Tag: rock and roll

Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Remembers Tabla Genius Zakir Hussain

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

“I am here. I’m ready to play.”

That, Mickey Hart recalls, is the first thing Zakir Hussain said to him when the young Mumbai-born tabla player, having recently arrived in the U.S., knocked on the door at the Grateful Dead drummer’s Marin County ranch.

“Oh, okay,” Hart says he replied. “Here we go.”

That was 1970 and go they did, forming a deep musical and personal bond that lasted from that day until Hussain’s death from lung disease on Dec. 15 at just age 73. Hart had been studying with Hussain’s father Ustad Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s long-time tabla partner.

“His father said, ‘I can’t play with you because I play the quietest instrument in the world and you play the loudest,’” Hart says, laughing in the den of his ranch house on a recent Zoom chat. “But he said, ‘My son, he could play with you. I will send him to you.’ And so he did.”

And? “It was just magic,” Hart says, beaming with the memories.

Soon Hussain moved into the barn studio facility at Hart’s ranch. And they played. And played.

“We played for four hours one time,” he says, then realizing that was nothing. “We played for four days and nights! Four days and nights! We really got to know each other and played every day. He was the crown prince of tabla, and when his father died he became the king.”

Father and son, in fact, duetted on Hart’s first solo album, Rolling Thunder, released in 1972. Soon other collaborations followed, including the creation of the Diga Rhythm Band, which grew around a multi-cultural percussion ensemble Hussain formed at the Ali Akbar College of Music in Berkeley. The group’s lone 1976 album also featured Hart’s Grateful Dead mate Jerry Garcia on two tracks.

“He loved Jerry, they just loved each other,” Hart says. “Their personalities were very similar. Jerry was really kind, loving, thoughtful, and so was Zakir.”

Hart and Hussain sparked creative energy in each other and an eagerness to explore.

“He taught me various ways rhythms could be used, exposed me to rhythms that I could never imagine, which I took to immediately, and I wanted to learn them,” Hart says. “When we did Diga Rhythm Band together, that was the first time I had to learn composition. He composed half of it and I composed the other half.”

If Hart had to learn new discipline, Hussain had to unlearn some.

“When he came to America he kind of picked up on some American traits, and he liked the looseness of my style,” Hart says, slipping back and forth between talking of Hussain in the present and past tenses with the freshness of this loss. “It freed him from the strictness of Indian classical music. My gig was a little serpentine, you know. His is straight down the pike. As accurate as he could be, it is like a machine. He’s the Einstein of rhythm, so playing with Einstein was really cool. But I didn’t have that sensibility. That’s not the way we did it in the Grateful Dead, right? And he loved that. He really took to it. And that’s what he said I taught him. It was a wonderful combination, a meeting of the minds and a meeting of the hearts.”

The meeting, and the mutual growth and openness to new vistas, continued as Hussain had key roles on Hart’s 1990 album At the Edge, 1991’s Planet Drum (which won the first-ever GRAMMY Award for World Music), 1996’s Mystery Box, 1998’s Supralingua and 2000’s Spirit Into Sound. Each brought together a world-circling community of percussionists on stage as well as in the studio.

With 2007’s Global Drum Project, the Planet Drum ensemble coalesced around a core of Hart, Hussain, Puerto Rican conguero Giovanni Hidalgo and Nigerian talking drum master Sikiru Adepoju, the quartet mounting several dazzling concert tours and coming together again for the 2022 album In the Groove. The joy they brought each other was clear to anyone who saw their shows.

The same spirit sparked much exploration throughout Hussain’s life. Around the same time he was creating Diga, he teamed in Shakti with jazz guitar boundary-breaker John McLaughlin, Indian violinist L. Shankar, and Indian percussionists Ramnad Raghavan and T.H. Vinayakram, rooted in traditional styles but reaching to new territories. Hussain and McLaughlin teamed regularly through the years with several other lineups (at times called Remember Shakti) and a triumphant final Shakti album and tour in 2023.

Hussain also had his own regular tours and recording projects with different ensembles under the name Masters of World Percussion, as well as a 2015 tour leading an East-West ensemble with veteran jazz bassist Dave Holland inspired by the oft-overlooked world of Indo-jazz.

Taking another tack, with Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer he created a banjo-bass-tabla triple concerto, “The Melody of Rhythm,” crossing lines of progressive bluegrass and both Western and Indian classical as documented on a 2009 album with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. The three came together again in 2023 for the album At This Moment, which also features Rakesh Chaurasia on the Indian bamboo flute, the bansuri.

Other collaborators, among many, included Yo-Yo Ma, Van Morrison, George Harrison (Hussain played on the 1973 album Living in a Material World), Bill Laswell, and even Earth, Wind & Fire. He also had a long association with saxophonist Charles Lloyd that produced several wonderful albums, including 2022’s Sacred Thread, a trio with guitarist Julian Lage. And, of course, he made countless concert appearances and recordings with the top artists of Indian classical music.

“No one has crossed more borders than him,” Hart says. “Yeah, I’ve crossed a few myself. Not like him. He’s gone beyond me or anybody else I’ve ever met or heard of. He took to the air and went to all these different places, interacted magnificently with all these different cultures. What an incredible ambassador of music.

“And he was very kind when he played with you. He never overplayed, which he could do in an instant. But he was so kind, such a great person that he reserved himself. He never tried to show you up, he was never in competition with me. He was harmonious and rhythmically blissful, in a way. I guess you could call this bliss, bring the bliss word into this.”

Can Hart hear Hussain in some of his own and the Dead’s music?

“Oh God, yes!” he says. “Think of all the Grateful Dead rhythms.”

He cites “Playing in the Band,” for which he wrote the music with Bob Weir, adapting a piece called “The Main Ten,” a version of which appeared on Rolling Thunder.

“That’s 10/4 rhythm,” he says. “Nobody played 10/4 then! And there was ‘Happiness Is Drumming,’ which became ‘Fire on the Mountain.’ That was one we did in Diga. And the 7/4 on ‘Terrapin Station,’ and a lot on Blues for Allah. That was what we were playing in Diga and Phil Lesh picked up on it and everybody picked up on that rhythm and that became ‘King Solomon’s Marbles.’ No one did that in rock ‘n’ roll.

“So Zakir influenced me in so many ways, subtle ways and obvious ways. He was a big influence on the Grateful Dead. And he loved the way Bill [Kreutzman] and I interacted. That became kind of a model for him in some ways because it made it, I don’t know how you’d say it, legal for him in a way. He said, ‘Oh! Now I can do this! This is okay!’ Because only two drummers could do something like that.”

With all that, where would Hart recommend someone wanting to get to know Hussain’s music start? At first he insists that he couldn’t possibly narrow it down.

“I’d rather not,” he says. “Anything he ever played on is a wonder.”

But he gives it a little thought, mentioning several of the cross-cultural albums they made together, before focusing on Venu, a very traditional session he recorded in 1974 featuring Hussain in duet with Indian classical bansuri flute player Harisprasad Chaurasia. This came about when George Harrison’s “Dark Horse” tour, which featured the Indian all-star ensemble Ravi Shankar & Family (including Hussain’s father) as well as Western musicians, did shows in the Bay Area. Harrison and Shankar arranged for a private concert to be held at the historic Stone House, a granite building in Fairfax.

