It’s fitting to enjoy the Lowest Pair’s new album, Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, in the opening weeks of a new year. In particular, the song “Give It All Away” gently offers a theme of letting go amid an orchestration of acoustic guitar, banjo, and other subdued instrumentation. As the song swells, a soft percussion begins to underscore a sense of renewal.
“I feel the lightest when I give it all/ Give it all away,” sings Kendl Winter in the opening moments; she’s later joined by bandmate Palmer T. Lee when they harmonize on a simple yet poetic lyric: “Before the sun, there was the rain/ Before the rain, there was the sun.”
Indeed, it’s been quite a few seasons – six years in fact – since the Lowest Pair released an album of their own. The duo enlisted Tucker Martine to produce the new project, recorded in Portland, Oregon. There are some surprising musical textures for longtime fans of the duo, but at the heart of the Lowest Pair, there’s still the welcoming vibe that’s enchanted listeners since their 2014 debut album.
“We were really excited about the recording situation, being with Tucker Martine in his studio, and having such beautiful musicians paint our songs, to flesh them out more than just the two of us,” Winter says. “They really did lean into the medium of the studio and the sounds that were available to us. There are a lot of instruments and musicians…”
“… A lot of other people’s ideas coming into the mix. We were just feeling open to that,” Lee adds.
Although both Winter and Lee are reluctant to divulge too much about the meanings behind the songs, listeners will certainly relate to lyrics about making it through rough patches (“Diamonds”) and learning to find comfort in the unknown (“Uncertain Seas”). The album’s country-tinged closing track, “Thorn,” is an elegant ode to getting past the pain.
“You visit these things that hurt often. I mean, we all do,” says Winter, who wrote the song. “That’s what grief is, right? You’re kind of hoping you’ll figure it out, and then it’ll go away. …
“With Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, the whole theme is now, and now, and now, and trying to be in the present with things. There’s a love and there’s a ‘go to hell’ in that song. There’s a wanting to hold things sacred but also let them go.”
The album is actually named for a song that didn’t make the final track listing; Martine loved the phrase so much that he insisted the band should keep it as the title. The words are wistful enough to also call to mind the 2009 bluegrass festival in Minnesota, where Palmer, Lee, and a few other musicians stayed up late jamming along the Mississippi River.
“That was really pretty special!” Winter recalls. “Both of us were playing banjos in different bluegrass bands at the same festival. I saw Palmer playing and singing and I loved his voice and I loved his melodic style. I still hadn’t seen a bunch of other banjo players exploring more, like, off-the-grid playing and more melodic approaches. And after he played, I think I said something about it, right?”
“Well, I think the first time, you were just like, ‘Hey, nice banjo playing.’ And I was like, ‘Thanks, random person,” Lee remembers with a laugh. “Then maybe a few hours later, you were just like, ‘I really dug your melodic style,’ And it’s like, ‘Oh… you’re a banjo player.’”
Growing up in Arkansas, Winter heard the banjo in bluegrass, but considered herself more of a punk rocker. Hearing Béla Fleck & the Flecktones changed her perception of what tones and sounds could come from the instrument. Lee, a Minnesota native, inherited two banjos – one from each side of his family – when his relatives heard about his burgeoning interest in music. He dismantled them both to create one instrument specifically suited to his personal taste.
Several years later, after that initial encounter at the riverbank, Winter decided to quit her band; Lee asked if she needed a singing partner. Remembering their easy musical bond, she invited him to Olympia, Washington, where she’d relocated in her early twenties. In turn, he asked her to make a duo record with some time he’d already booked. Thus, the Lowest Pair was born.
“I think, serendipitously, both of our bands were falling apart at the same time, and I was exploring ideas about how to move forward in my career,” Lee says. “It was like, maybe if I collaborate with somebody and make a record that way, that could be a way forward.”
Now living about a mile apart in Olympia, Winter and Lee will be touring the Pacific Northwest this spring. At the merch table they’ll have some lino-cut carvings and prints, new posters, stickers, and T-shirts, and of course, vinyl copies of Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be. (The album art is a watercolor painted by Winter’s mother, Jill Morgan.) Along with the new material, they’ll also be mixing in catalog cuts like “Too Late, Babe” and “Rosie.”
Asked about the enduring popularity of the former song, Lee chalks it up to placement on an editorial playlist when it was released as a single in 2020. “I have this vague memory at one point of someone after a show mentioning that we played a really good cover of that ‘Too Late, Babe’ song,” he says. “That was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’”
As for “Rosie,” Winter says, “Yeah, that one’s still in the set list. That one is a really early one. I was playing that even before we had started the Lowest Pair. And it’s really interesting what people latch onto, because it’s simple. I mean, I wrote it crying.
“I think with songs, you can kind of feel the ones that come from your heart. They did the thing. They gave you the goosebumps when you wrote it, and then they continue to have that effect, and it’s pretty cool.”
That emotional effect remains in place for Always as Young as We’ll Ever Be, too.
“I took a lot of space from it and hadn’t listened to it for a few months before we started talking about what we’re gonna do with it,” Lee says of the album. “And I remember being kind of surprised. You know, there’s an amount of pride and accomplishment. I was grateful to have contributed to it.”
You know what would be the perfect way to end the week? A bevy of new roots songs and videos! Well, we have just the thing – and You Gotta Hear This.
To start us off, South Carolina-based husband-and-wife duo Benson – Wayne and Kristin Scott Benson – deliver a brand new instrumental, “Slayton Court.” Inspired by Wayne’s first address when he moved to Nashville 30+ years ago, and their young adult son’s similar journey in the present, it’s a thoughtful and tender tune that’s lyrical and evocative. Their labelmates, Unspoken Tradition, who hail from just up the mountains from Benson, also debuted a new single today, “Rhythm of the Ridge.” Written by North Carolina native Milan Miller, it’s an excellent song built on regionality, community, and the importance of the cultures that birth roots music.
Keep scrolling, though, as there’s plenty to explore. Singer-songwriter Cuchulain offers an adorable, painstaking stop-motion video for his new single, “Flip Turns.” As he puts it, it’s a song for swimmers and/or folks trying to keep their head above water wrapped in smooth and jazzy, alt-Americana sonics. New Jersey singer-songwriter Sean Kiely kicked off 2026 with a brand new track featuring his friend and hero, Kaia Kater. We’re pleased to share a live performance video of “This Is The Year,” a perfect song for starting the new calendar year on the correct foot.
Los Angeles stalwart Jonny Fritz returns to his most recent album, Debbie Downers, to offer all of us a woodwinds version of that critically acclaimed LP coming in April. Today he unveils the first delightful woodwinds version from the reimagined collection, “Tea Man,” featuring clarinets, bass clarinet, flute, and Fritz holding it all together himself. For a dose of old-time, check out “Cheeky F” by George Jackson’s Local Trio. Stemming from the tradition of Texas-style old-time fiddling and melodies, Jackson, his trio-mates, and guest guitarist (and producer) Stash Wyslouch pick through the swinging and acrobatic pizzicato head with “Flight of the Bumblebee” aplomb.
To round out our roundup this week, we get a healthy dose of alliterative outlaw country from Ameripolitan crooner Dale Watson. “Willie, Waylon and Whiskey” brings alt-country, the Bakersfield sound, and psychedelic surf rock together as only Watson could. The track is driving and frenetic, leaning forward in the beat and referencing so many classic lines, melodic hooks, and tracks from his fellow outlaws. Would country be country without self-referential songs? It’s hard to imagine.
From bluegrass and old-time to folk and outlaw, there’s plenty to enjoy this week on BGS. You Gotta Hear This!
Benson, “Slayton Court”
Artist:Benson Hometown: Boiling Springs, South Carolina Song: “Slayton Court” Release Date: January 23, 2026 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “‘Slayton Court’ was the first address that I had when I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, around 1993 with my good buddy Greg Luck. This instrumental is inspired by kind of reflecting on that time when you first gain your independence. For me, I was a young working musician for the first time playing with IIIrd Tyme Out. And you fast forward all these years and now I have a 19-year-old son going through a similar season. We were going to make a slideshow to document those years, especially with his activity as a young angler and going into the world of college fishing. As we made that slideshow it felt like this same melody would serve as great background for that, as well. I hope you guys enjoy ‘Slayton Court.'” – Wayne Benson
Track Credits: Wayne Benson – Mandolin Kristin Scott Benson – Banjo Cody Kilby – Acoustic guitar Kevin McKinnon – Bass
Cuchulain, “Flip Turns”
Artist:Cuchulain Hometown: Rock Hill, South Carolina, but currently live in Ithaca, New York. This was recorded in Eugene, Oregon, though, which was our hometown for the past five years. Song: “Flip Turns” Album:It’s Always Something Release Date: January 23, 2026 (single); April 3, 2026 (album)
In Their Words: “‘Flip Turns’ is a song for swimmers, for folks keeping their head above water. Written between swim breaks on summer tour 2024 and recorded live last January 2025, this song was our Tiny Desk Contest submission last year. I’ll be touring East Coast listening rooms in April 2026 to support It’s Always Something, the live in-studio album for which this is the lead single. A stop-motion music video accompanies the single release. The video took me most of fall 2025: I hand-felted the figures, constructed sets, and filmed frame by frame on my phone during my newborn daughter’s nap breaks. Equally at home on a coffee shop playlist or swimming workout playlist, the songs on this album are meant to be photographs of what my Oregon band sounded like at our peak, and love letters to hopeless romantics trying to make sense of this wild world.” – Cuchulain
Video Credits: Video by Cuchulain, color by Ashley Barry.
Jonny Fritz, “Tea Man”
Artist:Jonny Fritz Hometown: Los Angeles, California Song: “Tea Man” Album:Debbie Downers – Woodwinds Release Date: January 20, 2026 (single); April 3, 2026 (album) Label: Gar Hole Records
In Their Words: “I love woodwinds and have wanted to make this type of record for as long as I can remember. I’ve had this vision of clarinets playing chicken pickin’-style telecaster solos. Just imagine a Jerry Reed covers album played with clarinets and piccolos. There’s something about the staccato tonguing of a reed instrument that seems to me as enjoyable as playing roadhouse country solos. I’ve never played one, so I don’t know, but I do think about it all the time. I couldn’t be happier to finally hear it out loud and share it with the world.
“The version of this record I brought to Andrew Conrad was very different from what it became. My version was ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ and he made it into ‘The Star Wars Theme’ (or something like that). He was so clearly overqualified for the job and it made me appreciate him even more.” – Jonny Fritz
Track Credits: Jonny Fritz – Vocals, songwriter Christine Tavolacci – Flute Andrew Conrad – Clarinets Michael Mull – Clarinets Brian Walsh – Bass clarinet
George Jackson’s Local Trio, “Cheeky F”
Artist:George Jackson’s Local Trio Hometown: Originally, Christchurch, New Zealand. Now, Madison, Tennessee Song: “Cheeky F” Album:Center Of The Universe Release Date: January 26, 2026 (single); February 13, 2026 (album) Label: Adhyâropa Records
In Their Words: “I was inspired by the way Texas-style old-time fiddlers hide all sorts of weird notes on upbeats, so this was a bit of a riff on a Texas-style tune and seeing how many non-chord notes I could hide around the melody on weak beats. Stash took a break from producing in the control room to join us with some driving rhythm guitar, which really helped channel the Texas-style energy. I’m really happy with some of the spontaneous energy that we were able to capture in this take, a real edge-of-your-seat, improvised, studio take.” – George Jackson
Track Credits: George Jackson – Fiddle Frank Evans – Banjo Eli Broxham – Double bass Stash Wyslouch – Guitar
Sean Kiely, “This Is The Year” Featuring Kaia Kater
Artist:Sean Kiely Hometown: Jersey City, New Jersey Song: “This Is the Year” featuring Kaia Kater Release Date: January 1, 2026 Label: Multiple Logo
In Their Words: “I’ve been working on a new record since the fall and I was thrilled that Kaia Kater joined us on ‘This Is the Year’ singing and playing banjo. She elevated the tune so much, both in the vocal and in the groove of the banjo with the band. It came together really naturally and quickly, so we decided to release it on New Year’s Day, even as the rest of the album is still taking shape.
“I have a long list of favorite things about my friend and hero Kaia, but two in particular are her songwriting and her posture as a performer – the self-possession and power that’s just so right-there in everything she sings. They’re qualities I’m reaching for, so having her bring that craft to something I wrote was so rad.
