One to Watch: Sarah Kate Morgan’s Appalachian Echoes

Sarah Kate Morgan is a talent to behold. Hailing from Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, and currently nested in Hindman, Kentucky, Morgan is deeply rooted in Appalachian soil. She stands as a revered singer-songwriter and preeminent authority on the mountain dulcimer, alchemizing all the beauty, richness and sorrows of those blue, grassy hills into music.

With her resonant voice and grounded lyrics, Morgan’s music breathes new life into the histories of Appalachian music. She has performed and/or recorded with other lauded contemporaries, including Tyler Childers, Alice Gerrard and Erynn Marshall & Carl Jones. Additionally, she has a full life beyond performing; Morgan presently serves as the Hindman Settlement School’s Traditional Arts Education Director, where she preserves and teaches Appalachian folk traditions for local youth and community members.

Her latest album, Old Tunes & Sad Songs, perfectly encapsulates what Morgan does best — weaving together a tapestry of traditional roots music with her own original, breathtaking spins. Every listener will emerge edified by Sarah Kate Morgan’s masterful blending of hope, history, and heart.

The bio on your website mentions that your grandfather built your first dulcimer; I would love to hear more about that. Do you come from a lineage of musicians or music makers?

SKM: My great grandfather was named Jolly Morgan — I love that name. The Morgans were from North Carolina, Transylvania County, and the Sylva area. Jolly played the banjo and owned a general store. My grandfather on my dad’s side built a dulcimer when he retired after working most of his life at the ALCOA steel plant in Maryville, Tennessee. When he retired, he picked up oil painting and played the harmonica a little bit. Another one of the things he dabbled in was woodworking, and he built a dulcimer. It ended up not being the best instrument ever. He actually put it together backwards, so like, the headstock was on the opposite end of the instrument.

So you learned how to play on a backwards dulcimer?

Kinda sorta, it really didn’t affect that much — it just had to be tuned at the opposite end of the instrument.

That’s pretty unique! A lot of your work is about honoring the lineage and all the history of Appalachia. What does that feel like? To be connecting with the people of the mountains or even your own ancestry?

I don’t know. I think I struggle with impostor syndrome a lot. When people ask me, “Oh my gosh, how does it feel to be part of Appalachia?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’ve just been making music.” There have been so many people who’ve come before me and will come after me that we all are just one little branch of the tree that tells the story of living in this region. And if I can write a couple songs that add to that story in my lifetime, I would consider that an honor.

Do you ever feel like it’s a spiritual undertaking?

I grew up playing music and singing in church — that was sort of my first musical experience, which I think is a pretty common thing if you grew up in the South and you grew up musical… you always got to sing in church. And so, music and my faith and my religion growing up were always very deeply tied together. Now, that kind of shows up in my songwriting, like the form of hymns and old-time gospel music is branded into my musicality. I write songs that often end up feeling like hymns, just the structure of them, even if the content is different. One of my songs on my most recent album, “Heaven In My Mind” speaks to that. I think it feels like a sort of traditional gospel [song], but has a different sort of message.

 I would love to hear more about your songwriting. What’s your creative process like?

Lord if I know! I think the songs just sort of end up. I don’t start with a verse. It’s always all or nothing. I just sit down, and it all kind of dumps out into a finished song. I find that the times I’ve been most inspired to write are often when I’m most busy and most surrounded by people. I wish I could be a pensive, loner musician that floats off into the wilderness and then comes back and writes all these songs. But because a lot of my songs are written about people, I think being around people is what inspires me the most.

One of my favorite songwriters, Matthew Sidney Parsons — he’s from Eastern Kentucky in Carter County. Something that he said years ago that I really took to heart was that as a songwriter, one of the best things you can do is have a career that’s not music related at all, especially if you want to write this kind of music, folk music. It’s people music, music about experiences, the regular folks, you know — just working and existing in the world and living your life can often be the most inspiring thing because then you come home and write about the people that you are with every day.

Yeah, it’s in community. It’s not in a vacuum. So you work in a school, right?

Yeah, well, I work at Hindman Settlement School, which is a nonprofit in Knott County, Kentucky, and I’m the Folk Arts Education Director. But essentially I’m just a traveling music teacher. In Knott County, as with a lot of rural school districts, there’s barely any budget for music or art. So one thing that the Settlement School does is to try and fill that gap. I do an after school music education program teaching acoustic instruments — banjo, guitar, mandolin, those things. And then I go into mostly kindergarten through third-grade classrooms and give short general music education sessions. I often try to incorporate Appalachian music and traditional music from around the world as much as possible. For so many of them, this is their first time seeing live music, period.

That’s so special. They must love seeing you play and learning! What’s it like teaching the dulcimer?

I love the instrument because it’s probably one of the most accessible instruments to play. It’s got three strings, and it’s diatonically fretted, which means it’s not chromatic. It has whole musical steps from the major scale with a few accidentals, so like the white keys of a piano without black keys. And what that allows for people with relatively little musical experience to sit down with the instrument and just run their finger up and down the fretboard. From there, they can pick out tunes that are already in their head and in their heart. And it’s easy for people to sound good on the instrument. I love that. It’s a great first instrument for kids; it was my first instrument when I was seven. And it’s a great first instrument for older folks who have never played music in their life.

