Tag: Old-time

Fair Black Rose Wants You to Know Bluegrass is for Anyone

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Fair Black Rose is a six-piece bluegrass and old-time string band of young folks from the southwestern U.S. The group grew out of Jam Pak Blues ‘N’ Grass Neighborhood Band, a community and after school program founded by Anni and Vincent Beach in Chandler, Arizona. Anni Beach continues the program to this day, teaching kids about bluegrass, blues, old-time, and the importance of these musics while passing along these folk traditions to a diverse and representative up-and-coming generation of pickers. The impact of Jam Pak has been well known to southwestern bluegrassers now for more than two decades, but its reputation as a first-rate educational program and bluegrass ambassador has garnered national recognition as well; in 2019 Beach won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Momentum Award for Mentor of the Year. 

Jam Pak has had hundreds of children and young adults come through its ranks, many of which have coalesced into different groups and bands within the greater program. Fair Black Rose is just one of those bands, but this year they’re making their debut on the national stage – and rising to that occasion and then some. The lineup of talented teenagers includes Lucy Tanyi on banjo, Carlos Parra, on fiddle, Maxwell Klett on mandolin, Rosy Lopez on guitar, Alasya Zelweldi on mountain dulcimer, and Justin Mizer on bass. Though still cutting their teeth, the group members have a mature sense of self well beyond their ages and are clearly at home within the many stalwart idioms of roots music.

In lieu of our annual Shout & Shine showcase held at IBMA’s conference and festival we’re dedicating two of our Shout & Shine columns to artists appearing during World of Bluegrass and IBMA Bluegrass Live! who represent often-marginalized identities in bluegrass. So, ahead of Fair Black Rose’s Official Showcases and Bluegrass Live! performance in Raleigh this week, we spoke to two of their members, Zelweldi and Mizer, about their music and repertoire, their blossoming band dynamic, what they hope to get out of their cross-country trip to IBMA, and more. Look for an upcoming interview with banjoist Tray Wellington to complete this Shout & Shine IBMA mini-series.

BGS: What are you looking forward to most at IBMA? Is it your first music conference? I know you’ve been to festivals plenty, but have you been to a music conference before? 

Justin Mizer: No, this is definitely going to be the biggest conference/music festival/showcase thing that we’ve ever attended. It’s a really big deal for us and we’re really excited. 

Alasya Zelweldi: We’re really looking forward to meeting new people, going out there — we’ve never traveled this far for a festival. We’re really excited for what’s to come!

As a band, what are you hoping to achieve at IBMA? Not only showcasing, but also being part of the conference, the hang — everybody being in the same space and pickin’ — but also the festival. I wonder what you’re hoping to get out of the experience? 

JM: Something that has been on my mind about the trip is that I really want us to make our mark, to let people see who we are — we are a really diverse band. This trip is a huge opportunity to network, get to know people, and to get Fair Black Rose’s name out there. We are a part of Jam Pak, Jam Pak was the start for us and we’re hoping to keep going with that, too. 

AZ: Hopefully we can make people happy with our music.

JM: We will! We definitely will! [Laughs]

AZ: Yeah! Overall, we want to show that bluegrass is for anyone. Like Justin said, we are a very diverse band and we hope to meet the youth out there and show that bluegrass is for anyone. 

I feel like that has been the entire point of this showcase and column, to shout, “This can be for everyone!” 

JM: Exactly!

Y’all just performed at the Pickin’ in the Pines festival in Flagstaff, Arizona, how was that? 

AZ: That was so fun, we got some really great reactions from the audience. That makes us so happy, as musicians. It just makes you want to play. We’re excited for North Carolina and to hear what they have to say to us. It was a lot of fun [in Flagstaff], it’s a great festival. 

One thing I wanted to ask you is about your collaboration process as a band, because you aren’t just a traditional bluegrass five-piece. You’re a six-piece band so there is a slightly different dynamic. What does the process look like when you’re taking a song and turning it into something you perform? 

JM: If we hear a song we like or we take a song that Jam Pak does or something we already know, we kind of always want to put our Fair Black Rose stamp on it. We basically share ideas and will go around in a circle, like, “Let’s add on to this,” or “Adding onto your idea, let’s do this!” We’ll play it or rehearse it until it sounds good to us. We come up with our arrangements that way. We don’t fight over the songs — but we do fight over who gets to sing lead. [Laughs] That’s one of our issues. Because we all like to sing. We love coming up with our arrangements. That’s what I’d say is really unique about Fair Black Rose, our arrangements for our songs and our covers are unique and different. You won’t always hear it performed that way. 

AZ: It’s very much a collaborative effort. We all work together to come up with something. This person will say, “I think we should do this” and this person will say, “I think we should do that” and we’ll go out there and try it out. It’s awesome. 

What do bluegrass and old-time and string band music mean to you — not only as a band, but you individually? I know that’s kind of a big question!

AZ: One thing I love about bluegrass is that you don’t need to have anything fancy to play it. You don’t need to have some kind of technology. You just need to bring your voice, your instrument, and a passion for music. You can just go out there and play. I just love that. It’s accessible. You can go anywhere and play bluegrass. You can be in the middle of nowhere. 

Another one of my favorite things about bluegrass is the harmonies. The vocals are so beautiful to me. The songs in bluegrass have such touching lyrics and vocals, I think those elements can really make a song.

JM: For me, one thing Ms. Beach has always said is, “You could have nothing, but you will always have your music.” That’s always something you can turn to and you can have, your music. Whether you lose your job or you lose a family member, or you lose this or that, you will always always always have your music. That has really stuck with me for a long time. I could be doing anything in the world and I will always have my music, I’ll always be able to turn to my music and to perform. 