“This video from the afternoon of New Year’s Eve is actually the first time we ever played the tune just as a duo and I gotta say it was no less exciting (and fun) to sit and pick ‘This Is the Year’ on Kaia’s couch just the two of us.” – Sean Kiely
Unspoken Tradition, “Rhythm of the Ridge”
Artist:Unspoken Tradition Hometown: Western North Carolina Song: “Rhythm of the Ridge” Release Date: January 23, 2026 Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “The first time I heard the demo of ‘Rhythm of the Ridge,’ I realized it was as deeply meaningful for me as it was for Milan [Miller]. I grew up in an immigrant family and straddling two worlds. The mountains of Appalachia are where I found the inspiration to write my American story. It feels timely to tell a story of grounding ideals and identity in a time where external forces attempt to rend us further away from each other. Just as the culture of my family’s home is written on their hearts long after they left it, so too is the ‘Rhythm of the Ridge’ on my own.” – Sav Sankaran
“Although it wasn’t my original intention when I began writing ‘Rhythm of the Ridge,’ the song quickly took on a deeply personal narrative as the lines started falling into place. I left the mountains of North Carolina for Nashville almost 30 years ago, yet home is a melody that follows you long after you leave it – a rhythm in your bones and blood that quietly keeps time. This isn’t a song about longing or looking back; it leans into a sense of place that steadies you and guides you through new endeavors and experiences. Fully adept at honoring the traditions of bluegrass while championing material that feels fresh and forward-thinking, Unspoken Tradition has become one of my favorite bands to emerge in the genre over the past decade, and I am beyond thrilled that they’re adding ‘Rhythm of the Ridge’ to their stellar catalog.” – Milan Miller, songwriter
Track Credits: Audie McGinnis – Acoustic guitar, harmony vocal Sav Sankaran – Upright bass, lead vocal Tim Gardner – Fiddle, harmony vocal Ty Gilpin – Mandolin Zane McGinnis – Banjo
Dale Watson, “Willie, Waylon and Whiskey”
Artist:Dale Watson Hometown: Austin, Texas Song: “Willie, Waylon and Whiskey” Album:Unwanted Release Date: January 23, 2026 (single); April 24, 2026 (album) Label: 40 Below Records
In Their Words: “This song was written on stage in San Antonio at the Lonesome Rose Bar. Inspired by a large man standing in front of me all night because he was wearing a shirt that simply said ‘Willie Waylon and Whiskey.’ I asked if it was a band name or a song name and he just said, ‘No, I just saw it in Walmart and liked it.’ Well, I liked it, too, so I wrote the song on the spot. I knew it would be a keeper when by the second time the chorus came around the entire crowd was singing it with me.” – Dale Watson
Speaking to Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee and IBMA Award winner Larry Sparks over the phone, you might never guess you’re conversing with a living legend. He’s remarkably humble, down to earth, and plainspoken. And his approach to making bluegrass – as he has professionally for more than 60 years – is surprisingly zen.
His latest album, Way Back When, was released in late October 2025 and the project finds Sparks in exactly the same sonic space as any of his excellent LPs from the last six decades. If you were to take a short audio sample of Way Back When, it would be genuinely difficult to identify from which era of his lauded career it came. The project is warm, lively, and resonant, sounding like you’ve been dropped into a cozy living room with perfect acoustics and a superlative bluegrass string band.
The songs, as well, are timeless and classic, whether fresh tracks, iconic covers, or an old-timey instrumental fiddle tune with familial origins. Like his vocal style, guitar picking, and production preferences, Sparks’ song curation also feels like an intuitive extension of his personality. When he describes how he accomplishes this consistency across eras and executes the timelessness of his albums, it seems as though he becomes a sort of bluegrass guru.
“When songs touch me, they touch my feelings,” he explained to BGS . “When the song touches me, it’s saying something. I’ll take that and see what I can work with, and make it my song.
“The song’s me and I’m the song. And that’s the way that they did it back in the day. They become that song – the older singers, they became those songs. That’s the way that I do it, I try to make that song me and me the song.”
It’s a secret ingredient lacking from too many bluegrass records out there today. Not just his inhabitation of songs so that they can inhabit him, but also treating bluegrass like the forebears of this music did. As a living, breathing, cutting-edge thing that doesn’t need to be built on a foundation of regurgitation and emulation and litmus testing. Like Sparks puts it so simply – and eloquently – in our conversation, bluegrass has mainstream appeal. It requires heart, soul, and being present – becoming the music and becoming each song.
That right there is exactly how Sparks became a Bluegrass Music Hall of Famer and a hero to many – Alison Krauss, Billy Strings, and this writer included. It’s also how he’s maintained a consistent (never boring, stale, or regressive) sound over the course of his 62-year career. And, it’s what keeps him motivated to continue looking forward while inspiring all of us and reaching new audiences.
Let’s start by talking about your excellent new album, Way Back When. When I first listened to it in the fall, when it was released, I was struck by how old-school it sounds. The production style sounds so timeless, it sounds so warm and live – like real bluegrass. It also feels like it could have been pulled from almost any era of your career. with the way that it’s produced and the way that it stands out sonically. I wondered how you accomplished that?
Larry Sparks: I try to do things normal and just go for it. And all of the band– you just feel what you’re doing. You make it real. It’s hard to explain. It’s just, I sing and play from my heart, soul, and mind. Some songs you don’t have to do that, you just – like the old saying – rear back and let it go.
But some songs need attention, and you have to become that song and the song becomes you. That’s the way that I think probably all these songs are, everything I sing is pretty much that way. But, I don’t know, the feel just comes out natural. It’s more of an older feel, the real feel. That’s the way I like things. So much [that’s] added in today’s recording and music and everything, it’s okay – I’m not saying anything about it! But myself, I’d rather keep it pretty real, just like it used to be.
Are you tracking in isolation booths? Or are y’all tracking in the same room and live? It doesn’t sound like you’re putting the music under the microscope, as it were.
No, I don’t like that. You have to [sometimes], but I’d rather [not]. It’s [an] all in the same room deal. Sometimes you’ve gotta do an overdub break or something. You miss your hot lick, you gotta do it over again. Overdubs are good to use, but I don’t like to depend on them. I’d rather do it straight down the line, and if you make a mistake you do it over, you can overdub a spot or something.
Something else that stood out to me listening to the album is how consistent your sound has been over the decades. You have your own way of singing, you have a style that’s really consistent – as well how you pick the songs that go on your recordings. And you certainly have your own guitar-picking style. Almost no one picks like you these days. How do you think it is true, across 60 years in music, that when you listen to Larry Sparks, you know you’re hearing Larry Sparks and Larry Sparks alone?
It’s a natural style for me. I respect the older songs an awful lot. The older music and the older singers, that came along before I did, in the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. I was a kid, but I remember the music mighty, mighty well in the ‘60s. All the older country singers were embedded in me, too. Some of the people just stayed in me. They were good singers and their music, their singing was real. It embedded in me.
I still had my own way of singing and playing. I never did wanna copy someone else. And although I respected what they did very much, the older music and the older country and bluegrass [artists] and whatever else – there is other music, too. It just became natural for me to have my own style of singing and playing, and I never really worked on it to do that. It’s just me, and the band pretty well feels what I’m doing.
The whole thing, you gotta keep it natural, real, and feel what you’re doing, from your heart and soul. That’s the way I do it. It’s nothing I plan to do. It just comes out that way.
I think that’s why it works and is so consistent across your entire career, because it’s not a costume that you put on, it’s not affectation, it’s not a target that you’re trying to hit. It’s just you being you.
People can feel that, too. The audience can feel what you feel. Most of ’em, they can feel exactly what you feel, what you do.
Larry Sparks (far left) performs with the Stanley Brothers before Carter Stanley’s death. Circa 1964. Image courtesy of Rebel Records.
I so appreciate that you bring up heart and soul, because I think people make the assumption that bluegrass is not a music that’s based on heart and based on soul. Especially when you listen to some barn burning, shredding bluegrass or jamgrass.
But for me, this music has always been as much about the stories, the heart, and the soul – and the feeling of it. And that’s clearly such an important part of it for you, too, and the storytelling. I think a lot of people don’t realize heart and soul are an important part of the tradition of bluegrass.
Yeah, sure it is. I’ve worked under the bluegrass name for years. Bluegrass is about 80 years old now, and I have been into it 62 of those years.
Wow.
I can’t believe I’ve been into it that long under the bluegrass name. My music is considered bluegrass, but actually a lot of my stuff could go either way. I’m considered bluegrass and that’s fine. I appreciate it. I’m honored, but a lot of my stuff can go into country or some other direction, too.
I just hold to what I’m doing and [what has] been a good business for me over the years. But you have to make it work and look ahead. The music is music, but you gotta make a business out of it. If you don’t, it’s not gonna work. And that’s what I did. It’s worked out for me. A lot of the bluegrass [industry] is not easy. It’s not one of the easiest forms of music to “make it” in.
And, it’s always been set behind [other] forms of music. I’d really like to see it be possible for bluegrass to be played on all stations. To play it [alongside] new country, modern country, rock and roll. Whatever it is, mix it up. But get bluegrass to program directors. If it ever could get played on other stations, with the right songs and the right artist – put in with everything else they’re doing – it would work. I don’t know if it’ll ever come to that or not, but that’s what it’s always been. We’ve always – like the old saying – took the backseat to the other forms of music.
But we got enough fans and that keeps it [going]. … I’m honored and I’m thankful for it. But it takes a lot of years, a lot of hard work. It’s not easy. I’ve done it all myself. I’ve done my own management, my own booking, my own phone calls, my own writing. This, that, this, that, this, that. I’ve done it all. Like I said, I’m gonna keep doing it, it’s working. It’s fine.
Like you mention, these songs really could go both ways. I love how much country is on this album, and you do such a great job of illustrating that bluegrass and country will always be related and that they cross-pollinate.
And I totally agree, bluegrass has mainstream appeal. And always has! I don’t know why we pretend like it doesn’t.
Yeah, we need more promotion on bluegrass. I wanna keep doing everything I can for it, because I respect it very much. Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and Flatt & Scruggs – these three names put [bluegrass] on the path and all that played bluegrass come after those three names.
Those three names are in you. I never did want to actually copy any one of those three names, but you take those three names – just to give you an idea. Take those three names I said and you put the Osborne Brothers with ‘em. Put Jim & Jesse with ‘em. Put Jimmy Martin, Mac Wiseman and others – and Larry Sparks – all those names. Every one of ’em are different sounds, different style. But they’re still on the same path. That’s what you gotta have. That’s what I knew, “I better stick to that and not be a copy.”
Let’s talk a little bit about your guitar playing style, because I think you’re carrying on a tradition of a particular kind of guitar picking in bluegrass that is rarer and rarer today. So few people who still make records and perform shows pick like you do. I love how front-and-center your guitar is on this album. Could you talk a little bit about your picking style and maybe who your influences were or how you came up in that type of picking?
Other guitar players are really good and there are a few players out there that can. But the way I do things, my playing is like my singing. I play the melody. And I don’t play over the melody. There’s less notes than normal guitar, it’s more of a feel. It’s hard to explain, but I just play the feel of the song and the melody. I try not to overdo it. I play it and when I hit a note or a slide or a backward– or whatever I do, a pull-off, I want it to come from me. I want it to be me and I wanna feel that note I’m doing, feel that slide I’m doing, whatever I’m doing. And [I want to] keep it that way and not overplay the song.
I also wanted to talk about the instrumental on the album, “Sleepin’ Lula.” Speaking of things that are rarer and rarer in bluegrass, having the clawhammer banjo on it is excellent. It feels like no one flogs the banjo anymore. There’s a lot of old-time players, a lot of clawhammer players, but it doesn’t really seem like anybody’s flogging it anymore. Hearing the instrumental, when the clawhammer kicks in, it was reminding me of that era of early bluegrass when you were just as likely to hear frailing banjo as a three-finger in a bluegrass band.
That’s great. Yeah, I thought it turned out pretty good. I was pleased with it. That’s an old tune. My grandpa, I got a recording of him playing that in 1953. Him and some guys, and he’s from Jackson County, Kentucky. Very good fiddle player. Very good. He was one of the best, he could’ve done something with his talent. He was born in 1877. Back in those days, up to the turn of the century, ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, he just played square dances around locally and stuff. He never did really go out. Stringbean asked him to go out with him some, but he never wanted to leave or go ‘round traveling and stuff. But he could have filled the bill for anything. He was that good.
I heard the tune from him. And I had never heard it before. “Sleepin’ Lula” – that was my grandma’s name, his wife’s name. She died in 1910 in childbirth and I never got to see her, of course. But her name was Lula, and so he recorded that “Sleepin’ Lula.” And I don’t know, I’m not going to say for sure if he wrote it. There’s a couple other fiddle players I heard play that from back in the ‘20s or ‘30s. But all respect to him. There wasn’t a player like my grandpa.
I don’t know who it came from. I don’t know if it came from my grandpa and he put it together because his wife’s name is Lula. Or if “Sleepin’ Lula” was the name [he gave another tune.] Someday I may try to trace that out a little further.
The other fiddlers that you know played it, did they use the same title for it, too?
Yeah!
Interesting. That’s so cool!
Yeah, it’s something else.
You’re a famous bluegrasser. You’ve been famous to me, for instance, my whole life. I was honestly nervous and a little starstruck to have this conversation. [Laughs] But you’re also becoming more famous at this moment, because two of the biggest bluegrass names to ever come out of the genre – Alison Krauss and Billy Strings – they’re such big fans of yours. I feel like both Alison and Billy see your legacy, they see how important it is, and they are translating that importance to people that maybe don’t know who you are or are just learning about you for the first time.
So I’ve just been curious to ask you, how do you feel about having these prominent “fans” – and it’s not just Alison and Billy, obviously. What does it mean to you to be part of that constellation of people that they look to as influences? And, what does it mean to you to see your music reach new audiences thanks to them and others?
It’s a new world. It’s a different world than what I’m used to. Which, there’s nothing wrong with it. I’m very honored that they stand behind what I do and my music. And, for the music, I’m very honored and thankful that they like it and that they maybe have it in their shows sometime or whatever.
