It’s somehow already July (where is this year going?), so what’s better to pass those hot and lazy days than some sweet sweet banjo music? All month long, BGS will be featuring some of the very best players of the instrument, plus some special interviews, videos, and playlists. From Scruggs-style to clawhammer, whatever you want, we’ve probably got it covered.
To kick things off, we’ve assembled a playlist of our twenty-five very favorite banjo-centric SITCH SESSIONS, including Abigail Washburn & Bela Fleck, Valerie June, Joe Mullins, Noam Pikelny, Rhiannon Giddens, Tim O’Brien, and Greensky Bluegrass, with a video so epic, it deserves to be in the canon of one of our TOP 50 MOMENTS.
It was Telluride 2014, and the BGS team was on the road with the guys from Mason Jar Music to record some friends in picture-perfect settings nestled amongst the San Juan Mountains. The Greensky band was down for anything, so the whole crew shlepped up to Mountain Village and found an empty platform – typically used for weddings and the like – and started recording guerrilla style. The result is one of the most memorable – and most watched – moments we’ve ever captured. Relive it at the video link below.
Check out the full BGS Banjo Month video playlist here.
Known as the Gate City, Greensboro, North Carolina is a transitional town: hub of the Piedmont between the mountain high country to the west and coastal Sandhill Plains to the east, and a city defined by the people who have come, gone, and passed through over the years. As a crossroads location, it has long been a way station for many endeavors, including touring musicians – from the likes of the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix at the Greensboro Coliseum, the state’s largest indoor arena, to James Brown and Otis Redding at clubs like the El Rocco on the Chitlin’ Circuit. Throw in the country and string band influences from the textile mill towns in the area, and the regional style of the Piedmont blues, and you’ve got yourself quite the musical melting pot.
This historical mixture was not lost on one of Greensboro’s own, Rhiannon Giddens – one of modern day Americana’s ultimate crossover artists. A child of black and white parents, she grew up in the area hearing folk and country music, participating in music programs in local public schools, and eventually going on to study opera at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. Once she returned to North Carolina and came under the study of fiddler Joe Thompson and the Black string band tradition, she began playing folk music and forged an artistic identity steeped in classical as well as vernacular music. In this episode of Carolina Calling, we spoke with Giddens about her background in Greensboro and how growing up mixed and immersed in various cultures, in a city so informed by its history of segregation and status as a key civil rights battleground, informed her artistic interests and endeavors, musical styles, and her mission in the music industry.
Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Durham, Wilmington, Shelby, and more.
Music featured in this episode:
Rhiannon Giddens – “Black is the Color” Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler” Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Cornbread and Butterbeans” The Rolling Stones – “Rocks Off” Count Basie and His Orchestra – “Honeysuckle Rose” Roy Harvey – “Blue Eyes” Blind Boy Fuller – “Step It Up and Go” Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Avalon” Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Snowden’s Jig (Genuine Negro Jig)” Barbara Lewis -“Hello Stranger” The O’Kaysions – “Girl Watcher” Joe and Odell Thompson – “Donna Got a Rambling Mind” Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Country Girl” Carolina Chocolate Drops – “Hit ‘Em Up Style” Our Native Daughters – “Moon Meets the Sun” Rhiannon Giddens, Francesco Turrisi – “Si Dolce é’l Tormento”
BGS is proud to produce Carolina Calling in partnership with Come Hear NC, a campaign from the North Carolina Department of Natural & Cultural Resources designed to celebrate North Carolinians’ contribution to the canon of American music.
Photo Credit: Ebru Yildiz
Enter to win a prize bundle featuring a signed copy of author and Carolina Calling host David Menconi’s ‘Step It Up and Go: The Story of North Carolina Music,’ BGS Merch, and surprises from our friends at Come Hear North Carolina.
Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, this weekly radio show and podcast has been a recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the digital pages of BGS. This week, we bring you new music from John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas, Yola, and more from our Artist of the Month, Chris Thile! Remember to check back every week for a new episode of the BGS Radio Hour.
To kick things off on the Radio Hour this week is a new release from Johnson City, Tennessee-based Bill and the Belles. We caught up with them recently on our 5+5 series, where they discussed hosting the revived Farm & Fun Time series in Bristol, Virginia, as well as their musical influences and career-based mission statements. Between lead singer Kris’ songs, their great harmonies, and instrumental prowess, Bill and the Belles are just plain enjoyable.
When asked about his musical influences on a recent 5+5, Louisville-based Sam Filiatreau highlighted country greats John Prine and Guy Clark. Those influences combined with his classic twang shine through on “Wrecking Ball.”
