Tag: ronnie mccoury

Peter Rowan and Sam Grisman Project Will Bring Old & In the Way to the Ryman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

On January 9, 2025, there will be a special performance – more so a once-in-a-lifetime celebration – of the groundbreaking music of Old & In the Way at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.

Led by the “Bluegrass Buddha” himself, Peter Rowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the group will be backed by the Sam Grisman Project. The gathering will also feature a murderers’ row of talent: Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie & Rob McCoury, and more.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan told BGS in an exclusive 2022 interview. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old & In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

To preface, Old & In the Way started as impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions in the early 1970s between Rowan, his longtime friend, mandolin guru David Grisman, and Jerry Garcia, iconic guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who reached for his trusty banjo during the gatherings at Garcia’s home in Stinson Beach, California.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan remembers. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

At the time, Garcia was searching for new avenues of creative exploration, seeing as the Dead were in the midst of taking a much-needed hiatus after years of relentless touring and recording. He was also, perhaps subconsciously, trying to tap back into his roots before the Dead, this landscape of the late 1950s/early 1960s where Garcia was heavily involved in the San Francisco Bay Area folk scene.

“And you realized that Jerry was an intergalactic traveler, just dropping in on the Earth scene for a little while, but he was totally at home,” Rowan says of Garcia’s restless penchant and lifelong thirst for acoustic music.

When Old & In the Way formed in 1973, the trio recruited bassist John Kahn, as well as a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements). Sporadic gigs were booked around the Bay Area, with the vibe of the whole affair casual in nature – the ethos one of camaraderie and collaboration, but without expectations or boundaries.

“I remember singing the ending of ‘Land of the Navajo’ at the first rehearsal and I looked over at Jerry,” Rowan recalls. “He kept nodding his head like, ‘go.’ It was like Jack Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at City Lights Bookstore – ‘go, man, go.’ Encouragement, encouragement.”

By 1974, Old & In the Way simply vanished into the cosmic ether, but not before capturing a handful of live performances that have become melodic sacred texts of a crucial crossroads for acoustic music. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.

As it stands today, Rowan, now 82 years old, is the only remaining member of Old & In the Way still actively performing. Garcia, Clements, Kahn, and Hartford have all sadly passed on, with the elder Grisman and Greene retired from touring. Grisman’s son, standup bassist Sam Grisman, is now carrying his father’s bright torch.

And although the tenure of the Old & In the Way was short-lived, the ripple effects of the band’s ongoing influence and enduring legacy remains as vibrant and vital as it was those many years ago, when a handful of shaggy music freaks kicked off a jam that will perpetuate for eternity.

In preparation for the upcoming Old & In the Way showcase at the Ryman on January 9, BGS recently spoke with Sam Grisman, who talked at-length not only about his continued work with Peter Rowan and the intricacies of Jerry Garcia, but also why a band Grisman’s father started over a half-century ago still captivates the hearts and minds of music lovers the world over.

You were five years old when Jerry Garcia passed away. You were really young, but do you remember anything that you hold onto?

Sam Grisman: Yeah, I have a very vivid memory of what our house felt like, smelled like, and just what the energy was like when Jerry was around. And I remember that sort of ease, just the way that he made people feel. It seemed like my parents were at ease when he was around.

And he probably felt at ease being around them. It was probably a safe haven at that house.

Definitely. And, you know, my parents smoked weed in the house. But, my mom was pretty strict about cigarettes. [She] wouldn’t let anybody smoke cigarettes in the house. But, when Jerry was around, he smoked cigarettes in the house. So, part of this smell in my blurry five-year-old memory is the smell of cigarettes. And Jerry would sometimes wear a leather jacket, maybe the smell of leather.

I remember the sound of his laugh. I remember all that music, and some of it I remember so vividly that I just know that part of that memory is reinforced by being there as a little toddler when they were working up [music]. Because they would often work on tunes upstairs in the living room and then take them down to the studio, put them on the mics and pull them.

You just wanted to be around it all and soak it all in.

I was a really curious kid.

With the Ryman show coming up, there’s been a lot of celebration of Old & In the Way as of late, especially with you touring with Peter Rowan and the current Jerry Garcia exhibit at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. You’ve been around those songs your whole life. But, when you think about the context of Old & In the Way, and what you’re doing at the Ryman, what really sticks out with why that was such a special time in not only bluegrass, but in the lives of those people?

I mean, what a lightning-in-the-bottle chapter of all those people’s lives, you know? I think 1973, ’73/’74, was a particularly fertile time for Jerry. He was playing a full schedule with the Dead. He had Jerry Garcia Band stuff. He was playing in Old & In the Way. He was playing pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It seemed like he really had an itch to go back to where his roots were, especially when you look at [the Grateful Dead album] Workingman’s Dead [that was released a] couple years prior.

For all of us, who are looking back on it 50 years in the future, it seems like this momentous, heady time that was just meant to be. But, for those guys in the moment, it was just total serendipity. And the quintessence of just going with the flow – Stinson Beach, California, vibes. They just kind of stumbled into this reality.

“Y’all wanna play?” “Sure, why not.”

Yeah, where it would just be really fun to have this bluegrass band that they didn’t take super seriously, which I think really comes across in the recordings, you know? Because there’s all this joy in that music that might not necessarily have been there if those guys were taking it super seriously or if they needed it to pay their bills. It was a very interesting circumstance.

And for them to call their hero Vassar Clements into the mix, on a sort of whim because Peter found his number on a card in his wallet. It was sort of like a fantasy camp for these guys. Like a bunch of hippies sitting around on the beach, smoking a joint, thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the world’s greatest fiddle player just show up?” “I bet you we could book a gig.” “Hey Jerry, you got these legions of people following you around, you could probably get us a gig, right?”

And that’s kind of how it happened. Those gigs were so magical, because they happened mostly for all of these Deadheads in Marin [County, California], for like 16 months or something.

So, if you really had your finger on the pulse of it and you were going to the Keystone [music club in Berkeley, California], to see [the Jerry Garcia Band] and you loved what the Dead were doing, you knew that they were going to take this time off, but you just saw Jerry the week before and he never took his guitar off. He just finished the [Jerry Garcia Band] set and walked backstage with his guitar on and was smoking a cigarette, and then you saw him 30 minutes later talking to somebody off the side of stage, still had his guitar on — you’re thinking, “Gee, this guy’s not going to stop playing music this year, so I better keep my eyes peeled for what’s next.” And they played all these little gigs mostly around the Bay Area — they kind of captured some lightning in a bottle.

With playing these Old & In the Way melodies not only throughout your life, but also extensively nowadays with Peter Rowan, what’s been your biggest takeaway on what makes those songs and the ethos/history behind them so special to you? What about in terms of musicality, technique, and approach?

It’s hard to articulate how special it is to be exploring these beloved songs that mean so much to so many folks, myself included, with Peter and a cast of some of my best friends and favorite musicians. It’s a catalog that’s got a lot of depth.

Old & In the Way would play anything from songs by bluegrass heroes like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, and Jim & Jesse to Vassar [Clements], Jerry [Garcia], and my pop’s instrumentals, to the tunes that Peter was writing at the time, which are some of my absolute favorite songs ever written.

Songs like “Midnight Moonlight,” “High Lonesome Sound,” and “Panama Red.” Playing these tunes with Uncle Peter makes me feel connected to the times he spent with David and Jerry in Stinson Beach in the early ’70s.

I grew up in Mill Valley and loved going to Stinson Beach with my friends, so I have a pretty vivid image in my mind’s eye. They played tunes, hung out, relaxed, took in the sea breeze, smoked a bunch of great weed, and developed a highly individuated “West Coast” approach to playing and singing this bluegrass music that they all loved and respected so much.

And then, they called one of my bass heroes, John Kahn, and their fiddle hero, the inimitable Vassar Clements and gave the world about one glorious year – I think around 50 shows – of a rare and lovable breed of bluegrass.

So much of everyone’s personality comes through in the music, and you can hear their camaraderie in the recordings. I guess my biggest take away from getting to play this music with Peter is how important it is to bring your own approach to these timeless songs that we love, while still honoring what it is that makes us love them in the first place.

You’ve known Peter Rowan since you were born. But, what has this latest endeavor together meant to you, to play the Old & In the Way catalog to not only lifelong fans, but also a whole new generation of acoustic music fans and bluegrass freaks?

It means the world to me to get to spend some time out on the road sharing space and time in service of this music with Uncle Peter. Getting to meet all of these folks who care so much about this music and feeling their appreciation and gratitude for Pete has been truly special.

There are so many people from so many different ages and different walks of life for whom this music has been the soundtrack to many fond memories, and I’m honored to be one of them. It’s also been a joy to see fresh faces in the audience and some folks taking in this music with a new perspective.

In your honest opinion, what is the legacy of Old & In the Way when you place it through the prism of the history of bluegrass and the road to the here and now, especially this current juncture where the torchbearers are selling out arenas and creating this high-water mark for acoustic, traditional and bluegrass music?

For many folks who know and love the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Old & In the Way has been their first exposure to bluegrass. So many people over the years have told me how listening to Old & In the Way led them to further explore bluegrass music and its roots and branches. And others have told me how it inspired them to become pickers and start bands of their own.

I think Old & In the Way has been pivotal in bringing a wider audience with a more adventurous musical palette into the bluegrass universe. The legacy of Old & In the Way is one of exploration and preservation, and they certainly paved the way for many of us to walk a similar path — honoring the music that we love, while exploring its boundaries and finding our own voices and approaches.