But yeah, the new crowds in bluegrass – we have a very good crowd, but it’s bigger than it ever has been, now, bluegrass music is. But we still have that limited crowd [coming] from other forms of music. And that’s why I said, if it ever got to play on the big stations, give us a little room and respect for the bluegrass. It’s very important music and if the big country stations would give us some respect and get bluegrass to their program directors…
Don’t just [throw it out there]. You gotta be careful. Give it the right thing, the right artists, the right songs, and it would really help our music. It really would help.
But if it never happens, we still got a good crowd and we get more people all the time coming in. It’s a kind of a new crowd coming in, a new age group coming in. We still have a lot of the older people, but the younger people are coming into it. Teens to 20 years old, I’m seeing that happen more. That’s good. Bluegrass, it needs more push, it needs more promotion.
Do you see what Billy Strings is doing as that push or as that promotion? Can you tell, with younger fans coming in, that they started as Billy Strings fans and found you that way? I wonder, is there any way you’re measuring the impact of people talking about you and pushing your music?
I can’t really tell on that, for sure. I can’t. I’m just seeing people that’s young – teenagers and stuff – that wants to learn to play the music and are trying to play. And then that age group I was telling you about is. It’s coming in stronger all the time.
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t listen to other music. I don’t listen to anything hardly, music-wise. You gotta keep yourself fresh. But I respect other music. I respect it. All forms of music. I don’t have anything against the big bands and all the new names. But I like that old stuff. Of course, bluegrass and old country. And other things, blues, I like a lot of that.
You seem remarkably humble and so down to earth. You follow the songs, you put heart and soul into ‘em. But you’re literally a Hall of Famer and you’re one of the last of the first big generation of bluegrass makers that are still doing it today. You’re a legend to all of us. Does it feel like you’re a legend? To you, on the inside? Or no?
I would be to a lot of people, a legend, and to a lot of people I would be famous, I would be a star. But when I went into this business, went into music in my teens, I never looked at it as wanting to be a star or to be famous. I never looked at those two things. I wanted to take what talent I had. I knew I had something to offer. I had to put it together and see what I could do [to] make it work.
I don’t know if I’m a star or famous to people. I hope so, because that’d be nice. I’m pretty honored.
Photo Credit: Images courtesy of Rebel Records. Lead image by Michael Wilson.
Roots music was everywhere this year. It’s time we decide once and for all: Is roots music enjoying a “moment”? Or are these genres and sonic stylings alwaysthis foundational to popular and mainstream music?
Maybe roots is just at the center of everything we do here at BGS, but we’re inclined to the latter option. Roots music, folk music, whatever you want to call it, these styles are at the root – pun intended – of everything we love, not just in our scenes and spaces, but what we love about pop music, radio hits, and the musical mainstream, too. It’s no wonder, then, that roots shows up in albums and offerings by Bad Bunny and Sabrina Carpenter. That roots music finds its way across the globe in the fight for justice. That banjos and fiddles and the blues and bluegrass can be seeds by which entire resplendent artistic universes can be birthed, whether festivals or films or documentaries or albums or songs.
For our final year-end retrospective list of 2025, we asked our BGS contributors to reflect on the roots music and moments that stuck with them over the course of this year. Instead of setting strict criteria for what qualified as “roots music,” we did just the opposite, leaving our year-end “best” prompt as loose, open, and broad as possible. The results reaffirm our central belief that roots music isn’t a niche, it’s everything. There’s no limit to what it can touch on, impact, and transform.
We look forward to continuing to celebrate all things roots music and roots culture with you in 2026. In the meantime, enjoy our BGS Class of 2025. Roots music below, bluegrass here, and Good Country here.
Bad Bunny, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS
Last year, the most mainstream and far-reaching roots album was most certainly Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. The project has amassed billions of streams and listens, millions of sales, and has been certified Platinum by RIAA. This year, the most prominent roots album has received little to none of the controversial discourse of “belonging” and genre and roots-adjacency that Cowboy Carter attracted. Bad Bunny’s 2025 masterpiece, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS, is perhaps a bit sneakier in its rootsiness – or, being that it was made by a Puertorriqueño and is delivered entirely in Spanish, perhaps the same sorts of racism that put Beyoncé under the crosshairs may have relieved Bad Bunny of such targeting.
DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is jaw-dropping in its artistic and sonic accomplishments. Reggaeton and pop, hip-hop and house are grounded and contextualized by roots music, which does incredible heavy artistic lifting across the album. Interludes and intros reference many of the Latin and Caribbean folk styles that would birth the genres Bad Bunny currently inhabits. Calls of endemic frogs are mentioned alongside varied sounds of the diaspora, gentrification decried while advocating for self-determination. The album successfully does the work of so many solely folk and/or roots projects, but given its mainstream appeal and A-lister creator, that fact seems to have been lost in the glitz, glamour, and Super Bowl Halftime Show of it all. Make no mistake, though, for all the things that it is, DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS is obviously roots music. – Justin Hiltner
Carsie Blanton
Singer-songwriter Carsie Blanton gave the most fun performances I saw on folk stages this year. Whether solo in the round or with frequent collaborators Sean Trischka, Joe Plowman, and Isa Burke, a Carsie show feels like a block party. People pack in corners to see what she will cook up next: a saucy tale, a power pop-influenced anthem of revolution, a quiet moment that demands reverent attention. Blanton has a gift for translating history into sing-alongs without softening any of her political edges. It takes an expert vocalist and arranger to sing “I guess America’s coming untied/ Half of my neighbors are living outside” without the audience feeling gloomy or preached at.
It helps that Blanton embodies the kind of working-class swagger that only a bad bitch from New Jersey can pull off. An outspoken feminist and member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, this past October she brought the revolutionary hope of her songs to Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, where she risked her life as a member of the humanitarian coalition. Blanton, along with many of her comrades, was detained when the Israeli military intercepted their boats. Her bandmates were waiting at the airport when she got home. – Lizzie No
Brooklyn Folk Festival
Celebrating its 17th year, the Brooklyn Folk Festival is the best of the independent roots music community incarnate. Each November, the festival brings together members of the New York folk music community with musicians from across the country (and sometimes the world) for one weekend of homegrown joy, hosted in the Saint Ann and the Holy Trinity Episcopal church in Brooklyn. Musicians swap instruments and stories and audiences pack church pews and sit cross-legged on the floor to listen, intently.
The festival fosters space both for old-timers and young musicians; each year students from the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, which hosts the event, perform. This year, the mainstage audience waited patiently, giving grace to 91-year-old folk legend Alice Gerrard (of Hazel & Alice) as she remembered the lyrics to one of her songs. Friends, lovers, and children waltzed together to Black string band New Dangerfield. And when musician Nick Shoulders invoked folk music’s long history of protest and compared old-time music to public lands – dubbing both worthy and precious resources, which should be protected and preserved as free for all – the entire room cheered. Community uplift at its purist and sweetest. – Meredith Lawrence
Sabrina Carpenter’s Sneaky Roots
They say the Germans have a word for everything. Do you think there’s one for how good it feels when roots music sneaks into the pop mainstream? Maybe… Beyoncénfreude? There should be some term for it, because it’s a special kind of satisfaction, and this year the good vibes continued with Ms. Short n’ Sweet herself, Sabrina Carpenter.
The superstar had already shown a genuine appreciation for country when she teamed up with Dolly Parton on “Please, Please, Please” (even changing explicit lyrics to better suit the mild-mannered icon) and with the dreamy country-folk of “Slim Pickins.” But in 2025 two important things happened. 1) She made her Grand Ole Opry debut in October, beaming with pride and lavishing the institution with praise. “Please, Please, Please” and “Slim Pickins” were both part of her set. And, 2) “Man Child.” Beneath the disco pulse ran an undercurrent of country twang, with a rhinestoned electric guitar hook dripping in her signature campiness.
This alone would be a prime case of Beyoncénfreude, but the best part was how Carpenter felt no need to call attention to the matter. It wasn’t a play or statement. She just wanted some country in there and knew her fans would accept it. What that says about roots music and the mainstream is definitely a 2025 highlight. – Chris Parton
Neko Case, “Winchester Mansion of Sound”
The late great Flat Duo Jets guitarist Dexter Romweber, who died at a too-young 57 last year, was an inspirational figure to generations of artists, Neko Case among them. The Americana siren repaid that debt with a cameo on Dex Romweber Duo’s 2009 LP Ruins of Berlin, and goes one better with this eulogy from her latest album, Neon Grey Midnight Green. Over spectral tack piano plinking away, Case paints a picture of kindred spirits bound together by music:
I still think of you And your wild, recurve guitar Only you can play so far out of tune And still kick me in the heart.
By the end, shortly before the full band kicks in for the outro, Case concludes, “Only music is forever.” Perfect.
This has been just one of 2025’s Romweber afterlife artifacts, including posthumous induction into the North Carolina Music Hall of fame and depiction in the teen drama TV series, The Runarounds. But this one is the best of all. – David Menconi
Chatham Rabbits, Be Real With Me
Despite its general lamenting about growing older – something I can relate to all too well – I can’t get enough of husband-wife duo Chatham Rabbits on Be Real With Me. But instead of focusing on the aches, pains, and other changes that come with the passing of time, Sarah and Austin McCombie also reflect on the wisdom that accompanies it as well.
This manifests itself in missives like “Matador,” where Sarah sings about trusting people too fast and ignoring red flags along the way, and “Gas Money,” which touches on overcommitting to relationships with others before first looking after yourself. The duo also navigate everything from falling out with longtime companions (“Childhood Friends”) to wanting freedom while also having desires to build and nurture a family (“Collateral Damage”), painting an understandably complex web of stories in the process.
The result is a very millennial-leaning record that puts a positive spin on aging as a young adult and will leave any 20-something listening ready to do what Austin describes on the album’s lead track, “Facing 29” – “Grabbing 30 by the strap of its boots.” – Matt Wickstrom
Michael Daves, Early Morning Sun
2025 has been a bang-up year for new releases and one at the top of my list is Michael Daves’ five song EP, Early Morning Sun. Daves’ music is always inspiring, but this EP differs from his past releases. Unlike Orchids and Violence, which was a two-part album with one side being bluegrass covers and the other being electric covers of those same bluegrass songs, Early Morning Sun is just Daves and his guitar.
All recorded on a low-tuned Kay guitar in an old church in Brooklyn, the EP has a rough, thrashy bluegrass and somewhat country feel. It’s an album of covers that, if you live in Brooklyn, you’ve probably heard Michael play around town, especially at the Jalopy Theatre or in the old days at Rockwood Music Hall. What’s special about this EP is that you can really feel the energy of how it was recorded. The slight echo of the church compliments the songs in a unique way, bringing a lot of oomph to the songs both in his vocals and his guitar playing. – Emma Turoff
Flock of Dimes, The Life You Save
Feeling weighed down by life? Tired of propping up others who can’t (or won’t) get their act together? Friend, have I got a record for you.
Jenn Wasner has been telling survivors’ stories through exquisite, deeply textured music for two decades. Her third Flock of Dimes LP, The Life You Save, leans into the atmosphere of Wasner’s voice over instrumental theatrics. Its songs find her in the deeply wearying role of reluctant savior, trying her best to heal her little corner of the world – or at least herself. The album’s money shot is “Long After Midnight,” which sounds like it could be about anything – from trying to save a friend from a drug problem or a parent sliding into dementia. The video shows Wasner sitting on the floor singing as every piece of furniture behind her is removed, finally directing attention to herself near the end:
I live my life among the lucky ones When things are bad I never let them know When you come from where I come from There’s only so far you can go…
But if you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need. – David Menconi
Rhiannon Giddens & Justin Robinson, What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow
Rhiannon Giddens reunites with former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate Justin Robinson for what is essentially a crash course in the music of North Carolina. What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow contains 18 songs – a healthy mix of instrumentals and tracks with lyrics. The music comes alive in the pair’s very capable hands and invites the listener to take a 44-minute stroll through Appalachia and North Carolina’s Piedmont. Their late mentor, Piedmont musician Joe Thompson, taught them all he knew, which is quite evident on selections such as “Hook and Line,” “Little Brown Jug,” and “Old Molly Hare.” Together, it’s like no time has passed between Giddens and Robinson, and they reach new heights in their work with some of the most propulsive and emotive string work of the year.
What Did the Blackbird Say to the Crow demonstrates that learning and growing never end. String work is best served when untethered to strict structures, but rather fluid and gently gliding, they evoke both a sense of whimsy and raw emotion. – Bee Delores
The History of Sound
I was in a cab going up the mountain to see Bugonia, and I was talking to another queer friend about The History of Sound. Specifically, about Josh O’Connor and Paul Mescal singing “Pretty Saro” and “Silver Dagger” to each other as a method of seduction. We talked about other versions of both songs – especially “Silver Dagger” – about how tender the song is in general, how O’Connor makes it softer, and about how his halting, half-good singing was effective in ways that, for example, Joan Baez wasn’t.
I thought a lot about the “Silver Dagger” scene, with a heat and a hunger, more than anything else in that film; a song which was too formalist to fully represent the erotic lives of the main characters. The movie made me sad and aroused, and what else can you ask for from a film? But it also made me worry about what songs we absorb from which traditions, and that the trading of these two famous songs as signifiers of a kind of melancholic, cock-blocked Appalachia only considers one kind of desire, one kind of hunger, and one kind of aesthetic. One marked by loss, and one which never completes except in death.
