LISTEN: Steel Blossoms, “Kentucky’s Never Been This Far”

Artist: Steel Blossoms
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Kentucky’s Never Been This Far”
Album: Steel Blossoms
Release Date: April 26, 2019
Label: Billy Jam Records

In Their Words: “‘Kentucky’s Never Been This Far” is the first song we ever recorded that we didn’t write. The second we heard it, we looked at each other and said, ‘We need this song.’ We both travel so much and are constantly away from our loved ones, that sometimes 100 miles feels like a million miles away. This song is so beautifully written and what Jerry did with the instrumentation is just amazing. We are so lucky to have it on our album.” –Steel Blossoms


Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

WATCH: The Tillers, “The Old General Store Is Burning Down”

Artist: The Tillers
Hometown: Cincinnati, Ohio
Song: “The Old General Store Is Burning Down”
Album: The Tillers
Label: Sofaburn Records

In Their Words: “Nestled along the banks of the Ohio River lies a quaint little northern Kentucky town called Rabbit Hash. A quirky and vibrant town frequently filled with musicians, artisans, river folk, old-timers, bikers, hippies, punks, and many other colorful travelers. The indisputable heart of this bend in the river is the Rabbit Hash General Store, built in 1831. The general store is a mecca for the region’s folk music scene and has hosted concerts behind the big wood stove for many years. The general store has survived many a flood and many a floorboard stomping hootenanny, but on a cold night in February 2016 the general store caught fire and was destroyed.

“After the tears had dried, the people of Rabbit Hash picked themselves up by their bootstraps, gathered around, and with the generous help of folks all over the world, rebuilt the general store in just about a year’s time. ‘The Old General Store is Burning Down’ is a song dedicated to the good people of Rabbit Hash and to the unwavering spirit of community and togetherness that they promote and embrace. The words of old-time fiddle player Tommy Taylor still ring true: ‘Rabbit Hash Kentucky is where I want to be. Cornbread molasses and sassafras tea.’ Long live Rabbit Hash, Kentucky!” — Mike Oberst, singer-songwriter-banjo player, The Tillers


Photo credit: Michael Wilson

WATCH: Steven Curtis Chapman, “Where the Bluegrass Grows” (Solo Acoustic)

Artist: Steven Curtis Chapman
Hometown: Paducah, Kentucky
Song: “Where the Bluegrass Grows” (Solo Acoustic)
Album: Deeper Roots: Where The Bluegrass Grows
Label: SCSee

In Their Words: “As the song says, ‘the first sound I remember as a little barefoot boy was my daddy’s Martin guitar and a 5 string banjo!’ The sound, honesty, purity and passion of bluegrass and folk music is what first awakened a love for music in my heart and soul. I’m thankful to have the opportunity to write and record a song (with some of the best pickers in the world!) that pays tribute to that music and its impact on me!” — Steven Curtis Chapman


Photo credit: Connor Dwyer
Video credit: Nathan Pirkle

BGS 5+5: Fate McAfee

Name: Fate McAfee
Hometown: Murray, Kentucky
Latest Album: Diesel Palomino
Rejected band name: Little Bill & the Late Fees

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Bob Dylan. He created the potential of the singer-songwriter to be a popular recording artist without compromising the quality of the work. I grew up listening to him, and I’ve found his colorful discography speaks to many different phases of life. He stayed true to himself, despite the backlash he faced while exploring new territory.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My favorite memory thus far was performing with my backing band (Leonard the Band) and my duet partner (Melanie A. Davis) all together at a recent show in Paducah, Kentucky. The energy created amongst six people on the same page musically is a special thing, and I feel there is a lot of potential there.

What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?

A lot of my songs are driven by imagery, so I enjoy reading content influenced by that. I also have some specific literary references in my songs, so I’m certainly inspired by the concepts in the poetry and novels that I read, as well. I enjoy writing that offers just enough for the reader to infer the rest. I think about it like triangulation; if you can give someone two specific ideas, they can deduce what the third (the main sentiment) might be.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I had a long, reserved introduction to performing live. I spent quite a few years writing and practicing before I ventured into public with my songs. But the moment I learned that I wouldn’t have the chance to try out for a college baseball team as I’d planned, I felt my wheels turning in another direction. It was disappointing at first, but I grew excited by the freedom. I began to use more of my time writing songs and practicing guitar, and within two years I began playing shows.