It’s wonderful to see my friend Billy Strings out there playing for so many folks on such a big scale simply being himself, playing his own songs with a great group of friends, and also honoring the material that made him the musician that he is — maybe that’s a part of the legacy of Old & In the Way.

Photo Credit: Elliot Siff
Poster Credit: Taylor Rushing

Two Women on the Cutting Edge of Bluegrass’s Future

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

At whatever level you may be plugged into the online bluegrass scene, you have surely heard, seen, or scrolled into content by Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and Brenna MacMillan. These two young, talented pickers are part of a vibrant and blossoming community of traditional musicians and folk artists that includes folks like Cristina Vane, Victor Furtado, Hilary Klug, Wyatt Ellis, and many more.

What makes these creators stand apart, especially Keith-Hynes and MacMillan, is that they aren’t just shoehorning social media into their art-making and creative processes to move up Music City ladders and check abstract music industry boxes. Instead, they’ve intentionally demonstrated how powerful, engaging, and charming content can be when it’s made with art, creativity, tradition, and joyful, cooperative generation as its focal points. Instead of bending over backward to construct virality and lean into transient socials trends, they let their talent, their songs, and their communities do all the talking.

In May, Keith-Hynes released her second solo album, I Built a World, her first project to center songs and her recently-developed, impressive vocals. Drawing on musicians and pickers from her immediate circle and her main gig – Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway – as well as tapping notable country stars and bluegrass legends, the project finds Keith-Hynes at her most confident and unbothered. This is a fiddler-singer-front woman who has found her voice – literally, through work, practice, and vocal lessons as well as figuratively, not satisfied to craft a career on bowing the fiddle alone.

@bronwynmusic Somehow Tonight [Earl Scruggs] SPBGMA stairwell jam!!! Our favorite acoustics for sweet harmonies 😇 🎻: Bronwyn Keith-Hynes 🪕: Brenna @Brenna MacMillan 🎸: Danielle Yother #spgbma #bluegrass #indoor #festival #nashville #harmonies #womeninmusic #banjo #guitar #fiddle #fridaynights #weekend #fyp #stairwellsinging #explore #foryou #bluegrasstiktok ♬ original sound – Bronwyn Keith-Hynes

Later this year, MacMillan will release her debut solo album. Its lead single, “What’s to Come,” features Ronnie McCoury and is indeed a harbinger for the superb album to follow. This project, which highlights MacMillan’s prolific songwriting and features her musical community fleshing out the band, is built directly upon the successes she, Keith-Hynes, and others have found on the internet. Eschewing labels, management, or traditional roll outs, MacMillan will release the project herself, with funds raised on GoFundMe, bringing the music directly to her consumers on her own website and socials channels without “middle men.”

So, not only are MacMillan and Keith-Hynes innovating on ideas around what it means to be a side person, a career picker, and multi-hyphenate, professional traditional musicians, they’re taking all of their expertise as online brands and businesswomen to find success for themselves, on their own terms. They’re focusing on what matters, centering their communities, and making incredible, superlative music at the same time.

BGS connected with MacMillan and Keith-Hynes together via video chat to talk about their unique approaches to making albums, content, and music, while highlighting the deep and tight-knit “bluegrass influencer” circle they’ve each helped create since moving to Nashville and putting their all into bluegrass.

I wanted to start by talking about community and musical community – one of the reasons why I wanted to have you both in conversation with each other is how you each rely on, draw from, and center your musical communities in what you create. It may look like these are solo projects that you’re making, but they’re clearly not solitary projects – and they don’t really feel like vanity projects, either. from the outside looking in either. It really feels you’re making music with other people so you can make music with other people. Could you talk about your work, your solo albums, and working in your communities?

Bronwyn Keith-Hynes: Yeah, I think first and foremost, me and Brenna are good friends and we just ended up being drawn together. We both moved to Nashville around the same time and ended up doing a lot of things together and had a lot of similar interests. That’s cool to find. I haven’t found that many women who have my same interests until I moved to Nashville and then all of a sudden I felt like there was a whole bunch. It’s been really awesome to find that.

First of all, I’m just such a fan of so many people, and I wouldn’t want to make music any other way. My project was based around songs from my community, which was really special to me. It was like a little nerve wracking reaching out to friends and people I respected to be like, “Do you have a song that you’re not going to record that I could record?” But, thankfully, a lot of people did – including Brenna – and I ended up recording one of her songs. And, she sang on it and it was awesome!

I feel like I couldn’t do it alone. I know my strengths and then I know other people’s strengths and I want to make sure we’re all [drawing on our strenghts]. I don’t know if singing is my strength, but it’s something I feel passionate about and feel driven to do for whatever reason. I know the things that I want to put out in the world; I want to make sure the music I’m making has the best parts of myself, but then the best parts of everyone else who’s playing on it.

I think that folks who aren’t just straight white men in this industry, we realize from the get-go that we have to have others with us. We have to do it together. Otherwise we’re not going to go the distance. I feel that in both of your music, as well. But Brenna, I wonder what that question brings up for you, as you’re thinking about and positioning your album to release as well?

Brenna MacMillan: It’s funny, because when Bronwyn asked about songs that I had, I had like a bunch and at that time I wasn’t even thinking about [making] an album at all. I think it was maybe like a couple months later that I decided, based on my friends that kept being like, “You should record some of these songs!” And I was like, “I guess…” I wasn’t thinking about it at all whatsoever.

Then that’s another way like to get my songwriting out there, too. And why wait for someone to come to me for songs if they don’t even know that there are songs? Besides my friends, which is who I first would want to do my songs anyway. It’s funny, because obviously it’s really cool putting out your own music, but I still get more excited when “Riddle” comes on than when “What’s to Come” comes on. [Laughs] That is so cool!

Someone else’s vision for your song, it’s like the coolest thing ever to me. Because, I know what my brain comes up with so it’s not shocking, but someone else’s ideas around something that you wrote – it’s like the coolest thing ever, and I guess that’s why I love the community. I feel like community is like the word that I say way too much, but I do I love it. For Bronwyn, Cristina [Vane], Hilary [Klug], Emily, and Mallory, to some extent back in 2018, we all were moving to town around that time and then 2020 hit and I think that’s when we all got a little closer, because we were all bored and wandering around. I took a lot of walks with my friends, individually, we tried to stay across the path from each other, but I think those bonding moments brought us closer. We were like, “Let’s get coffee” or “let’s get dinner,” and then we ended up making a video or something and it all evolved into great friendship, plus people online being like, “Oh, we like to hear you guys play together!”

@brennamacbanjo Friday night with Lester Flatt! #bluegrass #harmonies #sisters #womeninmusic #fyp #banjo #fiddle #musicians #foryou #friday #weekend #vibes #flatt #scruggs @bronwynkeithhynes @cvanemusic ♬ original sound – brennamacbanjo

One of the things I love most about that whole community of content creators – you’re talking about Cristina Vane and a lot of these other folks you create with here in Nashville – it never feels like you’re trying to shoehorn bluegrass into contemporary content creation. It really seems that making bluegrass music and making roots music with your friends is the impetus, and then you made it fit into social media – instead of vice versa. Like, it’s happened organically and from a community standpoint first, and not just from “I have a social strategy. I have a five year plan.” Do you agree or disagree?

BM: Oh yeah, I agree. There’s not much strategy that’s happened in here. There’s not a lot of that going on. [Laughs]

And yet, I can tell you objectively from the outside looking in, y’all are still operating with 110% more strategy in mind than most of bluegrass. [Laughs]

BKH: I feel like Brenna and I have both talked about – correct me if I’m not saying this right, Brenna – wanting social media to serve us, rather than for us to serve social media. The end goal, for at least for both of us, is not like to become a social media star, it’s to have it serve us, to get our names and our music out to more people.

BM: Yeah! And it felt like it was very random that social media took off for me. I was just like, “Where are you guys coming from? Why do you want to hear me kick off a J.D. Crowe song like every day?” But at the same time, it has its own frustrations and that’s when me – and I think a bunch of the other girls that do this side by side with their music careers – we’re like, “We’re going to have this, but only if it makes sense for helping promote our live gigs and any projects we’re doing.” But as soon as I get nasty comments, or this, or that I’m like, “Oh, I will literally just get off of this app if it’s going to go this direction.” I just block people and then keep going.

I want an audience who will appreciate the things that I want them to appreciate. I think that I’ve trained my audience, too. Basically I shoved it in there, “You are going to listen to this slow song and try to enjoy that. And if you don’t, then I’m going to take you [out of my following]…” Because there have been some people who think that I am a content creator on there, and I’m like, “No, I play music and I took an hour out of my day and posted this video and we’re lucky that happened. Now I’m on my way to a gig and I don’t need some [negative] comment.” But you could come to a live gig and request a song!

Brenna, one of the things I love about your upcoming album and the messaging around it is that you’re really doing  a direct-to-consumer business model and roll out. You’re being like, “Y’all can come to me. You already know how to find me, so this is where you can find the music, too.” I think it’s amazing and again, it’s the cutting edge of what the future of bluegrass will be while it’s also so fucking trad. It’s like back in the day, when bluegrass music required taking the car battery out of the car to play a show in the high school auditorium and then putting the battery back in to drive to the next high school auditorium.

It’s like you’re doing that in the 21st century. You’re being a DIY bluegrass musician, but in 2024. Can you talk a little bit about the direct to consumer model you’re using with your album roll out?

