Artist:Gangstagrass Hometown: All over the USA! Rench: Brooklyn with Oklahoma roots; Dolio the Sleuth: Pensacola, Florida; R-SON the Voice of Reason: Philly; Danjo: Washington, D.C.; Farrow: Omaha; Sleevs: Baltimore. Song: “The Only Way Out Is Through” Release Date: February 7, 2024 (video); February 2, 2024 (single) Label: Rench Audio
In Their Words: “I’m really into how much we played with tension and energy to craft this track, the dynamics came out so powerfully. Especially with the horns! (Provided by Lowdown Brass Band.) We were stunned by the quick ‘yes’ from the one and only Jerry Douglas, who put in a blisteringly intense Dobro solo. I dare you to tell me you’ve heard anything like this before. I feel like this will be a great song for psyching yourself up to kick ass at whatever you are about to do.” – Rench
“When you ask Jerry Douglas to collaborate with you and he says yes, it says something about him and it says something about you. Jerry is the quintessential progressive bluegrass musician, with one foot permanently rooted in a genuine love of musical tradition and the other foot continually stretching forward and in every direction, looking for ways to bring traditional music into new places. ‘The Only Way Out Is Through’ makes the case, fearlessly, that what we do is in the true spirit of bluegrass: innovative, collaborative, awesome.” – Danjo
“‘The Only Way Out Is Through’ was a lotta fun to make: a bumping, triumphant track where we get to spit fire bars, a mantra of a hook, plus Jerry Douglas going BANANAS on the Dobro!” – Dolio the Sleuth
“Making Gangstagrass music is always dope. Adding some Lowdown Brass Band to the mix and a LEGEND like Jerry Douglas is even mo’ dope!” – R-SON the Voice of Reason
Track Credits:
Rench – beats, vocals Dolio the Sleuth – MC, vocals R-SON the Voice of Reason – MC Jerry Douglas – Dobro Dan “Danjo” Whitener – banjo, guitar, mandolin, vocals B.E. Farrow – fiddle, vocals Lowdown Brass Band – horns Sleevs – management / behind-the-scenes
Photo Credit: Melodie Yvonne Video Credit: Directed by TOUGH DUMPLIN & MZ.ICAR; Post-Production by Someplace Called Brooklyn.
Newgrass luminary Sam Bush joins host Tom Power for the highly anticipated debut episode of Toy Heart Season 2. Bush – the celebrated mandolinist, Bluegrass Hall of Famer, and co-founder of New Grass Revival and the Telluride House Band – opens up about his illustrious career, from his early days of fiddle contests in Weiser, Idaho, to the pivotal moments learning at the feet of influential figures like Bill Monroe. Bush’s narrative weaves a rich tapestry of bluegrass history.
Season 2’s first episode features stories of Sam’s many genre-breaking collaborations, including playing with the Dillards and New Grass Revival plus his time at Capitol Records. He waxes poetic about the magic of jam sessions and improvisation, and the profound influence of artists like Byron Berline. From the roots of “Callin’ Baton Rouge” to the impact of the Vietnam era, Bush’s journey is a testament to the ever-evolving nature of bluegrass.
For nearly a quarter century, North Carolina-based Chatham County Line have pushed the boundaries of American roots music, but with their new album, Hiyo, they’ve finally knocked them down.
Released January 26, the album contains some of the band’s most far-flung soundscapes to date, as they introduce synths, drums, and other sonic elements to their repertoire for the first time ever. The resulting creations sound more like synth-grass than bluegrass, with everything from drum machines to stretched out harmonicas, harmoniums, and other oddities guiding the way. According to guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and founding member Dave Wilson, the drastic shift in direction stems in part from the departure of banjo player Chandler Holt, who stepped away from the band following 2020’s Strange Fascination to spend more time with family.
“We listen to all kinds of music so I wanted to make an album that reflected that,” Wilson tells BGS. “We knew when Chandler left that we didn’t want to just do the same thing we’d always done with a different person on banjo. That’s not how artists grow in the world. You instead look at something as a springboard for change, which is exactly what we did in moving toward a sound that more closely resembles the music we enjoy playing when nobody’s watching.”
The experimentation on Hiyo was further encouraged by its producer, Rachael Moore, who the band met during their time portraying George Jones’ backing band on the Showtime series, George & Tammy. Both the opportunity to be a part of that show — which manifested itself through a friend of a friend — and meeting Moore were complete happenstance, with the latter seeing the two parties build an instant rapport.
“Anybody that works in the studio with T. Bone Burnett that many times and has been a part of records like [Robert Plant & Alison Krauss’ Raise the Roof] is alright by me,” praises Wilson. “That’s the kind of music I listen to, so us making that connection to Rachael made us realize how hard a worker she is and how much she understood the sound we were going for. We knew then she was who we wanted to record our next album with.”
Speaking with BGS from his home near Raleigh, Wilson further touched on the band’s connection to George & Tammy, the similarities between the recording process and being on a film set, Phoebe Bridgers’ influence on one of Hiyo’s songs and more.
Who are some of the bands you’ve been listening to that helped inspire the sonic shift of Hiyo?
Dave Wilson: That last Sarah Jarosz record really blew me away. She’s just a phenom. There’s also two radio stations that I listened to religiously throughout the writing process for this album. Whenever I’m messing around with a guitar or building a tube amp in my basement I listen to the radio, and one of the stations I tune into is called “That Station” here in Raleigh. They play everything from us to Mipso – and a bunch of other local acts – in addition to bigger Americana artists making waves. That’s where I heard the Sarah Jarosz stuff.
Being tuned into what people are doing today is very important to me, because I’m a part of this too. If I’m asking people to listen to me instead of Led Zeppelin then I need to listen to Sarah Jarosz instead of Led Zeppelin, because she’s a living, breathing artist that deserves that respect. I take a lot of joy out of not only buying modern albums, but listening to radio that supports those artists as well.
