Tag: string band

LISTEN: The Barefoot Movement, “Back Behind the Wheel”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Barefoot Movement
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Back Behind the Wheel”
Album: Pressing Onward
Release Date: September 17, 2021
Label: Bonfire Music Group

In Their Words: “‘Back Behind the Wheel’ is basically a dialogue with myself where I’m expressing my fears and then bolstering myself up. This is a theme in a lot of my songs, and especially on this album. I am by nature a pretty hopeful person; even when I allow myself to feel the full weight of whatever I’m despairing over, somehow I just can’t let that part of me be the ultimate winner. So it’s that idea of letting yourself feel what you need to feel, but not allowing that to be the end of the journey. Because unless you just give up, the only way to move is forward. I wrote the song about my experiences in the music industry, but I think it’s a universal concept. The chorus says, ‘When it comes to this, I don’t know what it means to quit.’ The listener can allow the ‘this’ in the line to represent whatever matters to them!” — Noah Wall, The Barefoot Movement

Photo credit: Workshop Media

LISTEN: Swamptooth, “The Owl Theory”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Swamptooth
Hometown: Savannah, Georgia
Song: “The Owl Theory”
Album: B-Flat Earth
Release Date: September 17, 2021

In Their Words: “This song was written by guitarist Jay Rudd. In the Netflix series The Staircase, crime novelist Michael Peterson was convicted of murdering his wife who was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home. A few years later a neighbor brought forth a new theory that an owl had attacked Peterson’s wife on her way inside the home and she had fallen down the stairs during the resulting confusion. Many have argued that the theory is plausible due to evidence such as microscopic owl feathers found in her hand. This song manifested after visualizing the owl attack and subsequent fall down the staircase.” — Swamptooth

Photo credit: Kelly Roetto

LISTEN: Birds of Play, “Not Alone”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Birds of Play
Hometown: Ophir, Colorado
Song: “Not Alone”
Album: Murmurations Vol. 1
Release Date: September 3, 2021

In Their Words: “‘Not Alone’ was written in the thick of lockdown, early April 2020. I was sitting down to read a book when I found out that John Prine had died. I put my book down and picked up my guitar and played his songs for a couple hours. Somewhere in the midst of that celebration and mourning this song appeared. I wrote it over the course of that night and the next morning as a bit of a reflection on our shared lot. It feels cathartic to sing and still unfortunately relevant.” — Alex Paul, Birds of Play

Photo credit: Sarah Schwab

The BGS Radio Hour – Episode 216

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Welcome to the BGS Radio Hour! Since 2017, this weekly radio show and podcast has been a recap of all the great music, new and old, featured on the digital pages of BGS. This week, David Crosby and Sarah Jarosz join up for a Joni Mitchell number, husband-and-wife duo Darin and Brooke Aldridge bring us some beautiful bluegrass harmonies, LA’s own Los Lobos share their rendition of a favorite Jackson Browne tune, and much more.

APPLE PODCASTS, SPOTIFY

The Wallflowers – “Maybe Your Heart’s Not In It Anymore”

25 years after their breakout hit and almost a decade after their most recent release, The Wallflowers are back with a new album, Exit Wounds. In our interview with Jakob Dylan we talk about the project, singing with Shelby Lynne, the documentary Dylan executive produced, Echo in the Canyon, and more.

Ric Robertson – “Carolina Child”

We spoke with Ric Robertson about playing a popcorn kernel in a musical as a kid, his kite surfing aspirations, his new album Carolina Child, and more in a recent edition of 5+5.

Amy Ray Band – “Chuck Will’s Widow”

Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls finds herself often haunted by the song of the nocturnal songbird, the Chuck-will’s-widow: “I find that I witness the most profound moments in the midst of their songs, when everyone else is asleep. While I am often in need of rest, the respite I find in being awake under a miraculous and melodic night sky is too tempting for me to sleep. It’s a conundrum that inspires me, but also leaves me bleary-eyed.”

Darin and Brooke Aldridge – “Once In A While”

Bluegrass husband-and-wife duo Darin & Brooke Aldridge hope that every aspect of their music makes you smile — even more than “Once in a While!”

Matt the Electrician – “Home Again”

Folk singer-songwriter Matt The Electrician will return with a new album called We Imagined an Ending in November. A new track, “Home Again,” takes inspiration from the point of view of his teenage daughter. “The conundrum of parenthood, that as you finally start to figure some things out, and try to pass along some of that hard won wisdom, you’re greeted with your own teenage face staring balefully back at you.”