I wondered what it would mean, instead of “don’t sing love songs,” to sing every possible love song for every possible kind of love. In that too-short scene in the tent, Mescal and O’Connor sing to each other as a mode of seduction, but we get an incomplete song and an incomplete seduction. If we are listening to folk songs for their ardor, then the tradition must allow for all kinds of ardor – all kinds of desire. Sure, we have their version of “Pretty Saro” (the movie convinced me that nothing would be sexier than hearing that song post-coitally), but what about everything from “The Money Comes Rolling In” to “The Wanton Seed” to “The Two Magicians”? – Steacy Easton
I’m With Her, Wild and Clear and Blue
Right from the get-go, 2025 was a hard year. The Los Angeles wildfires ripped through homes and communities in January, displacing thousands of people, including many of my friends and music industry peers. Even for those of us whose homes were unscathed, everything suddenly felt untethered and dangerous, like it could disappear at any second.
For me, nothing captured that unnatural feeling quite like I’m With Her’s “Standing on the Fault Line.” “Is it when the reservoir runs out/ And the birds stop flying south/ Are we gonna know it’s time to flee?,” questions Sara Watkins. Many of us did have to flee, loading our cars with whatever we could grab; evacuating to anywhere that seemed remotely safer. But as climate change and economic and political upheaval continuously flip our world upside down, is anywhere really safe?
The rest of I’m With Her’s beautiful album, Wild and Clear and Blue, has been a soothing balm amidst these strange times. Each song captures a different aspect of womanhood, family, home, and the slipping of time – a testament to the shared songwriting duties of Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz. Their harmonies ring out like an old friend offering words of comfort on the other end of the line. – Amy Reitnouer Jacobs
Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery
One of the highlights of the late 1990s was Lilith Fair, a popular music festival co-founded by Sarah McLachlan and featuring the talent of such acts as Fiona Apple, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Sheryl Crow, Bonnie Raitt, and The Chicks over three years (1997-99). Director Ally Pankiw, known for I Used to Be Funny and two episodes of Black Mirror, pulls from a remarkable 600 hours of never-before-seen footage that cuts to the core of what Lilith Fair meant – and continues to mean – for women and female-identifying people. Interviews with Emmylou Harris, Brandi Carlile, and Jewel, among others, give new insight into the landmark festival and the tough-as-nails artists who stormed its stages.
Pankiw pulls back the curtain and offers the audience a peek into the blood, sweat, and tears that festival planners and the talent endured for the sake of the art and proving to the world that women artists were far more valuable than as tokens in a sea of men. Lilith Fair: Building a Mystery is raw, honest, and probing. For any casual music fan, it’s a must-watch of the year. – Bee Delores
Jess Sah Bi, Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas
Seven years ago, I worked on the reissue of Our Garden Needs Its Flowers (1985) by the West African country, folk, and afro-pop duo Jess Sah Bi & Peter One. Back in the 1980s, they were one of the most popular musical acts in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), entertaining stadium-sized audiences at home, and later on, throughout Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo.
When I first heard it, Jess Sah Bi & Peter One’s music was a revelation. In a sense, it offered a whole new lens through which to view country and folk music, while unlocking an entirely different set of African musical histories to learn from. Afterwards, Peter One scored a deal with Verve Records, culminating in his celebrated comeback album, Come Back to Me (2023).
Earlier this year, Awesome Tapes From Africa, the label that gave Our Garden Needs Its Flowers a second wind, reissued Jess Sah Bi’s rare early-1990s gospel, folk, and country solo album, Jesus-Christ Ne Deçoit Pas (Jesus Christ Does Not Disappoint). Written and recorded after recovering from a mystery illness and relocating from Côte d’Ivoire to the United States, the album’s seven songs, sung in French and Gouro, are soaring, transcendent, and undeniable. – Martyn Pepperell
Caroline Spence, Heart Go Wild
For me, 2025 has been typified by abject, all-encompassing grief. Singer-songwriter Caroline Spence’s past albums are certainly also heartfelt and lean towards tear-jerking and raw emotion-inhabiting, but Heart Go Wild feels particularly primed for a good, cathartic, therapeutic cry. Spence processes quite a few life and career changes within these songs, but the specificity by which these tracks and lyrics were born don’t hem them in or limit their relatability. On the contrary, by Spence opening up her own particular introspections to all of us, yet again, she enables each of her listeners to find our own healing, growth, and redemption in the same way she has. Through song.
Tracks like “Fun at Parties,” “Confront It,” “Why the Tree Loves the Ax,” and “Where the Time Goes” – really, the entire collection – have been remedies I didn’t know I would need so deeply when the album was first announced. Spence never needs to rely on tropes or platitudes to handle these sorts of topics. She rises above gratuitousness or melodrama, even while she acknowledges the sorts of grief, pain, and change she’s reckoning with aren’t aberrations from the human experience, they are the human experience. She’s reminding herself as much as each of us, and I suppose that’s where the magic of her particular skillset truly lies. – Justin Hiltner
Billy Strings at IBMA World of Bluegrass
When it comes to the International Bluegrass Music Association, two big things happened in 2025: the annual conference, festival, and awards show found new digs in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Billy Strings finally returned to where it all began for the star. Taking home his fourth Entertainer of the Year award this year, Strings made a genuine, heartfelt effort to appear at the IBMA events. Not only to accept his recognition, but also to hang around the festivities all week.
Strings kicked off the conference with a stunning keynote address, only to then perform two shows in Chattanooga (one with his full band, one with guitar wizard and mentor Bryan Sutton). Throughout the week, Strings casually popped up all over the city, either jumping in on jam circles or merely stopping to chat with fans and fellow musicians alike, including a memorable jam with 90-year-old bluegrass icon Paul Williams. Strings’ presence was a well-received thing for a bluegrass community not only indebted to the six-string ace for what he’s brought to the scene, but also to remind everyone he hasn’t abandoned bluegrass — it’ll always be the essence of his melodic core. – Garret K. Woodward
Molly Tuttle, So Long Little Miss Sunshine
Molly Tuttle’s So Long Little Miss Sunshine actually comes loaded with sunshine and it’s evident from all angles. The empowered and fearless lyrics start on the first track, “Everything Burns,” and continue through “No Regrets” and “Story of My So-Called Life,” showing Tuttle standing proudly in feelings, intentions, and reflections that are true to this chapter in her life.
Whether she’s basking in a seemingly perfect headspace (“There’s no valley I can’t cross, or mountain I can’t climb/ I’m in a golden state of mind”) or making a messy choice and owning it without self-abasement (“Don’t try to fix it when you break my heart/ Knew when you hit me with your poison dart”), every moment is deliberate and delivered with confidence. That includes the sonic side of things, too – despite judgmental heat coming from folks who think Tuttle is trading in pickin’ parties for pop(ularity).
First: There’s plenty of Tuttle’s prodigious musicianship shining on this record. Second: take a cue from Tuttle herself and embrace what’s new as we go into the new year! Because for Tuttle, not all the personality on this album is new. It’s just new to us because she’s finally letting it out and letting it breathe. – Kira Grunenberg
Cristina Vane, Hear My Call
The Italian-born, Nashville-based singer and multi-instrumentalist Cristina Vane has long been at home playing bluegrass, country, blues and everything in between, but on Hear My Call she’s finally at home with the most important thing of all — herself.
Across the album’s 13 tracks Vane embraces the cultures and sounds that have shaped her, from finding joy in everywhere she’s been on the rock anthem, “Little Girl From Nowhere,” to relating to the stories of someone born an ocean away on the banjo ballad, “My Mountain.” While many songs on the record lean heavy into introspection and the strength that comes from it, others find power in everything from fun and sensual moments (“Shake It Babe”) to moving on from people who don’t value your presence and time (“You Ain’t Special”).
On top of Vane’s clever songwriting, I also can’t get enough of her playing on this album. Throughout, she moves effortlessly from banjo to slide guitar without skipping a beat, further reinforcing her staying power. This is someone to watch from 2026 onward. – Matt Wickstrom
Lead Image: Justin Robinson & Rhiannon Giddens by Karen Cox; I’m With Her by Alysse Gafkjen; Carsie Blanton by Bobby Bonsey.
If you’re looking for a definitive, qualitative, and deliberate ranking; a firm and scientific rubric; or an unbiased, sterile reckoning of the best albums made in bluegrass this year, this roundup may not be for you.
Truthfully, as someone who’s worked, been acquainted, and become friends with many of the artists on this list in various capacities – from bio writing to onstage performances to media coverage to pickin’ parties to recordings and beyond – objectivity isn’t something I, personally, could establish anyway. And such year-end or other merit-based lists and collections aren’t all that interesting, are they, if not just to argue with their curation and selections.
I would not even attempt such things, because to me – to many of us – that’s not what bluegrass is about anyway. Bluegrass is about a feeling. It’s about innovation. It’s about virtuosity. It’s about tradition, loving it or retooling it or coaxing it or turning it upside down. It’s about adrenaline and a high pulse – and passing a mason jar around. It’s about feeling downtrodden or alone, shedding tears into that very ‘shine, and wailing along with the high lonesome sound. It’s folk music as much as it’s abject commercial country in “poor people drag.” It’s endlessly interesting and complex, but pretty damn simple, too.
Anyone with even an ounce of sense knows and understands that bluegrass can’t ever be objective. So indeed, why try? Why not acknowledge that bluegrass is always a matter of taste, of preference, of whimsical or capricious or convicted opinion? Bluegrass is always debatable, because, after all, bluegrass is always in the eye of the beholder.
In the eyes – and especially ears – of this particular beholder, these albums released in 2025 were the best, the most memorable, the most engaging. These collections stick to ribs like ham hocks, or stick in your throat like the tastiest clod of emotional peanut butter. They each advance, subvert, perpetuate, or wrinkle our core ideas of what bluegrass is – and what it can be.
Are each and every one of these LPs the best in bluegrass from 2025? Perhaps not… But also definitely yes.
Big Richard, Girl Dinner
In January, we gobbled down a heaping helping of Big Richard energy with the nourishing and nutritious Girl Dinner. The project may have been the band’s album debut, but this Colorado all-women quartet had already been making remarkable waves in the bluegrass, jamgrass, and string band scenes – and each of the members had extensive and glitzy musical resumés before they even convened. With a new album, Pet, on the horizon for February 2026, a signing with Signature Sounds, and an upcoming co-bill tour with fellow femme outfit Della Mae, we can tell this Girl Dinner is set to become an ongoing traveling feast.
Shawn Camp, The Ghost of Sis Draper
I remember attending Station Inn shows in Nashville in the early 2010s and sitting with rapt attention – like Martha’s sister Mary at the feet of Jesus – as Shawn Camp performed his suite of Sis Draper songs with his star-studded bluegrass bands. Often you’d hear just “Magnolia Wind” or just “Sis Draper.” Sometimes he would perform a more complete handful of the tracks he had written, individually and with his hero and mentor Guy Clark, about the mythical roots music figure from his home state of Arkansas. Now, he’s collected the slate of material – what could easily become a musical or multi-disciplinary theatre work of some kind – into one commanding, lovely, and visceral album. These are timeless songs, written and rendered as only Camp could.
Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland, Carter & Cleveland
Every now and again a new collaborative duo album comes along and makes you think, “Oh! This must have been what it felt like when Skaggs & Rice was released.” Or Tone Poems. Or Ralph Stanley and Jimmy Martin’s First Time Together. A monumental occasion, captured for posterity’s sake in the studio. When fiddlers Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland released their duo debut, that was the feeling. History made in the present, a work that will be regarded as seminal ages into the future being enjoyed in real time. Carter and Cleveland have collaborated quite a bit over the decades they’ve known each other, but what a gift to have that musical friendship ensconced forever on this album. We hope there is more to come.
Wes Corbett, Drift
Look, if all modernist banjo players sounded like Béla Fleck and Noam Pikelny, that would certainly be great. But thankfully there are dozens of five-string pickers continuing to expand on the Fleck (and Pikelny and Munde and Keith and Trischka) school of Scruggs-style, each in their own veins. Corbett is one of the best. Though he blends effortlessly into Scott Vestal’s former role in Sam Bush’s band – or into any number of recordings and one-off pick-up bands that boast his playing in newgrass and bluegrass and beyond – Corbett is a true idiosyncratic banjo player and composer. Drift, his latest, often employs traditional techniques as tools for innovation and contemporary tunesmithing. He recalls the great melodic pickers while always sounding first and foremost like himself.
East Nash Grass, All God’s Children
A few years ago, if you had told me the ragamuffin band holding down Monday nights at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison, Tennessee, would in 2025 release an album you’d describe as “heartfelt, contemplative, and intentional,” I would have probably laughed. East Nash Grass were just as jaw-dropping good then as they are now, but with that down-home silliness and clumsy charm all the great bluegrass bands born of indentured residencies have had. All God’s Children finds the band all the way grown up (but not really), and they never forsake their banter-rich, never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get roots. That overlap – of silly and heartfelt and virtuosic and not too serious – is where most (if not all) of the best bluegrass is born, anyway.
