Tag: String Cheese Incident

Billy Strings – Toy Heart: A Podcast About Bluegrass

Posted on by Editor

Billy Strings sits down with Tom Power for a special live episode of Toy Heart recorded at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in the fall of 2025.

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Billy traces his journey from growing up playing bluegrass with his father to becoming one of the most influential musicians in the genre today. He talks about the moment he rediscovered bluegrass as a teenager, the artists who shaped his playing, including Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Larry Sparks, and Jimmy Martin, and how moving to Traverse City, Michigan, opened his eyes to the possibility of making a living as a musician.

He also reflects on discovering the improvisational side of bluegrass through bands like Greensky Bluegrass and String Cheese Incident, learning to appreciate the Grateful Dead and other forms of improvisational music, and why he believes a great song doesn’t need to be changed to connect with a massive audience.

Billy talks openly about poverty, addiction in his family, and the role music played as a coping mechanism and survival tactic. He explains why he isn’t chasing fame or Grammys as much as he is running away from the life he once knew, and why being an ambassador for bluegrass has become one of his life’s greatest purposes.

Photo Credit: Dana Trippe

A Jamgrass Chronology

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Dichotomy. The essence of jamgrass is the intersection of traditional and progressive ideals, techniques, and tones when it comes to the musical hot potato that is bluegrass – past, present, and future.

Throughout the generations, and within the structured lines of bluegrass, there’s a constant segment of the genre that remains eternally curious about what lies just beyond the horizon. It’s this sonic landscape of unlimited possibilities and creative fulfillment, one where the whirlwind attitudes of psychedelic rock, freeform jazz, classical music, and country gold were injected into the “high, lonesome sound,” ultimately conjuring this new melodic avenue to duck down.

The First Generation

When looking at the origins of jamgrass, the “Big Bang of Progressive Bluegrass” arguably occurred with the formation of New Grass Revival in 1971 in Louisville, Kentucky. Led by fiddler/mandolinist Sam Bush and banjoist Courtney Johnson, the outfit emerged from the ashes of another group, Bluegrass Alliance. This revolutionary quartet combined traditional bluegrass with contemporary influences from the popular rock, country and jazz of the period, the result being their self-titled debut album in 1972. In later years, bassist John Cowan and banjoist Béla Fleck would be added to the lineup.

By the early 1970s, the Earl Scruggs Revue was already well-established on the national touring circuit. With the Western North Carolina banjo great himself at the helm, Scruggs and his two sons, guitarist Randy and bassist Gary, embraced the counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Scruggs not only was outspoken in his support of the anti-Vietnam movement, he also happily and genuinely welcomed those from other musical circles, including playing gigs alongside rock acts The Byrds and Steppenwolf.

Although not necessarily considered jamgrass, the Revue – with Scruggs being a vital pillar of the first generation of bluegrass as a member of Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys – opened doors into an often-heavily guarded realm of traditional bluegrass. One where the fear of outsiders taking over the scene without “proper knowledge or respect” to the unspoken rules and traditions of the genre could be seen as misguided intent versus building a bigger space for more folks to tap into the history of the music and evolve their own craft, the end result being the survival and perpetuation of bluegrass.

In April 1972, the Revue’s album I Saw the Light with Some Help from My Friends featured guest appearances by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Arlo Guthrie, and Linda Ronstadt. The sessions would inspire Nitty Gritty to eventually pursue its own collaborative project, which became the seminal album Will the Circle be Unbroken – the record now regarded as a pillar of the bluegrass and country music scenes in the decades since its release in November 1972.

That winter of 1972/1973 conjured the happenstance formation of acoustic supergroup Old & In The Way. Guitarist Peter Rowan and mandolinist David Grisman, longtime friends and collaborators, found themselves at the home of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia in Stinson Beach, California. As expected, impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions ensued.

“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan told BGS in a 2022 interview. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”

By the early 1970s, the Dead had become one of the premier rock bands in America. Even though he was now a bonafide rock star with a massive legion of diehard fans, Garcia yearned for a simpler time in his life, which was his existence before the band itself, when he was a young, hungry bluegrass musician in the San Francisco folk scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Soon after, the trio tapped bassist John Kahn and a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements) and booked a handful of gigs around the Bay Area in 1973. There were no expectations set or boundaries drawn. The gatherings were more about honoring musicianship and friendship, where all present could play joyously in the sandbox together.

Old & In The Way only lasted a little more than a year, disappearing in the spring of 1974 without any fanfare or real notice of its demise. The group was kind of like a comet flying by in the night sky — bright and stunning, and yet all too fleeting, but you counted your lucky stars you were able to see and appreciate it in real time, onstage and in the audience.

And that special time and place that was Old & In The Way would be forever captured in recordings of the live shows. In 1975, the self-titled debut album was released and became the biggest selling bluegrass album of all-time until it was overtaken by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack in 2000.

“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan says. “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 and In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”

The final piece to the puzzle that is the first generation of jamgrass was filled when Hot Rize emerged in the late 1970s in Boulder, Colorado. Coming together while all being employed at the Denver Folklore Center, fiddler/mandolinist Tim O’Brien, banjoist Pete Wernick, guitarist Charles Sawtelle and bassist Nick Forster would become the pioneers of the Colorado jamgrass scene – ultimately launching countless bands in The Centennial State with their unique blend of traditional tones and innovative styles.

The Second Generation

Just like O’Brien, Leftover Salmon guitarist Vince Herman was also a West Virginia native who headed west to the Rocky Mountains in search of his musical destiny. In 1985, Herman dropped out of West Virginia University and decided to “go to Colorado and find like-minded players.” This single decision by Herman ushered in the second generation of jamgrass.