Loose Cattle hope they’ve made Porter & Dolly, Johnny & June, and John Doe & Exene all equally proud with this track, written by their longtime friend and songwriter Paul Sanchez.
In this new live version of “Tin Man,” Miranda Lambert reminds us how moving a simple performance can be. The solo acoustic version of the track comes from a new album and film that Lambert and fellow songwriters (and proud Texas natives) Jack Ingram and Jon Randall have crafted. Titled The Marfa Tapes, the album features the recordings that are shown in The Marfa Tapes Film.
Our Artist of the Month, Chris Thile, has been the busiest man in bluegrass for a long time. Between hosting Live From Here, shows with the Punch Brothers, or Nickel Creek reunions, Chris didn’t get to slow down much before the pandemic forced him to. Recorded in an old church-turned-studio, his new album Laysongs reflects on his Christian upbringing and community, and how that relates to where he is now.
In the words of Turner Cody and the Soldiers of Love, “Lonely Days in Hollywood” is a “kind of meditation on the transactional nature of our culture of celebrity; how our dreams belie reality and nothing is for free.”
Tray Wellington originally wrote the main riff for “Pond Mountain Breakaway” on the electric guitar, but then realized it would be well-suited for an uptempo bluegrass tune.
For his latest record, famed roots singer and songwriter John Hiatt enlisted the help of the Jerry Douglas Band. Recorded in famed RCA Studio B in Nashville, Leftover Feelings returned Hiatt to his earliest days in town when he lived in a $15-a-week rented room on Music Row. Although the space could easily intimidate due to the amount of classics recorded there, Hiatt suggested that you don’t actually think about it, because it’s such a comfortable environment.
Paula Cole’s new album American Quilt showcases her impressive vocal range as she sings some of her favorite American standards. She chose “What a Wonderful World” to close the album intentionally, stating that the song “unifies people.”
We caught up with Drew McManus of Satsang recently, and he shared with us the touching story of “Malachi,” a song about his son, which he wrote in the hospital the night he was born.
“O Death” is the latest installment in Rhiannon Giddens ongoing collaborations with her partner, Francesco Turrisi, a gifted Italian multi-instrumentalist. Their new record, They’re Calling Me Home, was inspired by the year they spent together in Ireland, amidst the pandemic. They’re Calling Me Home echoes the many ways that a tumultuous 2020 had many of us yearning for the comforts of home, of the past, or of those that were called home from this world.
“Stand For Myself” is Yola’s newest single from her upcoming album, set to release in July. The track is a mix of “symphonic soul and classic pop,” and its message is universal — that real change can come from thinking, living, and standing for ourselves.
Tim Raybon & Daniel Grindstaff of Merle Monroe hope listeners will be captured by the classic sound and wonderful story line of “Shelby Tell Me.” In talking to BGS recently, they stated, “our intention is to move the listener emotionally through the lyrics and melody.”
When BGS spoke with Beau Roberson of Pilgrim about “Darkness of the Bar,” he shared that the song “…is about the dark struggles of life, and trying to see the light in those dark times.”
Photos: (L to R) Miranda Lambert by Jim and Ilde Cook of CookHouseMedia; Yola by Joseph Ross Smith; John Hiatt by David McClister
We invite our readers to celebrate Black History Month as we always do, by denoting that celebrating Black contributions in bluegrass, country, and old-time — and roots music as a whole — requires centering Black creators, artists, musicians, and perspectives in our community daily, not just in February.
Over the past year we’ve recommitted ourselves to fully incorporating Black Voices into everything we do and we hope that our readers and listeners, our followers and fans, and our family of artists constantly celebrate, acknowledge, and pay credit to Blackness and Black folks, who we have to thank for everything we love about American roots music.
Following a look back on our BGS Artists of the Month, Cover Story, and Shout & Shine subjects, we close our listicle celebration of Black History Month this year with a sampling of some of the most popular features, premieres, music videos, Friends & Neighbors posts, and 5+5 interviews that have featured Black, African American, and otherwise Afro-centric music. We are so grateful for the ongoing, vital contributions of Black artists, writers, creators, and journalists to American roots music and we’re proud to pay credit exactly where it’s due, in this small way.
Black history is American roots music history and all of these incredible folks certainly prove that point.
An edition of our Roots on Screen column featured an interview with Branford Marsalis and dove into his soundtrack for the new Netflix film based on August Wilson’s 1982 play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Bona fide soul man Jerry “Swamp Dogg” Williams took us behind the scenes of his album, Sorry You Couldn’t Make It, showing humorous, casual, candid moments from the project’s creation — and giving us all the opportunity to be there, even though we “couldn’t make it.”