Music is a language. It’s a love language. You can play a song and it will make someone’s day. It can put a smile on someone’s face just to hear music. Somebody can not speak the language of the song you’re playing or singing, but they love it! Like with Latin music — I don’t speak Spanish, but I love the music. Music is just a really good way to express who you are. It’s such a good thing for the both of us and for our band.

 

Photo courtesy of Anni Beach and Jam Pak Blues ‘N’ Grass Neighborhood Band

WATCH: Kat Wallace and David Sasso, “Somes Pond”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Kat Wallace and David Sasso
Hometown: New Haven, Connecticut
Song: “Somes Pond”
Album: Old Habits
Release Date: October 1, 2021

In Their Words: “David wrote this instrumental tune at a cabin on Somes Pond, Mount Desert Island, Maine, last summer. We recorded this track at Dimension Sound Studios in Boston with David on mandolin and octave mandolin and Kat on fiddle joined by Brittany Karlson on bass and Ariel Bernstein on drums. In rehearsal, this harmonically adventurous tune called for a ripping solo section, and Kat suggested inviting friends to contribute to a big party breakdown. After a sparse melodic beginning and solos by Kat, David, and Brittany, Ariel launches the track into a funky groove with solos from this all-star cast of featured guests: Max Allard (banjo), Joe K. Walsh (mandolin), Mark Kilianski (guitar), Mike Block (cello), Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (fiddle), and Mike Marshall (mandocello). A few harmonic twists bring the tune home.

“‘Somes Pond’ is the third single from our second album, Old Habits, which evolves from the raw and transparent fiddle/mandolin duo feel of our first album, Stuff of Stars, into a full band sound with guitar, bass, drums, and pedal steel. Our album’s eclectic songs explore the cyclical nature of life, love, and loss, taking inspiration from the isolation and pain of the past year’s pandemic yet reaching to find beauty in the blemishes of the human experience.” — Kat Wallace and David Sasso

Photo credit: Naomi Libby

WATCH: Clinton Davis, “Curly Headed Woman”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Clinton Davis
Hometown: Carrollton, Kentucky
Song: “Curly Headed Woman”
Album: If I Live and I Don’t Get Killed
Release Date: September 10, 2021
Label: Tiki Parlour Recordings

In Their Words: “‘Curly Headed Woman’ is a rare version of one of the most common American folk songs: ‘The Hesitation Blues’ or ‘If the River Was Whisky’ as most people call it. My version is most directly inspired by a 1928 recording of Kentucky banjoist Dick Burnett and fiddler Leonard Rutherford. Their version contained some common folk lyrics — anyone with any exposure to folk and blues music has probably heard the line ‘If the river was whisky and I was a duck, I’d dive to the bottom and I’d never come up’ sung with a hedonistic, ‘let the good times roll’ kind of sentiment. But this version also held more unique lines about a curly-headed woman that had brought great pain and misfortune on the singer. And in that context, it occurred to me that the famous lyric about a river of whisky could also be a cry of pain. This thought became the center of my interpretation and my arrangement became a kind of dreamy balm. The video, shot on a beautiful spring day in an urban canyon of San Diego, features Erin Bower, who sang on the recording, and Aaron Brownwood.” — Clinton Davis

Photo credit: David Bragger

Béla Fleck: “It’s Clear to Me That Bluegrass Is Still My Defining Element”

Posted on by Editor

Novelist Thomas Wolfe famously declared that you can’t go home again. But then again, Wolfe is not remembered as a musician who played bluegrass, a style that’s all about going home again.

So it is that Béla Fleck’s new album is a homecoming, and an ambitious one at that. A third installment in Fleck’s long-running bluegrass trilogy, My Bluegrass Heart (Renew/BMG Records) is his first bluegrass album of this century. It’s a double-disc effort with an all-star cast – from old hands like Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas to new stars including Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Chris Thile, Billy Strings, and more – with a running time not much shorter than the first two volumes put together.

“It’s hard to get around,” Fleck says. “As much as I may pretend to be something else, I am bluegrass at heart and that’s okay. It’s something I’m proud of and have come to embrace more as time goes on. Part of that is aging – do something when you’re young and you may not want that to be what defines you. Bluegrass just seemed like too obvious a pigeonhole for a banjo player when I was starting out and there was so much other music I loved, too. But after a lot of exploring, it’s clear to me that bluegrass is still my defining element.”

The album title of My Bluegrass Heart is actually a riff on an unexpected source, the late jazz pianist Chick Corea, a sometime collaborator of Fleck’s. One of Fleck’s favorite Corea albums was 1976’s My Spanish Heart, an ironic title because Corea was of Italian rather than Spanish descent.

“He was a guy from Boston with a natural affinity for Latin music, which was central to who he was even though he did not have legit entry in terms of ethnicity,” Fleck says. “That resonates for me. I’m from New York, of Eastern European and Russian descent with no natural connection to folk or bluegrass. So I’m defining myself with music that’s not necessarily my heritage, but being an outsider helps you bring new things to the idiom. When I go off to study Indian music, I can come back and write this album’s ‘Vertigo,’ which has very Indian rhythmic devices. Finding a way to insert Indian music or jazz or classical into bluegrass is very satisfying.”

The roots of My Bluegrass Heart go all the way back to Fleck’s first bluegrass album, 1988’s Drive, which he made with a core group including Bush, Douglas, Stuart Duncan, Mark Schatz, and most notable of all the late great guitarist Tony Rice (to whom the new album is dedicated, along with Corea). That same cast appeared on the 1999 follow-up, The Bluegrass Sessions: Tales From the Acoustic Planet, Vol. 2.

Had Fleck had his way, the same crew would have convened for volume three, and it would have come out many years ago. But the holdup was Rice, the troubled but brilliant guitarist who died in 2020 on Christmas day after years of health struggles.