“We brought a bunch of them back to Marin County,” Hart says. “I had just got a 16-track machine from Ampex, threw it in the back of my pickup with a bunch of hay and all that. We went there and did the first 16-track remote recording.”

The music on the album is gripping, two long pieces featuring the venerable Rag Akir Bhairav, a devotional melody meant for the early morning hours, unfolding with grace and power. The first part is largely Chaurasia solo, with Hussain coming in for the second half, the pairing at times delicately rippling, at others building to frenzies, always in perfect, empathic sync.

Hart also cites Sarangi, a second album which he and Hussain co-produced at the same event with Ustad Sultan Khan’s sinewy playing of the bowed instrument that gave the album its title, accompanied by tabla player Shri Rij Ram.

Legacy is a difficult thing to predict. But to Hart, Hussain’s artistic importance is found in the drive the two of them shared to experience all music and cultures and to bring them together.

“He brought together cultures that no one had ever dreamt of, from Egypt with me and [oud player] Hamza El Din, from Nigeria with [drummer] Babatunde Olatunji, with Airto from Brazil. We introduced into the Western world something filled with all these gems and wondrous rhythms. That’s something that will never be forgotten. And all the cultures he touched around the world for all these years. He made quite a difference. There is no place that he’s played that he is not revered.”

It’s talking on a personal level, though, that Hart becomes emotional, effusive, as he reaches back through time to that day Zakir Hussain came to play.

“We just fell in love with each other,” he says. “We really liked each other. He is such a kind man. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like him. I can’t say that about anybody else, actually.”

He throws his head back and laughs.

“He’s singular in that respect. And it reflected in his music and the way he played with other people.”

Photo Credit: Jay Blakesburg

Dead in December: 9 Bluegrass Covers of Grateful Dead Classics

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

It’s certainly true that the Grateful Dead were never a bluegrass band, starting with the fact that their lineup had not just one drummer, but two. And yet it also can’t be denied that the group’s musical DNA has a wide streak of bluegrass deep within, both in terms of licks and improvisational flair.

In large part, that’s due to the late Jerry Garcia – “Captain Trips” – who started out as a banjo player before finding his most famous calling as the Grateful Dead’s lead guitarist. Before that, Garcia played in folk circles for years, and his many extracurricular collaborators included David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Don Reno, Chubby Wise and other titans of the genre. More than a quarter-century before O Brother, Where Art Thou? took bluegrass to the top of the charts, Garcia’s 1973 side project, Old & In the Way, stood as the top-selling bluegrass album of all time.

Garcia and the Dead’s bluegrass bona fides are solid indeed, as shown by artifacts like the Pickin’ on the Grateful Dead series (not to mention Grass Is Dead, a tribute act). But maybe the strongest testament to the strength of the Dead’s bluegrass-adjacent side is what other artists have made of their catalog. Countless bluegrass musicians have covered Dead songs in ways that would appeal to even the staunchest chair-snapping purists. Here are some of the best.

“Friend of the Devil” – The Travelin’ McCourys (2019)

This rounder’s tale is the granddaddy of ’em all, a bluegrass staple from almost the moment it appeared on the Dead’s 1970 proto-Americana classic, American Beauty. Long a picking-circle staple at festivals, it’s been covered by everybody from Tony Rice to Elvis Costello. But here is a fantastic cover by one of the finest family bands in all of bluegrass, captured onstage at the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival in 2019. In contrast to the manic pace of the original, this version proceeds at more of an elegant glide. But it’s still got plenty of get-up-and-go, with killer solos over walking bass and a great Ronnie McCoury lead vocal.

“Dire Wolf” – Molly Tuttle (2022)

Among the most acclaimed young artists in bluegrass, Molly Tuttle is a two-time Guitar Player of the Year winner from the International Bluegrass Music Association. She also won IBMA’s Album of the Year trophy for 2022’s Crooked Tree, which included the 1970 Workingman’s Dead standard “Dire Wolf” as a bonus track. Equal parts folk fable and murder ballad, it’s something like “Little Red Riding Hood” with an unhappy ending. And Tuttle’s vocal is even more striking than her guitar-playing.

“Wharf Rat” – Billy Strings (2020)

Possibly even more acclaimed as a guitarist is William “Billy Strings” Apostol, another IBMA Awards fixture (and multiple Entertainer of the Year winner) who is frequently likened to Doc Watson. But few guitarists have ever conjured up Garcia’s sound, spirit, and all-around vibe as effectively as Strings. A song about a lost soul in a seaside town, “Wharf Rat” first came out on the Dead’s eponymous 1971 live album. Strings’ 2020 live version from the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, is amazing, as Strings doesn’t sing it so much as inhabit it. The money shot is his guitar solo that begins just after the five-minute mark.

“Scarlet Begonias” – The Infamous Stringdusters (2020)

Gambling is one of the Dead’s recurrent tropes and “Scarlet Begonias” gives it a playful spin with a loping guitar riff. The original dates back to 1974’s From the Mars Hotel and it’s been widely covered in oddball styles by the likes of electronic duo Thievery Corporation and the ska band Sublime. But “Scarlet Begonias” has never had it so well as in this excellent bluegrass version by The Infamous Stringdusters, shot onstage at Seattle’s Showbox just ahead of the pandemic in early 2020.

“Ripple” – Dale Ann Bradley (2019)

More often than not, vocals tended to be the Dead’s weak link. But that is not a problem for Kentucky Music Hall of Famer and five-time IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year Dale Ann Bradley. The elegiac “Ripple” began life as the B-side to the “Truckin’” single and was also a show-stopper on the Dead’s 1981 acoustic live album, Reckoning. Bradley covered it on her 2019 LP, The Hard Way, with Tina Adair providing truly lovely vocal harmonies.

“Uncle John’s Band” – Fireside Collective (2022)

One of the Dead’s folksiest numbers, “Uncle John’s Band” kicked off Workingman’s Dead at an easy-going amble – a clear departure from the psychedelic excursions of the Dead’s earliest work. This live version by the young Asheville, North Carolina, band Fireside Collective reimagines “Uncle John’s Band” as sprawling jam-band fodder.

“Cassidy” – Greensky Bluegrass (2007)

“Cassidy” first appeared on-record as a Bob Weir solo tune on his 1972 side-project album, Ace, but it’s been on multiple Dead live albums over the years. It’s always been something of an enigma, inspired by a young girl as well as Neal Cassady. Michigan jamgrass ensemble Greensky Bluegrass gets to its beat-poet heart on this version from 2007’s Live at Bell’s.

“Tennessee Jed” – Front Country (2018)

A frequent theme for the Dead was being in motion, whether traveling toward something or running away from it. So it follows that homesickness would be an aspect of their music, perhaps most overtly on this wistful song from the double-live LP, Europe ’72. California’s Front Country put “Tennessee Jed” through its paces in this 2018 version from their “Kitchen Covers” series.

“Touch of Grey” – Love Canon (2014)

If the Dead wasn’t a bluegrass band, they most definitely weren’t a pop band, either. But the group had occasional brushes with the Hot 100, most famously with the 1970 statement of purpose “Truckin’” and its “what a long strange trip it’s been” tagline (even though the group had only been together about five years by then). “Truckin’” stalled out at No. 64 and was later eclipsed by its 1987 sequel “Touch of Grey” – an actual Top 10 hit with its bittersweet conclusion, “We will get by, we will survive.”

