, Americana, Dixieland, with Delta blues.

Did that collection of players … because I know you did assemble them, you sort of handpicked each one right?

Yeah.

So did the [final product] surpass your dreams of what you thought it could be?

Absolutely, because I had no idea what it was going to be. Actually, the record started out as a tribute to Mississippi John Hurt, and I was going to do a traditional guitar and vocal thing, and just play his songs, because he’s a big hero of mine and I know so many of his songs.

After I cut a few tracks, it was like, “Okay, this is alright, but it’s been done before, and I’ll never do it better than the original.” But I loved the music and I loved the songs themselves and I thought, “Well, I’ve never heard these songs played with a band,” because it’s so associated with that classic guitar and vocal presentation. So one night I just said, “Let me just pull all these guys together,” and honestly I wish I could say it was this concept that I had with my master plan. [Laughs] But it wasn’t! It was just dumb luck and a beautiful thing because [after] the first track we cut, my engineer turned to me and he said, “I don’t know what this is, but it’s cool.” And I said, “Yeah this is good, let’s just keep doing this.” And that’s how it happened, so it was totally organic and it just evolved from the players.

…

So tell me about some of the songs on the record. You’ve got some Jimmie Rodgers, you’ve got some Emmett Miller, some other folks on there, some of your stuff. What’s the key to sort of crafting a new song that fits within that comfortably?

Well, I didn’t know I was gonna have an original song on the record. I took a visit to a place called Wilson, Arkansas, which is about 30 miles northwest of Memphis, just on the other side of the Mississippi River, at one time one of the biggest plantations in America. And I did a show there, and it’s this cool little town that’s being reimagined or reinvented as an arts community. It’s really cool. And the night after the show, we went outside, and the cotton fields were just rolling through the distance. There was the river, and it was very evocative. And it just seemed to crystallize this musical journey that starts, I guess, in New Orleans, really, and just goes up the Mississippi River through the Delta and, by the time it gets to Arkansas, I think it’s kind of the last rural stop on the musical journey northward.

…

It’s so fun to see artists … you’re very far into your career, you’ve had massive success, and then, as a solo artist, you kind of have to start not quite from scratch, but almost from scratch. But you’re still super excited about exploring and experiencing, aren’t you?

Yeah, I am. I think it’s the best time of my life. It really is, for a lot of reasons. I love the music I’m making. I love the friends I’ve made here in Nashville and the community that I’m a part of. But even more so, that I have this incredible career with Daryl Hall and the legacy of music that we’ve made together that provides a foundation and the ability for me to have total creative freedom which, for a lot of artists, that’s what they dream of, you know? I think, if you asked any artist what would be your ultimate dream, it would be that. And I have it. And so, because I have it, I wanna make the most of it. I wanna milk every second out of that experience.

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