It’s incredibly empowering to be able to sit down with an instrument and be like, “Oh, I can really do that.” When I teach, I can get people playing a simple tune within five minutes. I personally love instant gratification like that. It’s the least gatekeep-y instrument in traditional music, which I’m a big fan of. On the flip side of that, because it’s so simple, people don’t give the dulcimer the same amount of intensive musical study as others, but this instrument is just as complex as guitar or fiddle or banjo, in terms of tunings, chord shapes, modes, and keys. You can take the dulcimer as far as you want. While it’s accessible and easy, I love that you can still do surprising innovative things with it.

And you do! Speaking of which, do you have anything exciting coming up?

The first weekend of September my friend Tatiana Hargraves and I are going to do a string of duo shows in East Tennessee and Eastern Kentucky. We’re excited about that. I love playing with Tatiana. This weekend I’ll be performing at a festival called Holler Girl. I’m not performing on my own, but I’ll actually be sitting in with a local Eastern Kentucky punk band called Slut Pill. I’ll be playing dulcimer, but I have a pickup that allows me to plug into a pedal board and play with some cool effects. It’ll be my first time performing with them, so I’m looking forward to seeing how dulcimer can fit in with a punk band!

Do you have any other collaborators you want to shout out? You’re One to Watch, but who are you watching? Are there any artists you’re appreciating especially right now?

Gosh, so many! My dear friends Linda Jean Stokely and Montana Hobbs make up the duo the Local Honeys. They’re really, really great. They’re dear friends. They were the first two women to graduate from Morehead State University with degrees in traditional music, and I was in the next generation behind them. And oh my gosh, I just love their writing — they tell incredibly complex and beautiful stories with just a few simple words. They’re really making great strides in traditional music, and I love listening to them.

Also, friend Ben Fugate is a local Perry County songwriter, and he has his band Ben Fugate and the Burning Trash Band. Ben is a great local songwriter, and he writes in a more traditional country style. I’m also really enjoying listening to the artist Amanda Fields. She’s a Nashville-based country music songwriter and she just put out this beautiful album, What, When, & Without. Her whole album is moody and effervescent — kind of far away. It’s this kind of slow and introspective country music. Yeah, and it’s just really pretty. And Momma Molasses out of Bristol, Tennessee, is an amazing classic country and Western swing style singer and writer.

I also do a radio show on Sundays! You can tune in all over the world. It’s from 4-6 p.m. [ET] and the show is called She’s Gone Country on station WMMT 88.7. It’s a show featuring all female country music, from past and present. Country music is loosely defined, so I feature a lot of small artists and big artists and a lot of local Eastern Kentucky writers.


Photo Credit: Jared Hamilton

BGS 5+5: Shadwick Wilde

Artist: Shadwick Wilde
Hometown: This is a tricky one–

I was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and I was raised primarily in San Francisco, but we lived in Havana and Amsterdam before settling in Kentucky, ancestral homeland of my maternal grandfather. My family on my grandmother’s side were Roma and Jewish, my grandfather’s, Scotch Kentuckian. My mother took after hers, and we moved around a lot while she made documentaries and wrote poetry.

Latest Album: Forever Home (out September 22, 2023)

Personal nicknames (or rejected band names):
Sadwick, Dadwick, Sandwich, Shadooby, sometimes I am Henry, and so on. We have many names and take many forms.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

If I’m doing my job well, I don’t really retain memories of being onstage… The “I” disappears into the music. Of course, if something goes badly, I will remember it for the rest of my life. But my dearest onstage memory is from recently at a festival in Wisconsin – a tattooed dad and his two punk-rocker daughters were all singing along to every word of our songs. That felt really special… I may have cried about it. I definitely cried about it.

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

I remember being five years old, dancing in the mirror with my plastic guitar and ripped jeans to my mother’s Bruce Springsteen records. She likes to remind me of that memory. I guess I have always known. Even though there are many career paths that I would like to explore in other lives – baker, teacher, postman, monk – this one is for songs, and I am rich with them. Laden, even.

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

Sing from the heart. Don’t take it too seriously. Remember to have fun, and to be kind. That’s pretty much it! We have a tendency to overcomplicate things, when the simplest answers are often the truest.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

I love to watch trees. We are rich with trees in Kentucky, and out where we live on the farm (just outside Louisville). The last few years I have been trying to learn all of their names, their leaf shapes, their bark textures. A favorite hobby of mine is foraging – black walnut, mulberry, gingko. Mushrooms, too. This year we got lucky with the morels. Last year I missed morels, but was lousy with the butteriest chanterelles, from a hillside near Greenbo Lake in Eastern Kentucky.

I have always felt connection in nature, in a spiritual sense. Nurturing that connection is essential for my mental health, and, I believe, also for our survival as a species. Our dominant culture would have us believe that humankind is separate from nature, but of course we know that’s not the case. We are wholly of the Earth, our larger body. It is this imaginary separation that allows us to objectify and exploit her, which of course has brought about this very real existential threat that is the climate crisis.

How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?

This is such an interesting dance, as a writer – the one between subject and object. Every time we perform, we are creating a character for the purpose of communicating this particular story. When I was a younger songwriter, I would tend to write about things that had really happened to me – heartbreaks, epiphanies, tribulations and such. Nowadays, I don’t find my autobiography to be quite so interesting. And although there are many such personal narratives on Forever Home, the “I” and the “you” are ultimately “us,” and the perspectives of “writer” and “listener” can be interchangeable in that same way: telling the stories of the human heart and mind, that are universal in more ways than they are disparate. So yes, very often, because in the end, there is only us; only One consciousness experiencing our human and cosmic dramas through the infinite and beautiful forms we take.


