Tag: Sam Bush

Like Father, Like Sons: Del McCoury & The Travelin’ McCourys

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Even after five decades in the bluegrass business, the McCoury family is having a banner year in 2019. In February, Del McCoury turned 80 years old and shared the Grand Ole Opry stage with some of his most famous admirers. That same month, the Travelin’ McCourys – fronted by Del’s sons Rob and Ronnie McCoury — picked up a Grammy award in Los Angeles for their self-titled, debut album. And looking ahead, the 12th annual DelFest music festival in Cumberland, Maryland is slated for May, with performances by both bands on the schedule.

In person and off stage, Del McCoury is as polite and warm as one would expect. Smiling broadly as he enters the Opry dressing room, he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, his pompadour is on point (as always), and he seems unfazed by the fact that show time is less than 30 minutes away. To paraphrase another Opry star, he’s just so proud to be here.

“I’ve been listening to the Grand Ole Opry since I was at least 10 years old,” he says. “My brother and my dad would listen because it was before TV, you know? Especially out in the country where we lived. People had TVs, but I don’t remember anybody who did out in the country. We grew up on a farm. Like I said, I’ve been listening to the Grand Ole Opry since then and I’ve always looked up to all the acts on here. Especially the bluegrass acts, like Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs. It’s a big show in my mind! Still is!”

Though the time set aside for the interview is somewhat brief, Del conjures up stories about everything from crusty club owners to playing Carnegie Hall. He cracks up at a memory of Bill Monroe flat-out telling festival promoter Carlton Haney that a bluegrass festival would never work. Thinking even further back to his childhood, he reminisces about being fascinated by Earl Scruggs’ banjo on “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” when he was around 11 years old.

“Something hit me here,” Del says, touching his heart. “That banjo behind the lead singer was so good. And so I learned how to play that. I was already a guitar player but I heard this record and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s what I want to do!’ So, when I could get a banjo, I started learning it. Just take the record, pick the needle up and put it over, and try to play what Earl was doing. It was not simple!”

Ronnie McCoury, Vince Gill, Del McCoury

Asked about the decision to spin off a group from The Del McCoury Band, employing everybody except himself, Del says he conferred with manager Stan Strickland about how to make it work.

“I got to an age where I thought, you know, I’m [not] gonna be around here forever,” he noted, just before breaking into his trademark laugh. “I felt good, and I still feel good, but you never know. When you get to 70, you don’t know how many days you got left. I thought, these guys depend on me. My wife and I talked to Stan and I said, ‘You know, if we get them something going on their own, and if something happens to me, then by that time they might be established.’ So we got them a different booking agent than I had, and it seemed like right from the start they were starting to do good already! And I thought, ‘Wait a minute now, I wonder if I should have done that…’”

He breaks into laughter again, before adding, “Especially when they start winning Grammys! And they don’t take me with them!”

Loyal bluegrass fans know that for decades the Del McCoury Band has done its own share of travelin’ – not to mention winning two Grammy awards of their own. Led by Del on lead vocals and guitar, the good-natured group includes Ronnie on mandolin, Rob on banjo, Jason Carter on fiddle and Alan Bartram on bass. Cody Kilby assumes Del’s role as a guitarist in The Travelin’ McCourys, while the vocals in that ensemble are handled in equal share by Ronnie, Rob, Jason, and Alan.

Three days after their Grammy win, the Travelin’ McCourys regrouped with Del when the Opry curated a special show called the Grand Del Opry, in order to commemorate McCoury’s milestone birthday as well as his 15th anniversary as an Opry member. Friends like Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn, Vince Gill, Old Crow Medicine Show, Jesse McReynolds, Ricky Skaggs, Marty Stuart, and of course Travelin’ McCourys jammed with the man himself.

The finale of the Grand Del Opry

In an interview a few weeks after the show, Rob says, “One of the biggest things for me was the finale, and looking at all these people on stage to help Dad celebrate his birthday. And also looking out to see nearly a full house in honor of my father. It made me very proud to see all these folks that have such respect for my dad and the music, and they all took the time to come out to the Opry that night and put on a show in honor of my father.”