“Playing bluegrass with Tony Rice was such a profound, dramatic upgrade from anything I’d ever experienced before,” Fleck says. “I wanted to do it again and reached out a lot over the years, but there was no response. I was puzzled and disappointed. Hurt, even. But come to find out that a lot of his other friends were going through the same thing with him as he started to isolate. He was not confident about playing anymore, so he shut it down and withdrew. And at a certain point, I heard about some close musician friends of mine who were starting to have hand problems. I thought, ‘If I don’t do this soon, some people I want to play with might not be able to anymore.’”

To that end, Fleck convened the surviving cast from his first two bluegrass forays, while adding young guns like Strings and Tuttle as well as other longtime pals including Tony Trischka, David Grisman, and Michael Cleveland. There’s plenty of firepower throughout these 19 tracks, especially on “Slippery Eel” — the first-ever studio work featuring the pairing of Strings and Thile. Fleck did his best to come up with something that would challenge those two, but notes that, “Of course they made it look easy.”

All 19 tracks are instrumentals, with a conservatory feel akin to Punch Brothers (several of whom appear) or the Kruger Brothers. But there are vocals of a sort, between-song quips and jokes by various players.

“This is such a community record and I thought it’d be cool for people to know this bluegrass community through these voices,” Fleck says. “You know, Sierra Hull talking, Tony Trischka and Jerry Douglas laughing, Sam Bush being silly, David Grisman being David Grisman. I think people in the bluegrass world will know every voice. When I’d play the record for people, they would always tell me, ‘I hope you keep that stuff in. It really humanizes it.’ I’m really excited and satisfied with everything about this record. The community aspect, hearing everybody play and talk, makes me happy. It’s like a love letter to the bluegrass community. If there’s ever been any doubt I love this music, there’s this.”

Editor’s note: Read about more about our Artist of the Month, Béla Fleck, here.

Photo credit: Alan Messer

BGS 5+5: Brad Kolodner

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Brad Kolodner
Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland
Latest Album: Chimney Swifts
Personal nicknames: B-rad, Dadley, BK

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

My father Ken, hands down. As long as I can remember, my father’s music has been the soundtrack of my life. To be fair, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. The living room in our house was filled with the sounds of his hammered dulcimer and fiddle playing (along with the scores of students who banged away on their dulcimers and scratched out tunes on fiddle). I’d be lying if I said my sister and I always loved the ruckus. In all seriousness, the music must’ve been seeping in all those years. When I finally picked up the banjo as a teen, old-time music clicked and it felt right.

My father quickly became a musical mentor and eventually a bandmate and musical peer. His experience playing a multitude of traditional folk music styles through his years with his band Helicon has informed how I approach music with a creative, open mind while respecting the traditional roots of the music. His musicality and sense of dynamics are captivating. He really feels every note and it’s something I strive for in my playing. While piecing together material for my new solo album Chimney Swifts, it was a natural choice to include my father on the project as I wanted to highlight both the groovy and mellow sides of his playing. It’s always a joy to make music with him and I’ll treasure that feeling as long as I can.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Singing “I’ve Been Everywhere” for the student talent show at the Meadowlark music camp in Maine back in 2007 was a catalyst for my love of being on stage sharing music. I had just wrapped up my very first week learning the basics of clawhammer banjo in a workshop with Richie Stearns, who ultimately became a banjo hero of mine. I could only play a very clumsy “bum-ditty” so I wasn’t quite ready to show off my newfound love of the banjo. However, I was eager to share the one song I had memorized in my life up to that point for the student talent show.

Years earlier, I spent weeks memorizing all the places in “I’ve Been Everywhere,” which caught my ear when I heard Johnny Cash’s version in a commercial. Suffice to say, I didn’t do too well in school for those few weeks. With my tail between my legs, I hopped up on stage and sang the song. As a relatively shy kid at that point in my life, I emerged from my shell after belting out each verse with the crowd roaring along the way. I can’t say I knew I wanted to be musician at that moment but it’s certainly the first time I tasted that high performers can get on stage in front of an electric audience. There’s actually a home video of that original performance.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

I’ve been fortunate to have some incredible experiences performing with my father Ken at venues like the Kennedy Center, Winfield, and Clifftop and with Charm City Junction at Grey Fox, IBMA, and the Charm City Bluegrass Festival. However, there is one night that really jumps out: the opening concert at our inaugural Baltimore Old Time Music Festival in 2019. After moving back to my hometown in my early 20s around 2012, I made it my mission to reboot the local old-time music community. I cofounded our biweekly old-time jam with my dad, started the Baltimore Square Dance with some pals, and hosted a monthly house concert series with the long term goal of putting together an old-time music festival someday. Well, that dream became a reality in 2019 when I, with Baltimore Old Time Music Festival in partnership with the Creative Alliance, cofounded an arts organization here in town. I’ll always treasure the memory of standing on stage during the kickoff concert in a packed concert hall rocking out during the encore playing “Tennessee Mountain Fox Chase” with the biggest smile on my face. This year, we’re hoping to have our “2nd” Annual Baltimore Old Time Music Festival in mid-November.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

There’s really nothing more nourishing or magical than the time I’ve spent deep in the dense woods on top of a mountain in Clifftop, West Virginia, at the Appalachian String Band Festival. As an artist, I spend much of my time making music in the context of my work — playing a show, teaching lessons, leading a local jam, etc. While I’m deeply grateful for this lifestyle, I need those soul-nourishing experiences in which I play music simply to play music. Clifftop provides that space. It’s a gathering of thousands of old-time musicians who huddle under soggy EZ-ups ’til the wee hours playing fiddle tunes. The natural beauty of the setting adds to that magic.