“And I knew there was a progressive bluegrass scene based around the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Hot Rize was in Boulder, which was a major influence on me,” Herman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, I figured Boulder would have a good progressive bluegrass scene. And it sure did, proven by pulling up and seeing a ‘Live Bluegrass Music Tonight’ sign [at a bar].”

That night in Boulder in 1985, Herman wandered in and crossed paths with multi-instrumentalist Drew Emmitt. The two were kindred spirits and immediately hit it off, with Herman eventually joining Emmitt’s Left Hand String Band. A year later, Herman launched his own band, The Salmon Heads. But, it would be New Year’s Eve 1989 when Leftover Salmon came to fruition, the ensemble being a combination of the duo’s respective band members.

“We stuck with Leftover Salmon for the first night, never knowing it would be any more than one night of a gig [in Crested Butte],” Herman says of the NYE show. “The older the tune, the more the bluegrass stomp kind of thing would go on, people would slam dance. We were like, ‘Something’s good about this.’”

By 1993, another Colorado band came rolling down the ski slopes of Crested Butte and Telluride. Formed as a casual gathering of acoustic musicians and a percussionist looking to get together during après-ski and play some tunes for free lift tickets and cold beer, the String Cheese Incident took bluegrass and pushed it more into the jamband world than any other group who came before them. Nowadays, the sextet is a glorious kitchen sink of sound and scope – bluegrass to blues, rock to reggae, jazz to jam-tronica – especially through their highly popular annual festivals, Electric Forest and Hulaween.

Heading towards the end of the century, Yonder Mountain String Band appeared on the scene in Nederland, Colorado, in 1998. The quartet originally featured a mesmerizing frontman in the late Jeff Austin, an ambitious and endlessly curious mandolin player. The core of the band was based more in traditional bluegrass, but with a heavy focus on improvisation and just seeing where the night took them. The culmination of which led to Yonder finding itself in this unique position, one that allowed the group to be booked at both lawnchair bluegrass festivals and wild-n-out jamband gatherings across America.

The Third Generation

The new millennium signaled the third generation of jamgrass. On Oct. 31, 2000, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, a casual Halloween gig consisting of college buddies (who played the local bluegrass open mic night at the Blue Dolphin) would parlay itself into the creation of Greensky Bluegrass – an ensemble equally obsessed with Tony Rice and David Grisman as they were the Grateful Dead and Phish.

A few years ago, when I was interviewing frontman Paul Hoffman about the initial intent of Greensky, he replied, “To play heavy metal music on acoustic instruments.” And in the quarter-century since its inception, Greensky has become a marquee act. They blurred the lines between bluegrass and jambands, ultimately setting the stage for every band who came thereafter with ambitions to rock big venues, all in the name of jamgrass exploration.

“I think that we just have a spirit to not be limited,” Hoffman told BGS in a 2025 interview. “So, if we want to emulate all the things we love – and we’d love a diverse amount of things, musical things – we honor the acoustic nature of our heritage as a band, but we want so much more. We want [things] to keep us interested and engaged. We’ve allowed ourselves that creative freedom to try anything.”

On the other side of the Great Lakes, in Duluth, Minnesota, Trampled by Turtles formed by happenstance in 2003 on a tiny stage at Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake. A hearty blend of bluegrass, indie-folk and alt-country influences, Trampled’s sound has been described as “Midwestern Gothic” – a musical signature ultimately straddling the barriers between genres of distinct sounds and approaches.

The third generation is rounded out by the Infamous Stringdusters, coming together in 2006 in Nashville. Consisting of longtime road musicians and recent graduates of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, the group is a meticulous balance of tradgrass and jamgrass. With their core soaked in the principles of traditional bluegrass, the Dusters have never wavered from chasing their artistic muse towards the unknown horizon of Americana and rock influences that run deep in their sound.

“That’s what’s so beautiful about bluegrass music, in particular,” fiddler Jeremy Garrett told BGS in a 2026 interview. “You pass it on to the next generation and they take it and they do their thing with it. Luckily for us, we were around at a time that [that] was very important, and a transitional time in the industry.”

The Fourth & Fifth Generations

That transitional time in jamgrass of the early 2000s and 2010s sparked what is currently being considered the highwater mark of the genre – and also regarded as the fourth generation of jamgrass – as seen by guitar phenom Billy Strings bursting into the arena level, with Molly Tuttle and Sierra Hull right in the mix when it comes to bluegrass spilling into the mainstream.

Also emerging from the same Michigan scene as Greensky Bluegrass, Strings’ rocketship ride from hardscrabble beginnings to selling out any size of venue from coast to coast is the stuff of legend. Only in the summer years of his career, Strings’ playful flexibility around “bluegrass rules” is mirrored by his genuine respect for those who came before him. His knowledge of the genre is as profound as the unknown depths of his skillset and ambition, something witnessed each night he performs for an endless sea of faces.

For Hull and Tuttle, they became the first female musicians to be given the IBMA award for Mandolin Player of the Year (Hull) and Guitar Player of the Year (Tuttle). To note, Hull has now been given the honor seven times in the last 10 years. Both artists are becoming well-known for genre-bending collaborations with a fearlessness in entering new artistic realms – Hull jamming alongside Slash and Cory Wong, with Tuttle shifting into the indie-folk and alt-country scenes as of late.

Where we stand at this exact juncture is considered the fifth generation of jamgrass – a level represented by young, hungry and immensely-talented bands eager to learn, eager to rise to the occasion on the live stage – with the likes of Mountain Grass Unit, Clay Street Unit, Shadowgrass, and Magoo putting down quickly-growing roots in the scene due to impressive appearances in front of massive crowds on the festival circuit in recent years.