Photo Credit: Wes Proffitt

Tyler Childers Announces New Album With “In Your Love” Music Video

Traditional country phenom and Kentuckian Tyler Childers has announced his upcoming album, Rustin’ In The Rain (available September 8, 2023), with a brand new single and music video, “In Your Love.” Written and creative directed by New York Times bestselling author Silas House, the video tells a gay love story between two working class, Appalachian men – played by queer A-list actors and celebrities Colton Haynes and James Scully. The visuals for “In Your Love” tell one of country music’s most prominent and visible LGBTQ+ narratives to date, entering an industry landscape that has become more and more (openly) queer over the past decade.

“In Your Love” reminds of songs and albums released not just by left-leaning, more mainstream artists like Childers and Parker Millsap, but also by queer artists themselves, telling working-class stories and histories just like that constructed and depicted by House and director Bryan Schlam. In 2015, gay banjo player, singer-songwriter, and fellow Kentucky-resident Sam Gleaves released a landmark album, Ain’t We Brothers, which dripped with the exact same lived experiences and soot-tinged patina that inform Childers’ new video. In the past couple of years, releases by LGBTQ+ identified music makers like Amanda Fields, Willi Carlisle, Adeem the Artist, Amythyst Kiah, Jaimee Harris, and more trod similar ground. It’s notable still that an artist – however outlaw- or fringe-identified – as mainstream as Tyler Childers and with as broad a fanbase as his would choose to not only highlight queer, working-class storytelling, but to do so in a way that normalizes and re-centers these ways of being in Kentucky, the South, and Appalachia.

Rustin’ In The Rain will be released via RCA Records on Childers’ own imprint, Hickman Holler Records, on September 8. Via press release, Childers describes the inspiration that birthed Rustin’: “This is a collection of songs I playfully pieced together as if I was pitching a group of songs to Elvis. Some covers, one co-write, and some I even wrote in my best (terrible) Elvis impersonation, as I worked around the farm and kicked around the house. I hope you enjoy listening to this album as much as I enjoyed creating it. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

Clearly, the legacy of “The King” is merely one way drama, mystique, nuance, entertainment, and Southern-ness coalesce within this new project from one of the most exciting voices and perspectives in country.


Photo Credit: Sam Waxman

7 Times Bill Monroe Did Anything But Play a Mandolin

If there’s a common ground most bluegrass musicians share, it’s a virtuoso mentality and an extreme level of skill. Most pickers jam on more than one instrument, and the Father of Bluegrass himself was no exception.

Born in 1911 in Rosine, Kentucky, many folks credit Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys as founders of the genre. Monroe was best known for playing mandolin, churning out driving tunes like “Uncle Pen” and “Jerusalem Ridge,” but he had quite a few other skills as well.

Let’s take a quick peek at a few of the times Bill Monroe broke his own mold and put down his classic mandolin.

Pickin’ a Pink Telecaster

In this old-school, infamous footage shot at a home jam circle, Monroe shows off “Ozark Rag.” A fellow jammer hands Monroe a pink Fender Telecaster with a black pick guard as he sets aside his mandolin. At just two-and-a-half minutes long, this clip is short, but it’s still extremely entertaining and showcases what an incredible musician Monroe was.

Buck Dancing with Ricky Skaggs

This charming clip shows Bill Monroe buck dancing while Ricky Skaggs plays a blazing guitar. The traditional dance style is popular in Appalachia and the South, and Monroe’s steps are pretty slick! Monroe also appeared in the now-iconic official music video for this hit, “Country Boy,” buck dancing in a NYC subway set alongside street dancers.

Playing an Ovation Guitar

Another YouTube throwback shows Monroe in footage from a Homespun tutorial video, playing an Ovation acoustic guitar. Like the first clip, Monroe plays “Ozark Rag,” a tune he wrote later in life.

Playing Muleskinner Blues

This clip shows Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys on the iconic Grand Ole Opry stage. Monroe kicks off “Muleskinner Blues,” which according to other concert footage, was originally debuted by Monroe on the Opry in the 1940s with Big Mon picking guitar, rather than mandolin.

Singing with the Osborne Brothers

In this clip, Monroe leaves the mandolin playing to recently-departed Bobby Osborne of the Osborne Brothers at the Berkshire Mountains Bluegrass Festival. Instead, he provides backup vocals on the gospel number, “I Hear a Sweet Voice Calling.”

Dancing with Emmylou Harris

Like the other buck-dancing clip, Monroe comes out on stage to show off his traditional dance skills — but this time, with a friend! Here, he takes to the stage with singer-songwriter and fellow dancer Emmylou Harris. The pair even do a little do-si-do as Harris dances in cowboy boots.

Playing an Acoustic Guitar

From the plethora of online footage, it’s pretty clear Monroe loved picking “Ozark Rag,” and preferred to do so on guitar. This video is a clip taken from the longer concert above. It was made in 1994 – Monroe died in 1996.