On the flip side, I love WWOZ 90.7 FM in New Orleans. That’s on constantly and is full of crazy, disparate sounds, old songs, funny blues stuff and more. I never get bored of DJ Black Mold down there.
How did the rapport working with Rachael Moore on George & Tammy translate to the studio with these songs?
I’ve listened to a million records and I really wanted this one to sound like the ones in my head. In the studio we tracked three or four songs per day, then at night I’d lay in bed in disbelief at the way the music sounded better than I had ever imagined us doing. We demoed the songs, so we had an idea of what it was going to sound like, but with the additions of [Jamie Dick and John Mailander] there was a huge leap forward that outpaced my wildest imagination. I’m so glad we were able to capture that, and it wouldn’t have happened without Rachael’s knowledge and connections.
Did you notice any similarities between your experience recording this album and time on set for George & Tammy?
It was really about seeing how hard all these people work, plus the whole concept of down time vs. on time, where you have to deliver an emotional performance before sitting around for 20 minutes as the cameras get moved around before jumping right back into your role like you didn’t miss a beat. It shows you that that is the job. It’s more about sitting around mentally preparing yourself and managing your emotions between those two extremes.
That rubbed off, because in the studio it’s a lot like that, too. In most cases the songs are written long before you go to record them, so when the time comes to get in front of the microphone you’ve got to deliver it with an intensity like it’s still brand new. That’s how George Jones delivered a vocal. He left no doubt that he was the character in his songs, not just the person singing them. That’s the approach we’re trying to take so we can deliver the goods when it matters most.
One of my favorite songs on Hiyo is “Heaven,” which I understand is somewhat inspired by Phoebe Bridgers, of all people. How’d that come about?
I live about three hours from Charlotte, which is where I grew up. My father, who’s in his early 90s, started going through some Alzheimer’s stuff during COVID that had me driving back and forth often to take care of him with my mom. During those trips I got to listening to Phoebe Bridgers to the point I’d have one [album] on repeat each way of the drive. I really dig her style of writing and think some of that influence rubbed off when piecing together “Heaven.”
The song was actually more of a country shuffle in the beginning, so in the weeks prior going to the studio I got my drum machine out of the basement to make some demos for Jamie, so he’d have a template of it to reference. One day I decided to try the Fender VI on it, hit the drum machine, and got playing. Something about those sonic elements, how the words came out and the harmonica completely shifted my perspective of it.
That’s another way we approached this record when we added a drummer. We went back through our catalog and redid a bunch of old songs entirely different as if we were covering ourselves. So with this album, I approached it as if I were covering these songs and how we could change them up, because my favorite cover songs are completely different from the originals except for the story and melody.
You mentioned earlier the influence of New Orleans’ WWOZ on this record and I feel like no song better embodies that than “B S R.” Would you agree with that assessment?
It was a huge part of that song. I actually also play banjo on it in open G tuning. One day I also tuned my Stratocaster to it and began playing the opening riff, which isn’t necessarily what the song is built around, but did help it to pop when we first brought it to the studio. Since then, I began playing Stratocaster in open G with super heavy, flat line strings on it and it’s become one of our favorite songs to play.
I also have family in Mississippi and my mom’s from Alexandria, Louisiana, so I traveled there a lot as a kid and have a general knowledge of the area. To be honest, New Orleans is the coolest city in America. It’s the one that’s got soul. There’s other towns with soul, but none that can match New Orleans. There’s live music in literally 40 places every night!
I’m also fond of the change of pace provided by the instrumental “Under the Willow Tree.” How does your approach change when writing songs with lyrics vs. composing an instrumental piece like this one?
I think some songs just lend themselves to having a story told over them and some, instrumentally, can tell a story from their melody alone. When Chandler left the band it was a sign to me to up my game and dig in a little harder, because until then I’d deferred to banjo and mandolin for most of the solos and heavy lifting. I’m a huge fan of Leo Kottke and other guitar virtuosos, so “Under the Willow Tree” is my homage to players like him.
Despite not being an instrumental, another song that gives me the same feel of “Under the Willow Tree” is “Stone,” both for the wisdom it imparts and its ballad-like feel. What was the motivation behind it?
That is the one song that I wrote during the pandemic. It was informed by all of the protests that were going on and the idea that when it comes down to it, you have the ability to change not only yourself, but you can change those around you with whatever power you have at hand. That can come from a deep conversation and from exchange of ideas and respect for the other person’s opinion, but in this case it comes from our music.
Music has a way of bringing people together in a way that few other things can match — just ask Taylor Swift fans! At the end of the day, we’re all gonna be a piece of dirt that a tree grows out of, so just relax. “Stone” was born out of a simple riff and that idea questioning what is permanent in this world, because all want something positive to persevere when you’re done and your story is getting told.
One thing that I regret about the advent of recorded music is the families that used to sit around, everyone playing an instrument and singing. There’s a therapy in that that went long overlooked. It’s just really positive and healthy for everyone included to sing a bit and let the world go for a minute.
(Editor’s Note: This story was first published in November 2023 by our friends at Roots Radio WMOT 89.5. Visit their website to hear the best in listener-powered independent American roots music and to read more by journalist and producer Craig Havighurst.)
Sixty years ago, an 18-year-old David Grisman made his way to a place called the Coral Bar in West Paterson, New Jersey. He brought with him a portable Wollensak reel-to-reel tape recorder and a good measure of youthful chutzpah. He found the dressing room of his quarry – bluegrass stars the Osborne Brothers – and asked Sonny and Bobby if it would be okay if he recorded their show that night.
“And Sonny Osborne looked at me and said, ‘You can record the show. But if that ever comes out on a record, I’ll find you and I’ll kill you.’”
