Tag: live music
Bluegrass Returns to Bourbon & Beyond
Bluegrass is back at Bourbon & Beyond! We’re so excited to once again curate and host a stage at the bourbon, food, and music festival in Louisville, Kentucky. To add onto the already stellar main stage headliners like Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, Yola, and so many more, this year’s bluegrass stage will feature Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, Sierra Hull, and Hogslop String Band, as well as Gary Brewer & Kentucky Ramblers, Jon Stickley Trio, Missy Raines & Allegheny, Jake Blount, Bella White, Tray Wellington, Tyler Boone – and more to be announced! We can’t wait to gather with all of our bluegrass friends for a weekend of stellar bourbon, delicious food, and incredible music.
You can grab your tickets and learn more about Bourbon & Beyond here.
Cayamo: Setting Sail on a Journey Through Song
The BGS team is gearing up to board the Norwegian Pearl and join the Sixthman team – along with the likes of Emmylou Harris, the Punch Brothers, Aoife O’Donovan, Dawes, the Mavericks… (we could go on and on and on about this lineup) – as we set sail for a journey through song in Cayamo. The cruise has been a fun-filled gathering of roots music artists and fans for fourteen years now, and we can’t wait to be a part of this reunion after a year away. The week at sea promises full days of live music and community set against the crystal blue waters of the Caribbean, and it all sounds like a dream.
This year’s ship may be full as of now (though there’s still time to cross your fingers and join the waiting list if you’re the last-minute type), but no need to fret – we’ll be capturing exciting moments onboard so you can experience the fun from dry land. Stay tuned!
GIVEAWAY: Enter to Win Tickets to Allison de Groot & Tatiana Hargreaves @ Irish Arts Center (NYC) 3/19
Grab tickets to the rest of the festivities at the Bluegrass Situation Presents: A St. Patrick’s Day Festival at New York’s New Irish Arts Center, with de Groot and Hargreaves participating in an opening night jam session with fiddler-banjoist Jake Blount and traditional dancer Nic Gareiss on March 17 as well as a headlining show from Blount and Gareiss on March 18.
BGS Top 50 Moments: BGS On Deck – Our First Music Cruise
It’s been over nine years since we first boarded the Norwegian Pearl to set sail with some musical friends. Back in 2013, BGS joined the team at Sixthman as well as host band, the Steep Canyon Rangers, on the first Mountain Song at Sea cruise, sailing from Miami to the Bahamas alongside the Punch Brothers, David Grisman, the Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien, Della Mae, Bryan Sutton, and Peter Rowan.
You can get a glimpse of the riotous fun that was had onboard that first cruise here.
This month, BGS returns to the high seas on board Sixthman’s Cayamo cruise. While onboard, we’ll be hosting the Party of the Deck-Ade, our kickoff birthday event celebrating ten years of BGS. The jam will be hosted by Sierra Hull and Madison Cunningham, and backed by our house musicians Hogslop String Band.
Get your sunscreen ready, and we hope to see some of you in Miami very soon!
Carolina Calling, Greensboro: the Crossroads of Carolina
Known as the Gate City, Greensboro, North Carolina is a transitional town: hub of the Piedmont between the mountain high country to the west and coastal Sandhill Plains to the east, and a city defined by the people who have come, gone, and passed through over the years. As a crossroads location, it has long been a way station for many endeavors, including touring musicians – from the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix at the Greensboro Coliseum, the state’s largest indoor arena, to James Brown and Otis Redding at clubs like the El Rocco on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Throw in the country and string band influences from the textile mill towns in the area, and the regional style of the Piedmont blues, and you’ve got yourself quite the musical melting pot.
This historical mixture was not lost on one of Greensboro’s own, Rhiannon Giddens – one of modern day Americana’s ultimate crossover artists. A child of black and white parents, she grew up in the area hearing folk and country music, participating in music programs in local public schools, and eventually going on to study opera at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Once she returned to North Carolina and came under the study of fiddler Joe Thompson and the Black string band tradition, she began playing folk music and forged an artistic identity steeped in classical as well as vernacular music. In this episode of Carolina Calling, we spoke with Giddens about her background in Greensboro and how growing up mixed and immersed in various cultures, in a city so informed by its history of segregation and status as a key civil rights battleground, informed her artistic interests and endeavors, musical styles, and her mission in the music industry.
Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Durham, Wilmington, Shelby, and more.
Music featured in this episode:
Rhiannon Giddens – “Black is the Color”
Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Cornbread and Butterbeans”
The Rolling Stones – “Rocks Off”
Count Basie and His Orchestra – “Honeysuckle Rose”
Roy Harvey – “Blue Eyes”
Blind Boy Fuller – “Step It Up and Go”
Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Avalon”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)”
Barbara Lewis -“Hello Stranger”
The O’Kaysions – “Girl Watcher”
Joe and Odell Thompson – “Donna Got a Rambling Mind”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Country Girl”
Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Hit ‘Em Up Style”
Our Native Daughters – “Moon Meets the Sun”
Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Si Dolce é’l Tormento”
BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz
Enter to win a prize bundle featuring a signed copy of author and Carolina Calling host David Menconi’s ‘Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Music,’ BGS Merch, and surprises from our friends at Come Hear North Carolina.
Carolina Calling, Shelby: Local Legends Breathe New Life Into Small Town
The image of bluegrass is mountain music played and heard at high altitudes and towns like Deep Gap and remote mountain hollers across the Appalachians. But the earliest form of the music originated at lower elevations, in textile towns across the North Carolina Piedmont. As far back as the 1920s, old-time string bands like Charlie Poole’s North Carolina Ramblers were playing an early form of the music in textile towns, like Gastonia, Spray, and Shelby – in Cleveland County west of Charlotte.
