Tag: Punch Brothers

For Guitarist Jordan Tice, “Perfect” Recordings Are Never the Goal

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Bluegrass. Newgrass. Chambergrass. Jamgrass. Thrashgrass. So many sub-genres, so little time. For guitarist Jordan Tice – solo artist and longtime member of Nashville-based Hawktail – there’s no time at all, because labels don’t define art and they don’t factor into his creative process.

“I don’t necessarily think about it,” he says. “I mostly do what I feel like doing and incorporate sounds that feel relevant, that I have a personal connection to and an excitement to explore, and the ability to replicate and share. I’d like to think that personality can unite disparate things if the heart is pure.”

Tice weaves a thread of musical connectivity on his new release, Badlettsville. The EP features two covers, Bob Dylan’s “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” and Randy Newman’s “Dayton, Ohio – 1903,” as well as the originals “Mean Old World” and the instrumental title track. The four are staples of his live shows, but only now have they been committed to recordings.

“They’re all fundamental to my show and are requested as much as my other songs, but they didn’t have a place on either the last record or the next one, so they belonged in Badlettsville,” he says. “They fit together sonically as well. As soon as we got those four things down, I was like, ‘This is something.’”

Ever busy, Tice isn’t slowing down in 2025, although the emphasis is shifting somewhat. After two hectic years, Hawktail is dialing back a bit on gigging and Tice is devoting time to another solo album. “Hawktail has an EP in the can that will hopefully get out sometime soon,” he says. “We’re doing a few festival gigs but taking a much lighter year. I’m doing some dates in support of [Badlettsville], in addition to festivals with Hawktail. But I’m trying to take a little bit of a step back to focus on making this new record.”

Your website bio begins, “Jordan Tice is a musical seeker of the most dedicated sort.” What does the term “musical seeker” mean to you?

Jordan Tice: I’m always exploring my own interests and creativity, and also exploring the music that I do play, the roots of that. I want to understand myself and everything I do, and everything that came before me, better.

Part of the art of music is communicating to anybody, not particularly musicians. The more you understand about music in general, the more you understand what works and what doesn’t. The more you do it, get out there, and play and make records, the more you understand how things register and land with people – different types of thoughts and sentiments, things like that. Music is the art of sculpting sound within a given amount of time for someone who’s giving you their ear.

How has that manifested itself over the course of your solo albums and Hawktail?

With everything you do, there’s something you want to repeat about it, but there’s also things you want to do differently. I mostly grew up writing instrumental music and Hawktail is entirely instrumental. Long about 2015 or 2016, I started writing songs like crazy, just out of nowhere, and I realized I needed an outlet for that. But the instrumental stuff is still near and dear. Keeping a foot in both doors allows me to scratch this itch and this love for both of these things I do.

Did moving to Nashville have something to do with your songwriting?

I think so. I can’t provide concrete evidence, but the coincidence is too great – the fact that I started writing songs right when I moved to Nashville. So the answer is yes, but I couldn’t tell you exactly how. I also started hanging out with a lot more songwriters. My community was more instrumental-based in Boston and New York, where I lived before, so there’s definitely the influence of some new friends I made upon moving down here.

You’ve been playing guitar since you were 12. Does it sometimes feel the same today as it did then?

Yeah. I actually started taking lessons again, from a classical guitar teacher, just because I have some time off the road this winter. There’s things I wanted to improve and I decided I needed some help. I’m always trying to improve, always listening to things, and even in the music I love, there’s still the same sense of mystery of, “How did they do that?” The breadth of everything you’re aware of and assimilated expands, but at the same time it’s the same old [thing].

What led you to classical training?

We’re not doing classical music per se, I should clarify. But a lot of the things I was hoping to work on were technical-based, and classical guitar has such a codified, rigorous, technical study and a pedagogy related to technique in a way that other genres don’t necessarily have.

I’ve studied a lot of facets of music, but I’m not formally trained by any stretch. I took some jazz guitar lessons here and there, and I studied composition, but in terms of guitar I’ve never had formal technical training. I felt I was up against some roadblocks and walls with my playing and decided I needed the help of an expert, a teacher. This [teacher] came strongly recommended from my friend Chris Eldridge from Punch Brothers, and it’s been rewarding to expand the technical facility side of things.

You played a Preston Thompson Brazilian Rosewood and your main guitar, a Collings, on Badlettsville. Tell us about those guitars.

I was at Laurie Lewis’s house in Berkeley with Brittany [Haas] from Hawktail. We were in town playing and we were helping her move some furniture. She had this Preston Thompson in the corner that she was trying to sell and I was interested. It’s from 2016. She hand-selected the cut of Brazilian rosewood, a beautiful piece of wood, and had them make it with this wood that she had sourced. I absolutely love it. It’s going to be my main touring guitar for my solo stuff coming up.

The Collings is a D1A mahogany dreadnought that I bought in 2014. It’s perfectly balanced. It almost sounds like an old guitar. The overtones are exactly right. I have a relationship with Collings, but I bought this one at The Music Emporium in Boston because I liked it so much. It’s been my main axe for the last ten years. It’s what I play in Hawktail and what I recorded my last solo record on.

I brought both of those guitars to the studio, in addition to this new Yamaha FG Indian rosewood guitar that I’ve been working with them for the last couple years to promote and develop. They’re great guitars, and it was a fun process getting to work with them and help get the word out. They’re really fantastic.

How do your picking styles with Hawktail, on your solo work, and with other artists come together to create your style?

I write a lot of music, so my identity as a writer maybe puts those things in the same world. So I would say that it’s filtered through the same mind, and also the conceit is that it’s my music. Hawktail is collaborative, obviously, but it’s part of the same musical world.

I’ve always looked up to Norman Blake and Doc Watson. Norman Blake does a lot of different things, but you don’t really think about it. He plays fingerstyle, flatpicking, traditional music, writes his own music, but it all makes sense in the context of his world. I’ve always admired that as an archetype for a folk musician. He’s himself first. He’s not a historian. He picks and chooses things that work in his musical world, as opposed to something outside of himself. He’s an artist that happens to combine all these folk music techniques and sources into something that’s his own.

You’re thought of primarily as an acoustic player, but you also play electric guitar. Which ones?

I grew up playing rock and roll, in addition to bluegrass and things like that. My first music was the Allman Brothers. I got together with this guy in my church and he showed me the twin lead thing. We’d learn the two leads and then we’d switch. That music is near and dear to me – Jimi Hendrix, the Allman Brothers. So I’ve always played a little electric too. I think it’s going to work its way into the next album.

My main electric is an American Standard Telecaster that I swapped out some of the pickups and modified a little bit. I put a higher-output Seymour Duncan pickup in the neck position and I made it a four-way switch, so you have the humbucker setting in addition to the normal three settings.

Also I have a Yamaha Revstar Professional that they just sent that I’ve been having fun with as well.

What do acoustic and electric guitar each bring out in your playing?

An electric allows you the opportunity to fill up a room with less effort. You can saturate a room with sounds with less notes, with less physical effort. An acoustic is a parlor instrument. It’s meant to be played in a small room with your head right up against it. As soon as you stop making noises with your hands, the noise goes away. With electric, a lot of times less is much more, and with acoustic, a medium amount is a medium amount.

With this new record, I’m going to do it with drums, so I’ve been messing around with pickups on electrics and … I don’t want to say effects, but ways to expand the breadth of the sound, get a little bit of that electric expanse, but still treating it like it’s an acoustic. That’s been a fun and interesting pursuit.

How does collaborating with other musicians push you musically?

I have a little home studio setup, but I love going to the studio. I love there being, “This is the time that we’re making the record. What happens, happens.” I think that urgency puts you into a superpower mode. Also the camaraderie. There is truly no substitute for live chemistry. AI can try all it wants, but it will never get it. The communication and sound that happens … there’s so much subconscious and physical factors that are changing constantly. You can’t substitute it.

I love the element of not trying to perfect things, of a record being a snapshot in time. Treating it that way helps you bring your A-game because it’s, “I need to be able to do this at any given time.” It makes you focus on delivering a performance, crossing all your T’s and dotting your I’s, so that it’s all there when it’s time to push “play,” or when it’s time to play with other people, or time to get in front of people.

What snapshot does Badlettsville represent?