Grisman, now 78, recounts this memory at his home in Port Townsend, Washington. It’s a turn-of-the-20th century house with high ceilings, period furnishings and beguiling, music-themed paintings on the wall by David’s wife Tracy Bigelow Grisman. I got to visit the master mandolinist this summer, just weeks before he was announced as one of 2023’s inductees into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, an honor that was consummated in late September during the IBMA Awards.
While he was hailed by the bluegrass establishment for his “distinctive and influential” mandolin playing, his visionary advances in string band music, and the creation and cultivation of an offshoot of bluegrass so particular that Jerry Garcia dubbed it “Dawg Music,” Grisman’s legacy also includes a lifelong passion for recording acoustic music. Taking cues from his mentor, the folklorist Ralph Rinzler, Grisman has captured live shows, friendly jams, and studio sessions across six decades. Many of his best tapes have been released since 1990 on his own record label, Acoustic Disc.
Artist-owned labels are rare enough in their own right, but there may never have been a label that documented an artist’s own influences and output across time as abundantly as Acoustic Disc does for Grisman. He’s reissued historic music that touched him, including that of mandolinist Dave Apollon and Argentine jazz guitarist Oscar Alemán. He’s documented his personal mandolin heroes and pals like Jethro Burns and Frank Wakefield. But at its core, Acoustic Disc is a catalog of Grisman’s various collaborations, as leader of his David Grisman Quintet, in his influential bluegrass supergroup Old and In The Way, and in duos with Jerry Garcia, Del McCoury, Andy Statman, Tony Rice, and Doc Watson.
Acoustic Disc (encompassing the legacy CD releases in physical and digital form) and its sister label Acoustic Oasis (all download) offer a thread of immersive snapshots from the life of a man who seemed to be everywhere that mattered in bluegrass from the early 1960s into the 21st century. And we might not have this rich portrait of Grisman’s influential career if fortune hadn’t brought him early on into the world of renowned folklorist, artist manager, and promoter Ralph Rinzler as he grew up in Passaic, New Jersey.
“I was really into early rock and roll. You know, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis,” Grisman said. “It was being born really. And so I was one of those young, impressionable kids. But around 1958 or ‘59 it started evaporating. Buddy Holly got killed, you know? Little Richard got either busted or became religious. Elvis went to the Army. And pop music got very vapid.”
Into the vapid void came folk music, first the polite kind like the Kingston Trio but soon this rougher, richer sound called bluegrass began to reach teenaged Grisman. He and some friends formed a folk music club at his high school, and the cousin of his favorite teacher came to talk and demonstrate records and instruments. That was Ralph Rinzler, and the encounter changed Grisman’s life. Rinzler, 10 years older, hosted late night listening sessions at his home, which happened to be four blocks away, sharing music by Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers, until Grisman’s mother telephoned to call her son home.
In 1961, Rinzler invited Grisman along on a road trip to the New River Ranch for an outdoor show with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and another blazing mandolinist named Frank Wakefield. “There was a small backstage. I heard them play mandolin duets,” Grisman said. “And that really blew my mind. The whole experience blew my mind.”
In Rinzler, Grisman had latched onto a key figure in American folk music. He was a mandolinist with the popular Greenbriar Boys at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village. He’d go on to manage Monroe and Doc Watson, promote many shows, and run the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and Folklife Program. His passion as an archivist rubbed off.
“I got this all from Ralph, you know? He was going on these field trips, finding these musicians and recording them,” Grisman says of their early years together. “For a while, Ralph lent me his Nagra, the premier portable Swiss tape machine. I made a tape of Jesse McReynolds and Bobby Osborne playing duets in a shed outside a show in Maryland in 1965 that I still have.”
So Grisman was thinking like a producer by the time he started at New York University in Greenwich Village, and at age 18 he officially became one. First he took a recorder to Wakefield’s Hyattsville, Marylad home where he captured an informal jam session with great songwriting bluegrass star Red Allen. His young partner on that trip Peter K. Siegel, another acolyte of the music, worked with Grisman to gather the personnel and repertoire for the album Bluegrass by Allen, Wakefield and the Kentuckians on Folkways Records in 1964. The jam tape, which Grisman used as a practice guide for his own mandolin playing, was released by Acoustic Disc on CD and download as The Kitchen Tapes.
Grisman produced two more Red Allen albums and played in his band for a bit before the next major shift in his life, one that reflected the times. In 1967, he conspired with fellow bluegrasser Peter Rowan to go electric with the psychedelic folk-rock band Earth Opera. They made two albums for Elektra before disbanding, and by 1970, Grisman had moved to the Bay Area, where he’d spend most of his life. A fellow he’d met back east in ‘64 or so was out there making quite a name for himself in rock and roll, but Grisman knew that Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia’s first instrument was banjo and that he was good at it. That led to the first project that truly set Grisman apart as one of the great influencers of bluegrass music.
It wasn’t Grisman’s tape recorder that was running on October first and eighth of 1973 at the Boarding House in San Francisco, but Owsley “Bear” Stanley knew what he was doing as sound engineer for the Grateful Dead. Grisman was on stage with Garcia on banjo, Peter Rowan on guitar, Vassar Clements on fiddle and John Kahn on bass. The set lists blended classic repertoire with Rowan originals like “Panama Red” and “Midnight Moonlight” that would become standards.
Ten tracks from those two live sets were put out in 1975 on the Dead’s in-house record label as Old And In The Way, which became by some reckonings the best-selling bluegrass album of all time. With its reach from rock and roll through the songwriting sensibility personified by Rowan and the daring improvisation of Vassar Clements, it was certainly among the most influential. Grisman released both shows in their entirety for the first time asLive At The Boarding House – The Complete Shows in high definition digital download. It’s an extraordinary time capsule of a pivotal confluence in roots music.
The Mill Valley, California house where Grisman settled became a hub for musicians where the mandolinist got to work out the sound and approach he’d been thinking about for years, one grounded in the sounds of stringed instruments working together more than the high lonesome singing of traditional bluegrass music.
