Tag: Old-time

Special Consensus, ‘Squirrel Hunters’

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There’s a phenomenon that certain bluegrass instrumentals experience when, for however brief or extended a time, you hear them almost everywhere played by almost everyone. Tunes like the key-of-B barnburner “Rebecca,” or John Reischman’s “Salt Spring,” or David Grier’s legendary reharmonization of “Angeline the Baker” come to mind. Whether during a lap of your favorite festival’s campground jams or wandering the halls of the IBMA World of Bluegrass host hotel, while each of these numbers enjoyed their respective heydays, you could hear them emanating from almost every single circle of pickers. The old-time tune “Squirrel Hunters” hasn’t just been relegated to one single moment; it’s a pickin’ marvel unto itself. Old-time, mash, straight-ahead bluegrass, jamgrass — they all claim “Squirrel Hunters.”

In this host of renditions, one by Chicago-based bluegrass outfit Special Consensus stands out. Not only because John Hartford’s buzzy baritone introduces the track (as if to remind us that “Squirrel Hunters’” moment has been decades and decades long), but because the entire ensemble artfully reimagines a tune that could much more easily be found stale and tired. Rachel Baiman and Christian Sedelmeyer, the fiddley duo 10 String Symphony, kick off the song alongside Hartford’s fiddle, making a technological cameo. The band jumps into a bushy-tailed clip with another guest — the album’s producer, Alison Brown — on a low-tuned banjo (continuing the nods to Hartford), playing call and response, her postmodern five-string against Greg Cahill’s traditional-while-psychedelic approach. A round of breaks, a melodic bass solo, and an epic rearrangement of the chord changes later, you’ll barely realize you’ve listened to a four-minute-long tune without even a hint of a yawn. And that, right there, is why this “Squirrel Hunters” moment goes on and on.

Hot Club Sandwich, ‘Swang Thang’

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Swing is the most bluegrass-y subspecies of jazz. The chunk of the guitar chopping and comping away, the improvisational fiddle, and the walking bass solos almost guaranteed to elicit applause are more than reminiscent of ‘grass. It’s not uncommon to hear standards played in the style of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli wafting from more progressive bluegrass jams. Quintessential numbers like “Swing 42” and “Minor Swing” morph seamlessly into new acoustic favorites like “16/16” and “E.M.D,” both written by David “Dawg” Grisman. Dawg, arguably more than anyone else, is responsible for bringing swing and gypsy jazz to the bluegrass masses — but he isn’t just a jazzy missionary to more folky, old-time realms; he has made a home for himself in the heart of the swing scene, as well. He’s as comfortable straddling the fence as he is jumping down and spending some quality time on either side.

On the opening track of Hot Club Sandwich’s just-released album, No Pressure, the duo of mandolins make this bluegrass comparison most palpable. But don’t be mistaken: This band, this album, and this track are all swing. Hot Club’s mandolinist Matt Sircely and Dawg himself, the writer of “Swang Thang” and the album’s producer/advice guru, twin the tune’s bouncy, whimsical, jovial head and swap licks with each other during the solo sections. Listeners may feel a sudden urge to run away to the countryside in France, or to sip wine or snooty coffee at a street side café, or watch an indie movie or Fiat/Vespa car chase after a dose of this swang. It’s a pleasure to hear Dawg do what he does best with this Washington-based string outfit that’s been carrying the swing banner for going on two decades.

LISTEN: Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert, ‘Where’s My Baby’ 

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Artist: Kieran Kane & Rayna Gellert
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Song: “Where’s My Baby”
Album: The Ledges
Release Date: February 16, 2018
Label: Dead Reckoning Records

In Their Words: “We went to the cabin in New York for the summer to finish writing and then record what became The Ledges album. We had a few songs finished, and a few bits and pieces that we wanted to see if we could push further down the road. ‘Where’s My Baby’ was one of the unfinished bits. It was so much fun to play, we just couldn’t let it go. It was, in fact, the first song that we recorded where we felt ‘that’s the keeper version’ … so we kept it.” — Kieran Kane

Photo credit: Molly Secours

Hangin’ & Sangin’: Chance McCoy

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From the Bluegrass Situation and WMOT Roots Radio, it’s Hangin’ & Sangin’ with your host, BGS editor Kelly McCartney. Every week Hangin’ & Sangin’ offers up casual conversation and acoustic performances by some of your favorite roots artists. From bluegrass to folk, country, blues, and Americana, we stand at the intersection of modern roots music and old time traditions bringing you roots culture — redefined.