From Charlottesville, Virginia, Love Canon strips away the ’80s pop keyboards and covers the song well as straight-up bluegrass on 2014’s “Dead Covers Project.”

Photo Credit: Old & In the Way, courtesy of Acoustic Disc.

BGS Wraps: It’s the Rootsiest Time of the Year

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Each year, the BGS Team likes to “wrap up” the year in music by featuring holiday, seasonal, and festive tunes and songs throughout the month of December. It’s a perfect way to generate holiday cheer while shining a light on some of the high quality new – and timeless! – seasonal music we’ve got playing on repeat each winter. And, it gives us the chance to infuse our veteran/stalwart holiday playlists with some new life, too.

This year, we’ll be sharing songs, albums, shows, and events each day for the first three weeks of December, a musical bridge to bring us to the peak holiday season, the end of one year, and the beginning of another. Check back each day as we add more selections to these weekly posts, highlighting roots music that will soundtrack our solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and New Year.

What are you listening to this time of year? Let us know on social media! You can scroll to find our complete BGS Wraps playlist for 2024 below. Check out Week 1 of BGS Wraps here and Week 3 of BGS Wraps here.

Megan Moroney, “All I Want For Christmas Is a Cowboy”

Artist: Megan Moroney
Song: “All I Want for Christmas is a Cowboy”
Album: Blue Christmas …duh (EP)
Release Date: November 1, 2024

In Their Words: “Well since it comes out tonight, I guess now would be a good time to let y’all know I recorded a lil 3 song holiday EP that features 2 original songs & a cover of a classic. It’s called Blue Christmas …duh.

sleigh, I guess.” – Megan Moroney, via social media

From The Editor: “Megan Moroney was everywhere in 2024 – and we certainly didn’t mind! Three CMA Awards nominations, her sophomore album, Am I Okay?, reached No. 9 on Billboard‘s Hot 200 chart, she’s MusicRow‘s Breakout Artist of the Year, and so much more. Plus, she released this excellent holiday EP, Blue Christmas …duh, in November featuring two new originals and her rendition of the classic made popular by Elvis. We adore Moroney’s brand of high-end, sequin-studded, mainstream country. Catch her and her music on the Am I Okay? Tour in 2025!”

Spencer Hatcher & Aubrie Sellers, “Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus”

Artist: Spencer Hatcher & Aubrie Sellers
Song: “Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus”
Release Date: November 1, 2024

In Their Words: “‘Oh, yeah, you bet. Uh… ho ho ho and stuff’ 🎄 ‘Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus’ is out now!!” – Spencer Hatcher & Aubrie Sellers, via social media

From The Editor: “Decked out in their holiday best and performing in front of a classic Airstream trailer, bluegrass influencer Spencer Hatcher and garage country artist Aubrie Sellers play the mother and father of Christmas for their new single, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Claus.’ Throwing it back to the ’70s in more ways than one, their rendition pays tribute to George and Tammy’s cut of the song released in 1973. It combines so many things we love about bluegrass, country, and roots music – from the steel guitar and tasty harmonies to the retro trimmings and honky-tonkin’ tempo. We’re even here for the iconic knotty pine wood paneling! Perfect for BGS Wraps.”

Sierra Hull, “The First Snowfall”

Artist: Sierra Hull
Song: “The First Snowfall”
Release Date: November 8, 2024

In Their Words: “‘The First Snowfall’ is the B side from my upcoming limited edition 7” vinyl release, Holiday Favorites V1  … Can anyone guess which classic artist I discovered this song from?” – Sierra Hull, via social media

From The Editor: “Every seasonal playlist deserves a selection of songs about the season, as well as the festive holidays we celebrate during it. So we were especially excited to hear impeccable mandolinist Sierra Hull’s rendition of this Bing Crosby classic, ‘The First Snowfall,’ when it dropped last month. With a newgrass groove that skips and hops along, Hull and her crack band bring a modern glitz to the number. Don’t miss the A side of her special holiday single release, too – it’s ‘Country Christmas’ pulled from the catalog of one of Hull’s heroes, Loretta Lynn. Bluegrass winter leads to bluegrass Christmas, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Blind Boys of Alabama & Jay Buchanan, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”

Artist: Blind Boys of Alabama & Jay Buchanan
Song: “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day”
Release Date: November 29, 2024

In Their Words: “Get in the holiday & shopping spirit with ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.’ Produced and arranged by Hall & Oates Music Director Shane Theriot, we sing it alongside rocker Jay Buchanan of Rival Sons.” – Blind Boys of Alabama, via social media

From The Editor: “Every holiday needs soul. Who better to provide a bit of a Christmas slow burn – besides a yule log – than the Blind Boys of Alabama with Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan? ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day’ has limitless pocket and a funky, slow dance groove. A brand new addition to our Non-Crappy Christmas Songs playlist? Most certainly! This rockin’, soulful, Americana-steeped rendition of a holiday classic is just too good.”

William Prince, “The Sound of Christmas”

Artist: William Prince
Album: The Sound of Christmas (EP)
Release Date: October 18, 2024

In Their Words: “Produced by the wonderful Boy Golden, featuring the talents of Alyshia Grace, FONTINE, Cody Iwasiuk, John Baron, Stephen Arundell, Keiran Placatka, Matt Kelly, Kris Ulrich, Austin Parachoniak, Kaitlyn Raitz, Ben Plotnick, and with beautiful artwork from Roberta Landreth, these songs were a treat to put together for you and I hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed making them. … Happy early holidays, folks.” – William Prince, via social media

From The Editor: “Christmas arrived right on time – in mid-October – via this delicious three-song EP from First Nations country singer-songwriter William Prince. We’ve covered Prince quite a bit over the years, relishing the plains patina and down-to-earth quality of his albums and songs. The Sound of Christmas is a bit more polished, shiny, and draped in tinsel (especially the primed-for-Times-Square title track), but the other tracks on the project, ‘Silver Bells’ and ‘Don’t Go Leaving Me (It’s Christmas Eve),’ still display plenty of that signature grit and duality. Here’s a sound direct from (what we now call) rural Canada that’s also very much ready for the mainstream.

“Something else we love about The Sound of Christmas: Prince is selling 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles of the festive, holiday village cover artwork for the EP. Adding it to our holiday gift list now!”

Artist of the Month: Dead in December

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s Note: This December, we continue our annual series – see also: Dolly in December, Dawg in December, Dylan in December, and Del in December – by celebrating the iconic, trailblazing jam band, the Grateful Dead, all month long! We’ll be featuring the Grateful Dead as our Artist of the Month, celebrating their enormous impact on bluegrass and roots music over the next few weeks.

To kick off our coverage, BGS contributor Garret Woodward pens a heartfelt and personal AOTM reveal. Plus, don’t miss our exhaustive Essential Grateful Dead Playlist below.)

The single most profound moment within my 39 years of existence (thus far) is the first time I heard the Grateful Dead. Not far behind that life-altering experience were my initial encounter with LSD (in high school) and finally cracking open Jack Kerouac’s seminal 1957 novel, On the Road (in college).