There’s something about the shared experience trudging through the mud, square dancing in a dusty dirt road, and watching the sunrise with your buds grooving out on fiddles tunes that can’t be matched anywhere else. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten lost meandering through the woods with sounds of far-off old-time jams swirling around the forest. There’s a hike next to the campground that weaves through a rhododendron grove amidst rock formations atop a ridge before descending to a little mountain stream. It’s the quintessential West Virginia swimming hole and it’s a hike I look forward to every year. Most of all, I’ve made some dear pals at Clifftop who have become my closest musical collaborators including Alex Lacquement and Rachel Eddy who are featured on my latest album, Chimney Swifts. While the music is what draws me in, it’s the people who keep me coming back year after year.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Well, since you asked… Before I played music, I was (and still am, sadly) a diehard Baltimore Orioles fan. The earliest musical memory I have, besides listening to my father’s music, is seeing John Denver hop up on top of the Baltimore Orioles dugout during the seventh inning stretch to sing “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” back in 1997 just a couple weeks before he tragically passed away in a plane crash. After that performance, my parents gifted me some John Denver CDs and I listened to them more than anything else as a kid — really. I would fall asleep to his albums on repeat and my parents would have to come in and turn them off after I dozed off. So, it would be my dream to sit with John Denver at an Orioles ballgame on a warm summer night while eating a Boog’s BBQ sandwich and drinking a Natty Boh beer (a classic Baltimore combo). Oh, and an Orioles win would be nice, but I don’t want to ask for anything unrealistic…

Photo credit: Joanna Tillman

WATCH: Jordan Tice, “River Run” (Feat. Paul Kowert)

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jordan Tice
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “River Run” (Featuring Paul Kowert)
Album: Yesteryears
Release Date: October 1, 2021
Label: Padiddle Records

In Their Words: “‘River Run’ started with a little lick I had been carrying around in the key of D — a speedy little cascading thing that felt good to let roll off the fingers that I’d find myself playing in idle moments. I slowly built upon it while sitting around during lockdown and my dear friend, Paul Kowert, tied it all together with his wonderful bass part. To me, the song evokes the lightness and constancy of a swiftly moving river as it passes over rocks, rounds curves, and speeds and slows as its channel widens and narrows. Hope you experience the same sense of motion while listening and are able to glean a little bit of levity from it.” — Jordan Tice

Photo credit: Jacqueline Justice

LISTEN: Skillet Licorice, “3-in-1 2-Step”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Skillet Licorice
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “3-in-1 2-Step”
Album: Allsorts Orchestra
Release Date: September 10, 2021
Label: Tiki Parlour Recordings

In Their Words: “‘3-in-1 2-Step’ was one of the first East Texas Serenaders tunes that we learned. One listen and you feel transported 100 years into the past. It is so named because it borrows its melody from three other tunes: ‘Dill Pickle Rag,’ ‘The Entertainer’ and ‘I Don’t Love Nobody.’ As such, it’s perfectly emblematic of the ETS. They weren’t jazz players and they weren’t classical players, but these talented Texans were able to seamlessly incorporate elements from disparate genres to create something new, something their own, yet somehow familiar. Our version features a driving yet elegant banjo-mando harmony part played by San Diego old-time wunderkind Clinton Davis.” — Elise Engelberg and Matt Knoth, Skillet Licorice

Photo credit: Sean Kelly.
Skillet Licorice Allsorts Orchestra Illustration by ‘The Simpsons’ artist Joe Wack

The Bristol Sessions Get Another Look on ‘We Shall All Be Reunited’ CD

Posted on by Editor

For Dr. Ted Olson, Appalachian music has always been much more than a collection of songs. It’s been nothing short of a passion. The Eastern Tennessee State University professor has spent much of his life writing, researching, and documenting the music that has played and recorded throughout the southeastern United States during the 1920s and 1930s. His respected work on Bear Family Records box sets covering sessions in Bristol, Johnson City, and Knoxville, Tennessee, have brought those long-ago recordings to new generations of listeners. For example, the single-disc set Tell It to Me: Revisiting the Johnson City Sessions, 1928-1929 was named Best Compilation Album of 2019 by the Independent Music Awards.

Now, Olson has teamed up again with Bear Family to release We Shall All Be Reunited: Revisiting the Bristol Sessions, 1927-1928, a single CD distillation of these legendary sessions. Commonly called “the big bang of country music,” the recordings in Bristol by the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and others became unexpected bestsellers, positioning country music as a viable commercial format. Along with reams of new liner notes, the CD delivers not just those familiar names, but also Ernest Stoneman, Blind Alfred Reed, and more, reminding listeners of the diversity that crowded around producer Ralph Peer’s microphone.

BGS: What inspired you to revisit the music from the original Bristol sessions for this album?

Olson: I found that the story of the Bristol sessions had grown significantly, for me. I’ve changed my interpretation of the Bristol sessions, its historical significance, and how one interprets that legacy. This gave me the opportunity to set the record straight about how that story needed to be told. That new narrative is in the liner notes, which are 44 pages. That is the maximum that can fit in a jewel box. I was pretty adamant that this is the story that needed to be told and this is the length it should be.

We have new documents to learn from, new research that was unavailable to us before. New interviews and new artwork. To me, it’s revisionist history in the best sense of the term. When Sony released a single CD of the Bristol sessions in 2003, they focused solely on the 1927 sessions. To my mind, the 1928 sessions are equal to the sessions of the previous year. With this new CD, we celebrate both of those sessions. We have new masters for the songs as well. An engineer in Germany, Marcus Heumann, produced new masters for this release. They’re very exciting and they sound like they were recorded yesterday.

Dr. Ted Olson

What emerges from listening to both the Bristol and Johnson City collections is that they each demand your attention, albeit with different qualities.

The Johnson City sessions were an essential part of the rest of the story. They were echo sessions, just months after the Bristol sessions. They involved many of the same musicians, and yet the Johnson City sessions explored a different side of the Appalachian music that the Bristol sessions didn’t get to. The Bristol sessions accomplished certain things that are valuable and important, but they didn’t explore other facets that Johnson City was able to get more deeply into, because it had a different producer. It also was a different company, with different priorities and fortunes.