“At some point early on, we realized that we could play instrumentals if we made it interesting enough,” said Grisman about a stretch in a band with the innovative fiddler Richard Greene. “And so we would do ‘Lonesome Moonlight Waltz’ (by Monroe). We’d do a Duke Ellington tune. We’d do Django (Reinhardt) and Stéphane Grappelli tunes. We started mixing it up. And then I guess I always had this composer in me. And as soon as I had this outlet for it, I had a list of tunes.”
Original tunes and another reel-to-reel tape recorder played a role in bringing Grisman together with Tony Rice, an early ’70s hotshot bluegrass guitarist whose Kentucky tutelage with traditional band J.D. Crowe & the New South was coming to an end.
“I had put together an album of the music I had written – all these tunes that I later did with my first quintet. And I had this tape with me. And Tony wanted to hear it and we’re in this living room filled with people,” is how Grisman remembers their first encounter. So instead, they did some picking, and Grisman was astonished, overwhelmed with memories of the master flatpicker Clarence White, who had recently been killed by a drunk driver. (“I figured I’d never hear that (style) again,” he said.) Eventually, Grisman was able to play his recorded music for Rice. “I put the tape on,” said Grisman. “And he listened to it and said, ‘I’d give my left nut to play that music.’”
That extreme sacrifice wouldn’t be necessary. A short time later, Rice had decamped for the Bay Area and joined what became the David Grisman Quintet with Todd Phillips on second mandolin and a young Bay Area fiddler named Darol Anger (now a Nashvillian). Soon, the great Mike Marshall took over the second mando seat with Phillips shifting to bass, where he’d have an outstanding career. With this, Dawg Music really took off, with its fusion of bluegrass, gypsy jazz, and classic swing. It was all instrumental, with all the architecture and improvisational freedom of a jazz band, played on bluegrass instruments, propelled by a fierce sense of timing and dynamics. Acoustic Disc offers a triple-length, 20-year retrospective DGQ compilation and a 1979 live show at the Great American Music Hall.
Also in that decade, Grisman decided to build a studio in his home, a rarity at the time. A San Francisco recording studio he’d worked at was closing down and he was able to make a deal for the recording console and tape machine, opening up the prospect for sessions that could be spontaneous and unbounded by budget. The most historic of them might be his duo recordings with Jerry Garcia. The two had been out of touch for about a decade when Garcia sponsored Grisman for an artist grant from the Dead’s foundation, which prompted a call and a get together.
“(Jerry) walked in the door, and he said, I know what we should do. We should make a record. And so I said, Wow, I just started a record company, and I have a studio in the basement. He said, Great, we’ll do it for you. And we walked downstairs. And I put two microphones up, and I still have the tape of what we played for the first time,” Grisman said. “Anyhow, it’s just been kind of serendipitous like that. And then we did over 40 sessions for the next five years until he passed away.”
The seminal release in 1991 was simply called Garcia Grisman, with vocal/instrumental arrangements including the blues standard “The Thrill is Gone,” Irving Berlin’s “Russian Lullaby,” and an acoustic “Friend of the Devil.” Like Old And In The Way, this album circulated like mad among open-minded bluegrass and roots aficionados who adored its mellow swing, its fascinating repertoire, and the chance to hear Jerry Garcia play acoustic guitar in a manner so different from the Dead. They also released a jazz forward album called So Whatand an ostensible children’s album called Not For Kids Only that became, according to Grisman, his label’s all-time best-seller.
In early 1993, Tony Rice spent a few days at Grisman’s home making an album that tapped those masters’ love of great vintage instruments. Tone Poems featured 17 instrumentals, each with a pairing of guitars and mandolins made between the 1890s to the 1990s. (Acoustic Disc offers an expanded edition.) And what else to do in the evenings but invite Jerry Garcia over to meet and pick with Tony Rice? Recordings from those picking parties circulated among bluegrass nuts for years as bootlegs but were finally released formally as The Pizza Tapes, and Acoustic Disc offers the complete recordings as a 170-minute download. Other iconic duo sessions paired Grisman with Doc Watson (Doc And Dawg was another guidepost album for me and others) and Grisman with Del McCoury.
Grisman moved from California to a small seaside town on the Olympic Peninsula about a decade ago, but he still has a studio where Dawg magic happens. One recent project with implications for Grisman’s family legacy is the Dawg Trio with dissident banjo player and songwriter Danny Barnes (also now a Puget Sound resident) and Grisman’s son Sam on bass. Their collection Plays Tunes & Sings Songs is a multi-generational romp that shows the grooving power of Sam, who has his own Sam Grisman Project, a band that’s touring with a mix of original music and Dawg meets Dead repertoire.
While Grisman avows that he’s never been a Grateful Dead fan per se, being generally uninterested in electrified music, he’ll forever be part of the Dead’s story and reach because of his relationship with Garcia. As such, Grisman will play a key role in the upcoming exhibit Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey, which opens in March of 2024 in Owensboro, Kentucky. It will tell the story of Garcia’s acoustic roots, including Old and In The Way and the Grisman/Garcia sessions, establishing what a historic relationship it was.
Speaking of museum-worthy stuff, Grisman told me that he donated most of his studio multi-track masters to the Southern Folklife Collection at UNC Chapel Hill a while ago. The rest of the archive lives in his climate-controlled studio, where he works with Tracy and a small team to produce releases for Acoustic Disc and Acoustic Oasis. The growing collection assures us that Grisman’s diverse musical legacy will be available in perpetuity. They’re even talking about releasing that Osborne Brothers bootleg tape from 1963 – with permission of course.
(Editor’s Note: Read more writing by Craig Havighurst and listen to The String at WMOT.org)
Craig Havighurst is WMOT’s editorial director and host of The String, a weekly interview show airing on WMOT 89.5 Mondays at 8 pm, repeating Sundays at 7 am. He also co-hosts The Old Fashioned on Saturdays at 9 am and Tuesdays at 8 pm. Havighurst has been a regular contributor to BGS over the past decade.