Summer 1994. I was nine years old and living a simple, yet happily mischievous childhood in the small North Country community of Rouses Point, New York. One mile from the Canadian Border. One mile from the state line of Vermont. Solitude. Desolation. Rural America. Mornings spent building tree forts and wandering vast cornfields surrounding my childhood home. Afternoons jumping off the dock into nearby Lake Champlain.

Even at that time, I was a bona fide music freak. Whether it was Top 40 radio (Gin Blossoms, Melissa Etheridge, Collective Soul, Sheryl Crow) blasting out of the small boom box in my bedroom or whatever my parents shoved into the cassette deck in the family minivan (Willie Nelson, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Nat King Cole, George Jones), I was in search of “the sound.”

But, everything in my existence changed one evening that summer at a family cookout at our camp on the lake. Sitting at the picnic table — chowing down on some burgers, beans and potato salad — I noticed a hat my aunt’s boyfriend was wearing. The logo on the front was of a dancing bear, with the back featuring a skull with a lightning bolt. I inquired.

“It’s the Grateful Dead,” he replied with a Cheshire Cat grin emerging from a bushy beard. “Have you ever listened to the Dead, man?” No, I replied. After dinner, he walked me over to his early 1990s Volkswagen Jetta. He hopped in, rolled the windows down and turned on the stereo. Again, with a grin, as if he knew what was going to happen once he pressed play and cranked the volume.

It was the Skeletons from the Closet album. The opening tune, “The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion),” hit me like an undulating series of waves in some endless ocean of melodic tones and lyrical truths. It was just like when Dorothy Gale entered the world of color in The Wizard of Oz.

Nothing really was ever the same after that moment. It was not only the first music I’d discovered on my own – without the radio or my parents’ influence – the Dead, for some unexplained reason at the time, immediately became “my band.” Something clicked deeply inside of me. I awoke. And I had arrived.

Soon, a seismic shift occurred in my adolescent life. I wore Dead shirts to my Catholic elementary school to the dismay of the nuns. Tacked up Jerry Garcia posters on my bedroom wall. The swirling sensation of “Sugar Magnolia” or “St. Stephen” echoing from the boom-box. Incense burning on the windowsill overlooking the cornfields and unknown horizon of my intent. I even had a small shrine to Jerry on my bookshelf for several years after he died. I was all-in.

Musically, the Dead were a bunch of incredibly talented bluegrass, folk, and jazz freaks, who were inspired by the onslaught of the Beatles to plug in and go electric. The band itself was this massive sponge, one which soaked in any and all influences it crossed paths with — either onstage or merely wandering down the road of life. That authentic sense of curiosity and discovery is key to the Dead’s magic throughout its decades of improvisational splendor.

At its core, the Dead’s message resonated within my often-bullied and ignored self as a kid. If you like the Dead, you’ll always find a friend out there in the universe to connect with. The band’s symbols are beacons of love, compassion, and acceptance once you walk out the front door. In essence, I’d found my tribe, this wild-‘n’-wondrous ensemble of loving oddballs, eccentric weirdos, and all-around jovial folk. My kind of people, who remain so to this day.

The Dead is about personal freedom. To not only be yourself, but to also seek out the intrinsic beauty of people, places and things in this big ol’ world of ours. Have adventures. Pursue wisdom. Radiate love. Be kind. Damnit, be kind. All of these things offered from the music and its followers were placed in my emotional and spiritual toolbox as I began to wander the planet on my own following high school, college and impending adulthood.

And here I stand. Age 39. That nine-year-old discovering the Dead is still inside of me somewhere, still burning incense and blasting “St. Stephen.” That youngster’s excitement for all things music (especially live), endless curiosity for what lies just around the corner, and running with a reckless abandon towards the unknowns of tomorrow are as strong and vibrant as ever — especially through this ongoing catalyst that is my career in the written word.

Case in point, I recently headed to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, Kentucky, for another celebratory weekend for its current exhibit: “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey,” on assignment and on the ground covering the festivities. An incredibly curated collection of rare Garcia artifacts and wisdom, the showcase will run onsite until next spring.

Before the inception of the Grateful Dead, Garcia was completely immersed in the bluegrass and folk scenes in the San Francisco Bay area in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was part of numerous acoustic acts and ensembles throughout the bountiful period — the culmination of that vast knowledge and in-depth experience being poured into the Dead’s formation in 1965.

To note, there’s a lot to be said about Garcia’s talents on the banjo being applied to what would become his signature tone on the electric guitar. And to that notion, add in the sheer lyrical aptitude of Robert Hunter, who not only penned many of the Dead’s iconic melodies, but was also on a parallel journey to Garcia’s early on and throughout the band’s 30-year trajectory.

And there I was in Owensboro, some 400 miles from my current home in Western North Carolina. Traveling for hours just to arrive on the mighty Ohio River – the state line of Kentucky and Indiana, this crossroads of the Southeast and Midwest. And for what? To push further and farther down the cosmic rabbit hole that is Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead, and those who follow.

The next 48 hours were a whirlwind of sound and scope. Seemingly endless tribute sets to Garcia and the Dead at the Woodward Theater inside the museum from the Kitchen Dwellers, Lindsay Lou, Fireside Collective, and members of the Infamous Stringdusters to late-night jam sessions in hotel rooms next door.

The Grateful Dead are arguably the only musical entity to exist that – regardless of who or what genre is being represented – once one of their tunes is placed into a performance, folks either show up in droves or are already present with ears perked up to what’s radiating out from the stage. It’s a fact that no matter what style of music you play, if it involves the Dead in some form or fashion, Deadheads are game to check it out. You could be a polka group and we’ll be right there, standing front row, the second you roll into “Althea” or “Shakedown Street.” The music provides, always and forever.

Before I left Owensboro and the Garcia celebration at the museum, I found myself on a bourbon distillery tour on Saturday afternoon. I walked into the enormous facility and checked in with the host. All by myself and waiting for the tour to start, the host tapped me on the shoulder.

“You like the Dead?” his face lit up, pointing to the Dead stealie tattoo on the back of my right leg. “Sure do, my brother,” I shot back with a smile of solidarity. We talked about our favorite live Dead recordings and where we’ve caught Dead & Company in concert recently, kindred spirits now eternally connected by this band of roving musical pirates. It’s a genuine interaction that happens often to Deadheads and something I don’t ever take for granted.

Even as we stand in this uncertain time in American history – where nothing is the same, everything is the same – the Grateful Dead remain this portal to escape, to purposely choose compassion, camaraderie, and community. It’s about cultivation of one’s self and of the sheer magnitude and gratitude of daily life, so long as you stroll this earth with the pure and honest intent to connect, to listen, and to understand.

“I will get by, I will survive.”

 

Travis Book Happy Hour: Caitlin Krisko

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

I had heard of Caitlin Krisko, but I’d never really heard her until she took over the stage at the Floydfest Buffalo Jam a few years ago. I’d finished up my part of the show and had headed out into the crowd to unwind and watch the proceedings. Every time Caitlin stepped up to the mic the ensemble struggled to match her soul and intensity. It wasn’t even fair, really. She owned that show that night and she owned the interview and music during the Happy Hour, too. It was Caitlin’s show, Aaron and Tommy and I were just along for the ride!

