Tag: Noam Pikelny

Tray Wellington Conquers World of Bluegrass With His Five-String Banjo

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A few short weeks ago the streets of Raleigh, North Carolina, were once again filled with bluegrass lovers at IBMA’s World of Bluegrass conference and festival. Banjoist and Momentum Award winner Tray Wellington was everywhere to be found during the festivities — performing, hosting this year’s Momentum Awards luncheon, and playing a main stage set at the Red Hat Amphitheater. This is remarkable because if you had looked for Wellington at IBMA just a few short years ago, you might not have run into him except on the youth stage or in the halls, jamming.

Catapulted by his prior work with the talented young band Cane Mill Road, his studies at East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass program, and a stable of accomplished and connected mentors and peers, Wellington went from a newbie to a seasoned veteran faster than a global pandemic could subside — and during it. Efforts for better and more accurate representation in bluegrass have contributed to his momentum (no pun intended), but above all, his talent and his envelope-pushing approach to the five-string banjo are the root causes of his mounting and well-deserved notoriety. 

Last year, during World of Bluegrass, Wellington performed as part of our Shout & Shine Online virtual showcase. For 2021’s edition of the biggest week in bluegrass, we connected via phone after the conference to talk about these leaps and bounds in his career, the ever-increasing tempo of his music-making and performing, and what’s coming up next for the young picker. We also discuss why making the bluegrass community more inclusive is so important — and how his own progress in the industry over a few short years reinforces that point. 

BGS: You were so busy at IBMA this year! Let’s start there — can you talk a bit about the growth that you’ve experienced over the past few years? Because this year you were everywhere and doing everything in Raleigh!

Tray Wellington: [Laughs] Yeah, it was kind of a crazy week! It was a lot of new things, like you said, that I’ve never done before. But I think it really opened me up to a lot more ideas of what I can do in the music industry. I started out the week going to the business conference and then on Wednesday I hosted the Momentum Awards. And that was kind of a crazy thing for me, you know, I’ve never done anything in that regard, as far as hosting a whole awards show. I got asked to do it and I was kind of nervous about actually doing it. I remember getting up there like, “Dang! I can’t back out now!”

It’s a cool experience! Especially when people come up to you afterwards and tell you you did a good job. It makes you feel good about your progress over the last couple of years and I’m glad that people put faith in me and thought I would do a good enough job at it so they did ask me to do it. 

You’re going from being an instrumentalist, a sideman, and a technician of the instrument to being a frontman and a recording artist. I wonder how that shift has felt to you? How does it feel to be in charge and “guiding the ship?” 

It’s been a really weird experience. Before, when I was just being a sideman, I had a great time with that, because it did open me up to a lot of different types of music and getting to learn a lot of music. But that’s something I still try to do with my band now. I try to incorporate those ideas from my band members, because I did learn so much [when I was in other bands]. I think the most important thing in a band is hearing other people’s perspectives. I love the other band members bringing songs to me and being like, “Hey, can we do this?” Working up their music [is just as important] as working up my music and the arrangements for my stuff. 

There have been people who do great front work who choose all of the material for their bands — I’m not saying that doesn’t happen. I just think that when I’ve seen bands that really get along and take each other’s musical perspectives in, it’s been a much more natural and calm feeling. Versus the feeling of, “Oh, somebody messed something up!” That was something I felt more when I was a sideman, I was so serious. It’s good to be serious, but it’s also good to stay relaxed.

To me, you have a very traditional approach to banjo playing while at the same time, you don’t necessarily seem too concerned with what is or isn’t bluegrass. Can you talk about what musically guides you and inspires you as you’re playing more in the bandleader headspace? How do you want to sound and why do you want to sound that way? 

It’s interesting that you mention that, because most of the time I usually get feedback that I’m more of a progressive musician, like 95 percent of the time. So it’s interesting that you say that — I love everybody’s observations. I would say, when I was playing with Cane Mill Road I definitely had more of a traditional approach to the banjo. I still get a lot of my attack from that. When I’m thinking about music, though, I love all forms of music and I want to play all forms of music. That’s something I really try to do. I try to incorporate sounds from jazz — I studied jazz a little bit in college. That was a big thing for me, taking in those sounds and inspirations. As well as taking from other forms of music, because that’s the way the genre grows. 

I’ve been really getting away from trying to sound like anybody, necessarily. That’s been my big thing. I want to be one of those musicians that tries to make my own voice on the instrument overall and gives my own ideas to it. A lot of that came from studying different players, like Béla Fleck and Scott Vestal and Noam Pikelny. Not just studying them, but studying the old school kind of stuff as well. 

You just took IBMA by storm, you’re signed to Mountain Home Music Company — so much is coming down the pipeline for you it almost feels like too big of a question to ask, but I have to ask: What are you excited about? What are you looking forward to as you just finished this really busy, business-y week? 

There’s a lot of stuff going on! It’s something I’m still thinking about myself, like what is my next major step? What’s the next move? That’s something I think a lot about. I’m looking forward to getting out and playing music live again next year. I’m playing more music live this year, but not as much with the pandemic. It’s slowed everything down. I’m also looking forward to getting into the studio at Mountain Home and recording — well, finishing my album. We’ve got some stuff recorded, but we’re kind of in the process of planning and trying to finish that project. I think it’s going to be really fun. I’m really trying to get away — not to like, disagree with what you said earlier! [Laughs] — but I’m really trying to get away from people perceiving me as more of a traditional player. 

You’re trying to sound like Tray Wellington.