With me today at Hillbilly Central, Chance McCoy! So Chance McCoy, part of Old Crow Medicine Show, and more!

And more! So much more.

So let’s do a little Chance McCoy 101, background thing because you don’t have a website for people to go and find out about you so I think we need to teach the people.

Yes, I’m the 21st century George Harrison of Old Crow.

Alright, let’s go with that.

The Quiet Crow. [Laughs]

Yeah, okay, I’ll believe that. [Laughs] So you grew up in West Virginia, playing in punk and rock bands, yeah, a little bit?

Yeah, a little bit.

In your youth.

A little bit. The first band that I was in was called the Speakeasy Boys, and that was more just an excuse to get drunk and run a speakeasy than it was to be a band. But I did learn some music in there.

Right. And they were sort of old-time without knowing they were old-time? Kind of like the punk version of old-time?

Yeah, we didn’t know what old-time music was, actually. We didn’t know what bluegrass was, and we had heard the term “old-time.” And we were playing some old-time music. We had a washtub bass player. We were playing “Soldier’s Joy” and things like that. But it took me, like, a year of being in that band for somebody to finally tell me what old-time music was. [Laughs] We kept asking around, “What is old-time music?” and nobody could tell me!

So yeah, it was amazing! We basically ran a bar out of a basement of a friend’s house and, every Sunday, a friend of ours would go down to the Potomac River and fish out a bunch of catfish and we’d fry them on a barrel, and about 200-300 kids from the local college would show up and we’d play music. It was a ball.

That’s awesome!

So that was my experience learning folk music and bluegrass and old-time, and then I started performing in folk clubs and I was like, “Why is everybody sitting down and listening? This isn’t what you do, here’s a beer! Go ahead and dance, just start dancing!”

What do you think it was about that kind of music, or maybe it was how you guys were doing it, or maybe it was the beer and catfish, but what was the appeal to those college kids?

Um, I think the appeal was that we created a scene. Our bumper sticker read, “We’re not a band. We’re a party.” [Laughs] That was the appeal!

Your life motto ever since!

Yeah, I think that works for a lot of acts. Sometimes it’s not about the music; it’s about the event — creating a party. So that was very much what the draw was in that band.

And then once you got into the more “proper” old-time and folk scene, it was a whole other vibe.

It was a whole other vibe, yeah. It was great because, growing up in West Virginia, I’d actually never heard folk music, because it was pretty rare. I mean, it still is. I didn’t know where to look. I didn’t have any connections to it. So, when I finally discovered folk music in West Virginia, I was in my early 20s, and I realized that there was incredible depth, this well of music that went so much deeper than just the surface level “Soldier’s Joy” and all that kind of stuff — “Pig in a Pen.” And that’s where I really started to fall in love with old-time music, especially. And I was lucky enough to study and apprentice with master musicians form West Virginia, so that’s where it started to change for me. And then I took all that and went out and tried to perform it and that’s when I realized … [Laughs]

That’s when you ran into all the folks who were … the “that ain’t bluegrass” folks.

Like, “Well, actually …” [Laughs]

…

So you were just living out in a cabin and teaching fiddle at Augusta Heritage Center when you got the “Hey, come try out for our little string band, Old Crow Medicine Show” call.

Yeah, I got a cold call! Yeah the little string band that you know, we have the song “Wagon Wheel.” Nobody’s heard it.

Nope! What was it like stepping into that band with them having been a band for so long, even though they took a few years off, sort of regrouping?

It was really hard because I had to figure out how to join this band, like you said, that had already been a huge band that had been really successful, and I had to figure out how to enter the band and not make it seem like I was trying to replace Willie Watson or what he did. And that was always something that was really a sensitive issue where we all wanted to integrate me into the band in a new way where it didn’t feel like, “Oh, Old Crow’s back, but now this guy’s replaced this other guy.”

So there was this intentional shift in the band, and I tried to take sort of a back seat role and a more supportive role in that band, and not try to, you know, try to get myself out there and play a leading role in the band. And, in doing that, I was able to really support them to go in directions that they hadn’t gone before, and I was integral to the creative process and helping write the songs and record the records and doing all that, but I was sort of the behind-the-scenes guy, where I was just kind of trying to make Old Crow great again, and lift them off.