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This episode was recorded live at 185 King St in Brevard, NC on August 13th, 2024.

This episode is brought to you by Thompson Guitars and is presented by Americana Vibes and BGS as part of the BGS Podcast Network.

Photo Credit: Aaron Austin

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.

Artist of the Month: Billy Strings

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We’ve been covering our friend, GRAMMY Award winner and physics-defying flatpicker Billy Strings for now almost ten years. In that relatively short period of time, he and his band have revolutionized the bluegrass, jamgrass, and acoustic guitar scenes. Way back in 2014 and 2015, when the local Michigan guitarist with generational talent first started appearing on our site and in our Sitch Sessions, and making his mark on the national bluegrass scene, almost no one would have predicted he would be selling out arenas less than a decade later. And yet– there were always signs.

Indeed, BGS’ first viral content was a Sitch Session performance by Strings and former duo partner Don Julin, performing what would eventually become a “hit” for Billy, “Meet Me at the Creek.” The video spread like wildfire on BGS, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and beyond – rapidly garnering more than a million views. It was just one of the many early inflection points that would occur over Strings’ stratospheric rise.

Strings’ jaw-dropping picking, gritty and heartfelt vocals, mystifying jams, and virtuosic, tradition-steeped aggression are all at once charming and hypnotizing. Given a platform, of any size or reach in his early career, his performances, songs, and live shows were an unstoppable force. Audience members and fans could hardly look away.

His personal narrative, of hardship and bootstraps and holding onto a childhood dream of playing bluegrass for a living, of road-dogging and paying dues and “god-given” talent, bolstered his trad bona fides when his metal and rock background, long hair, and drug-infused stories might have undercut his appeal to bluegrass and old-time audiences. Strings was – and is – obviously, a real human being; despite what supernatural touches are evident in his music, here is a guitar hero embodied. And, for hundreds of thousands of roots music fans, diehard and uninitiated, that brand has been limitlessly resonant and relatable. Plus… there’s that picking!

It’s no wonder, merely four solo studio albums into his career, Strings has gone from touring 250+ days a year at every mom-and-pop bluegrass festival, rock club, coffee shop, and barbeque restaurant in the U.S. and Canada to selling out enormous arenas, auditoriums, and amphitheaters for multi-night runs all around the world. Billy Strings, as an artist, a brand, and an individual, was always made to go the distance.

His newest album, Highway Prayers, which released September 27 on Reprise Records, finds Billy and band putting even more miles under their well-worn, veteran tires. A long form, 20-track album, the project includes breakneck instrumentals, many a live show and fan favorite, and plenty of that Billy Strings magic that only he and his cohort could bring to such a record. But, despite the fact that Billy has guested on dozens of projects as a track feature in the past few years – from Post Malone to Zach Top to Sierra Ferrell to Willie Nelson to Luke Combs to Ringo Starr – Highway Prayers has not a single credited celebrity feature.

Which brings us to a point that, forest for the trees style, seems to go missing from considerations of Billy Strings, his music, and his impact. Yes, Strings is defining and redefining bluegrass in the modern era and in the 2000s. Yes, Strings is perhaps the most important bluegrass artist of his generation, if not of all time. Yes, Strings has illustrated there truly is no ceiling for bluegrass music, commercially and otherwise. And yes, he and his band are revolutionizing the very landscape on which this music is built, offered, and examined.

Still, as Highway Prayers – as well as his live shows and his entire discography – demonstrates, the most innovative and revolutionary aspects of Billy Strings and his version of bluegrass are not what he’s changed, but what has stayed the same.

Even Alison Krauss & Union Station at their very peak were only performing true bluegrass for a portion of their live shows. The Chicks, for all of their international touring and arena sell-out shows, would often only have four or five string band songs set aside in a special mini-set during their performances. Billy Strings and his band are not only raising the bar for bluegrass and its marketability and sale-ability in an era where nearly all music businesses are floundering and struggling, they’re doing it all as a simple, five-piece bluegrass band across the front of the stage.

Sure, there are pedal boards and LED screens and smoke machines and delay, and WAH, and distortion – plenty of “no part of nothin'” moments, of course. But at the beginning and end of the day, whether touring in a Ford Econoline or with dozens of road crew and buses and tractor trailers, Billy Strings is a bluegrass musician, playing bluegrass songs, birthing thousands of new bluegrass fans, and doing all of it at the largest scale we’ve ever seen as a community and as an industry.

There’s much (well-deserved) noise to be made about all of the strange and unique ways Strings and his team have accomplished this, but even more noise ought to be generated. For the most remarkable impact of Billy Strings is that he’s shown everyone, all across the globe, that bluegrass doesn’t need to fundamentally change to be something everybody can love.

All month long, we’ll once again be celebrating Billy Strings as our Artist of the Month. Enjoy our revamped Essential Billy Strings Playlist below, check out our exclusive interview with Billy here, explore our list of favorite songs and recordings – by other artists – featuring Billy here, and stay tuned on BGS and on social media as we dip back into the archives for all things Billy Strings.

Photo Credit: Dana Trippe

Basic Folk: Kasey Anderson

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

We’re starting with the end in our conversation with Kasey Anderson. On Basic Folk we’ve covered a lot of firsts: debut albums, origin stories, and the beginnings. Ever since I have known Kasey, his social media bio has been, “Gradually retiring songwriter.” I’m always teasing him about “What does that mean? When are you going to retire?” Officially, this latest album, To the Places We Lived, is his “last album.” I want to put that in very heavy quotes, because I hate to imagine a world where a great songwriter friend of mine is not making records. I think his insistence on this album as the last one has more to do with saying goodbye to parts of the music industry that he wants to release and ways of being in the world that he doesn’t want to engage with anymore. What do we need to let go of? What do we need to release? That’s the place where this album begins.

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In our conversation, we talk about Kasey’s whole songwriting career and the moment where he went surprise viral for one of his political songs, “The Dangerous Ones.” We talk about his time being incarcerated and what that taught him about himself, what it taught him about the world, what it taught him about white supremacy. We talk about his family. We talk about his sobriety and his work in helping others get clean and stay clean, and what staying clean means in a holistic and gentle sense.

The songs on this album are mournful, literate, and very, very fun. My favorite is “Back to Nashville;” it’s a rock and blues song. Kasey is the type of artist who can write a really contemplative song about self reflection or grief or loss, and then a blues rocker that makes you want to shake your ass the next second.

Photo Credit: Matthew Leonetti

Tim Heidecker on the Battle of Life and Everything ‘Slipping Away’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Sitting in a Nashville hotel room one recent morning, Tim Heidecker is awaiting his Americanafest showcase. It’ll take place later that evening at 3rd & Lindsley. And Heidecker’s dreading the gig. Not because he doesn’t enjoy the act of performance. It’s simply the format in which the show will be set up: solo.

“It’s not my preferred way of presenting my songs,” Heidecker says. “I just came off the road with my band. Playing every night for two weeks. I’m a little road tested and warmed up. But, these songs benefit from other people playing them with me.”

That sense of vulnerability and, perhaps, a slight fear of what may or may not lie just around the corner of the grandiose ether surrounding all of us are core themes at the heart of Heidecker’s latest album, Slipping Away.