Earlier this year, David “Dawg” Grisman was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at IBMA’s annual awards show in Raleigh, North Carolina. Grisman was unable to attend, but gave remarks via a pre-recorded video; his acceptance speech was striking. Dawg poured forth unmetered gratitude, listing so many artists, bands, peers, and forebears who gave him a shot, hired him, got him started, stuck with him, and contributed to his success.
It was a laundry list of names, some enormous in his creative life – Jerry Garcia, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger, Roland and Clarence White, Ralph Rinzler – and others with much more granular and specific impacts. Though his speech was barely four minutes long, Grisman gave a remarkably holistic overview of his broad and varied career, pinpointing respective “dominos” in his musical life that each tipped over into the next, leading to the decades-long, groundbreaking musical output for which we all know, respect, and adore the Dawg.
He even remembered the very moment he heard bluegrass music for the first time, beginning his self-taped video mentioning the Mike Seeger-produced vinyl compilation, Mountain Music Bluegrass Style, and Earl Taylor & the Stoney Mountain Boys’ rendition of “White House Blues,” his first pivotal taste of the music that would define his life – and that he would re-define, time and time again, over the course of his career. He thanked Doc Watson, a frequent collaborator and recording partner, for being “the first professional musician to ever invite this mandolin picker on stage, when I was 17 years old.”
But Dawg’s musical pedigree – unassailable as it is – wasn’t the focal point of his Hall of Fame acceptance. Instead, Grisman positioned his lengthy and name-drop-heavy resumé not as proof of his own bona fides or validation of his music and impact, but as evidence of his own gratitude. Gratitude at the honor of being inducted into the Hall, yes, but more importantly, gratitude at having been given the opportunity to find, become, and be himself, unapologetically and with mandolin in hand.
Whether in duet with Tony Rice, Del McCoury, Jerry Garcia, Tommy Emmanuel, or Andy Statman, or in groups like Old & In the Way and the David Grisman Quintet (or Trio or Sextet), Dawg has routinely and effortlessly pushed every musical envelope he’s inhabited. He, his friends, bandmates, and collaborators invented new genres and sub-genres, brought bluegrass to hundreds of thousands of new fans, and folded in virtuosos (often unknown to bluegrass) from across the roots music landscape and around the globe. No matter how “out there” or fringe Dawg’s music became, it was and continues to be indelibly rooted in a reverence and love for the traditional, vernacular roots of bluegrass and old-time – as genres, yes, but as communities and folkways, primarily.
It’s why his catalog includes music made for and with folks like Stephane Grappelli, Frank Vignola, Jerry Garcia, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor, but in his acceptance speech he went out of his way to thank and spotlight bluegrassers like Frank Wakefield, Curly Seckler, Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, and Herschel Sizemore instead. It’s also why, despite building a career and identity out of coloring outside the bluegrass lines, Dawg is still proudly claimed by the bluegrass hard liners and “that ain’t bluegrass” sorts – as well as the wooks, hippies, jamgrassers, and chambergrass acolytes.
From the highest-selling bluegrass album of its time, Old & In The Way, to The Pizza Tapes; from “E.M.D.” to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty; from Tone Poems to “Dawggy Mountain Breakdown” playing at the beginning of each and every episode and rerun of NPR’s quintessential hit, “Car Talk;” David Grisman’s legacy is resplendent, exhaustive, and one-of-a-kind. But it’s not just a resumé to Dawg – or just a history, benign and objective. To David Grisman, the most important thing about making music is people – the ones who make it, the ones who hear it, and the ones who love it.
All month long we’ll be celebrating Dawg in December. Enjoy Artist of the Month content like our Essentials Playlist (below), plus we’ll be chatting with friends of Dawg about what it’s really like to know him and make music with him, we’ll dip back into the BGS Archives for our favorite Grisman content, we’ll feature his son’s new band, the Sam Grisman Project, and much more. So join us as we celebrate Dawg’s induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and his entire groundbreaking career for Dawg in December.
My name is Bertolf Lentink, I was born in 1980 and I’m from the Netherlands. I was spoon-fed bluegrass music by my father, who endlessly played his records by the likes of Doc Watson, Tony Rice, and Tim O’Brien in my parental home. At a young age, I learned to play both from and with him.
I have released six albums here in the Netherlands and they were more in the singer-songwriter/pop style. But for my seventh album, I decided to return to my roots and my first love: bluegrass. I had the chance to record an album of my own material with some of my favorite musicians of all time, such as Jerry Douglas, Stuart Duncan, and Mark Schatz – guys I’ve been listening to and admiring since I was like 6 years old. The band was completed by two fantastic instrumentalists of the younger generation: Wes Corbett and David Benedict. The album was recorded and mixed by David Sinko in the Sound Emporium Studio in Nashville. I really had the best week of my life recording it; it was everything I hoped for and more.
The album is called Bluefinger because residents of Zwolle, the city I live in, are called Bluefingers. But it’s also a reference to bluegrass and getting blue fingers from studying so hard on the guitar trying to be good enough to record with my heroes.
Bluegrass music has surely travelled all around the world. It even made its way to the Netherlands and continues to inspire young people here. This is a mixtape of the stuff that inspired me and that’s going on in the blue- and newgrass department here right now. Dutch Grass! – Bertolf
“Before The Storm” – Bertolf featuring Ilse DeLange
It was quite a surreal experience to record with my heroes, but at the same time it felt really familiar when I heard those guys’ instruments coming through my headphones. Like I was coming home somewhere I’d never been before.