Del McCoury made his first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry as Bill Monroe’s guitarist in 1963 – and that performance was only McCoury’s second gig with the esteemed Father of Bluegrass. The first was not long before that, when McCoury subbed for Monroe’s banjo player at a New York show. Although McCoury still preferred playing banjo, Monroe offered him a spot as a guitarist and lead singer – a job he kept for a year. “He’s the reason I’m doing that now,” Del says with a chuckle. “I didn’t think I would be, but once I started playing guitar and singing, I liked it.”

Obviously he still does. McCoury has played a staggering number of festivals over the years, including a few of those seminal Carlton Haney bluegrass festivals of the 1960s. Still he needed some persuasion to launch his own music festival. He recalls, “My manager said to me, ‘Did you ever think about having your own festival?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I’ve always wanted to, but I don’t want the headache! What a headache that’s got to be!’”

But with persistence, the right location, and a diverse lineup, DelFest has become a major player on the folk festival circuit. This year’s roster includes The String Cheese Incident, Trampled by Turtles, Tyler Childers, Railroad Earth, and more than a dozen bluegrass artists, including Billy Strings, Sam Bush, the Gibson Brothers, Sierra Hull, and the SteelDrivers.

Sam Bush and Del McCoury

“Attendance is staying up there good, and it’s fun,” Del says. “It’s not a bluegrass festival, it’s just a music festival. We have a lot of bluegrass bands there, you know, but we have jam bands, and we have country acts, man, you name it. We had jazz bands, we had a mixture of music, and I like a variety of music my own self. I figured, if we have a variety of bands, some folks will come to see one band, then these folks will come to see another band, and that’s how you get your fans.”

Rob McCoury adds, “I thought having the festival was a great idea. We’ve played hundreds if not thousands of festivals through the years. So I think it was just the natural progression to have a festival of our own. I guess the most surprising thing is, the small details that add up to big things, that no one realizes is going on behind the scenes.”

Asked about the reward of all that work, he answers, “The fans, no doubt about it. All those folks come to DelFest, and anytime dad walks on stage at his own festival he’s a rock star. To me, it’s just the coolest thing.”

Rock star. Bluegrass Hall of Fame member. A nine-time IBMA Entertainer of the Year. Dad. These are just some of the ways you can describe Del McCoury. Winding down the interview backstage at the Opry, he pauses for a moment when he’s asked how he’d like the Opry family to remember him.

Finally, he says, “You know, I guess I’d want ‘em to remember me like a guy that never expected to be an Opry member. I knew I would play music, for years and years, but I thought, ‘The Opry is something is really special and I don’t know if they’d want me there.’ I was fortunate that they did, and I’m just so grateful. I hope they just remember a country guy that really loves the Grand Ole Opry and loves music.”

The Travelin’ McCourys, Vassar McCoury, Del McCoury, and Dierks Bentley

Photo credit: Chris Hollo / The Grand Ole Opry

Del McCoury’s 80th Birthday at the Grand Ole Opry in Photographs

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As bluegrass fans know, Del McCoury is kind of a big deal — in fact, the Grand Ole Opry briefly renamed itself on Wednesday (February 13) in his honor when the “Grand Del Opry” event gathered good friends like Dierks Bentley, Sam Bush, Béla Fleck & Abigail Washburn, Vince Gill, Jesse McReynolds, Old Crow Medicine Show, Marty Stuart, and the Travelin’ McCourys to celebrate the legendary musician’s 80th birthday. Happy birthday, Del!


The Travelin’ McCourys’ Ronnie McCoury, Rob McCoury and Alan Bartram with Del McCoury


Sally Williams, Grand Ole Opry; Del and Jean McCoury; Dan Rogers, Grand Ole Opry


Del McCoury Band with Dierks Bentley and special guest Vassar McCoury on “upright bass.” 


Sam Bush and Del McCoury


The finale of the Grand Del Opry

Photo credit: Chris Hollo, The Grand Ole Opry

Mandolin Orange: How Bluegrass Brought Them Closer (Part 2 of 2)

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Because they have developed a fan base that stretches across genres and generations, it isn’t so easy to, ahem, segment Mandolin Orange into one specific category. But throughout a decade of performing together, bluegrass has been a major part of the music created by the duo’s Andrew Marlin and Emily Frantz. In the second part of our BGS cover story, they discuss their biggest bluegrass influences.

