Mike Compton – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Bluegrass fans know Mike Compton from his long and eclectic resumé, including decades of touring and recording traditional Monroe-style mandolin with greats like John Hartford, Doc Watson, Peter Rowan, Ralph Stanley, Alison Krauss, and David Grisman, as well as venturing into more mainstream music with with Sting, Gregg Allman, Elvis Costello, and many others. He was also heard on the soundtrack for O Brother, Where Art Thou? and traveled with the smash hit tour, Down from the Mountain, which highlighted the artists and musicians on that incredibly popular soundtrack.

But, as Toy Heart host Tom Power points out, it’s not just virtuosity that makes Compton stand out as a mandolinist – it’s just as much about the heart, feel, and grit that he brings to the instrument.

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Tom speaks with Compton for over an hour for this exclusive Toy Heart interview, walking through his life and career, from the musical influence of his great grandparents and growing up in Meridian, Mississippi, to the indelible mark left on his own playing style by Bill Monroe. Compton also recalls his childhood, skipping school to hide out in a “dirt pit” to practice all day, his time in Nashville – including a historic visit to China with the Nashville Bluegrass Band – and recounts his collaborations with the legendary John Hartford. You’ll also hear Compton discuss the impact that playing on O Brother, Where Art Thou? had not only on himself and his own career, but on bluegrass as a whole.


Photo Credit: Scott Simontacchi

WATCH: Tommy Emmanuel & Mike Dawes, “Fields of Gold”

Artists: Tommy Emmanuel & Mike Dawes
Song: “Fields of Gold” (Sting cover)
Album: Accomplice Series Vol. 3 (EP)
Release Date: September 23, 2022
Label: CGP Sounds

In Their Words: “I always think like a singer when I play a Sting melody. Playing this masterpiece with Mike is always fun and emotional…a simple repetitive melody with a slowly building arrangement that becomes powerful.” — Tommy Emmanuel

“‘Fields’ was Tommy’s idea based on his own arrangement from the Can’t Get Enough record [Emmanuel’s 1996 album]. I wanted to hold down something of a strict rhythm and backbeat for this one. The result is a mid-tempo homage to the classic Sting song. This [EP version] was recorded in a single take by Marc DeSisto. I’m playing in DADGAD tuning whilst Tommy is in standard tuning. I particularly like the different tones on our guitars on this one. Tommy’s bright flatpicked Maton soars over my fingerpicked Indian Rose Cuntz guitar. This was very important in a tune with doubled melodies.” — Mike Dawes

Drew Holcomb, Bandleader and Bourbon Collector, Taps Into a New Golden Age

Drew Holcomb writes and sings often about the comforts of home and family life, but don’t assume he’s setting his family and himself as role models.

The leader of roots-rockers Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, Drew (who is the BGS Artist of the Month for January along with wife Ellie Holcomb) is quick to point out that the couple is “not trying to portray any sort of ideal.”

“We just write about our life,” says the singer-songwriter, whose most recent projects are a tour and compilation album with Ellie. “That’s sort of the season that we’re in. It would be disingenuous for me to try to write anything different than what I see and experience, the lens that I have.” Drew says he does have some narrative songs in his catalogue that are less personal, “but it’s not tended to be where I’m drawn to as a songwriter.”

Of nine songs on the new collection Coming Home: A Collection of Songs, the couple harmonize twice about the comforts of home, four times about their love for each other, once about their love for their “wild man” 3-year-old son Rivers and once about the need to “Love Anyway.” The collection concludes with a cover of Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again,” which is appropriate given their You and Me Tour, which launches February 4 in Jacksonville, Florida.

BGS called the couple for companion interviews; enjoy Ellie’s Q&A here.

BGS: Your band, Ellie’s solo work, and the duo each have a separate, unique sound. Do you purposely work to give each a different style?

Drew Holcomb: Part of that’s personality. When I’m recording with the Neighbors, it’s always the same players, who I’ve been playing together with for years. And then Ellie has worked with different producers and different musicians than me, and she has her own stylistic creative impulses and decisions. So those two roles are clearly differentiated, and then we get together. We decided to let each song sort of dictate itself. There’s some good variety in there, but it lends itself toward more of a singer-songwriter vibe with a little more atmospheric, sonic landscape kind of creativity.

After Ellie left the band (Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors), she eventually started a successful career in Christian music. Where did the idea of also working as a duet come from?