Because, when I met them and they went on that tour that I joined them on, when they reunited, they had kind of come out of a broken place with having lost Willie, and then being like, “Is anyone gonna like the band anymore? Are we gonna be able to do it? Is it gonna be any good?” So it was a real fragile situation that I came into, so I really tried to come in and just support them as musicians and help them realize their vision for what the band was gonna be moving forward.

And clearly that worked, or it was just a coincidence that you joined the band to play on Remedy and oh, it wins a Grammy, the first Grammy for a record.

[Laughs] I like to say I have the Midas touch. Any project I join wins a Grammy.

If anybody needs a fiddle player/banjo player/guitarist/carpenter …

I can build it. I can play it.

And you can win a Grammy.

[Laughs] Yeah, it was an amazing rise to success, especially coming from where I had been before I got the call. I had kind of sunk into poverty in Appalachia and it was rough times, for sure. I was just scraping by, barely, when Ketch [Secor] called me. So that was a good call to get.

…

You recently did some solo shows here in Nashville. So is that still a lingering ambition in your mind, are there projects coming?

It is! Yes, there is a project coming. I’m gonna be going into the studio in a couple weeks here, after I finish building it. [Laughs] And laying down my next record, which is gonna be called The Electric Crow. It’s kind of the next creative project where I wanna use all the different elements, all the different kinds of music that I play, and kind of bring that through my own creative focus and hone in something completely new. So, yes, that is on the way!

Watch all the episodes on YouTube, or download and subscribe to the Hangin’ & Sangin’ podcast and other BGS programs every week via iTunes, Spotify, Podbean, or your favorite podcast platform.

Nashville School of Traditional Country Music Plays It Forward

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The act of passing down traditional music through generations is as inherent to the craft as the music itself is to its region of origin. Amidst the flurry of YouTube tutorials, tuning apps, and streaming services available at the fingertips of today’s technologically advanced society, a crop of non-profits are working to ensure that traditional music continues to be shared from person to person. The Junior Appalachian Musicians program — nicknamed JAM — is one such effort. The after-school program offered in locations across North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia offers music lessons to children, focusing on Appalachian tunes and instruments like the banjo or fiddle. Singer/songwriter Meredith Watson was a fiddle instructor in the JAM program in Black Mountain, North Carolina, for three years.

“I saw firsthand how valuable group learning can be when it comes to music, as opposed to the sort of traditional model of sheet music learning or ‘learn this to tune’ or ‘learn this piece of music on whatever instrument you’re playing and go practice for 25 minutes by yourself everyday,’” Watson says. “[That’s] a very isolated experience of learning music, but I’ve seen both from the JAM program and then also my own personal life in old-time music, music is just so much more than that. It’s so much more than practicing by yourself; it’s community.”

An accomplished musician — both solo and with her band, Locust Honey — Watson moved to Nashville nearly three years ago. Despite the lore of Music City, Watson was surprised to find that there were no organized instructional programs or gathering places for musicians.

“It’s the most welcoming community I have probably ever found, musically, so you know, everybody hangs out together and has dinner parties and plays music together, and it’s all very supportive. So it occurred to me, at some point, that there was the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago and there’s the St.Louis Folk School and there’s Jalopy [Theatre and School of Music] in Brooklyn … that makes [the music] accessible to the rest of the town, and we didn’t really have that here,” she explains. “It seems like there’s this moment happening in Nashville right now — all these people have moved to town that are world-class, absolutely top-of-the-game players of traditional country music, and there’s nowhere that’s really teaching it. There are obviously private lessons galore, but there’s nowhere that’s teaching music as a community-building art.”

Watson started brainstorming with friends about what an organization or program that filled this gap in Nashville might look like. She used her experience in the JAM program as a jumping-off point and harkened back to her childhood for more inspiration.

“I grew up going to a community theater in Cape Cod in Massachusetts, when I was a kid, and I remember the feeling of having a place outside of my own house that felt like home,” she explains. “It was a really creative place where all you did was problem solve creatively all day. It was just so many different creative minds coming together.”

Watson’s vision for bringing such a place to Nashville has been realized with the Nashville School of Traditional Country Music. Still in its seed stage, the school has about a dozen instructors and is offering a spate of winter classes for children, including fiddle, ukulele, and guitar instruction.