The tunes weren’t created or arranged with the idea that they’d be on a record, so in some ways it’s like a snapshot of the live show I’ve been doing over the last couple of years. It’s really organic in that regard.

All these arrangements came about from playing live, specifically with Paul Kowert and Patrick M’Gonigle. Patrick’s been playing a lot of shows with me, and Paul is my BFF partner in crime in Hawktail and beyond, so it represents my relationship with those two guys in a big way.

Also my interests, the fact that there’s cover songs by Randy Newman and Bob Dylan. If I had to pick my two favorite songwriters, it would be them. It’s a snapshot in time of the manner in which I’m playing and thinking about music and the people I’m doing it with right now.

Photo Credit: Cameron Knowler

One To Watch: With Connecticut Origins, On the Trail Find Their Way in Bluegrass

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

While Boston may claim its title as the bluegrass capital of the Northeast, acoustic quartet On the Trail is living proof that the Connecticut bluegrass scene is not only alive and well, it is thriving. Composed of four impeccable musicians who each attended Western Connecticut State University to earn vastly varying degrees, On the Trail weaves together an uncommon collection of backgrounds to deliver a unique sound.

Drawing inspiration from opera to the Beatles to jazz, these four achieve a sonic richness that will leave listeners edified and enamored. True to their band’s name, they trailblaze full force with the release of their first full-length album, Where Do We Go from Here.

BGS recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Tom Polizzi (mandolin, guitar, vocals), Matt Curley (bass, vocals), Charlie Widmer (guitar, vocals), and Austin Scelzo (fiddle, vocals) to discuss all things On the Trail.

Congrats on the new album! Will you tell me a little bit about how you all ended up in a bluegrass band together?

Tom Polizzi: Well for me, I was a really, really serious jazz guitar player for a number of years – it was my whole life. Then around the end of high school I started to get a little more disillusioned with what jazz was about and where that could take me in life. I knew about Chris Thile, though weirdly I didn’t know about mandolin’s association with bluegrass, but I knew I was really interested in mandolin, the tone and potential of the instrument. I got a little $400 scholarship from the music department at my high school and bought myself a mandolin as a graduation gift for myself.

I learned to play walking around a camp that I worked at that summer with the thing on my back, playing while I walked anywhere around the camp. I remember standing somewhere at that camp with the mandolin and someone asked, “Do you want to play a bluegrass tune?” I was like, “A what?” And then they taught me “Cherokee Shuffle.” From there, I just started learning fiddle tunes and while in college I pretty much gave up on jazz aspirations. Even though I got my scholarship to school with jazz, I just kind of started playing Doc Watson and bluegrass tunes and the rest is history.

Austin Scelzo: My background was in classical violin. I learned to read [music] growing up in school orchestra and then went on to study it in college. But in the summers of my later high school years, I got sent to those iconic fiddle camps that get so many people in the door and that opened up my whole world to non-classical playing, which eventually propelled me into spending my summers in college exploring different music camps and festivals. My freshman year of college I went to Grey Fox, my first bluegrass festival. And throughout college, I started playing in a bluegrass country group locally. I would play classical music in school systems and then spend summers floating from festival to festival, living out of my car and really digging into the bluegrass stuff, which over time grew to become my primary musical expressive tool. So between the classical/arranging mindset and my investment in traditional bluegrass, that’s kind of where my musical tastes lend themselves to this group.

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Charlie Widmer: Austin and I met when I was 19 years old – he’s actually the one that married my wife and me; he got ordained for it. We’ve known each other for such a long time. I had auditioned on a whim for a musical at 16. Didn’t know I could sing. They were doing Grease and I had a crush on a girl at the time. I went into that room and I met my now-wife, that same day at the audition, and I ended up getting the lead role. And then that kind of spiraled into more musical theater and trying to get into music school.

When Austin and I met, I was in school for classical singing and we were both interns at a church in Ridgefield [Connecticut], where we were both paid section leaders in the choir. After about a year of working together, somehow we ended up sitting next to each other. You know, we were in an a cappella group together, lots of different choirs, all these classes, but we just hadn’t connected. But as soon as we sat next to each other it was clear that we were getting along.

And so, fast forward five years, I was in the middle of a gig with my hip-hop soul band. I’d been doing stuff as a front man for a hip-hop soul group and it was awesome. I’m drenched in sweat, and Austin and I are talking in the break and I say to him, “Hey, man, I’ve been listening to Chris Thile and his group, Punch Brothers, and they’re sick, man. If that’s, like, a possibility in bluegrass, I’d love to do something where I’m playing guitar – let me know if a gig pops up.” We kind of agreed that he needed another year to finish school and get settled into being a teacher and everything. And a year later, almost to the day, he said, “I got us something if you want to drive.” It was perfect timing. My other group was falling apart. When this started, it just kept working and going. I don’t think any of us ever thought at that point, six years later we’d be here with an album.

Matt Curley: I was the last member to join On the Trail and I’ve been in the group for about three-and-a-half, four years now. I started playing guitar when I was in middle school and in early high school, I was playing in punk rock bands. When I got to high school, I really wanted to play in the jazz band playing guitar, but the guitarist was very good, So I thought, “I’ll play bass. It’s easy, it’s four strings.” Then the band director points to the upright bass. I remember thinking, “No, no, not that one!” So during that rehearsal it was the first time I ever played upright, and I eventually came back to the bass.

I’m the kind of guy who’s switched instruments several times. I switched to percussion, joining the drum line. I ended up marching drum corps for a few years, which led me to majoring in percussion at WestConn and then to get my master’s degree in Tennessee, right outside of Nashville, in classical percussion performance. For a while I thought I was going to be in professional orchestras, as I was training and practicing to take auditions for triangles and cymbals. Glad I didn’t do that. Then I started teaching band down there in Tennessee and I ended up moving back up here. I was teaching and Austin was the orchestra teacher in the same school, so we started jamming. Up to this point, I knew nothing about bluegrass. Even living in Nashville for a while, I knew nothing about bluegrass. Then I just happened to own a bass, so that led to me showing up to an On the Trail rehearsal. Here we are, three and a half years later.

CW: We also had a banjo player with us for the first three years, Chet, who was from Mississippi and originally grew up in Nashville. Chet lent a hand on some of the songs, even on the album. He got a doctoral offer to go down to Florida and get his doctorate in philosophy. He’s a genius, really such a smart guy – we always hope that Chet will join us again. We just always have a lot of fun together. I think that can be rare in groups.

Absolutely. Y’all have amazing chemistry and it’s evident. You recently released the band’s first full length album, Where Do We Go from Here. What are you each proudest of on the album?

TP: I think the fact that I actually wrote songs with lyrics and they made it somewhere. After I finished school with an audio engineering degree, I did our whole first EP – all of the editing, mixing, mastering – myself. And with this record, I felt like that kind of stuff culminated in a different way, where I knew how to be on the other side of the booth, so to speak, in a way that was productive. I think I was able to help us keep the sessions thoughtful and productive throughout, from a perspective of final product.

I also love that I’ve got a couple of very sad or introspective songs on the album, one of which my fiancée didn’t know I had written. We were on the phone with her mom and she was talking about “Help Me” on the album. She said something along the lines of, “This is so devastating. Tom, you really wrote something beautiful.”  And Claire goes, “You wrote that devastating song about heartbreak and loss?!” I had all these things written years ago after I broke up with my ex-girlfriend. Claire had never heard it because I don’t sing it – Charlie sings it on the record and we don’t play it at shows very much. She didn’t know I was capable of even having such sad words in my brain.

AS: I love that this album captures three or four original songs from each of us. My three songs all have a really different feel than anything else I’ve put out and they all mean something really powerful to me. They each capture a timestamp of a part of my life. The title track, “Where Do We Go from Here,” was one of the last songs we recorded, and one of the last songs that we even talked about putting together. It almost didn’t make the album at all. But we’re so proud of that track. That’s the song I’m by far the most pleased with. I also really like the way that “Trouble in My Soul” captured a different side of my voice that I’ve never captured on a record. It’s a lot more gritty, which is kind of cool, and then “Can’t Get You Out of My Mind” has some really nice moments too.