Though many may know Heidecker for his comedic brilliance – as part of innovative comedy duo Tim & Eric, on an array of beloved TV shows or across the big screen in major Hollywood films – he’s also been a lifelong singer-songwriter. And a damn fine one, too.

Now 48, Heidecker offers Slipping Away (available October 18 via Bloodshot Records) as a genuine snapshot of a human being wrestling with middle age and the intricacies of daily life. Just like many of us in the same boat of age and awareness.

Sonically, Slipping Away straddles psychedelic alt-country, surf rock, and indie folk. The ethereal attitude and lyrical ethos flows in the same river as Pavement and Wilco, with hints of Guided By Voices and They Might Be Giants felt throughout.

In an era of doom and gloom, Heidecker’s humor and zest are much needed – the notion that sometimes all you can do is laugh in pure amazement at the absurdity of what’s outside your front door.

“They say that Jesus Christ is coming back some day/ But if I were him, I think I would stay,” Heidecker sings during “Bows and Arrows.” “Up in the clouds, hanging out with dad/ Cuz things down here, things are going bad.”

In truth, much like his comedy, Tim Heidecker’s music is aimed at the idea of connectivity. Finding common ground with you and me. And his constant yearning to expose the lunacy and mysteries of one’s existence within the cosmic universe is why we’ve come to turn to Heidecker for comfort and solidarity in uncertain times.

I replayed the album this morning while having coffee with my girlfriend. And, in a good way, I started having existential thoughts. It made me think, “This is an honest snapshot of someone on the cusp of 50, who’s looking at the chaos of their youth in the rearview mirror and looking at the unknowns of growing older through the windshield.”

Tim Heidecker: That’s beautifully put. Can I use that? [Laughs] I mean, yes, I agree with that. It’s funny, you writers, critics and journalists are always better at vocalizing what I’m trying to say than I am. And I appreciate it. These things come from such a subliminal place for me that it’s nice to hear how it’s received or how it’s perceived. A lot of the writing of this record came right after the pandemic. There was this real, palpable feeling of an apocalyptic kind of mentality happening.

It still feels like that every day, though. That’s the world we live in now.

Yeah, for sure. And it was very crisp in 2020, 2021, 2022. In my comedy, I’ve tried a few different times to write shows about that. I’ve had a couple of projects that didn’t go very far, that were sort of about the end of the world. So, it’s been on my mind for a while and I wanted to do a record with that sort of concept or theme. And I started writing songs, letting the record be this way of getting those ideas out of my head.

With the title, Slipping Away, is that a reference to how fast time goes?

Picking the title of a record is always a pain and challenge to crystallize it. But, to me, there’s two meanings. The first half of the record is maybe a little more upbeat and positive and there’s this feeling of being content or being happy. Then, it can also mean things falling apart and disintegrating [in the second half]. There’s Slipping Away Side A and there’s Slipping Away Side B.

There’s also a very ethereal vibe to the album, too, where it’s like a dreamlike state.

Mm-Hmm.

With the song “Hey, Would You Call My Mom for Me,” was that a real encounter you had with somebody?

It was. We were on tour up in Vancouver. They have a big area of Vancouver that’s kind of been surrendered to addicts. They call it “Zombie Town.” I was walking around there and a kid asked me that. It was early in the morning and it took me off guard. I gave him 20 bucks and was like, “Sorry, I can’t.” I just couldn’t get involved. But, I came back to that line of, “Hey, would you call my mom for me?” Especially after the pandemic and living in Los Angeles, seeing a lot of people on the street. I felt like I wanted to capture that moment. Little journalistic songwriting there.

I’ve read that you’re an atheist/agnostic. And I wonder – with the pandemic and just life in general – if you’ve started to have maybe a crisis of faith or identity as you’ve gotten older?

I wouldn’t say crisis.

Recalibration, maybe?

Recalibration is fair. Honestly, I’m fairly firm in my agnosticism. I wouldn’t consider myself an atheist. I think it’s kind of an irrelevant question for me [about] what’s going on outside of reality. But, I’ve started therapy and working on some personal issues, health issues and stuff this past year. I don’t want to say midlife crisis. But, it’s this feeling of like, “Alright, I’ve been kind of coasting on my instincts for a long time. And it’s gotten me to where I am, which is a pretty good place. But, I’d like to figure out how I’m going to spend the rest of my life here – maybe a little happier, a little less anxiety-ridden, easier to be around.”

It’s been a couple years of taking the old car into the shop and getting it adjusted for long-term use. I mean, I’ve been touring with this band for the past couple years. And part of me is like, “Man, love this so much. How many more of these am I going to get to do? How many more of these runs where you’re just on the bus and you’re playing every night?” It takes a lot of work to get to that place where things are going well.

There’s the line on the record – I think it may be my favorite line on the record – [in the song “Something, Somewhere”] that goes, “There is a feeling I get, when things are going good but it’s coming to an end.” You’re at that place where things are working, something you’re working on or a project where you see the end. It’s that end of summer melancholy feeling. And I think you can zoom out and look at your life a little bit that way, too.

I couldn’t find much about your early music years. And I was curious about where music begins for you, and as somebody like yourself who came of age in early 1990s Pennsylvania. Was music just something that was always there?

Yeah. I came from a very musical family. My grandmother was very religious. She could play piano and she could play by ear. So, she could sit at the piano and figure out songs. My mom loved music and my dad was a big classic rock guy. He had a great record collection, then he updated his record collection to tapes as we were driving around in the ’80s. He would play the golden oldies and the best of the Beatles, [those] red and blue compilation [albums] a lot. I was always very performance driven, dressing up and doing shows and playing from as far back as I can remember. We had a piano in the house, and eventually a guitar came around. It was just something my parents really encouraged, I guess. My sister took piano lessons. It was just part of our education. I went to Catholic school, so there was a lot of singing. Just a lot of music around all the time.

Eventually, that led to bands being formed. My cousin had a hardcore punk band. And I gravitated towards those kinds of people who were also into music. I had an uncle who had really great taste in music and turned me on to all kinds of artists in the ’80s and ’90s [like] Billy Bragg. I remember him being a big fan of [Billy]. And it was fairly easy to put a band together. We all wanted to be on TV or make movies or create stuff. But, the band was the thing that you could put together after a good Christmas of getting a practice amp and a starter guitar. Your friend has a drum set and you could go into a basement and make something. We used to rent four-track tape recorders from the music store and make demos.

I hear a lot of influences on Slipping Away – indie rock, folk, alt-country. I hear a lot of stuff, too, that I grew up in the ’90s loving. I hear some Pavement influences. With Pavement, they always came across as a band where you could do whatever you wanted, and a song can be whatever you want it to be – something I always loved about them.

I loved Pavement. In fact, they’re a really important band for me, because when I was in high school my head was really firmly in the classic rock ’60s and ’70s world. I didn’t really connect to anything modern. I didn’t like pop punk music. I mean, it was okay. But, I didn’t really like the hardcore scene, the emo scene. I found it really boring and exhausting to listen to, and I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I didn’t like a lot of hip-hop. Whatever was happening in the early ’90s, I was not connecting with it.