Editor’s Note: Read Part One of the BGS Cover Story with Mandolin Orange.

BGS: There’s a real country feel on “Lonely All the Time.” Are you classic country fans?

Andrew: Yeah. It’s not something I dig into, and really break apart, like I do with old-time and bluegrass music, but I think Emily and I both grew up listening to classic country. My dad is a country music fan, and that was a song that inadvertently got written from his perspective, living alone these days. I wanted to do a classic country duet sound for that, and Emily had the idea to do harmony all the way through it, like a George Jones and Melba Montgomery tune.

Emily: I think our road to classic country has been more roundabout. We listen to a lot of bluegrass, and when you listen to a lot of the older country, it’s a lot more acoustic and smaller-sounding, sonically. A lot of it is not very different than standard bluegrass tunes. It feels like that’s a natural path for us to go down with this band.

Andrew: Yeah. I like Hank Williams and early Johnny Cash, where it’s just a small ensemble playing the music.

Who are some of the bluegrass musicians you return to, just for enjoyment?

Emily: Andrew spends a ton of time listening to Bill Monroe, from a place of really digging into mandolin, and I guess for enjoyment too. But for listening pleasure, I would say a lot of the brother duets – the Stanley Brothers, the Louvin Brothers…

Andrew: Yeah, the Stanley Brothers for the songs, too. They were lonely, man. They were lonely dudes! I think the Stanley Brothers had a natural, bluesy feel, and their songs were so heavy and beautiful. Definitely, for songwriting, the Stanley Brothers would be a big influences, especially on our tune, “Suspended in Heaven,” on the new record. But also the Sam Bush and Tony Rice era. I listen to a lot of Sam Bush and Tony Rice, and just keep getting farther and farther into the Sam Bush catalog. I love his energy and what he brings to whatever ensemble he’s playing. It’s cool that he has a documentary out about him now. He’s getting the respect that he is due.

You may never emerge if you dive too deeply in Sam’s catalog. That stuff is so great, and sounds so good at festivals. He’s like the king of festivals.

Yeah, I think that’s because he’s able to maintain what he wants to do musically, but he’s still energetically appealing to mass audiences. That’s a hard to thing to do at a festival and I feel like he does it well.

That festival crowd can be tough. How many festivals have you all played over the last 10 years?

Andrew: We’ve played a bunch of ‘em. And playing quiet music. That can be an intimidating thing sometimes.

How did you overcome that?

Andrew: We shut our eyes and just hope they don’t mind hearing some quiet music. (laughs)

Emily: I think it was actually realizing that there is a place for that at festivals, even though it doesn’t seem like it. We’d get on stage and feel outgunned at the outset, but the more that we talked to people and realized that they appreciated having that in their festival experience, to offset all the crazy jamming going on. Everybody needs to balance out a bit. Once we realized that, we were able to own it a little more and recognize that that could be our role.

Andrew: It’s more like the hangover weed crowd than the late night drunk crowd, I would say.

I want to go back to “Suspended in Heaven.” It does have that Stanley Brothers sound, but it also has that church music sound, in a way. Are you influenced by music of the church?

Emily: Probably more in that we listen to and enjoy the old gospel tunes that are part of the bluegrass repertoire. We both grew up with church music but it wasn’t necessarily this kind of church music.

Andrew: My mom’s mom was the piano player for the church I went to, growing up, and then my mom took over her responsibilities, then my sister took over for a little while. So it’s like three generations of piano players at this church in Afton (North Carolina) that we went to, growing up. I was around a lot of old hymns and old gospel music, and you can’t really separate my mom from gospel music. I think in wanting to pay homage to her, and to her life, it made sense to write a standard old gospel tune. I guess the lyrics are not traditionally leaning but the sound definitely is.

Tell me how you became interested in bluegrass music.