CW: For me, honestly I think the whole album is the pride point. When we did our first record, we had no clue what we were doing. I was really green to bluegrass in so many ways. Those first couple years were trial by fire, where I had no clue about any artists or vernacular and I was constantly terrified of every gig and jam. It felt like everyone was speaking a language. This record feels very full circle – we’d been talking about it forever. It really captures who On the Trail is. As songwriters, I think all of us have gained some confidence, though so much of that has come from just performing these pieces and getting positive feedback from the audience the last six years. When we started we didn’t know we had something, but our friends and family and even strangers told us to keep going. It just kept fueling us, you know? So, yeah, when I think about the proudest thing, it’s that we have this collection.

Given the diversity of musical backgrounds you each come from, where do you feel like your aligned priorities are? Do you have through lines about what you all prioritize and value musically?

TP: I would say one of the biggest factors that held us together is just that joy of making music. One of our biggest frictions, probably, is that diversity of background – even now, in the background of this interview, I’m just wrapping up my marketing job, my day gig, Matt’s driving home from teaching school, and Charlie and Austin both freelance more and do more things that are full-time music. A lot of it has been about finding that balance that brings us all joy and keeps us believing in what we’re doing. But you know, on our toughest days, what drives us ahead is that we love making music together, we love making music on our own and sharing it with one another.

CW: Yeah, as any musician knows, we’re always just chasing that incredible moment. We all share a true appreciation of music, and we are all deeply aligned regarding what exciting music feels like. When something’s hot, we all can agree immediately – it’s not even so much of a discussion.

AS:  We’re all also pretty consistent with the vocal harmony, regardless of the song. No matter the arrangement, we value strong vocal harmony and strong vocal presence. So a big part of this group is understanding harmony to a point where we can get really good three-part and other types of arrangements.

TP: For probably the first year and a half, I didn’t sing a note in the band. Vocals have become such a big thing. I learned from these guys, who are and always will be better singers than I, but they coaxed it out of me.

MC: Same for me. I’ve never taken a voice lesson or anything and now I’m singing four or five songs. It’s incredible.

For our final question – you’re our One to Watch, but who are you watching right now? Any creatives, musical artists, or otherwise that are inspiring you right now? Could even be a TV show or a Tik Tok creator.

TP: I’m sure they’ve been featured here a lot, but someone who’s been talked about a lot in our band is AJ Lee & Blue Summit. We love them. We’ve played with them. We’re inspired by them. Lots of our friends just around here, you know, keep us moving. The Ruta Beggars are doing fantastic things. Cahaba Roots, High Horse – all of those guys have so much going on. And if you’re looking for a good TV show to watch, watch Shrinking, because it’ll just rip your heart out. Oh, and one sleeper album – if you love all the music that we’ve talked about, this is an album I’ve heard no one else talk about. Maybe I’m just not talking to the right people, but it’s an album called Passages by Ethan Sherman. It’s got Wes Corbett on the banjo, and Thomas Cassell plays amazing mandolin on that album. I found it very inspiring.

CW: For me, a constant, big influence in songwriting and sticking to your vision and making it work has been Theo Katzman, who’s one of the guys from Vulfpeck. His last record especially resonated incredibly. All of his records have, but that one was during the process of making my album, as well as On the Trail’s album, and it empowered just feeling brave enough to do what we felt was right for the music. He was a big inspiration.

Allen Stone is also a huge inspiration for me as a singer and as a songwriter and he just dropped a new project. I always come back to Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers. Nickel Creek’s last album, I thought, was stunningly brilliant and beautiful.

MC: It’s really a great time for bluegrass, country, and folk music, even in the Northeast, not just down south [or] in Nashville. There are a lot of groups that are getting really big here. I mean, we have a Connecticut group, North County Band, that is doing some good things. Another group that I played with this summer, Raquel and the Wildflowers, from the Poughkeepsie area, are also doing great things. Shout out to the Rock Hearts, the other group Austin fiddles with. They’re great too.

AS: I mean, I would definitely have to reiterate the bands that Tom mentioned. We’re so steeped in the New England scene, we play so many shows, and my best friends are in so many of these bands. We’ve been friends with the Ruta Beggars forever. I mean, they were my earliest experience seeing young people play bluegrass music at Grey Fox. I just love those guys – they are so hardworking. They just got signed this year and are doing awesome stuff.

I go to IBMA every year with the Rock Hearts and I see some of the upcoming bands, and every once in a while one will really strike me, and the one that struck me this year was Never Come Down. I got to hang out with them in Colorado and I was hanging with the Stillhouse Junkies, who have a new player from New England that just joined them this year, so they’re a quartet now. They’re doing some really cool new stuff. Another band is Della Mae, and they’ve been around for a really long time, but they’re still producing amazing new songs. I mean, some of the songwriting that comes out of the group has absolutely made me weep, multiple times. Some of the songs are unrecorded—they’re still building a repertoire that’s really meaningful and really powerful.

I think we always have an eye on Twisted Pine, too, who just came out with a new album, and they have all these really fun videos, too. They’re doing something that I think we hope to do as well, which is kind of keep a foot in the bluegrass door, but also step into spaces that bluegrass music hasn’t been to. I think our music is suited for that, to get it outside of the traditional festival circuit, the traditional concert series, and preserve the tradition we’re so grateful for while also being innovative.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the artist.

Travis Book Happy Hour: Chris Eldridge

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Chris Eldridge and I met when I stepped off of an elevator with my bass at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s convention in 2004. The Infamous Stringdusters were forming in Nashville at the time and they needed a bass player for the jam that night and, it turned out, for the band in general. We spent the first two years of that band traveling and making music together and Chris is still one of my favorite musicians and humans. A member of Punch Brothers and Mighty Poplar, he’s also made a couple great records with guitarist Julian Lage and plays in a duo with his wife Kristen Andreassen. Our conversation started when he arrived at my house and didn’t end until he pulled out of the driveway the next day, but we’ve captured some of the best parts here for the podcast.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • AMAZON • MP3

This episode was recorded live at 185 King St in Brevard, NC on November 12, 2024

Photo Credit: Laura E Partain

Editor’s Note: The Travis Book Happy Hour is hosted by Travis Book of the GRAMMY Award-winning band, The Infamous Stringdusters. The show’s focus is musical collaboration and conversation around matters of being. The podcast includes highlights from Travis’s interviews and music from each live show recorded in Brevard, North Carolina.

The Travis Book Happy Hour is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and The Bluegrass Situation as part of the BGS Podcast Network. You can find the Travis Book Happy Hour on Instagram and Facebook and online at thetravisbookhappyhour.com.

Chris Thile Dives Into New Audible Variety Show, ‘Energy Curfew Music Hour’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Punch Brothers’ new audio-based variety show, The Energy Curfew Music Hour, takes listeners to a fictitious, not-so-distant future where, as the show materials describe, “diminishing resources and extreme weather have ushered in a worldwide effort to ration electricity. America has instituted a weekly ‘energy curfew’ where the power grid goes down completely and we all live electricity-free for 24 hours. The Energy Curfew Music Hour hits the airwaves an hour before the lights go out while the nation tunes in and turns off together before the Dark Day.”

The Audible exclusive, eight-episode series was recorded in front of a live audience at the Minetta Lane Theatre in New York in early 2024 and features a cavalcade of all-star performances backed by Punch Brothers, who serve as co-hosts and house band.

BGS executive director Amy Reitnouer Jacobs spoke to Punch Brothers’ frontman Chris Thile about the show and what’s next for the band.

What a good way to start my week, chatting with you! I’d love to start by hearing how The Energy Curfew Music Hour started.

Chris Thile: [My wife, Claire Coffee] and I came up with the idea a long time ago… originally it was like a show within the show for Live From Here.

We always thought maybe two-thirds of the way in the show, we would all of a sudden flash-forward to a future that was like this. And we’d gather round one microphone, because I’ve always loved the sounds of those old variety shows and their campy-ness.
And then of course, practically speaking, there’s not much of a platform for acoustic music out there. That was the thing I missed the most on Live From Here: I was obliged to at least try to concern that show with the width and breadth of the music being made in the world, regardless of aesthetic.

Norah Jones joins Punch Brothers on stage at Energy Curfew Music Hour at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City.