Sierra Hull, A Tip Toe High Wire
Every single time Sierra Hull releases a new album, journalists and critics love to talk about how she’s now “found herself” and “found her sound.” This writer, however, disagrees. I first saw Hull perform when we were both in our mid-teens and then as now I knew, wholeheartedly, this is someone who knows who they are. Granted, Hull has done plenty of finding herself along the way, as we all do, but the songs and tunes of A Tip Toe High Wire were obviously not born of someone just locating her voice, musically or otherwise. They don’t feel experimental or out on a limb, they are each solidly in her wheelhouse. They do still push the envelope, though, and they all tell personal stories, draw on individual experiences, and chase those treasured Hull-ian melodies wherever they lead.
I’m With Her, Wild and Clear and Blue
Perhaps all future I’m With Her albums should be made while basking in the “Ancient Light” of a total solar eclipse, given the striking sonic successes of Wild and Clear and Blue. Is that cosmic magic why their second full-length release feels so distinct and metamorphosed from their debut? Is it all the years and personal growth in between recordings? It’s not like they reinvented the wheel, they’re the exact same band – but something feels different here. Whatever the special sauce may be, all of I’m With Her’s offerings over the course of the band’s lifespan have been stellar, but this latest full-length project stands apart. As long as Jarosz, O’Donovan, and Watkins are making music together, we will be unendingly grateful they offer us these recorded windows into their creativity.
Kissing Other ppl, Kissing Other ppl
Bluegrass and old-time birth new projects, bands, and collaborations all the time. Some are purposefully momentary, some are unintentional flashes in the pan, some are such long strings of last names ampersand-ed together you know there’s no future for them. We hope Kissing Other ppl are here to stay. Rachel Baiman and Viv & Riley joined forces on the album – and band – turning mainstream and pop songs into bluegrassy and old-timey string band arrangements that positively vibrate with passion and life. “Sad boi” covers these are not, though you may at times find them subdued or tender or mild. Long may this old-time Americana musical polycule reign.
Cameron Knowler, CRK
If you’ve been craving a contemporary storyteller and poet who utilizes the guitar as their medium – like Norman Blake or Doc Watson or Tony Rice or so many others – I am so pleased to step onto my soapbox to tell you about Cameron Knowler. Also a writer (at times for BGS), archivist, photographer, and visual artist, Knowler’s guitar-centered album, CRK, is almost anything but a “guitar album,” despite each and every composition centering on the instrument. The LP paints vivid and haunting musical portraits of a place Knowler loves, longs for – and despises or begrudges, too – Yuma, Arizona. Knowler wouldn’t even pretend to compare himself to Norman Blake or state that he’s deliberately taking up Blake’s heavy, heavy mantle in the 2020s, but I’m saying he is. Thank goodness.
Bryan McDowell, Bryan McDowell
You may recognize multi-instrumentalist Bryan McDowell from his time performing, recording, and touring with artists like Claire Lynch, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Alison Brown, and many, many more. He’s an incredibly talented sideman and session player, so when I first received his new self-titled solo album, I imagined the sort of formless instrumental project most pickers with similar resumés create. What a pleasant surprise to find a fully fledged, well-rounded, complete song sequence chocked full of original songs and McDowell’s lovely, honeyed singing voice. (I know Bryan and I didn’t know he sang like this!) It’s on me, really – I shouldn’t have been surprised at all – but McDowell’s skill set is clearly no longer just geared towards backing others up. I am looking forward to seeing what’s next.
Shelby Means, Shelby Means
Speaking of artists ready to step out of the role of sideperson or session musician. Bassist, singer, and songwriter Shelby Means’ debut solo album is fantastic. Since departing Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway, Means has already built striking momentum as an artist unto herself, and the quick success of her album has played a huge role in that. With originals, tasteful (and surprising) covers, and a star-studded roster of pickers – Tuttle, Ron Block, Michael Cleveland, and more – the project certainly doesn’t feel like a debut. And it shouldn’t, Means has crisscrossed the country and the globe for decades, she’s more than ready to step to the center of the stage. She’s done it before, she’s doing it again – and now a lot more frequently, I’d bet.
The Onlies, You Climb the Mountain
All the best bluegrass is old-time these days. (I say that over and over again, here’s what it means.) While mainstream bluegrass sounds more like ‘90s country played by a bluegrass string band, or jamgrass, or “MASH” – all of which depart greatly from the 1945/1946 sound of its origin – modern old-time becomes more and more of an audio swatch of essential parts of what bluegrass used to sound like and used to include. One album this year that epitomizes this phenomenon is the Onlies’ You Climb the Mountain. Is it phenotypical bluegrass? Oh, no. It’s not. But it also has plenty of textures and tones endemic to original bluegrass that are becoming increasingly rare in its modern forms. I shouldn’t sell the Onlies short, though, they aren’t here because they’re “better bluegrass” than bluegrass, or more authentic, or more “real.” They’re here because this album is excellent, on its own terms.
Danny Paisley, Bluegrass State of Mind
Danny Paisley is celebrating 50 years of bluegrass with his latest album, Bluegrass State of Mind. Still looking for new challenges and trying to add fresh sparkle to his dyed-in-the-wool traditional sound, the new LP includes Dobro (for the first time), drums (sacrilege!), and a bit of an Americana lean. (Don’t you dare call it “grassicana.”) To BGS readers, the project will most likely sound like straight down the middle bluegrass of the highest order. Longtime fans of Paisley & the Southern Grass, though, may notice that very sparkle Danny has been chasing, as he targets new audiences and still sets new goals, five decades into his career as a bluegrass tradesman. It’s the family business.
Missy Raines & Allegheny, Love & Trouble
Missy Raines is one of the winningest musicians in the history of IBMA, amassing 10 Bass Player of the Year trophies over the years and and a handful of honors in other categories, as well. She may have won her biggest prize, though, when she landed on her latest band lineup, Missy Raines & Allegheny, a few years ago now. Her second album with the group, Love & Trouble, continues building upon the chemistry and collaboration that dripped from 2024’s Highlander. They often rise to the occasion of my preferred nickname for them, Mashy Raines & Allegheny, but they remain a consistently dynamic group capable of gritty, barn-burning bluegrass and contemplative and emotive slow burners, just the same.
Red Camel Collective, Red Camel Collective
They began as Junior Sisk’s backing band, and like many of the great “spinoff” bluegrass bands of yore – Quicksilver (Authentic Unlimited), the New South (American Drive), and many more – Red Camel Collective have quickly shown they’ve got the chops to take the same route. Their debut self-titled album was released earlier this year and was made at Sisk’s suggestion – and with his blessing. (He regularly steps off the stage at his own shows to spotlight the Collective and their music, as well.) This band of lifelong pickers have clocked so many miles playing bluegrass and executing the visions of others that, when charting their own course as Red Camel Collective, they’re able to sound exactly like themselves. It’s tough to sound singular in modern, radio-inclined bluegrass. But Red Camel Collective do. Is that why they won New Artist of the Year at the IBMA Awards this fall? It sure ain’t coincidence.
Sister Sadie, All Will Be Well
Sister Sadie’s All Will Be Well is like dropping the needle on a 45-minute bluegrass therapy session. I don’t say it flippantly or sarcastically; it is indeed shocking the level of earnest contemplation, processing, emoting, and growth evident in the songs on this album. At the same time, when you hear the tracks played down at a bustling bluegrass festival or a packed rock club or a subdued listening room, they never feel twee or try-hard or sodden with greeting-card level sentiments. They never feel heavy, actually – this is fun, often hilarious, party-ready music. Dance-along music. Shout-along songs. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. (At the vocals alone.) These are real human ideas, thoughts, and feelings set to bluegrass. Imagine.
Larry Sparks, Way Back When
How does this album seem like it could have been pulled from any year, any decade of Bluegrass Hall of Famer Larry Spark’s sceptered career? Because it could have been, damnit. He’s Larry Sparks. Way Back When sounds warm and live, like listening to tape or vinyl over earbuds or cell phone speakers. Like being in the room with that resonant, vibrant, and patinated voice. The material is timeless, but never tired or lost in retrospection. Sparks is obviously making bluegrass in the present, as he always has. He just sounds exactly like this. And the way he talks about making music – as he did in a BGS interview set for publish in January 2026 – you can tell, for him, it’s essential to inhabit the present and inhabit the song. Bluegrass really is his calling, and we’re all all the better for it.
Billy Strings & Bryan Sutton, Live At The Legion
One of the best bluegrass albums of the year? Of course. One of the best live shows and tours of the year? Doubly, triply, quadruply of course. You’d think it would be brain-melting to listen to hours of two acoustic guitars and an electric bass pick through bluegrass, fiddle tunes, and Doc Watson classics, but it was divine. Trance-like – not with eyes glazed over, but on the edge of your seat. I wasn’t at that show at the Legion when they tracked the album, but was lucky enough to catch their show this fall at the Ryman in Nashville. If you weren’t so fortunate, don’t worry, ‘cause this isn’t an incredibly exclusive club. This record really does capture all that’s ineffable of being “in the room.” (No one is surprised.) Turns out, you can actually bottle and sell it, if you’re these two. Now if only you could buy the skillset, too…
Thompson the Fox, The Fox in Tiger’s Clothing, vol. 1 & vol. 2
Maybe once a year I trip over or into a new music discovery that gets me so excited I start getting annoyed with myself from having to hear me recommend them over and over again. With Thompson the Fox, it never got annoying (not to me, at least) and the excitement of turning folks onto their music still hasn’t worn off. So here we are, again. If this is your initiation, don’t thank me, thank the people who sent Thompson the Fox my way. Jazz, newgrass, bluegrass, bebop, ragtime, and oh-so-many more styles and textures combine in a completely fresh and distinctive form. I’ve never heard new acoustic music quite like this, yet it’s clearly rooted in that tradition. The simple math of xylophone, banjo, bass, and drums doesn’t quite math, but this group sounds resplendent, rich, and fascinating. Takumi Kodera on banjo is a revelation and Rie Koyama (xylophone), Akihide Teshima (bass), and Tomohito Yoshijima (drums) complete the Tokyo-based ensemble.
Cristina Vane, Hear My Call
Cristina Vane exists at an intersection of roots music that far too few inhabit, because very few can manage there. Vane can. She does blues, bluegrass, old-time, country, and Americana. Sometimes blended, sometimes compartmentalized. She’s got short-form, short-attention-span, vertical-video appeal for days, but her songs are never vapid or playing to any kind of commercial common denominator. Her instrumental skills and the passion for learning and song collection across roots and folk genres that she exhibits bring it all together. I’d not want to subject either woman to the corniness of comparing one to the other, but for folks who love Sierra Ferrell and are looking for more artists in a similar roots-meets-mainstream space, Cristina Vane can do it. She is doing it.
Vickie Vaughn, Travel On
Vickie Vaughn has won IBMA Bass Player of the Year for three years in a row and on the heels of that remarkable accomplishment, she’s released her debut full-length solo album, Travel On. Produced by Deanie Richardson of Sister Sadie, it’s Vaughn’s first recording under her own name released in 10 years. Original songs and covers are packaged in a sound that’s always trad bluegrass, but often infused with a dash of Osborne Brothers from the ‘80s or Jim & Jesse with a drum kit. It’s an Earl Scruggs Revue sort of flair, troubadour-steeped bluegrass-country. And it’s divine.
To conclude this long yet non-exhaustive and surely myopic list of the best bluegrass albums of 2025, let me leave you with this gentle reminder. What’s bluegrass and what’s best are always in the eye – and the ear – of the beholder.
What was your favorite bluegrass album of 2025? Let us know on social media. We hope you discover some new music to love in our BGS Class of 2025 and we can’t wait to make new discoveries with you, too.
BGS Staff contributed to this list.
Photo Credit: Shelby Means by Hunter McRae; Shawn Camp by Neilson Hubbard; Sierra Hull by Spencer Showalter.
Lots of people would like to think their lives have made a difference – whether through their family life, or work, or some sort of creative endeavor.
However, even to approach the enduring heritage of the great musician Arthel “Doc” Watson, a person would have to achieve lifetime landmarks as imposing as the North Carolina Appalachian mountains that were his home. During a lifespan from his birth in 1923 until his death in 2012, Watson created a legacy of music, folklore, and goodwill that no one has entirely equaled.
First a little background: Arthel Lane Watson was born March 3, 1923, near Deep Gap – he is not from Asheville – in Western North Carolina. An audience member suggested the nickname “Doc” when his given name was found less than compelling for an entertainer.
His life story before and after becoming an admired folk musician has been often told, notably in Doc Watson: A Life in Music, a 2025 biography by Eddie Huffman published by the University of North Carolina Press.
Blind since infancy, Watson started to develop life skills and musical ability from an early age. He learned both formal and popular styles when sent to the state’s school for the blind in Raleigh at about age 10.
The boy was consumed by music and persistent in getting better at it. Watson had learned both the rudiments of harmonica and a few banjo tunes from his father, General Watson, before he went off to Raleigh. While living within the strict environment of the school for the blind, Watson learned braille and grew familiar with classical and church styles of music taught there. Perhaps as strong an influence as that education was fellow student Paul Montgomery, the talented friend from whom he learned guitar chords. Young Watson and Montgomery, later a well-known Raleigh pianist and children’s show host, shared enthusiasm for the popular music of the day, including jazz and big-band sounds.
His parents, Annie and General Watson, taught the boy skills of growing crops and basic carpentry, and he contributed to the family despite his blindness.