“Because Nashville is growing at the rate that it’s growing, there are a lot of buildings going up and there’s a lot of concrete and just like money, money, money happening, and I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew the reason that this town has the name that it has,” Watson says. “It’s because all of this music from the American countryside came through here. You know, ‘country’ is a weird word because people have very different ideas of what that means, but it’s Music City. All of this vernacular music happened out of human need in rural America and then it came through here and people got to hear it because there was a wider access from here, but it seems like that’s being forgotten. And, having lived in places where that is still celebrated, I see how important it is and I just want to make sure that this particular city doesn’t forget kind of where it came from.”

While the Nashville School is beginning with children’s programming, Watson aims to eventually pivot to gatherings that adults and professional musicians in Nashville can attend, too. The person-to-person connection is what drew Watson to traditional music in the first place. “I went to the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and then, after college, I was living in New York playing gigs just by myself, playing a lot of old blues, pre-war blues stuff, and some of my own stuff, and I just sort of got really lonely,” Watson says.

She was working at an Irish pub and bar for supplemental income when an Irish jam session on Monday nights caught her attention.

“It had been going on for 15 years and, every Monday night, I would have these guys come in and just sit in a circle and play traditional Irish music,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘This is what I’m missing. This is what I’m longing for: connecting with people.’”

Watson dove headfirst into the aspect of music as community.

“I [didn’t] want to just get up on a stage; that’s not what music is about,” she says. “So I fell in love with this idea of the music of a people and, through that session, I ended up finding out about old-time music and I started going to festivals, and it was really a cure for my loneliness because I realized that there are all these gatherings that happen all throughout the year of people who just get together, cook together, play music, dance. I felt like music was integral to life, as opposed to being something that you had to try to do in your spare time or make happen somehow.”

Watson hopes to cultivate this feeling for others with the Nashville School of Traditional Country Music, whose mission lies in passing on and preserving the original sounds of American country music. Under that umbrella, she says, is generating a wider support for artists and their music.

“Because art is not valued as a necessity in America, we all struggle really hard just to even put [our music] out and have it be heard or seen,” explains Watson. “I want to make sure that all of our teachers get paid an actual living wage to teach. I don’t think music is extracurricular; I think it’s necessary for the human soul, and I want to make sure that the people who have spent thousands of hours learning how to play it, and then are kind enough to pass it along, are also taken care of.”

Photo credit: judy dean on Foter.com / CC BY

David Bragger and Susan Platz, ‘Devil in Georgia’

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Welcome to a brand new, bi-weekly feature: Tunesday Tuesday. Think of this as the instrumental answer to our Song of the Week. Pickers are found at the center of bluegrass, old-time, blues — really all roots music forms — and their virtuosity is what attracts so many of us to the music. With Tunesday, we want to celebrate that virtuosity by highlighting incredible tunes and the nimble-fingered instrumentalists who play them.

We’ve suggested retiring overplayed songs before and the response was, well … mixed. Here’s a new idea: Let’s en-state a one in/one out policy for songs we’ve maybe had enough of. For example: Perhaps we should bench everyone’s favorite disco country, fiddlin’ trick song — “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” — and replace it with David Bragger and Susan Platz’s simple, stripped-down, old-time fiddle duet, “Devil in Georgia,” off their new album, King’s Lament, out February 2.

Bragger and Platz sourced the reel-like tune from Kentucky farmer/fiddler/mandolinist, Dock Roberts, who first recorded it in 1929. Here, it’s interpreted in the age-old style of two fiddles, alone and set apart, freewheeling and dancing in and out of harmony and counterpoint. Sure, there’s no paranormal fiddle battle with the devil incarnate, but you won’t miss that. It’s not flashy, it’s not gimmicky, it’s not set at a breakneck tempo. Instead, it’s a warm, subtle earworm with the breathiness, openness, and ease of old-time. Seems like a fair trade, yes?

Bonus points: If it reminds you of another tune, say, “Temperance Reel,” that’s because it is. It’s sometimes also known as “Teetotaler’s Reel,” “Kingsport,” “Old Tiddley-Toe,” “Rocky Road to Denver,” and, perhaps the best option of the bunch, “Where’s My Other Foot?” Ah, old-time with their alternate tune names!