Emily: For me, it was in the very beginning when I was taking Suzuki violin lessons as a kid. Our teachers didn’t give lessons in the summer but they did fiddle camps. I always played by ear but that was my first experience of being encouraged to learn to play by ear and not being forced to read sheet music. So I learned “Old Joe Clark” and “Bile ‘Em Cabbages Down” – all the first fiddle tunes you learn. And gradually I phased completely out of doing anything classical.

I was able to take more fiddle lessons and play in a local bluegrass band around the time I started high school. And learned a ton from the guys I was playing with, about how to sing tenor and what role the fiddle is supposed to play. It’s cool that traditional bluegrass has pretty hard-and-fast rules about what the given instruments are supposed to do, and I’m really glad that I learned that. We don’t play that way ourselves, on our own tunes necessarily, but it’s really fun to jump in and make a bluegrass song sound just like bluegrass-–if you know the rules.

Andrew, how about you?

Andrew: I’d only just started getting into bluegrass when Emily and I met each other, actually. I grew up with country and switched to rock ‘n’ roll, and then from there I fell into a metal zone. I was in a metal duo, actually, before I moved to Chapel Hill. I don’t think there are any recordings of that out there – hopefully not. I credit the Skaggs & Rice record a lot as being that switch for me that flipped me to bluegrass. When I heard that, I was like, ‘Who is this guitar player?” And the way they are singing together, it’s really quality. Especially Ricky Skaggs’ mandolin playing on that record.

So from there, I found out about Norman Blake and David Grisman and John Hartford and of course Sam Bush. I just fell in love with it, and especially the mandolin. So I think when Emily and I first met, I’d only been playing the mandolin for a year or so.

Emily: Andrew didn’t know very many bluegrass tunes. I was more of the source, at that point.

Andrew: She was showing me a bunch of fiddle tunes to learn on the mandolin, which really helped me figure the instrument out. I’m still figuring it out. So I’d say meeting Emily was a big part of my schooling in bluegrass, in a lot of ways.

After ten years of knowing each other, do you have a good intuition about what the other person is thinking?

Emily: I would say yeah, especially musically. I think all those years, too, of playing just the two of us, it becomes like a second language, and you don’t even necessarily realize it’s happening.

Was there a time when you did realize it was happening? Where you thought, “Wow, this is actually pretty good.”

Andrew: It depends on what we thought the other one was saying. (both laugh)

Emily: I remember reading an interview with Gillian Welch a long time ago, when she was talking about playing with a duo, about how it’s so much harder than playing with a full band, but also how it’s so much easier. And a lot of the things that she said about it made me realize how we were communicating, in a way that I didn’t necessarily realize before.

Andrew: I definitely love the spontaneity of playing in a duo, playing with just one other person. It’s really hard to make that split-second decision to vamp on a chord if you forget a lyric, or to extend a solo section, when there are four other people on stage with you. But when it’s just the two of us, we can kind of look at each other and give an eyebrow raise, and it’s like, “Oh yeah, I forgot the lyrics, so….”

Emily: It’s not even visual sometimes, but if somebody misses something, you automatically compensate for it in some way, and it’s not even conscious. I guess that’s probably possible in larger ensembles but it probably takes ten times as long to get there.

Photo credit: Kendall Bailey

LISTEN: Danny Burns, “North Country”

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Artist: Danny Burns
Hometown: Ballyshannon, County Donegal, Ireland
Song: “North Country”
Album: North Country
Release Date: January 18, 2019
Label: Bonfire Recording Co.

In Their Words: “I wrote this about the indigenous people of the island of Ireland engaging the Vikings in Viking raids! I started writing this on the banks of Lough Melvin looking up at Rossinver Mountain in the village of Garrison in County Fermanagh where my family are from. This song took many years to take shape and present itself to me; I started this maybe in 2001 and it was finished in 2015. When we went in to cut it in Nashville with Mindy Smith, Sam Bush, and Chessboxer, they were able to add depth and mood to this historical story.” — Danny Burns

Photo credit Jacob Blickenstaff

WATCH: An Exclusive Preview of ‘Revival: The Sam Bush Story’

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With his extraordinary musicianship and boundless energy, Sam Bush embodies the spirit of bluegrass. The award-winning documentary, Revival: The Sam Bush Story, captures him in peak form, with testimonials from many of his fellow musicians.