After years of mostly local performances back in Western North Carolina, it wasn’t until the early 1960s, when East Coast musician and historian Ralph Rinzler tuned into and promoted his far-reaching ability as a singer and picker, that Watson’s name gained national, then international attention.
According to an account at the Blue Ridge Heritage Area website Watson recorded over 50 albums and was honored with “the National Medal of Arts, a National Heritage Fellowship, the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award, seven GRAMMY Awards, and a GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award.”
As fans know, Doc Watson contained multitudes of skills, a breadth of ability that inspired this list of the five pillars of his musical and artistic legacy.
The King Flatpicker
Watson largely created the challenging fiddle-inspired guitar style that led many followers along a flatpicking trail.
It was during the 1950s, when playing an electric Gibson Les Paul in the local Jack Williams Band, that Watson developed a style that would transform the way the guitar was played in folk and bluegrass music.
Generally, earlier acoustic guitarists in roots-derived styles used a flatpick to create basic “boom-chuck” back up, perhaps throwing in some fills and Jimmie-Rodgers-style bass runs.
But when dancers at Williams’s gigs wanted music for square-dancing, Watson worked up single-note versions of fast fiddle tunes such as “June Apple” and “Bill Cheatham” on his Les Paul. This approach enables lead guitar pickers to achieve the same flowing, rapid attack that fiddlers used for tunes, many of which had come over from the British Isles in past generations.
It’s not possible to say that Doc Watson was the first guitarist to flatpick fiddle tunes. After all, it wasn’t until Watson emerged as a folk artist in the 1960s that the broader music scene caught on to his musicianship. And high achievers such as Arthur Smith on “Guitar Boogie,” Don Reno on “Country Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll,” and Bill Napier on the Stanley Brothers’ “Mountain Dew” – along with some jazz and blues players – all recorded hot-licks acoustic soloing before Watson did. Joe Maphis was also cranking out ultra-fast flatpicking numbers in the 1950s.
But it was Watson’s 1960s performances that created a precedent for a wave of guitarists who had to muscle up to the speed and dexterity he displayed.
A long line of guitarists at the top of the field – from Clarence White to Tony Rice, from Bryan Sutton to Billy Strings – all show Watson’s clear influence not just in recreating fiddle tunes, but also in rapid-fire picking and clean sound on a broad range of material.
Player and educator Alan Barnosky wrote in “An Exploration of Doc Watson’s Innovative and Joyful Guitar Stylings” for Acoustic Guitar in 2023 about the spread of this kind of playing.
“Watson amazed folk fans in the early 1960s by taking tunes typically reserved for the fiddle and reworking them for the acoustic with speed, clarity, and flash,” he wrote. “He never claimed to be the first to play fiddle tunes on a guitar, but for the majority of listeners at the time it was an entirely novel and groundbreaking approach.”
Another world-class, tradition-based player, Earl Scruggs, praised Watson’s adaptation of fiddle tunes as the two were joined by Ricky Skaggs for the 2003 The Three Pickers performance and album.
“He was the first man I ever heard on the guitar that was fooling with tunes like that,” Scruggs said in a Three Pickers introduction. “You had all these good G-C-D pickers – that’s chord positions – but I had never heard anybody that actually took over a lead like a banjo or a fiddle or a mandolin and do those tunes. He could do it.
“And what amazed me about Doc Watson’s picking, and still does, is he’s got that – I call it ‘mountain sound’ to his picking, and he’s one of the best to keep it in that mode of sound.”
New generations of players have immersed themselves in Watson’s style. When I interviewed him for a Bluegrass Unlimited article, leading guitar picker and multi-instrumentalist Bryan Sutton talked about being captivated by Watson’s playing during Sutton’s youth on Western North Carolina.
“Doc and Dan Crary were the first great influences on me,” he said. “Doc Watson was one of the first professional musicians/guitar players that I ever saw. He doesn’t live too far from Asheville, so I saw him play some different festivals and at Maggie Valley. So, he was the first one to really catch my ear as far as what you could do with the flatpick.
“My right hand – it may not as much anymore – but I remember at one time it was kind of like Doc’s. It’s kind of like the way Sam Bush plays, using the whole forearm and wrist involved in the playing, whereas with jazz players or Tony Rice it’s more of a wrist thing. I think I’ve got a little bit of both now.”
Billy Strings, the artist who’s likely doing the most to promote Watson’s legacy in the 21st century, sounded almost evangelical during a September 2025 interview for NPR’s Fresh Air.
“He’s like the ground upon which I stand, you know?” Strings said. “My dad played his music all around the house growing up. And by the time I could play guitar, you know, 5, 6 years old, I was learning those tunes, too. I might’ve been able to play some of them before I knew how to tie my shoes or something, you know?
“It was like, I was learning how to speak and talk and walk, and I was learning all these Doc Watson tunes at the same time. And it was just, like, a religion in my house, you know? His music is just – it’s the best.”
To see some of the top pickers in the field paying tribute, check out this video shot at the Merle Watson Memorial Festival – what would become MerleFest – in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1992.
A Model Fingerpicker
From his first albums on, Watson regularly also played guitar with a thumbpick and index finger. As he noted with his customary self-deprecating humor in the DVD “Doc’s Guitar: Fingerpicking & Flatpicking,” “See, I just play with one finger and a thumb. I don’t use the sensible three-finger method that you should use on finger-style guitar.” (Watch below.)
Watson sounded great with that approach, making finger-picked tunes such as “Deep River Blues,” “Nashville Blues,” “Omie Wise,” and “Doc’s Guitar” fan favorites and objects of long study. For every striving guitarist who practiced hard on his fiddle-tune adaptations, plenty of pickers also worked on showcases such as “Windy and Warm,” with its alternating bass, pull-offs, note bending, and a jazzy minor sixth chord at its conclusion.
Watson’s fingerpicking often showed off his acquaintance with diverse approaches, as in “Deep River Blues,” with an E diminished as its second chord. It also illustrates the way he put his touch on existing pieces such as 1933’s “Big River Blues” by the Delmore Brothers, who played with flatpicks.
“There were two guitars, a tenor – a little four-string, and the regular flattop, and I never could get my guitar to sound like both of theirs did,” Watson said. “Then I began to hear brother Merle Travis, the late Merle Travis, on the radio. And I thought, Now, wait a minute. If I can steal me a lick off brother Travis, maybe I can learn ‘Deep River Blues.’”
Multi-talented Kentuckian Merle Travis (1917-1983) popularized a style in which the thumb plays an alternating bass on the guitar’s lower strings while picking the melody on treble strings. Watson also studied the work of the great guitarist Chet Atkins. The picking buddies released the album Reflections in 1980.
The centuries-old, transatlantic ballad “Georgie” would have once been sung unaccompanied, leaving Watson and others free to craft a brand new style of guitar back up. With no clear precedent on guitar, he might employ the flowing, almost classical patterns that became popular among folk revivalists.
And fingerpicking became the tool Watson used to play the blues that he loved and drew on so deeply, music he followed from the time he heard Mississippi John Hurt on the family’s disc player in childhood.
In the end, there’s no easy way to pin down the many elements Watson brought to his picking, musical points of view that enriched his listeners along the way.
A Standout Singer
Doc Watson’s vocal abilities don’t generally get as much attention as his top-drawer chops as an instrumentalist. However, he was also a tuneful singer with a natural, angelic mountain baritone.
Watson came along during an era when rougher-voiced vocalists such as Hobart Smith, Dock Boggs, and his picking buddy Clarence Ashley represented mountain singing to a growing audience. And Watson’s less mannered style likely contributed to acceptance among listeners less familiar with the high lonesome sound. His direct vocal approach was often heard in performances with no instrumental backing.
It’s useful to remember that Watson also enjoyed the smooth country vocalist Eddy Arnold so much that his son Merle Eddy Arnold was named not just after fingerpicker Merle Travis, but also for Arnold.
Tunes from the Tennessee Plowboy’s repertoire such as “Tennessee Stud,” “I Couldn’t Believe It Was True,” and “Anytime” also showed up in Watson’s repertoire. These were only a few examples of the eclectic side of Watson’s vocal approach, with emphasis on great material over genre labels.
Given his broad taste, Watson at times put some extra grit into his singing on a number such as “Blue Suede Shoes” from his Jack Williams days of the 1950s, later a concert favorite. But more often he sang songs straight, even on one like “Nights in White Satin,” a 1967 pop hit by British rockers the Moody Blues. With waltz-time guitar and plain singing, Watson makes the song come across as relevant to himself and listeners as songs by the Delmore Brothers and Jimmie Rodgers.
Watson’s first memories of vocal music came in church, and he prized the straightforward, no-vibrato sounds that carved such songs in his memory.
“If you love music, you have to listen from the time you’re big enough to notice music,” he told me when recording his 1991 GRAMMY-winning CD On Praying Ground.
“If you’re looking for old-time material in songs, those old songs that you heard when you were young were the easiest to put down.”
From his first commercial recordings on, Watson featured gospel numbers such as the a cappella version of “Talk About Suffering” from 1964 and “Down in the Valley to Pray” from 1966. Both radiate belief and unornamented clarity.
More recent listeners may know the latter song as “Down in the River to Pray,” as it was opportunistically relabeled to match a scene in the 2000 hit film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Always A Song Man
Doc Watson had an impressively broad range of musical interests, perhaps markedly so, given the period in which he came along.
Country or folk music didn’t start appearing on commercial records until Watson was about two years old. In childhood he listened to down-home picking as well as church and gospel songs. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the family owned a radio that let them hear music beyond their 78-rpm record collection.
Virtually every great musician is a song collector at heart. And like Bob Dylan, Watson took on songs from tradition and added new elements. Take the mournful ballad “Omie Wise,” based on a North Carolina murder from the early 19th century.
In the 1920s notable old-time artists G.B. Grayson and Clarence Ashley recorded it with modal accompaniment that was neither truly major nor minor. When Watson recorded in the 1960s, he ventured into folky, arpeggiated picking that put it squarely into minor-chord territory, opening up the song to young folkies who couldn’t play fiddle like Grayson or banjo like Ashley.
In fact, Watson’s playing on “Omie Wise” occupied the same guitar realm as folk star Joan Baez’s playing on “East Virginia” and other traditional songs.
He also tuned into compositions by folk musicians Bob Dylan (“Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right), Tom Paxton (“The Last Thing on My Mind,” “Leavin’ London,” and “Bottle of Wine”), and Townes Van Zandt (“If I Needed You”).
Watson isn’t chiefly known as a songwriter, but he enjoyed notable success with “Your Lone Journey,” which he wrote with wife Rosa Lee. The starry duo of Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and bluegrass’s own Alison Krauss released it as “Your Long Journey,” leading to what biographer Huffman called significant royalties for the family.
Watson’s greatest legacy in songs may have come with the wealth of lasting favorites – just a few are “Deep River Blues,” “I Am a Pilgrim,” “Banks of the Ohio,” “House Carpenter,” and “Shady Grove” – that made their way into the folk, old-time and bluegrass repertoire and could otherwise have been forgotten.
Ambassador for the Old-Time Way
This role for Watson may be the hardest to pin down, as it overlaps with almost all the others. By cleaving to his Appalachian heritage while also making the most of decades of change, Doc Watson was able to introduce countless fans to a rich, living culture.
“I don’t live in the past,” Watson told me in 1991. “I still burn wood in a furnace at the house, but I have heat ducts and a blower on it just like an oil furnace.
“I love to burn wood and I love to split wood. There’s a few of the old-timey things I love to do. I like good dried-apple pie and I like ‘leather britches’ beans.
“And I like to be at home, dadburn it. I hate the road.”
Watson’s long career of traveling to take his music to listeners, often in the company of his beloved son, Merle, nourished their taste for music that he built upon sold timbers of musical tradition.
Wade Smith, a legendary Tar Heel lawyer, told me once about his first experience of hearing Watson, at a small coffeehouse in downtown Raleigh in 1965.
“What word would I choose to describe how I felt?” Smith said for a later Raleigh News & Observer story. “Electrified, stunned at the speed of his fingers and the way he played single strings, and the clarity of the sound. Each note was like a piece of gold, so amazing.
“We stayed to the last note. When we left, I remember thinking that I had never heard anything like it and that in some way I had been changed by it, that I was in an altered state of existence.”
Watson’s national and international impact becomes more impressive given that he wasn’t heard outside his North Carolina stomping grounds until his late 30s. That’s when he honed his broad range of expertise into a mountain-based style that captivated and often amazed listeners at first hearing.
When the Society for American Music, a distinguished non-profit scholarly and educational organization, made Watson an honorary member in 2012, musicologist and musician Greg Reish paid tribute to Watson’s broad impact.
“As I discovered more of America’s traditional musical styles through my teenage years, Doc Watson always seemed to be at the core, an entrée into both older and newer styles,” Reish wrote. “Through Doc’s music I found my way to the pre-war music of the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Skillet Lickers; to the first-generation bluegrass of Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs; to the classic country of Merle Travis, Chet Atkins, and Eddy Arnold; to the country blues of John Hurt and Frank Hutchison; and to the contemporary and progressive flatpicking of Clarence White, Norman Blake, and Tony Rice.”
Huffman’s book quotes the great bluegrass musician Roland White as he talked about the way his guitarist brother Clarence was caught up in Watson’s flatpicking after hearing him at California’s Ash Grove club.