Some people prefer the Johnson City sessions to the Bristol sessions. They find the Johnson City recordings wilder, more exciting. Less controlled by the producer. Ralph Peer was a very controlling producer, very interactive in shaping the sounds, whereas Frank Walker of Columbia had the attitude of anything goes in this music. He was more documentarian, in a way. “What do you have? Let’s hear it.” Rather than shaping something into a package, which is what Ralph Peer’s modus operandi was at the Bristol sessions. I love them both. I’m not going to play favorites, but I’m also not going to acquiesce into the idea that Bristol sessions were more important because they were a year earlier.

How did you come to choose one song from each artist for the new Bristol Sessions album?

I knew that I wanted to match the length of the Johnson City CD, which had 26 recordings. I committed to 26 tracks, because that’s as much as we could fit on a CD, but there was also a licensing limitation. I also wanted a new template, where the ’28 Bristol sessions were as important as the ’27 sessions.

There were 28 artists that performed at the Bristol sessions, which meant that I could include one track from everyone except two. I had committed to including performances that in 2020 would be enjoyable by those who aren’t initiated into the sounds of the 1920s musical world. The stylistic approaches back then have changed over the years. We’ve listened to the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers through the years, so they sound familiar to us. Other artists from those sessions were such talented performers that we can still appreciate their recordings for talent alone.

How did you select the song from the Carter Family? All six of the songs that they recorded in Bristol are amazing.

I came to the conclusion that while “Single Girl, Married Girl” or “Bury Me Under the Weeping Willow” had gotten a lot of attention from these sessions, it’s “The Poor Orphan Child” that, for me, is the one that has captured my ears as the definitive Carter Family debut performance. A.P. is part of it. He’s not on “Single Girl, Married Girl.” He was out fixing their car tires that morning. To my mind, his best singing at the Bristol sessions was on “The Poor Orphan Child.”

Jimmie Rodgers’ recordings in Bristol have always suggested to me a person with a distinctive musical identity that is still seeking a comfort level in front of the mic. His two songs seem a bit tentative, a little nervous. Rhythmically, he’s very loose, which was always part of his persona. I think those recordings show his great charisma. He didn’t invent the singing yodel, but he first demonstrated it on the track that’s on this CD, “Sleep Baby Sleep.” Several months later, he records “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T For Texas),” and that was his breakthrough record.

The Bear Family box set about the Bristol Sessions received two Grammy nominations in 2011. It should have been a high point for you. How did you come to realize that you had much more to do?

It was fascinating for me to watch the press reaction to the Grammy nominations as well as the box set itself. I found that the press reactions were a little bit uncertain of what the Bristol sessions were. It was as though they were all falling lockstep into rapt amazement at the mythic importance of this thing called the Bristol sessions. It was obvious to me that people were changed by a myth, which revolved around two notions. One was that the Bristol sessions were “the big bang of country music.” But what does that mean? It was where Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family made their first records, but there were many other artists there as well.

The other notion was that Bristol is the birthplace of country music, which has been promoted by both Bristol, and the state of Tennessee, but that statement has often left other important sessions to be overlooked. I came to see that critics didn’t know how to unravel the myth. So, there I was at the Grammys, and as a scholar I felt I had only cracked the surface of what these sessions really were. I, too, was under the spell of the myth. And I needed to get past that. It was quite clear to me that there was more to the story. I remember flying home from that event, thinking that this was a life’s work in front of me.

Photo of Dr. Ted Olson by Charlie Warden

With These Women Inducted Into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, Who Should Be Next?

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For the first time in the thirty year history of the International Bluegrass Music Association a class of Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductees includes a woman in every act. The Hall of Fame, helmed by the IBMA and housed inside the Bluegrass Music Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky, infamously lacks women. Before this year’s class it included ten women, total, and only one woman — Louise Scruggs — had ever been inducted as an individual. All others had been inducted as members of bands, duos, or organizations. 

This year Alison Krauss and Lynn Morris join the rarest rank of individual female inductees, alongside influential manager Louise Scruggs. The Stonemans — including Patti, Donna, and Roni — join the likes of songwriter Dixie Hall, who was inducted with her husband, Tom T.; Polly, Miggie, and Janis of the Lewis Family; Marion Leighton Levy of the Rounder Records founders; Sara and Maybelle of the Carter Family; and Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard.

To mark the occasion, we’re celebrating women in bluegrass who certainly deserve induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, beginning with this year’s inductees. The point is, there is no dearth of women in bluegrass, from way back in its earliest days before the genre even had a name to the big-tent-bluegrass present, and many of whom are more than qualified for inclusion in this hall of honor — as innovators, ambassadors, creators, pickers, and forebears, all.

Alison Krauss 

Arguably the most well-known bluegrass musician to achieve mainstream success, Alison Krauss is a no-brainer addition to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame. With her stellar collaborations — with Robert Plant, James Taylor, T Bone Burnett, and so many others — her bluegrass bona fides, her technical prowess as a fiddler, her crystalline and influential vocals, and her unparalleled skill for song interpretation she’s the perfect multi-hyphenate bluegrasser to demonstrate to veteran fans or the uninitiated passers-by what the Hall of Fame is all about. Because, no matter how far Alison Krauss may stray from bluegrass, everything she does remains firmly rooted in her ‘grassy foundations.