Eschewing Authenticity: A Conversation with Willie Watson

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When Willie Watson steps out alone on stage in Allston, Massachusetts, he looks every bit as though he’s wandered out of another time. His wide-brimmed hat, plain button-down shirt, and twangy banter all pin him to a different era. Beginning to play the banjo, Watson overlays his preferred clawhammer style with warbling vibrato, all of which add to the picture — as if he’d been among the musicians who traipsed to Bristol, Tennessee, to participate in Ralph Peer’s recording sessions in 1927. Comments about authenticity have long dogged him, but Watson prefers to avoid such talk. He’s not attempting to recreate so much as create, and he just so happens to be using the past for inspiration.

The former Old Crow Medicine Show member is touring behind his sophomore solo album, Folksinger Vol. 2, which culls an array of folk songs — for example “Gallows Pole,” “The Cuckoo Bird,” and “John Henry.” To gain his footing, Watson looked to Lead Belly, Reverend Gary Davis, and more as models. For him, they’re players who created such magic through their respective voices and instruments that he jealously sought ways to participate in that feeling many decades later. He recorded Folksinger Vol. 2 with David Rawlings on analog tape, nodding to a sepia-colored sound. But for those who consider what he does in purist terms, Watson eschews such notions. This isn’t about a musician chasing the past or attempting to preserve it; the latest batch of songs on his new album are his attempt to get closer to a style of music he loves and hopes others might happen to enjoy.

Do you ever get the feeling you should’ve been born in a different time period?

No, not at all. I think there’s a time and place for all this kind of music. If it were a different time, then I wouldn’t have all these other influences that inform what I do and the way that I do it. I think I’m in just the right time. Sometimes this modern world can wear me down a little bit, but for the most part, it’s all good.

Your catalogue seems like a tip of the hat to the array of music Harry Smith once collected for the Anthology of American Folk Music. Why was it important for you to draw on so many different styles?

I didn’t really think of it as important; it’s just the stuff that I love. I don’t know that any of this is important. A lot of people seem to focus on that, like, “Oh, this is so historic and it’s preserving history.” The songs that I put on there, they’re just because I love all this old music and I want to do it all. I listen to a Neil Young record with Crazy Horse and I’m thinking, “These guys are having a really, really good time.” That sounds like something I wanna do. I really don’t wanna go out and play football with the neighbors, and I really don’t wanna go to track practice, and I certainly don’t want to study math, but I really want to be on that stage with Neil Young. It’s the same with this old music. You listen to Lead Belly singing with the Golden Gate Quartet and you think, “That’s some fun stuff.” It changes over the years, as you grow and you mature; your influences and things change. But I don’t know if it’s important. If it’s important to somebody else, then great. It’s important to me … hey, I don’t even know why it’s important to me.

Well something clicks. It’s a spark.

Yeah.

You’ve mentioned that you’re not trying to be a purist. To some extent, that mindset has run through and still runs through bluegrass and other folk traditions. Why is it important for you to avoid that restriction?

Just because it is a restriction, and I don’t like any of those restrictions. I can only do things in the way I know how. I never really liked bluegrass music; I never listened to bluegrass. It was okay, but it’s certainly not what captured my attention. What got my attention was old-time string band music and people like Lead Belly. Bluegrass, to me, seemed uptight. It seemed like those guys were wearing suits, and they all sounded exactly the same. It’s this very formal and very standardized thing that never attracted me at all. I couldn’t have cared less about banjo until I discovered what clawhammer banjo was, and what old-time string music sounded like. Since then, I’ve learned to appreciate bluegrass, and I’ve learned to love bluegrass, and I’ve learned the differences between certain people and certain players, but that came over time.

Interesting that you mention the formality of bluegrass because I know, in the ‘60s, listeners saw a more commercialized version of folk with the Kingston Trio and others.

Yeah, again that ‘60s scene, too, is sort of the same story as bluegrass.

It wasn’t what you were looking for.

No, definitely not. I was listening to some radio show, and this guy played something on the station … this guy was singing a song about all that, about how Lead Belly could kick the Kingston Trio’s ass, and how they were not the real thing. I’m going to recognize if something’s not the real thing pretty quick. I look for it. You’re not going to fool me. Kingston Trio, again, I was never into those guys. It was white bread and way too stale. Those guys didn’t have any soul.

“Authentic” can be such a loaded term, when you’re talking about preserving past traditions. What does it mean to you?

Just being honest. I mean authenticity isn’t necessarily … I don’t consider it being historically accurate. You take a mountain man, and he’s lived on the mountain his whole life — his parents did and he’s barely ever left — and he’s an authentic mountain man. That’s one side of it. I come from central New York state, but I’m honest. I love what I do and I love this music and I don’t have to live that life or live that culture just to play the music. No, I’m not a mountain man, and I didn’t grow up in North Carolina, but that’s not necessary to be able to feel it and genuinely be able to … I don’t want to say “interpret,” but yeah interpret it in your own way.