There’s something in what you mentioned about old-time radio shows with one microphone. When you think about when those were popular, it was the Dust Bowl, the Depression, a time that was really hard for most people. And the radio brought everyone together. So, in an age where we are so splintered as a society, I find [Energy Curfew Music Hour] very comforting. But there are elements of dark humor throughout too… am I reading too much into it?

Oh, no you’re right on it. There’s a certain aspect we always talked about, trying to strike the balance between shameless optimism and at the same time as I think it is really staring the monster [of reality] in the face. The extent to which we’ve imagined life has changed in a very short amount of time is huge. None of us have pseudonyms. We’re all [playing ourselves], so it can’t be that far in the future.

The extent to which we’ve imagined that life has changed is dramatic and potentially traumatic. And there’s some gallows humor throughout that. But despite taking place in this “dystopian future,” there’s nothing actually futuristic about the show. We wanted it to feel like a little bit of escapism, but a little bit real too.

Yeah, we know that change happens very fast in our world today. It’s not that hard to put yourself in those shoes when you’re listening.

That’s good to hear. Claire and the band and I keep talking about the increased emphasis on collaboration, compared with Live From Here, which was more just “Here are some acts that we love…” But those acts coexisting or working with me or the band … those were few and far between on that show, whereas on this show, it’s every episode. That’s also something of an analogy for the kind of thing we have to do just as human beings, not just as musicians, to effect the kind of change that we’re all hoping to see [in the world].

Gaby Moreno guests with Punch Brothers during the Energy Curfew Music Hour.

Can you talk a little more about working with Claire? I know you guys have worked together on Attention!, [a new narrative live show for mandolin and orchestra], which you’re taking more places now. What is your process like being married and collaborating?

I think I realized [during the pandemic] how shamelessly I had used Claire’s incredible taste as a sounding board for just about everything I’d done since we met. So I hired her to produce the solo record I made, Lay Songs. Then I hired her for Attention! and she helped me tell the story of how I met Carrie Fisher on a rooftop bar in San Diego in my mid-twenties, in what ended up being a really silly story, but also a very foundational experience for me in many ways.

When you’re telling a story like that – really when you’re working on any art – you get so inside of the thing, it’s very difficult to know how it’s coming across or if any of the stuff that’s so clear to you is landing with any other human. Claire is one of the very few people in my life who has absolutely no problem telling me when I’m full of shit, and it can be intense, but it invariably yields a better result.

So, when a couple people had asked me whether I wanted to do something like Live From Here again, I thought about it for a little while and remembered Claire’s and my idea for a show within a show. I asked Claire whether she would be interested in trying to make that a whole show and then fairly soon after that, the idea of Punch being the house band and co-hosts with me materialized and it was really off to the races.

It all felt very comfortable and natural. Claire is not a musician by trade; she’s an actor and writer and now director, and she’s always been the person that all her writer friends go to for their first round of notes. She has an extraordinary ability to strip away and identify what’s in between the writer and their audience – of what’s getting in the way. We’ve benefited a lot from that.

Sylvan Esso perform during a taping for Energy Curfew Music Hour episode 5 at Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre in New York City.

You’ve got some incredible names in this first season as guests – Norah Jones, Lake Street Dive, Jon Batiste, Kacey Musgraves, and James Taylor, just to name a few. Who brought the most surprising acoustic performance to the show?

Sylvan Esso came in and were really excited to not do what they normally do. To be there with them using Punch Brothers, wielding us like a laptop and basically muting and unmuting us, but all in analog! I think that was a moment of proof-of-concept for me. When we did that, I found myself cackling with surprise and delight. I hadn’t suspected that it would crack the show open to a whole other level.

You’re premiering some new Punch Brothers songs on the series too. Is there something else cooking for the band? What’s ahead now that you’ve added Brittany Haas to the lineup?

The band feels very, very new. We’re in uncharted territory and it’s so interesting. Four-fifths of the band is the same. You change one component and it feels completely new in the writing room, in the rehearsal room, and on stage. At this stage in the band’s career, that’s really interesting. So yes, there are new Punch Brothers songs and they’re being written specifically for Energy Curfew now, but of course, with an eye towards whatever’s coming next.

Season One of The Energy Curfew Music Hour is out now via Audible and is available to stream for free for Amazon Prime members. Discover more about the show here.

Photo Credit: All photos by Avery Brunkus, courtesy of Audible.

Artist of the Month: Gillian Welch & David Rawlings

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Gillian Welch & David Rawlings are ubiquitous in American roots music. The life and musical partners have spent nearly 30 years defining and redefining what it means to be prolific bluegrass, old-time, and Americana inhabiters and masters. Now, with the release of Woodland, their first studio album in four years, it seems they’re entering a new phase of their illustrious and storied careers – one where their pace and positioning have changed, somewhat. Or perhaps, solidified.

Since 2020’s All the Good Times, Welch & Rawlings have not exactly receded into hermitage. They appear regularly as track features on others’ recordings, they released dozens and dozens and dozens of demos on several Boots No. 2: The Lost Songs albums, they perform regularly and make appearances on all star lineups, at ceremonies, and on tribute shows in and outside of Nashville. Yet, as with many artists responding to a post-COVID world, their artistry seems to be taking an intentional shift toward slowing down, acting with renewed purpose, and focusing on storytelling, canon-crafting, and legacy-building. But certainly not for ambition’s sake alone.

It makes perfect sense, then, that Woodland chooses the pair’s East Nashville studio as its focal point, the fertile soil from which this verdant collection of songs has been cultivated and through which they’ve been channeled. It’s a thread easily traceable across all of their work together, and separately as solo artists: To ground their music in reality and in their own everyday. For a pair of musicians who have inspired countless emulators and acolytes, it’s remarkable to watch them both remain committed to truth and simplicity, and to authenticity not as social currency, but as demonstration of selfhood and agency.

Welch & Rawlings are legends, roots superstars. At this point in their careers, we are viewing their brand identity’s realtime shift toward longevity, striding confidently into their nascent roles as Americana elders. Who could possibly be better poised for this new era? Woodland, as nearly all of Welch & Rawlings’ outings over the past decade, seems to say these two global stars would really, truly be okay if the music industry shuttered once more or if they never stepped foot onto a stage in a 3,000-seat theatre again. These are creators in this business for themselves – though never self-serving. The tableaus and dioramas on Woodland, iconoclastic and archetypical Welch & Rawlings, are never small, but they are often minute. Nuanced. Detailed.

This is Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, after all. Surrounded throughout their long-running heyday by roots-infused, vest-wearing celebrities and bands like Mumford & Sons, Punch Brothers, Old Crow Medicine Show, and many more, they’ve time and time again refused to allow their own art to be enveloped or eclipsed by Americana-as-costume, or to devolve into millennial “shabby chic” as an aesthetic, or to revert to Pinterest-style, cottagecore performances of wholesome, American values to make a living. They even rose above the reflexive pigeon-holing following the massive success of O Brother, Where Art Thou?, using the soundtrack and tour’s enormous gravity for a slingshot assist into the stratosphere, rather than finding themselves in a limiting though profitable niche.

They started their careers as many folk, bluegrass, and old-time singers do – putting on “poverty drag” to signal their commitment to these songs and sounds, slumming it and road dogging while building their business bit by bit, paying their dues, worshipping at the feet of bluegrass and Americana forebears. Over time, Welch & Rawlings shifted from being simply performers of these aesthetics to being residents and artisans within these traditions. Apprentices become masters, pupils become professors. And, now, they themselves are the forebears building standards and models for new, oncoming generations just as Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, and so many more did for them.

Woodland isn’t exactly a turning point, but Gillian Welch & David Rawlings are certainly entering a new era. While so much of what we know and love about this duo remains remarkably consistent across their music and releases over time (even going all the way back to Revival in 1996), this project reveals that only now, 30-some years since they began their journey in music, could Welch & Rawlings actually become the authentic Americana stalwarts that they’ve always strived to be. They’ve been dressing for the job they want the whole time, gradually becoming one with the characters that first stepped on stage those decades ago. Their catalog is a gradient, a line graph of growing and becoming, rising above theater and performance to a place of intimate self expression and respectful, expert mastery. However forest-for-the-trees it feels to state, these are no longer just the traditions they love, these are their traditions.