“We’re a live band. It’s where we really shine through, and you can just feel the energy up there. We always try to say, ‘There are only so many Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights,’ and we want to elevate that and bring the energy and the emotion and let [the audience] loose,” Clay Street Unit guitarist Sam Walker told BGS in a 2026 interview. “We want to make sure at every show we’re bringing that to the table, our full attention to the energy and making sure that everyone’s having as good a time as they can.”

In the last 55 years or so of the jamgrass movement, the sheer beauty of the genre is the mere fact that many of the architects and torchbearers are still walking this earth, still touring and proudly collaborating with the younger generations, and always offering a real sense of encouragement to happily take risks and not be afraid of what could be, onstage and in the studio – for true gratitude resides in the ancient desire to find one’s truth and purpose.

Continue exploring our Jamgrass in July coverage here. This content brought to you in partnership with Preston Thompson Guitars.

Photo Credit: Leftover Salmon by Tobin Voggesser.

Magoo on Taking Chances and Giving Up Second Guessing

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Magoo has been lighting up Colorado’s vibrant and crowded jamgrass scene since 2022. Their collision of string band music with danceable beats, jazzed up instrumental breaks, and anthemic lyrics rooted in rock has led guitarist Erik Hill to coin the phrase “bluegrass with lasers” to describe their sound and style.

After turning heads with two volumes of Magoo The EP in 2023 and 2024, the band – now comprised of Dylan Flynn (Dobro), Courtlyn Bills (mandolin), A. Denton Turner (bass), and Hill – have finally unleashed their full-length debut, What A Life. The 10-song compilation sees the upstart group of pickers contemplating everything from the sacrifices of a life lived on the road, the places that have transformed us, and how our stories are all connected.

Across 52 minutes of run time, the musicians rip their way through meandering jams that flow freely from one song to another as if it was a live show, an approach Hill says was intentional to keep the album from feeling sterile.

“Our live shows and recordings are very important to us, so it was imperative that this album not feel so copy and paste or cut and dry like studio projects often can be,” explains Hill. “I think we landed on a nice, organic feel that stretches the songs out, but not as much as we do when you see us live. In that sense, it serves as a good bridge between the two.”

During a free-flowing conversation with the band inside the green room at The Burl in Lexington, Kentucky, midway through their winter tour, Magoo spoke about the DIY approach to What A Life, Telluride’s significance to the group, near-death experiences, and more.

Why was now the right time to release your debut record?

Erik Hill: We had all the songs that we wanted to record. With the EPs we released previously, we basically recorded the couple originals that we had at the time along with a few covers. Eventually we started collecting a nice set of original music and figured it was time to do a full-length album.

Denton Turner: A big part of it is just having all the parts in place, from our management to booking people, so we can hit the road full speed. But in order to do that right it was important we have an album out to go with it – we needed a product to market. That was a big motivator for us this year, having an album to really kick in the door and make the most of our 100+ shows this year. Getting those other pieces in place on our team gave us ample time to focus on recording. When you’re trying to do everything it’s easy to half-ass it all, so having them by our side allows us to focus on and tackle what we love – the music – head on.

And with What A Life you opted to tackle it in your own DIY studio. Tell me about that experience?

Courtlyn Bills: I’ve made about 80 records in the past, but for this one everything was set up special just to make this album. I was moving and had my dad drive up a bunch of equipment from Texas, including my console he’d been holding in storage that was previously owned by Prince.

EH: Sessions were scattered throughout the month when we weren’t touring. Any time we were able we’d try getting over to Courtlyn’s to bang out a tune or two.

CB: There were a lot of 4 a.m. sessions. The coffee pots were flowing! The only big difference from one session to the next came on the jams, which we decided to use our pedal boards on and mic them up simultaneously. The only other thing is that I changed the action in my mandolin near the end of some tunes, which is why my mandolin sounds a bit thicker to close out three songs. There was a lot of us repeatedly asking each other, “How does your instrument sound?” Because there’s no turning back now, so no pressure. [Laughs]

DT: Even though we’re coming from touring and going straight into recording and back to touring – which seems hectic in a way – it’s nice for me doing [songs] one at a time. Being in a studio can be a grueling, tedious process, so having the luxury of being able to do it ourselves when it made sense for us was nice. We were able to just focus on one song or two songs at a time and give them all our attention. It didn’t feel like we were on the clock and paying by the hour with the pressure to get it all done quickly. Instead we were able to focus on banging out a song then hitting the road and discussing what next song we want to do and develop next before coming back being ready to give that song the attention it deserves, which was a lot of fun.

Courtlyn, you mentioned having a deep catalog of producer credits already. Has it always been a goal of yours to record your own band’s projects?

CB: I first started working in a studio when I was 15, mostly with younger artists that have less developed material, which I love. However, what I don’t love recording is my own music, which is why I never made a record for myself up to this point. But the cool thing about Magoo is, even though I write for and sing a lot with them, it feels like I’m working for a band and not myself. Knowing that removed a lot of the pressure of it being a make or break thing because I could trust my dudes. If they said something was good I wouldn’t question it, I’d just say, “Let’s move on!”

If I’m not mistaken, the only song you didn’t record at the DIY studio was “Angel Of Telluride,” which you flew to Nashville to knock out with its feature artist, Sam Bush. How’d that one come about?