It is, right? Because these songs have been passed down and reimagined, they almost belong more to the interpreters than the originators.

Well, my versions belong to me, so far as I don’t feel I have ownership or possess them, but they’re my versions. I sing “Samson and Delilah” enough, and I sing “Keep It Clean” out on the road, and I put my sound on it. I feel like that’s my song. I don’t consider myself among the ranks of Reverend Gary Davis or anything, but I’m definitely one of the guys.

When I was watching your show last week, it reminded me of a tent revival, which was interesting to see in 2017 in Boston, that you’re able to reproduce that kind of community in a big metropolis.

That seems to be a big part of each night. It’s not like I set out in the beginning to do that. When I set out to do the solo stuff, I just set out to go back to work, really. I used to play in Old Crow and, all of a sudden, I didn’t, and I found myself with my hands up in the air saying, “What the fuck do I do now?” I can’t just sit around, I’ve gotta get out there and keep my name out there, and at least let people know that I’m here. Little did I know that nobody really knew who the fuck I was anyway.

Really?

The hardcore Old Crow fans and the earlier fans [did]. It just happened that my music seemed to really be affecting some people. I think the song choices we put on the first record — which were good choices and they really spoke to people — they reached people the same way that they do me and so, all of a sudden, I find that every night, just about every night, me and the audience have this real connection. That’s a real powerful thing.

It is. I had a ball doing the call and response for “Stewball” during your show. Speaking of that song, it has a similar strumming pattern to “Cuckoo Bird.” Really, so much of the old-time music was more rhythmic than melodic, so how are you trying to distinguish that for modern day audiences?

So many songs are the same song. The list is endless.

Right, and the variations on those songs.

“Cuckoo” and “Stewball” are definitely related. They’re practically the same tune. “Cuckoo” has a modal banjo tuning, so it makes it sound darker and mean sounding. “Stewball” is a major scale. “Cuckoo” has these few little notes that make it in the minor world, as opposed to major. I just do these songs in the way that I can. I’m not the guitar player that Reverend Gary Davis is, so I’ve gotta figure out my own way. It’s really just as simple as that.

Sometimes I’ll think I really want to do this Blind Willie Johnson song, but he’s playing some complicated slide guitar parts and, if I want to do that, I’m going to have to sit and get really good at playing slide guitar and that’s going to take me years. So how do I do it? Well, maybe I can play a Blind Willie Johnson song on the banjo … that’s no different than Bob Dylan taking a song he wrote 30 years ago and completely changing the tempo and putting a band behind it, and changing the song around completely. There’s nothing really new in that. It’s just basically the definition of interpretation.

Photo credit: Meredith Munn

STREAM: Laura Baird, ‘I Wish I Were a Sparrow’

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Artist: Laura Baird
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
Album: I Wish I Were a Sparrow
Release Date: October 20, 2017
Label: Ba Da Bing
In Their Words: “After spending over a decade learning and exploring the banjo, I wanted to document where that journey had taken me. I had been lucky enough to spend some time with some of the best old-time musicians and traditional ballad singers at the Swannanoa Gathering in North Carolina and Allegheny Echoes in West Virginia, and I’ll never forget the joyful feeling of staying up all night playing and listening as one big musical family. I took these experiences and turned them inward, recording alone in an old farmhouse in rural New Jersey. I think of this record as my ode to the banjo and to the old mountain songs.” — Laura Baird

Photo credit: Allen Crawford

From Appalachia with Love: A Conversation with Sam Gleaves and Tyler Hughes

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Sam Gleaves and Tyler Hughes are very proud to have grown up in southwestern Virginia, a swathe of Appalachia that birthed the Carter Family, the Stanley Brothers, Jim & Jesse McReynolds, and so many more icons of roots music. Released in June, their self-titled duo album is a collection of old-time, traditional country, and mountain music that, on the surface, feels like an album exhumed from a time capsule of southwest Virginian music from bygone eras. But, when you begin to unpack Sam and Tyler’s perspective — yes, they’re native Virginians steeped in their homeland’s musical heritage, but they’re also young and openly gay — you begin to fully appreciate the subtlety, the thoughtful care, and the love that they’ve put into curating and recording this set of tunes.