Below, enjoy our Essential Gillian Welch & David Rawlings Playlist. And, if you want more, you can return to 2017, when Welch was our Artist of the Month at the time of her Boots No. 1: The Official Revival Bootleg release – and  revisit our Essentials Playlist from that time. Later in September, we’ll have an exclusive AOTM interview feature with both Gillian and Dave, so stay tuned as we celebrate Woodland all month long.

Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

Brittany Haas Joins Punch Brothers Just in Time for the Energy Curfew

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

I first encountered Brittany Haas when I was 14 years old, attending the Mark O’Connor Fiddle Camp outside of Nashville. Brittany was only a few years older than me, but she was miles ahead of me musically and professionally, already gigging with some of the best traditional musicians around. I bought a copy of her self-titled CD and learned every single track on it. When I would meet other fiddle players my age, we would often bond over this recording and its shared influence on our playing.

Haas went on to join Boston-based band Crooked Still, one of the most influential string bands of the last 20 years. In the small community of acoustic music makers and lovers, Crooked Still was the kind of iconic band – much like Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers – that created a hundred baby bands in its wake, each inspired by the reinvention of traditional song in modern and exciting ways. There was even a period of time when seemingly all of the young women involved in the folk and bluegrass scene (myself included) began dressing like Haas, wearing messy buns in their hair and colorful leggings under short boho dresses.

Following her time with Crooked Still, Haas went on to play with Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings, in the house band on Live From Here, and with her own genre-bending quartet, Hawktail – among many other projects. Unlike other powerhouse women instrumentalists like Missy Raines, Molly Tuttle, and Sierra Hull, who have carved out career paths by leading their own bands, Haas has stayed largely under the radar to the wider public, working primarily as a collaborator or band member.

As my own musical interests have grown and changed, I have found myself feeling guilty at times for not putting my focus on being an improvisational instrumentalist, fearing that I’m taking a too traditionally female path as a songwriter, and reenforcing gender expectations. But as Brittany has kicked through ceiling after ceiling as an instrumentalist, I’ve thought “Hey, it’s OK, Brittany is so good that nobody will ever doubt that a woman can do it!” For years, Haas has been a pinnacle, an example for the rest of us female instrumentalists. So, you can imagine the thrill that I felt when it was announced that Haas would be the newest member of Punch Brothers, a band that is representative of the highest caliber instrumental prowess in today’s acoustic music scene.

Haas’ first gigs with the band have been as part of The Energy Curfew Music Hour, a live radio-style show created by Claire Coffee and Chris Thile in collaboration with Audible. The show features Punch Brothers along with special guests like Jason Isbell, Gaby Moreno, and Sylvan Esso among others.

BGS had the opportunity to ask Brittany Haas a few questions about her career and her hopes for joining the band in the lead up to a handful of Energy Curfew Music Hour shows in New York City this month at Minetta Lane Theater.

Chris Thile & Punch Brothers perform at Energy Curfew Music Hour with Jason Isbell in December. Photo by Rebecca J Michelson.

You’ve had a lot of experience working with various members of Punch Brothers in different bands and formats over the years, what about the particular aesthetic and ambition of Punch Brothers made you want to accept the gig?

I’ve been a fan of the band for a long time – I guess as long as they’ve been a band. So the idea of joining was very exciting. I think any fan would tell you that there’s something about the band – the expansive nature of their approach to writing and arranging music – that is really unique. They’re making music that doesn’t sound like anything else. Getting to jump into something that’s been evolving and expanding into and beyond itself for so long is really cool. And as an instrumentalist in this “new acoustic” musical universe, it’s basically a dream gig, joining four incredibly talented and smart people and making music through which I know I will grow as an artist.

You’re known as a fiddle player that’s rooted in old-time traditions, but also improvisationally virtuosic. Do you feel like your background in old-time will bring a different flavor to the band moving forward?

Old-time is a genre in which I feel a lot of joy and comfort, so it’s always nice when that can be utilized in service of a tune or a song. Lately, in playing with my sister and with Hawktail, I also feel that my voice is strongly Celtic and Scandinavian – basically a combination of the genres I grew up around at fiddle camp and got obsessed with. I think that stuff will come out naturally no matter what new music we’re creating and perhaps some of the music will be written in that direction.

When stepping into a role that has been created and maintained by one specific fiddle player for so many years (Gabe Witcher), how much freedom do you have to remake the parts for the older material in your own voice?

I think this is true in many areas of life– the more deeply you know something, the more you can put yourself into it. Once you know intimately how it goes, you can be freer and more artful and playful with it while staying true to its nature. So that’ll be a journey for me with the back catalog material. Also, sometimes the parts he played were just the best thing that could happen in that musical moment. Some of the parts are more written than textural/improvised, so in those cases I will need to stay true to what he played. And I love his playing! Playing like Gabe is fun for me, because it stretches me in a different way than I normally go.

What made you want to wear a suit for this gig?

I’d never worn a suit before joining the band, so I saw it as an opportunity to try that. I always thought that the women I saw wearing pantsuits looked awesome. Plus it’s great having so many pockets for mic and in-ear packs. The other part of my thought process was, this is a band and I want to integrate into it, so it makes sense to wear the uniform. No one said I had to wear a suit. I’m sure it would be cool with everyone if one of them wanted to start wearing dresses, so it’d be cool for me to do that too, and maybe I will at some point.

You’ve made incredible records in a lot of different fiddle genres at this point, is there any uncharted territory that you hope to explore in the future?

The depths of my own mind! I’m partially kidding; I do want to write more music. But there is always uncharted territory! Darol Anger is an inspiration in this – he never stops practicing and devising new ideas for getting around the fiddle. I hope to keep learning tunes from different musical traditions. Lately I’ve enjoyed learning conjunto music and I’d like to spend more time with Eastern European folk music, getting comfortable in different time signatures, etc.

What is a record that has been inspiring you lately?

James Taylor’s album Hourglass from 1997. We learned a few of those songs to play with him on the show and I fell in love with them. Also Alasdair Fraser’s album Dawn Dance, which I returned to recently after first being obsessed with it about 25 years ago. It is still as lovely as I remembered.

What is your process for preparing to play with so many different guest artists on the show – how do you approach constructing fiddle parts?

Mostly listening. Generally, when we get together with the guest artists that’s when most of the decision making about parts happens. So my job is just to show up being familiar with the music. Sometimes there are more specific string-oriented parts to play.

You’ve been a part of the Live From Here house band in the past, how does the vision and format for the Energy Curfew shows differ from that show?

The format feels similar, although there is more of an air of collaboration, because there is a bit more time for creation and also the same core band for every show. And, the premise of the show centers on the idea of it being purely acoustic music, so that’s mostly what it is with some inventive ways around that rule when needed.

Photos courtesy of Audible. Lead image by Avery Brunkus; inset image by Rebecca J Michelson. 

On ‘Quiet Flame,’ Caitlin Canty Finds Truth and Hope in the Middle

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Caitlin Canty is in the middle — in the middle of moving houses (behind her when we connected on Zoom this spring is a Jenga tower of bankers boxes) and in the middle of prepping an album release, which we’re in the middle of talking about when she isn’t in the middle of pushing a pair of overeager dogs from her lap (“These dogs!”), all of which is taking place in the middle of her toddler’s nap.

The moving, the music, and the motherhood are taking place in the middle of her life (Canty turned forty-one in January) and the middle of her career: Quiet Flame, her latest record, is her fourth.

Oceans of ink have been spilled on beginnings and endings, on best new artists, and lifetime achievements. We rarely think about the middle, write about it, or sing about it. But Caitlin Canty does.

Quiet Flame is a dispatch from — and a celebration of — the middle; it is a testament to the in-between, to the precious spaces between day and night, birth and death, here and home. It is also a rallying cry, a call not to run from middle moments, but to revel in them. “Breakneck boy goes speeding by / In a hell-bent race to some finish line,” Canty sings on the album’s opening track, “Blue Sky Moon.” “I ain’t going with him… Gonna take my time in the middle of the road.”

This is a new message for Canty, one that asks the listener not to “get up before the road pulls you under,” as Canty sang on 2015’s Reckless Skyline, but to accept the road as it is, accept that it may pull us under, and enjoy the ride. “If the pandemic and [2020 Nashville] tornado taught me anything,” Canty says, “It’s all the things I thought I could control are out of my control. The natural world is beautiful. It’s also terrifying,” she exclaims with a half laugh, “it can just crush you in a second.” (That tornado missed her house by thirty feet.)