 

LISTEN: Alyssa & Wayne Brewer, “Golden Ring”

Artist: Alyssa & Wayne Brewer
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Song: “Golden Ring”
Album: Alyssa and Wayne Sing George and Tammy
Release Date: July 14, 2023
Label: SGM (Stretch Grass Music) Records
In Their Words: “Collectively, ‘Golden Ring’ is our favorite George & Tammy duet that we’ve loved singing together through the years. That made it a very fitting choice for the first single with it also being their biggest #1 hit song and most identifiable duet! We are so proud to have included it on our debut album. If that wasn’t already a dream come true, we recently had the pleasure of meeting one of the gentleman, Rafe Van Hoy, that wrote this song at one of our performances in Nashville, TN. We hope you enjoy it and that it transports you into country music’s euphoric golden era as it does us every time that we are blessed to perform it together.” – Alyssa & Wayne Brewer
“I love Alyssa and Wayne Brewer’s new recording of ‘Golden Ring!’ So proud to have this wonderful couple put their golden touch to my song. A lot of people have done different versions for sure, but theirs is a great new and fresh take that also retains the classic elements with absolutely awesome vocal performances. Not an easy challenge to live up to the originals for sure, but they nailed it!” – Rafe Van Hoy, “Golden Ring” songwriter


Photo Credit: Katie Kauss

WATCH: Bibelhauser Brothers, “Place In The Sun”

Artist: Bibelhauser Brothers
Hometown: Louisville, Kentucky
Song: “Place In The Sun”
Album: Close Harmony
Release Date: June 15, 2023

In Their Words: “In the past few years, Louisville, Kentucky has been shaken to its core, amid a global pandemic, racial inequity, gun violence, and the fallout surrounding the death of Breonna Taylor. Our hometown, seemingly a microcosm of the country at large, has struggled with social justice and a level of political unrest not seen since the 1960s. During a time when it felt impossible to find bits of optimism on social media I stumbled upon a video from way back in 1969. It was an epic duet with Stevie Wonder and Tom Jones singing ‘Place In The Sun.’ In the video, the two superstars traded off singing powerful lead vocals, then switched back and fourth singing harmony parts. This reminded me of how Aaron and I have traded singing parts on many of our songs over the years. The lyrics gave me hope that we might soon find ourselves moving to a better place, and the image of Stevie & Tom singing together at the height of the civil rights movement was beyond inspiring. I knew right away, this was a song we should sing together, and I hope our interpretation of it moves and inspires a new generation.” – Adam Bibelhauser


Photo credit: Winston Garthwaite
Video credit: Brennan Clark

LISTEN: Dale Ann Bradley, “Kentucky Gold” (feat. Sam Bush)

Artist: Dale Ann Bradley
Hometown: Middlesboro, Kentucky
Song: “Kentucky Gold” (featuring Sam Bush)
Album: Kentucky For Me
Release Date: June 23, 2023
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “‘Kentucky Gold’ is a great story about determination, faith, and a desire to be in the race despite all the doubts and opinions of others. It’s about just taking your place and giving it all you’ve got, while at the same time, keeping in mind not to let the odds be a factor in your right to be at the race. We’re really happy with how this song came out and it was an honor to have Sam Bush on it. We’re excited for everyone to hear the full album when it drops. The title is Kentucky For Me and it’s a tribute to my home state. We also have a great lineup of guest artists who joined us.” – Dale Ann Bradley


Photo Credit: Pinecastle Records

See Photos from Lexington, KY’s Railbird Music Festival Featuring Tyler Childers and More

Highlighting the confluence of roots music and the mainstream, Railbird Festival welcomed 32 acts from across the rock, folk, and bluegrass spectrum to Lexington, Kentucky on June 3-4.

Boasting headliners Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan, plus Charley Crockett, Whiskey Myers, Nickel Creek and more, a sold-out crowd of 40,000-plus helped kick off festival season with a uniquely “Americana” lineup – drawing attention to this hidden gem of a city.

Set in the heart of Lexington and spread across three massive stages and a spacious lawn at The Infield at Red Mile (usually a horse racing venue and casino), 2023 marked the third year of a festival turning the “horse capital of the world” into roots-music central while celebrating the rich musical history of the area.

Jenny Lewis (R) with Lucius by Nathan Zucker

Day one kicked off with perfect festival weather– meaning it was blazing hot and dry as a bone. That was no worry, however, since Railbird also featured three huge shaded areas, plenty of refreshments (it is bourbon country, after all) and a merciful breeze. From just about anywhere on the grounds, fans could see everything all at once – and that included 2023’s festival-season fashions.

Charley Crockett (L) by Charles Reagan

Indie pop chanteuse Jenny Lewis was an early draw, singing smart tunes about “psycho men” and hypoallergenic puppies – and also welcoming Lucius, the Grammy-nominated duo who became something like the fest’s house band, for a rich duet.

Sheryl Crow by Nathan Zucker

Later on, Charley Crockett herded everyone to the Elkhorn stage for some ballads from a modern day drifting cowboy. And Sheryl Crow showed she could still hang with the kids, even calling for more of them in politics. “I don’t have a lot of hope for people older than me,” the feisty icon said. “But you can bring change.”

Valerie June by Cora Wagoner

Whiskey Myers brought their own gasoline (and a match), firing up a midday crowd with their rowdy roadhouse rock, and while Valerie June won her crowd over with a big smile and songs connected to the Black-folk past, emerging phenom Morgan Wade unleashed the pent up anger of country girls everywhere, sounding like a combination of Courtney Love and Loretta Lynn.