Speaking to Sam and Tyler was a welcome reminder that, in a time when phrases like, “middle America,” “silent majority,” and “forgotten middle class,” have become daily buzzwords and when the divisions between urban and rural, rich and poor, right and left are seemingly at their greatest, it’s more important than ever that we have these difficult conversations, that we listen to each other, and that we love one another.

So much of what you guys are doing on the record is simply putting a spotlight on perceptions of and presuppositions about people who come from central Appalachia in general. On “Stockyard Hill,” an original song and the first track on the album, you sing, “I’m proud of the way that I came up …” How did your families inspire this song through watching you grow up in the music and grow up to be who you are, living truly and openly?

Sam Gleaves: I wrote this song based on the words and experiences of my great aunt, Corrine Thompson — my grandmother’s sister. She’s an amazing woman, a real matriarch, a really loving, good presence in my life. I feel like she’s a great example of a really open-minded, intelligent, progressive person from southwest Virginia. She’s a great example of someone who defies a lot of stereotypes about people from central Appalachia. I’ve only ever known her to be loving and accepting of all people. She would think that a lot of the political discourse — this really hateful, divided situation that we have now — is so contrary to who she is as a person, the culture that she comes from, and the culture that I come from.

Tyler Hughes: As far as family influence, I grew up in an average, working/middle-class family. They are real people. I think that’s what influences my music and specifically the music that we put together on this album the most. I come from a strong union family: My grandpa was a union coal miner for over 30 years. My family is much like Sam’s in being very accepting and loving. There’s not really a judgmental side to them. They have a great appreciation for the place we come from, but they also have a wider view of the world beyond just what happens in southwest Virginia. I think that’s what influences me most and what makes me most proud to say that I am from southwest Virginia. Probably the number one thing I want to tell people when I meet them is that I’m from southwest Virginia, because people do have such misconceptions, but there are people out there that don’t fit into these exaggerated beliefs and misconceptions.

SG: I came out when I was in high school and I had a really close community of friends around me between my classmates in school, people that I played music with in the old-time music community, and also my family. When I came out to my family, they all knew other gay people. It wasn’t an unfamiliar or unexpected thing, when I came out. [Laughs] I think my parents gave me permission to be who I am. Not only as a gay man, but as an artist and a human being. A lot of people don’t get that permission from their parents. They never discouraged me from singing professionally, and they never told me my writing wasn’t important, but just the opposite. They wanted me to write and they wanted me to travel, to sing, to get to know musicians.

I definitely have had to think a lot about how I talk about these issues because, when I recorded my first album, Ain’t We Brothers, everyone that interviewed me asked me what it was like to be a gay man living in Kentucky and growing up in southwest Virginia. In rural places all across America, LGBTQ people need a lot of support. There are a lot of needs that aren’t met, in terms of communities not being able to come together and celebrate our identities, and also work for equal rights. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I’ve been very fortunate to have a good, welcoming experience being openly gay, in the old-time community, but also just living in Virginia and Kentucky.

Following on that then … I wonder if either of you considered that this project could potentially be that very permission for a listener? There are a lot of LGBTQ individuals in these spheres — Appalachia, the South, roots music — that aren’t out. Did you think this could be validation for other LGBTQ artists to be out and to lay claim to this music in a more assured way?

TH: I think about that quite often, even just for regular performance, even though we don’t stand on stage and advertise that we are gay musicians — that’s not exactly the shtick of our show. It’s nothing that we try to hide, but it’s not the main focus. I try to keep in mind that, to someone who might be struggling with their identity, it could be a very powerful moment for them to see someone they can relate to doing something that maybe society or someone around them is telling them they can’t do, or that something is only reserved for certain people. Any time that I’m playing music, whether it be working on this record or just being on stage, I think about that. Because I had a similar experience. When I first met other gay musicians, it really empowered me to think about how I could also live an open and full kind of life and still do the thing that I love the most.

As diversity becomes more of a hot-button topic in roots music communities, a lot of bystanders seem to assume that, because more LGBTQ individuals are becoming visible in bluegrass and old-time, we’re coming from the outside in or that we’re “infiltrators” and appropriators of the music. But here you both are, born and bred in this area of Virginia and Appalachia that’s such a hotbed for this music. How do you approach people with this perspective?