CB: That connection came about through Jeff Fasano, an amazing photographer who used to shoot the rock band I was in prior to Magoo. Whenever we first met I had just started playing mandolin and I remember him telling me that he could see into my soul and could tell that playing it was my destiny, not rock music. I knew he was also close to Sam, so when I eventually wrote “Angel Of Telluride” I did it to be a Sam Bush song.

One day Jeff emailed Sam about the song and once he realized we were a real band and not full of shit he gave me a call and said he’d be honored to be a part of it. When we got to recording, I remember asking him if he wanted a producer credit on the song and he turned it down even though he was still effectively acting as a producer, because every freaking note, chord change, and tone shift he hit was spot on.

DT: Sam actually beat us to the studio the day we recorded. We wound up spending the entire day hanging out with him. It reminds me of a line in “What A Life” – “Buy the ticket, take the ride.” You only get one life, so don’t shy away from taking chances and shooting for the stars. Who knows, you might just wind up at a studio in Nashville recording with one of your heroes. Working with Sam never would’ve happened if we hadn’t taken the chance, and I’m so glad we did. I hope it inspires others to bet on themselves and their abilities too.

That song also holds a lot of significance given what the Telluride Bluegrass Festival has meant to the band, notably how you wound up bringing Courtlyn into the fold. Can you tell me about that?

Dylan Flynn: Erik, myself, and my Uncle Paul [Flynn] were the original Magoo and would regularly attend and pick around at festivals like Telluride, Rockygrass, and Tico Time. Then a few years ago Courtlyn, still new to bluegrass at the time, stumbled into our campsite. We ended up picking all week, through the night until 8 a.m. each day.

Then at one point when we were watching Greensky Bluegrass perform I remember him turning to me and saying, “I want to be in your band” and I responded, “I just met you like five minutes ago. Let me talk to the guys about it first.” [Laughs] But after spending all that time with him there and seeing not just how his brain works, but also how far along he was as someone still new to bluegrass, it was a no-brainer. In the weeks after Telluride it dawned on us that he was the missing piece we needed, not just as a player but as a person as well.

We rode with that lineup for about a year until my Uncle Paul decided he wanted to step away from music to travel the world – he’s actually rooting us on from Thailand right now. But when he departed, Denton was presented to us by a mutual friend. Similar to Courtlyn, after being introduced he tagged along to play several gigs before we formally asked him to join us long-term.

DT: I still remember them proposing to me and making it official with a Slim Jim ring. I still have mine and see it every day. It’s on the bus sitting on the butter tray in our fridge. [Laughs]

Sounds like you’re preserving it like one of those Big Macs you see in a museum that’s unchanged after 20 years!

Switching gears now – Courtlyn, what led to your move from the rock world into bluegrass?

CB: I was seeing the String Cheese Incident and going to festivals like Hulaween a lot, but I still didn’t quite love or understand bluegrass yet. I come from a really progressive and heavy world of jazz fusion, metal, and radio rock, but once I started hearing Cheese do more bluegrass-leaning songs I started falling in love and learning how to do them myself.

Then in 2019 – still prior to picking up a mandolin – I ingested DMT for the first time. When I did, I remember a friend who’d been telling me for years that even though I didn’t know it, that I was a mandolin player. [He] put a 1916 Gibson A[-style mandolin] into my hands and told me to shred. I don’t know how to explain it besides it being like “Dr. Strange,” but with numbers. It was that moment I became a mandolin player.

From there I formed a Celtic band and began plugging away with that, all the while realizing I had to get this bluegrass thing figured out. Bluegrass is one of the most prominent genres in the counterculture-ish scene that I loved being a part of, from String Cheese people to Deadheads and Spreadnecks and beyond. One day I sat myself down and said bluegrass is gonna have to be it – you are married to bluegrass now. Then I started going online and listening to pickers like Ricky Skaggs, Sierra Hull, Jarrod Walker, and David “Dawg” Grisman, slowing down YouTube videos to learn their breaks. That was about it. Once I learned what was going on in bluegrass musically, then it was obvious that these guys and gals are monsters. To be able to create such a back pocket with no drums on that mash grass stuff – there’s nothing like it.

You’re right, there is nothing like it! With that in mind, is that what your song “What A Life” is about – taking chances and being grateful to make a living making music?

CB: The melody and chorus for that song came together really quickly one day in my buddy’s living room. At that time in my life, the songs I was writing didn’t hold a lot of meaning or significance, so I wanted this one to be profound. The last verse really says it all: “What a life/ Is what I thought before I got swallowed by the tide/ Something felt amazing/ But I knew it wasn’t on the other side.”

I had a near-death experience when I was 19 and that is where I take a lot of the song’s inspiration from – although in the beginning I try to get cute talking about grandpas and other relatives and how their actions and memories have impacted the person you are in this very moment. Despite how insignificant those stories may seem to you right now, the fact that they were passed down and made it to you means they must’ve been pretty big moments in their and your family’s history.

So even though something like hopping into a stranger’s car and hauling ass to Telluride may not seem significant to anything other than the present moment, it’s so much more than that. We’re all connected in the climb and the work we put in together to build the memories we cherish. If none of us were here, what would be the point?

DF: …There’d be no life at all. That’s my favorite line in the entire song: “If none of us were here there’d be no life at all.” [Laughs]

A big part of the musical life and memories in your Colorado stomping grounds are its vibrant jamgrass community, a talented and tight-knit group that reminds me a lot of the Kentucky scene I’ve been fortunate to grow up in. What are your thoughts on the scene there and where Magoo fits into it all?

EH: We’re pretty lucky to call Colorado our home base. It’s certainly a breeding ground for a lot of great bands and even better music fans. People that love our type of music are everywhere in Colorado, no matter what town you’re in. From Denver to Boulder and up in the mountain towns, people want to hear that jam music, bluegrass, or a mix of both. It keeps us constantly busy and buzzing with new ideas to explore.