Morgan Wade by Taylor Regulski

Nineties alt-heroes Weezer united the crowd in a full set of fuzzed out awkward-teenager anthems – but also showed where they fit in the roots world, breaking out some old-timey three part harmony – and the day came to a close with breakout superstar Zach Bryan.

Zach Bryan by Charles Reagan

A self-made headliner who still carries the underground spirit, he gathered the whole crowd as the sun went down, doing his best to stay a songwriter who “keeps truth in songs.” Leading a country band with strong Class of ‘89 vibes, he mixed tender-but-edgy confessions with a well-placed vocal growl, and finished the night off in awe of the Railbird crowd, noting he was on the fest’s smallest stage just a few years earlier.

“I’m nervous as shit!” Bryan admitted. “Never in my life did I think I’d be after Weezer or Marcus Mumford.”

Marcus Mumford by Charles Reagan

Day two started off much the same as the first: hot and sunny, but with a marked increase of tow trucks prowling the Red Mile area. Great herds of humanity seem to migrate from one stage to the next, with wide smiles and a rootsier, more-acoustic lineup for them to enjoy. Luckily, the pacing was excellent and there was rarely any conflict over which stage to check out.

Sierra Ferrell by Cora Wagoner

Winchester 49 took over the big stage early, dodging beach balls and blasting their gritty country/rock/soul as they welcomed the crowd back with calls to drink up life (and beer.) Old-school master Sierra Ferrell had everyone dancing a throwback jig, and while Flipturn mixed fiery rock grooves with huge, danceable swells of energy (like EDM on electric guitars), Ricky Skaggs charmed as the fest’s elder statesman, and Kentucky treasure.

Making bluegrass look beyond easy (maybe more like effortless), a “RICKY!” chant soon broke out as parents answered questions from dumbstruck kids, like “Is it just him playing right now?” – once again proving the timeless, ageless wonder of acoustic music.

Nickel Creek by Charles Reagan

Nickel Creek seasoned their simple ingredients with a playful edge, returning for their first tour as a blood-bonded neo-bluegrass trio in quite a few years, while Amos Lee sampled everything from Memphis soul to Bob Marley and a bit of New Orleans funk.

Amos Lee by Taylor Regulski

Town Mountain found a welcome home for its foot-stomping, wild-child alternative-grass over at the covered Burl stage – as did Molly Tuttle (who will surely be on a bigger stage next year) and Charles Wesley Godwin, the West Virginia troubadour who welcomed night-one’s headliner back for a re-energizing duet, late in the festival and just before its biggest draw.

Molly Tuttle by Cora Wagoner

That moment finally came as the deep-red Strawberry Moon rose over Red Mile, with Tyler Childers putting a bold, indie-country cap on an already special event.

Tyler Childers by Charles Reagan

Welcomed to the stage by Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton – who proclaimed June 4, 2023 as Tyler Childers Day – the Lawrence County native arrived carrying the whole state’s roots-music tradition on his small frame, and never put a foot wrong.

Humble as ever and wielding the witty cadence of a carnival barker, he presided over a rabid hometown crowd in a jean jacket and rusty-blond hair, matching a voice that could cut Kentucky limestone with hardscrabble poetry just as sharp.

Tyler Childers by Charles Reagan

Over a two hour set, all of Lexington seemed to sway and sing along, closing the weekend with proudly down-home tracks like “All Your’n.” On the surface, it’s a holler-kid’s rebellious pledge of true love, that’s obvious enough. But in this case, that pledge seemed applicable in other ways – to the fans, to roots music, to Lexington. Perhaps even to the Railbird Music Festival itself.

I’ll love ya ’til my lungs give out / I ain’t lying,” Childers and his audience sang. “I’m all your’n and you’re all mine.”

Tyler Childers and band by Cora Wagoner

Photos courtesy of Railbird Festival
Lead photo credit: Taylor Regulski

WATCH: Gary Brewer, “Old Brown Case”

Artist: Gary Brewer
Hometown: Louisville, KY
Song: “Old Brown Case”
Album: House of Axes
Release Date: May 26, 2023 (single); June 30, 2023 (album)

In Their Words: “This is the main axe I’ve carried on the road with me all these years. It’s a 1941 D-28 Herringbone. All-original. You can see she’s got quite a bit of wear on it. One of 183 ever made and she’s still doing good. A good and strong guitar. Going to see if I can go way back and do an old Norman Blake song I recorded a number of years ago. It’s called ‘Old Brown Case.'” – Gary Brewer


Photo Credit: Alyssa Brewer

Bluegrass Memoirs: Lexington, Kentucky and J.D. Crowe, 1972

[Editor’s note: All photos by Carl Fleischhauer, except publicity shot of Esco Hankins]

On the afternoon of Sunday, August 13, 1972, Carl Fleischhauer and I were in Jackson, Kentucky, at the finale of Bill Monroe’s Kentucky Bluegrass festival where we’d been since Friday. In my notes, I wrote:

We left after talking briefly with Monroe (I bought his new LP [Bill Monroe’s Uncle Pen] and latest single [“My Old Kentucky and You”] from him) and drove [85 miles northwest] to Lexington where we got a motel — the Flora — run by an 85-year-old lady who liked Bill Monroe and told us that Uncle Dave Macon stayed in the Flora whenever he visited Lexington. Dinner late on the [U of KY] campus or near at an Italian restaurant — snuck in leftover wine and had ravioli. Sure was good to bathe and sleep in an air-conditioned room.