BM: I was like, I need to build a website so that there’s everything in one place – I remember why I did it, too, because there are a bunch of fake accounts. I knew I needed something out there to be authentic and to have all of my official links. That was literally my number one goal with the website. So now, here’s the link to my website, you can find my YouTube channel, my Facebook, my Instagram, my TikTok from there. And you’re going to know you’re in the right place. I’ve basically just started to try to push everything to my website and go from there to everything else, even if it’s taking you back to Instagram. Because [the website is] where everything’s going to happen, so that you know that it’s me instead of some person scamming you. I guess with that in mind, I started trying to link everything, like in my stories, when I’m talking about anything coming up, I just say, “Go to my website!”

Bronwyn, I wanted to ask you again about community and about bringing your circle, your scene into your album. I love all of the features on your album and I also love that it doesn’t just feel like you’re reaching for a Collaborative Recording of the Year nomination. 

[All laugh]

But I wanted to know how it felt to you, as you were thinking about who you wanted to have on the record and why you wanted to have them on the record?

BKH: I’m glad to hear you say that it feels like it’s in service of the music, because that was definitely my intent. It was the funnest part of [recording the album], for me. I did kind of make those decisions after the tracks were done and I’d done my vocals. I just didn’t know how it was going to turn out until I heard it. Then I would brainstorm with Brent [Truitt], and Jason [Carter], and whoever about who to get on it. Dudley Connell was somebody I was really excited about and I’d never met him. I didn’t know him. Someone just gave me his number, I called him up and left him a nervous voicemail. But yeah, he turned out to be the sweetest guy ever – and he’s a bluegrass hero, I love all those Johnson Mountain Boys records.

It’s crazy especially being a new singer, I haven’t heard my voice recorded much ever. Then to hear my voice with all these other voices that I know and I’ve heard a lot – to hear like that combination for the first time – it was like very surreal!

What was it like working with Dierks [Bentley]? We all know his bluegrass pedigree and his connections to the Station Inn and to the McCourys and that he’s always had one foot so solidly in bluegrass, but y’all would have gotten to know him and got to spend some time with him on the road with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, too. I wondered how how that conversation happened and also what it felt like to you to have someone who has gold records and platinum records collaborating with you on your record?

BKH: I grew with his Up On The Ridge album, it was literally one of the first bluegrass albums I heard around my college years.
I was obsessed with it and I thought it was so cool. It got me into listening to the more trad stuff, but I’d always loved his music and then being Jason [Carter’s] partner, and Jason and he were friends even before he was famous. So they’ve been friends from the get go.

I’d met him a few times through Jason and then again when we were on tour [opening for him], that was cool. ‘Cause I felt like we could meet [more as peers], not just because I’m somebody’s partner. But now, this is my gig and this is your gig. And you’re asking us to sit in every night. I felt a little bit more comfortable to make that ask. He just came into Brent’s studio one day and tracked it in under an hour. He’s great! Very quick.

Brenna, talk to me a little bit and if you have features on your upcoming album – and if you can’t talk about them yet, that’s totally fine.

BM: I know, I was trying to think of what I should say – I don’t know, I’m the one in charge! But let me check, I don’t know if Brenna wants to tell all that yet. [Laughs]

At the very least, we can talk about Ronnie [McCoury] and “What’s to Come.” Ronnie’s one of my favorites. Talk a bit about, again, bringing in community and bringing in the scene that already surrounds you.

BM: The core band in the studio was [Mike] Bub on bass and Jake Stargel on guitar. Me, I played banjo on four or five of the tracks, but I have been writing a lot on clawhammer lately and I know that I’m not good at it, so I had Frank Evans come in for those and then I had Cory [Walker] play on a couple very last minute. I was thinking, it’s just going to be better if he does it.

When the special guests ideas popped in my brain, I was thinking, “Do I want special guests to be like my friends, my age, or like people that I really are like heroes of mine? Is this the time to ask them? I don’t know.” Nobody knows who I am, but that’s okay. I had met Ronnie a handful of times in kind of settings where it was like, “I’m here with so and so” and I’m just a little curmudgeon. [Laughs]

“What’s to Come,” it’s like a reflective life song. I know that I sound like a small baby when I sing, and I was thinking of someone with an older sounding voice. Like wanting ancient, lonesome vibes so that there could be old and young together, pondering about life. If you’re young or if you’re old, you still ask all the same questions about life.

Also, [Ronnie’s] gritty mandolin playing. I love it so much. Jarrod Walker played on most of the core mandolin stuff, but he happened to be out of the country that session. I was like, this is perfect! But it’s funny, because I didn’t even know if Ronnie was going to bring his mandolin! [Laughs]

To wrap up, here’s a question I had for both of you, because you’re both musical shape shifters. You move in and out of musical contexts so easily; you’re both side people, you’re both front people, you’re both social media brands. How do you maintain your senses of self?

BKH: I feel like I can’t get away from myself! I don’t feel like I ever even think about that. The only way I’ve struggled with that a little bit, or thought about that more, is doing the solo projects. That’s where I’m like, “Wow. OK. What would Bronwyn do next?” But I think I know what I like and I know what I want to do. I’m just like, “How am I going to do that? I need to figure that out.

BM: I think similarly, I don’t really think about it that much. I think I know what I like, too. And I know what I don’t like. From the get go, I’ve very much just been myself online. I come home from the lab job and do a video with dark circles [under my eyes] and grunge and smelling like hemp trash. That’s what I established from the beginning. So now, I feel comfortable being myself.

Pretty much everything has been my own ideas and, it’s funny, because ten of my eleven songs are originals on the album, three of which are co writes, but hearing it come to life in the studio with other people, it still ended up being what I thought it should be. Which is weird, because there’s no way that I could bring some of these musicians into the studio who are eons beyond what I could imagine, but they knew exactly what the track needed. It does sound like me still and what my vision would have been if I had expressed it [all myself].

BKH: I feel like I’m like more myself these days than I’ve ever been. I feel like for a while, starting out in bluegrass, I had a lot of ideas of what a woman in bluegrass needed to look like, or be, or act like. In the last couple years, maybe inspired by being with Molly in Golden Highway, I feel like I’ve been able to let a lot of that stuff go – about how I should dress and whatever. Now, I embrace the things I actually like.

Photo Credit: Brenna MacMillan by Sophie Clark; Bronwyn Keith-Hynes by Alexa King Stone.

New Exhibit, “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey,” Opens at Bluegrass Hall of Fame

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Although it will be showcased for the next two years, the recent grand opening celebration of the “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey” exhibition at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum will go down as not only a monumental gathering of musical legends, but also an unforgettable moment in time for all involved.

“This exhibit is coinciding at a great moment for bluegrass,” says Carly Smith, museum curator. “[Jerry] funneled so many people to [bluegrass]. And a lot of present day artists — Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle — are incorporating Jerry’s style into what they’re playing.”

Located in downtown Owensboro, Kentucky, along the mighty Ohio River, the Bluegrass Hall of Fame has created an incredibly impressive and intricate ode to Garcia and his undying love of the “high, lonesome sound,” demonstrating how his indelible fingerprint on the genre is still clearly visible in this current high-water mark moment for bluegrass.

Known as one of the finest electric guitarists to ever pick up the six-string instrument, Garcia, who passed in 1995, is eternally known as the de facto leader and musical zeitgeist at the helm of the Grateful Dead. And yet, the foundation of Garcia’s playing and skillset lies in American roots music — folk, blues, and bluegrass.

Photo by Chris Stegner, courtesy of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

The exhibit weaves through Garcia’s early years as a folk musician in the 1950s, his lifelong friendship with musician/lyricist Robert Hunter, his time in a slew of acoustic outfits in the 1960s – including Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions (an early footprint of the Dead) – as well as a keen focus on Garcia’s work in Old & In the Way and New Riders of the Purple Sage.

“I cried through the entire [opening weekend] press conference,” Cliff Seltzer, the exhibit’s creative director, says in a humbled tone. “I’ve been trying to keep my composure for this weekend because it’s overwhelming.”

For Seltzer, the journey to the opening weekend has been five years in the making. A well-known former artist manager, Seltzer was touring the museum in 2019 with one of his friends and clients, Vince Herman of Leftover Salmon. With curator Smith guiding the duo through the building, the group started kicking around ideas for what to put in a then-empty gallery portion of the second floor.

Photo by Chris Stegner, courtesy of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

“We’ve always talked about a Jerry Garcia exhibit, and it just kind of snowballed from there,” Smith says. “And it was very unexpected how open Jerry’s family was with [helping] us. What I’ve learned over the last two years, really working with them, is that bluegrass was part of [Jerry] — that’s what he was doing when he wasn’t on the road, that’s what he did at home.”

For the better part of the last half-decade, Smith, Seltzer and a small crew of folks roamed America, not only in search of Garcia artifacts to display (instruments, photographs, family heirlooms), but also numerous interviews with some of the biggest names in bluegrass to share in the exhibit — each talking at-length about Garcia’s cosmic lore, larger-than-life legends, and lasting legacy.

“Every genre of music has to morph and change. New people enter the fold and introduce new things,” Seltzer said. “With Billy [Strings], Molly Tuttle, Sierra Ferrell, and others, bluegrass is bigger [now] than it’s ever been — it’s only going to continue to grow.”

David Nelson joined by Sam Grisman, Ronnie McCoury, and Jason Carter on stage at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. Photo by Emma McCoury.

Way before the Dead — before any of the melodic chaos and intrinsic beauty of what that band created onstage any given night for its 30-year tenure — there was Garcia himself, simply a huge bluegrass freak who, perhaps someday, would become a member of Bill Monroe & The Blue Grass Boys.