She was in the band and took seven years off from that, and is still not in the band, but we do this (You and Me) tour together every year. We thought we should write some new music. We had not written together in almost a decade. We just put them up on Spotify and stuff like that, and they actually performed really well. The music sort of became its own sort of separate entity from my work with the Neighbors and her solo work.

Your take on Sting’s “Fields of Gold” pares back the production for a comparatively sparse interpretation. You and Ellie also do that on your Kitchen Covers series. Why that approach?

I primarily see myself as a songwriter, maybe secondarily as a singer. And thirdly, as a performer, entertainer. The genius of a song can get lost in some of the ornate production and people just think about it as a pop song, right? They don’t hear the great songwriting at the bare bones of it. I’m not a theatrical, big singer. So I kind of quiet things down, take the dynamic down on an “Islands In the Stream.” It’s just an interesting approach.

You’ve mentioned Van Morrison and Bob Seger as influences in the past. Who else are your musical heroes?

I love Tom Petty for a lot of reasons. I love how he played with the same guys for the majority of his career, working with different producers, made different styles of records but always with the same sort of North Star. Springsteen. There’s so many. Carole King, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson. There’s like 100 persons.

Americana is increasingly the category of singer-songwriters in popular music, where in the past comparable artists like Jim Croce and James Taylor had big hits on the mainstream pop charts. Is that frustrating for you?

Yes, certainly it is, to some degree. But if I was starting out in 1971, I don’t think I was good enough to have gotten a label deal, the only way to get records released in that era. The era I was born in gave me that long runway to hone my craft. Yes, there’s not as much opportunity commercially for what artists like myself do. But if it ever is frustrating, it’s something I move on from pretty quickly, just because you can’t change when you were born. I do think it’s actually a really wonderful time to put out music because there’s a lot of space for a lot of artists. While there may be less of us on a large commercially successful level, there’s probably more of us doing it in general, at the “pay your bills and keep moving forward” level. There’s so many good artists making great records that it’s a different type of a golden age.

Can you be immodest for a moment and tell me which of your songs might have staying power and be covered years from now?

I don’t know. I’ll let posterity decide if that happens. We get videos all the time where people are out and they’re hearing some person in a restaurant playing our songs. It’s really cool to see other artists and songwriters giving it a go. I definitely have been surprised by “What Would I Do Without You,” from the Good Light album. It seems to have that sort of staying power. I hear from people that their grandparents love the song, and then their kids love the song. If I could get kids who grew up on my music that came out before they were born and they still like it, that would be a good barometer of the staying power of the songs themselves. I’m starting to see that a little bit, and I hope that continues.

Are you still in the whiskey business?

I am. Just a very small partner on a thing called Sweetens Cove Tennessee Bourbon. It’s been a fun endeavor for sure. My manager and I both are collectors of bourbons and various whiskeys. When I was living in Scotland in college, I started drinking scotch. I was a history major, so I always fall in love with the backstory of whatever thing I’m consuming. Whiskey is great for that because every brand’s got a good mythology story, a good origin story or creation story. It’s a fun thing to be a part of.

You’ve done some scattered dates since the coronavirus hit, but the February–March You and Me tour with Ellie is your first full-fledged tour since then. How do you feel about it?

It’s great. You don’t realize how much you love something until it’s taken away from you. We’re definitely going to play some new songs on the tour. We’ve been writing. I like to test new stuff out, tease it out a little bit.

Did you write a lot of songs while you couldn’t do many shows?

Maybe 40 and growing. I’m not proud of all of them. Half of them are worth taking into the studio to see what happens.

So you’ll throw out 20 songs?

Usually, I cannibalize them. I take the stuff I like out of them and start something new.

Do you have any particular ambitions for your music going forward? Is there somewhere you want to go that’s different than what you’re doing now?

I’m writing more than I’ve written in a long time. COVID’s been good for my writing in the last eight months at least. I’d like to probably increase the pace at which I release music, but maybe decrease the pace at which I tour. I’d love to get to that point where instead of every tour having to be connected to a new record, you just tour on and off all the time and put out music whenever it’s ready.

You’ve done collaborations with The Lone Bellow, Lori McKenna and Natalie Hemby. Do you see more of this cross-pollination in the future?

I did this thing with Johnnyswim. We did a collaborative EP (Goodbye Road). I have aspirations of doing more and more of that with other artists. I’ve been doing lots of co-writing. The older I get, the more freedom I feel to collaborate and hold my own creative rudder less tightly and see what happens. I think there’s some of that on the horizon as well. That’s also what’s been fun about working with Ellie, to do things differently, try to stretch different muscles creatively and challenge yourself in different ways and share the spotlight. That’s been a big thing for me.