This new vision, however, hasn’t diminished Canty’s optimism. With a heightened sense of all that is lost and lose-able, Canty offers not less hope, but more. “Let it roll, let it ride / Let your sweet heart open wide,” she sings on “Pull the Moon.”

“I let go of a lot of things I thought were my fault, or my responsibility, things I thought I could do everything about, or take care of, or succeed at,” she explains. “And what I found was an ability to be happy in devastating moments in time. Even when it gets dark and troubled, to find a way not to ignore that — to address it — but to stay buoyant.”

It is this clear-sighted courage — what amounts to Canty’s profound musical and lyrical authenticity — that not only sets Canty apart, but draws so many of the acoustic world’s greatest artists into her corner. “Caitlin just has such a magnificent view of the world,” Grammy Award-winning guitarist and Quiet Flame producer Chris Eldridge says. “It’s so strong and true and clear and honest. You just believe it.”

Among those drawn to Canty’s vision — to her clarity, honesty, believability — are some of the greatest artists in contemporary music, making the Quiet Flame band a bona-fide acoustic supergroup: on banjo, mandolin, and harmony vocals you have singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz (another Grammy winner); on bass, Paul Kowert of Punch Brothers and Hawktail (yet another Grammy winner); and on fiddle, Brittany Haas (also of Hawktail and the newest member of Punch Brothers), who is widely considered the greatest fiddler of her generation.

“Every artist has a vision,” Kowert says, “But I specifically would say I believe Caitlin. I believe her about what she’s seeing in the songs.”

“There’s such conviction,” Haas adds. “It’s so clearly from the heart.”

For Jarosz, Canty’s super-distinction is the totality of her authenticity and an unusual ability for Canty to “sound like herself” in every domain of her artistry. “Her ability to be herself within her songs has always been very obvious to me, before I even knew her,” Jarosz says. “My favorite singers sound like themselves when they’re talking — their singing voice is a genuine extension of them, their personality. Tim O’Brien has that, Gillian Welch has that, Caitlin has that. It’s almost like Caitlin’s voice is so true —it’s like it’s not an option for her to be anyone but herself. And the songs are also that way.”

The songs of Quiet Flame mark not only a musical achievement, but an achievement of spirit. “It takes a very self-assured, fully realized human being to be able to make a record that’s this exposed,” Jarosz continues. “The record takes its time. It takes a very mature musician — and person — to have the courage to let these songs unfold the way they do.”

It is no small feat that Canty manages to make this deliberately slow journey, this taking our time in the middle of the road, so arresting. Such is a testament, of course, to the music as music; to Canty’s voice (“Caitlin, in her way, is as good a singer as exists,” Eldridge says); to her effortless melodic sensibility; to what Haas calls the unusual “variety and diversity of what [her] songs are like, what they allow and make room for texturally.” It is also a testament to the production vision of Eldridge, who Canty calls the perfect “co-pilot,” and to his attention to the “big picture.”

Each member of Canty’s band offers a tour de force on their instruments. In Canty’s words, Kowert is a “Multi-instrumentalist on his instrument… essential, the strongest foundation… my favorite bass player I’ve ever played with”; Haas is a “Flamethrower! Her fiddle is an electric guitar! It’s grit and mournfulness — not sad, defiant; not sorrowful, defiant”; Jarosz is “Just insanely good — insanely good singer, insanely beautiful instrumentalist — the most solid partner; she held it down!”

In turn, the band is quick to praise the rare musical freedom Canty affords them. “She makes so much space for other musicians in her music,” Haas says. “She’s really good at being like, ‘I hired you to be you,’ instead of, ‘I want you to do this very specific thing that involves only playing these four notes.’”

The result? The band gets to see their true selves in the work — even their best selves. “‘Odds of Getting Even’ is one of my favorite performances I’ve ever played,” Kowert remarks. “My playing on that song is really exemplary of something that I am uniquely able to do, which is bowing the bass that way, driving the rhythm with the bow.” Multi-instrumentalist Noam Pikelny (still another Grammy winner), who is featured on “I Don’t Think of You,” says much the same: “[It’s] easily one of my favorite examples of my playing captured on record.”

Most of all, however, the success of Quiet Flame’s slow burn is owed to the trust Canty engenders in her audience. It is a trust natural to Canty, but made all the more affecting by her decision, for the first time in her career, to make an entirely acoustic record. “Intimacy is just kind of baked into the nature of acoustic music,” Eldridge explains. “You just intuitively understand that what you’re hearing is what can happen in somebody’s living room. So when you commit to doing a string band record, you’re committing to a certain kind of intimacy. It casts the artist, and the songs, in a different light—in a light that asks the listener to lean in a little bit more, asks the listener to be a part of a moment.”

It is with the listener leaning in close, grounded in the moment with Quiet Flame, that Canty offers a vision both audacious and convincing, that she shares the unmistakable and unshakeable sense that all will be well; that even in the face of so many black holes, we too will be okay; that we, like Canty, will arrive “by the highway home” – a lyric after Robert Frost.

“They all told me love could feel this way,” she sings. “I never thought I would see the day.”

It is the peculiar gift of Caitlin Canty that when she says love can feel “this way” – or even that “nothing’s gone, only changed” – one can’t help but think she’s right.

LISTEN: APPLE • SPOTIFY • STITCHER • AMAZON • MP3

(See our full post on Caitlin Canty’s episode of Basic Folk here.) 

Photo Credit: David McClister

Fiddles in February: Punch Brothers, Watchhouse, and More BGS Videos

Posted on by Editor

At the Bluegrass Situation, we are fond of the fiddle! Sometimes its nuance will get overshadowed by the acoustic guitar or the banjo, but in our hearts, the fiddle always holds its own. Can it rouse a crowd of country fans in a dancehall in Texas? Yes. Can it make you weep when you hear it on an Alison Krauss record? Every time. Will we ever get tired of hearing “Orange Blossom Special”? Can’t even imagine that.

Throughout the month of February, we’re shining a light on some of our favorite fiddle content, like this excerpt from Mark O’Connor’s upcoming memoir, this Mixtape from Turnpike Troubadours’ Kyle Nix, or this interview with Becky Buller. It also seems like the right time for a (double) stop by our BGS archive. Here are five of our favorite clips along with a brand new BGS playlist at the end.

Jason Carter, “King of the Hill”

One of our newest videos finds Jason Carter and friends jamming in the Station Inn dressing room, just before an album release party at Americanafest. Joining him on this Bruce Hornsby song are Cody Kilby (guitar), Ashby Frank (mandolin), Cory Walker (banjo), and Alan Bartram (bass). Carter told BGS, “This song is for anyone who’s ever had a dead-end job or had a boss like a prison warden.”

Che Apalache, “Red Rocking Chair”

Joe Troop of Che Apalache brings an international flair to the fiddle, balancing his North Carolina upbringing with a South American history lesson. How does he bridge the gap? Find out in our BGS interview from 2018.

Watchhouse, “Hey Adam”

On their very first trip to Los Angeles in 2014, Watchhouse (then Mandolin Orange) shared a special performance of “Hey Adam.” The poignant narrative of the song, written by Andrew Marlin, is beautifully underscored by the elegant harmony and gentle fiddle of Emily Frantz. In 2019, we caught up with the duo for this BGS Cover Story.

Punch Brothers, “My Oh My / Boll Weevil”

You can count on Punch Brothers to consistently deliver something cool, even if you can never predict what they’re going to do next. Back in 2015, BGS filmed the guys outside of the Fonda Theater in Hollywood, California. A few years later, in 2018, we interviewed all five members individually for our Artist of the Month series. During our visit, fiddle player Gabe Witcher shared his childhood memories of meeting a very young Chris Thile at Follows Camp Bluegrass Festival and even playing with Bill Monroe at Strawberry Bluegrass Festival.

Sara and Sean Watkins, “You and Me”

The Bluegrass Situation emerged from the West Coast acoustic scene, so we have to give props here to California natives Sara Watkins and Sean Watkins. They’ve been friends of BGS from the beginning and we’re always delighted to follow along on their creative journeys. That includes the time we ushered them into a tiny gondola in Colorado, resulting in this wonderful 2014 live video of “You and Me.” We’re thrilled about the new Nickel Creek record coming in April, which follows Watkins Family Hour’s terrific collection (and conversation) last fall.