Lynn Morris

Lynn Morris remains a criminally underappreciated figure in bluegrass, partly due to her career being prematurely ended by a near-fatal stroke in the late 1990s. In the decades prior, this IBMA Award winner was a powerful and influential banjo player, bandleader, and community-builder, carving out a pathway to success in roots music for herself — given that no pathways were being made available to women like her. Morris’ brand of bluegrass was unflinching, driving, and gritty, and to this day it continues to defy stereotypes about what women can contribute to a music that often holds up maleness and horse race-style competition as currency. While at the same time, she retained a level of tenderness and openness rare in masculine-centered bluegrass. Hopefully this induction will spotlight Morris’ important role in bluegrass’ golden age during the ‘80s and ‘90s. “Love Grown Cold,” a semi-viral hit for Morris on many a bluegrass social media page, is merely the tip of the iceberg of what will be this Hall of Famer’s long-lasting legacy in this music.

The Stoneman Family

Ernest “Pop” Stoneman, father and figurehead of country’s legendary Stoneman family, was the man who started it all. No, literally. Pop is credited with being a keystone picker, performer, and pseudo-producer of 1927’s Bristol sessions, which later came to be considered as the “big bang of country music,” the beginning of the genre’s commercial fortunes. His family of pickers, including Donna, Roni, and Patti, became stars of stage and screen thanks to their showmanship, homespun vibes, and blistering-fast picking. The impact of this musical family on country, bluegrass, and Americana music — as a unit and as individuals — can simply not be overstated. From Hee Haw to the Grand Ole Opry to winning a CMA Award to international tours with their own group and as side musicians, the fingerprints of the Stoneman Family are all over American roots music across the globe.

Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper

At one point, Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper were perhaps the most famous bluegrass act in the world, landing several singles and tracks in Billboard’s Hot Country Chart in the ‘50s and ‘60s — notably landing four songs in the Top 10. Not on a bluegrass chart, because such a thing did not yet exist, but on the country chart! Granted, at that time bluegrass was still considered simply a subgenre of country and hillbilly music, but imagine not just one “Wagon Wheel”-level hit to their name, but a handful! And somehow, in modern times, Wilma Lee & Stoney are at best relegated to footnotes and asides. Bluegrass has always been a commercial genre and the commercial success of this pair is alone worth induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame, all their other achievements and accolades notwithstanding.

Ola Belle Reed

Ola Belle Reed is more than “I’ve Endured” and more than “High on the Mountain.” A Western North Carolina songwriter and picker, Reed typified the politically- and environmentally-conscious, subversive, and grounded style of musicmaking by Appalachian women who lived through the many upheavals and uncertainties within the region and around the world during the twentieth century. Her songs, like “Tear Down the Fences,” highlight that the south, Appalachia, and the people who live there are not monoliths. Just as Reed’s catalog of influential music is not a monolith, either. Truly a glaring omission from Bluegrass’s hall of honor.

Sally Ann Forrester

Born Wilene Russell, “Sally Ann” or “Billie” Forrester — wife of fiddler Howdy Forrester — was one of only two women to have ever been members of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys. (The other being Bessie Lee Maudlin, another prime candidate for Hall of Fame induction and inclusion in this list.) With the band, Forrester played accordion and sang as well as “keeping the books.” Inducting the women who were Blue Grass Boys, members of THE titular band of bluegrass, just makes sense! But with Forrester, it also represents an all-too-rare opportunity to canonize a bluegrass accordionist for the ages. Why wouldn’t we want to do that!? Take a listen to her accordion fills on “Rocky Road Blues” and just try to come up with a reason why bluegrass accordion isn’t more popular nowadays. Besides the obvious reasons.

Rose Maddox

Rose Maddox is traditionally credited as the first woman to cut a bluegrass album, recording Rose Maddox Sings Bluegrass in 1962 for Capitol Records and including many a bluegrass hit, like “Footprints in the Snow.” Maddox also marked the beginning of a series of women vocalists and musicians in bluegrass who could accomplish the high lonesome sound for which men like Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, the Osborne Brothers, and others were famous. Women who sang old-time and country up to this point often had rounder, more full, resonant, and rich voices, where men in bluegrass were seemingly attempting to shout tenor to dog whistles. Sexists weren’t sure women could replicate that testicles-in-a-vise-grip sound, but Maddox’s powerful voice immediately commands the same attention – and respect – of the highest and most lonesome. To think there used to be a time when people actually thought (or pretended to think) women couldn’t sing bluegrass!

Elizabeth Cotten

A pillar of American folk music, Elizabeth Cotten’s influence and impact knows no bounds, reaching far from downhome blues, ragtime, and old-time and into bluegrass, folk, Americana, rock, pop, and beyond. Her songs and her playing style continue to influence bluegrass today, but Cotten’s true legacy, one that will stretch on into infinity, is that her existence stands as permission for the Other – for marginalized folks like herself, a Black, working class artisan and musician from the South – to exist and to take up space within these historically white and often forbidding and exclusive roots music communities. Elizabeth Cotten is proof positive that the contributions of Black folks to American roots musics, including if not especially bluegrass, were truly seminal, essential, and vital to the music growing and developing into the entity we all love today. Elizabeth Cotten would be an excellent and unimpeachable first Black and African American inductee into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Let’s make it happen.

Buffalo Gals

In the 1970s the group considered to be the first bluegrass lineup of all women was Buffalo Gals, including Martha Trachtenberg, Susie Monick, Carol Siegel, Sue Raines, and Nancy Josephson. Their first and only record, First Borne, is finally available digitally and via online streaming platforms, but up until recently was largely forgotten. We featured First Borne in our list of the 50 Greatest Bluegrass Albums by women and retold a now-infamous story about the Buffalo Gals performing in their sleeping bags when a festival promoter gave them a set early in the morning because, you guessed it, who would want to see women perform bluegrass!? Hearing this whimsical, zany mash-up of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” and “Loco-motion” we’d make this group headline. Just sayin’. With bands like Della Mae and Sister Sadie enjoying success and acclaim at all levels of the IBMA, perhaps it’s time to pay tribute to the all-women lineups like the Buffalo Gals who came before and blazed the trail.