And although Garcia would eventually swerve into the electric sounds of rock and roll and blues, he was never too far from bluegrass. There were always side projects and low-key jam sessions with a bevy of acoustic musicians throughout the early years of the Dead in the 1960s and 1970s.

Most notable of those collaborations was with mandolin virtuoso David Grisman. Through Grisman, Garcia met guitarist Peter Rowan in 1972. A former member of Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys, Rowan found a kindred spirit — in sound and in attitude — with Garcia. The kismet trio would jam often at Garcia’s Stinson Beach, California, home, with Garcia plucking his trusty banjo.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan says. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material. I remember singing ‘Land of the Navajo’ and looking at Jerry like, ‘This is really weird, isn’t it?’ He goes, ‘Keep going, man.’”

Peter Rowan speaks as Heaven McCoury looks on during the exhibition opening weekend festivities. Photo by Chris Stegner.

What was birthed from those happenstance pickin’ and grinnin’ sessions became bluegrass super group Old & In the Way. Like a shooting star in the tranquil night sky, the band — featuring Garcia, Rowan, Grisman, bassist John Kahn, and a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements) — would only last the better part of two years (1973-1974).

But, in it remains one of the most important and groundbreaking acts to ever emerge in the bluegrass scene. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.

Maria Muldaur performs. Photo by Chris Stegner.

Alongside an onslaught of beautifully touching performances (Leftover Salmon, Maria Muldaur, Jim Lauderdale, Kyle Tuttle, Peter Rowan, Ronnie McCoury, Sam Grisman Project) and poignant gatherings of artists and music lovers throughout the “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey” opening weekend, there were also several panels taking place each day at the museum.

Of which, “Garcia: Legend & Lore of a Bluegrass Freak” featured Peter Rowan (Old & In the Way), David Nelson (New Riders of the Purple Sage), Pete Wernick (Hot Rize), Sam Grisman (son of David Grisman) and Eric Thompson (Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions).

“Old & In the Way really helped everything get bigger,” Wernick says. “It was this whole group of material that means so much to all of us in the bluegrass scene — it suddenly became something that people all over the world knew about.”

Greg Garrison, Ronnie McCoury, Eric Thompson, and Jason Carter perform. Photo by Chris Stegner.

Below are a few excerpts for that artist panel conversation:

Eric Thompson: I grew up in Palo Alto, California, kind of the nexus point for the folk world in the early ’60s. Joan Baez was from there. The Kingston Trio was from there. I got into the bluegrass guitar in [1961]. [Jerry] ended up there after he got thrown out of the Army. He got into all kinds of folk music and he would just devour a style. [He’d say], “Oh, I’m going to do that,” then two weeks later he’s got a whole repertoire. I was 15 years old and made friends with Jerry right away — it changed my life.

David Nelson: We’d go down to Kepler’s bookstore, which is an old hangout in Palo Alto. There was a section of it where you could get an espresso, sit down at a picnic table, and read a book. And there’s this guy [there]. It’s summer, so he’s got his shirt open and [big] hair. And he’s playing a 12-string guitar. Somebody comes up and says, “That’s Jerry Garcia.” We went over and pitched the idea [of jamming together]. Sure enough, next Tuesday night, we’re waiting and waiting. Then, all of a sudden, here comes the car and there’s Jerry coming up the stairs with a guitar and some friends. It started off a whole [jamming] thing at the Boar’s Head [Tavern], which just went on for months and years maybe. [Jerry] was interested in bluegrass banjo and I was interested in bluegrass guitar. I got me a banjo. Jerry said, “Oh, man, borrow my guitar. Can I borrow this banjo?” He happened to have a 1940 Martin D-18 [guitar].

The Sam Grisman Project – featuring Victor Furtado, Logan Ledger, and more – take a bow. Photo by Emma McCoury.

Thompson: [Jerry] brought some openness to the approach [of bluegrass music]. I know [so] many people, who are mostly not bluegrass musicians, who found out about [bluegrass] because of Old & In the Way. It was open and expressive and, at the same time, paid respect to what came before. It was this new, intelligent thing. And intelligence is what Garcia brought to the music, [as well as] imagination, articulation.

Vince Herman and Jim Lauderdale harmonize. Photo by Chris Stegner.

Get more information on “Jerry Garcia: A Bluegrass Journey” and plan your visit to the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum here.

Photo Credit: All photos by Chris Stegner and Emma McCoury, as indicated. Courtesy of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum.

My Friend Dawg: Three Musicians on the Real David Grisman

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

To complete our Dawg in December Artist of the Month series, we asked several musicians who have worked with and made music with the inimitable David Grisman what it’s like to really know him.

A mythological figure in American roots music, the Dawg remains remarkably accessible and embedded in the scene, despite his unofficial role as a sort of guru-meets-mentor-meets-hermit. He’s been a teacher and encourager of multiple new generations of pickers and mandolinists, from Grammy-nominated Ronnie McCoury to young, impressive upstarts like Teo Quale – who, with his brother Miles and band, Crying Uncle, performed for Dawg’s Bluegrass Hall of Fame induction at IBMA’s annual awards show in September. Others, like fellow Hall of Famer Alice Gerrard, began their friendships with Grisman long ago, before his skyrocketing notoriety and impact.

We asked these three pickers and friends of Dawg – Gerrard, McCoury, and Quale – to reflect on their relationships with the man, who despite being placed high upon a pedestal by many in bluegrass, new acoustic, and old-time music, remains a grounded and down-to-earth mandolin player with an extraordinary legacy.

Alice Gerrard

Alice Gerrard: “I remember sort of my first impression of David – I think it also was Hazel’s too, because he was this very young looking kid from New York, but he played this great mandolin. It was kind of, “What’s going on here?” you know, but the thing that really stands out in my mind is when we were riding to New York [once]. I don’t remember, it might have been my van, but it was a van, and we were going there to record the second Folkways album.

“I think that’s the one that had, ‘The One I Love is Gone.’ We were on our way to record that album in New York and Peter Siegel – who is a friend of David’s and I think Peter was the one who suggested that David play mandolin on the album, because we didn’t really know David at that point. But we did trust Peter. So, David is in the band with us and and we were practicing that song as we were driving up to New York from D.C.

“Hazel was singing the tenor, and I was singing the lead, and there was a problem. Because, you know, often those Bill Monroe harmonies are kind of a mix of major against minor and stuff like that. Hazel was having a hard time getting it, but I’m not. (I’d have to go back and really think about whether she had it right and Peter and David had it wrong.) But it ended up with David lying on the floor of the van between the front and back seats. I don’t know why he was doing that, but he was lying on the floor and singing it with Hazel, trying to get her to find this particular note.

“It was just hilarious! I mean, it was like, I don’t know, two or three hours worth of David’s face, singing ‘The One I Love Is Gone,’ and him fairly well convinced that she did not have the right note. I don’t remember. I mean, I don’t remember the specifics of that, but it was hilariously funny, and of course, what she ended up with was great, but I’m not sure whether he was trying to get her to hit a minor note or what.

“He was just this little kid, you know? From New York. And played this great mandolin. It was beautiful what he did on that song.

“I had to think about how we first met him and how we first decided to record. So I called Peter Siegel on the phone and he told me that he was the one– I mean, David was a friend of his in New York. [Peter] came down to D.C. with David. They were going to go to this bluegrass show, but that got rained out, so they didn’t go. They canceled the show. They [both] heard about this party. I remember where it was. It was at my cousin’s house, who at that time was living sort of on the edge of Georgetown.

“And so, according to Peter, they just came to the house and Hazel and I were sort of sitting somewhere singing together. It was Peter’s idea to use David. And I’m so happy that we did because yeah, he’s amazing.”

Ronnie McCoury

Ronnie McCoury: “When I started playing music, I started playing the mandolin with my dad. I was 14 ‘81– like ‘82 or ‘80, somewhere around there, either before I started playing or right after. My dad got this package in the mail and David had gotten a hold of him and said, ‘I found these tapes of a show we did in Troy, New York in 1966.’ And it was my dad, David, Uncle Jerry [McCoury], and Winnie Winston. [Dawg] said, they sounded pretty good and he’d like to put them out. So he did. It’s called Early Dawg on Sugar Hill. It was half this live stuff and the other half was studio. Along with that package he sent a couple albums of his stuff.

“I mean, that’s just how he is, you know? He just sent this along. He didn’t even really know that I was playing music at the time. I had no idea he was a California guy. I found these albums [he had sent], I had never heard anything like that played on a mandolin, because I was just [getting started]. You know, I’m a child of bluegrass. I was born into it. My dad started a band in ‘66. I was born in ‘67. [It’s] always been a part of me.

“This new music I was hearing, I couldn’t even grasp it. I didn’t know what it was, but I went to bed at night all through my teens putting his albums on and it would play one side and I’d be usually asleep by that time. I did that basically every night to David’s records.

“When I was probably 18 or so, David called my dad and said, ‘Hey, I want to do some bluegrass and I want to do this thing called the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience and we’ll do some shows.’ Basically, it was my dad’s band [backing him up]. We did that quite a bit, for a year or two – just on and off.

“I got to know David and every time we go west, we always were basically playing Northern California and either Grass Valley, California – for the festival – or touring out there playing with my dad. It was just starting for my dad a lot more in the West. He’d been going there for years, but sporadically, and we’d always wind up going to the Dawg’s house. I had been playing a Kentucky mandolin, and he told me, ‘Hey, I got a mandolin at my house for you.’ And I never thought anything about it, and I surely wouldn’t ask about it.