“It’s pretty overwhelming,” Bush remarked after seeing the film for the first time. “Your friends are talking about you. You’re watching yourself back when you only had one chin. It’s pretty amazing to think I got out of high school 45 years ago and have been fortunate to play music ever since. I hope people come away from watching the film with a greater appreciation for Americana and acoustic music.”

The film may be purchased or rented on Amazon on Thursday, November 1. Here’s a preview:

Image Used With Permission from Revival: The Sam Bush Story

John Jorgenson Revisits His Southern California Bluegrass Roots

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John Jorgenson is not only a man of many talents, he’s a musician with many interests. Perhaps you’ve heard his gypsy jazz, or remember when the Desert Rose Band — a neo-trad country group that included Jorgenson, Chris Hillman and other luminaries of the California country and country-rock scene — was riding high at radio, or perhaps you saw him playing an indispensable role in Elton John’s touring band. As Jim Reeves might have put it, he’s done a lot in his time.

Even so, you might not know that John Jorgenson is also a bluegrass guy — unless, that is, you saw him on the road with Earl Scruggs during the legend’s final touring years, or happened to buy his 2015 box set, Divertuoso, which included a disc of bluegrass alongside one of gypsy jazz and another of eclectic, electric music. Earlier this year, that disc was issued as a standalone album, From the Crow’s Nest. Featuring the regular (and equally eclectic) members of the John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band (J2B2) — Herb Pedersen, Mark Fain and Jon Randall — it’s a delicious collection that scatters well-known songs (Pedersen’s “Wait a Minute”; Randall’s “Whiskey Lullaby” co-write; and the Dillards’ “There Is a Time”) among a trove of newer material, much of it written or co-written by Jorgenson.

From the Crow’s Nest ought to go some distance in alerting wider audiences to a new standard-bearer for a style of bluegrass that, while its roots trace back to the early 1950s, hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Though Southern California is a long way from the Grand Ole Opry and other spawning grounds for the original bluegrass sound, it served in the post-World War II years as a magnet for job seekers from both sides of the Mississippi River, and that meant bluegrass pickers, too — and so, when we met up, that made for a good starting point for our conversation.

Listening to your album reminds me that you are a product of a Southern California roots music scene that included bluegrass from early on. How did you get exposed to it?

Probably the first time was when a band came to my high school and I thought they were from another planet, because I’d never heard anything so fast in my life. I played music already — I played classical music, and rock — but that was sort of an anomaly, and then I didn’t really see it again for a while.

I came to it sort of in a backwards way. I had a scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival. They brought me in as a jazz bass player; they wanted to start a jazz program. And I accepted the scholarship as long as I could also be in their classical program, playing the bassoon. Well, I had my tuition paid for, and my room paid for, but I didn’t have money for meals. So I needed to figure out how to make some money, and then I saw an ad that said: Wanted: strict jazz player for immediate gigs. So I checked out an upright bass from the school and went to this audition. And they weren’t playing jazz — what they were playing was David Grisman’s first album. This was the summer of 1978, so this album was new. I’d never heard it.

So they’re playing all instrumental stuff and I thought, OK, I really like the sound, especially of that mandolin. I liked the flatpicking guitar, too. I was already a guitar player, but I just loved the mandolin. When I got home that summer, my neighbors had a Gibson A model and I borrowed it. Not too long after that, I ran into a friend who had been instructed to put together a band that could play bluegrass and Dixieland to cover two different areas of Disneyland. And he asked, “Hey, do you know anybody that could play bluegrass fiddle and Dixieland cornet?” And needing a job at the time, I said, “I can play mandolin and clarinet.”

And then I kind of learned backwards, whatever I could. I learned from New Grass Revival, and then Bill Monroe, and Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers, and the Osborne Brothers. And all the others — Tony Rice, Sam Bush, the Bluegrass Cardinals, whoever was playing around at the time. Larry Stephenson was playing with the Cardinals at that time, and I remember I was — I don’t want to say shy, but I’m shy around people I don’t know. And to me at the time, they were real bluegrass musicians and I was a pretender. I sort of felt an attitude from some people, too, but he was not like that at all. He was really friendly.