DF: We also have so many friends who are a part of great bands like Clay Street Unit, Tonewood String Band, and The Fretliners. I have more friends in my life now than ever before because of the community that we’re building. It’s also funny too – like one day I was driving home and saw [the Infamous Stringdusters’] Andy Hall in my neighborhood and am in awe, only to find out he lives half a mile down the road. My number one Dobro inspiration is Andy Hall, so having him so close by is a testament to just how unbelievable the music scene is in Colorado right now.

CB: There’s just something about being above 8,500 feet [elevation] that pushes people to their limits, whether it’s climbing a mountain or writing a song. The special thing about Colorado is the people here are making music for their friends. They’re making music for their little community to get together and have a good time. Someone like Vince Herman isn’t out there writing a song to have a number one hit. He’s writing a song so his family and his homies can get in front of the stage and throw down and feel comfortable and have the time of their lives, which is exactly what we’re getting to do now.

All: What a life!

What has bringing this album to life taught you about yourselves?

EH: Doing this album DIY style, we had to learn to trust ourselves and say, “Hey, this is really good.” You can sit here and nitpick each part and each take fucking forever, but at the end of the day what we have is really good, good enough to put out for people.

DT: For me, it’s in line with the phrase “what a life,” to take the chance and take the ride, call Sam Bush, whatever. I hope it inspires others the way it inspired me. When I met these guys, I lived three and a half hours away on a good day, but I saw what was going on and wanted to be a part of it. That meant getting in my car and driving to Denver multiple times a week to practice and learn the material. People thought I was crazy, but if you want something, you’ve got to go for it and give it your all. When you do that, amazing things can happen.

This whole experience has been a case in point of that, especially with the Sam Bush thing and making that call. We didn’t sit there and second guess ourselves about it and look at what happened. It’s always worth your time to give it a shot. You never know where the ride will take you. For me, that’s what this is all about.

Photo Credit: Jeff Fasano

Artist of the Month: The Infamous Stringdusters

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

During the Infamous Stringdusters’ recent holiday gig at The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina, the storied venue was packed out with jamgrass freaks, the performance itself a kickoff of sorts for the band’s 20th anniversary in 2026. I found myself standing sidestage when show opener Bronwyn Keith-Hynes came up next to me. A smile emerged on her face taking in the band and the audience.

“The Stringdusters made me want to start a band,” the GRAMMY-winning fiddler said, turning to me. “The Fork In The Road album was the most influential modern bluegrass album for me when I was at Berklee.”

Keith Hynes’ sentiment conjured numerous memories and moments I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of when it comes to the ‘Dusters. The first time I ever laid eyes and ears on them, it was the 2008 Targhee Bluegrass Festival in Alta, Wyoming. I was 23 years old and a rookie reporter for the Teton Valley News, based just down the mountain in Driggs, Idaho. By that point in my life, both personally and professionally, I was diving deep into the jamgrass world – the intersection of ancient tones, psychedelia, improvisation, and a collective love of the Grateful Dead.

The initial spark of the modern jamgrass movement was lit by Yonder Mountain String Band, Leftover Salmon, and the String Cheese Incident, all three acts coming into the national spotlight by the end of the 1990s. A musical template had been formed, and the ‘Dusters would emerge in the early 2000s to throw gasoline onto that melodic fire, ultimately becoming a missing link (alongside Greensky Bluegrass) between jamgrass originators, those ‘90s propagators, and folks currently carrying the torch into new, exciting realms: Billy Strings, Sierra Ferrell, Molly Tuttle, Sierra Hull, and more.

“That’s what’s so beautiful about bluegrass music, in particular,” Stringdusters fiddler Jeremy Garrett told me recently. “You pass it on to the next generation and they take it and they do their thing with it. Luckily for us, we were around at a time that [that] was very important, and a transitional time in the industry.”

In 2010, a couple of years after my introduction to the band at Targhee, when I returned to my native North Country of Upstate New York, I found myself covering a show at the intimate Showcase Lounge at Higher Ground in Burlington, Vermont. I was there to see the ‘Dusters once again. Their sound and energy immediately transported me back to the Rocky Mountains that I missed dearly. (Sharing the bill was another rising jamgrass act, Trampled by Turtles.)

I remember walking away from that gig feeling in awe and refreshed with a genuine feeling that something was happening. Something was on the horizon when it came to bluegrass and string band music. This wasn’t a traditional bluegrass band in matching suits, standing like statues. It was a rock show with acoustic instruments. Baseball caps and long hair, grins ear-to-ear. More provocative than standstill, more vibrant than just going through the motions of what past generations were instructed to do.

“Being able to showcase our own songs, in our own way, [our] writing skills, and making the decisions on what was chosen to play and how to play it [were] foremost for most of us at the beginning,” Garrett says. “Over time, we realized that we were actually growing a community. And after all these years, that honestly has become the most important part, the most important thing that we could possibly do.”

What I witnessed in Wyoming and Vermont years ago is what I’ve continued to experience with the Infamous Stringdusters, in person and in method, from Florida to Colorado and beyond. They set the pace then for where we stand with jamgrass right now, built on a full-throttle approach, one which remains sonically elusive as well as paying homage to the architects of bluegrass and those who broke from the pack and made something all their own.