Monday morning after breakfast downtown and some cursory hunting in record cut-out bins, we headed to the Esco Hankins Record Shop. Tennessean Hankins, a Roy Acuff-style singer, began his recording career in 1947. He settled in Lexington in 1949 and performed for years on WLAP with his wife Jackie and his band, which included Dobro player Buck Graves. He also performed weekly on The Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance, which started in Lexington in 1949 and was broadcast on WVLK. 

Jackie and Esco Hankins publicity photo, original date unknown.

Flatt & Scruggs joined the Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance cast that year, influencing both Graves – to whom Earl taught his right hand, three-finger roll – and young J.D. Crowe, who was a regular in the audience and often went with his dad to observe Scruggs rehearsing with Flatt for their radio shows at WVLK. In 1950, at age 13, inspired and informally tutored by Earl, J.D. got his first banjo and began practicing what he’d seen watching Earl in action.

Esco Hankins Record Shop, Lexington, KY, April 1972.

Hankins held amateur country music contests, and at one he discovered teenager Crowe, who soon became part of his band. Marty Godbey’s Crowe On The Banjo: The Music Life of J.D. Crowe (2011) is a fascinating biography that narrates in great detail much of the story I would hear in my interview with Crowe that day in 1972. Early on, Godbey quotes from one of her interviews with J.D.: “I played for him quite a bit, it was my first paying job.” 

Esco Hankins in his record shop in Lexington, KY, August 1972.

I knew nothing of Crowe’s connection with Hankins on that morning when we walked into Esco’s shop. We browsed, bought some records, and then got into a conversation with him about country music history. He generously gave me a number of old songbooks and then, when we mentioned our interest in interviewing Crowe, he phoned Lemco, the Lexington record company with whom Crowe had recently made three albums and several singles, to get J.D.’s number. My notes:

…he ended up calling first Lemco and then J.D. Crowe and then handing the phone over to me to talk with J.D. — I thought it was still Lemco and went into a long rap about my project and what I was doing and how I would appreciate if they could put me in touch with J.D. — and the voice said, “This is J.D.” and I was embarrassed but maybe it was a good thing…anyhow we made an appt. for 3:00…

Esco Hankins in his record shop in Lexington, KY, August 1972.

Today, Crowe is best remembered as the banjo picking leader of the progressive New South, whose 1975 Rounder 0044 album with Skaggs, Rice, Douglas and Slone has become a modern bluegrass icon. He also was, in 1980, a founding member of the bluegrass supergroup The Bluegrass Album band, playing solid, perfectly timed, and driving banjo based on the style of Earl Scruggs and singing the harmony parts he’d learned with Jimmy Martin. He died on Christmas Eve, 2021. 

When I interviewed him in 1972, he’d been living in Lexington, his birthplace, since returning in 1961 after a five-year stint with Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys. For the next seven years he’d worked day jobs (with a couple of brief stints back with Martin) while playing in local taverns with his group, The Kentucky Mountain Boys. 

In 1968 they began appearing six nights a week at the Red Slipper Lounge in the Lexington Holiday Inn. It was a change from his former blue-collar tavern milieu – lots of young college students in the crowds. This gig was going strong when Carl and I visited him.

The Holiday Inn, Lexington, KY, April 1972. Featured at the Red Slipper Lounge at the motel that night was J.D. Crowe and Kentucky Mountain Boys.
The Holiday Inn, Lexington, KY, April 1972. Featured at the Red Slipper Lounge at the hotel that night was J.D. Crowe and the Kentucky Mountain Boys. Left to right: Larry Rice, Bobby Slone, Tony Rice, J.D. Crowe, and Donnie Combs.

J.D. was now working full-time at his music. A number of notable musicians had worked for him in The Kentucky Mountain Boys, like Doyle Lawson and Red Allen. At this point, in 1972, his band consisted of Larry Rice, mandolin, Tony Rice, guitar, Donnie combs, drums, and Bobby Slone, bass. He had just changed the name of the group to the New South

I had first seen Crowe in April 1960 when I went to Wheeling, West Virginia, with a couple of college friends. A month earlier we had opened for the Osborne Brothers at Antioch College. Bobby Osborne had urged the audience to come see them at the Wheeling Jamboree at WWVA. We took him up on it at spring vacation.

We drove down from Ohio and took a cheap room in a hotel close to the Virginia theater where the Jamboree was held. That evening we saw the Osborne Brothers as expected, but just the two of them were there. Bobby played guitar and sang “Down The Road” while Sonny picked the five. Good music, but no band! We enjoyed some of the country acts like Rusty and Doug and the fiddling of Buddy Durham. But we weren’t expecting any more bluegrass when Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys were introduced. It was the most memorable moment of the evening for us.

The four-piece band – Jimmy Martin, Crowe, mandolinist Paul Williams, and fiddler Johnny Dacus – bounded up to the mic from backstage and opened with Crowe’s the up-the-neck single-string banjo intro to “Hold Whatcha Got,” Martin’s latest single. 

The audience, which included a bunch of young women seated up front who had cowbells and knew how to use them, went bananas. It was a tight band, thought by many to be Martin’s best, and we were very impressed. Crowe’s banjo break was amazing. It marked him as a unique stylist.

Thereafter, when talking with fellow banjo pickers, I identified this single-string work as “J.D. Crowe style.” The success of “Hold Whatcha Got” led Martin to record several more using the same rhythm and banjo break style. 