Exactly. I’m trying to branch away. I’m more drawn to the modern sounds, so when I present this new album I am wanting it to be more of an eclectic kind of thing. 

I’m also excited about this upcoming performance I did for CNN on W. Kamau Bell’s program, United Shades of America with Nikki Giovanni. We did it at the Highlander Center, which is a historical civil rights school [in East Tennessee]. We went up there and I got to sit with Kamau and Nikki and a lot of great organizers from the area and get to play music for them. It was super fun. I’m wanting to do more stuff there in the future. It’s such a historic place. It’s crazy, before this shoot I didn’t know what the Highlander Center was and I grew up an hour and twenty minutes from there. The government of Tennessee hates the Highlander Center for their work there. It’s such a taboo thing to talk about in East Tennessee. I had never heard of it. They gave me a whole tour of the place and told me a ton of the history and I was like, “I’ve never even heard of this!” They had a building burnt down like two years ago by white supremacists. 

I know!! And this is after the state and the KKK trying so many times to run them out. It’s shocking so few people know about it, but that’s all by design. I’m so glad to hear you’re connected there! Especially with the current movement for inclusion in this music, it makes so much sense to partner with an organization like the Highlander Center, which is based in the home region of these musics and has always been a leader in the fight for justice. 

Yeah, absolutely. With diversity and inclusion in bluegrass, there needs to be more focus on it. Because the typical bluegrass fan base is white people, no matter what walk you’re from. It’s a lot of white people and white men, just to be honest. I think it’s one of those things where, if you want to get outside people into the music you need to encourage people who are of diverse backgrounds that this music can be inclusive. That’s the way that you move towards more people doing it.  There have been a lot of factors that have contributed to this. The biggest problem I’ve seen is not a whole lot of nationwide outreach. There are a few great programs, like Jam Pak in Arizona by Anni Beach, she’s doing great work right now.

We just interviewed Fair Black Rose, of Jam Pak, for the other part of our special IBMA Shout & Shine coverage! 

That’s great work they’re doing there! It’s a band of all diverse people from all walks of life. That’s such a great thing to see. I listened to one of their sets and I thought, “This is such a great thing.” Even when I started music I didn’t see anything like that at IBMA. It was such an interesting thing, despite the pandemic and this being a pretty low-attended year of World of Bluegrass. This was the most diverse year I’ve ever seen. … I remember going to IBMA five or six years ago for the first time and looking around and being like, “I’m the only person of color here.”

It’s that way at a lot of bluegrass festivals I go to — which is crazy, cause if you think about it, this is the International Bluegrass Music Association. There are supposed to be people from all over, as well. I’m not talking bad about IBMA, but I think the biggest need is more outreach. To people of color, but the LGBTQ+ community, too. Sometimes it’s a difficult thing to do, it can be easier said than done, but definitely I think it can be done, because other music forms have done it. For years! And they’ve had very big success. I think it just takes that initiative and drive to do it. 

Photo courtesy of Mountain Home Music Company

WATCH: Punch Brothers, “Church Street Blues”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Punch Brothers
Song: “Church Street Blues”
Album: Hell on Church Street
Release Date: January 14, 2022
Label: Nonesuch Records

Editor’s Note: Recorded at Nashville’s Blackbird Studio in November 2020, during a time of great uncertainty, Hell on Church Street is the band’s reimagining of, and homage to, the late bluegrass great Tony Rice’s landmark solo album, Church Street Blues. The record features a collection of songs by Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Bill Monroe, and others. It was intended as both its own work of art and a gift to Rice, who died that Christmas.

In Their Words: “No record (or musician) has had a greater impact on us, and we felt compelled to cover it in its entirety, with the objective of interacting with it in the same spirit of respect-fueled adventure that Tony brought to each of its pre-existing songs.” — Punch Brothers

Photo credit: Josh Goleman

Double the Banjos, Double the Fun!

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Twin fiddles are the bluegrass instrumental duo that get all the attention, but double banjos are really where it’s at. (Is this writer a banjo player? Why, yes. Is this writer biased? Why, of course!) It makes sense that twin or triple fiddling would end up more popular than double or triple banjos, given that fiddles are sounded by bows, so the melodic contours are more like vocal harmony, often longer phrases and bow strokes languidly and charismatically laced together. Banjos, with their rapid-fire sixteenth notes and syncopated, idiosyncratic rolls, are just more difficult to sync up. Hundreds – if not thousands – of banjo jokes devoted to rhythm and timing will certainly back that claim up.

But double banjo is an art form as old as bluegrass itself – and older, by quite a few dozen decades, if you count early American popular music, banjo orchestras, minstrel and vaudeville songs that all centered banjos before and during the turn of the 19th to 20th century.

In bluegrass, twin five-strings are at their most astounding in jaw-dropping and acrobatic contexts such as High Fidelity’s incredible rendition of the Don Reno classic instrumental, “Follow the Leader.” Famous for his steel guitar and chicken-pickin’ Telecaster licks transferred to banjo, Reno’s harebrained and wonky turns of phrase might seem like the last musical context in which one should attempt perfect synchronization, especially on banjo, but Jeremy Stephens and Kurt Stephenson defy reason, logic, and surely physics with their buttery, seamless, double banjo blend. The track perfectly encapsulates the “WHAT IS THAT!?” quality of five-string, three-finger banjo – raised to the second power.