In this second episode of Carolina Calling, a podcast exploring the history of North Carolina through its music and the musicians who made it, we visit the small town of Shelby: a seemingly quiet place, like most small Southern towns one might pass by in their travels. Until you see the signs for the likes of the Don Gibson Theatre and the Earl Scruggs Center, you wouldn’t guess that it was the town that raised two of the most influential musicians and songwriters in bluegrass and country music: Earl Scruggs, one of the most important musicians in the birth of bluegrass, whose banjo playing was so innovative that it still bears his name, “Scruggs style,” and Don Gibson, one of the greatest songwriters in the pop & country pantheon, who wrote “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “Sweet Dreams,” and other songs you know by heart. For both Don Gibson and Earl Scruggs, Shelby is where it all began.
Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Greensboro, Durham, Wilmington, Asheville, and more.
Music featured in this episode:
Charlie Poole & The North Carolina Ramblers – “Take a Drink On Me”
Flatt & Scruggs – “Ground Speed”
Don Gibson – “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler” (Carolina Calling Theme)
Hedy West – “Cotton Mill Girl”
Blind Boy Fuller – “Rag Mama, Rag”
Don Gibson – “Sea Of Heartbreak”
Patsy Cline – “Sweet Dreams ”
Ray Charles – “I Can’t Stop Loving You”
Ronnie Milsap – “(I’d Be) A Legend In My Time”
Elvis Presley – “Crying In The Chapel”
Hank Snow – “Oh Lonesome Me”
Don Gibson – “Sweet Dreams”
Don Gibson – “Oh Lonesome Me”
Chet Atkins – “Oh Lonesome Me”
Johnny Cash – “Oh, Lonesome Me”
The Everly Brothers – “Oh Lonesome Me”
Neil Young – “Oh Lonesome Me”
Flatt & Scruggs – “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”
Bill Preston – “Holy, Holy, Holy”
Flat & Scruggs – “We’ll Meet Again Sweetheart”
Snuffy Jenkins – “Careless Love”
Bill Monroe – “Uncle Pen”
Bill Monroe – “It’s Mighty Dark To Travel”
The Earl Scruggs Revue – “I Shall Be Released”
The Band – “I Shall Be Released”
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”
The Country Gentlemen – “Fox On The Run”
Sonny Terry – “Whoopin’ The Blues”
Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee – “Born With The Blues (Live)”
Nina Simone – “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.
BGS Top 50 Moments: The LA Bluegrass Situation at Largo
It was 2010 when the true origins of “The Sitch” first materialized. For five days in May, BGS founder Ed Helms congregated a lauded lineup of roots artists at the storied Largo at the Coronet Theatre in Los Angeles. That first annual LA Bluegrass Situation festival included the likes of Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers, The Watkins Family Hour, Gillian Welch, Will Ferrell, Jackson Browne, The Infamous Stringdusters, and Ed’s Whiskey Sour Radio Hour variety showcase.
In the festivals that followed, LABS brought in the likes of Nickel Creek, John C. Reilly, the Punch Brothers, Willie Watson, and many others before broadening to bigger venues across Los Angeles. The online iteration of “The Bluegrass Sitch” wouldn’t come to fruition for another two years, but the heart of it was all there, on stage at Largo, from the very start.
Photo Credit: Lincoln Andrew Defour
GIVEAWAY: Enter to Win Tickets to the Infamous Stringdusters @ The Echoplex (Los Angeles) 3/31
Carolina Calling, Asheville: A Retreat for the Creative Spirit
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Asheville, North Carolina’s history as a music center goes back to the 1920s and string-band troubadours like Lesley Riddle and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and country-music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. But there’s always been a lot more to this town than acoustic music and scenic mountain views. From the experimental Black Mountain College that drew a range of minds as diverse as German artist Josef Albers, composer John Cage, and Albert Einstein, Asheville was also the spiritual home for electronic-music pioneer Bob Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer first popularized by experimental bands like Kraftwerk to giant disco hits like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”
It’s also a town where busking culture ensures that music flows from every street corner, and it’s the adopted hometown of many modern musicians in a multitude of genres, including Pokey LaFarge, who spent his early career busking in Asheville, and Moses Sumney, a musician who’s sonic palette is so broad, it’s all but unclassifiable.
In this premiere episode of Carolina Calling, we wonder and explore what elements of this place of creative retreat have drawn individualist artists for over a century? Perhaps it’s the fact that whatever your style, Asheville is a place that allows creativity to grow and thrive.
Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Shelby, Greensboro, Durham, Wilmington, and more.
Music featured in this episode:
Bascom Lamar Lunsford – “Dry Bones”
Jimmie Rodgers – “My Carolina Sunshine Girl”
Kraftwerk – “Autobahn”
Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”
Pokey LaFarge – “End Of My Rope”
Moses Sumney – “Virile”
Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler (Carolina Calling Theme)”
Moses Sumney – “Me In 20 Years”
Steep Canyon Rangers – “Honey on My Tongue”
Béla Bartók – “Romanian Folk Dances”
New Order – “Blue Monday”
Quindar – “Twin-Pole Sunshade for Rusty Schweickart”
Pokey LaFarge – “Fine To Me”
Bobby Hicks Feat. Del McCoury – “We’re Steppin’ Out”
Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Put A Lid On It”
Jimmie Rodgers – “Daddy and Home”
Lesley Riddle – “John Henry”
Steep Canyon Rangers – “Graveyard Fields”
BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.