Sabine McCalla simply blew us away with her Western AF video session of an original, “Baby, Please Don’t Go,” last year, and we were ecstatic to include her on the BGS Stage lineup for Cabin Fever Fest last weekend, too.
Joy Oladokun’s vision and determination, and her unrelenting trust in both, paid off on a texturally varied second album, in defense of my own happiness (vol. 1), a self-produced exercise in vulnerability and subject of a feature interview. Oladokun will perform a few of her folk-pop songs as part of our Yamaha Guitars + BGS Spotlight Showcase during Folk Alliance’s virtual Folk Unlocked conference this week, as well.
The preeminent hip-hop-meets-bluegrass band, Gangstagrass, stopped by for a 5+5 and to plug their latest, No Time for Enemies. Gangstagrass were another excellent addition to our Cabin Fever Fest lineup and we look forward to being able to catch them in-person again, soon.
To mark Juneteenth 2020, we published a thoughtful round up of new movement music, a sort of patchwork soundtrack for protest, struggle, civil rights, and progress including songs by Leon Bridges, Chastity Brown, Kam Franklin (listen above), and more.
We were ecstatic to feature Valerie June, Rhiannon Giddens & Francesco Turrisi, Ben Harper, and Yola during our five-episode virtual online variety show, Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, last spring. The show raised over $50,000 for COVID-19 relief — through MusiCares and personal protective equipment via Direct Relief. WSHH season 2? We want that to happen, too! Stay tuned.
Pianist Matt Rollings’ collaboration with Americana-soul duo The War & Treaty was — UNDERSTANDABLY — a mini viral hit, taking off on our social media channels.
Rhiannon Giddens also powerfully and captivatingly warned all of us not to call her names with a new song recently: “The framework in the song is a love affair, but it can happen in any kind of connection,” she explained in a press release. “The real story was accepting my inner strength and refusing to continue being gaslit and held back; and refusing to keep sacrificing my mental health for the sake of anything or anyone.”
We visited once again with now mononymous Kenyan songwriter, Ondara, whose pandemic album, Folk n’ Roll Vol. 1: Tales of Isolation, kept many of us company during sheltering in place.
Speaking of which, Crys Matthews and Heather Mae didn’t let guidelines around social distancing keep them down, as evidenced on “Six Feet Apart.”
Our country-soul queen, Yola, wowed all of us with a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert and some acoustic renderings of her resplendent countrypolitan songs.
As did veteran bluesman Don Bryant, who after a lifelong career writing and recording earned his first Grammy nomination in 2020 for You Make Me Feel, a record that is nothing less than a physical incarnation of rhythm and blues. His Tiny Desk (Home) Concert is entrancing.
Selwyn Birchwood rightly reminded blues fans that it isn’t all sad; in fact, if you aren’t partying to the blues you’re doing it wrong. Just listen to “I Got Drunk, Laid and Stoned” to find out.
Leigh Nash and Ruby Amanfu joined forces on a Congressman John Lewis-inspired number entitled “Good Trouble” just last week, a perfect song to mark Black History Month.
Last year, to mark Women’s History Month (coming up again in March!) we spotlighted the huge influence and contributions of Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten, a folk singer and picker famous for playing her guitar left-handed — and upside down and “backwards!” Though Cotten spent most of her adult life working as a housekeeper, her original folksongs and her idiosyncratic picking style still inspire bluegrass, old-time, and blues musicians alike.
Country singer-songwriter Miko Marks returns this year with new music for the first time in thirteen years, after effectively being shut out of Music City and its country music machine because of her Blackness. A recent single release reclaims “Hard Times,” a song composed by Stephen Foster, who was an American songbook stalwart and folk music legend who performed in minstrel shows and in blackface.
Chris Pierce challenges his listeners with a new song this month, “American Silence,” because as he puts it, “It’s important to not give up on reaching out to those who have stayed silent for too long about the issues that affect those around us all.” A timely reminder to all of us — especially those of us who are allies and accomplices — as we approach the one-year anniversary of this most recent racial reckoning in the United States.
And finally, to close this gargantuan list — which is still just the tip of the iceberg of Black music in bluegrass, country, and Americana — we’ll leave you with a relative newcomer in country-soul and Americana, Annie Mack. Mack’s gorgeous blend of genres and styles is anchored by her powerful and tender voice and we were glad to be stopped in our tracks by her debut EP, Testify.
Photo credit (L to R):Chris Pierce by Mathieu Bitton; Elizabeth Cotten; Annie Mack by Shelly Mosman.
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