Anyone who grew up tuning in to or has ever binge-watched reruns of Hee Haw knows the beauty of a good double, triple, quadruple, quintuple banjo number, a common feature of the homespun country, comedy, and pickin’ variety show. Roy Clark, the Hee Haw host who could tear through almost any instrument in any style, released an entire album of double banjo music with regular Hee Haw guest Buck Trent in 1978 called Banjo Bandits. “Down Yonder” kicks with all-too-rare (and certainly delicious) bluegrass piano, a delightful intro to a bluegrass, old-time, and American songbook standard that almost sounds like a carnival merry-go-round thanks to the effect of the banjos “in stereo.” Banjo Bandits is something like a bluegrass and country double banjo primer, every track a stunning example of the form.

Like twin fiddling, double banjo lends itself so intuitively to the collaborative, community quality of bluegrass music. Through many a duo album and “featured artist” slot pickers have been using double banjo tunes to bring in their favorites, their mentors, their heroes, and their peers to swap licks, rising and falling, rolling and tumbling in breakneck unison. Alison Brown’s first Grammy Award was won for “Leaving Cottondale,” her double banjo instrumental with Béla Fleck from her also-nominated 2000 record, Fair Weather. In 2007, modern banjo hero Tony Trischka released a 14-track album of all twin banjo tunes entitled Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular. Its roster included Earl Scruggs, Brown, Fleck, Noam Pikelny, Steve Martin, and more. On “Doggy Salt,” a silly, winking instrumental that reconfigures the classic chord progression of “Salty Dog,” Scott Vestal joins Trischka, leaning into the humorous, comedic quality of these sorts of duets — a quality we see in Banjo Bandits and “Follow the Leader,” too.

Do not be mistaken, though, putting together a banjo duet isn’t just a comedic or intra-bluegrass activity! Cross-genre double banjo forays are certainly just as delightful, if not rarer and even more difficult to lock into rhythmic synchronization. Those that can mesh together three-finger’s rolling right hand with clawhammer and frailing’s loping, looser right hand are true virtuosos, defying not one but two genre’s expectations that banjos are intrinsically arhythmic and constantly rushing. Old-time players like Allison de Groot, Cathy Fink, Mark Johnson, Victor Furtado, and others all make it look and sound easy, matching their bluegrass compatriots’ rhythms and syncopations with ease and not just blending in, but counterpointing tastefully as well. One such recording, “Cluck Old Hen” from Pikelny’s Beat the Devil and Carry a Rail project, features Steve Martin, once again, on clawhammer. A less traditional approach, the two play with textures and senses, not striving for perfect unison, but rather exploring what an old-time-and-bluegrass dialogue can look and sound like, expanding our ideas of what twin banjo can be.

No matter the context, genre, roster of pickers, or style of playing, this fact remains true: more banjos equals more fun. (To this writer, at least.)

Twenty Years After ‘O Brother,’ John Hartford Gets Grammy Attention Again

Posted on by Editor

Some years after the late great John Hartford passed on, his daughter Katie Harford Hogue wound up with his archival material in her basement in Nashville. It was a huge collection, a lifetime’s worth of recordings, books, instruments, notes, stage outfits and all the rest. So she dutifully began wading through everything to sort, organize and catalog it all. And she would come across notebooks with numbers on the cover, which she set aside – 68 of them all together.

“It can be a pretty heavy task to go through someone else’s things like that,” Hogue says now. “And I was not sure what they were at first. But we were able to piece together the puzzle and figure out what these were: They had been his creative journals.”

Representing decades’ worth of raw material, the journals contained nuggets straight out of Hartford’s musical mind. There were some transcriptions of old tunes by other artists, but the vast majority of it represented original music composed by Hartford himself, amounting to several thousand tunes. It was a trove that yielded up a couple of projects that have returned Hartford to widespread attention coming up on two decades after his death.

First came a 2018 book, John Hartford’s Mammoth Collection of Fiddle Tunes, featuring transcriptions of 176 compositions from the journals as well as Hartford’s own illustrations plus writings from Hogue, musicologist Dr. Greg Reish and others.

That led to an accompanying album, The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project, Vol. 1, featuring an all-star cast of players recording 17 of the archival Hartford songs.

Even though it was independently released, The John Hartford Fiddle Tune Project is up for a Grammy Award in the category of Best Bluegrass Album, alongside Billy Strings, Danny Barnes, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Thomm Jutz.

“Winning would mean a lot,” says Hogue, who is credited as co-producer with Matt Combs. “But I certainly feel honored to be considered, especially in a field like that. The fact that there’s something new that has people paying attention to my dad’s work again is wonderful. Mind-blowing, even. It’s a side of him that a lot of people did not know about, another dimension. I love being a part of that.”

Hartford was no stranger to Grammy Awards, going all the way back to his mainstream breakthrough with “Gentle on My Mind.” Reputedly inspired by the 1965 romantic epic Doctor Zhivago, Hartford wrote and recorded the first version of “Gentle on My Mind” for his 1967 album, Earthwords & Music.

Yet it was Glen Campbell’s version from later that year that put “Gentle on My Mind” on the map. Industry lore has it that Campbell made what he thought was a demo, complete with yelled instructions to the Wrecking Crew studio musicians. Campbell’s producer Al De Lory cleaned it up enough to release as-was. And even though it barely cracked the pop Top 40, “Gentle on My Mind” never left the radio. In 1990, BMI rated it as the fourth-most played song in radio history.