“My dad went out, while we were still in Pennsylvania, and he recorded with David for what is called Home is Where the Heart Is. Dad did a show at the Great American [Music Hall], I think, with Dawg, and he came home with this Gilchrist mandolin. The neck was coming out of it at the time and I had a guy repair it – Warren Blair, who was playing the fiddle.

“He laid that mandolin on me, I believe I was probably 19 or 20, and it’s the same one I play today. I’m 56. I got a Loar 10 years ago and played it a little while, but David and Sam Bush and all my peers said, ‘Hey man, stay on that Gilchrist.’ So I stuck with it. I owe him such a debt. He gave me something that is such a part of me, it defines me, I guess. I’ll tell you, it’s his giving heart. He has a huge heart.”

“My dad met David in 1963. He was playing with Bill Monroe and Ralph Rinzler was his manager at the time– Bill’s first manager. He played in New York somewhere and they stayed at David’s house. David’s father passed when he was 10 and his mother, I can’t remember if his mother was even there, but my dad would have been 24. [Dawg] would have been six years younger than my dad. He was a teenager, you know. I don’t know if Monroe did, but my dad wound up staying with David, because Ralph put him there. He and my dad go back to when he was a teenager. There’s such a long friendship there.

“One time, we were at Grass Valley and Dawg said, ‘Have you heard of this kid?’ He comes riding up on a little bicycle with his mandolin on his back and I said, ‘Well, I’ve heard the name Nickel Creek, but I didn’t really know much.’ He says, ‘Chris Thile’s his name.’ He comes riding up, you know, and he jumps off his bike and he wants to play for David.

“We’re standing around picking and [Chris] sings, ‘Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ – super high, you know – and he’s playing. David said, ‘Hey, man, do you know this tune?’ And he starts playing ‘Big Mon.’ Or ‘Monroe’s Hornpipe,’ I think it was. [Thile] didn’t know it, so David’s playing it and he starts showing him it. And [Chris is] just like a sponge. He starts just running it real slow, then he’s like, ‘Oh, that’s neat!’ And he hops on his bike and he’s off. Like an hour or so later, he comes riding up, jumps off his bike, and he’s got it down. It was pretty neat to see David show him.

“The first time I ever heard or met Jake Jolliff was with David. The first time I ever met Julian Lage was with David. Both of those guys, probably at the time, were 10 and 11, something like that.”

Teo Quale

L to R: Teo Quale, David Grisman, and Mile Quale. (Photo courtesy of the Quales and Crying Uncle Bluegrass Band).

Teo Quale: “I first met Dawg as a young kid at a Manning Music event when I was about 6 or 7 – so about 10 years ago. Actually, the first time I was around David was when I was still a baby, but I don’t really remember that!

“Anyway, he jammed a bit with us and Tracy played bass. He and Chad [Manning] played later on. At the time, I was playing fiddle and I really wanted to start learning the mandolin, but my fingers weren’t strong enough yet. So, my mother got me a ukulele and replaced the strings with ones tuned in fifths. Then about a year later, I finally started on the mandolin.

“David has been an inspiration to me ever since meeting him. Over the years, I’ve also had the opportunity to take some lessons with him and he’s always been really generous with his time and his knowledge, but always in that relaxed Dawg way. His music has influenced the way I approach every aspect of my playing, from improvisation to composition.

“Most of my other heroes were also greatly influenced by David – Mike Marshall, Darol Anger, Ric [Robertson] and [Dominick Leslie]. I’m thankful that I get to call him a friend and that I’m also around so many musicians who were touched by him. I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like, but we keep in touch.

“He was born on the same day and year as my grandfather, both two really special people in my life. I play one of his old mandolins now (made in 2006, the same year I was born!), and I am thankful each time I pick it up, knowing that a part of Dawg will always be in this instrument.”

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Acoustic Disc.

WATCH: The Brothers Comatose, “The IPA Song” (Feat. Ronnie McCoury)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: The Brothers Comatose
Hometown: San Francisco, California
Song: “The IPA Song” (featuring Ronnie McCoury)
Release Date: October 5, 2023
Label: Swamp Jam Records

In Their Words: “There comes a time in every band’s existence when you have speak up and let the chips fall where they may. We realize that this statement is really going to split our crowd, but it’s time we say something. We can’t drink IPAs anymore! They’ve gotten too strong and too hoppy and we just can’t do it any longer. All we drink are light beers now and maybe it’s because we turned into more of a quantity, not quality type of band… or maybe we just turned into a bunch of beer wusses. Either way, no more IPAs!

“It all stems from us overdoing it back in the day when we were sponsored by a beer company and they delivered 3 cases (72 beers!) of IPAs to every tour stop. So there we were, neck deep in super strong, warm IPAs in our van and we were just trying to keep up. It’s kinda like how you can’t drink Bacardi anymore because of that one bad night you had in college. That’s us with strong and hoppy beers. The song started off as a joke because venues kept putting IPAs in our green room, but we would never drink them. It turns out the message really hits home with a lot of people.

“When we were planning to go into the studio to record ‘The IPA Song,’ our mandolin player Greg wasn’t available, because he was out on tour with another band at the time. It turned out our buddy, mandolin maestro Ronnie McCoury, was going to be in town playing a show, so we got him to come and play mandolin and sing high harmonies on the track. And being the legend he is, he truly delivered the goods on this one.

“We recommend cracking a nice, cold, non-IPA beer to enjoy while watching this video.” – The Brothers Comatose

Photo courtesy of the Brothers Comatose, Pavement PR

Artist of the Month: Willie Nelson

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Earlier this year legendary musician, songwriter and recording artist Willie Nelson announced his 151st studio album would be a return to bluegrass, this time reimagining 12 of his own originals with a string band lineup. Available September 15 and simply titled Bluegrass, the Buddy Cannon-produced project reinforces the career-long relationship Nelson has had with bluegrass and bluegrass pickers, calling on old friends and collaborators like Barry Bales, Ron Block and Dan Tyminski, as well as band members and vocalists Aubrey Haynie, Rob Ickes, Josh Martin, Mickey Raphael, Seth Taylor, Bobby Terry, Wyatt Beard and Melonie Cannon.

Nelson is a revered song interpreter and cross-genre adventurer, covering and recording songs from all across the American roots music landscape, from the Great American Songbook to blues and soul, from jazz to Texas swing. No corner of Americana in any/all of its forms has been left untouched by this prolific music maker. But his relationship to bluegrass – similar to his peers like Dolly Parton or Lee Ann Womack, or his acolytes and emulators like Sturgill Simpson and Kacey Musgraves – speaks to the primordial relationship between country and bluegrass, more than just musical touristing or a genre-based gimmick. Nelson doesn’t put on “bluegrass” as a costume, he brings it forward from the earliest days of country music as a genre, before sub-genres like bluegrass had stratified and coalesced as identities somewhat separate from country as a whole. It’s part of what makes Bluegrass a compelling collection, tracks like “Still Is Still Moving to Me,” the album’s lead single, don’t feel like songs wearing bluegrass drag, but rather feel like country gone back to its roots.

Across a career that has touched so many other musicians, singers, and creators – from Waylon Jennings to Ray Charles to Snoop Dogg – it follows that Nelson has counted many bluegrass greats among his album guests, track features, and show bills. He’s toured extensively with Alison Krauss & Union Station over the past two decades; it’s no surprise to find a handful of Union Station alumni on Bluegrass. He’s recorded with Rhonda Vincent, Billy Strings and all the McCoury boys, Del, Rob and Ronnie – the latter two have toured with Willie, too. Country Music, a 2010 release from Nelson produced by Americana superstar T Bone Burnett, was also a bluegrass-centered album, pulling from the deep and broad repertoire of early country, old-time and bluegrass – when the three genres could be represented by a Venn diagram of one circle.

There are so many facets of Nelson’s music making that feel patently bluegrass: his love of borderless, boundless cover songs; his ability as a picker standing equal with his songwriting and one-of-a-kind vocal interpretations; his endless output of personal, meaningful music; his mutual admiration of his compatriots, adorers and mentees. The list could go on ad infinitum. It makes perfect sense that this year he’ll join the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

It’s rare that a multi-hyphenate musician and songwriter such as Willie Nelson can shift so effortlessly between contexts, gathering and maintaining a diverse following that understands great music can – and should – transcend not only genre, but all of the trappings of the music industry. It’s part of why Bluegrass feels grounded, honest and resonant. Willie Nelson isn’t playing pretend, he’s just being himself – and that might be the most bluegrass thing about him.

Watch for our Artist of the Month feature, an in-depth exploration of Willie Nelson’s relationship with bluegrass across his life and career coming later this month, and enjoy our Essential Willie Nelson Playlist, featuring many of his bluegrass forays among his popular recordings and our BGS favorites.

Photo Credit: James Minchin

Robbie Fulks Reflects on a Funny, Smart and Heartfelt ‘Bluegrass Vacation’

Posted on by Editor

In the liner notes to his new album Bluegrass Vacation, released at the beginning of April, Robbie Fulks talks about his formative experiences in the genre. He also mentions how, as a young musician in the early ’80s, he drifted away from it in search of the coolness of trendier sounds. “But what made me think there was anything cooler than bluegrass?” he asks, playfully reprimanding his younger self.

Bluegrass Vacation makes the case that there is indeed nothing hipper than some of the world’s most decorated musicians tearing into a tried-and-true format. And it doesn’t hurt when they do so in service of smart, funny, heartfelt material, which is what Fulks delivers here and is emblematic of his output for the past three decades. While he proves that he can write rollicking back-porch jams like “One Glass of Whiskey” and “Let the Old Dog In,” he also slows the tempo for tender acoustic beauties like “Molly and the Old Man” and “Momma’s Eyes.” And in the stunning “Angels Carry Me,” he pushes bluegrass boundaries with a multi-movement piece of fearless lyrical and musical complexity.