Following our experience in Wheeling, we began listening to Martin’s late Saturday night show, after the Jamboree, on WWVA. The live sound of new songs like “My Walking Shoes” – driving, up-tempo stuff with Crowe’s banjo out front – caught our ear. 

J.D. told Marty Godbey about watching Earl rehearse: “I was more interested in trying to learn the breaks to songs and backup than instrumentals.” His work on Martin’s Decca recordings was definitive; Martin’s banjoists were told to play it like J.D. 

He began to record on Lemco with the Kentucky Mountain Boys in 1969 when the band included Doyle Lawson and Red Allen. This was the most recent Crowe recording I’d heard at the time of our August 1972 interview. 

That afternoon Carl and I drove to his trailer park home. We set up my cassette recorder and mic, and I began the interview with a few ethnographic questions: “Let me ask you just some of the basic things, like how old you are and where you were born and so on.”

J.D. Crowe home, Lexington, KY, April 1972.

He was 34 and told of childhood with country music on a farm six miles outside of Lexington. Then he described how his musical calling emerged in the fall of 1949 after Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs came to town. 

I saw them in person before I ever heard their records. Cause, the first record I heard of them was one called “Down The Road.”

“Down The Road” was Lester and Earl’s newest record release in October 1949.

His family were regulars in the audience at the Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance. 

And I saw, they came here — fact, I never heard of ‘em!

They was there one night, and they was so well received that they was hired.

His first banjo was a 39-dollar Kay, but within a year he’d moved up to a Gibson. Scruggs was his informal mentor. At fifteen he was playing dances and at sixteen Jimmy Martin hired him after hearing him playing on the radio with Hankins. “Hankins?” I asked.

Yeah, I guess that was the first person I worked with professionally.

J.D. Crowe at home in Lexington, KY, August 1972, during a visit and interview with Neil V. Rosenberg (left).

After five years working full-time in Martin’s band – in Detroit, Shreveport, and Wheeling – J.D. quit. It was 1961, he was twenty-four.

I think I just, a, kindly got tired, I mean, you know, wanted to try something different. 

This was a phrase he used several times in the interview: I just wanted to try something a little different, he said later, speaking of the band he started. Moving back to Lexington, he got a day job, and formed The Kentucky Mountain Boys, who played five nights a week in local clubs until 1968. Then the Holiday Inn gig came along:

I give up my job and I’ve been doing it full-time ever since.

As a bandleader, he stressed the hard work involved in building a career:

…you know how the music goes, unsure, you know. Which anything is, really when you get down to it. It’s just what you want to make out of it, and how hard you want to work… And a, believe me, it’s, it’s rough. A lot of people, you know, think it’s a lot of, a bowl of cherries, you know, just have a good time, but it’s not like that.

I suppose the picking is only the small part,” I said.

That’s just the smallest part of it, really.

J.D. explained how his full-time band operated – fall, winter, and spring they played six nights a week at the Holiday Inn. Then they took the summers off: 

Work road shows

He told me about his band members — mandolinist Larry Rice, his brother Tony, and Bobby Slone — and explained about the Rices’ California connection:

They were born in Danville, Virginia, but … they went to California when they were just little shavers and they lived out there I guess ten or twelve years in Los Angeles. And that’s where Larry came from, he was living there at the time… Bobby Slone, our bass player, he’s been with me I guess about six years. Well, he used to live in California also, and he had worked with them when they was growing up and so he told me about them. And of course, Tony I met after Larry joined me. He moved back to North Carolina and he came up. 

His band were all veterans of the late ’60s LA scene where folk-rock and country-rock had blended with bluegrass. That musical mindset had a kind of creative vision that Crowe could empathize with. 

I used to be, if it didn’t have a banjo in it, then I’d cut it off. But now, with the exception of rock and roll and blues. I’ve always liked it. I used to listen to blues, just all the time. I like the style of B.B. King, of course he’s still going, you know, and, a Fats Domino, Little Richard, you know … they was in the fifties. And there’s just a lot of ‘em, and of course the rock changed you know, course what they call country rock, which is good, I like that. In fact, we do quite a few numbers of that ourself.

I asked: “When you were leaving Jimmy Martin, were you thinking of putting some of that into your music?” He explained:

That wasn’t out yet … I didn’t have too much choice. You (could) only do country, do bluegrass, or you just do hard rock. But now there’s so much new stuff’s out that it’s just endless, to what you can do, and take over songs and adapt them over, your own little thing, in style.

You can take with what you had and combine it with a couple other forms of music and come up with a little different gimmick, a little different style. That’s the whole thing, that’s what you got to have. 

Perhaps the most novel aspect of the New South sound at this time was the fact that since the prior September – almost a year before – they had been playing electrified instruments.

I had the idea, you know a, maybe that might be the answer, because, like I say, like we couldn’t get any records played on country stations. 

The Osborne Brothers had gone electric in 1969; J.D. said their example had influenced him “a little bit.” Also in 1969, Earl Scruggs had begun playing an electrified banjo with his sons in the Earl Scruggs Revue. Jim & Jesse had done an electric album in 1971. I asked J.D. if he’d recorded with his electric group.

The latest single is. Course I use a steel and a piano and a drummer, the whole works on that. In fact I didn’t play too much banjo, on account, if there’s a lot of banjo, some things, they won’t even, some stations won’t play it.