Along with setting Hartford up financially, Campbell’s “Gentle on My Mind” cover won Hartford his first two Grammy Awards. He won another for 1976’s Mark Twang, an album inspired by Hartford’s riverboat experiences on his beloved Mississippi River. And his final Grammy was awarded posthumously, for his contributions to the landmark soundtrack for the 2000 Coen Brothers slapstick epic, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

O Brother’s surprising popularity launched a bluegrass revival and also put a luminous bookend on Hartford’s career. He emceed the Down From the Mountain show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on May 24, 2000 (filmed by D.A. Pennebaker for the concert film of the same name), in which Emmylou Harris, Alison Krauss, Ralph Stanley and other stars from the soundtrack performed. The soundtrack was just starting to take off a year later, on its way to topping the charts and winning a Grammy for Album of the Year, when Hartford succumbed to cancer on June 4, 2001, at age 63.

“He didn’t get to see all of that, but he would have told you that the coolest part of that movie being popular was that it put an old Ed Haley tune in the forefront,” Hogue says. “There’s a campfire scene with a lonesome fiddle playing, and that was my dad playing the Ed Haley tune, ‘I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.’ That was always his goal, to highlight the old-time music and fiddle players he loved so much. I don’t think he would have taken any of the accolades for himself.”

The Fiddle Tune Project album liner notes include a quote from Hartford himself, something he told Matt Combs once: “If we play our cards right, we can fiddle all day and on through the night.” That play-all-night-play-a-little-longer spirit animates the album, as played an all-star cast including Sierra Hull, Ronnie McCoury, Alison Brown, Tim O’Brien, Brittany Haas, Noam Pikelny and Chris Eldridge from Punch Brothers and Hartford’s old bandmate Mike Compton.

However, Hartford himself is the real star, in absentia, via the 17 songs pulled from the 2,000-plus in his journals. Hogue calls it a celebration of his creative process.

“Creativity with him was like a faucet he could never turn off,” Hogue says. “His journals are full of weird late-night thoughts and ideas he’d jot down, and then go back and try to work into something. He was very prolific and would go down rabbit holes very quickly. His journals have a lot of stream-of-consciousness writing where he was looking for different ways to come up with songs. He was a very open free-thinker.”

Combs oversaw recording at Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa, a Nashville studio formerly operated by Jack Clement. It is the studio Hartford used to make his 1984 album, Gum Tree Canoe. The project was funded by a Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $33,000 from 468 contributors. As the Vol. 1 in the title implies, there will be future volumes if only because more musicians wanted in on it than they had room to accommodate on just one record.

Indeed, tending to her father’s posthumous legacy has turned into quite an ongoing project for Hogue. Hartford left behind so much material in so many wide-ranging areas that the family donated parts of it to four different institutions. The Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library at the St. Louis Mercantile Library is where Hartford’s photos, journals and research pertaining to the Mississippi River wound up.

“That’s where the papers of all the river people and mentors my dad grew up with are, so it already looked like his office on steroids,” Hogue says. “So that was a no-brainer for everything of his related to the river, from when he had his pilot’s license. Had he not been a musician, he would have been a boat pilot up and down the river. That’s what he really loved. It was his passion.”

Putting together these projects has been therapeutic for Hogue, who was raised by her mother after her parents split when she was very young. She didn’t see much of her father during her childhood, and there were long stretches when she mostly heard from him when he’d mail her copies of his latest album.

“I still remember opening the mailbox one day and finding Aereo-Plain,” she says, referring to Hartford’s 1971 hippie-bluegrass classic.

For all Hartford’s success, his daughter still didn’t realize his stature until relatively late in his life — especially from all the visitors who came to see him at the end. That carried over to when she was dealing with the archive that yielded up the book and the album.

“There’s a lot to sift through in a process like that,” Hogue says. “The public sees the figure and the persona and hears the music, but there’s so many different dynamics behind that for friends and family. When you lose a parent, it’s like the world comes to a stop and there’s suddenly a period at the end of everything they were. There’s so much joy, anger, frustration, confusion. Going through all his things this way made me able to see the human side of him, which was healing. It’s been a way to say, ‘Hey, Dad, we’re good. I did this because I love you.’ There’s a lot of joy in these songs. They just make you want to dance, and his spirit comes through. I love that. I’m thrilled to be able to have this with him, even though it’s posthumous. A father-daughter project, where he’s here in spirit.”

Photo credit: Charles Seton

LISTEN: Caitlin Canty, “Where Is the Heart of My Country”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Caitlin Canty
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Single: “Where Is the Heart of My Country”
Release Date: September 30, 2020
Label: Tone Tree Music

In Their Words: “‘Where is the Heart of My Country’ first sparked for me as I flew home from California and spent most of the flight gazing out the window. At 30,000 feet, the rivers and roads looked like the flowing veins and arteries of our country. The patchwork of quilted farmland and tight-knit cities drove home how connected we truly are as Americans, despite the fractured state of our nation.

“At the time, I’d been trading off between scrolling angrily through the news and reading Woody Guthrie’s autobiography, Bound for Glory, which likely helped direct my rage and sadness into this song. I was aching over our country’s growing division, disheartened by the people stoking the flames and inspired by strong voices raised in protest. I was thinking about the many chapters of America’s past and wondering where our story goes from here.