Did playing bluegrass at Disneyland motivate you to build connections with the larger bluegrass scene, or was it a standalone kind of gig?

Actually, when we first started, we were terrible! We learned three songs and then we’d play those, move to a different place and play them again. But everyone was ambitious, so we all practiced; we learned songs, we got better. And then we started to play out around Los Angeles. I think the first time we played out as an act, we opened for Jim & Jesse at McCabe’s [Guitar Shop]. There was also a venue called the Banjo Cafe, with bluegrass every night, on Lincoln [Boulevard] in Santa Monica. So the Cardinals played there; Berline, Hickman & Crary would play there; and touring acts, too — Ralph Stanley would play there. And a young Alison Brown, a young Stuart Duncan.

I know that there are a lot fans of Desert Rose Band among bluegrassers, and some gypsy jazz fans, too, but for a lot of people, you came onto the radar when you were going places with Earl Scruggs — 15 years ago, maybe? How’d that come about?

Actually, it was because of Brad Davis. He was playing with Earl, and we were kind of guitar geek friends. We ended up sitting next to each other on a plane one time, and were chatting, and he said, “I’m playing with Earl Scruggs,” and I said, “I’d love to do that.” He said, “You know, they like to have an electric guitar, maybe there might be a spot.” He really set that up for me.

I said, “OK, I’m happy to play electric guitar, but I would really love to play the mandolin.” So I would bring both, and if I played too much mandolin, Louise [Scruggs] would say, “John, don’t forget that electric guitar.” Then they said, “Don’t you play saxophone? We used to have that on a song called ‘Step It Up and Go.’” So I said, “What about the clarinet? It’s not quite so loud.” And as it turns out, Earl said his favorite musician was Pete Fountain, and he loved the clarinet. So every time after that, Gary Scruggs would call me up: “Dad says don’t forget the moneymaker.”

The J2B2 record was originally part of a box set — a disc of gypsy jazz, one of bluegrass, one of electric stuff. So you have these different musical itches, and some musicians would choose to try to synthesize these things into something new and different and unique, but you seem to have an interest in keeping them each their own thing. Why is that?

It’s because, to me, the things that I love about bluegrass are what make it bluegrass. I love the trio harmony, I love these instruments, the way each instrument functions in the band. And I love gypsy jazz, and some folks might say they’re closely related — they’re string band music, they both have acoustic bass and fiddle and acoustic guitar, and each instrument has a role. There are a lot of similarities, but the things that I like about each one are what make them different. I think each music has an accent, and a history and a perspective, and I really want to be true to those, because those are the elements that touch my heart.

I feel like what I do and what this group does is quite traditional, compared to a lot of people. It’s not jamgrass. It’s not Americana. It’s bluegrass. There are folk elements, and all those other things, of course. But really, my touchstones for that style of music are all the classics: the trio harmonies of the Osborne Brothers, and the slightly softer Seldom Scene and Country Gentlemen sounds, the early Dillards, the Country Gazette, and the whole Southern California sound… you don’t think of Tony Rice’s roots as Southern California, but they are.

And probably at one point, if I could have sounded like I was from Kentucky, I wouldn’t have minded that. But at the end of the day, well, I love Bill Monroe as much as the next guy, and I’m going to take inspiration, but I feel like I’m part of a lineage of bluegrass that’s just as viable as any other, and why not have that sound be a part of me?

Photo credit: Mike Melnyk

Mark O’Connor, ‘Pickin’ In The Wind’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Mark O’Connor comes about as close to being a household name as any musician in bluegrass (and its adjacent genres). Because bluegrass is predicated upon instrumental skill, the origin point of O’Connor’s recognition will always be his virtuosity, his musical expertise, and his command of his instrument. He’s a true master of bluegrass fiddle and contest fiddle forms, he’s a trailblazer in fiddle-flavored classical compositions of all manners and sorts, his musical code-switching extends to jazz, gypsy jazz, and swing, and he is pervasive on recordings and sessions from his years spent in Nashville. He even has his own violin and fiddle curriculum, The O’Connor Method, which pedagogically capitalizes on and celebrates American music, rather than Western European music, as usual.

