Here’s a surprise from the Western North Carolina music scene. Steep Canyon Rangers and Asheville Symphony have partnered with R&B group Boyz II Men for a refresher of “Be Still Moses.”
Instinctively believing that these genres would blend, Steep Canyon Rangers’ producer Michael Selverne collaborated with musical director Michael Bearden to bring all the entities together, thus elevating an SCR crowd favorite into something special for all three groups.
“We always get this chill when we know we are in the right place,” says Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman. “And we got a few chills working on this project.”
Photo credit of Steep Canyon Rangers: David Simchock Photo credit of Boyz II Men: Debby Wong
Artist:Darin & Brooke Aldridge Hometown: Shelby, North Carolina Song: “I Found Love” Album:Inner Journey Release Date: October 18, 2019 Label: Rounder Records
In Their Words: “‘I Found Love’ is a wonderful Vince Gill, Randy Scruggs, and Earl Scruggs song that we first heard on Earl Scruggs’ Family and Friends album. Working closely with the great Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, North Carolina, we were excited to stumble across this upbeat tune that Earl had a co-write on. It also takes us back to a memory of when Darin and I had the honor to open for the legendary Earl Scruggs in some of D&B’s first few years as a band. This well-written tune leads off our CD, describing perfectly what Darin and I found in each other 11 years ago…life, love and a career that’s taken us to places that we only once dreamed of.” — Brooke Aldridge
Artist:Songs from the Road Band Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina Song: “Any Highway” Album:Waiting on a Ride Release Date: July 31, 2019 Label: Lucks Dumpy Toad Records
In Their Words: “‘Any Highway’ is a song about the one that got away! It’s set out west in a desert town. Its relevancy is timeless. It was written by Darren Nicholson of Balsam Range fame and Charles R Humphrey III. We made it the first track on our new album because it introduces the themes of change, transition, travel, and nostalgia. Those threads are woven throughout the album and seem to tie this batch of songs together as one cohesive project.” — Songs from the Road Band
Artist:ClayBank Hometown: Claybank, North Carolina, and Southern Virginia Song: “Dreamer” Album:Road Signs and Highways Release Date: July 26, 2019 Label: Mountain Fever Records
In Their Words: “Jamie Harper and I heard ‘Dreamer’ a long time ago by a great band in our region. Sometime after, I texted Shannon Slaughter, who’s a great songwriter, about songs and ‘Dreamer’ was in the batch he sent me. I hadn’t thought about it much until we were looking for material for this new album, but when I shared it with the band, all the guys loved it and thought it fit the style we’re going for. We all love the positive message. In bluegrass there’s a lot of killing and prison themed songs — and we love playing them — but it’s really cool to have a song with a positive message every now and then. I hope everyone enjoys it.” — Jason Davis, Banjo, ClayBank
Award-winning author and journalist Emma John has intensely pursued many passions through her gift of writing. Her first book, Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket, was named the 2017 Wisden Book of the Year, and her newly published title, Wayfaring Stranger: A Musical Journey in the American South, tells a story of self-discovery in the Londoner’s trip to the hills of North Carolina.
An email discussion with John (who also regularly contributes to BGS) uncovered a number of universal truths about the wide-reaching allure in the people, stories, and culture of bluegrass.
BGS: Describe the overall experience of writing this book. Were there any particularly surprising or challenging points in the experience?
EJ: There were two very distinct parts to the process. First came the trip itself, which was supposed to take six months, but got extended far longer because I was enjoying myself so much. That was the fun part, and the real reason for writing the book in the first place. What was really hard was heading back home to the UK, sitting in a tiny little study, in the middle of winter, when there are only about 6 hours of daylight, and trying to recreate all my memories without feeling really miserable that I wasn’t still in the mountains! I found a solution: I went back.
Early in the book you describe bluegrass music as “the sound of the past, being enjoyed with all the verve and vivacity of the present.” What is it that seems to make bluegrass so timeless?
I think it’s the fact that it’s always been pretty true to itself. You don’t play bluegrass to be modern, you don’t play bluegrass – Lord knows – to make money or get famous. The only people who play bluegrass are the people who really love it and can’t help themselves. I think that has given it a truly unbroken thread over the past 80 years. Plus, acoustic instruments are never going to age as badly as electropop synth music or the keytar.
It sounds like your trip to North Carolina turned your life upside down in the best possible way. How much did the sheer unfamiliarity of everything play a role in your self-discovery?
It really hit me for six, as we say over here in Britain (that’s a cricket metaphor). The fact that from my very first day in North Carolina I stumbled into – and was immediately embraced by – a world of rural pickers meant that I had to start from scratch. On every score: the music, yes, but also the food (an endless quest to source a vegetable that wasn’t cooked in sugar), the culture (lunch before noon?! what is that?), manners (if I even said ‘damn’ I got funny looks), and accents (I struggled to make myself understood because of my incredibly clipped vowels, and I often had to smile and nod when Southern folk spoke to me because I had no idea what they were saying.)
In a way it was incredibly liberating. Yes, I was an alien, but I was also someone about whom no one had any preconceptions, really. In fact everyone seemed to believe the best of me at first sight! And so I shrugged off my more cynical side, and began to enjoy and try to live up to their confidence in me. I also found the openness and generosity of American society a lot more suited to my own natural character than my own country. I’ve always been gregarious and felt that at home in London where people are quite reserved I can be “a bit much.” In the South I found myself being the best version of me I could be!
As your friend Fred is describing the many achievements of Earl Scruggs, you write, “Fred said all this with a personal pride, as if Earl’s success reflected well on everyone, including himself.” What makes bluegrass so personal to those who follow the genre, and why do people take so much pride in being a part of this music?
Again, I think this is because the music is so niche, so people feel very protective of it. If you pour yourself into something that not a lot of other people appreciate or even notice, you feel incredibly attached to it and sometimes even defensive of it. The pride can come from family connection and ancestry — ‘My great granddaddy played on this fiddle!” — or from that strong sense of geography – “This is the music of our mountains!” – but it can also, I think, just come from ‘getting’ it. Bluegrass is a language that not everyone speaks.
In describing the atmosphere of Pete Wernick’s bluegrass camp you wrote, “When people weren’t playing their favourite songs, they were talking about them.” How much do the non-musical aspects of bluegrass such as the stories and characters play a part in the culture of the genre?
Very much. In fact it always amazed me at how no one got tired of hearing the same stories do the rounds a million times in picking circles! Remember that one about Bill Monroe and the bagels? One of his bandmates brings him a bagel and he eats it and says, “This donut tastes kinda strange.” I mean, we’ve all heard that, right? At least a dozen times. But the sharing of those stories – that everyone already knows! – is part of the ritual. It’s part of the homage you pay to the music. You don’t stop someone mid-flow and say, “Yeah yeah, I know how this one ends.” You listen to someone tell you about how Carter Stanley drank himself to death, or Stringbean was murdered, or Earl and Lester fell out. It’s a grand narrative that we all belong to.
Have you returned to playing classical violin since discovering bluegrass music? If so, has learning bluegrass fiddle changed the way you think about or play classical music?
I have not. The only time I play classical violin is if I want to show off in front of a bluegrasser, and then I’ll peddle out the first few bars of “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” or “Czardas” just to prove I know where fifth position is. But bluegrass fiddle has changed the way I think about all music. I just didn’t LISTEN to it before, or at least I listened in a very superficial way. I listened to the notes, but never the feel. I listened for familiarity, not for emotion. I consumed music so that it could fulfil a purpose, but I didn’t appreciate the utter genius of the people who were making it.
One of the interesting things about this book is that it can be enjoyed by someone who’s never heard of bluegrass equally as much as it can be enjoyed by a bluegrass veteran. What can a novice learn from your story? What can a veteran of the genre learn?
Well hopefully the novice will be interested by the very American story of this music’s history — its 19th century distillation in the Appalachian mountains, its crystallisation in the post-depression Southern diaspora, its rebirth in the hippie and folk movements of the 1960s. But one thing I really wanted people who are new to bluegrass to take from the book is the realisation that it’s a truly unique meeting place. That this kind of music can be and very much is a place where people with very different political outlooks, backgrounds, and experiences do sit alongside each other and put aside what divides them. It’s a music that demands your wholehearted commitment to the moment of playing, and in that moment, everything else gets stripped away, and you can have a pure human connection. And surely that’s what the world needs right now.
Have you discovered more bluegrass music in Europe since becoming interested in the genre? Have you found that other “bluegrassers” in Europe share a similar introduction to the music as yours?
I have! I think meeting the Kruger Brothers in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, was a big turning point for me, because the realisation that these two Swiss siblings had been channeling Doc Watson for years, and come up with their own adaptation of bluegrass, was really the first time I’d understood that it was OK to have your own relationship and tradition with this music. I always had this sense that bluegrass was someone else’s music, and something that as a non-American I would only ever be “playing” at, and never have a true part in. Now I realise that music is just music and I shouldn’t get hung up on that!
Artist:Zoe & Cloyd Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina Song: “Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down” Album:I Am Your Neighbor Release Date: June 14, 2019 (single); Fall 2019 (album) Label: Organic Records
In Their Words: “‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’ is a traditional African American spiritual that we learned from a solo field recording of Frank Proffitt from 1965. Proffitt claimed to have learned the song from a black banjo player named Dave Thompson, also from the Sugar Grove area of northwestern North Carolina. It is a simple yet powerful musical statement, and Natalya’s stark, solo vocal mirrors the sound of many old-time source recordings that we love. The lyrics are haunting and hypnotic and our version features flat-picked guitar and bowed upright bass coupled with the more ‘old-time’ elements of cross-tuned fiddle and clawhammer banjo. There is a timelessness to this song that contributes to its survival. Every generation has its Satan. — John Cloyd Miller
Artist:Isaiah Breedlove Hometown: Cashiers, North Carolina Song: “Save Your Pennies” Album:Save Your Pennies Release Date: July 26, 2019 Label: Gold Ship Records
In Their Words: “I wrote this song on an old Kay small body, looking at the big flag on our porch. A friend had told me a few months back, ‘Save your pennies and I’ll take you fishing out west.’ And I had kept that line in my hip pocket since.” — Isaiah Breedlove
Artist:Sideline Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina Song: “Crash Course in the Blues” Release Date: May 31, 2019 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “Troy and I spent hours writing the guitar work for this song. We had so many ideas, and they kept flowing as we worked. We really hadn’t played it in the context of the song with the whole band though. When we brought it to the studio there was an energy that all of the guys were riding on. We laid it down on the second take and knew it was a keeper. It was so live and organic, but tight and strong. It was really awesome to see the whole thing come together.” — Skip Cherryholmes, on playing twin guitars with bandmate Troy Boone
Artist:Si Kahn and the Looping Brothers Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina (Kahn) and Germany (Looping Brothers) Song: “It’s a Dog’s Life” Album:It’s a Dog’s Life Release Date: May 31, 2019 Label: Strictly Country
In Their Words: “When a human says, ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ they mean that life is pretty rough. But when a dog says, ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ and adds examples of how great it is to be a dog, that’s a different matter.” — Si Kahn
Give or take, it’s about 2,800 miles from Brandi Carlile’s native Seattle, Washington, to Wilkesboro, North Carolina, home to the renowned music gathering known as MerleFest. (See photos.) And as the Saturday night headliner this year, the award-winning singer-songwriter took to the Watson Stage during the 32nd annual MerleFest, surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and an overzealous audience in the neighborhood of 30,000.
Backed by her rollicking Americana/indie-rock band, which includes founding members Phil and Tim Hanseroth (aka: “The Twins”), Carlile held court during an unforgettable performance that led to one of the festival’s finest moments — Carlile around a single microphone with North Carolinians Seth and Scott Avett for an encore of the Avett Brothers’ “Murder in the City.”
But a few hours before that performance, Carlile found herself standing backstage alone in the dressing room of the late Doc Watson, the guitar master who founded MerleFest. Gazing around the small square space, she looked at old photos of Watson and other legendary Americana and bluegrass performers that have played MerleFest over the years: Earl Scruggs, Alison Krauss, Peter Rowan, Rhonda Vincent, Tony Rice, and so forth.
Carlile smiled to herself in silence, truly feeling humbled in her craft and taking a moment to reflect on her wild and wondrous journey thus far, all while possessing a once-in-a-generation talent — something broadcasted across the world during her staggering performance of “The Joke” in February at the Grammys, and amid a standing ovation from the music industry. Remarkably she also picked up all three Grammys in the American Roots Music categories.
We met Carlile in Watson’s dressing room before the show for our interview and surveyed the steps she’s taken from Seattle to the MerleFest stage.
BGS: It seems as big as your career has gotten, the humble nature of where you came from still remains within you, as a headlining performer now.
Carlile: It does. Part of that reason why I feel that is part of who I am is because of the people that I’ve surrounded myself with — The Twins, our families, our kids, and our folks. They’re not going to let anybody get too heady or too ahead of themselves. Everybody puts you right back in your station if you’re getting there.
Growing up around Seattle, was Kurt Cobain’s songwriting or specifically the Unplugged in New York album by Nirvana ever a big influence on you as a performer?
It was later in life. It’s so funny, like when you live in the [Pacific] Northwest, the intensity that was directed towards country music for me was big because I didn’t have proximity to it. I was so far away from it. People in the South, I think so often they love country and western roots music, bluegrass, folk, and Americana music. It’s not that they take it for granted, but they don’t realize sometimes that they’re so close to it — it’s right here. And we don’t have that proximity, so I think we love it a little more intensely in the Northwest.
Because you’re seeking it out maybe?
Yeah. And [it’s] even more concentrated in the [United Kingdom]. I mean, if you want to meet some of the most potent country music fans, you go to the UK. And Seattle is kind of that same vibe. So, when I discovered grunge music and rock ‘n’ roll music, it was after it had already happened in my city, which had its own grief period with it, but also kind of an intense celebratory thing because I had missed it. I wanted to know everything about what happened in my city. And what I came away with was realizing we came up with something new. We didn’t repeat anything. We didn’t throw back to an era. We didn’t put on a Halloween costume. We did something brand new.
So, how does that apply to where you are today, in terms of what you want to create with your art?
I’m kind of a hybrid thinker, in general. I like putting ideas together and posing thoughts, things like that. I’ve never really been a great or very successful genre person.
You don’t want to be pigeon-holed…
It’s not that I don’t want to be pigeon-holed, it’s just that I don’t know if I’m able to be. Unfortunately I’ve always wanted to fit in, but I don’t know if I ever will.
Well, to that point, this last year, at least from an outsider’s perspective, has seemed like a whirlwind in your career, with the trajectory it’s on now. Has it been a slow burn to this point or is this a whirlwind, and how are you dealing with all of that?
That’s a good question. It’s both. It’s been a slow burn to this point. I’ve been working for a long time. But it was a really big change. That Grammy moment changed my life, and in a really, really big way. I can’t even catch up to it yet — I don’t even know how to catch up to it yet.
Or if you even want to embrace it. I mean, how do even wrap your head around something like that?
No, dude, I want to embrace it — I love it. I’ve always loved everything about music and the music business since I was such a little girl. I sat in my room wanting the biggest and the best of opportunities for myself, my family, and my friends. And so I’ll find a way to embrace it. And I want to — I’m really insanely grateful for it.
What do you remember from that moment? I was thinking, the stunning way your voice and the energy was going up and down, any frustration, any love or sadness you’ve experienced was put out through that microphone at that moment…
Yeah. I think I’m going to live to be 100 because that is how I do it, you know? I just let it all out. And in that moment, I don’t know — I was just so ready for it. I’m 38. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m not going to get too nervous or too excited and come undone. But, I am going to enjoy it while it’s happening. Like so many big things in your life you don’t really get to enjoy it.
Or maybe in hindsight you realize how important it was…
Yeah, man. Like loving everything in retrospect, enjoying everything in retrospect. And I was just so right there, right in the moment at the time — more so than maybe ever before while performing.
So, does that mean you subscribe to the idea of “the now,” to learn to be present, rather than worry about what was and what could be?
Yeah, but I’m horrible at it. But for some reason, that day I was able to get there. And I think it’s because I had been so nervous and then I won those three [Grammys]. I was like, “What do I got to lose? I’m just going to do this. I’m just going to show everybody [who I am].”
What is the role of the songwriter in the digital age, in all this chaos that is the 21st century?
To try to be as permanent as you can in a temporary environment.
In all the years you’ve created and performed music, traveling the world and meeting people from all walks of life, what has it taught you about what it means to be a human being?
Well, it’s taught me so much. I think you need to travel, in general, in life. You cannot stay put and not see the way that people live and then try and create an assumption about the way the world works. Travel, in general, has taught me so much about social justice and empathy. It’s enhanced me spiritually as a person, and that’s the thing I think I’ve garnered the most out of it. But I’ve met some really wise and special people as well. And to get to meet your heroes, people that you’ve admired – to find out if you were completely wrong about how much you admire them or being completely right — has been so enlightening.
And what about being in Doc Watson’s dressing right now, being at Merlefest?
Being in Doc Watson’s dressing room is really moving. I’ve been looking around at the pictures and the gravity of it. And when you’re here at this festival, you feel the reverence and you understand what it’s all about. And it’s something I’m coming to later in life. Just like I missed the greatest rock ‘n’ roll genre of all-time — grunge — in my very own city, I missed this experience, too — and I’m looking forward to diving in with both feet.
All photos: Michael Freas
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