Aside from the talents of the Stringdusters, either as individuals or the sum of their parts, you also have a unique setup. Alongside founding members, banjoist Chris Pandolfi and Dobroist Andy Hall, who emerged from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, you have the tradgrass pedigree of Garrett, who was born and raised in a traveling family bluegrass band hailing from Idaho. This fusing of road-tested grit and grace with conservatory-style techniques is at the heart of what this group does best: jam.

All of which circles back to the Asheville Orange Peel performance in late 2025. There were tightly knit melodies and freewheelin’ improvisational explorations. They broke down the invisible walls between themselves and the audience, maintaining a two-way street of momentum, energy, and inspiration from both sides of the microphone – a vortex of sound and scope, all revolving around a deep sense of community.

“The band is stronger than ever and making some of the best music we’ve ever made,” Garrett says. “But, the thing I see that is the most important being carried on is that community factor. We certainly didn’t invent that, but we took note and applied the philosophy to our scene, and hopefully the next generation realizes how important that piece is.”

Ultimately, this 20th anniversary celebration for the Infamous Stringdusters is a culmination of a tried-and-true effort to bring this hallowed music into the unknown and unfolding musical landscape of the 21st century. With their upcoming album, 20/20 (out February 13 via Ameriana Vibes) they continue their efforts to break new ground and forge ahead, together, whatever the next 20 years hold for jamgrass and the ‘Dusters.

The Infamous Stringdusters are our Artist of the Month. Below, enjoy our Essential Infamous Stringdusters playlist and stay tuned as we share brand new and archive content on the ‘Dusters throughout the month of February here on BGS – and across our social media channels. Like our exploration of their 20-year discography or our oral history of the band featuring all five members in conversation.

Photo Credit: Daniel Milchev

Banjo Player Kyle Tuttle Reflects on Personal Growth and ‘Labor of Lust’

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

One of the most talented and sought after banjo players in bluegrass, Kyle Tuttle’s life has been full of the highest of highs and lowest of lows in recent years, from a marriage and divorce to the surprise death of close friend and bandmate Jeff Austin to the loss of his job due to COVID and finally hitting the road as a member of Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway.

All of that and more are documented on Labor of Lust (out February 16), an 11-song expedition taking listeners on a deeply personal and sonically diverse journey of tragedy and triumph. Recorded across three separate sessions in Nashville dating back to 2018, the record also documents a significant chunk of Tuttle’s life that, despite the length of time and changes that come with it, aren’t lacking a central theme. This led him to describing the project as “a long work-in-progress,” due to how its focus shifted throughout the more than five years of bringing it to life.

“By the time it was all said and done, this was a pretty eclectic group of songs,” Tuttle tells BGS. “There’s some stuff with an electric band that includes drums and me on electric banjo, others with traditional string band arrangements and some that meet in the middle for a more jamgrass sound.”

One of the songs that bridge the gap between these two worlds of bluegrass is “Hard to Say,” a song that sees Tuttle grieving the loss of Austin, his marriage, and his job all at the same time. It’s anchored by his blistering banjo backbone with introspective lyrics like, “Knowing that it’s gone and gone for good, makes you wonder what the hell you’re waiting on?” that serve as a message to himself and anybody listening to ask the questions you need to ask, then play another one.

“Even though the music and lyrics were written over a handful of years, loss and learning to deal with it on a personal level is central to this record,” indicates Tuttle. “That being said, there’s a lot of joy within these songs too. I don’t want to make it seem like I wrote music for five years and all I experienced was misery. Loss is something we all have to deal with at one time or another, and my way of dealing with it was to write some of this music.”

Speaking by phone from his snowed-in Nashville home following a mid-January winter storm, Tuttle opened up about how he approaches being a bandleader compared to his current gig with Golden Highway, being stuck in a Bob Ross painting, choosing to work doing something you love, and more.

You’re notorious for staying extremely busy in your musical endeavors, from sitting in with folks on stage and in the studio to your stints with the Jeff Austin band, (your current gig with) Molly Tuttle, and your own compositions and projects, like Labor of Lust. With that in mind, how do you approach your own music versus being a member of someone else’s band?

Kyle Tuttle: It’s a bit different, because with my own show I’m the bandleader, along with other variables. With my shows, I play with lots of different members, I don’t have one set group of people that know my body of material super well, but rather lots of friends I can call on who all have different strengths. For that reason, when fronting my own band I’m more in the headspace of trying to wrangle all these people and variables together for a cohesive show, whereas with Molly we all have our roles that are specifically defined. One role isn’t more comfortable to me than the other, they just both require different things from me.

Is that comfort what had you leaning on friends like Travis Book, Dominick Leslie, and Lindsay Lou in the studio instead of session players?

It speaks very similarly to what we were just talking about with putting together a version of the Kyle Tuttle Band for shows. I wouldn’t use the term session player though, because even though all of these people are my friends they can also be called “session players” for their work on other’s records, because they’re all so good at what they do. I pick them very specifically based on their strengths and what they’ll bring to the music. I’ve been lucky through my years in the business to build personal connections with an awesome group of people that I can call when I’m looking to create something.

Although not an original, I really enjoy your cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Turn On The Radio” that closes the album. What drew you to that song of his in particular instead of “Coconut” or another of Nilsson’s gems?

I’m gonna have to work on a “Coconut” cover next, because that song is awesome! In all seriousness, [“Turn On The Radio”] felt like a thematically appropriate way to close this album. At the end of the day, I’m just a jamgrass stoner that plays banjo wanting to make a record that people can enjoy and have fun with. This record has some heavy undertones, so I felt like it deserved a nice ribbon on top to end it. It speaks to me big time, [about] remembering those near and dear who you’ve lost, especially if they’re an artist doing something you can hear. That sentiment of “turn on your record player, listen to my song, turn on your night light baby, I’m gone” felt like the right words to capture that feeling even though I didn’t say them, Harry did! I’ve loved the song for a while, so when I began putting this record together it immediately made sense to close it with this.