And then I heard [Pavement’s] Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain record. I remember hearing the drumstick in [opening track] “Silence Kid.” And I was really into Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones, so it was a connection, a through line from the Stones to Pavement, where it felt like, “Oh, these guys are happening now.” That opened me up to Guided By Voices, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Yo La Tengo, and that Matador Records scene. I was like, “Oh, I am of my age now. I’m of my time.” [Laughs]

When you’re touring, is it weird people may have preconceived notions of what to expect and expectations that aren’t accurate?

Yeah. I mean, that’s diminishing a little bit now. I think people are getting the message. There’s still people that are confused. They’re waiting for the punchline to drop. It took me a while to figure out how to behave as a performer when I’m doing my music. I’ve found this little sweet spot, where I can still be funny and I can still be myself. I don’t have to pretend to be this pretentious singer-songwriter, because I’m not. I’m just me. I don’t want to keep it too serious, so I lighten the mood enough where people get a little bit of both – they get the full picture, they get the full version of me.

One of the songs on Slipping Away is “Dad of the Year,” where you sing about how you had all these expectations growing up and conquering the world, as we all do. And now you’re in your late forties and you’re like, “Well, that didn’t really happen. But, in this other way, I’m actually really happy with where I landed.”

For sure. The goal is to get to that place where you’re content and satisfied with wherever you are. And in the way the world is, it’s very hard to not compare yourself to everything else that’s going on, to people you don’t know. Why do people care about Ben Affleck and J. Lo? [Laughs] When I see a picture of them, there’s this intrusive thought of, “Why aren’t they taking pictures of me?” And if you really are honest, I think everybody has varying degrees of that. And that’s the battle of life – to find ways of knowing how to be happy with where you’re at. But, don’t squash ambition, because ambition is very important, too.

To that, it does feel like you’re in a good place right now.

I’m in a great place. I’m in Nashville. I’m excited for the record to come out. I hope people sit with it. Some records you just need to sit down and listen to. I mean, Slipping Away is only 30 minutes. [Laughs] This isn’t coffee shop music.

Photo Credit: Chantal Anderson

The Stories and the Storyteller Behind ‘Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Stelth Ulvang is a storyteller, but as he shares in our conversation, if it hadn’t been for a broken mast on a famous sailboat years ago, his stories might have found a different outlet than music.

Since then, his musical life has unfolded from one wave to the next. From playing with established bands like The Lumineers or his own projects like Heavy Gus to finding pick-up bands in different towns, he is fast and prolific. His latest effort, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips, is a ten-song opus, cut in New Orleans by The Deslondes (a band he indeed met through a friend). A self-declared autumnal record, Ulvang grapples with death with a lilting cover of Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Killing Moon” and guides the listener along his travels in “What Three Dogs.” The (mostly) live recordings lend themselves to the raw emotion of the storytelling.

BGS spoke to Stelth Ulvang over Zoom from his home in Bishop, California.

How’s your life?

Stelth Ulvang: Well, we just got back from a family vacation, and our 3-year-old hates us for trying to explain jet lag to him.

It sounds like you were on a real adventure. Where all did you go?

Greece, Turkey, and the Republic of Georgia. We have a friend there that is a wild, wild, Wild West woman.

She won this great horse race, and she’s really into cooking over big fires. She won the Iron Chef competition there. She’s a pretty versatile human, but pretty wild. So it was fun to have a friend in these places. We had friends in Greece and we had friends in Turkey. But we didn’t have instruments. My wife and I play a lot of music together, so we’ve always traveled with instruments, and this time we refused to.

I’ve just been recording all last year. I’m sitting on three records of recordings and trying to just put out one of them right now.

Nice. That’s awesome. Do you write alone, or do you and your wife write together sometimes?

I normally write alone. I have a hard time writing with others. I just haven’t had enough practice with it. With our other project, Heavy Gus, we will bring songs to the table and then we’ll intermingle and edit them together. But for the most part, it always comes from one voice or another. We haven’t sat down and said, ”Let’s write a song.” I find it harder. It’s more vulnerable than the other parts of a relationship, I find. After like sexual or intimate vulnerabilities, I found writing music together was like by far the last tier.

Well, not to make it about me. But I write music with my husband. Co-writing and the kitchen are the only places we fight.

Oh, yeah, totally. It can get really impassioned. You are just opening yourself up on the table in this way, and it can just go so quickly to feeling under attack about this very personal thing.

You’re very prolific. Sounds like you got a lot of stuff in the pipeline to release.

When The Lumineers stopped touring, I kind of just rallied and tried to get everything done. I did a lot of the writing on the road with the band. There was a lot of downtime in hotels. For a long time, I was recording in hotel rooms with my phone on voice memos and stuff like that. But then I got into using Garageband on my cell phone and making more produced tracks. I released a record like that.

Ultimately, I found that my favorite thing to do was to find a band. If we have a few days off in a town, I find a band and go into a studio somewhere and see if we can just record five tracks. So that’s what I kept doing around the States during this Lumineers tour for the past three years. I had written all these songs over COVID. So we’d be in Cincinnati for three days and I’d find a band and record five songs.

When you say “find a band,” what do you mean?

I mean whip a band up. Ideally, find a band that plays together and they’re down to just like learn a song of mine.

Are you meeting them at a show or are these people that you’re like friends of friends with online?

Yeah, sometimes friends of friends, people that I’ve never played with. But for this record, Stelth Ulvang and the Tigernips, this is all people that I had never met. A friend who was going to be on the record but then left for a tour was like, “Well, they’re good people, you’re in good hands.”

It was fun to just use real old gear, old vintage mics and run it all through tape. We recorded everything live. Singing it live, that’s something I’m not as used to. But with this band from New Orleans, the magic was quick to come.

Did you know you wanted to cut it to tape before you headed down there? Or was that circumstantial?

That was circumstantial. It’s funny with tape right now, because obviously, everything just gets digitized. I was trying to think, “Is there a way that we can keep this off of ever touching digital?” And it’s almost impossible. You know it’s possible, but it feels impossible.

With the record I made on my cell phone, I only released it on cassette tape for a while, which was the reverse. So I should have tried to be true to form and release it just on vinyl and tape in analog form. But it’s 2024.

Well, tell me about self-releasing music. What does that feel like in 2024?

It’s like I finally figured out the releasing stuff. I’ve had help through Emily Smith, with the Alt-Country Show. There was a lot of logistical stuff that I was getting new anxieties about – a lot of social media.

You think you have it all figured out and then it’s just all about being a content creator. I feel like an old man. It’s so complex, but it’s true. I finally kind of figured out how to self-release and self-book shows and now that almost feels like an obsolete skill set. I’m doing a whole tour around the Northeast on this record for a few weeks and booked everything myself. Amazing that it like came naturally, just writing people and asking for help. But yeah, the content is a skill set that I forgot to put my 10,000 hours in on.

I feel that. For the tour, is the band that played with you on this album from New Orleans going?

No, they’re all gonna be in Spain at a sick residency that they do every year. The band goes to Spain once a year. They’ve done it for 3 years. Now this will be, I think, their fourth year. And there’s a huge following in Seville of American country and folk.

It’s interesting that country music is getting big. But in Europe right now, it’s getting huge and friends who do country tours in the States are having much more success in Europe right now.