“To record this song in the early months of the pandemic, Noam Pikelny and I set up a makeshift studio at home with borrowed gear. I was eight months pregnant when I tracked my part; standing up, guitar slung to the side, the baby monitor as a talk-back mic. I am so grateful for the beautiful contributions from the band of Brittany Haas, Paul Kowert, Noam Pikelny, and Andrew Marlin. The microphones are now torn down and the room where I sang ‘Where is the Heart of My Country’ is a nursery. I hope by the time my son is old enough to understand the refrain, its sentiment will seem like a relic of the distant past.” — Caitlin Canty

Photo credit: Laura Partain

Aoife O’Donovan Finds Her Heart in the Verse of Others

Posted on by Editor

It’s not easy keeping up with Aoife O’Donovan. The 37-year-old Boston native grew up in a musical family, cutting her teeth with Crooked Still, a progressive bluegrass group she founded with four friends in 2001, and Sometymes Why, an Americana trio. She worked with Goat Rodeo Sessions (Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile) on an album that won a Grammy in 2013. Then, after an impromptu collaboration at Telluride Bluegrass Festival, she turned around and formed I’m With Her with Sara Watkins and Sarah Jarosz, winning a Grammy for “Call My Name.”

Meanwhile, it’s been ten years since O’Donovan released her first solo record, Blue Light, and since that time she’s released five more — with a new EP appearing this month. On Bull Frogs Croon (And Other Songs), she applies her soothing vocals and folk sensibilities to the poetic verse of others. The EP builds upon three numbers that bring to life the poetry of the late Peter Sears through songs O’Donovan wrote and arranged with Teddy Abrams and Jeremy Kittel for the 2015 Britt Festival in Oregon. Pared down from orchestral arrangements to a tour-friendly string quartet, she rounds out the five-song EP with two covers: Hazel Dickens’s “Pretty Bird” and traditional folk song “Lakes of Pontchartrain.”

BGS caught up with O’Donovan about what drew her to Sears’s poetry, the qualities of a great folk song, and how she stays grounded while throwing herself into so many creative endeavors.

BGS: What drew you to his Peter Sears and his poetry?

I had never heard of Peter Sears before getting a call to write a piece for the Britt Festival in Oregon. My friend and colleague Teddy Abrams suggested that we look to the poet laureate of Oregon for inspiration, so I got a book of Peter Sears’ poems at my local bookstore and was immediately in love with his writing. I absolutely loved his work. I loved the way he was able to write about simple things, everyday things, everyday feelings — it felt like these were the thoughts of my own heart. I loved it so much. In sifting through these books, I found these three poems — that didn’t go together, weren’t from the same collections — and I put them together. I was lucky to get to meet Peter Sears at the premiere of the piece in Oregon, back in 2015. He passed away a couple of years later. But he was a really special guy.

You didn’t write these lyrics, but did any of these lines or themes coincide with something you were going through personally?

The whole song cycle of Bull Frogs Croon has that. I set these songs to music at a very different time in my life, four years ago, five years ago. They’re three songs that are incredibly relevant to the human experience. The opening song, “Night Fishing,” is a meditation on stillness, on finding comfort in your own solitude. That’s definitely a human experience — I go through that all the time. “The Darkness” [describes] the idea that waves of emotion can come over you. The final song, “Valentine,” is a love song. It’s a two-stanza poem about the simple act of being in love with somebody, and I think that’s also universal — I hope people can relate to that!

In addition to the trio of songs inspired by Sears, you included two covers — one of which is “Lakes of Pontchartrain,” which is an Irish folk song you’ve included in live shows for a while. What are your roots with that song?

It’s one of my all-time favorites. My uncle James sings this song at certain jam sessions; as I was growing up, I would hear him sing it all the time. Every time I sing it at a concert, it’s the one song that people come up to me afterward and say, “I love that song! I love that song!” I hadn’t yet recorded it. The Paul Brady version of this song is the main recorded version, in my mind. It’s just the most beautiful song.

You grew up playing folk music with your family, and you performed many traditional songs early in your career with Crooked Still. From your perspective, what makes a good folk song?

“Lakes of Pontchartrain” is a classic example of what makes a folk song good: It has a long story, and you can really follow along with this guy. You can see yourself in his shoes. He’s lonely, he doesn’t know where he is. He doesn’t recognize anybody. And then he meets this beautiful girl who just shows him kindness. It’s not like it has a happy or a sad ending: It’s just an ending that could happen to anybody. She’s engaged to somebody else. But that doesn’t stop her from being kind and from them having a beautiful connection. I actually love that part of the story: “Fair thee well… I never will see you no more, but I’ll ne’er forget your kindness.” I wish there were more songs in the world that were about that.

You also included a Hazel Dickens song. Tell me about your relationship with her and her music.

Hazel Dickens is a very special person in the bluegrass and folk community. There aren’t tons of women who are as lauded as she is, of that age certainly. She wrote beautiful songs, and she was an incredible performer, singer, and musician. “Pretty Bird” is a very tragic song. I recorded it years ago for a Hazel Dickens tribute record that never came out, and then we re-recorded it with Crooked Still, just violin and voice. I wanted to have a string quartet recording of this. Jeremy wrote this arrangement years ago, and I think it’s just stunning. I’d been doing it live — any time I was around a string quartet, I would do “Pretty Bird” — and I just wanted to have [a recording of] it.

What’s someone or something you’ve seen in music recently that makes you feel excited or hopeful?

I have been listening non-stop to the Bonny Light Horseman record. I saw that live a few weeks ago and was absolutely floored. I had not enjoyed a live concert so much in a long time. The singing was so good. The record is so good, and the live show was just even better — more enhanced, and oh my God it was just so good. I just can’t even… I loved it so much. It was like the record on steroids. Everybody should be listening to that.

You’re involved in so many ongoing projects. What keeps you going on a daily basis?

One thing I love to do daily is go for a run. When I’m running, often I’ll get song ideas, or have some lyrics pop into my mind. Sometimes I don’t remember them, or I’ll remember them days later I’ll say, “Oh, I had that idea, I had that idea” and I’ll write it down. But I think making sure to carve out at least a little time for yourself is crucial, as an artist and as a musician.

And then of course, getting to connect with my husband and my family — little tiny things, like when my daughter does something amazing. Surrounding myself with people that I love and friends and family are a huge part of that for me. When I am home, one thing we’ve been doing is trying to have meals together, even when the timing is inconvenient. Maybe it means we have lunch at 11, or we have dinner at 5:30 — earlier than most musicians would probably like to be eating — but we’re really sitting down and talking about our day. I love that. My two-year-old is now saying things like, “Tell me how your day was! Tell me how your day was!” It’s a nice moment to just put the phones away, put aside everything not at the table, and really talk to each other.

Photo credit: Rich Gilligan

Nick Hornbuckle, “Cleo Belle”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

There’s a sort of primitive beauty within the patchwork techniques that have informed and filtered into each individual instrumentalist’s approach to the five-string banjo. Styles rapidly morph and change, aided by the instrument’s relative youth (when compared, in roots music, to all but perhaps the resonator guitar) and its absolute refusal to nestle into any one distinct vein of pedagogy. Scruggs-style, clawhammer and broader frailing, ragtime, picking (i.e. with plectrum), strumming, and even more avant garde approaches such as Greg Liszt’s four-finger banjo all lend themselves to the machine in their own alluring ways. 

Enter Nick Hornbuckle, banjoist at large and member of John Reischman’s Jaybirds, who’s just released his second solo album, 13 or So. Hornbuckle’s right hand method defies categorization even by the rule-eschewing standards mentioned above. His two-finger style is decidedly distinct from the eponymous Appalachian, old-time frailing approach, combining aspects of clawhammer, Scruggs-style, and the ethereal, impossible-to-replicate quirkiness of just making your hands do what the music requires without being exactly sure how that works. I.e., playing the banjo. 

The resulting aesthetic, which anchors each of the twelve original tunes on 13 or So, falls somewhere within an equilateral triangle whose vertices would be Mark Johnson (of clawgrass fame), Steve Martin, and Noam Pikelny (if he had one finger tied behind his back). “Cleo Belle,” as all of Hornbuckle’s compositions, confounds with its combination of sheer musical athleticism and acrobatics — while remaining absolutely intuitive and organic. With his crew — on “Cleo Belle” that would be Trent Freeman (fiddle), John Reischman (mandolin), Darryl Poulsen (guitar), and Patrick Metzger (bass) — Hornbuckle wholly incorporates vernacular musical vocabularies while still pushing string band boundaries into more art music or chamber music spaces. The arrangement reminds that the western-most communities of bluegrass and old-time acolytes in this country have truly, effortlessly combined the best parts of each, while retaining that rustic, back-porch timelessness that makes the banjo beguiling to all of us.

IBMA Reveals Award Nominees, Hall of Fame Inductees, Distinguished Achievement Winners

Posted on by Editor

Five of the top bands in bluegrass earned IBMA Entertainer of the Year nominations from the International Bluegrass Music Association. The ballot was revealed on Wednesday morning in Nashville.

The Entertainer of the Year nominees are Balsam Range, Sam Bush Band, The Earls of Leicester, Del McCoury Band, and Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers.

Due to a tie, seven titles will compete for the Song of the Year category. The IBMA Awards will take place Thursday, September 26, at the Duke Energy Performing Arts Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, with hosts Jim Lauderdale and Del McCoury.

Mike Auldridge, Bill Emerson, and the Kentucky Colonels have also been named as inductees into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame.

Distinguished Achievement Award recipients include radio personality Katy Daley, Mountain Home label founder Mickey Gamble, former IBMA executive director Dan Hays, The Lost and Found founder Allen Mills, and Japanese language magazine Moonshiner, now in its 37th year covering bluegrass and acoustic music.

The full ballot is below.

ENTERTAINER OF THE YEAR

Balsam Range
Sam Bush Band
The Earls of Leicester
Del McCoury Band
Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers

VOCAL GROUP OF THE YEAR

Balsam Range
I’m With Her
Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver
Russell Moore & IIIrd Tyme Out
Sister Sadie

INSTRUMENTAL GROUP OF THE YEAR

Sam Bush Band
Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper
The Earls of Leicester
Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder
The Travelin’ McCourys

NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR

Appalachian Road Show
Carolina Blue
High Fidelity
Mile Twelve
Billy Strings

SONG OF THE YEAR (7 nominees, due to a tie)

“Dance, Dance, Dance”
Artist: Appalachian Road Show
Writers: Brenda Cooper/Joseph Cooper/Steve Miller
Producers: Barry Abernathy, Darrell Webb, Ben Isaacs
Executive Producer: Dottie Leonard Miller
Label: Billy Blue Records

“The Girl Who Invented the Wheel”
Artist: Balsam Range
Writers: Adam Wright/Shannon Wright
Producer: Balsam Range
Executive Producer: Mickey Gamble
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

“The Guitar Song”
Artist: Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers with Del McCoury
Writers: Bill Anderson/Jamey Johnson/Vicky McGehee
Producer: Joe Mullins
Associate Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

“The Light in Carter Stanley’s Eyes”
Artist: Peter Rowan
Writer: Peter Rowan
Producer: Peter Rowan
Associate Producer: Tim O’Brien
Label: Rebel Records

“Next Train South”
Artist: The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys
Writer: Mac Patterson
Producers: The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, Dave Maggard, Ken Irwin
Label: Rounder Records

“Take the Journey”
Artist: Molly Tuttle
Writers: Molly Tuttle/Sarah Siskind
Producer: Ryan Hewitt
Label: Compass Records

“Thunder Dan”
Artist: Sideline
Writer: Josh Manning
Producer: Tim Surrett
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

City on a Hill
Artist: Mile Twelve
Producer: Bryan Sutton
Label: Independent

Del McCoury Still Sings Bluegrass
Artist: Del McCoury Band
Producers: Del and Ronnie McCoury
Label: McCoury Music

For the Record
Artist: Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers
Producer: Joe Mullins
Associate Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

I Hear Bluegrass Calling Me
Artist: Carolina Blue
Producers: Bobby Powell, Tim and Lakin Jones
Executive Producers: Lonnie Lassiter and Ethan Burkhardt
Label: Pinecastle Records

Sister Sadie II
Artist: Sister Sadie
Producer: Sister Sadie
Label: Pinecastle Records

GOSPEL RECORDING OF THE YEAR

“Acres of Diamonds”
Artist: Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers
Producer: Joe Mullins
Associate Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

“Gonna Sing, Gonna Shout”
Artist: Claire Lynch
Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

“I Am a Pilgrim”
Artist: Roland White and Friends
Producers: Ty Gilpin, Jon Weisberger
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

“I See God”
Artist: Marty Raybon
Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

“Let My Life Be a Light”
Artist: Balsam Range
Producer: Balsam Range
Executive Producer: Mickey Gamble
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

INSTRUMENTAL RECORDING OF THE YEAR

“Cotton Eyed Joe”
Artist: Sideline
Producer: Tim Surrett
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

“Darlin’ Pal(s) of Mine”
Artist: Missy Raines with Alison Brown, Mike Bub, and Todd Phillips
Producer: Alison Brown
Label: Compass Records

“Earl’s Breakdown”
Artist: The Earls of Leicester
Producer: Jerry Douglas
Label: Rounder Records

“Fried Taters and Onions”
Artist: Carolina Blue
Producers: Bobby Powell, Tim and Lakin Jones
Executive Producers: Lonnie Lassiter and Ethan Burkhardt
Label: Pinecastle Records

“Sunrise”
Artist: Sam Bush & Bela Fleck
Producers: Akira Otsuka, Ronnie Freeland
Label: Smithsonian Folkways Records

COLLABORATIVE RECORDING OF THE YEAR

“Burning Georgia Down”
Artist: Balsam Range with Atlanta Pops Orchestra Ensemble
Producer: Balsam Range
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

“Darlin’ Pal(s) of Mine”
Artist: Missy Raines with Alison Brown, Mike Bub, and Todd Phillips
Producer: Alison Brown
Label: Compass Records

“The Guitar Song”
Artist: Joe Mullins & the Radio Ramblers with Del McCoury
Producer: Joe Mullins
Associate Producer: Jerry Salley
Label: Billy Blue Records

“Please”
Artist: Rhonda Vincent and Dolly Parton
Producers: Dave Cobb, John Leventhal, Frank Liddell
Label: MCA Nashville

“Soldier’s Joy/Ragtime Annie”
Artist: Roland White with Justin Hiltner, Jon Weisberger, Patrick McAvinue, and Molly Tuttle
Producers: Ty Gilpin, Jon Weisberger
Label: Mountain Home Music Company

MALE VOCALIST OF THE YEAR

Shawn Camp
Del McCoury
Russell Moore
Tim O’Brien
Danny Paisley

FEMALE VOCALIST

Brooke Aldridge
Dale Ann Bradley
Sierra Hull
Molly Tuttle
Rhonda Vincent

BANJO PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Gina Furtado
Mike Munford
Noam Pikelny
Kristin Scott Benson
Scott Vestal

BASS PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Barry Bales
Mike Bub
Beth Lawrence
Missy Raines
Mark Schatz

FIDDLE PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Hunter Berry
Becky Buller
Jason Carter
Michael Cleveland
Stuart Duncan

RESOPHONIC GUITAR PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Jerry Douglas
Andy Hall
Rob Ickes
Phil Leadbetter
Justin Moses

GUITAR PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Kenny Smith
Billy Strings
Bryan Sutton
Molly Tuttle
Josh Williams

MANDOLIN PLAYER OF THE YEAR

Alan Bibey
Sam Bush
Sierra Hull
Ronnie McCoury
Frank Solivan

Béla Fleck and the Flecktones Forge Their Own Path

Posted on by Editor

What’s on Béla Fleck’s mind?

Balloons.

Just the day before, his Nashville house was filled with them, as well as with a few dozen kids. It was the 6th birthday of the eldest of two children of the three-finger-style banjo maestro and his clawhammer-style counterpart, frequent recording and touring partner and wife Abigail Washburn.

But the days surrounding this have also had a party vibe. He’s been in rehearsals with his cohorts in the beloved jazz-and-way-beyond Flecktones, in preparation for a tour marking the band’s 30th birthday.

Working again with harmonica player/pianist Howard Levy, bassist Victor Wooten, and the singular electro-acoustic percussionist known as Futureman (a.k.a. Wooten’s brother Roy), digging deep into their group catalog of complex flights of fancy mixing daredevil chops, musical depth, and persistent whimsy has been a blast.

“They’re the same guys they were when I first met them,” he says, speaking from home. “Curious, interested, ever-expanding, ever-pulling me with them. There’s a very special bond we have together. I’m realizing it more and more as years go by, one of the great relationships in our lives, musically and personally.”

They’re even pulling out such rarely played and decidedly difficult gems as “Jekyll and Hyde (and Ted and Alice)” from the band’s second album, 1991’s Flight of the Cosmic Hippo. It’s challenging and exciting, enlivening the qualities that made this alchemical combo of characters special from the very start. Futureman, he says, is an “empath and enabler — musical enabler, brings consciousness underneath you.” Victor Wooten too. Levy is “the crazy ideas on top. He’s the brains of the outfit.”

Fleck’s role? “Somehow I thought I was the heart of it, limiting it but making it more understandable for the common man — I was the common man in the band, surrounded by these crazy guys.”

But with a moment to reflect on their collective history and achievements, he finds descriptions of the magic they work together to be elusive.

This is where the balloons come in.

“It has to have heart, has to have melodies, some harmonies,” says Fleck, who turns 61 in July. “Couldn’t just be a groove or a shred-fest. That’s the power of the band. The tunes are strong, good things to pour everyone’s musical power into. Like a balloon. It’s an empty piece of rubber. But these tunes I’d written, we filled them up with Futureman and Victor and Howard — the balloons get real handsome. With the balloons at the party, it occurred to me that you fill them up and they become joyful. That’s what this music is.”

They’ll be sharing that joy on the road now, including two shows of particular import. This 30th anniversary tour began with a big “Friends and Family” kickoff May 30 at Red Rocks near Denver, the friends and family here including Washburn, saxophonist Jeff Coffin, Dobro genius Jerry Douglas, and the Colorado Symphony. And on June 8 they will be taking a cherished headlining slot at the Hollywood Bowl’s vaunted Playboy Jazz Festival.

The Playboy slot is, to Fleck, a particularly meaningful recognition.

“It’s one of the neat things to being around 30 years,” he says of that booking. “From the start I was begging to play it and they said, ‘Yeah, we’ll put you on at noon’ and we’d play once every four years or so. Now we’re in the headlining slot and we’re legacy artists.”

Sure, the Flecktones have had several albums go to the top of the jazz sales and airplay charts and they have won two Grammy Awards for contemporary jazz album, with Outbound in 2000 and The Hidden Lands in 2006. And last year the band was given the prestigious Miles Davis Award by the Montreal International Jazz Festival. And Fleck has found himself partnering regularly on recordings and tours with some of the greats of jazz, one in particular in an ongoing partnership. “I’m playing with Chick Corea, which is ridiculous, on a regular basis,” he marvels, having just returned home from a tour with the ceaselessly groundbreaking pianist.

But, while belated acceptance in the jazz world is frustrating, he understands. See, banjo is pretty much standard in any jazz band… in 1919. In 2019, not so much. Even after 30 years of forging a path for banjo in modern jazz, Fleck remains singular. Asked about others doing anything comparable today, he’s kinda stumped.

He cites New Orleans’ veteran Don Vappie, but he’s generally in the mode of traditions going back to those earliest years of jazz. There’s Matt Davis, a converted jazz pianist who’s on the faculty of the University of Michigan. And there are others who use some jazz chops and sensibilities while not strictly playing that style of music, notably Tony Trischka, Noam Pikelny, Alison Brown, and Pat Cloud.

“But yeah,” he says. “They’re rare.”

Not to mention that the Flecktones as a whole is anything but standard jazz, with a truly eccentric approach and reach into a lot of styles. The 3-CD Little Worlds set from 2003 showed a boundless range that felt to some at once excitingly delightful and confounding.

On the other hand, not fitting in any category is par for the course for Fleck. He’s made a career of it, holding the record for the most categories in which he has been nominated for Grammys, 16 total. The most recent win is a best folk album trophy in 2016 for Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn.

He’s a charter member, he quips, of the “Modern American Attention Deficit Disorder Musicians.” There are really only two others he’d put in that association: Jerry Douglas (whose fusiony Jerry Douglas Band may be the only thing out there comparable to the Flecktones) and Chris Thile (who’s resumé runs from Nickel Creek to ongoing collaborations with classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma and jazz pianist Brad Mehldau).

There’s one side of his musical hexadecagon he’s underserved for a while now, though. Ironically, it’s the one that first brought him fame when he emerged as a precocious New York City musician in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“On the bluegrass side, people go, ‘Whatever happened to Béla Fleck? He could have been a great bluegrass player.’” he says. “Someone told me he had heard that. That was when I was at the top of my game, selling out stadiums with the Flecktones on tour with the Dave Matthews Band.”

Well, it has been 20 years since his last true bluegrass album, the on-point-titled The Bluegrass Sessions. And the one before that, the breakthrough Drive, came in 1988, a year before the Flecktones genesis. Well, as it happens, Fleck has a new bluegrass album in the works with a cast of musicians including such longtime buddies as Douglas, mandolinist Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, bassist Mark Schatz and fiddler Stuart Duncan (all of whom were on the 1988 album) and a mix of fellow veteran stars (bassist Meyer, mandolinists David Grisman and Chris Thile) and relative newcomers (fiddlers Billy Contreras and Michael Cleveland, mandolinist Dominick Leslie, and guitarist Cody Kilby).

The timing? Just seemed right, he says.

“Now the years have gone by and I didn’t have a place for bluegrass to fit in,” he says. “But I had these tunes burning a hole in my pocket and thought I would really love to have a place for them. These sessions have been a knockout. These are hard tunes. And we’re having a blast. It’s as good as I’d hoped.”

The results will be out sometime next year. But first there’s this Flecktones balloon to float.

“One thing I will guarantee you is you will never hear anything else like it,” he says. “There is nothing else like the Flecktones in the world. I promise that. And I am very proud that were are that, and that we are back together.”