Tobacco City – “AA Blues”

Says Chris Coleslaw of Tobacco City’s latest single, “The character in the song is trapped between working in a brewery and staring at beers all day and trying to walk a sober line. I think regardless of your sobriety status we can all relate to those kind of blues.”

Jesse Daniel – “Clayton Was A Cowboy”

Jesse Daniel spoke with us about his new album, Beyond These Walls, about growing up catching crawdads and fishing, the chills-inducing feeling when a crowd sings along with his lyrics, and more in a recent 5+5.

Joy Oladokun – “Judas”

Joy Oladokun is able to do more with just an acoustic guitar and her voice than many artists can in an entire discography of work. And going from Arizona to L.A. then across country to Nashville with a new outlook and perspective, her music stands on a plane with a unique vantage point.

Luke LeBlanc – “Same Blues”

A new video for Luke LeBlanc’s co-written tune with Roy August, “Same Blues,” attempts to capture what the song is about: the tug of war between the status quo and what you’re currently doing versus that thing you really want to do.

Midnight North – “Silent Lonely Drifter”

“Silent Lonely Drifter” is an original folk melody reminiscent of timeless Appalachian string band music. Each verse references a different full moon, speaking to the natural balance that exists in the universe.

Los Lobos – “Jamaica Say You Will”

The Jackson Browne tune “Jamaica Say You Will” always resonated for the fellas of Los Lobos and the narrative and storytelling were attractive, too. So, they recorded their own rendition of the track on their latest project, Native Sons.

Aoife O’Donovan ft. Milk Carton Kids – “More Than We Know”

New music from Aoife O’Donovan is here and we’re loving it! Hear tracks created with Joe Henry and the Milk Carton Kids — one inspired by the modern classic re-telling of Peter Pan, the movie Hook.

John R. Miller – “Shenandoah Shakedown”

Depreciated, the new Rounder Records release from singer-songwriter John R. Miller, combines many of his string band and bluegrass influences with a satisfyingly melancholy and dark mood — plus plenty of fiddle.

David Crosby ft. Sarah Jarosz – “For Free”

Legendary singer, guitar picker, and songwriter David Crosby keeps his love for collaboration alive on his new album, For Free, which features guests and co-writers such as Sarah Jarosz, Michael McDonald, his son James Raymond, and more.

Photos: (L to R) Joy Oladokun by Nolan Knight; Aoife O’Donovan courtesy of Shorefire Media; David Crosby by Anna Webber

LISTEN: The Way Down Wanderers, “Everything’s Made Out of Sand”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: The Way Down Wanderers
Hometown: Peoria, Illinois
Song: “Everything’s Made Out of Sand”
Album: More Like Tomorrow
Release Date: September 10, 2021
Label: Soundly Music

In Their Words: “‘Everything’s Made Out of Sand’ was written to create a dialogue on the temporary nature of all things: one day everything here will to turn to dust. I was inspired in the writing process while struggling to feel like I was using my short time here wisely. Humans are connected by our perception of time and the understanding of our own mortality. Through this mutual connection that we share as neighbors, I feel that a certain amount of accountability exists between us to try and live our best life for each other. We captured this tune with the band belting and stomping into a single antique microphone. By recording the song in just one take, it is set aside from the rest of the album and meant to capture the idea behind the track itself in a sonic way: we have a short time to live the most impactful and fulfilling life we can, so let’s try our best.” – Collin Krauss, The Way Down Wanderers

Photo credit: Keith Cotton

WATCH: Aaron Lipp, “They Say I’ve Been Lonely”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Aaron Lipp
Hometown: Naples, New York
Song: “They Say I’ve Been Lonely”
Release Date: June 26, 2021
Label: Temple Cabin Studios

In Their Words: “This song is inspired by some classic small-town lovers quarreling in the local bars and the misunderstandings we are all a part of in the human experience. The way gossip can make one feel passionate and fierce — thus being inspired to sing a fiery bluegrass tune about it. It’s like… everyone in town thinks you’re all torn up about someone but really you’ve moved on. It’s a beautiful sentiment and this song is for anyone who needs to share with the world their truth, especially if they’ve been portrayed in the wrong light. In the end, classically enough, the new lover is… you guessed it… the bottle!” — Aaron Lipp