Yet, no matter the level to which he transcends any/all musical barriers or the ubiquity of his name and brand, many folks don’t know he’s a maddeningly adept guitar player as well. In his youth, as he racked up wins at fiddle contests far and wide, he was also taking home flatpicking trophies with the same bravado. On his iconic 1976 album, Pickin’ In The Wind, the title track and the first tune on the record opts not to showcase his signature fiddling, but rather his guitar picking — backed up by a band that is no less than jaw-dropping: John Hartford on banjo, Sam Bush on mandolin, Norman Blake on dobro, Roy Huskey Jr. on bass, and Charlie Collins on the rhythm guitar. The tune listens down as straight-ahead bluegrass, but with a chord progression and arrangement that never strays into the simplistic, thanks in part to O’Connor’s compositional taste and the supreme talent of his fellow musicians. It’s an O’Connor staple that doesn’t require a single bowstroke.

So, in celebration of O’Connor’s birthday (August 5), it seems appropriate that we shine a light on the guitar stylings and the unbelievable ensemble of “Pickin’ In The Wind.”

WATCH: Becky Buller & Sam Bush, ‘The Rebel and the Rose’

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Artist: Becky Buller
Hometown: St. James, Minnesota
Song: “The Rebel and the Rose”
Album: Crêpe Paper Heart
Label: Dark Shadow Recording

In Their Words: “’The Rebel and the Rose’ is a period piece, with its reference to a soldier and his love navigating love and loss amid the turmoil of civil war. It is also, however, a classic story about choices, desperation and hope … and the redemptive power of love. The tender message within is quite fitting for contemporary life; a commentary on things that tear us apart and things that bring us together … and how quite often, the tearing apart or joining together is a choice of the heart, separate from any issue. This song is special to me on so many levels, from writing it with my dear friend, Tony Rackley, to recording it with my hero, Sam Bush. The message of hope in this song is timeless; not one of us is so broken that love can’t mend us.” — Becky Buller

Photo credit: Shelly Swanger

ROMP 2018 in Photographs

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum’s annual ROMP Festival celebrated its 15th anniversary with more than 27,000 people attending the four-day bluegrass roots and branches music event at Yellow Creek Park in Owensboro, Kentucky. Those lucky 27,000 were treated to a a sunset performance by the iconic Alison Krauss, a split set of bluegrass and country by newly-minted Country Music Hall of Famer Ricky Skaggs, a rowdy and non-stop dance party by Ireland’s We Banjo 3, a rocking finale performance by the ‘Father of Newgrass’ Sam Bush, and much, much more. Check out our photo recap to relive the highlights or to find out what you missed.

Lede photo by Alex Morgan

Nefesh Mountain, “Eretz’s Reel”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

For forty years now the Station Inn has lurked in Nashville’s Gulch, carrying the bluegrass banner in a town with pop country and cover bands to spare, while condo high-rises, wine bars, rooftop lounges, and organic groceries have sprouted up around the small, unassuming stone club. On any given night of those forty long years a bluegrass fan or a nonchalant passerby could step through the door and expect the best in bluegrass and old, real country. Luckily for every roots music fan in the universe, that fact is still true — and will be for the foreseeable future.

What one would not, perhaps, expect upon entering the Station Inn is vocals sung in Hebrew, or bluegrass songs based on Jewish traditions and turns of phrase. But on a recent evening, these were the sounds wafting from that fabled stage, as Nefesh Mountain performed songs from their new album, Beneath the Open Sky. It’s not as though bluegrass as a genre isn’t already predicated upon subverting expectations — it’s arguably a core precept of the form — but an average Station Inn patron might still be surprised by the Jewish-infused, modern ‘grass of Eric Lindberg, Doni Zasloff, et. al. “Eretz’s Reel,” an instrumental off the new record, is a less overt example of their Jewish perspective, but brings in a transatlantic flair, Tony Trischka-esque melodic turns, and a potent dose of originality and imagination. On the record, bluegrass phenoms Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and David Grier lend their talents to the track, but live at the Station, Lindberg stands apart as the imagineer and linchpin of this stripped-down version of the tune.