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

I believe it’s all of our responsibility to help out people who are less fortunate. My father, whose influence is all over Diesel Palomino (lyrically and in the artwork), dedicated his life to this sentiment. He was a photo-journalist who documented human rights abuses by crumbling regimes in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and much of his writing was centered around the concept of privilege vs. responsibility. I believe that humility is humanity.


WATCH: NewTown, “Long Hard Road”

Artist name: NewTown
Hometown: Lexington, Kentucky
Song: “Long Hard Road”
Album: Old World
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “This is one of the coolest tunes Tyler Childers has written. It speaks about the hardship of a long-distance relationship, something I’m sure a lot of folks can connect with. The video for the song was such a joy to make, surrounded by a few close friends and family. We used The Burl in Lexington, Kentucky, for the shoot — a beautiful venue! We hope people will enjoy the labor we put into this; we think it was well worth it. Enjoy!!” — Jr. Williams, NewTown banjo player and vocalist


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

The Shift List – Edward Lee (610 Magnolia, MilkWood) Louisville

Edward Lee is the chef and owner of three restaurants with unique identities in Louisville, Kentucky – 610 Magnolia, MilkWood, and Whiskey Dry – and is the author of two books. Smoke & Pickles – his first – is a cookbook that chronicles the story of how he was raised in Brooklyn in a family of Korean immigrants to his arrival in Louisville, and Buttermilk Graffiti, a uniquely inspiring read that is part food essay, part travel book, part memoir and part cookbook.

LISTEN: APPLE PODCASTSSTITCHERMP3

Released in the Spring of 2018, Buttermilk Graffiti finds Lee traveling across America to learn how immigrants arrive, thrive, and influence the cuisine of communities all over the country, from the Cambodian community of Lowell Massachusetts to the predominantly Muslim neighborhoods of Dearborn Michigan.

In addition to his appearances on award winning shows like Mind of a Chef and writing and producing the Feature Documentary Fermented, Lee participates in the annual Bourbon and Beyond festival held in Louisville at the end of each September for the past two years.

Equal parts bourbon, music, and food, the festival shines a spotlight on the things that make Kentucky and Louisville a great place to visit and live.

chefedwardlee.com

WATCH: Dillon Carmichael, “It’s Simple”

Artist: Dillon Carmichael
Hometown: Burgin, Kentucky
Song: “It’s Simple”
Album: Hell on an Angel
Release Date: October 26, 2018
Label: Riser House Records

In Their Words:  “My co-writers and I all grew up in very small towns. We wanted to write a song about how we appreciate our childhoods and what life was like then. Things can get so complicated, but it’s the little things that impact our lives so much. We wrapped up that write that day, all of us knowing we had something special.” — Dillon Carmichael


Photo credit: Cameron Powell

Canon Fodder: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, ‘I See a Darkness’

Will Oldham stands on the stage of the Odeon in Louisville, Kentucky, dressed up like a bruise: black pants hanging low on his hips, a blue shirt barely tucked in, hints of mascara around his eyes. He is gesticulating dramatically and singing about how death will come to us all, and behind him a large band kick up a larger ruckus. It sounds like chamber klezmer, its jazzbo rhythm section squaring off against a frantic string section and a clarinet that sounds like a gremlin in the works. The song is “Death to Everyone,” which originally appeared on 1999’s I See A Darkness, the first album to bear Oldham’s odd stage name Bonnie “Prince” Billy and likely his best-selling album.

“Death to Everyone” has never sounded quite like this before. The original is a low-key, heavy-quiet dirge, Oldham’s vocals measured and steady and even menacing, as an electric guitar mimics the sound of decaying flesh. It is a rover’s song, a justification for hedonism and rootlessness, and when Oldham sings the chorus—“Death to everyone is gonna come…”—he makes it sound like a threat. But the Odeon version of the song, from August 2018, backed by a sprawling band called the Wandering All-Stars & Motor Royalty, is starkly different. The tempo is ratcheted up, the lyrics sung like there is an exclamation point after every phrase; the energy is agitated yet gregarious, and Oldham stands on the stage, his hands flailing to the audience, as though inviting us to partake in every lusty pleasure before we perish. Oldham might be Falstaff or Caliban up there on stage, a figure of uneasy company.