In terms of your own songs, I understand that “Trailer In Boulder Canyon” came together at two different times, similar to the recording process for all of Labor of Lust?

That’s a funny one, because as I said previously, I’m just a jamgrass stoner banjo player. First and foremost it’s a fun, feel good song about a magical place — a shitty little trailer on the side of a mountain up in Nederland, Colorado, where you don’t have to worry about any of your troubles or cares and just get to play fiddles and banjos and have fun all day. There’s a great jamgrass scene up there due to Vince Herman and Drew Emmitt basically starting Leftover Salmon up there. Years later some of The String Cheese Incident guys moved there followed by Jeff Austin, leading to the eventual forming of Yonder Mountain String Band there as well. There’s such a rich history of the music I love so much in that goofy little mountain town.

I initially wrote the chorus and first verse for the song as a goofy little ditty after it bounced around in my head for a while. I went up there when Vince put together a memorial concert for Jeff to help raise money for his family and so people could grieve together and ended up writing the second half of the song driving up the canyon road to get there. So like a lot of things on this record, part of it came to me at one point before finishing it off much later.

You’ve got three instrumentals on this record and another mostly instrumental tune in “Two Big Hearts.” What variations do songs like those have compared to ones with lyrics in the creation process?

The process is relatively the same, because no matter if I write with lyrics or melody I’m starting with some short idea and building around that nugget of information piece by piece. If it’s a melody, it’ll probably come out as an instrumental, but if it’s with lyrics it’s probably going to come out as a song with vocals. Even though it’s one track, “Two Big Hearts” is really two songs. The lyrics in it don’t come in until the second song, nearly four minutes in, but I felt that both were similar enough that they should be together and presented as one idea. I don’t think I’ll ever play one part of it without playing the other.

On “Not Quite Spring,” you’re singing about being stuck inside a Bob Ross painting. How’d that idea come about?

That’s a COVID song. I was sitting around on the couch watching a lot of Bob Ross’s The Joy Of Painting, just killing time like we all were back then. All of his paintings were titled and each episode of his show is titled after the painting he does in it. [“Not Quite Spring” is season 25, episode 3]. It’s of this spooky, huge mountain that’s covered in snow and frozen. A lot of his paintings are happy sunsets and warm things like a pond reflecting the trees around it, a stark contrast to this one that’s cold, dark and lonely, which is exactly how I felt at the time trapped inside my house.

In the album’s liner notes you allude to a life in music often being painted in glamor, when in reality it’s a consistent grind where persistence pays off. Is that message of sticking to it what you’re singing about on “Saddle Up?”

“Saddle Up” is the term I have for getting up every day and doing it again. It’s the idea that you may not have succeeded today or done everything you wanted to do the way you wanted to do it, which is what I’m touching on with the lyric, “The past can’t be where my best is.”

I feel like persistence defines my own life and career. Anyone who works in pursuit of a skill or art is always striving to get better. Even outside of that, we’re all working on our personal relationships and doing better by the people around us. Hopefully our best work, whether it be art or personal growth, is ahead of us and it’s not all downhill from here. It’s also a message I wish to impart on any listener or friend going through a rough patch to remind them that brighter days are on the horizon.

With Labor of Lust’s themes of personal growth in mind, what’s one resolution you have for yourself, music or otherwise, in 2024?

I’m actually trying to play the banjo even more, not from the standpoint of traveling and playing more shows, but just tinkering with it more in my downtime. It’s an interesting duality, tying your work to something you love. It’s a tricky thing to do because the lines between work and play are instantly blurred and made one. If it’s all work and no play it makes Jack a dull boy, so my resolution is to just keep the banjo in my hands for fun and to work smarter, not harder, which comes back to the idea that the past is not where my best work is.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

The String Cheese Incident Salute Tony Rice on This ‘Manzanita’ Favorite

Posted on by Editor

The amount of love and respect that has poured out of the music community around the country and the globe for the loss of Tony Rice has been breathtaking to say the least. The breadth of Rice’s legacy cannot be understated as he pioneered not only the guitar’s role in a bluegrass band, but also created a new sound previously unexplored by acoustic musicians. A seminal flatpicker, his touch, timing, and taste are unmatched to this day, and there’s the separate matter of his beautifully rich voice. Here at BGS, we’ve shared Tony Rice memories and stories from the likes of Ricky Skaggs, Todd Phillips & Robbie Fulks, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, and David Grisman, and many others.

The latest contributors to our collective debt of gratitude to Tony is the String Cheese Incident, collaborating virtually to cover “Old Train,” the lead track on what many consider his magnum opus, Manzanita. The String Cheese Incident is known for being a genre-bending group, but founding member Bill Nershi had this to say about their bluegrass roots and Rice’s artistry: “Tony Rice’s guitar playing shaped a generation of musicians. His impeccable tone, taste, and timing were unmatched and highly regarded by players and listeners alike. We are very fortunate to have so many great recordings of his life’s work. If you haven’t had the pleasure of hearing him perform, check out The Tony Rice Unit and David Grisman Quintet albums. I recommend you start with Manzanita. We’ll never forget you, Tony!”