Top 10 Sitch Sessions of the Past 10 Years

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Since the beginning, BGS has sought to showcase roots music at every level and to preserve the moments throughout its ever-developing history that make this music so special. One of the simplest ways we’ve been able to do just that has been through our Sitch Sessions — working with new and old friends, up-and-coming artists, and legendary performers, filming musical moments in small, intimate spaces, among expansive, breathtaking landscapes, and just about everywhere in between. But always aiming to capture the communion of these shared moments.

In honor of our 10th year, we’ve gathered 10 of our best sessions — viral videos and fan favorites — from the past decade. We hope you’ll enjoy this trip down memory lane!

Greensky Bluegrass – “Burn Them”

Our most popular video of all time, this Telluride, Colorado session with Greensky Bluegrass is an undeniable favorite, and we just had to include it first.

Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris – “The Traveling Kind”

What more could you ask for than two old friends and legends of country music reminiscing on travels and songs passed and yet to come, in an intimate space like this? “We’re members of an elite group because we’re still around, we’re still traveling,” Emmylou Harris jokes. To which Rodney Crowell adds with a laugh, “We traveled so far, it became a song.” The flowers were even specifically chosen and arranged “to represent a celestial great-beyond and provide a welcoming otherworldly quality … a resting place for the traveling kind.” Another heartwarming touch for an unforgettable moment.

Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan – “Some Tyrant” 

In the summer of 2014, during the Telluride Bluegrass Festival we had the distinct pleasure of capturing Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan’s perfectly bucolic version of “Some Tyrant” among the aspens. While out on this jaunt into the woods, we also caught a performance of the loveliest ode to summertime from Kristin Andreassen, joined by Aoife and Sarah.

Rhiannon Giddens – “Mal Hombre”

Rhiannon Giddens once again proves that she can sing just about anything she wants to — and really well — with this gorgeously painful and moving version of “Mal Hombre.”

Tim O’Brien – “You Were on My Mind”

Is this our favorite Sitch Session of all time? Probably. Do we dream of having the good fortune of running into Tim O’Brien playing the banjo on a dusty road outside of Telluride like the truck driver in this video? Definitely.

Enjoy one of our most popular Sitch Sessions of all time, featuring O’Brien’s pure, unfiltered magic in a solo performance of an original, modern classic.

Gregory Alan Isakov – “Saint Valentine”

Being lucky in love is great work, if you can find it. But, for the rest of us, it’s a hard row to hoe. For this 2017 Sitch Session at the York Manor in our home base of Los Angeles, Gregory Alan Isakov teamed up with the Ghost Orchestra to perform “Saint Valentine.”

The Earls of Leicester – “The Train That Carried My Girl From Town”

In this rollicking session, the Earls of Leicester gather round some Ear Trumpet Labs mics to bring their traditional flair to a modern audience, and they all seem to be having a helluva time!

Sara and Sean Watkins – “You and Me”

For this Telluride session, Sara and Sean Watkins toted their fiddle and guitar up the mountain to give us a performance of “You and Me” from a gondola flying high above the canyon.

Punch Brothers – “My Oh My / Boll Weevil”

The Punch Brothers — along with Dawes, The Lone Bellow, and Gregory Alan Isakov — headlined the 2015 LA Bluegrass Situation festival at the Greek Theatre (a party all on its own), and in anticipation, the group shared a performance of “My Oh My” into “Boll Weevil” from on top of the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

Caitlin Canty feat. Noam Pikelny – “I Want To Be With You Always”

We’ll send you off with this delicate moment. Released on Valentine’s Day, Caitlin Canty and Noam Pikelny offered their tender acoustic rendition of Lefty Frizzell’s 1951 country classic love song, “I Want to Be With You Always.”

Dive into 8 of our favorite underrated Sitch Sessions here.

Seeking Bluegrass in LA, Ed Helms & Amy Reitnouer Jacobs Made a Scene With BGS

Posted on by Editor

To commemorate the 10th birthday of the Bluegrass Situation, co-founders Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs are taking it all the way back to the beginning. In the first installment of an ongoing interview series, the enthusiastic bluegrass fans reveal how they first met, their shared vision for a modern aesthetic, and the meaning behind the unexpected (yet appropriate) name.

Amy: As we’re looking back on 10 years of The Bluegrass Situation, it occurred to me that you and I have never really reflected on how all of this started and how this thing kind of built up. So I wanted to get our own take on it and… reminisce, stroll down memory lane a bit, and think about it.

Ed: We need a little oral history for the archives! [laughs] And for our own… ’cause it’s exciting to reminisce a little bit.

Amy: I’ll kick it off and ask, what was your intro to bluegrass? Why do you care about this music to begin with and what drew you into it?

Ed: The earliest I can trace back would be growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. My mom’s from Nashville, so we would take road trips from Atlanta to Nashville all the time. In addition to that, I spent many, many summers at a summer camp in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. That’s another road trip that’s about a three or four-hour drive from Atlanta.

So, on those drives, we’re always pulling off at truck stops and whatever, and we would pick up cassette tapes at the checkout counter. And my dad, who grew up in Alabama, was always a big fan of opera and classical music. He would grab these string band tapes for some reason. And I started listening to these very generic, early string band tapes when I was 8 years old in the car. They didn’t resonate with me as artists, but the music connected with me somehow. And I associated it with those places — Nashville and the North Carolina mountains.

Then as I got older, I was one of those kids that kind of thought everybody was fake, you know, like Holden Caulfield. Just distressed by all the artificiality of our world and of the people around me and like, “Oh, everyone at school, everything is so performative. Like, who’s real? Who’s the real deal?” And that kind of drew me, musically, into older and older music. I got obsessed with authenticity and where are the roots of things. … I think it scratched some itch that I had for authenticity-seeking, and probably allowed me to feel superior to all my classmates in junior high.

Then when I could actually get to a record store, I remember the very first bluegrass album that I bought was the Bluegrass Album Band. I didn’t know who J.D. Crowe and Vassar Clements and Jerry Douglas were, but all I knew was that on the cover of this CD at Turtle’s Records & Tapes in Atlanta was guys holding banjos and guitars and mandolins. So I bought that album and to this day it’s one of my favorite albums. I’ve never asked Jerry Douglas about this, I should, but it felt like the intention of those albums was to kind of just be the ultimate catalog of, you know…

Amy: I mean, it’s called the Bluegrass Album Band.

Ed: Right. They just called themselves the most generic name. And it’s almost like they were just trying to create a library of excellent bluegrass artists playing the canon or something. Or maybe they were really ahead of their time with like meta irony and they were just like, “We’re going to call ourselves the Bluegrass Album Band, ’cause it’s hilarious.”

And of course Tony Rice’s guitar playing on that – I was very much into guitar at the time, I later picked up a banjo – Tony’s guitar playing was so magical to me. I could not understand how human hands could play what he was doing. I would just pour over these solos. I remember the solo to “Your Love Is Like a Flower,” it just was like, how the hell is that being played? I could not wrap my head around it. And I listened to it a million times, and I didn’t have the technology to slow it down, so I couldn’t do that.

Amy: That album and that band really represent a generational shift. It’s not newgrass. It’s playing the canon, but with this mix of the new guard and some folks with some real cred from the second generation.

Ed: You’re right. It isn’t an old sound, what they’re doing. It’s a new sound at that time, because no one was doing Tony Rice licks before Tony Rice. But the harmonies are timeless and the structure of the songs is very traditional. That album means so much to me and I listen to it to this day and I’m still blown away! I actually can play that solo from “Love Is Like a Flower” now, but only at about half speed. And it’s one of the proudest things, when I finally found – someone had transcribed it in tablature, and I was like, “This is string theory explained. This is like if you had Carl Sagan sit you down and explain the mysteries of the universe.” I was like, “Holy shit, I got it! The holy grail!”

Amy: Yeah. To me, it’s still magic. ‘Cause I am not someone who can play an instrument, at least very well, so when I first heard bluegrass, I was just like, “How does that happen? How do you even get the notes from your brain to your fingers and do it so well, and in a way that I’ve just never heard before?” It still kind of blows me away.

Ed: Can I ask you the same question? Where did you first connect to bluegrass music?

