LISTEN: The Grascals, “Thankful”

Artist: The Grascals
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Thankful”
Release Date: May 21, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “The lyrics to our new single are a powerful and wonderful reminder of just how much we all have to be thankful for, and especially now more than ever! I think this song really touched all of our hearts, which made it an easy choice to record, and we’re so glad that the writers — Daryl Mosley and Rick Lang — brought it to The Grascals. ‘Thankful’ makes you pause and reflect on the truly important things in life and where our blessings come from, and I hope all of the listeners will really focus on the words of this song. I know it has helped me keep a brighter disposition while not being able to travel and see my music family and friends — and you just can’t help but smile when you hear it. The Grascals truly are ‘Thankful’!” — John Bryan, singer/guitarist, The Grascals


Photo credit: Kim Lancaster Brantley

LISTEN: The Gina Furtado Project, “Kansas City Railroad Blues”

Artist: The Gina Furtado Project
Hometown: Winchester, Virginia
Song: “Kansas City Railroad Blues”
Release Date: April 9, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “How in the world I made it all these years as a banjo player and not heard of ‘Kansas City Railroad Blues,’ I have no idea. Nonetheless, I heard this tune for the very first time last year and it quickly became my new favorite. This tune has the magic fire that drew me to the banjo as a kid and hasn’t let me put it down since. I chose it knowing it would be a great way to show off the hot pickers in the band. It provides a perfect template for Drew and Malia to exhibit their pristine swing style chops. This is also the first single of ours that includes our newest band member, Lu Furtado. And boy, does she make a grand entrance with her stellar bass playing! Lastly, Wayne Benson and Kristin Scott Benson, joining us on mandolin and from the producer’s chair, respectively, made this a super special recording. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed recording it!” — Gina Furtado


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

LISTEN: The Alex Leach Band, “The Turntable”

Artist: The Alex Leach Band
Hometown: Jacksboro, Tennessee
Song: “The Turntable”
Album: I’m The Happiest When I’m Moving
Release Date: March 26, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘The Turntable’ is a song I wrote while on a layover at the Houston Airport. I was thinking about both of my grandfathers who taught me about music as they played songs for me on a turntable when I was a little boy. I’ll never forget those days and how I felt when the vintage music started flowing out of that turntable.” — Alex Leach


Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

LISTEN: Andy Leftwich, “Through the East Gate”

Artist: Andy Leftwich
Hometown: Carthage, Tennessee
Song: “Through the East Gate”
Release Date: March 19, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Through the East Gate’ is a tune I wrote with the thought in mind of combining old-style fiddling with the new style of fiddlers that we hear today. I’ve always loved old traditional fiddling, and I wanted to somehow capture both the feel of the old style and combine it with the exciting licks and melodies that the newer style brings. This song reminds me of friends and family coming together to play music and to have a great time! I was so honored to have the legendary Mark Schatz join me on bass and clawhammer banjo. After we cut the track, we couldn’t resist recording a track of him dancing to this one!” — Andy Leftwich


Photo credit: Erick Anderson

LISTEN: Lonesome River Band, “Love Songs”

Artist: Lonesome River Band
Hometown: Floyd, Virginia
Song: “Love Songs”
Release Date: February 19, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Love Songs’ is another great song written by our friend Adam Wright. It tells the story of a songwriter who has had bad experiences with love and can’t find ways to be positive about it. The lyrics depict the songwriter’s frustration: ‘They say write in what you know / And all I really know is the losin’ and the leavin and the left.’ Adam puts a comedic twist to selling sad songs, and Brandon Rickman, our guitarist and vocalist, portrays it in his unique way.” — Sammy Shelor, Lonesome River Band


Photo credit: Anthony Ladd

WATCH: Sideline, “Just a Guy in a Bar”

Artist: Sideline
Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina
Song: “Just a Guy in a Bar”
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “In both recording and performing this song, we knew needed something special in terms of visual representation. The story speaks for itself, but capturing the emotion and weight of the story required more than just musically performing it on camera. We put our heads together and found a way to play the whole story out, piece by piece. It was a lot of fun working with actors and professionally creative minds that knew exactly what to do to suck the viewer in. It gives an already strong, deep song so much more dimension.” — Skip Cherryholmes


Photo credit: Mountain Home Music Company

LISTEN: Jaelee Roberts, “Something You Didn’t Count On”

Artist: Jaelee Roberts
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Something You Didn’t Count On”
Release Date: February 5, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Something You Didn’t Count On’ is about anything that happens in life unexpectedly. The main theme is about love coming out of nowhere, but it really has so many underlying meanings, and that’s why I love the song so much. The melody and lyrics came to Theo MacMillan and I pretty quickly and, interestingly, the storyline comes from either the male or female perspective. I think my favorite line in the song is ‘you don’t always look for what you find’ which is the focus of what the song is all about!” — Jaelee Roberts


Photo credit: Before Charleston Photography

‘Bluegrass at the Crossroads’ Series Displays a Big-Tent View of Bluegrass

Over the last several years, it’s been fun watching the rapid creative growth happening at sister labels Mountain Home Music Company and Organic Records. Their rosters are musically diverse — a reflection of the music-rich mountains of Western North Carolina where the label group is based — thanks to the effort they’ve put into signing adventurous bands that redraw musical boundaries on stage every night, along with artists that are able to sound like themselves while keeping tradition’s torches shining. The prevailing attitude in the building, among staff and artists alike, is decidedly forward-looking; the music these groups and artists create is mutually influential, and the territory between them fertile ground for collaboration.