Photo Credit: Ashtin Paige

With “Every Breath You Take,” Ashley Monroe and Tyler Cain Cover a Classic

Ashley Monroe’s new project could put a smile on anyone’s face. Together with producer and collaborator Tyler Cain, she’s released The Covers, an EP of five reimagined classics including “Love Hurts,” “More Than Words,” and The Police song performed in this video, “Every Breath You Take.” It’s a celebration of songs that Monroe and Cain both love, with nothing to detract from excellent songwriting. With minimal arrangements and production frills, these two artists captured a pure and innocent expression of admiration in this record.

About the project’s origins, Cain says, “This project began out of a shared love for these songs. There’s just something magical about taking classic songs that we’ve listened to for most of our lives and stripping them down to just vocals and a guitar.” Monroe adds, “Tyler and I were just hanging at his studio and talking about our favorite songs and I said we should just film ourselves recording some of our favorite songs on Earth. The ones that make us feel better. Maybe it will help other people too.”

The EP not only features a five-pack of classic songs, but Cain and Monroe also pulled in friends and artists Ruston Kelly and Brittney Spencer on two of the tunes. Altogether, the EP is refreshing. Listening to working artists perform for no other reason than pure enjoyment is a breath of fresh air in an artistic environment where creativity is often sacrificed for correctness or commerciality. Watch Tyler Cain and Ashley Monroe perform “Every Breath You Take.”


Photo of Ashley Monroe: Alexa King. Photo of Tyler Cain: Jonathan Dale

BGS 5+5: Eli West

Artist: Eli West
Hometown: Olympia, Washington
Latest Album: Tapered Point of Stone

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Probably Paul Brady, as a singer and guitar player. While I don’t play Irish folk music much, the tradition, while having lots of shapes and inflection, isn’t inherently showy. You don’t see an Irish folk musician put their foot up on a monitor to take a solo. I think communicating something interesting in an understated way is so satisfying…. Leaving room for the listener, not hitting you over the head with an idea. Tim O’Brien is an American version of that as well.

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

I’m a visual learner. Visual and spatial art, woodworking, painting, all have something to do with my musical decisions. I love understated chaos, like arranging things that seem to already be there. Goldsworthy is an obvious example of this, but there are many folks who do this in a variety of mediums. I tend to overthink, so anything that helps me escape my head to see things in a simpler way.

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Running, for my mental health. Also, getting to know a new town before a show. Also, eating. Big fan of eating.

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

I grew up on salt water, sailing, and kayaking with my dad. Also skiing and backpacking in the mountains of the Northwest. I think the understory of a dense cedar grove is pretty inspiring, usually quiet while full of life.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Huh… I love seafood. There is a restaurant in Tel Aviv called the Old Man and the Sea. I would love to sit outside, eating fish, talking to someone like Django or Jim Hall about guitars. Since both those guys are gone, maybe drunk BBQ with Sting or Mark Knopfler would be fun (all those things borrowing from my high school self).


Photo credit: Jenny Jimenez

3X3: Peridot on the ’40s, FOMO, and Frank Sinatra

Artist: Peridot
Hometown: Los Angeles, CA
Latest Album: Peridot
Rejected Band Names: One time, a producer told us we should change our band name to “Hillary’s Unicorn” or “Hillary and the Man” — both were appropriately discarded. 

If you could go back (or forward) to live in any decade, when would you choose? 

Definitely the ’70s — but I would also say the tail end of the ’60s, as well — so let’s say 1965-1975. Also the late 1930s/early 1940s when Sinatra was getting started and dance orchestras were the thing.

Who would be your dream co-writer?

Tom Petty, John Mayer, or Ray LaMontagne.

If a song started playing every time you entered the room, what would you want it to be?

It’s a tie between “Gimme Some Lovin” by the Spencer Davis Group or “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys. The best song for leaving the room would definitely be Frank Sinatra’s version of “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

What is the one thing you can’t survive without on tour?

It’s a tie between good coffee and a real pillow. 

What are you most afraid of? 

I have major FOMO — “Fear of missing out”

Who is your celebrity crush? 

Sting 

Pickles or olives? 

Pickles 

Plane, train, or automobile? 

Plane — depends on the airline. Train — depends on the country. Drive — depends on how many people are in the car and how long the trip is. For now, we’ll say plane. 

Which is worse — rainy days or Mondays? 

Mondays