“Uncle Pen” – Bill Monroe
Bill Monroe learned to play from his Uncle Pen. Full name: Pendleton Vandiver. Uncle Pen’s great-great grandfather was Bill Vandiver, an immigrant from the Netherlands. Vandiver is actually derived from the Dutch Name “van de Veer.” So if Bill Monroe is the Father of Bluegrass and Uncle Pen is the uncle of bluegrass, then Bill van de Veer is the great-great uncle of bluegrass. So there’s the Dutch connection with bluegrass for ya!
“Keep on Pushing” – Country Gazette
My love of bluegrass music is entirely my father’s fault. In 1972, when he was 16 years old, he heard a song on the radio: “Keep on Pushing,” by Country Gazette. That song was actually on the Dutch pop charts at that time! My father was completely blown away and it was the start of his love of this kind of music. And when I grew up, he played nothing else but bluegrass, so I couldn’t help but to fall in love with it, too. (The original ’70s recording of “Keep on Pushing” is not on Spotify, so here is the ’90s remake.)
“Amsterdam” – Douwe Bob
Douwe Bob is a famous artist here in the Netherlands. I wrote this song with him and we thought it was nice to try and write a bluegrass song not about the hills of Kentucky or something, or to once again pretend to be American, but to write a bluegrass song about the city we know, Amsterdam.
“Crying Shame” – Blue Grass Boogiemen & Tim Knol
Blue Grass Boogiemen are a great high-energy bluegrass band from the Netherlands who have been on the scene for a long time now. Here’s a song from an album they made with the great singer-songwriter Tim Knol (who happens to sing a nice harmony vocal on my album Bluefinger as well)
“Fallin’” – Nathalíe
Here in the Netherlands, I’m playing live with a great band of musicians who also happen to have their own bluegrass bands. This song is from the band Nathalíe, that feature my band members Nathalie Schaap on vocals and double bass, Jos van Ringen on banjo, and Janos Koolen on mandolin. I really love what they’re doing.
“The Bipolar Bear” – The Charivari Trio with Janos Koolen
Janos Koolen is the mandolin player in my band. He’s a fantastic multi-instrumentalist and composer as well. Here’s his beautiful composition, “The Bipolar Bear,” with the Charivari Trio.
“Tapdancing on the Highwire” – Ilse DeLange
My career in music started by playing in Ilse DeLange’s band. She’s a big country/pop star here in the Netherlands, and she’s very fond of bluegrass music as well. Here’s one of her songs that I really love from a live album we did back in 2007.
“One Tear” – 4 Wheel Drive
4 Wheel Drive is probably my favorite Dutch bluegrass band. The band also features Joost van Es on fiddle, who’s playing live with me right now. I went to see them live a lot as a kid, and I was always left really impressed and wanting to learn to play, too. I also need to mention the bands The Country Ramblers and Groundspeed, who were from the city of Kampen (which was jokingly called the “Nashville by the Ijssel”), but sadly their albums are not on Spotify.
“Deeper Than the Holler” – G-runs ‘n Roses.
G-runs ‘n Roses is a band from the Czech Republic, with two Dutch guys playing in it: Ralph Schut on guitar, banjo, and vocals and his brother Christopher Schut on bass.
“Till I Found Someone” – The Bluebirds
The Bluebirds are a band that do great and heartfelt three-part harmony. Here’s a song that I wrote with them, with J.B Meijers on dobro.
“Team Hoover” – Bertolf
I’d like to end this mixtape with an instrumental that I’m really proud of, once again from my album, Bluefinger.
I hope you enjoy it and thanks for listening! Cheers from The Netherlands.
Artist: Tray Wellington Band Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina Song: “Moon In Motion 1” Release Date: September 1, 2023 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “I often equate music and nature as one in one, as music is a constant movement that is always progressing forward through time. With this idea in mind, I thought one thing that always moves around us, like music, is the moon. I thought what a better way to progress in my music than channel this idea of continuous movement? That’s where the idea for ‘Moon In Motion 1’ came from, and the song is meant to convey these emotions. This is the first part of a three part movement that will be on my upcoming album.” – Tray Wellington
Two of the most accomplished musicians in bluegrass – certainly two of the most notable women players in the history of the music – have joined together on a mind-blowing chamber-grass duet. Alison Brown, the first woman to win the Banjo Player of the Year Award from the IBMA, and Sierra Hull, the first woman to win Mandolin Player of the Year, joined forces on Brown’s recent album, On Banjo, and a classical-influenced original tune, “Sweet Sixteenths.”
Both Brown and Hull are virtuosic players adept in many styles and “Sweet Sixteenths” shows just how effortlessly they bring bluegrass improvisation and energy into what’s regarded as a more stoic format, creating an exciting, jaw-dropping, impossibly complicated – yet, totally down to earth – sound. Their synchronicity is just as impressive, inspiring a sort of wonder that chamber-grass is well known for: How much of this is planned out, and totally written-through, and how much is off-the-cuff and in the moment?
Bluegrass pickers are so well equipped to confound and delight us with these sorts of questions and that fact is no more apparent than in this live, studio performance video by Brown and Hull. We hope you also enjoy “Sweet Sixteenths.”
On Monday August 7, 1972, with fresh memories of Maritimes old-time and bluegrass, I drove from New Brunswick to New England to join my wife and kids, who were house-sitting for my in-laws in Norwich, Vermont.
On Thursday the 10th I headed south. A fourteen-hour drive brought me to Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of my friend and partner in research, photographer and film-maker Carl Fleischhauer, then employed at West Virginia University. We’d known each other for twelve years. (Our stories are in Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words, 1966-86 [U of IL Press 2001]). We were about to embark on fieldwork.
During the preceding year, when I began planning for the book Bluegrass: A History, I asked Carl to help me think about photos. In addition to documenting bluegrass festivals and other venues he, with Sandy Rothman, had recently looked for traces of earlier days in a field trip to the old Monroe home in Rosine, Kentucky. Now, we made plans for our own field trip. Carl would take photos. I would make notes and do interviews.