SG: I think it’s important that you mentioned that. We love the place that we’re from, but I think we have to acknowledge that there’s a lot of work to be done. I don’t know how else to say it. I see this especially in the bluegrass community, which we’re sort of on the fringes of. We also play old-time country music, which is just a blend of all of these things, so we end up in these environments where genre doesn’t keep us from playing in a wide, wide range of places. We want to represent our communities and the Appalachian region well, but we also have to acknowledge that there are people in these genres of music that do feel that it’s not right for gay people to be out in their performances — like just singing a love song about a same-sex relationship. I’ve never had any negative backlash from anyone at a concert or from any producer or from any person on stage that I’ve ever worked with. I’ve never had anyone say openly, “You shouldn’t sing that song, or you shouldn’t tell that about yourself.” I’ve only ever had like one or two people ever walk out of one of my shows that I knew was because of what I was singing.

I’ve had a lot of conversations about these topics in the past several years and that’s certainly not always the case. Why do you think that is?

TH: I don’t know … luck? [Laughs] No, every audience is different and every situation is different, but the number one thing that I think about, when I first walk out on stage or when I first get to a venue or when I go out to meet an audience after a show, is that, first and foremost, I’m a musician and I’m a performer. I think more about that than anything else. If somebody didn’t want to listen to my music anymore because they suddenly found out that I was gay, it wouldn’t hurt me any more or any less than if they found out that I didn’t like bananas so they didn’t want to listen to my music anymore. To me, it’s their qualm and, even if I feel that it’s a silly thing to let get in the way, they may not. I try to understand that — I would have to disagree with them — but I would at least try to understand their position. I think about the fact that I’m presenting myself more on the level of musician and a performer first. And also just being a person. Being gay is only a tiny sliver of my identity, when it comes to all of the things that make up who I am.

SG: You know, in country music, there’s a tradition and an expectation that performers be friendly, that they engage with audiences. I think that is a big reason why people don’t come up to us and say, in person, “I was upset that you all mentioned the women’s movement before you sang ‘Bread and Roses,” or “I was upset that you wished everyone a happy Pride month.” I think it’s because we really do try to be friendly and welcoming to people. Not that other people who experience discrimination and hatefulness are not being friendly — I’m not saying that. To some degree, what you put out can be what you receive back. We do try to be a part of that tradition of being good to people.

That makes me think of “When We Love” from the record. Tyler, what was it like to write this song and to sing this song while you are faced with this loud, mainstream, idea that a lot of people out there don’t love who you are as a person? How do you espouse this kind of love, when it’s not what everyone else is also putting out into the universe?

TH: I really don’t find it that difficult. That’s not to say that I’m not angry with the situation we find ourselves in or that I don’t get frustrated when there are setbacks. I don’t really know where I align myself religiously on most days, but I do think that, no matter who you’re worshipping or what kind of life mantra you’re following, we are all human and we’re all sharing in the human experience. Part of that, to me, is just loving one another. I still live in a small coal mining town, and I would say that at least a good 70 percent of my friends probably voted for the president. They may not agree with everything he says, but they feel that they are supporters of his. I know them as people and I know they’re not judging me — even if deep down in their hearts they may not really agree with LGBT rights or equality for all people. That’s not a big enough issue for me to let friendships or relationships go. Some of my best friends in the world align themselves with conservative values and conservative movements. It just doesn’t bother me, because I’d want them to look at me in the same way. At the end of the day, we still all need each other. These are differences I can put aside for most people, as long as they put them aside for me.

Photo credit: Susi Lawson

WATCH: Rachel Baiman, ‘I Could’ve Been Your Lover Too’

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Rachel Baiman
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Song: “I Could’ve Been Your Lover Too”
Album: Shame
Release Date: June 2, 2017
Label: Free Dirt

In Their Words: “This song is about lust, pure and simple. The feeling of wanting someone you can’t have, and knowing that it’s wrong to feel the way you do. It’s perhaps one of the most powerful feelings in the world and can make you do some crazy things. The lyrics of the chorus are ‘A man in love ain’t mine for the taking, but if he comes my way, Lord, I’m … gonna shake him.’ Although we never discussed the subject matter of the songs, in the studio, Andrew Marlin (who produced the album) kept changing the words of this song to ‘That chicken’s ripe for the pluckin … and if he comes my way, Lord, I’m … gonna …’ which resulted in a lot of takes being interrupted by fits of laughter.” — Rachel Baiman

Photo credit: Gina R. Binkley