“After seeing Doc, his picking became an obsession, an everyday part of everyday life. To play music and practice every day. Whether we played gigs or not, he was always playing music.”
Sixty years after White’s epiphany, Doc Watson’s music continues to gain and inspire new followers, whether through the picking and testimony of contemporary players such as Sutton and Springs, or through his own dozens of albums and videos. His legacy of tradition and innovation still flows like one of the ancient streams that nourish his cherished mountainsides.
Thomas Goldsmith is an award-winning journalist based in Tennessee and North Carolina. In addition to producing many hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines, he edited The Bluegrass Reader and authored Earl Scruggs and Foggy Mountain Breakdown: The Making of an American Classic, both for the University of Illinois Press.
Few musicians have ever moved as fluidly between eras, genres, and generations as Doc Watson. From front-porch duets to grand-stage bluegrass revivals, Watson’s collaborations have a way of dissolving categories entirely.
His flatpicking precision, rhythmic calm, and vocal warmth made him the kind of performer who elevated everyone within earshot – young prodigies, genre pioneers, folk-tradition torch bearers, and musical iconoclasts alike. His reputation as a consummate accompanist was built not on showmanship or flamboyance, but on musical generosity and an intuitive sense of timing, phrasing, and expression that allowed others to shine while retaining his unmistakable voice.
Part of Watson’s power lies in the consistency of his musical identity. He never strained to fit into a new format or trend; instead, others bent gratefully toward his center of gravity. Whether playing an old-time fiddle tune, trading licks with a jazz-influenced mandolinist, or harmonizing with a younger bluegrass singer, he brought a sense of ease and groundedness that anchored every ensemble. That stability gave his collaborators the freedom to explore, improvise, and innovate – knowing Doc would be right there, steady and sure.
This sense of balance between precision and freedom made him a model collaborator for musicians across generations, and his impact can be traced through countless recordings, festival lineups, and mentorships of younger players.
Watson’s influence was not just technical but communal. He could guide a performance without overwhelming it, offering the ideal blend of authority and humility. In his guitar, listeners hear the voice of the North Carolina mountains, the pulse of Appalachian tradition, and the adaptability of a musician able to engage any genre without losing authenticity.
Today, YouTube’s patchwork archive of footage allows us to witness these collaborations anew: small moments of musical connection, sometimes real-time, sometimes reconstructed from archival sources. Below is a curated set of eight standout filmed or recorded collaborations that illustrate Watson’s reach. From storied duets with Chet Atkins or Earl Scruggs to meetings with newer-generation players.
“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” – Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs & Ricky Skaggs (The Three Pickers)
This relaxed but virtuosic performance features Watson, Scruggs, and Skaggs playing with the ease of a porch jam made public. Watson’s crisp flatpicking forms a warm foundation, while Scruggs’ banjo drives with characteristic agility and Skaggs adds mandolin flourish and bounce.
The trio exhibits mutual respect and joy, and their lines interweave with natural conversation. The recorded performance comes from the 2003 album The Three Pickers. The energy and clarity of the musicianship exemplify Watson’s ability to anchor an ensemble while remaining entirely supportive, a model of intergenerational teamwork. It is a performance that displays the combination of technical mastery and intuitive musical empathy that defined Watson’s career.
“Tennessee Stud” – Doc Watson & Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (Will the Circle Be Unbroken)
Watson’s performance of “Tennessee Stud” on the Will the Circle Be Unbroken project exemplifies his ability to blend seamlessly with both established musicians and a younger ensemble eager to learn from him. His deep, resonant vocals float over understated but fluid flatpicking, supporting the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s harmony vocals and rhythmic drive.
Watson’s musical sensitivity allowed for a dialogue that bridged generations, bringing traditional songs into a contemporary context while retaining their original heart and vibrancy. This track also highlights Watson’s ability to adapt to the studio environment, shaping a sound that was both authentic and polished. The 1972 studio album is well-documented, though various YouTube versions may mix studio, rehearsal, or live takes.
In this medley, Watson and Chet Atkins engage in a playful, masterful guitar dialogue. Watson’s flatpicking exhibits crisp, percussive articulation, while Atkins’ thumb picking introduces a smooth, jazz-inflected counterpoint. Both artists navigate tempo and dynamics with precision, creating a performance that is both technically dazzling and deeply musical.
The track appears on the Reflections album and while some online performances derive from live shows or reissued audio, the studio recording itself exalts the collaborative interplay. This duet demonstrates Watson’s ability to move effortlessly between folk and jazz guitar traditions, honoring both while creating something uniquely their own. The performance underscores his adaptability, an essential quality in a musician sought after by so many genres and generations.
“Black Mountain Rag” – Doc Watson & Merle Watson
The father-son dynamic between Doc and Merle Watson is in full display in this live rendition of “Black Mountain Rag.” Merle’s nimble, rhythmic energy dances atop Doc’s grounded guitar tempo, producing an interplay that is conversational, playful, and intricate. Their shared history and years of touring allow for spontaneous embellishments and musical commentary woven into the tune.
This performance captures the essence of the Watson family legacy, showing how Doc nurtured both musical skill and expressive interpretation in the next generation. The piece also serves as a lesson in ensemble sensitivity, as Doc balances his playing to give Merle ample space while maintaining rhythmic and harmonic cohesion.
“What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?” – Doc Watson & Bill Monroe
Watson and Monroe’s pairing on this traditional tune combines the latter’s piercing, high-lonesome tenor with the former’s warm baritone, creating a striking emotional contrast. Watson’s guitar provides steady, unobtrusive accompaniment, allowing the vocal interplay to take center stage.
This recording exemplifies Watson’s ability to adapt to any partner, responding in real time to vocal phrasing and tempo shifts. The performance demonstrates his interpretive sensitivity, highlighting how he could honor a song’s emotional core while integrating his own stylistic voice.
“Shady Grove / Summertime” – Doc Watson & David Grisman
Watson’s collaboration with David Grisman blends Appalachian folk with progressive acoustic styling. In this rendition of “Shady Grove,” Watson’s rhythmic guitar backgrounds Grisman’s mandolin flourishes, resulting in a lively, conversational back-and-forth. Improvisation is key, as both musicians respond to each other’s phrasing, demonstrating mutual respect and spontaneity.
This collaboration underscores Watson’s versatility, showing he could navigate between traditional melodies and innovative interpretations, elevating both in the process. It is a reminder of his role in bridging traditional and progressive acoustic music for audiences and colleagues alike.
“Amazing Grace” – Doc Watson & Jean Ritchie
Watson and Jean Ritchie’s collaborations were well-established, including performances at venues like Folk City in the early 1960s. However, the specific attribution of some YouTube uploads titled “Amazing Grace” is ambiguous. The Live at Folk City album recording is the most reliable source, showing their complementary styles: Watson’s gentle, precise guitar lines support Ritchie’s clear, expressive vocals, blending Appalachian tradition with personal interpretation. They represent the transmission of Appalachian folk music to wider audiences and the seamless melding of their similar sensibilities.
“Summertime” – Doc Watson & Mark O’Connor
Watson’s influence on multi-instrumentalist Mark O’Connor is well-known; O’Connor cites him as a formative inspiration and their collaboration remains significant as a symbolic bridge between generations. Watson’s teachings and style informed O’Connor’s fiddle mastery, illustrating Watson’s mentorship and the continuity of American acoustic tradition. Indeed, their shared repertoire speaks to the passing of musical knowledge and the sustaining of tradition through personal and professional interaction.
These eight performances above collectively highlight Doc Watson’s role not only as a primary musician, but as a profoundly generous collaborator. He created space for others to excel, whether alongside legends like Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, and Chet Atkins or with younger rising stars such as Alison Krauss and Mark O’Connor. Watson’s approach combined technical mastery with emotional intelligence, allowing him to respond intuitively to fellow musicians in real time.
His collaborations illuminate the breadth of his influence. Watson moved with ease between old-time Appalachian tunes, rag medleys, gospel-inflected ballads, rocking hillbilly sounds, and improvised jam sessions. Across these contexts, he remained unmistakably himself: grounded, warm, and adaptable.
By mentoring younger musicians, bridging generations, and seamlessly adapting to new musical contexts, Doc Watson demonstrated that tradition is not static; it is a living, evolving practice. His legacy continues to teach musicians the art of generosity, the importance of listening, and the beauty of musical dialogue. Perhaps in every collaboration, Watson’s spirit resonates, ensuring that his contribution to music endures across time, space, and audience.
Somehow it’s December and we’ve already reached our final collection of new roots music, songs, and videos for 2025. It’s been a year absolutely packed with essential new music that you gotta hear, hasn’t it? We think this final roundup is the perfect way to go out, as we look ahead to plenty more fresh tracks to share in 2026.
First, mandolinist Jesse Appelman previews the first single from his upcoming debut solo album. “Glacier Song” is sung from the perspective of the titular glacier, examining the inevitability of time and change with bluegrass trappings and tasteful dashes of old-time from his talent-stacked ensemble. Texan singer-songwriter Dustin Brown calls on fellow Texan Billy Hartman and Nashville-based Rachel Cole for his new track, “Ballerina.” Out next week, it’s a simple, stripped-down, and twangy arrangement for a song about yet another tale as old as time: a love triangle between two people and their freedom.
Also, Kara Arena draws inspiration from the Hindu deity Hanuman for a new single, “Whose Face Is On Your Heart.” A harbinger for her upcoming EP, which is set for release in January 2026, the vibey modern folk number finds the singer-songwriter considering the concept of our loved ones leaving indelible marks on our hearts while wrapped in cinematic strings. From Toronto, Meredith Moon returns to her just-released September album, From Here to the Sea, to share a brand new performance video for “Poseidon.” She’s accompanied by Tony Allen, Rachel Melas, and Mikey Shakes as they play the song down at Compass Records’ Hillbilly Central studio. “Poseidon” is about rising above the tumult of toxicity and negativity and choosing your own heart.
To conclude, we take a trip to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, to catch new singles debuted this week by both Ber and Pert Near Sandstone, two acts from the incredibly music-rich Twin Cities. Today, Ber announced her upcoming new album, Good, Like It Should Be, set for release in early April 2026. The lead single from that project, “Book Cover,” is about the deeper meaning and understanding that can be hidden inside ourselves and is found in the delicious sonic territory where country, indie, and pop overlap. You can easily picture the song on mainstream country radio and an indie-pop playlist, too.
Pert Near Sandstone, for their part, lean into Irish folk and Celtic sounds with accordion, tenor banjo, and a shout-along, pub-ready lyric. “Side by Side” is about perseverance and rising above interpersonal challenges together. With resonant accordion and banjo tremolos, you’ll feel like you’re huddled up with the band in the corner of a cozy pub jamming along.
There’s plenty to hear and enjoy below. Thanks for sharing a year’s worth of new music with us! We’ll see you in 2026 right here for more premieres, but for now… You Gotta Hear This!
Jesse Appelman, “Glacier Song”
Artist:Jesse Appelman Hometown: Oakland, California Song: “Glacier Song” Album:Where We Go Release Date: December 12, 2025 (single); February 20, 2026 (album)
In Their Words: “This song might not make much sense until you realize that it’s sung from the first-person perspective of a glacier – and what better inanimate object could there be to explore the inevitability of time and change? Written one of my oldest friends, Will Fourt, the crooked and circular structure was a perfect vehicle for this ensemble to weave the spontaneous and lush whirlwind of melody that ends the track. The refrain, ‘I don’t know where we go,’ here an expression of uncertainty, gave rise to the album title, reworked as a statement of intent: Where We Go.” – Jesse Appelman
Track Credits: Jesse Appelman – Mandolin, vocals Sami Braman – Fiddle Allison de Groot – Clawhammer banjo Emily Mann – Bass, harmony vocals Eli West – Guitar, harmony vocals
Kara Arena, “Whose Face Is On Your Heart”
(Click to listen)
Artist:Kara Arena Hometown: New York, New York Song: “Whose Face Is On Your Heart” Album:Whose Face Is On Your Heart (EP) Release Date: December 5, 2025 (single); January 2026 (EP)
In Their Words: “‘Whose Face Is On Your Heart’ was born after I encountered the story of Hanuman, the Hindu deity. What truly distinguishes Hanuman is his deep devotion to his Lord, Rama and Devi Sita. When his loyalty comes into question, Hanuman says, ‘Every inch of my body has Rama in it. My heart and soul are made of Rama.’ When doubt of his love persists, he tears open his chest to reveal images of Rama and Sita glowing within his heart. When writing this song, I thought about what it would be like if our hearts were branded with the ones we love most. We wear their faces like a badge of honor. And when love leaves, do those sketches become scars?” – Kara Arena
Track Credits: Kara Arena – Vocals, guitar, songwriter Michael Lepore – Piano Brett Bass – Upright, electric bass Matt Bent – Drums, percussion Mae Roney – Violin Rachel Rice – Cello Joe Cilento – Electric guitar, keys
Ber, “Book Cover”
Artist:Ber Hometown: Minneapolis, Minnesota Song: “Book Cover” Album:Good, Like It Should Be Release Date: December 5, 2025 (single); April 3, 2026 (album) Label: Nettwerk Music Group
In Their Words: “I wrote ‘Book Cover’ last year over a cup of tea with my friend Corey Sanders, who at the time was consoling me as I was feeling very overlooked and invisible as a small, independent artist and writer in the music industry. At its surface, ‘Book Cover’ is about heartache and longing to be known for what’s inside, to be given a shot by someone not based on your looks or appearance, but because of the person you are. In its bones I’ve personally found deeper meaning— ‘Book Cover’ is a sweet reminder to myself to know your worth and acknowledge what you bring to the table. It’s one of my favorite songs from my forthcoming album, and I hope you like it!” – Ber
Dustin Brown, “Ballerina” (with Billy Hartman, Rachel Cole)
Artist:Dustin Brown, Billy Hartman, Rachel Cole Hometown: Moody, Texas (Dustin); Texas (Billy); Nashville, Tennessee (Rachel) Song: “Ballerina” Release Date: December 12, 2025 Label: New Usual Records
In Their Words: “Writing a song can be as complex as the characters in it. Some fall out on the table, but this one definitely reflects its process as much as its meaning. The turmoil behind the writing of this song influenced its jaded undertones. It’s a tale as old as time, a love triangle between two souls and freedom. A dilemma of one’s resolve and another’s yearning.” – Dustin Brown
Meredith Moon, “Poseidon”
Artist:Meredith Moon Hometown: Toronto, Ontario, Canada Song: “Poseidon” Album:From Here to the Sea Release Date: December 2, 2025 (video); September 12, 2025 (album) Label: Compass Records
In Their Words: “‘Poseidon’ was written during a pretty tumultuous time in my life, juggling priorities and in the end choosing my heart over all else. I felt the weight of the negativity inflicted on me by the toxic situations I’d left recently and ‘Poseidon’ was about re-instilling my own power and safety, like surrounding myself by an orb of protection.” – Meredith Moon
Performance Credits: Meredith Moon – Guitar, vocals Tony Allen – Fiddle Rachel Melas – Bass Mikey Shakes – Drums
Video Credit: Filmed at Compass Studios by Emma McCoury.