Amy: I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and there was a lot of country and bluegrass around there. Admittedly, I didn’t like it because to me it represented… I mean, I was really busy listening to showtunes and learning Sondheim lyrics and stuff. I was that kid. And I just thought country and roots music was inherently uncool and representative of this place that I felt like I was stuck in.

It wasn’t until I went to college in North Carolina… It was probably the first few weeks of school, one of my housemates who is still a very dear friend of mine invited me to a show, and it was Nickel Creek. I had never heard of them. I had no idea what I was going in to and Erin said, “I just think you’re going to like this. Just come with me to the show. I’ll drive. We’ll go.” And I can honestly say, that show changed my life. I can still remember the whole show so clearly.

Ed: What year are we talkin’?

Amy: 2005? Somewhere around there. I was kind of reeling from it, because it had been a really long time since I felt like I had been challenged by music that was being played by young people, that I really connected with, but also was just kind of flummoxed by. From there it became a deep dive. I was really fortunate going to school where I did, that there was great bluegrass around. I mean, there was this bar about 30 minutes away called The Cave in Chapel Hill, and we used to go see the Steep Canyon Rangers play there every month. And I mean, this is a tiny underground basement bar, maybe holds 50 people, and they would just have bluegrass jams.

Ed: How close were you to Asheville?

Amy: It was about three hours from Asheville. Asheville is where we went for, like, fall break and our little weekend trips and stuff. We would go to Boone and Asheville, and even Mount Airy had a bluegrass fest that we went to. So that’s when I really started getting into it. And I could say, I think my first significant album purchase was pretty soon after that first concert. It was Why Should the Fire Die? by Nickel Creek. I played that into oblivion and had it in my car for like, 10 years, back when we kept stacks of CDs in our cars.

From there it kind of fell into the background, because I was studying film and I moved to New York. I was working all the time and didn’t really make space in my life for music. By the time I moved out to LA, I was working for a producer and I had one or two friends out here that I knew. Again, working a lot, not making any money and trying to find my place in the city, and not really connecting with a lot of the other assistants that I was meeting at the agencies. And I remember going to see the Get Down Boys at some bar on the west side of LA and having this thing reignited in me that I had felt back in college and was like, “OK, I think these are my people.” There was this momentum happening in LA at that particular time. And that’s how I started getting to know the scene out here and had the idea for the BGLA blog.

Ed: Tell us about BGLA.

Amy: I admittedly was a little bored at work. I was working at the Academy of Motion Pictures at this point, which was exciting, especially for three months of the year around the Awards, but the rest of the time was kind of slow. So I started this Blogspot and wrote about what was happening on the scene in Los Angeles. And then people started pitching me, cause I don’t think anybody was really covering it out here. So suddenly I was getting inquiries to interview these people… I mean, I started going really deep in the music and the history and background and getting to know the scene out here. But I remember getting connected to Sean Watkins (of Nickel Creek), and it was this beautiful, full-circle moment. It was the first time I met Sean and got to talk to him, and we became friends and kind of opened a whole other door to the roots music scene and what it could be. And then I think I met you pretty soon after that.

Ed: So when did we meet? I cannot remember.

Amy: Well, I remember when we first met, but I doubt you remember when we first met. I remember this because it was probably the most nervous I’ve been in my whole life. I saw you at a Sarah Jarosz show at Hotel Cafe. And I walked up to you and gave you one of my business cards for Bluegrass LA. And I was like, “I think you’ll like my blog.” That was it! And I don’t imagine you remember that, but that is technically the first time I met you.

Ed: At some point we had a cup of coffee to talk about possibilities.

Amy: Yes, that’s true.

Ed: But then maybe we bumped into each other… I assumed it was Largo, but I have the vaguest memory of getting a business card from you. So yeah, that part tracks.

Amy: Why don’t you talk about the LA Bluegrass Situation, because that predates me.

Ed: You weren’t even a part of the first LA Bluegrass Situation?

Amy: No. I was there. I went one night. But we didn’t know each other at that point. I just went as a fan.

Ed: The first time I ever went to Largo was when John Krasinski took me to see Aimee Mann playing at the Fairfax Largo. We went in through the back and I just was like, “Whoa, what is this incredible vibe?” This whole place is just so, so cool. And eventually Flanny (the owner of Largo) invited me to do stand-up on some people’s shows, and one night he said, “Why don’t you do a show?” And I thought, “OK, cool. It’d be fun to mix music and comedy.” So I think the first show that I did at Largo was called “Hams and Jams.” [Laughs] The idea was like, “Oh, it’s hams, like comedy people, and jams, music people!” And I just mixed up some comedians and musicians with a terrible name that Flanny was so gracious about rolling with.

We really loved that combination, but I was really struggling to wrap my head around the LA bluegrass scene. It just was so disparate, but somehow we managed to get excited about trying to cultivate the scene and coalesce things a little bit more. And I think that was the idea… that was the sort of original inertia behind the first LA Bluegrass Situation. The name literally just came from Flanny talking about it before we named it. He just kept talking about it as the bluegrass situation that we were dealing with. So then when it came time to be like, “What are we going to call it?” I was like, “Well, you’ve been saying this awesome thing because there’s something a little cheeky about a ‘situation.'” Like, it feels like, you know, “We got ourselves a situation, here!” Like it just kind of has some irreverence built into it.

So that’s what we named it, and Flanny and I both pulled as many strings as we could with whatever relationships we had at the time and put a totally magical lineup together. Like I still can’t wrap my head around it. I mean, it was Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch and Steve Martin and Steep Canyon Rangers and Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers and the Infamous Stringdusters… Oh, and of course the Lonesome Trio, my crew, with my friends Ian and Jake. We were sort of the hosts.

Amy: I remember I got an email from you not long after that, which was pretty shocking. What was the impetus of that, do you remember?

Ed: Yeah, I think that I was feeling pretty heady after that first LA Bluegrass Situation and probably getting over my skis a little bit and being like, “We can create the ultimate hub of bluegrass for Los Angeles and it will be this Tower of Babel that everyone will flock to!” I had so many ideas. There were so many things that I found lacking in Los Angeles that I had taken for granted in New York. There are just so many website resources. “You want a banjo teacher? Look here, there’s tons in New York City. You want to see what shows are happening? Look here!” You could just find stuff in New York City and you couldn’t find stuff in Los Angeles.

Amy: I look at the branding of that initial site and that first logo — I think DKNG did our first logo in Santa Monica — and I remember being really proud of the fact that we didn’t look stereotypical of the era.

Ed: You’re so right. And I give you so much credit for that because the very first LA Bluegrass Situation, Hatch Show Print did a bunch of posters for us. And they were so cool. I still have a bunch and I’m really proud of that, but it was also leaning really hard into a very conventional, stereotypical bluegrass aesthetic. It was a funny wake-up call for me – that plus your input. It helped me realize that what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go as fans and supporters of this idiom was not retro, like it was…

Amy: Forward-thinking.

Ed: Forward. And that artists like Chris Thile were doing that musically, right? But there was a little bit of a reckoning of “What’s our brand going to feel like? What do we want it to evoke? And who do we want to connect with? Do we want to connect with young people who are finding this stuff for the first time and finding it really fresh and exciting?”

Amy: That was always the crux of it for me. To a large extent, that aesthetic is still very alive and well within the roots music community. I had an inkling that there was an audience that had different tastes, but still could love this music and that it didn’t all have to look the same way. I could have never predicted where it went and what we’ve worked on since, but I think at the beginning we were very “of the moment.” It was the same time that Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers were on the top of the charts, and there was this kind of “authenticity” movement taking place.

Ed: I remember going to business meetings with Hollywood producers and one guy had a banjo in his office. And I was like, “You play the banjo?” And he’s like, “No, no, but I want to learn!” But you’re right. It was a moment. I’ve felt like an old fuddy duddy since I was 12 years old, but I was like, “Was I ahead of the curve here?”

Amy: Yeah, similarly, I’ve kind of always felt like an old soul; I never really felt like I truly fit in to my time, so I think there was something that really drew me in to that zeitgeist, but what amazed me was that once we really got into it, it was so much more complex and modern and exciting than I ever expected.

Editor’s Note: Look for the next part of this conversation with Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs in the weeks ahead.