We spent that Friday in Morgantown looking at Carl’s photos and films and listening to LPs as we prepared for the research. At the end of the evening, my notes say,
Did some picking.
Early Saturday morning we piled in my new Toyota with our gear (cameras, tape recorder, axes, tent, sleeping bags) and headed southwest, crossing into Kentucky from Huntington, WV and snaking down through the mountains to Jackson, the seat of Breathitt County. Three hundred miles; we arrived around 2 o’clock.
There we headed just outside of town for Bill Monroe’s Second Annual Kentucky Blue Grass Festival. When I went to Canada in 1968, Bill Monroe had one festival a year at Bean Blossom in Indiana. Now he was running a bunch in other states, as were other artists. Festivals were the big news in bluegrass music in 1972. We sought to document the bluegrass festival experience.
Later others would write about this, like Bob Artis (“An Endless Festival” in Bluegrass [1975]) and Robert Owen Gardner (The Portable Community [2021]). Here’s how my notes from Jackson begin:
West of town on main hwy, down short steep road. Paid camping & Sat. fees, never did pay for Sunday. Parked & walked down to the stage area — tent set up, natural amphitheatre, uncovered stage, bad sound. Lots of cops around on Saturday.
Made contact with Pete & Marion Kuykendall, and agreed to move in next to them to camp. Set up tent, attempted to speak to Monroe but he was busy coping with the Goins Bros. problem of being hassled by the cops for drinking. Later Kuykendall said that cops had asked Monroe for $ (3 or 6 hundred) and he had refused to pay off so they were taking it out in fines. Lots of racing around on Sat. with flashing lights etal, but they stayed away on Sunday.
Listened then to IT’S A CRYING TIME, hot & exciting Japanese bluegrass band. Then back to Kuykendall’s bus/home whatall. Thunderstorm; discovery that cassette recorder didn’t work on batteries because plug distorts switch; got it running eventually. Oldest Kuykendall girl Sam/Ginger comes in with bass player of above-mentioned Japanese band, then leaves. Kuykendalls are a bit worried about this but Carl & I both notice later that a number of young girls (McLain girls, for example) are hanging around, with this group.
Dinner with Kuykendalls. Frank & Marty Godbey come in and are around for the rest of the evening. Mostly we sit & talk, though I went down to the amphitheatre to catch Jim & Jesse and the Japanese bands. Came back, then returned to catch Monroe. Afterwards listened to picking group in tent near us. Did mainly Emerson & Waldron, Newgrass Revival, Bluegrass Alliance, Gentlemen, etc. Chromatic banjo. Noisy night in Carl’s tent, as sessions went on late and busses started early. I got a spider bite.
Bill Monroe (center) and the Blue Grass Boys at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Bandmembers include Monroe Fields, bass; Jack Hicks, banjo; Joe Stuart, guitar (hidden); Monroe, mandolin; and Kenny Baker, fiddle.
I’d known the Kuykendalls since 1966. Pete, a 1996 inductee to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, was a musician, record collector, producer, publisher, and, since 1970 owner-editor of the first and leading bluegrass monthly Bluegrass Unlimited.
Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday August 12, 1972.
Pete and I had already been corresponding about bluegrass history when we met on Labor Day weekend 1966 at the second Roanoke Bluegrass Festival. Subsequently, I visited the Kuykendalls in Virginia where Pete encouraged me to write for the then all-volunteer magazine he would later own. I began with a review of the festival, published the following January — the first of eight articles I did for BU in 1967.
Photo made by Pete Kuykendall’s son Billy with one of Carl Fleischhauer’s cameras. Carl is seated at left with two other cameras on the table. This photo was made at the time of Neil Rosenberg’s (top of head above stove) interview of Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, at left, is Pete’s wife and Bluegrass Unlimited co-manager Marion Kuykendall.
By 1970 Pete and Marion were running BU full-time; I’d done an article for them earlier in 1972 (eventually I would write a monthly column) so we had been in touch recently by mail and phone. Conversations with Pete were never brief! He loved to share the business scuttlebutt and he had plenty since they were selling the magazine at festivals every weekend and had just launched BU’s own annual festival.
I think this may have been the first time I met the Godbeys. From Lexington, and before that, Columbus, Ohio, they had been following the bluegrass scene for a decade. Frank is a musician who is still performing these days. By 1972 he and Marty had begun writing and publishing photos in BU. For them, as for me, hanging out with the Kuykendalls was a good way to keep up on the bluegrass news. People were already talking about starting an industry association, though that — the IBMA — wouldn’t happen until 1986. Pete was one of its founders.
Neil Rosenberg (facing camera) interviewing Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, with an air rifle, is Pete’s son Billy Kuykendall.
With the growth of the festivals came clubs, newsletters, and magazines. Bluegrass enthusiasts (many of them musicians) followed their favorites to festivals and other venues. Paths crossed; networks grew. The politics of bands was a favorite discussion topic.
Over the course of the festival, I made note of gossip about the always changing bands. Ricky Skaggs had just left Ralph Stanley — there were rumors about where he was headed next. Was Bill working to get Ralph Stanley on the Opry? Some thought so. The II Generation was said to be splitting up. Stories were told of bluegrass festival camp followers.
At this Jackson, Kentucky festival were a bunch of bands that had been appearing at Bill Monroe’s other 1972 festivals — Monroe, Jim & Jesse, Flatt, Reno & Harrell, the Goins, Ralph Stanley — mature musicians who’d been working with this music for a substantial period of time and who stuck close to the early models of which they were, often, the authors. Classic bluegrass, one could say.
What the audience didn’t hear was the kind of stuff we’d heard from the jammers late Saturday night, like “One Tin Soldier,” The Bluegrass Alliance’s cover of a song popularized in the film Billy Jack. Their bluegrass version, with Sam Bush’s lead voice and Tony Rice’s harmonies and guitar work, was a hit, a big step on the road to newgrass.