Gloria Belle

A woman for a Sunny Mountain Boy! Gloria Belle is most famous as a member of Jimmy Martin’s backing band, but it would almost be an insult to reduce her career to having spent time in the shadow of the King of Bluegrass. She was a fantastic picker, multi-instrumentalist, and singer and the first woman to ever release an album on longtime bluegrass label Rebel Records. In 1999 she received IBMA’s Distinguished Achievement Award after a handful of decades of nonstop recording, touring, and performing in bluegrass. She even made an appearance on the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s fantastically popular Will the Circle Be Unbroken album. Another case of an underrated woman who is constantly referred to on the back end of an ampersand after a man or men, Gloria Belle is a perfect example of a woman who deserves induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame on her own merits first and foremost.

Dolly Parton

Though she’ll often refer to it simply as “mountain music,” Dolly Parton is as bluegrass as they come. Albums like The Grass Is Blue, Heartsongs, and Trio demonstrate this fact to an obvious degree, but it’s worth pointing out — especially within the context of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame — that Parton’s bluegrass runs deeper than just being an offshoot of her musical expression. With the shows and festivals at Dollywood, her collaborations with artists like the Grascals, Rhonda Vincent, and Alison Krauss, and her longtime commitment to philanthropy in her home region of East Tennessee and abroad, Dolly is the perfect example the Hall of Fame could utilize to communicate the importance and value of taking bluegrass ideals and spreading them around the world. Plus, who wouldn’t want a ticket to the IBMA Awards show at which Dolly Parton would be inducted? (Pro tip: Dolly has actually attended the IBMA Awards and performed once before, when The Grass Is Blue was nominated in 2000 and Marty Stuart hosted. Let’s please recreate that show. Please.)

We could continue this list into infinity, and that’s exactly the point. Artists and bands like Alison Brown, Laurie Lewis, Missy Raines, Kathy Kallick, Blue Rose, Emmylou Harris, The Whites, Patty Loveless, and so many others are waiting in the wings, qualified, ready, and willing to step up and thrive under the mantle of Bluegrass Hall of Fame induction. And plenty of young women, femmes, and non-binary folks are waiting to have examples to look up to, to signal to them that bluegrass can be a place where they can also make a home. The concept of a Hall of Fame may seem like an unimportant or inconsequential or self-serving enterprise at times, but it can be so much more than that! We can supply those examples. Let’s do it.

Andrew Marlin Reveals the Observations and Explorations Behind ‘Watchhouse’

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When you’re the child of musicians, you get to see the world. By the time Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz’s daughter Ruby was one year old, she had been to 34 US states and nine different countries. “She was on a bus when she was three months old,” says Marlin. “She loves traveling.”

After a year of hiatus, the family of three is back on the road again as the duo formerly known as Mandolin Orange tour their new self-titled album, Watchhouse. And Ruby, now a toddler, has transitioned back to road life more smoothly than her father, who admits he’s still “struggling to find my sea legs.”

But then this has an unarguably big summer. Performing as Watchhouse, after more than a decade as Mandolin Orange, was no small change. A year of lockdown had given the couple space to reflect on a name change that they’d wanted for a while, but resisted, concerned at how any reinvention would affect their devoted following.

Their latest project proves that their fans have nothing to fear: a medley of richly intimate songs and beautiful vocal harmonies that’s as identifiably them as anything they’ve ever made. Marlin, who writes the songs and plays mandolin to Frantz’s acoustic guitar, spoke to BGS about the new album from their North Carolina home, where they were enjoying a short pause between gigs.

BGS: Your current tour’s taking you coast to coast, from the Newport Folk Festival in Rhode Island to Redmond, Washington and all points between…

Marlin: It’s all over the map, literally. We’re out for three or four days at a time and I’m enjoying being back on tour but it’s kind of difficult to get in the groove. After we’ve been moving at a snail’s pace at home this past year, this all feels so fast-paced, so much to keep up with!

How do you feel about touring in this age of COVID. Does it feel safe yet?

I was one of the naive ones who thought we were nearly done with this thing, but we’re really not. There is a vaccine but people just aren’t taking it. So no, I don’t feel safe at all. But it’s a balancing act: we need to make money because we haven’t worked in 18 months, and we want to play shows, because that’s what we’re driven to do. Everybody wants to get back to their lives, everybody needs purpose to stay sane. To feel like there’s a reason to get up in the morning.

Was a year of lockdown hard as a new parent?

It’s all relative. Emily and I travel so much that we wouldn’t have spent so much time home as full-time parents otherwise. Eighteen months ago you would have been talking to a different person, but now I just try to live day to day, and write a little here and there. It was really difficult to write at the beginning of the pandemic, though. As a songwriter I try to latch onto things that not many people are writing about and with so many people thinking about the same thing it was hard to separate myself from it and find a way to write about it that didn’t seem unoriginal. I wrote a lot of instrumentals so I could explore how I was feeling without having to put it in words.

Have you discovered some good tunes for getting Ruby to sleep?

Pretty much anything by Paul Brady. She loves him, especially that album he did with Andy Irvine. I put that on and she’ll start talking to Paul and Andy. And because she’s been around our music since she was in the womb, if I sit down and play mandolin very quietly that’ll chill her out. I’ll sit in her room and play and she’ll doze off.

There are a lot of songs sung from a parent’s viewpoint on this new album: “Upside Down,” “New Star,” and “Lonely Love Affair.” Has becoming a father changed your perspective as a songwriter?

Passively, yes. I think the change is that I would love to help pave a safe path for my daughter and hopefully inspire some of our listeners to be kind and open up a kind world for her to go into. And that’s made my its way into my perspective even in songs where I’m not talking about it.

That’s very much the message of “Better Way,” which is about online trolling. Was that inspired by a specific incident?