All artists must live with their works, and most musicians maintain intimate connections to much of their catalog, performing the same compositions night after night. Few roots artists, however, take as many liberties with their songs as Oldham. He constantly revisits and revises, reinterprets and reconsidered, less out of obligation to fans than out of curiosity: How far can these melodies and sentiments bend? What will they allow? In 2004 he released a full album of Bonnie “Prince” Billy covering songs that pre-date that pseudonym, written when he was making art under various Palace monikers: Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers. Later this month he’ll release Songs of Love and Horror, which collects new versions of tunes from throughout his career, including the title track to I See a Darkness.

That album may be his most revisited, a set of missives from what he calls a minor place, comprising something like an Appalachian operetta. He writes lyrics as soliloquies, as monologues by characters in transit, wanderers and loners, sinners both defiant and humbled. The characters on I See a Darkness ponder the thin membrane between life and death, being and not being, this world and the next. On the title track the narrator confesses to a friend the abyss he sees behind everything as well as his desire for “peace in our lives.” It recalls Waiting for Godot or True West in its stark setting and sparse details, but that makes it easier for him to restage it, as he did on 2012’s Now Here’s My Plan. That version was sped up considerably, almost flippantly, as though the character were retreating from the darkness, confessing his deepest fears through a sidelong joke.

The most famous version of the song, however, features Oldham in a supporting role. Johnny Cash covered the song on 2000’s American Recordings III: Solitary Man, playing up the implications of his own Man in Black mythology as well as his own waywardness earlier in his life. But it also plays as a late-in-life reverie, and it gives Cash the opportunity to face down the impending darkness with dignity: “You know I have a drive to live, I won’t let go,” he sings, his voice bowed but not broken by age and illness.

This songwriting strategy—this idea of songs as short plays—echoes Oldham’s own actorly pursuits. As a teenager he appeared in John Sayles’ Matewan, about miners in Appalachia in the 1920s, and the TV movie Everybody’s Baby: The Rescue of Jessica McClure. In the 1990s he gravitated more toward music, but occasionally appears in independent films like Junebug and Old Joy. And there is in these songs a sense of dramaturgy, of an actor slipping into a role, which creates a very squirrelly strain of roots music. But it’s an inexact and not quite satisfying metaphor, one that suggests he is only acting, that there is none of himself in these lyrics and melodies, that he is merely pretending to see a darkness.

And perhaps that more than anything else—his long relationship with indie label Drag City, his use of antiquated or skewed syntax, or his headquarters in Louisville, just a few hours but many worlds away from Nashville—is why Oldham has not embraced nor been embraced by the Americana establishment: He stands slightly apart from his music, doesn’t inhabit his songs the same way Chris Stapleton or Margo Price or Sturgill Simpson inhabit theirs. That doesn’t mean his songs are personal or don’t expose something of the person singing them, but that he has radically different relationships with his songs.

Perhaps that’s why I See a Darkness still stands out in his expansive catalog: It gets at something profound about its creator and implies a darkness too dark, too enormous, too horrible to approach directly. He needs the scrim of a character, a decoy perhaps or a shield; a larger narrative emerges of an artist confronting depression without naming it. “So I become more lively to bury all the ugly,” he sings on “Another Day Full of Dread,” whose very title implies a black unnameable feeling lurking within these songs. To reinterpret these songs is to admit that the depression remains, even twenty years later, but his relationship to it has changed. Every time he sings these songs, he prevails against it, bruised but not beaten.


Photo credit: Jessica Fay

Traveler: Louisville, Kentucky with Ben Sollee

We’re on our way to the Bluegrass State for this weekend’s Bourbon & Beyond, but there’s so much more to explore beyond the two day festival in beautiful Champions Park. For the very best local recommendations we spoke to Kentucky native Ben Sollee (who plays the BGS Bluegrass Stage at B&B on Sunday).

According to Ben, who was born in Lexington and moved his family to Louisville in 2015, “For me, the arts community is a little more cohesive, a little more collaborative. I never really had an instance where I had an idea that I couldn’t accomplish in this city. Whether that’s something as small as collaborating with some dancers for a storytelling event, or something as big as developing a virtual reality app for music. I’ve been able to pull all that off in this little city. And of course being able to travel – Louisville is manageable for me as a touring music. As an artist who is adventurous, I can live affordably. It’s not a hard hustle.”

EAT & DRINK

Ben says: “I’d start with stopping by Quills Coffee, probably the one in the Nulu area. It’s based out of an old firehouse. Pretty cool. In the fall and wintertime, I like getting a miele – a good, honey-based drink with cinnamon and nutmeg. It warms the belly a little bit. So I’d get that and pick up the LEO – the Louisville Eccentric Observer – and check out what shows are happening, and what artists are doing around town. And of course what silly business is trying to do something wild. That’s how I’d get my day started.

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Sunday mood.

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“Lately I’ve been going to an Ethiopian spot here in town called Abyssinia. They’ve got a really fantastic buffet. It touches on Louisville’s amazing international food scene. And if I wasn’t close to downtown, I’d probably swing by the south end of Louisville and hit up Vietnam Kitchen, which is probably our most famous international fare food place. It’s a really, really, really good spot! I like to order K-8 – their spicy pork noodle soup.

“The place that comes to mind for dinner is a place called MilkWood in downtown Louisville on Main Street. It’s a place by the chef Edward Lee, who was featured on Iron Chef. It’s a mixture of Korean and soul food cooking. I like to go there whenever I can. They have really good drinks, and it’s next to Actors Theatre so if the theater is in season, you can catch a really cool show.”

BGS ALSO RECOMMENDS:
Proof on Main (at 21c)
Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse
Pizza Lupo
The Silver Dollar

STAY

BGS says: Louisville is the home base of 21c Museum Hotels and this location is one of our favorite boutique hotels in the country. While there are several 21c locations you can visit throughout the South, the original Louisville location is like none other (even if you just get a chance to stop in for a bite at Proof on Main, check out the modern artwork collection, and ogle the giant copy of the David out front…. It’s worth the visit).

 

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Good morning, Louisville.

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BGS ALSO RECOMMENDS:
The Brown Hotel
Seelbach Hotel

SHOP

Ben says: “I certainly love thrifting and there’s the Flea Off Market that happens every once in a while. That’s a cool thing to look for when it happens. It’s a moving, modular market – Louisville’s bazaar in a way. And my favorite picking shop is over in Middletown (a suburb of Louisville) and it’s called the Middletown Peddlers Mall. I always find really good stuff in there.”

SEE & DO

Parks
Ben says: “Louisville’s got a huge, wonderful park system and we’ve got a bunch of parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the very fellow who designed places like Central Park. He did a lot of park design in Louisville. You can easily swing up to Shelby Park, which is an Olmsted Park, and do a loop through there. If it was a nice day, you could hang out there for a little bit and then stop by Red Top, which is a new boutique hot dog place. It’s in Smoketown, which is a working-class neighborhood. They make some really fantastic hot dogs and they’ve got a lot of local beers on tap.

 

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Let’s be frank: these were pretty tasty. #redtopdogs #hotdogs #louisvilleeats #latergram

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“A lot of people like to go visit the Colonel and see where Colonel Sanders is buried, and now Muhammed Ali’s there too, in Cave Hill Cemetery. I think walking the Big Four Bridge is a nice tourist attraction. That’s a nice spot because you can walk over to Indiana.”

Museums
Ben says: “Everybody needs to visit the Louisville Slugger Museum. You gotta go see how the bats are made and you gotta get yourself a little bat. I think that one of our most unique museums is the Portland Museum. And of course the Speed Art Museum is incredible. They just finished that. It’s really, really beautiful.”

MUSICAL POINTS OF INTEREST

Ben says: “I like to go play music as much as I like to listen to it. So, I’d hop in the car, or hop the bus, and go to Guitar Emporium and check out their guitars and maybe some of the pedals, and see what they’ve got in stock. Right next to that is Louisville’s famed Books & Music Exchange. That’s a great place to get used records and movies and comic books and all that jazz. You can ruffle through the stacks as long as your heart desires. It just goes on and on and on.”

You can still join us this weekend, September 22-23, in Louisville for Bourbon & Beyond! Get tickets.

Check out Ben’s Sitch Session below, and discover more of his music at BenSollee.com.

Don’t miss the full BGS Stage Schedule for Bourbon & Beyond.


Photo of Big Four Bridge courtesy of GoToLouisville.com

ROMP 2018 in Photographs

The Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual ROMP Festival celebrated its 15th anniversary with more than 27,000 people attending the four-day bluegrass roots and branches music event at Yellow Creek Park in Owensboro, Kentucky. Those lucky 27,000 were treated to a a sunset performance by the iconic Alison Krauss, a split set of bluegrass and country by newly-minted Country Music Hall of Famer Ricky Skaggs, a rowdy and non-stop dance party by Ireland’s We Banjo 3, a rocking finale performance by the ‘Father of Newgrass’ Sam Bush, and much, much more. Check out our photo recap to relive the highlights or to find out what you missed.


Lede photo by Alex Morgan