Mountain Home’s new series of releases, Bluegrass at the Crossroads, takes advantage of this by putting these artists together in unique and intriguing combinations to record mostly new music. The label’s team gets that this homegrown stylistic breadth is a great asset, and they aren’t shy in their commitment to the highly cooperative, big-tent view of bluegrass that’s proudly on display in the series.

Bluegrass styles cover a remarkable amount of ground — from Red, White, and Bluegrass to Red Rocks, if you will — while still remaining totally recognizable as the genuine article. As a result, there’s enough range within the genre that a gap exists to be filled by an ongoing project of this kind. And, since touring has been largely benched for the time being, this is the moment to gather these threads together, invite great players into the studio for new creative partnerships, and press “record.”

Music in general has become so cross-pollinated that you never know what you’ll find on another musician’s playlist or turntable, and as more musicians and producers jump their creative tracks to explore different genres, bringing their tastes and vocabularies along with them, they’re invariably influenced by the new sounds and ideas they encounter, and they exert their own influence in return.

Bluegrass is good at absorbing new ideas while holding on to its identity — the sometimes regrettable, sometimes successful, move of giving the bluegrass treatment to rock and pop hits is a perfect example – and so, as the music grows, bluegrass musicians of all kinds freely pull new ideas from all directions, incorporate them into their own expressions of the style, and wind up with something that is still absolutely bluegrass.

It’s easy to pick out classical music, jazz, indie rock, folk, metal, even electronic music, in the sounds of some of today’s bands. Other bands choose reach into the past to create new interpretations of Celtic music, old-time, classic country, and Tin Pan Alley. Turn your ear to a record from any performer on Bluegrass at the Crossroads and you’ll hear these influences effortlessly knit into the songs and arrangements.

It’s not surprising, then, that Bluegrass at the Crossroads is good, but it is striking how much fun it is to listen to. One-off bands like these can be like wrapped presents: lots of promise on the outside, but what’s inside might or might not meet expectations. Happily, there’s nothing to be disappointed about on these tracks; they’re full of life, maybe given a boost by a collective sense of cabin fever.

It also likely helps that most of the material is new. A few tunes from the standard repertoire appear, but few of the songs have been heard before. This keeps a lot of baggage out of a performer’s approach to a tune — each one is a blank slate, with no so-called “definitive” version to consult, and that extra space leaves room for a kind of subtle magic to happen.

Bluegrass may have a restless heart, but it also tends to hew close to tradition where it can be found (if you don’t believe me, listen to five different bands kick off “Steam Powered Aereo Plane,” you’ll see what I mean), and songs with unwritten histories don’t have conventions that must be attended to. So players are more free to search for new ideas, calling on their wide-ranging taste and experience, to create statements that seem more personal, the best of which sound as if they had always been there — just like the best songs.

These sorts of moments are everywhere in this series, and even though the players are all going for it, they’re also paying close attention to each other. The level of ensemble play is high, there are moments that have the intensity of a live performance, and a feeling that everyone involved was making themselves fully present for the project. That sense of life can be hard to come by in studio recordings, and the energy that’s captured is a refreshing reminder of what playing music is really about. It comes at a time when I know a lot of us could use something like this, and I’m excited for more!

A socially-distanced Bluegrass at the Crossroads session. (L to R: Joe Cicero, Sammy Shelor, Travis Book, Jon Weisberger, Carley Arrowood, Wayne Benson)


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Photo and graphics courtesy Crossroads Label Group

LISTEN: Balsam Range, “Rivers, Rains and Runaway Trains”

Artist: Balsam Range
Hometown: Haywood County, North Carolina
Song: “Rivers, Rains and Runaway Trains”
Single Release Date: January 15, 2021
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “‘Rivers, Rains and Runaway Trains’ is another great tune from Milan Miller and Beth Husband. For me it’s an upbeat and moody song that reminds me that there’s sometimes that one person or thing in your life that no matter how much you look ahead and prepare they still catch you by surprise. Could be in a good way or in a not so good way. As the song says in the bridge: ‘My steady feet stumbled, the heavens they rumbled, the earth shook below the ground. I tried to speak but mumbled, my senses they crumbled, the second you came around.'” — Caleb Smith, guitarist and vocalist


Photo credit: David Simchok

LISTEN: Balsam Range, “Grit and Grace”

Artist: Balsam Range
Hometown: Haywood County, North Carolina
Song: “Grit and Grace”
Release Date: September 4, 2020
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

In Their Words: “’Grit and Grace’ is the kind of song that every single person who walks this earth can or will likely relate to at some point during their journey. But with determination, courage, faith, and finding the inner grit to overcome struggles, we live to tell another story. One that has a happy ending for us. My desire is that this song provides encouragement and strength to anyone who may be suffering. That they may find peace in knowing they are not alone.

“The inspiration for ‘Grit and Grace’ came from a man who served his country, walked the Bataan Death March, and was a prisoner of war for 3½ years, Walter Middleton. When my mom asked him how he got through it, his answer was simply, ‘I provided the grit and God provided the grace.’ He later in life wrote a book about his time spent as a prisoner of war and he signed the book to my mother with, ‘For folks like you I would gladly do it again.’ It is hard to comprehend the willingness to suffer that greatly for others but many before us have. Life is about learning, teaching, sharing, and helping those along our journey that are experiencing what we may have already experienced and by grace overcame.” — Buddy Melton, Balsam Range (vocalist and fiddler)


Photo credit: David Simchok