The Japanese bands were new to the scene. Japanese bluegrass began in the early sixties. In 1971, Bluegrass 45 came from Kobe, Japan, with the sponsorship of their label, Rebel, to tour U.S. bluegrass festivals. They made a big hit at Monroe’s Bean Blossom festival with their showmanship and musical savvy. This year they were back, along with another Japanese outfit, It’s A Crying Time.
Visiting from Japan, the band It’s a Crying Time performs at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Band members include Eiichi “Ei’ Shimizu, banjo; Kazuyoshi “Kazu” Onishi, mandolin; Satoshi “Sato” Yamaguchi, guitar; Akira “May” Katsumi, bass.
Monroe had booked the Japanese bands as a novelty, something you couldn’t see just anywhere in the bluegrass world. As I mentioned in my field notes, I found It’s A Crying Time’s music “hot & exciting,” and I was not the only one in the audience reacting this way. They came to the attention of Lester Flatt, who, after watching them rehearse, invited mandolinist Kazu Onishi to join him on stage at his final set.
Backstage moment at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Akira Katsumi, Kazu Onishi, Lester Flatt, and Akira Otsuka. Otsuka was Kazu’s friend from the Japanese scene, a member of the Bluegrass 45.
This video comes from the Bluegrass 45’s appearance at Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs festival:
They are announced at the beginning of the video by emcee, writer, and DJ Bill Vernon. Vernon was here at Jackson, as I learned Sunday morning when I went down to the early morning gospel show. Pete Kuykendall introduced me to Bill there, and we had a long chat about the politics of the bluegrass industry. I wrote in my notes:
A very loquacious and complex person.
At that morning’s gospel show, the music came to a stop as a fundamentalist preacher began his sermon. At that point, I noted:
Bill Vernon cut out from the morning sermon, he’d had enough…
During the preacher’s sermon at the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. Bill Monroe (wearing a black suit) is seated in the audience area at left.
I stayed and heard some good music, noting:
The gospel section’s high point was when the Goins Bros. did “Somebody Touched Me” and Eleanor Parker came on stage & started clapping hands and singing; Monroe caught on and came up to join in too.
During the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. When the Goins Brothers band performed “Somebody Touched Me,” they were joined on stage by Eleanor and Rex Parker and Bill Monroe. Eleanor and Bill joined the Goins trio at the main microphone while Rex sang and played mandolin at the “stage right” microphone.
This kind of spontaneity, which gave festivals their appeal, was not there all the time. Jim & Jesse, I wrote, had:
A good show, with Jim Brock sounding especially good, but … a cut and dried quality to it all.
Describing Lester Flatt and his Nashville Grass, I concluded:
To me the whole band sounded tired, lackluster.
But Flatt’s final set was enlivened when It’s A Crying Time mandolinist and tenor Kazu Onishi came on stage to sing “Salty Dog Blues” with him.
During my times around the stage area, I had a chance to talk with Monroe and with some of the musicians I’d gotten to know during my years as a backstage regular at Bean Blossom, like Birch Monroe, Joe Stuart, and Roland White.
I arranged with Birch, who was busy helping Bill run the festival, for an interview, to take place later in the week at his home in Martinsville, Indiana.
Joe Stuart offstage at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.
Joe told me about his experiences playing bluegrass in Canada with Charlie Bailey. He’d even appeared in Newfoundland.
Roland, whom I’d known since his days as a Blue Grass Boy, was now playing with Lester Flatt. He told me they were working solid, playing festivals every weekend.
Here’s what I wrote about the audience:
Audience — bluegrass die-hards from Ohio, Ky., D.C., Carolinas. Few freaks. Appear to be about 50% campers, 50% local people. Certainly no more than 1500-2000, on Saturday, though figure of 3000 was bandied about. Bill moved his Ky festival to Jackson from Ashland this year because the turnout at Ashland was dropping. Fact, bluegrass ain’t as popular in Kentucky as it is elsewhere — Ohio, D.C.
Audience on the hillside natural amphitheater at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.
The festival closed with a finale, orchestrated by Monroe. At the first festivals in the mid-60s, which were created to honor Monroe, such events were somewhat spontaneous, but by now, seven years after the first one, these events were highly ritualistic. By the time it happened, I noticed that the Kuykendalls had left. They were not the only ones.
The finale performance at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. At the center, in white suits, are Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt. Here are a few of the other performers, left to right: Curly Ray Cline (on the ramp), Melvin Goins (guitar, facing camera), Kenny Baker (fiddle, white hat, wearing a suit), Joe Stuart (just behind Baker, partly hidden), Buck Ryan (fiddle, white belt), Jack Hicks (banjo, white hat, wearing suit), Paul Warren (fiddle, white hat, at microphone), Vic Jordan (banjo, facing forward), Ralph Stanley (banjo, dark suit, hidden behind McCormick), Haskell McCormick (banjo, in profile), Monroe and Flatt with Don Reno (wearing white) partly hidden behind them, Raymond W. McLain and sister Alice McLain (hidden behind Flatt), Jesse McReynolds (mandolin, wearing striped jacket), Ruth McLain (bass, behind McReynolds), Raymond K. McLain (guitar, no hat), Roland White (mandolin, white hat), Rex Parker (mandolin, striped shirt), and Monroe Fields (leaning on van).
We packed up soon after and headed west for Lexington. I was hoping to interview J.D. Crowe.
In Their Words: “Nearing the end of high school, my great-grandfather Stephen Carkeek filled out a survey for his senior yearbook. It simply asked for his hobby, ambition and fate. Stephen’s answer was wrought with truth. He responded, ‘harmonica, banjo tickler and pen pusher.’ The rest of his life was spent working behind a desk. Inspired by his inability to live out his ambitions, I wrote this fiddle tune after attending my grandfather’s funeral and finding Stephen’s yearbook in a now empty house.” — Marcel Ardans
Photo credit: Nick Pagan
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