Photo courtesy of the Artist

LISTEN: Midnight North, “Silent Lonely Drifter”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Midnight North
Hometown: Bay Area, California
Song: “Silent Lonely Drifter”
Album: There’s Always a Story
Release Date: July 23, 2021
Label: Americana Vibes

In Their Words: “Here we have a folk melody reminiscent of the timeless string music heard in the Appalachian region. Lyrically simple, the tune gives thanks to the inevitable and natural balance that exists in this universe — no matter the day or the moon. I shared the tune with Grahame [Lesh] on a day off down south a few years back. It definitely still needed something on the lyrical side, and Grahame had the idea to identify each verse with different full moons in the yearly cycle. Each full moon carries a unique weight to those surviving down below — so we made a connection from each moment (verse) to each full moon.” — Nathan Graham, Midnight North

“Nathan would play us snippets of ‘Silent Lonely Drifter’ on tour whenever he would get ahold of a banjo, and once he showed me the full song I always hoped we’d get a chance to play and sing it with Midnight North. The song was close to fully formed when he brought it to the band, and the melody and chord progression were so intuitive that we latched onto it quickly when we finally started tracking it in the studio. It really came together when we made Nathan sing the melody as Elliott [Peck] and I wove harmonies around him. Now that we’ve played it live ‘Silent Lonely Drifter’ is one of my favorite of our songs to sing in harmony!” — Grahame Lesh, Midnight North

Photo courtesy of Midnight North

LISTEN: Adeline Stringband, “Hickory”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Adeline Stringband (L to R: Chris Coole, Mark Kilianski, John Showman, Adrian Gross, Sam Allison)
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Song: “Hickory”
Album: Adeline
Release Date: July 23, 2021

In Their Words: “This session was definitely one of the loosest, most off-the-cuff, and most creative I’ve been a part of, and I’d hazard to say the same is true for the other guys. Smack dab in the middle of the pandemic — when none of us had really seen anyone besides immediate family for about a year — we holed up in a cabin in the woods and recorded old time tunes for three days and three nights. Seeing as it was -20º and there was a blizzard outside the whole time, there was nothing to do but pick tunes and roll the tape, and that’s exactly what we did. We learned “Hickory” from the great fiddler Earl White, and you can really hear the group interplay on this track.” — Adrian Gross

Photo credit: Chris Coole

WATCH: Scythian, “Buddy Holly”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Scythian
Hometown: Front Royal, Virginia
Song: “Buddy Holly” (Weezer cover)
Album: Quaranstream: The Album
Release Date: July 8, 2021
Label: Aerotone Records

In Their Words: “‘Buddy Holly’ was a product of a rabbit trail (no pun intended) while the four of us were practicing for our ill-fated 2020 Roots and Stones CD release tour. We were talking about some adjustments needed in the set when Dan started playing a couple chords, which were the same progression as ‘Buddy Holly.’ We then joked that it would make a rippin’ bluegrass tune, and left it at that. Next thing we knew it was mid 2020 and we had started these online shows that racked up about 30k+ viewers every other week called ‘Quaranstreams.’ We literally survived that whole year off of the amazing goodwill of our fans supporting us and tipping us while we played. The shows were kind of like a reverse SNL, lots of music, and a couple skits featuring a variety of recurring characters, so we thought that this would be a great place to experiment with writing and recording songs to release for our amazing fans.

“We remembered that we wanted to give this song a try, and ended up recording it all in about a day. After it was mixed and mastered, we were racking our brains with how to present this on the stream since we had limited time and wanted to do the song justice, so we took inspiration from the original Spike Jonze-directed video and just added crocheted puppets. We spent a good hour or so cutting out cardboard instruments and making mic stands out of Q-tips, then literally shot the whole thing in about two hours with an iPhone. When we released the video on our live stream for the first time, people were losing their minds, and kept requesting us to play the video every chance they could get. People wanted it so badly that they watched the whole four-hour stream again, just to screen capture the video and bootleg it to other Scythian fans.” — Ethan Dean

Photo credit: Brendan McLean

John Reischman’s “Salt Spring,” Tune of a New Old-Time Generation

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The “bluegrass songbook,” a suitably vague though well-known concept in bluegrass and old-time circles today, is a phrase that references the collective of songs and tunes most popular and most played by the community that makes up bluegrass and old-time music. Most of the melodies included in this informal — though often gatekept and debated — canon have well established origins, from source recordings, legendary writers and composers, famous performances, and so on. Even so, it’s difficult to trace each and every Bluegrass Album Band hit or Del McCoury favorite back to the beginning, when it was first being adopted and popularized among jam circles, as fiddle tunes, by and for laypeople as much as the performing professionals. 