Considering it took 2 ½ years from first session to album release due to pandemic holdups, Fulks is thrilled to finally have Bluegrass Vacation out in the world. He talked to BGS about early influences, his impressive cohorts on the record, and whether he’d consider dipping back into the genre again.

BGS: What are your earliest memories of bluegrass and what drew you to it?

Robbie Fulks: Early memories are a reel-to-reel tape of Doc Watson’s first Vanguard record. There were a couple of other records on the tape as well, but Doc was the first thing up, “Nashville Blues” going to “Sitting on Top of the World,” that warm, beautiful, versatile sound. Doc did all these different things that kind of put him one foot in bluegrass and one foot out. That was probably the earliest thing that hooked me. And then after that it was like The Country Gentleman and Will The Circle Be Unbroken. A couple of other records that my folks had, and then the festivals.

What made you decide that now was the time to do an all-bluegrass record?

Generally, over the last 10 years, I’ve been making more inroads. My bluegrass hot-shot Rolodex has expanded to where it’s like, holy shit, I have Jerry Douglas’ email and can call Sam Bush (laughs). It just seemed like it had reached a tipping point the last couple of years where it was like I gotta do this. The older guys are going to be dead soon including myself, and that’s part of the reason (laughs). But I’ve been leaning that way more and more for the last five to 10 years.

Did your songwriting process change at all?

I varied my angles on the songwriting as I went along. On a couple of them, I had a genre thing in mind. Like “Lonely Ain’t Hardly Alive,” I was thinking about Jimmy Martin in the late ’50s and early ’60s and wrote to that. With “Angels Carry Me,” that came about because I had inked (mandolinist) Sierra (Hull) on a session. I started thinking about what kind of a groove I would like to hear her on and wrote from the groove forward thinking about the way she plays.

And did writing for bluegrass steer you in the direction of any particular subject matter?

I’ve noticed that I gravitate repeatedly toward four or five rough subjects over and over again. One of them is alcohol, and that shows up in a couple songs. One of them is memories of when I was a kid, and that shows up. Or music itself. When these subjects show up, I always think “Should I go ahead, or not go ahead?” Because it’s well-trodden ground for me. Like “Old Time Music Is Hear to Stay,” I thought “Well, I’m writing another song about music. I’ve done of lot of that. Should I go forward?” And as I went forward with the song, I just found that I really liked it and that compensated for any qualms about having done something similar before. I guess it’s a long-winded way of saying no, it really wasn’t any different. Just going into a room with an instrument and seeing what happened.

Considering the incredible instrumentalists on this record, did you give them a lot of direction? Or was it more like, “Here’s the song. Let it rip?”

Generally, I’ve noticed in the studio that the less I say, the better. Because it’s surprising how you can say four words that seem well-chosen and exactly what you want and then things go haywire because it’s overinterpreted or misinterpreted. My approach is that I definitely have things in mind and I chart and have rough end points in mind. But when you hear the first go at it, I go with the idea that that’s what it’s going to be, like 90 percent, and then I direct the other 10 percent of it as delicately as I can.

Tell me about recording “Angels Carry Me,” which is fearless with how it expands the notion of what a bluegrass song can be.

The people that were on the session, it skewed a little younger, because Sierra was there and (guitarist) Chris (Eldridge) was there. And (fiddler) Stuart (Duncan) is just kind of ageless and genre-less, just pure music. Todd (Phillips) is the same way on the bass. He’s a really wide-brained guy. I think if it had been different players, it might have been more of a challenge. But those players can go anywhere and just have adventurous spirits, as do I. It was never a question that it would be too weird for somebody to get their mind around.

That song also has one of my favorite lines I’ve heard in a long while: “And only a fool thinks he can leave just by driving away.”

That was a line that took me by surprise. I worked on the song for three or four weeks in an attitude of mystery and concern (laughs). Because I didn’t know where it was going or what I was doing. It was kind of amorphous. But the appearance of that line at the end, it seemed like, “Ah, that could have been in my sights the whole time and I just didn’t know it.” It appeared as a gift.

Did you have to embellish any of “Longhair Bluegrass,” which talks about you going to see a festival as a kid with your parents?

I think the only untrue part is that in the fourth verse, I put an example of somebody at the festival, an old-timer that was not into the younger generation and their attitude. And I put in Wilma Lee Cooper because I looked at a poster of that Culpepper festival. Her name fit and I thought the age bracket kind of fit. In the session, Sam Bush said, “No, she was real easy-going about it.” I said, “Who wasn’t?” And he said, “Probably Ralph Stanley.” So I put that in. That was a little untruth, because I didn’t see Wilma or Ralph at that festival looking around angry. And maybe my parents weren’t stoned out of their heads like I implied in the song (laughs).

You talk in “Old Time Music Is Here to Stay” about picking up the electric guitar and then losing interest in it as you returned to more traditional sounds. How accurate is that?

100 percent. I think it was just a natural thing for me to want to swim with the current when I was 17 years old. But even at the time, I think it was at the back of my mind that this music by, I don’t know, Aztec Camera and Big Country or U2, it was OK, but it just didn’t grab me in the way that I was grabbed by a Doc Watson record. It was a little bit more work coming to the popular music of the late ’70s, early ’80s. But what can you do? The stuff that gets in you when you’re five or ten years old, that’s the stuff that doesn’t go away.

Did you feel extra pressure on this record because you wanted to do the genre proud?

There was pressure there, but it was more from being in an isolation booth and looking out the glass door and seeing Sam Bush over there or Ronnie McCoury over there. No matter how welcoming these people are, it’s a mind fuck to pick up your instrument and be playing with them (laughs). It freaked me out a little bit.

I know you just finished this one, but is it possible you could return to the genre again somewhere down the road?

I’m starting to think about what to do next. I’m open-minded. If people like this enough, I loved doing it. I would do another one.

Photo Credit: Scott Simontacchi

On ‘Lovin’ Of The Game’ Michael Cleveland Brings His Bluegrass Community to the World

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The entire world is learning what the bluegrass community has always known: Michael Cleveland is a once-in-a-lifetime talent. Cleveland has long enjoyed critical acclaim inside the bluegrass circles he grew up in – he is a 10-time winner of the IBMA Fiddle Player of the Year Award – but, given this genre’s inward-facing bent, his fiery, impassioned playing has most often reached listeners and fans who are already diehard acolytes. 

Now, with his sixth studio release, Lovin’ Of The Game, Cleveland’s star is objectively rising. Recent collaborations with stratospherically famous pickers like Béla Fleck and Billy Strings – both of whom appear on the new project – along with several jaw-dropping viral videos have demonstrated to the world beyond bluegrass conferences and festivals that Cleveland is worth paying attention to. 

And it’s all thanks to his truly unique voice on his instrument. The American public, and roots music fans across the globe, understand rip-roaring fiddle just as well as they relate to a speedy banjo breakdown or a screaming, arena rock guitar solo. With every note Cleveland pulls from his fiddle, there’s a grit, an ease, endless emotion, and a winking sparkle that all at once conjure the aggression of Charlie Daniels and the tenderness of “Ashokan Farewell.” It’s infinitely appealing, even to uninitiated fans, and it’s a delectable gateway drug, a window into a vibrant instrumental tradition that most folks only interact with casually. With Cleveland’s playing, every listener is given permission to love the most elemental parts of bluegrass, old-time, and country music – and to feel like it’s something they discovered for themselves. 

They are certainly discovering it. Six albums down and Cleveland is continuing to put one foot in front of the other, with constant innovation and enthusiasm, and a long view that envisions endless opportunities for new albums, new collaborations, and new music to be made. All the while, he’s bringing hundreds and thousands of new fans into these rootsy genres. Michael Cleveland shows all of us how much joy – and fire – can be found in the Lovin’ Of The Game. 

This is your sixth studio release – it’s not a “sophomore album” or a third or fourth record, even – you’ve got quite a lot of miles under your feet at this point and have made quite a few albums. What’s your perspective at this point, looking back and looking ahead? 

MC: What I wanted to show with this album and with [the last album,] Tall Fiddler, is that I still love and will always play traditional bluegrass, but I can and like to do a lot more than that. I wanted to definitely show that on this record, because a couple of people that I talked to recently – Béla Fleck being one of them, I heard Béla say in an interview, “I wasn’t really sure if Michael would want to play with me.” And I thought, “Who wouldn’t want to play with Béla Fleck!?” It’s kind of a no-brainer! I get what he’s saying, though, in the sense that a lot of people are comfortable in what they do, they’re happy doing that, and they might not want to stray too far from that. That’s not necessarily the case with me. I wanted to have some different stuff on this record, a lot of traditional bluegrass, but some things that push the envelope a little bit and let people know that I do like to do more than just straight-ahead bluegrass.

As far as straight-ahead bluegrass albums, to be quite honest with you, the albums that I did early on – like Flamekeeper and Let ‘Er Go, Boys! – as far as straight-ahead bluegrass goes, those would be my favorite albums. Not because of anything that I did on those albums, but because of the band. The bands on those albums and the groove that they play is like no other. Audie Blaylock, Jesse Brock, Jason Moore, who we recently lost last year, Tom Adams, Charlie Cushman, and people like that – I dunno if there’s a way to top those albums. We could do different material, but the groove and the feel that those guys played is like no other. So, the thing is to do something that’s a little different from that.

I view your fiddling as so innovative and cutting edge; when we hear you play, we’re hearing your musical thoughts just pouring out on your instrument. You can be couched so firmly in “tradition” and still be innovative, but then on the outside looking in, when a listener isn’t necessarily a diehard bluegrass fan, your playing can feel just traditional. Now that you’re getting well-deserved notoriety not just in bluegrass, but further afield too, how does it feel to try to show people your musical perspective when traditional bluegrass means different things to different people? 

You know, that’s my favorite audience, and I think a favorite audience of my band, to play to. We like to play bluegrass festivals and we always hope to play bluegrass festivals, but man, I like to play bluegrass for people that have never heard it before. Any time I’ve ever done that it’s been well received. If it’s put in the right situation, like seeing what Billy Strings is doing now. He’s playing traditional bluegrass and thousands and thousands of people are hearing that that have never heard it before or would have never paid attention to bluegrass. 

We did a couple of shows with the Louisville Orchestra here. We’re talking the Kentucky Center for the Arts’ Whitney Hall. I think it held like, 2,400 people. And it was a full house! Some of them probably knew what bluegrass was, some of them were there to see us, but I would guess that a far larger number of people were there and probably didn’t know what bluegrass was or what to expect. It went like gangbusters! [Laughs] It really did. Any time I’ve been in a situation like that where bluegrass is presented to an audience that isn’t familiar with it, it’s great. That’s what I like to do more than anything these days. 

It’s hard to look at it objectively, given that it’s me, but it gives me hope that there’s a future for bluegrass. And that it’s not just the stereotype that people think of – that it’s Deliverance. I think mainly, it’s encouraging to see new people getting into it, whether it’s me or Billy Strings or anybody else. I think that’s a good thing. 

Bluegrass is so much about community, it feels like a family. Your albums are so collaborative, whether they’re centered on your band Flamekeeper or not. I sense your community represented so strongly on this record, you’re working with Jeff White producing again, you’ve got old and new friends on the record. But I also wanted to give you a chance to talk about Bill Wolf and Eddie Wells, friends of yours in music who recently passed on and you dedicated the album to.

For records like this, it’s so fun for me to not only get to collaborate with people that I’ve worked with in recent years, but to find the right song that would suit these situations. It’s one thing to have Billy Strings or somebody come in and sing something, and they could sing anything and it would be good, but to find a song that they can actually own and it sounds like something they do, that’s a little harder. My producer, Jeff White, he’s a huge help in picking songs. I have to say this time, we had a lot of good songs to choose from. 

The community thing– number one, I like to get my favorite players, people that I really enjoy playing with whether they’re a “name” or not. My buddy Cody Looper, he played on “Five Points.” I love playing with Cody. He played in my band for about a year or so and he has a job where all of a sudden he wasn’t able to get time off so he had to leave the band. We all hated it, and we still keep in touch and get together to play every once in a while. Anytime I can have him on something I like to do that, because he’s just so fun to play with. Like Lloyd Douglas on Fiddler’s Dream, he played banjo on that album. Lloyd is another one of those guys that maybe not a lot of people are aware of, but he’s just as good as a lot of the people out here killing it.

It’s about who will fit the song. That’s very important to me. It’s got to fit, whoever you get on it has gotta be somebody who can contribute to the song – not just a name. 

And you mentioned Bill Wolf and Eddie Wells, they’re two guys who I’ve probably known since I was really little. Oddly enough, I didn’t really get to know them until I was older. Then Bill, I think, retired from Ford around ‘96 or ‘97 when I had my local band and we started playing together. Those two guys, when I wasn’t on the road, through high school and even up until a couple of years ago, if I was hanging out and jamming at a festival or doing some local gig or having a jam at the house, those two guys would be there. I learned more about music, dynamics as a band, how to play together as a band, and singing trios from those two – Bill Wolf and Eddie Wells and my other friend Cecil Jackson, those three guys singing together was the best. They’d sing Country Gentlemen stuff like no other. I learned a lot and played a lot of music over the years with those two guys and they passed away really not too far apart from each other. I miss them a lot and I wanted to do this album in memory of them and as a way to say thanks for all I learned being around them and all the good times we had together. 

One song that really jumped out at me on the record is a special version of “Temperance Reel,” which I’ve heard Luke Bulla perform over the years. I love how Luke and Tim O’Brien’s voices are blending together on the track – I love how stripped down it is. Can you talk about recording that one? 

I had heard Luke Bulla sing that song a few years ago, I think it was in 2017. Jeff White and Laura White were married and Jeff asked me to be the best man at his wedding. I went down there for that and they had a rehearsal and the night of the rehearsal it was also Ronnie McCoury’s birthday, so there was a big picking party over at this house. Everybody was there. Just about everybody you can think of in Nashville who played bluegrass was there. Luke sang this song and I remember hearing it and really liking it. While working on the album, Jeff was doing a bunch of dates with Lyle Lovett and Luke was in the band. Jeff mentioned that Luke was singing “Temperance Reel” and I happened to ask, “Has he ever recorded that?” Jeff said yes, but he hadn’t released it or something like that. I knew it would sound good with three fiddles and it was my idea to keep it to just the fiddles, we just had to see if we could make it sound full enough to work. 

There’s something about Luke and Tim’s voices, they’re so reedy that they really sound like they’re blending with the fiddles and the bowing. 

It’s wild! I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. I love not only Tim’s singing, but the part that he plays, the third part on the fiddle. It’s got this Celtic thing to it, too, that really added a lot to the whole track. 

What’s next? What are you excited for? I know you’re deep in the throes of releasing this album, and you’re gaining so much momentum and getting great national press …

Man, I don’t know what’s going to come of this but we’ve never had so much go on at the time of an album release. [Laughs] I’m thrilled about what’s happening so far. It’s already so much more than we would have dreamed of. It will be cool to see what happens. 

I do a lot of session work here at the house, people hire me to work on tracks and I’ve got a studio at home, so I record pretty much every day that I’m home. And the band has a pretty busy summer lined up and I’ve got some more dates with Béla Fleck and My Bluegrass Heart coming. Lots of stuff going on! And I’m working on some new projects that hopefully we’ll be able to tell you about pretty soon. 

Photo credit: Amy Richmond

What Del McCoury and Ronnie McCoury Took From Monroe, Flux, and the Dawg

Posted on by Editor

Del McCoury is a legend many times over. A snapshot from any period of his life would be enough to earn him a place in the history books. From his time playing with Bill Monroe in the early ‘60s to fronting his own band with his sons Rob and Ronnie McCoury, Del’s career is a triumph. The Del McCoury Band is the most-awarded band in IBMA history, and Del has been honored with a Grammy Award, induction into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, and a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since moving to Nashville in the early ’90s, The Del McCoury Band has recorded more albums than they can remember. (Literally. I asked them and they couldn’t remember. It approaches near two dozen.) Their latest album, Almost Proud, furthers their musical legacy. In a visit with The Bluegrass Situation, Del McCoury and Ronnie McCoury talk about recording it during the pandemic, digging through a big box of submissions for material, and learning a trick from Jerry Douglas that they still use to this day.

BGS: Del, you’ve fronted a band for many decades and this version with your sons has been around since the ’90s. How has the process of picking the material and arranging it changed over that course of time?

Del: Well, I’ll tell you, we used to do a lot of prep before we went in the studio, years ago when it was just me and the band. But now the boys have their own band and they’re a lot busier now. For the last several records, I just kind of picked the material and I’ll try to find the right key and tempo and all those things. And we won’t even have a rehearsal or anything until we get in the studio. We just mainly do all of the hard work in the studio after we’re in there.

I’ve always been in awe of how this band not only picks great material but also plays it in a way that makes it unique and often an instant bluegrass classic, no matter the original genre. What goes into how you pick material?

Ronnie: I still don’t know what Dad’s going to like. I found “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” through a guy named Dick Bowden. He gave me a tape of it after the band had played a show. It was just Richard Thompson playing solo guitar on a radio show. Dick said he thought it’d be a good song to cover and as soon as I heard it and the fingerstyle guitar I thought, “Wow, this could be good.” Well, I took it to Dad, and he passed on it for the record we were making. But then the next record, he pulled it out and said, “You know, I’ve been listening and I think that would make a pretty good song.” So, like I said, I don’t know what’s going to hit him and when it will.

But with my dad, it doesn’t matter what he plays or sings. Number one, it’s going to have strong guitar rhythm. Number two, it’s going to be his voice. Through the years, I figured he can sing about anything. For example, when he played with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, everybody was like, “I wonder how this is going to work.” Well, he just opens his mouth and does what he does, and it is what it is, and it’s great! People will pigeonhole others for their style of singing. My dad’s got a high lonesome sound, but it always seems to work.

My dad taught us how to have that feel and the elements of first generation bluegrass. The drive, how to play fast and when you need to, how not to overplay, and how to back up behind a singer, things like that. People don’t always have a teacher that really knows that stuff, so it sometimes doesn’t come easily or at all. We were just lucky to have this guy who was so well-rounded. A great guitar player but a banjo player first and such a good singer. He can sing any part, and he loves to sing bass, too.

Those elements are all very present in this band for sure. The fiddle is a very lyrical instrument to begin with but I’ve always particularly considered Ronnie’s mandolin playing and Rob’s banjo playing to be a really interesting combination of melodic/lyrical and still very traditional sounding.

Del: Yeah, I know what you mean. They don’t strictly depend on melodic notes to do something, but they make their style work around the melody that they’re trying to play. They do that. They try to keep it fairly simple.

It’s very masterful, the subtlety of all of it. I imagine you had a hand in guiding them when they were younger.

Del: I tell you, I never even thought about my sons playing music. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I just didn’t. Maybe it’s because when I was learning to play, I had a lot of cousins. They’d hear me and they’d want to learn to play, and I’d show them something. And then, of course, next week they’d be into baseball or something else. They forgot about music that quick. And I guess I thought they might also lose interest in this music. But they never did. Rob started playing banjo when he’s about 9. Of course, I started playing guitar when I was 9, too. My older brother taught me the chords. But I was not really all that interested in playing until I heard Earl Scruggs. I was about 11 then. And that really switched something up in my brain.

But my boys, they were always around music. Ronnie played violin in school when he was really young, but he also was in Little League and he was their star pitcher. And you know what happened? His violin teacher told me, “He’s really doing good on this.” And I said, “Really?” She said, “Yeah, he learned so fast.” Well, it comes to where there is going to be a recital in school at the same time there’s going to be a big Little League baseball game. And he was supposed to be in both of them. He chose the baseball game. And, oh, his teacher called! She was so disheartened because he was one of her finest students. But he kind of forgot about music just for a little while.

And I took him with me to New York City. I was playing a show and Bill Monroe was one of the acts there. It was during Ronnie’s school vacation between Christmas and New Year’s so I brought him with me. Bill took an interest in Ronnie. He put his hat on him and he put his mandolin in his lap and he said, “Now you play me something on this mandolin.” I didn’t think nothing about it at the time. But when we got back home, Ronnie asked if he could have this old mandolin I carried around on the bus. And once Ronnie got that mandolin, he never laid it down.

Well, now those guys, when they did start learning to play on their own, I could hear them in my spare time—I was pretty busy in those days. And I hear them playing and I could tell they were missing a note here and there and I’d just tell them where to find it and then let them go on their own. I just didn’t bother them much. Boy, they learned fast.

That’s great. I think all of that is a big part of the sound but there’s something about the arrangements that has always made you all stand out, I think.

Ronnie: As far as arranging things, when we got to Nashville and did that first record, Jerry Douglas produced it and one of the first things that we did still sticks with me. I wound up singing “A Deeper Shade of Blue.” Flux is the one that gave us the beginning and end of it, this lick. And I was like, “Oh, wow, we can put a lick on tunes.” I was just so straight-ahead that I had never even thought to do that. I credit Flux with opening my ears to that because he’s so musical.

That is interesting because that kind of thing is usually associated with pop-adjacent music. Your music is so traditional but having those hooks does make the songs stick in your mind.

Ronnie: It probably also comes from listening to all kinds of music. I’m a product of the ‘80s. When I was in school I was hearing all of the rock and newer stuff that was being played on the radio. I never gravitated to it as much as I probably did to Southern rock. We loved the twin guitars of the Allman Brothers. What’s interesting is that those guys were listening to this stuff. Dickey Betts was a bluegrass fan and I remember he and Vassar had a duet thing. They used to play together in Florida.

That makes sense. There’s a full-circle element there as well. The Allman Brothers are sort of the prototypical jam band and now you guys are playing shows with Greensky, The String Cheese Incident, Railroad Earth, etc.

Ronnie: You’re right about that. Part of the reason we got into that world we’re in is that there’s already a Del McCoury Band, and we wanted to do something different, but we couldn’t call it the “Del-less McCoury Band.” So we had to do something that was different sounding. When I grew up I had no idea that mandolin players were doing anything but what Bill Monroe did. I was around 15 years old when the Dawg came out with that first record, the David Grisman Quintet album with Tony Rice on it.

The arrangements and playing on there were really influential and all that stuff squeaks into your music. You’re a product of what you hear, I guess. Those guys changed so much. There’s the guys that don’t get credit on the banjo like Bobby Thompson and then the next guy was Bill Keith. From Bill Keith comes [Tony] Trischka and Béla [Fleck], and it just moves on. But the Dawg, man, he was kind of the first one to take the Monroe and Wakefield stuff and stir it up like that. I’m a big proponent for him to be in the Hall of Fame.

The ensemble abilities of this group are some of the best in the business. Having so much family in the band lends itself to that, but Jason Carter and now Alan Bartram have been in the band so long I imagine that you all can anticipate what each other will do next.

Del: That’s true. It makes it easier, because I think we all kind of think alike and are satisfied in what we’re doing. And I’ll tell you something, I think it helps keep them interested. Like on live shows, we never have a set list, and they never know what’s coming next. When we get on stage, we just go up there and do a few tunes. I like to introduce each member of the band. I’ll let them tune or choose a song to sing after I get the four of them introduced. Then a lot of times we just start doing requests from the audience, and all through the set, we’ll try to work in things that we just recorded or had released, whatever. But for the most part, we’re doing requests from the audience. They know that when they go up on stage, they don’t know what’s happening next, and I don’t either, but that’s kind of the fun of it.

You are a link to those older traditions, and those were a lot more about performing than making records and stuff. It seems to me that performing and being an entertainer is what’s important to you.

Del: You know, I think it probably is because that’s what you do most. You’re never in a studio that long but before the pandemic we’d be out every week doing a show. I like talking to the audience. I think they entertain me more than I entertain them. For example, I ask them questions, like, “What would you like to hear next?” And what entertains me is they’ll request a song, but they get one word wrong or two in the title of the song.

For instance, we get a lot of requests for “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” and what people have problems with is the year. So, I say back to them, “Well, I don’t know that song.” And then it gets real quiet and they’ll think, “Well, I know he knows that song because he’s got it on a record.” I let them wonder for a little bit before I’ll say, “Well, now, look, I know a song entitled ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightning,’” and then they’re relieved and I’ll play it for them. But just little things like that. They’re so funny. People are funny if you listen to them. They will entertain you.

You guys have put out so many records. Is there anything that makes this one stand out or feel special to you?

Ronnie: Well, probably the fact that during a pandemic, my dad worked and he sat down and listened to like 150 songs or something. He didn’t just rest on his laurels. We got him a tape recorder, a nicer one, that he could record his ideas on because he felt more comfortable working with a tape machine.

Del: All through the years, people have sent or given me songs while we were on the road. A lot of the time, I just throw them in a box and say, “Well, when I get time, I’ll listen to them, see what they are.” So, when this pandemic hit that spring, I thought, “Wow, I’ll get all those things out and listen to them.” And then I picked out certain songs and I started to work on them.

Ronnie: During this time, we’re wearing masks and sitting outside doing our radio show six feet apart and not going in the house. Everybody’s worried about my parents so we were careful. But he worked on this stuff and he wrote some songs. So, what’s special to me are just good memories, really. Just being able to be in a studio with Dad in the middle of a pandemic and getting it done and not having so much wasted time. … The hardest thing through the pandemic for me to see, besides the tragedies where people lost their lives to this stuff, was seeing my dad in his golden years, not being able to do what he wanted to do, which is to travel and play for the people. He knocks us all out with how he can play and sing at this age.

Yeah, it’s pretty amazing.

Ronnie: He knocks me out. I can’t get over it. Like I said, it was amazing to be able to go in and do this record through all this and that his health is still with him. So I’m just proud of that. “Almost Proud,” you could say, ha ha.

“Almost Proud,” there you go.

Photo Credit: Daniel Jackson

Carolina Calling, Asheville: A Retreat for the Creative Spirit

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

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Asheville, North Carolina’s history as a music center goes back to the 1920s and string-band troubadours like Lesley Riddle and Bascom Lamar Lunsford, and country-music pioneer Jimmie Rodgers. But there’s always been a lot more to this town than acoustic music and scenic mountain views. From the experimental Black Mountain College that drew a range of minds as diverse as German artist Josef Albers, composer John Cage, and Albert Einstein, Asheville was also the spiritual home for electronic-music pioneer Bob Moog, who invented the Moog synthesizer first popularized by experimental bands like Kraftwerk to giant disco hits like Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

It’s also a town where busking culture ensures that music flows from every street corner, and it’s the adopted hometown of many modern musicians in a multitude of genres, including Pokey LaFarge, who spent his early career busking in Asheville, and Moses Sumney, a musician who’s sonic palette is so broad, it’s all but unclassifiable.

In this premiere episode of Carolina Calling, we wonder and explore what elements of this place of creative retreat have drawn individualist artists for over a century? Perhaps it’s the fact that whatever your style, Asheville is a place that allows creativity to grow and thrive.

Subscribe to Carolina Calling on any and all podcast platforms to follow along as we journey across the Old North State, visiting towns like Shelby, Greensboro, Durham, Wilmington, and more.

Music featured in this episode:

Bascom Lamar Lunsford – “Dry Bones”

Jimmie Rodgers – “My Carolina Sunshine Girl”

Kraftwerk – “Autobahn”

Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”

Pokey LaFarge – “End Of My Rope”

Moses Sumney – “Virile”

Andrew Marlin – “Erie Fiddler (Carolina Calling Theme)”

Moses Sumney – “Me In 20 Years”

Steep Canyon Rangers – “Honey on My Tongue”

Béla Bartók – “Romanian Folk Dances”

New Order – “Blue Monday”

Quindar – “Twin-Pole Sunshade for Rusty Schweickart”

Pokey LaFarge – “Fine To Me”

Bobby Hicks Feat. Del McCoury – “We’re Steppin’ Out”

Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Put A Lid On It”

Jimmie Rodgers – “Daddy and Home”

Lesley Riddle – “John Henry”

Steep Canyon Rangers – “Graveyard Fields”

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.