It also feels like the genre is broadening. There’s obviously the stuff at the top of the pyramid that, depending on your ears, can be exhausting. But there’s more room for more kinds of country.

In that realm, I don’t know that I like the song for what it is, but “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X – to have a gay Black man put out a track at the top of the country charts, I think opened up the the floodgates to be like, “Anything goes.” I think that is an extraordinary gift to any realm of music, to do something so left field and find success for it. So bless Lil Nas X for that and maybe only that.

What’s a Tigernip?

What is a tigernip? I don’t know. I forgot. … I was just trying to think of something that wasn’t a Google trope. But I wanted the combination of very quick, ferocious, and sweet. We recorded half of the album in the space called the Tigerman Den so I was starting to call it “the Tiger Men.” But there were women in the project. I think I said “Tiger Dicks” at some point, and everyone was like, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

But then, something about a tigernip kind of sounded like a tiger lily or catnip.

I wanted it to be clear that the band that recorded on this record was actually a band and it wasn’t me just doing like solo songs. And how much the album was influenced by these relationships that we had over a very short few days. So, that’s why I was really set on trying to find a band name for us.

There’s a frequent revisiting in the songs on this album to the theme of water. And I read that at one point you sailed from Hawaii to Seattle. Since you have this connection to water, I’d like to know about that sail and if you have an everyday connection to water?

It’s funny, I don’t necessarily buy into astrology, but being an Aquarius, I am appalled that it’s not a water sign. I feel completely more watery than airy. [My birthday is] the very last day of Aquarius before Pisces, which is a water sign. So maybe that’s why I’m compelled to lean into the water sign. And my Chinese zodiac is the tiger.

Back to the sailing trip! I did not want to play music before this time in 2008. I met this musician who invited me on this sailing trip and I just wanted to go on an adventure.

Meaning you didn’t want to play music in your life, or you needed a break from it?

I was playing in high school and I tried to go to college for it. I didn’t like it and I dropped out. I just wanted to travel. I had gone on a bike trip, I was hitchhiking a lot, and I was riding trains everywhere. If music could help me travel, I was open to it.

I traveled to Hawaii to pick up this boat that was famous in National Geographic because of this teenager, Robin Lee Graham, trying to sail it around the world in one go. He left his boat in California and it got moved to Hawaii. I had somehow signed up with a buddy that I barely knew to travel with this boat from Hawaii up to Bellingham, Washington, where it was going to sit in a boat museum for its historical significance.

At the time, this was the youngest boy ever to sail around the world alone. The record has since been broken by a young woman. [The boat] had so much repair work that had to be done on it. So we’re in Hawaii for like five weeks, during which I got arrested for shoplifting some food at Sam’s Club, because we’d run out of all of our money that we had saved up to do this journey. I decided, “Screw it. We’re we’re just gonna skip the court date, I’m gonna get on this boat and we’re gonna sail.” So we bail on this court date, establishing a nice bench warrant that I had to deal with much later on. We make it a week out and the mast busts, and we had to get rescued. And I have never sailed extensively since then.

While we’re at sea my buddy had this mandolin. We sit there, and we’re just trading verses back and forth, writing this kind of silly song as this joke idea that we’re these stranded pirates. We’re just coming up with lyrics. We get towed back to Hawaii; I was really nervous about going to jail. We go to the airport and beg these flight attendants to basically put us on standby to get us back to the States. The only flight that they could put us on was one that went up to Seattle. We’re like, well, “We can hitchhike home from there.”

So, we go up to Seattle and we have no money, not even bus fare, to get to my friend’s house that lived in North Seattle. So we sit in the airport and we play this song, making up words on this mandolin with a little hat out [for tips], just for bus fare. As soon as we get the bus fare, we leave and we’re at our friend’s house. We tell him the story and he’s like, “You know, we’re having a show tomorrow night. You guys should play your song at this show that we’re having in our basement.”

That was the first show essentially that I ever played. By the end of the trip, we traveled for another couple of weeks back to Colorado, we’d written an entire album’s worth of stuff. As soon as we got back to Colorado we already had a band name. We had all the songs ready to record and all of a sudden I was a musician again.

Wow! All because of a broken mast. That’s wild.

SU: The boat was called the Dove. And the book that was about the boat is called Dove. So we called our band Dovekins. Never looked back.

Photo Credit: Rachel Deeb

BGS 5+5: Reckless Kelly

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Reckless Kelly
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Latest Album: The Last Frontier

(Editor’s Note: Answers supplied by Willy Braun.)

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

My favorite memory of being on stage is usually the last song at the Braun Brothers Reunion. We always close with a Bob Dylan song, “You Ain’t Going Nowhere.” It’s been a tradition for a long time and that’s always the end of our set. Reckless Kelly always closes Saturday night of the festival. We bring all of our artist friends out to do a big grand finale jam on that song. It’s always really fun, because it’s following a week of great times, great shows, great music, and people getting together having a ball. The crowd is always singing along with it. It’s just a good little crescendo to end the BBR every year. So that’s one of my top ten right there for sure.

What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?

I get a lot of inspiration for songs from reading. Actually, I borrow lines from books and maybe story lines or direct quotes. Not sure if that’s considered stealing or not, but haven’t been sued yet; so that’s good. But no, I try to read a lot, especially when I am up in Idaho in the wintertime and I keep a notepad by the chair or by the fire where I’m reading. I’ll jot down lines that jump out at me or you know sometimes when you’re reading a story you’ll get an inspiration for a song. But yeah, I take a lot of inspiration from reading books.

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

The nature element that inspired me the most is probably just being in the mountains up in Idaho. Kind of out in the middle of nowhere in the high desert. My place is pretty secluded, so I don’t have a lot of people stopping by, especially in the wintertime. I’m able to just kind of shut the phone off and do some writing. It’s just a great place to just sit and stare out the window at the mountains and just be inspired by the solitude and silence of it all. So I would say the mountains are my number one place to go and get away from it all.

Does pineapple really belong on pizza?

This is two questions rolled into one. First question being, “What’s the most random question you’ve been asked in an interview?” followed by, “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” I think that’s the most random thing I’ve been asked, so we’re going to answer it for you.

The answer is, yes, pineapple belongs on pizza. If you don’t think so, then you’re only fooling yourself, you’re trying to be cool, and trying to be a little more Italian than maybe you are. I can just tell you this from experience. When we have more than one pizza delivered to the bus and one of them contains pineapple, it’s the first one to go. Even though half the guys in the band claim they don’t like pineapple on their pizza, like it is some kind of abomination. So, I’ll take my pizza with pineapple, canadian bacon, and jalapeño, thank you very much. Preferably on thin crust and if you don’t like it, you can go back to Sicily.

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

If I didn’t work in music, I would probably be a carpenter. I’ve always liked building stuff. My grandpa was a carpenter; he taught me how to build stuff when I was a kid. I just enjoy creating things; whether it’s a coffee table, a cabin, a house, or a picture frame, whatever – if it’s made out of wood. It’s fun, I like to build stuff out of wood. I’m not much of a mechanic, but I can work with wood. Yeah, I’d be a woodworker/carpenter if this whole music thing doesn’t work out.

Photo Credit: Cassy Weyandt