With material by forebears like Flatt & Scruggs (“Foggy Mountain Breakdown” to “It Ain’t Me Babe”) or Bill Monroe (“Muleskinner Blues” to “Monroe’s Hornpipe”) or the Stanley Brothers (“Ridin’ that Midnight Train” to “Little Maggie”), the Osborne Brothers, Hazel & Alice, Reno & Smiley, and on down the line, it’s not so much a question of why or how their charming, archetypical songs made it to open mics and festival parking lot jams. But in modern times, as in bluegrass days of yore, just as many new, contemporary tunes, songs, lyrics, and melodies are being translated from professional studio recordings, radio singles, and on-stage hits to sing-alongs, play-alongs, and day-to-day jam fodder. And the process by which this happens is, part and parcel, what bluegrass and old-time are all about.

How did “Rebecca” become an almost meme-level instrumental in the past fifteen years? How did Frank Wakefield know that we needed a “New Camptown Races?” How many millennial and Gen Z pickers learned “Ode to a Butterfly” or “Jessamyn’s Reel” note for note? Each modern adoption into the bluegrass songbook, into that unflappable canon, is an idiosyncratic marvel unto itself — and perhaps no modern, original instrumental tune encapsulates this phenomenon better than John Reischman’s “Salt Spring.”

Being a picker myself, I first learned “Salt Spring” in Nashville in perhaps 2012 or 2013, taught to me by fiddlers who encountered the melody from John himself — and through the bluegrass and old-time camp scene in which he’s pretty much a ubiquitous figure, especially on the West Coast, where he lives and grew up. At that point, the song was regarded as a Colorado-grass staple, transplanted east by a regional genre phenotype that celebrates and capitalizes on timeless, sometimes ancient-sounding aesthetics played with chamber music-level intricacies and techniques. The forlorn, winsome — though simple — chord progression in the A part give way to a longing, pensive, and momentum-building B part — and no matter how “Salt Spring” is rendered, as an “everyone play at once” old-time jam song, or a thoughtful chamber-grass slow burn built to a raucous, defiant end, or as a no-holds-barred SPBGMA style MASH number, it’s a chameleonic composition, allowing itself to fit into every single context in which it’s applied. 

“Salt Spring” is truly the instrumental song of the post-Nickel Creek, post-Crooked Still, post-grass generation. As string band genre aesthetics dissolve in the global music marketplace, songs like “Salt Spring” typify this generation’s longing for music that feels honest, true, and real as much as it’s approachable, whimsical, and joyful; songs that celebrate the traditions that became the bedrock of these musics, without being predicated upon militaristic and arbitrary rules to “protect” or propagate those traditions. 

And, though modest to a fault, unassuming, and generally pretty subdued as a person and performer, Reischman has felt this phenomena metamorphosing his composition all along. With his first recording of “Salt Spring” available digitally and writ large, he’s communicating to everyone who loves the song that yes, he knows what it means to us, what it’s become, and what it could grow into still. It’s no wonder then, that when putting together the roster for this new recording and iteration of the track, that he didn’t simply call on his band, the Jaybirds, but he looked to the very generation that’s chosen “Salt Spring” as its own with Molly Tuttle on guitar, Alex Hargreaves on fiddle, Allison de Groot on clawhammer banjo, and Max Schwartz on bass.

A veteran of The Good Ol’ Persons, the Tony Rice Unit, and many other seminal acts of his own generation and time, Reischman knows firsthand the value of cross-generational knowledge sharing and his new album, New Time & Old Acoustic demonstrates this ethos in both conscious and subliminal ways. “Salt Spring” is a perfect distillation of these values and it’s truly fitting, as the tune will forever be enshrined and ensconced in the indelible, if not somewhat squirrelly and subjective, bluegrass and old-time songbook and canon.

(Editor’s note: New Time & Old Acoustic is available for pre-order now.)

Photo courtesy of the artist.