At J.D. Crowe’s home in Lexington KY, August 1972, during a visit and interview with Neil V. Rosenberg (right) as reflected in a mirror that also caught photographer Carl Fleischhauer.

We’d just been at a festival; I wanted to know what he thought about festivals. Had they helped his music?

The festivals have helped to a certain extent. You know. Right now, they’re trying, they’re getting too many of them, in my opinion. Cause you can over do a good thing, you know and, which I know we worked some of ‘em that didn’t turn out so good … most of ‘em, though, we’ve worked this year have all been great big ones, I mean a lot of people. And I figure they will probably continue having that kind of a crowd. And I think that it’s, it’s helped.

“Is it a different kind of crowd than the country music crowd?” I asked.

A, not really, I’d say a people that go to bluegrass festivals would also go to see Porter Wagoner and Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard — Nashville, you know. They like it, course they like bluegrass too. A lot of your country people, you know, like other types. There’s — they like it, but they won’t come out to see it, you know, they don’t like it that good. They can take it or leave it, in other words. That’s what you got to get to, those people, the general public. You know, cause there’s a lot of people come to the festivals and — but you know if you figure, the population of the world and you know, don’t look, it’s not too good a’ odds, so…

An experienced observer of the ongoing bluegrass scene, J.D. was keenly involved in his music business. He spoke of recording studio dynamics, record company practices, broadcasting politics, fan magazine reviews, and other factors in running a band. 

At that point I turned off the recorder and asked if he would show me his electrified banjo. When I turned the recorder on again, he was giving me the history of his banjo, starting with the neck:

This, this is original here, this part as you can see was pieced from a tenor, you turn it over and it’s a great job — see, that’s been pieced.

(N:) Oh, yeah.

(J.D.:) From there up. They matched it perfect, see, you can tell, right there, it starts up on the neck, go right in there, or right here, you can see its smaller up the neck.

(N:) It’s a splendid job.

J.D. Crowe at home in Lexington KY, August 1972.

J.D. had seen a lot of old Gibson Mastertones over the years. He knew chapter and verse about wood types and design details. But I wanted to know about his electric setup. I knew nothing about electric instruments, which were anathema to the ’50s folk revival I’d grown up in. He spent some time showing and explaining the details of his still-experimental pickup system (Godbey describes it well, p. 110). Carl asked if he could take a picture, J.D. politely told him no.

He told me what it was like to be playing electric, with the strings closer to the fretboard (“low action”) than on an acoustic:

(N:) Can you do licks that you wouldn’t otherwise do?

(J.D.:) Yeah. You can do a lot of stuff that holds, you know, you can get a sustain. That’s what nice about it. 

Then he announced what he was hoping on for the future:

I’ve got a six-string ordered.

In 1970 Sonny Osborne had added a sixth bass string to his five-string; it was part of a lush sound – string sections, twin steels, etc. – on their latest recordings. J.D. liked the possibilities the added string would enable, especially because he, like Sonny, was playing an electrified instrument. He’d even had to cancel a contract for a bluegrass festival that didn’t allow electric instruments. He told them:

Hell no! We’re gonna play electric…. We played up here electric for nine month and [then] we played acoustical; I sounded like I was playing a two-dollar Kay. Cause your hearing gets accustomed to that volume. And it’d take me three or four months to get back on the acoustical route.

Our interview ended there. Afterward I evaluated it in my notes:

Interview with J.D. Crowe — nothing spectacular, your hr.’s worth of history, but attitudes and early learning gone into pretty carefully. Very friendly but reserved in a reassuring way. Carl busy snapping away.

J.D. Crowe at home in Lexington, KY, August 1972.

We left Lexington immediately, heading for Louisville, where we were to stay with friends of Carl’s. Consequently, I didn’t get a chance to see J.D. and his New South in action at the Red Slipper Lounge. 

In 1973, the electric edition of the New South recorded an album in Nashville for Starday. Titled J.D. Crowe and the New South, it was issued on CD in 1997 under the title Bluegrass Evolution. Crowe played his 6-string on two of its ten cuts. Here’s one, “You Can Have Her.

The album wasn’t released until 1977, two years after they stopped playing electric. In 1975 when Larry Rice left the group, J.D’s new mandolin player, Ricky Skaggs, had insisted on “acoustical.” By then J.D.’s vision of “something a little different” was working just fine without the extra electricity; Rounder 0044 came soon after. 

The Holiday Inn, Lexington, KY, April 1972. The Red Slipper Lounge featured J.D. Crowe and Kentucky Mountain Boys; including Tony Rice (back to camera), Larry Rice (barely visible behind Tony Rice), J.D. Crowe, Bobby Slone (hidden), and Donnie Combs, drums.
The Holiday Inn, Lexington, KY, April 1972. J.D. Crowe and the Kentucky Mountain Boys; Tony Rice (back to camera), Larry Rice, J.D. Crowe, Bobby Slone (partly hidden), and Donnie Combs, drums.

That day I wished we’d taken the time to catch the band in action, but we had only five more days for our bluegrass field trip. Kentucky was just the start; our next planned stops would take us to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Recently, a recording of an evening at the Red Slipper was uploaded to YouTube. Here’s the 1972 sound of the electrified New South (with drums): 


Thanks to Tim Stafford and Carl Fleischhauer.

Neil V. Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg.

Edited by Justin Hiltner