Pert Near Sandstone, “Side by Side”
Artist:Pert Near Sandstone Hometown: Minneapolis / Saint Paul, Minnesota Song: “Side by Side” Album:Side by Side Release Date: December 3, 2025 (single); February 27, 2026 (album)
In Their Words: “I originally started writing ‘Side by Side’ about my relationship with my wife and us pushing through challenging times. However, as the song came together, I realized the message of perseverance applied equally to the band and the challenges we go through together as professional musicians touring on the road. The music is traditional Irish-folk inspired, featuring wonderful accordionist Patrick Harison and Nate Sipe on Irish tenor banjo. I sing the lead along with full band group vocals and harmonies, which add to that real pub anthem sound. While in the recording studio we pulled the title ‘Side by Side’ from the lyrics which eventually became a rallying cry and decided it would be a fitting name for the new album.” – J Lenz
For the past few years, as the music industry goes quiet, spooling itself down for a two-week sleep over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, the team here at BGS has taken the opportunity to utilize December to spotlight a few of our heroes. We began the series with Dylan in December in 2018 and followed up the success of that nontraditional “Artist of the Month” pick in following years with Dolly in December, Del in December, Dawg in December, and last year’s incredibly popular Dead in December.
What better way to spend a cozy, holiday-filled, wintry month than celebrating some of the legends – artists, songwriters, musicians, and bands – that have made our roots music scene what it is today? This year, it’s clear who our December Artist of the Month should be: “Doc” Arthel Watson, himself.
Born in Deep Gap, North Carolina, in the heart of Appalachia in 1923, Doc Watson started playing guitar – and other instruments, too – as a child. Doc lost his vision in his youth, but would go on to become one of the most important American guitarists in history even with his disability. His position in modern roots music, especially in bluegrass, old-time, and folk, is canon. He is a legend to any and all, from the diehard lifelong acolytes to the recently initiated neonates. He’s one of our Americana music figures who tends to get lost, like the forest for its trees, within his own ubiquity and universal adoration. But no matter from which angle you drill down into his career, discography, artistry, and legacy there’s always more to find. To explore. And to enjoy, of course.
Over the course of December, we’ll be doing just that. Our writers and contributors will offer new articles considering Doc’s songs and output and his career as an American guitar hero. And, how even after his passing in 2012, he continues to be a definitional stylist on flat-top, flatpicked guitar. But don’t sell him short, either. Though most known for his fiddle tunes, folk songs, and old-time and bluegrass licks, Watson was accomplished in many genres across the roots continuum; he dabbled in and conquered sounds from hillbilly and rockabilly, electric guitars, blues, ragtime, fingerstyle, chicken pickin’, and more. He collaborated with artists from well within his own circle and far outside it – sonically, socially, and geographically. Watson was incredibly dynamic, a characteristic that has contributed greatly to his lasting, ongoing appeal.
We will also be dipping back into our BGS archives to share past features, playlists, and articles about Doc, and his son Merle; about his festival MerleFest, which continues to this day; and about the albums and offerings celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth that were released in 2023. Truthfully, there’s nearly an endless supply of BGS content that touches on, focuses on, or mentions Doc. Because of course there is – these genres we all love and hold dear wouldn’t be what they are today without him.
You also won’t want to miss perhaps the most exciting aspect of our Doc in December Artist of the Month celebration. In 2023, BGS was invited to Bryan Sutton’s Blue Ridge Guitar Camp in Brevard, North Carolina. Sutton, alongside his friend and peer Billy Strings, is one of the most prominent proselytizers for Watson in the 21st century, so it’s no surprise his annual camp just up the mountains from Watson’s hometown of Deep Gap is usually dripping with Doc’s music.
That year, one of Doc’s most famous guitars, “Ol’ Hoss” – a 1968 G-50 Gallagher Guitar Watson played in the late ’60s and early ’70s and on many recordings – was also at the Blue Ridge Guitar Camp. The instrument was one of the first of a few Gallaghers that Doc owned. BGS made the trip to Brevard to capture special video performances and interviews with many of the event’s instructors and pickers, each of whom played Doc tunes and shared stories and memories while picking Ol’ Hoss. It was a magical week in the mountains. Now, for the very first time, we’re making select songs from these tapings available in a new series, the Ol’ Hoss Sessions. Three sessions pulled from the shoot celebrates Doc in December and features Bryan Sutton, Courtney Hartman, and will also feature Billy Strings. Stay tuned as we share those videos right here on BGS and on our YouTube channel throughout the month.
It’s not that Doc Watson is underappreciated or underrated, or that he needs any of the visibility that being a BGS Artist of the Month might afford. In our neck of the woods, seemingly everyone knows and loves Doc Watson already. But with so many folks and institutions shouting Watson’s praises from the rooftops lately – artists like Sutton, Strings, and a host of guitar pickers and roots musicians from across our community and scene; the folks who put on and attend MerleFest; the communities of Boone and Deep Gap, North Carolina; projects like I Am a Pilgrim: Doc Watson at 100 – it’s clear there’s always more to learn, love, and enjoy about Arthel Lane Watson.
Get started with Doc in December with our Essential Doc Watson Playlist, below. Plus, follow along right here on BGS and on social media as we share Doc Watson content throughout the month. We’ll have a new feature on Watson’s status as American guitar hero, and you can see our YouTube playlist of his incredible musical collaborations here. Plus, of course, our very special Ol’ Hoss Sessions, exclusively available right here on the Bluegrass Situation. (Watch Bryan Sutton here. Watch Courtney Hartman here.) Plus, we’ll be combing through the BGS archives for everything Doc Watson for y’all to enjoy. Buckle up for a mighty month of guitar pickin’ glory, it’s Doc in December!
Normally, when singer-guitarist Nick Hexum plays a gig, it’s fronting legendary hard rock band 311, performing for massive audiences in huge venues around the globe. But, on a recent evening in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was backed by Americana/bluegrass act Water Tower in front of a small crowd at the Open Chord, a cozy space on the west side of the city along Kingston Pike.
“I’ve always been drawn to music that has energy, and there’s so much energy in flatpicking, the banjo, the tremolo picking of the mandolin,” Hexum tells BGS backstage. “This stuff has rock and roll energy that predates rock and roll.”
For Hexum, this deep dive into bluegrass, country, and Americana of late has become something of an intrinsic mission from within. It’s the current soundtrack of a 55-year-old rock star carefully aiming to dig up and examine the melodic roots of his past – these existential anchor points needed to move forward.
“This whole experience is just bringing it really full circle, like a home,” Hexum says. “My mom is from Nashville, so this is me getting in touch with [memories of] when we used to go to visit my great aunt Margaret in Gatlinburg and she’d play the autoharp.”
Retracing old routes, both geographically and sonically, was no more apparent for Hexum than when he and Water Tower appeared at Americanafest in Nashville. The stop in Music City was part of a larger tour throughout the Southeast in an attempt for Hexum to not only reconnect with his past, but also create an opportunity to break new ground for his craft – especially outside of the hard rock juggernaut that is 311.
“I’m just grateful that fans are showing up and are open to seeing me do something completely different,” he says.
During the intimate set in Knoxville, Hexum and Water Tower crowded around a single microphone, weaving in, out, and around each other in a whirlwind of acoustic instruments and Hexum’s signature vocals. The show ran a gamut of material, whether it be classic 311 numbers or selections from Hexum’s latest solo record, Phases of Hope and Hollow.
“The intimacy [of the show], it’s wonderful to be so up close. It’s totally different [for me] from a technical situation – it takes silence,” Hexum reflects.
This project is the brainchild of Hexum and Water Tower’s Kenny Feinstein. Water Tower is a rising ensemble from Los Angeles, one which initially started as an old-time/punk group, only to lean further into becoming a high-energy string band. They raised more than a few eyebrows when they performed at the recent Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado.
“We’re walking into another side of Nick,” Feinstein says. “311 is all about bringing people together through unity and different styles of music, so this is another slice of Nick’s personality.”
For Feinstein, working with Hexum has been this surreal experience, personally and professionally. As a millennial growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Feinstein was a huge 311 fan, so much so he vividly remembers their video for the smash hit “Amber” and seeing 311 guitarist Tim Mahoney sporting a mohawk haircut.
“My friend and I saw the video and [decided] we needed mohawks,” Feinstein reminisces with a laugh. “So, all three of us went to a party [that night] and got our heads shaved into a mohawk.”
This latest musical chapter for Hexum and Water Tower happened serendipitously through the sober community both Hexum and Feinstein are part of in Los Angeles. Leading up to their crossing paths, Hexum had been heading down the rabbit hole of an Apple Music playlist that featured singer-songwriter Faye Webster. His ear perked up.
“I really like her songs, the pedal steel [sound], and the beautiful arrangements,” Hexum says of Webster. “And then, I reached out to Drew Vandenberg, who produces her music. We started talking about working together and one of the things I wanted to do was learn some of those instruments. So, I bought a pedal steel and took some lessons.”
Making space in his studio for the pedal steel, Hexum wanted to add a few more instruments into his creative arsenal, including the mandolin. Cue Feinstein. Meeting him through the sober community, Hexum asked Feinstein if he would teach him how to play the mandolin.
“I had [Kenny] over and I was like, ‘Let’s do something that sounds like [Faye Webster],’” Hexum says. “And he was just a cornucopia of ideas.”
At that juncture in his career, Hexum “mostly had played six-string guitar,” with these other instruments “a new world” for the artist. And yet, even though he was just learning how to play them, he was already well-versed in the sounds of bluegrass and country.
“Nick saw a dulcimer on my wall and I was really impressed that he knew what that was,” Feinstein recalls. “He told me about his heritage and [growing up] in Omaha and how he loved country and bluegrass. Then I said, ‘We should jam sometime.’”
That initial jam session between Hexum and Feinstein resulted in the duo writing five songs right out of the gate. Soon, Feinstein brought in Water Tower banjoist Tommy Drinkard and wrote several more.
“And now we’re on tour. It’s so special to see the humility that [Nick] carries, the gratitude and appreciation for all of his fans after so many years of doing it,” Feinstein says. “It just inspires us to have gratitude for where we’re at now, and to know the journey we’re on is about continuing to lessen the suffering [of others through music].”
“There’s so many people out there in the crowd crying, really taking it in,” Drinkard adds. “These are very intense subjects and Nick does a good job of explaining where he’s coming from with the songs he’s writing.”
For Hexum, this recent journey into the bluegrass realm has become this incredibly cathartic experience. He found himself not only dissecting his past and that of his parents, but also that of his ancestors going back generations.
“My mom is from Tennessee and my grandpa was a Southern Baptist minister,” Hexum notes. “Half of my family does have these southern roots, so when I hear bluegrass, it just feels like part of my DNA.”
Beyond the new music itself, Hexum views this ever-evolving project as part of his ongoing quest to find himself through this vibrant kaleidoscope of sound and purpose. It’s about stripping everything down, focusing on the essence of a particular melody, and always being aware of the beauty of the sacred platform that is live performance. Turn off the amps, pick up the acoustic guitar and huddle around a lone microphone, together.
“It has gotten to a point where I’m like, ‘All right, time is limited here, and I want to make the most of the time that I have now,’” Hexum says humbly. “I mean, when you see your kids get older and get their driver’s license and stuff like that, you just feel this passing of an era. And so, for me, it’s getting into a different mode of songwriting – really focusing on sincerity and simplicity.”
Photo Credit: Gentle Giant Digital
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