A number of incidents. It isn’t unique. Every time somebody puts themselves out there on social media you have the people who love to drum up negative energy. And I can’t wrap my head around it because that’s not how I was brought up. I rarely meet people who would do that when they’re talking to you face to face. So I don’t understand why those people feel compelled to sit at their computer or pick up their phone and try to rip others apart. It’s a weird way to live.

Emily says it’s one of the favorite tracks you’ve ever laid down together.

Yeah, I love the sound of that tune. It’s a gentle drive to it, the way the groove is so set. It has this steady pulse that fits with the whole idea of the tune, this nagging thing in the back of my head: why do people feel compelled to be such assholes?

These songs were recorded all the way back in February 2020. Where did you decide to record them?

We did it right outside of Roanoke, Virginia. It’s not quite in the mountains, but it was in the hills for sure, a very peaceful place on a lake. I like making records in places that aren’t studios. It feels a little more free, to just go sit in a living room and to turn that space into a very positive musical environment is way more appealing to me than a studio where you’re watching the clock and every time you hear it tick that signifies a certain amount of money. I think you feel that relaxed energy. There’s no trying to beat the clock on this record. It’s exploring all the directions we could go as a band.

The sound of the album is certainly more exploratory than previous ones — a little richer in texture, a little less acoustic, even a touch psychedelic at times…

There are a lot of sounds we’ve used in the past but on this one we didn’t try to hide them. In the past we’ve tried to keep the simplicity of what Emily and I do in the forefront and have all these light textures around that. I think of it as a mountain peak. We’d be up at the top singing our songs and beneath us is this luscious forest, a lot of organ songs, electric guitar, drums, bass. Well, on this record we brought all the sounds up to the same level.

We’d been touring with many of these musicians since 2016 and so we were already thinking about arrangements that worked for the band and it’s a good representation of what we can do live, as a unit. A lot of people think of Emily and I as a folk duo but we have a lot of music in us! It felt nice to change the name and feel we can do whatever we want to and not limit ourselves to any idea of who people think we are.

The new name, Watchhouse, seems to be a good choice to reflect the observational world of your songwriting.

One of the most important things you can do as an artist is observe the world around you and I’ve always sought out those little peaceful places I can let my mind wander. I don’t do well in chaotic situations. I’m not the one to be right up the front by the stage in a show. I’ll usually go hang out in a corner and close my eyes and listen. I just like to find those places wherever we are, whether we’re on tour, in our neighborhood, or at home.

It makes you sound like a pretty chilled person to live with.

I play music a lot, so if you don’t like to hear constant music then probably not… in lockdown there was a lot of noodling, a lot of searching. A lot of aggression being taken out on an instrument too.

Fair point, I can see Emily needing an occasional break from that.

Oh yeah, all the time! She’d send me out of the room, or she’d go out herself…

You’ve been in a band together for 12 years, and all that time you’ve been a couple too. How do you manage to spend so much time together without driving each other crazy?

We’ve talked about that sometimes, especially with Emily’s parents. They can’t seem to wrap their head around it. I guess we just like each other!

One song on the album that seems especially raw is “Belly of the Beast.” Can you tell me the inspiration behind that?

I wrote that tune after Jeff Austin committed suicide. I didn’t know him super well, but we had a lot of mutual friends and had crossed paths through the years and it woke me up in a scary way. Being a full-time musician you have to continually find new ways to stay relevant and interesting to people, and you have to deal with real bouts of anxiety and self-consciousness. Is this good enough? Am I good enough? Writing and playing is something I’m extremely driven to do for myself, but I also have to do it for others, and I throw my music out in the world to be judged by other people. It’s a weird process that I’ve found is extremely helped by therapy!

So is that what performing is for you: “Hiding from the monsters in the belly of the beast”?

Yes — I love that line. When people talk about being nervous to perform, for me it’s not wondering whether I’m able to perform well, it’s more that when I step out on stage I don’t know what that crowd’s energy is going to be, how receptive they’re going to be. Are these people going to allow me to be myself tonight or am I going to have to put on a hat? For the most part our fans are really receptive and I can be myself. That’s when it feels like things are right.

“Beautiful Flowers” is one of the more cryptic songs on the album. It starts with a tiny flash of color and ends with some powerful images about the climate crisis. How did you get from one to the other?

I hit a butterfly when I was driving down the road and it really bummed me out. Animals have no ideas what cars are. For something to come out of nowhere at 70 miles per hour has got to be the weirdest thing in the world. And that got me thinking about who had made the first car, and it turned out it was this guy, Karl Benz. And when he made this car he had no idea where it was going to lead and how terrible it was going to be for the environment.

For our own convenience we destroy a lot of this world and don’t give a lot back as humans. And my car hitting that butterfly felt like a really strong metaphor for what we’re doing to the earth. It’s a very delicate ecosystem and we’re killing all its intricate little working parts.

Is that a challenge for you, too, with your own carbon footprint as a touring musician?

Our carbon footprint is massive, riding on buses and planes and cars… going to a festival and them using generators to supply all the power. We all see all the problems but how to step outside of your own daily needs and confront them is the conundrum, and I’m as guilty as anyone. How do you inconvenience yourself to make positive change in this world? We’re asking ourselves that right now in terms of racism, climate change, housing inequality, you name it.

Given how personal the songs are, and the fact they’re drawn from your shared life, do you ask for Emily’s input or approval as you’re writing them?

No, not really. The way I write I’ll take a specific idea and continue to break it apart until it’s more universal. I don’t want to reveal too much of myself in any given tune. I’m not laying out a bullet point retelling of my life, just musing on how I felt in a given situation — or maybe how Emily felt, or maybe a friend of ours. In fact sometimes I’ll play a new song for Emily and I’ll tell her what it’s about and she’ll say, “Huh, I thought it was about this.” And you know what? She’s not wrong.

Watchhouse is coming to the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles on Saturday, February 19th 2022 – grab your tickets here.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez