Back in August 2024, in tandem with the release of his earth-shaking country debut, F-1 Trillion, Post Malone took to the heralded Grand Ole Opry stage for the very first time. The special edition show, “Post Malone & Friends Live at the Opry,” was filmed for an Opry Live and Circle Now livestream broadcast and featured performances by Malone, Lainey Wilson, Vince Gill, Brad Paisley, The War and Treaty, and many more.
As usual, the incredible Opry content team was backstage and on hand for the momentous evening, capturing Malone’s debut as they do for each artist who takes to the stage, stepping into “the circle” – the inset portion of stage taken from the Ryman Auditorium in downtown Nashville and installed into the floorboards of the Grand Ole Opry House. Hundreds, if not thousands, of iconic artists, musicians, and celebrities have strode the hallowed circle.
“Stepping into the circle today is very much like the Super Bowl,” Malone says in the video released last week. “It’s terrifying, but it’s so exciting – and I’m ready to rock.”
And rock he did, bringing the drive and swagger of his mainstream background onto the Opry stage, packaged in rugged, honky-tonkin’, and fun F-1 Trillion vibes. The video showcases just how excited and even giddy Malone is to share in the legacy of the Opry. It’s a common, nearly universal feeling for every artist – of every level and every genre –who has stepped onto that stage.
With words and thoughts from Wilson, Gill, and Post Malone himself, the video includes sweet backstage moments, clips of once-in-a-lifetime performances, and a heaping helping of the welcome and hospitality of the Grand Ole Opry family. It’s a testament to how open and warm this genre can be to newcomers and visitors in these styles – when it wants to be.
Ten years after a band of college friends played their first show in Lubbock, Texas, Flatland Cavalry have finally stopped moving to take a look around. Released in early November, their latest album, Flatland Forever, is a 25-song chronological opus, sampling key tracks from their six acclaimed albums. But, as with most things the band does, it isn’t your typical “greatest hits” package.
Also finding space for a few unreleased gems, Flatland Forever traces the contours of a remarkable roots music rise. This Cavalry has ridden to the rescue of countless country fans, pushing an indie ethos deep into the mainstream while retaining a self-contained spirit, and the Forever project offers new listeners an easy way to get up to speed.
Their 10 years have seen Flatland gather 500 million streams and a Gold certification for the tender “A Life Where We Work Out,” while establishing their live-band cred alongside the genre’s best and brightest. 2024 alone saw them score their first ACM Awards nomination (for Group of the Year), plus high-profile Hollywood placements in Yellowstone, Twisters, and more.
They also marked their first headlining shows at iconic venues like Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Ryman Auditorium, and they made a triumphant return to Texas on December 31, headlining Fort Worth’s Dickies Arena for the first time. Then it’s on to the Flatland Forever Tour – kicking off February 7 in Atlanta – with a new setlist to match the album in scope and satisfaction.
It definitely seems like a good time to take stock of how far Flatland Cavalry has come, and in a conversation with Good Country last month, lead singer and songwriter Cleto Cordero does just that. Breaking from a peaceful morning in Nashville which found him “sitting like a hippie or a cat and letting the sun hit me in the face, just breathing,” Cordero explains where Flatland Forever came from, and what it feels like to pass a true milestone.
Why don’t you start by telling me how you’re feeling these days. This is definitely a milestone that most bands never even imagined they’ll reach. So how’s it feel?
Cleto Cordero: It feels really good. It feels like a lot of hard work paying off and proof that persistence can get you where you aspire to go. It’s been a long journey, but you wake up one day and it’s like 10 years later and heck, man, you’re walking in the dream that was just in your head 10 years ago. So it feels good. It’s affirming.
That’s a beautiful thing for sure. It’s been ten years since the band started. I just wonder, are you still feeling inspired by music making?
We stay pretty busy on the road, so it is challenging to find that zen where, to me, the songs come from. But that’s why I’m seeking it. That’s why I’m sitting in the sun in my library. I just listened to a meditation last night and it was a lecture by Neville Goddard, and he’s talking about being still – it’s like the old biblical scripture, “Be still know that I’m God.” I think as much as we move and shake and hustle and bustle, that place where songs come from in my heart seems harder to hear. So I have to seek that inspiration and try to convene with it every day.
Tell me a little bit about Flatland Forever and the idea behind this. It seems like the key for you guys was to make it more than a greatest hits package, right?
The idea was initially brought to me by Matt Morris at Interscope Records, who we began working with last September. He had an idea like, “Y’all have so many great songs. And for someone that doesn’t know who Flatland is, it’s kind of a lot to chew on. Maybe there’s a way we can put all the songs in one place on a compilation.” And as he was saying that, I told him I had an idea for an album that I want to make one day called Flatland Forever. I was like, “That’s literally what I envisioned it to be.”
So his idea and mine kind of melded together and then I didn’t want it to just be stuff that we had already released. I wanted to throw in some unreleased songs or stuff that we had recorded but never shared, and it morphed into this smorgasbord of old and new.
As you were putting it together, did you notice any creative growth? As you went back through these older songs, how did they line up with the new stuff?
I mean, a [new] song called “Three Car Garage,” that’s something I could imagine myself writing last week or something. … I think if you listen to the start of the album and then you make your way on to the very end, it will be a journey hearing us evolve sonically and lyrically and all that stuff. … But I wrote that one when I was in college and I had skipped class one day and I was just sitting in my garage.
I took a look around and the books I’d been reading at the time, like, “write about what you know,” so I just took a look around and that’s literally the vantage point of me sitting in the garage. But there’s also some other meaning to it as well, because the bridge is like, “If you’re bored and got nothing to do, change your point of view.” It captures a youthful spirit. I’m glad it came out 10 years later – whenever we sing it, I’m like, “Okay, that’s young, hopeful, optimistic, enthusiastic Cleto.”
Since the album covers the band’s whole history, does it also kind of capture the spirit of a live show?
It does. The good thing about having a lot of songs to play is you have a lot of variety, but then we’ve been on this Wandering Star Tour and I really want to give those songs a chance. But yeah, the idea of Flatland Forever is this compilation thing, so our next tour will be named after that and I feel like we can play anything from the vault in any order. … It’s making me think a little bit, creatively. Like, I can start off the show with “Sleeping Alone” or it can be totally different every night and any song.
What’s it feel like to get to go to Fort Worth to Dickies Arena and headline?
A dream come true. We’ve worked really hard for 10 years to get to a place where we can fill up a room with hopefully 10,000 people. I mean, we played Fort Worth the last two years in a row, two nights each at Billy Bob’s – which is like 5,000 people [each night]. Our booking agent told me last New Year’s Eve, “Hey, the next time you play Fort Worth, it’s going to be at the arena.” And so this date has been a year in my brain. It’s been the little lighthouse on the coast. All the shows we played this year, to me it’s all like, “What have I learned? What can I apply to this big show on New Year’s Eve?” And hopefully, Lord willing, I do envision that for us – to put on an arena show and take it everywhere.
“A Life Where We Work Out” is now Gold-certified. Congratulations on that. What does that accomplishment mean to you?
I feel lucky and grateful, because that song was written about a relationship that I had messed up. Now it’s like a mistake I had made and how a mistake can turn into a Gold record is pretty ironic and kind of crazy. But I don’t say that at the expense of the other person on the other end of that relationship. It was just a dumb, young college kind of thing. But how that turned into a Gold record, meeting my wife, and our biggest song. I think God [or] the Universe has a sense of humor. You know what I mean? Even if we screw it up ourselves so badly, it still can turn into something golden. So I feel really lucky and grateful.
My favorite part of the record is what you guys end up doing with “Mornings With You.” Including the work tape and then also the fully fleshed-out version is really cool. Are you trying to show fans something with that?
Yeah, so before a song gets recorded, there’s always a work tape cut first, or else we’ll forget it. … And no one ever gets to hear that. I just wanted to share that with the fans, and there’ll be a deluxe version of the record that comes out. … It’ll have commentary about the work tapes and more acoustic versions and stuff. So it’ll be more that kind of stuff.
I will just leave you with the big picture. What do you hope your fans are going to take away from Flatland Forever?
The takeaway is that a little band made of college kids followed their dreams and, 10 years later, they have a small little pile of work that they’ve worked towards year after year. That’s the amalgamation of it. And if anything, it’s just a testament that if you pursue your dreams and work hard and don’t give up on it, then you can literally do anything that you aspire to. That’s what I hope people can take away. And the last song, “Chasing a Feeling,” talks about that.
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
As the frontman/guitarist of The Wood Brothers, Oliver Wood is well versed in the art of roots experimentalism, but even that genre-blurring trio can’t satisfy all of his curiosity. With his second solo album, Fat Cat Silhouette (out now), the singer-songwriter set out to reach a new creative plane of existence.
Featuring nine playful, untethered tracks exploring pure sonic adventurism, the set became a case study in songwriting for songwriting’s sake; it’s a joyful mix of folk, jazz and free form pop. Recorded analog to tape by Wood Brothers percussion polymath Jano Rix, it features guest appearances by Katie Pruitt and Los Lobos saxophonist Steve Berlin, and some of the most irreverent, open-minded musical journeys ever taken. Each day, Wood would wake up, grab a coffee and sit down in a comfy chair, looking out the window to write whatever crossed his mind. The result was musical mood-shift, just a refreshing as it is insightful.
Ahead of another Wood Brothers tour, BGS talked with the artist about clearing his creative mind and getting “weird.”
It seems like you were purposely expanding your horizons on this second solo record, right? Why did you want to open up the floodgates?
Oliver Wood: I don’t know, it just felt like time to do that and time to experiment. … The Wood Brothers, we put out an album last spring and when we were done, I guess I was just still writing tunes. But also, I’ve always just liked in the last few years to make it a point to collaborate with some people outside of the band. And then production-wise, I felt like we’ve just done this album with The Wood Brothers a certain way, and a lot of times we react as artists and as writers. You sort of react to what you did before, and you try to be different, even though there’s not necessarily an exact sound in mind. It’s like, “What can we do that’s weirder?”
I love that idea of being a little weird, because why not, right? But the funny thing is that as a band, The Wood Brothers does not exactly seem limiting in terms of creativity.
No not at all.
So was there just still more in you, that had to get out creatively, or what?
I think so, yeah. And I’m sure there’s a subconscious part of me that wants to figure out what is my musical identity. I know what it is within The Wood Brothers. That’s sort of our bread and butter, but when I do my own thing, I feel like I can do whatever I want. … Maybe nobody will even hear it, so why don’t I just do get as weird as I want to get?
In the album bio, you talk about practicing songwriting without self-judgment and I think that’s a cool idea. Can you explain what that is to you and how you go about getting there?
Yeah. I think that is, first of all, almost impossible. However, maybe putting myself in a frame of mind that I was under less pressure to make something that people would like helps get there. It’s all subconscious, but when we’re with The Wood Brothers, even though we’re not trying to please anybody but ourselves, we do have to make our living, so in the back of our heads it’s like, “Oh, this song will sound good at Red Rocks or the Ryman Auditorium.” In other words, “People are going to love this.” I can’t help but think that in the back of my mind probably. But as far as writing without judgment and what that looks like? I think it looks like trust. I think it looks trusting that oftentimes your first instincts are right.
You don’t have to fix something or change something. You can trust that your soul and realness is going to come out if you just let it, and you write something down or play something, rather than going over it and editing it. I feel like I did that a lot with lyrics on this record. I wrote some things and I was like, “That doesn’t make any sense.” I caught myself thinking that, and then I was like, “Screw it. I trust that that’s what my subconscious told me to write. And it’s real.” I don’t think you really have to try to do that. In fact, the more you try, the less authentic it might be.
What came out is these nine tracks that to me are really playful and enthusiastic. What do you like about where the sound went? You definitely took some leaps.
Well, I talked with [album producer and fellow Wood Brothers member] Jano a lot about maybe being a little bit less on the drum set side, a little more on the percussion side. He is my favorite drummer ever, but sometimes I get tired of drum sets. I mean I love classic rock ‘n’ roll and R&B drums, all that stuff. But sometimes when you think about it, it sounds like everything else. So it was like “What if we didn’t have that?” There was one point where it’s like, “Jano, why don’t you do that percussion part vocally?” With the song “Whom I Adore,” not only did he play the Sitar and the tambourine, but he also did this weird shaker part with his mouth. Sometimes when you avoid one thing, you have to innovate to replace it with something else. And that was kind of the idea.
I use this really dull, rubber-bridge guitar on a lot of the songs, so there’s some more atypical guitar sounds. And of course, Steve Berlin and the bari-sax was a really cool thing. There was one section where we were wishing we had a horn section and instead Jano and I just sang all the parts. That was for “Star In the Corner,” and we just sang them like idiots – like fake opera singers! It’s kind of silly, but it was like, “That’s cool. And we haven’t done that before.”
That to me was the way to go to be non-judgmental, to be like you called it, playful. Sometimes you feel like you can control something and make it just perfect. But the opposite of that is letting go and trusting that if you try something, it may or may not turn you on, but when it works, it’ll surprise you and delight you. And that’s so much more fun than trying to control something and never quite being happy.
Tell me about the track “Little Worries.” This contains the album title, Fat Cat Silhouette, which is so fun. How does that song speak to the project overall?
Some of the themes, I feel like bloomed from that song. I have a ritual where I’ll go downstairs in the morning and have a cup of coffee in this armchair, which is right by a window facing my front yard. And I usually go down there and I write and sometimes I just write in a notebook, just sort of freeform. Sometimes it’s working on a song, but it’s wide open and several of these songs kind of started that way.
The idea of the Fat Cat Silhouette was really just an actual thing. I’m sitting there in that chair with my cup of coffee and I have these semi-transparent sheer curtains, and there’s a cat sitting there looking out the window. Sometimes for me – and I’m pretty sure for a lot of other songwriters – you don’t know what you’re going to write about, but you may see something that gets you started. And so the beginning of that song is literally me describing sitting in the chair with my cup of coffee and there’s a fat cat silhouette in the window.
That sort of observation, oftentimes if you write it down, can lead to a story. The first song on the album, “Light and Sweet,” happened the same way, sitting in the same spot looking out the window and there’s a sparrow. I started the song and then I started fantasizing. He’s on the phone with his lawyer talking about his divorce with his soon to be ex-wife.
[Laughs] You don’t hear many songs about bird law.
Exactly! But with the “Little Worries” song, I think writing that song and writing in general every morning is a good way for me to deal with anxieties and overthinking things. And that kind of turned out to be what that song was about.
How about “Yo I Surrender.” This is another track about giving up control, but also I think the most fun on the record. I love how you said it has the worst guitar sound ever. Why does that work for you?
That’s one that Jano and me and [bassist] Ted [Pecchio] were warming up one day, and we just started playing that groove. We just had fun playing that groove and I saved it on my phone, and then Steve Berlin from Los Lobos was in town with his bari-sax, and we invited him to come into the studio, help us finish writing that song. So the four of us sort of arranged the music and parallel to that, I was starting to think about the lyrics. I was also reading some cool books that were giving me some cool vocabulary words that I was like, “I just want to use that word. I don’t even care if it fits. I don’t even care if it makes sense.” It was definitely one of those things where it was musically such a group effort, and then lyrically one of those things – let it be weird, let it be ambiguous. I think some of my favorite songs that I’ve heard over the years are always a little bit ambiguous.
With a voice that shimmers like sunlight on a rippling lake and songs that step deftly through ever-shifting emotional terrain, Kim Richey is the queen of understated finesse. On her latest album, Every New Beginning, she carefully tempers the ache of loss with moments of humor and even optimism. Produced by Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, John Hiatt) and containing collaborations with Don Henry, Mando Saenz, Jay Knowles, Aaron Lee Tasjan, and Brian Wright, among others, it provides yet another elegantly nuanced reminder of why other singer-songwriters revere her talents.
Dozens of country and Americana artists have invited her to sing on their albums and/or recorded her songs or ones they co-wrote, including Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, Martina McBride, Patty Loveless, Will Kimbrough, Chuck Prophet, the Chicks, and Brooks & Dunn. Radney Foster had a No. 2 hit with their co-write, “Nobody Wins;” Richey earned a Grammy nomination for co-writing Trisha Yearwood’s No. 1 song, “Believe Me Baby (I Lied).”
In October, she’ll open the final show of Jason Isbell’s annual Ryman Auditorium residency; last year, she helped celebrate the 10th anniversary of his career-making Southeastern album by reprising her vocal contributions. During Brandi Carlile’s solo-set debut at the 2019 30A Songwriters Festival, she spotted Richey and declared, “Kim Richey has been my hero since I was 16!” Citing the Ohio-born East Nashville resident as a major influence, Carlile beckoned Richey onstage to sing “A Place Called Home.” Turns out that wasn’t the first time — and, as Richey notes in this interview, conducted during her recent U.K. tour, it wouldn’t be the last.
Listening to these songs, one could assume this is a breakup album. But you’ve mentioned that songs like “Take the Cake” aren’t necessarily about a specific person. Are there breakups reflected within these songs?
Kim Richey: People always assume they’re breakup songs. [The “Feel This Way” line], “It hurts like it’s always gonna feel this way” — my mom passed away in November. It can be the loss of a friend, the loss of a family member, or it’s just a lot of looking back. COVID really had an effect on me that way, and maybe a lot of people as well, where I had old friends getting in touch out of the blue, and people taking stock, and that’s stuck with me.
You could hear “Feel This Way” as a song about grief or even generalized depression, which certainly doesn’t have to be precipitated by an event.
Or [the song] “A Way Around,” it’s like, “Oh, man, things are not going my way.” It can be general. That’s a great thing about songs; people can have their own interpretation of them and it can connect with them and help them. Maybe it’s something that they’re going through, which was not necessarily my intention when I wrote it, if that makes any sense. If I’m going through a hard time, it’s just nice to hear a song and think, “They know exactly how I feel.” You don’t feel alone.
I think that’s one of the major functions of songs — giving us something to connect to, even if it’s just to pull the tears out. Sometimes that’s all you have when you’re feeling like that. But let’s talk about something that must have been a really happy time: Brandi’s Girls Just Wanna Weekend in Mexico. Was that the first time you got invited, or the first time it worked out to go?
I actually did get invited a couple of years ago, but I’d already promised my parents I was going somewhere with them. But this was getting organized while my mom was in the hospital and everything, so I went down [in January] not really having any idea what to expect. When I got there, they asked if I could come to the rehearsal for Ladies of the ’80s, so I go to the rehearsal, and there’s Annie Lennox. And that was just the start of me crying the entire weekend.
Then I got to meet Wendy & Lisa, and Wendy was so sweet. And when the four of us — Brandy Clark, Brandi Carlile, Mary Chapin [Carpenter] and myself — were onstage playing songs, the crowd was so overwhelmingly amazing that Chapin and I just sat up there and cried in-between songs. It was absolutely one of the most intense and beautiful musical experiences, really, ever, for me. It’s hard to explain the vibe of it. The feel of the festival is so inclusive, and so kind and fun. I’ve never been to anything like that before.
Brandi’s always been really great to me. Like that year of the Pilgrimage Festival, that’s right outside of Nashville, got rained out [2018], her people called City Winery and said “Hey, can we come there and play?” and they packed it out. I had just gotten home from a tour and she texted and said, “Hey, you want to come and play with me tonight?” and I’m thinking, “Absolutely not. I don’t know who you are. I’m in a bathrobe, and I’m gonna watch TV and do absolutely nothing.” I texted back and said, “Who is this?” And it was Brandi and it’s like, “OK, I’ll be right over!”
I love seeing your Instagram traveling pictures. It seems like you seek out interesting places wherever you go. Is that something you’ve always done?
I always want to explore the places where I go, whether it’s a big famous place or some town nobody’s ever heard of. I don’t want to sit in a hotel. I like to find the local great food or coffee or something. One of my most favorite parts about doing music and playing shows is the touring and getting to go and see all these different places. It doesn’t have to be some really exotic place, because one of the things I love about touring in the states is you get to see some of these smaller towns and out-of-the-way places that you would never go to on purpose, because you don’t even know they’re there. I’ve found some fantastic restaurants and sites and hiking places; there’s all kinds of fantastic places in the states. Like, I love Michigan, the Great Lakes; that’s beautiful.
That brings me to the song about your home state, “Goodbye Ohio,” which you describe as “a leaving song.” Do you still have ties there?
Well my mom’s gone, but my stepdad still lives in Ohio and I’ve got my cousins and auntie. I still have a lot of people in Ohio. I go back up there pretty regularly.
So it’s not bittersweet to go home.
Oh, no, no, no. I got all the time in the world for Ohio. I like the people there. It’s very Midwest, and I like that. It’s interesting, too, because the different parts of Ohio are really different, like Southeastern Ohio has more in common probably with West Virginia. And then when you get further up toward Cleveland and Akron, that’s more Northeast-y vibes. It’s great; it’s got a lot going on.
What are some other destinations you would recommend?
I love Glasgow, that’s always been one of my most favorite places. Mostly these days, I’m not in a [tour] bus, I’m in a car or a van. You actually can see all these places you’re driving through, and then you have the ability to go, “Hey, what’s that weird shop there? Let’s pull in and see what that is.” When you’re on a bus, you’re just [taking] the quickest and easiest way to get from one point to the other. So I’ve really enjoyed that part of traveling in a car.
I’ll tell you someplace I just went that was absolutely amazing. My friend Dean Tidey was playing guitar with me and we had a couple days off on the West Coast, so we went to Sequoia National Park and stayed for a couple days in this Airbnb that was right on this beautiful mountain stream. And since it was still early springtime, there weren’t a lot of people there. There was still snow on the ground. I love doing stuff like that. The more I travel, the more I want to see. And the more I travel, the more I know there’s just so much stuff out there to experience and see.
Gosh, I’ve been all over the place. I love London; I lived here for five years. I love Belfast. I got to go to Croatia last year on a boat trip with the Accidentals, and that was amazing.
I love that band! Tell me how you wound up on a boat trip with them.
Well, they asked me to come along. It was a fan trip, and we played and slept on the boat and went to these different harbors. We docked in a different place every night – it was just a cool trip. There were bike rides; there was a lot of swimmin’. We went to Dubrovnik and toured different cities; we were all over the place. And I had no idea. I didn’t think of that as being a Mediterranean country. The food is fantastic. The people were super, super nice. I really loved being there.
You have such a great body of work, and younger artists who appreciate that, and appreciate you, they’re hooking into you and having you play. It seems so important for that kind of give-and-take to happen, in both directions.
It’s great for me, because I get excited about stuff. I love writing with Aaron Lee. He used to live just across the alley from me, so that’s how I got to know him. He’s definitely one of my favorites and one of the most talented musicians and songwriters. He’s great with lyrics and music, the whole deal, and a brilliant player. So it’s fun for me, too, to find somebody new that I really love writing with. It’s one of my favorite things, to write with other people.
Is there anything else you want to talk about?
Well, I would like to like thank the guys who played on the record, especially Doug Lancio, who did so much great work. He played most every string thing aside from when Aaron Lee played on a couple songs. And we had [bassist/mandolinist] Lex Price, who I’ve been wanting to work with for a long time. And Dan Mitchell and Neilson Hubbard; I’ve been playing with those guys for years. And the Accidentals came and put strings on a couple songs. So I just really want to give a shout out to the musicians, and my songwriting friends.
One song, “The World Is Flat” is an old one that I wrote with Peter Vetesse. He lives in Bristol, [England], and we played and he came and we got to play the song that we wrote together. I just never recorded it because it was so sad. I have a lot of sad songs, but there’s always a little kernel of something [positive]; “The World Is Flat” was like, you’ve just kind of given up. But the demo that he made was so beautiful, I just thought if I never make another record, I want people to hear that song.
You just said, “If I never make another record” – obviously, we hope that’s not true. Do you feel like you’re at a point now where you think in those terms?
A little bit. I do enjoy playing, but [touring is] tough physically. But I love to travel and I have super-close friends over here, in New York, in Washington state. Playing and touring allows me to go and spend time with those people. I do love playing for people and writing songs and making records, so we’ll see. I don’t know how much longer I’ll do it. This could be my last record, but you don’t want to say it is, because you never know.
NASHVILLE, TN – The first woman to ever yell “WOOOOOO!” at a bluegrass show over eight decades ago will be honored by the city of Nashville with a statue on Lower Broadway.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell acknowledged Vicki Lynn Bludso (103) in a heartfelt speech during the statue’s unveiling ceremony. “When a 22-year-old Vicki Lynn devised her perfect exclamation during the open bars of ‘Shady Grove,’ she had no idea that ‘WOOOO!’ would change the world,” O’Connell said.
“Heck, I yelled it last night during my daughter’s piano recital,” he grinned.
Despite the praise, the centenarian Bludso appeared unfazed in her remarks. “I’d just gotten out of a bad marriage and was letting off some steam,” she shrugged. “The band kicked in, and it just came out. I didn’t think the whole world would start sayin’ it.”
The last surviving member of The Red Boot Boys, fiddle player Jimmy “Slacks” McCoy (99) was on stage at the time of the incident. “When it happened, I froze. I thought a lady had fallen out of the Ryman balcony.”
As the sound caught on, McCoy said it became nearly inescapable whenever The Red Boot Boys played. “Sometimes they’d yell it before a tune started or right in the middle of a solo. By the time we came off the road, our nerves were fried. I think it broke up the band.” He added, “Either that or the excessive drinking.”
The 14-foot bronze statue depicts a young and wild-eyed Bludso, head tilted back, bellowing with the now-signature “O”-shaped mouth. Little did she know that “WOOOO!” would go on to span the worlds of music, sports, frats, bachelorette parties, transpotainment and extreme temperature change.
“I only said it once. Now I’m stuck with it.” Bludso reminded the crowd.
Bludso’s statue will join the statue of Rick Funt, more famously known as the 1974 creator of yelling “Freebird!” during a show of a band that did not, in fact, know the song.
On January 6, bluegrass luminaries gathered at the Mother Church itself – the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville – to celebrate what would’ve been the 100th birthday of a man whose name is synonymous with the genre. On that day just over a week ago, banjo legend Earl Scruggs would have celebrated his centennial, and bluegrass celebs like Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Sierra Hull, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes and many more gave a tribute concert streamed live on Veeps. While the live show might have come to an end, many are sharing pics and memories of Scruggs, keeping his special celebration going.
We’ll be highlighting the pioneer’s 100th all year long, so we’re also collecting some of the best social posts – in no particular order – that you might have missed.
Ryman Auditorium
Oh, what a 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣th birthday celebration it was for Earl Scruggs with some of the biggest names in bluegrass! 🤠
With such a star-studded tribute concert, of course we should kick our list off with the Mother Church’s post about their live concert celebrating Scruggs – which benefitted the Earl Scruggs Center in Earl’s hometown of Shelby, North Carolina. The Ryman itself is located in the heart of downtown Music City, a fitting venue for this show.
Béla Fleck
Béla Fleck is just one of many modern banjo pickers inspired by Scruggs’ iconic three-finger style. We recently featured a single from his upcoming album in our #BGSClassof2024 playlist. His Facebook post recalling memories of working with his banjo hero is a touching accompaniment.
“Rhapsody in Blue(grass),” from Fleck’s upcoming album Rhapsody in Blue, is a perfect commemoration of the 100th birthday of Scruggs. Fleck is joined by his My Bluegrass Heart band, picking alongside Michael Cleveland, Sierra Hull, Justin Moses, Mark Schatz and Bryan Sutton.
Sam Bush
It’s hard to imagine historic movements and bands like New Grass Revival existing without the ability to build on the foundation that Earl Scruggs and others laid for the generations that followed. It’s no surprise, then, that Sam Bush paid tribute to Earl in a Facebook post following the Ryman show.
Gena Britt
IBMA Award winner and Grammy-nominated Sister Sadie banjo player Gena Britt has posted several photos and reels on her Facebook page from the Scruggs bash, where she was just one of many banjo players in attendance.
Tony Trischka
Tony Trischka’s upcoming album, Earl Jam, is a tribute to his musical mentor and inspiration, Scruggs, and will be released later this spring by Down the Road Records. Trischka just released the official music video for “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” featuring Billy Strings, right after Scruggs’ birthday.
Earl Jam will be a special collection of Trischka playing Scruggs transcriptions note-for-note that he gleaned from jam session recordings taken by John Hartford at Earl’s house in the ’80s and ’90s.
Earl Scruggs Music Festival
To mark their namesake’s birthday, the Earl Scruggs Music Festival posted one of the most iconic photos of the banjo player in music history. If you haven’t made it to this North Carolina event yet, check out our coverage from last year’s festival. We’re very much looking forward to Earl Scruggs Music Festival 2024!
John McEuen
For his own tribute, John McEuen – a founding member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – shared some incredible footage of the first time he met Earl Scruggs back in October of 1970.
“This meeting right here is what led to the Will The Circle Be Unbroken album,” he shared.
Jerry Douglas
Jerry Douglas, iconic Dobro player and member of the Earls of Leicester, posted a wonderful collection of photos from the Ryman show!
Kyle Tuttle
Kyle Tuttle, member of Molly Tuttle’s Golden Highway band, posted a clip of his own three-finger work inspired by Scruggs.
“Who knows where the banjo would be had this man not come along and shown us how it works,” Tuttle mused.
International Bluegrass Music Association
The IBMA marked Scruggs’ centennial by posting an abbreviated history of his life and career.
“From his home state of North Carolina, Earl took the sound of the banjo and revolutionized it across the world,” the post reads. “Not only did he pioneer the three-finger banjo, but he played it to standards of taste and technique unmatched by thousands of disciples over seven decades.”
Thorn, banjoist for Leftover Salmon, posted a clip of himself on Instagram playing what is perhaps the most iconic banjo tune of all time, making it a fitting end to our list of social media tributes. Check out Thorn’s take on “Foggy Mountain Breakdown!”
We’ll continue to celebrate Earl Scruggs’ 100th all year long, so keep checking back for more on BGS!
Lead photo by Eric Ahlgrim courtesy of the Ryman Auditorium. Pictured: Stuart Duncan, Jim Mills, Alan Bartram, Sam Bush, and Del McCoury perform for Earl Scruggs’ 100th Birthday Celebration at the Ryman on January 6, 2024.
January 6, 2024 would be the 100th birthday of Earl Scruggs, a musician and artist who helped create bluegrass music and who was and is perhaps the most prominent and well known banjo player to have ever lived. Scruggs passed away in 2012, but this posthumous celebration – to be held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium – speaks to his undying musical legacy. The performance will benefit the Earl Scruggs Center, a museum in Shelby, North Carolina that’s dedicated to Scruggs, the local community, and its residents, and inhabits the former courthouse just up the highway from unincorporated Flint Hill, where he was raised.
The show, with musical director Jerry Douglas, will feature performances by bluegrass and roots music luminaries such as The Earls of Leicester, The Del McCoury Band, Gena Britt, Alison Brown, Sam Bush, Michael Cleveland, Stuart Duncan, Jimmie Fadden, Béla Fleck, Jeff Hanna, Sierra Hull, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Jim Mill, Justin Moses, Jerry Pentecost, Todd Phillips, Harry Stinson, Bryan Sutton, Tony Trischka, Abigail Washburn, Pete Wernick, and more. Limited tickets are still available and, for those who may not be able to attend in person, the entire show will be livestreamed via Veeps.com for $14.99.
It promises to be a quintessential Nashville evening, a star-studded lineup with endless appearances, special guests, and with certainly plenty of heartfelt remembrances and tributes in store. Livestream viewers will get a rare chance to be invited “flys on the wall” for a magical and one-of-a-kind concert.
Earl Scruggs’ legacy will certainly live on – for another hundred years and, we hope, beyond. BGS and many other roots music and bluegrass communities and organizations will continue to celebrate Scruggs’ centenary throughout the year, so keep an eye out for upcoming content that celebrates Earl Scruggs and his three-finger style.
Lead image courtesy of the Ryman Auditorium; inset graphic courtesy of Veeps.
Few bands have benefitted from the same type of steady, organic growth as the Hogslop String Band. Originally formed in 2009 as a pickup band for a square dance, the group played together for 10 years before releasing their first album. In that time, their camaraderie strengthened – as did their songwriting, performance style, and fanbase.
Following their 2019 self-titled album, the group – Gabriel Kelley, Daniel Binkley, Kevin Martin, Will Harrison, and Pickle – has been hard at work on their next record (expected spring 2024). Produced by Kelley at his own Mobile Traveler Studios in Bells Bend, 10 miles west of Nashville, the record illuminates the purely original sound that the Hogslop String Band has found over nearly 15 years of making music together.
BGS caught up with Gabriel Kelley and Daniel Binkley to talk about the new music, the formations of the band, and where it’s all headed.
You formed in 2009, but it was 10 more years before your first album came out. What has the journey been like, coming from such casual origins to debuting on the Opry in 2022 and looking ahead to releasing your sophomore record?
Gabriel Kelley: We sure did. We were, to be honest, just a rag-tag bunch of buddies. Most of us had grown up playing old-time music or found it in our early years. For a very long time, our motto was a little more on the punk rock side: “We are not a band” is what we said for the first 10 years of the band. It was just a way to get together and have a good time. It wasn’t until a few years ago that we started taking it more seriously. One thing that’s cool about our Opry debut – and Binkley can fill you in – is that his family has been a part of the Opry since the ’20s.
Daniel Binkley: My family has been in Nashville forever – my great-grandfather, Amos, he had a band called the Binkley Brothers’ Dixie Cloghoppers, and they were a part of the very first Opry cast in 1926. Backstage they have a placard for every member and I found my family back there. That was a very special moment for me. They mentioned it during the broadcast, and we actually ended up playing one of the Binkley Brothers’ songs on the Opry.
For a band with a foundation in traditional music, i.e, fiddle tunes, where do you find the balance between introducing your own original material and digging from the old-time repertoire?
DB: Old-time music is sort of the school that we come from. So when we write original stuff, it’s gonna come through that lens. Once you run it through the “hogslop filter,” it’s gonna sound like hogslop. There’s just something about that foundation, and our knowledge of each other as musicians, that makes it come together – whether it’s traditional tunes or original material.
GK: We absolutely don’t ever want to lose the component of old-time string music and we’re currently in a time where that music seems a lot more accessible and is getting thrown under the big umbrella that everyone is calling Americana. We don’t do a show without old-time tunes in there. A lot of the other music we take influence from – blues, rock and roll – they were actually getting inspiration from early country and old-time music. So for us, it all goes in the same bucket.
You’re definitely known for that high energy string band sound, but this new album has quite a range of pace. How do you stay true to that sound while incorporating softer material like “Mississippi Queen?”
GK: We’re very much a live band and in that setting it’s about that high energy, rowdy thing. We love that, but amongst us in the band, three to four of us are songwriters and have very different approaches to songwriting. We’re very lucky to have Daniel in the band, he’s one of my favorite songwriters and has an ability to write some of that intimate, close to the chest material, like “Mississippi Queen.” And you need that delicate stuff just as much as you need the fast, hard hitting, and fun stuff. We feel that it’s very important to show audiences (and ourselves) that we have those dynamics.
DB: A lot of our shows at festivals are late night, midnight shows and it’s almost more like a punk-rock show. But there are also theaters or other venues where you can really showcase more of that dynamic. Kevin Martin has a few tunes on the album and he writes totally different that I do. He’s more rock and roll and I guess I’m the softy. It’s nice to have a little variety – especially on a record.
What’s special to you about this upcoming album, compared to music you’ve released in the past?
GK: Personally, watching this band shift and develop over 15 years has been pretty wild. This is the first record of the band’s that I’ve produced, and what’s special to me is (and I’m not saying that we’re reinventing the wheel), I’ve never heard quite the blend of genres that we’ve thrown together. It’s cool that Hogslop is still shifting and mutating and we’re still discovering that. And that we’re embracing our songwriting – everything on this record is our own material, and I’m really proud of that.
DB: I agree with all of that! One thing I’ll add that was a major game changer – and this is thanks to Gabe – was the ability to take our time in the studio and not be under the time constraints that’d you’d be under paying for studio time somewhere.
What else is on the horizon with the release in 2024?
GK: We’ll be in the studio most of November, and then we’ve got the Ryman show [supporting the Mavericks] on December 1. As different as this new music is, we’re really woodshedding and figuring out our live show. It sounds like our ‘24 is gonna be busy – we’re mainly a festival band, so that’s where we’re headed.
The Americana Music Association announced the winners of its 22nd annual Americana Honors & Awards this evening (September 20) at a star-studded show at the historic Ryman Auditorium during the week-long AmericanaFest conference and festival in Nashville. Performers at the marquee event – which felt, as it usually does, more like a concert interspersed with awards presentations than vice versa – included Bonnie Raitt, Bettye LaVette, S.G. Goodman, Noah Kahan, The Avett Brothers, Adeem the Artist, William Prince and many more with Buddy Miller once again as music director for the Americana All-Star Band.
The evening’s presentations also spotlit this year’s Lifetime, Trailblazer, and Legacy Award Honorees: The Avett Brothers, George Fontaine Sr., Bettye LaVette, Patty Griffin and Nickel Creek. Allison Russell, nominated in two categories, was bestowed the Spirit of Americana / Free Speech in Music Award by the infamous Tennessee Three, Tennessee state representatives Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, whose expulsion by the Tennessee General Assembly after protesting in support of common sense gun legislation earlier this year made international headlines.
A full list of categories, nominees and winners at the Americana Music Association’s 22nd annual Americana Honors & Awards is below, winners in bold. Congratulations to all of the honorees and awardees!
ARTIST OF THE YEAR:
Charley Crockett
Sierra Ferrell
Margo Price
Allison Russell
Billy Strings
ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
Big Time, Angel Olsen; Produced by Angel Olsen and Jonathan Wilson
Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven?, Tyler Childers; Produced by Tyler Childers
El Bueno y el Malo, Hermanos Gutiérrez; Produced by Dan Auerbach
The Man from Waco, Charley Crockett; Produced by Bruce Robison
Strays, Margo Price; Produced by Margo Price and Jonathan Wilson
SONG OF THE YEAR:
“Change of Heart,” Margo Price; Written by Jeremy Ivey, Margo Price
“I’m Just a Clown,” Charley Crockett; Written by Charley Crockett
“Just Like That,” Bonnie Raitt; Written by Bonnie Raitt
“Something in the Orange,” Zach Bryan; Written by Zach Bryan
“You’re Not Alone,” Allison Russell featuring Brandi Carlile; Written by Allison Russell
DUO/GROUP OF THE YEAR:
49 Winchester
Caamp
Nickel Creek
Plains
The War and Treaty
EMERGING ACT OF THE YEAR:
Adeem the Artist
S.G. Goodman
William Prince
Thee Sacred Souls
Sunny War
INSTRUMENTALIST OF THE YEAR:
Isa Burke
Allison de Groot
Jeff Picker
SistaStrings – Chauntee and Monique Ross
Kyle Tuttle
Jack Emerson Lifetime Achievement Award
George Fontaine, Sr.
Legacy of Americana Award (Presented in partnership with the National Museum of African American Music)
Bettye LaVette
Lifetime Achievement
Patty Griffin
The Avett Brothers
Spirit of Americana / Free Speech in Music Award
Allison Russell
Trailblazer Award
Nickel Creek
Photo Credit: Bettye LaVette by Danny Clinch; Allison Russell by Laura E Partain; Billy Strings by Jesse Faatz; SistaStrings by Samer Ghani.
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