Watch the String Cheese Incident perform “Old Train:”

Photo credit: Scott McCormick

String Cheese Incident, Jim Lauderdale Share “Stories For Another Day”

Posted on by Editor

Colorado-based jamgrass troupe String Cheese Incident turned 25 this year, and although they’ve already established themselves as one of the most accomplished groups in jam music, they show no signs of slowing down in the next quarter-century. The band has spent their 25th year touring the country and releasing new music on a regular basis, their most recent single featuring the country-music-great Jim Lauderdale. (See the premiere below.) We called up SCI’s lead singer Bill Nershi to discuss the history of the band, how they’ve managed to stay so productive, and more.

BGS: Thinking about the fact that you’ve been a band for a quarter of a century has got to be awe striking. How have you managed to continue doing things your own way for so long?

Bill Nershi: Ever since we started, which was really 1995, we decided we were going to actually go for it. We met and played some local shows for a while, and then we moved out here to Boulder in ’95 and really started getting after it as far as touring. All these bands used to look for record deals and when we talked about it with other bands who had been through that we heard a lot of negative stories about dealings with record labels, so that’s when we decided to start our own label.

Twenty-five years ago, that must have been a big decision to make. How did the band come to the conclusion that music is what you were going to commit to?

We’ve always been trying to achieve things and get the best results we can from playing together. We work hard on rehearsing. Trying to improve our weaknesses as a band and trying to promote the positives. But really, when we first started, we were encouraged by the audiences that we were playing to and that really motivated us.

I had been playing a long time, and other people in the band had played music with different people, but that was the first time for me that I got together with a group that clicked right away. Even before our skills were really developed musically, there was a chemistry that we could feel — mostly that the crowd had picked up on — and that encouraged us to go for it. From then it was just “How are we going to go about this?”

We’re not going to be the band that has the hit single. So, we looked at some of the bands that had paved the way for us a little bit. How did the Grateful Dead do it? They didn’t have a hit for a really long time but they developed a following. And Phish of course was already successful. So we decided we were going to have to start traveling around and playing lots of shows in lots of different areas of the country to hit all the regions. We had two years where it seemed like I was gone almost the whole time. I think we played 450 shows in two years, and that gave us a lot of momentum for developing a bigger fan base.

It sounds like you approached this very methodically and really thought about how you were going to fit into the grand scheme of music.

Yeah, it needs to be thought out. Especially when you’re out that much and making sacrifices. You know, not seeing your family, or even just not being able to be at home. The idea for us was always, “We want to make every gig count.”

We were going around the country playing these clubs. Some of them had good sound systems, some of them didn’t, but we were carrying our own sound system. Money that we were making touring, which was not a lot back then, we put back into the band. We bought a sound system. We bought a bus from Crested Butte Mountain [Resort], and it was a good transit bus. We gutted it and put in bunks, so when other people were driving around in those little vans, which were just kind of torture chambers on wheels, we had our bus that we were driving around the country with.

We had a trailer with the sound system and our back-line amps and stuff, so we were going into places and sounding a little bit better than the last band sounded, you know? Trying to make it count when you’re making a lot of sacrifices. You don’t want to be wasting shows and wasting the ears that you do get in the room.

And that hits on another point: You’re perhaps best-known for your live performances. How does performing a song live contribute to its development before you hit the studio to record it?

Sometimes you have a new song that you play the same way for months, or even a year, and then you discover a different part or a way to open up a section of a song and go a little bit of different direction. Or you decide, “Hey, this would be better if it had one more verse here.” Things happen that change the song. It’s a bit of a quandary whether that’s better, or whether it’s better to release a song, let people hear it, and then play it live, which is what we’ve been doing mainly lately.

Sitting down and arranging a song in the studio before you play it live — what does that process look like for you?

You want to try to look at the song at some different angles and play it with some different approaches to see if there’s anything there that you may have missed or you might be able to add to the song, or what parts are expendable if you want to make it a little shorter.

The thought in the back of your head is, “I hope I don’t put this out and decide that part of it would be better played a different way, because then we’ll have to change the song and it’s going to be different than what the recording is.” You’re trying to exhaust some different ideas to make sure that you’re not missing something, and at the same time thinking about what are the crucial things that make this song tick so they can be brought the forefront when you record. Build the songs around the best ideas in the songs.

Moving on to this latest single with Jim Lauderdale. I hear very clear elements of his sound along with very clear elements of your own sound. What did that collaboration process look like?

I’ve written, and other members in the band have written, with Jim Lauderdale before and we’ve always had good results. You never walk away from sitting down with Jim empty-handed. He’s like a stream of ideas. You get done with one idea and he’s already singing some melody into his recorder, or some lyric from your conversation with him. And he has this whole chain of ideas going at all times.

I like to show up when I write with Jim with some different ideas of my own. Whether it’s a chord progression, or a lyrical idea, or a concept. Just an idea for a song. So I went out to Nashville and spent a few days out there with him, and you don’t want to go into a project like that and be sitting around going, “Uh….” So you come in with some ideas.

For this song, “Stories for Another Day,” I had this melodic chord progression with all these different parts. I played with a few different ideas and I played this one thing in D minor that I had been working on. I had been trying to think about how to make it work as an instrumental, or with lyrics. I played it for him, and he picked three chords out of one of the three different sections and said, “Let’s just write a song with that chord progression right there. Those three chords.”

So I had a lot of stuff that was maybe gratuitous in this concept that I had and he plucked this one simple idea out of it. We sat down and started writing some lyrics to that. It’s great writing with Jim.

Looking at some of the artists you’ve collaborated with in the past 25 years, the list is seemingly endless. How much of your own sound has sprouted out of collaborating with so many different kinds of artists?

Everybody’s contributing, so you get this blend of different styles and you can come up with something you definitely would not come up with on your own. You also learn things from the different people that you write and play music with. They rub off on you either consciously or subconsciously. Co-writing and collaborating is really important.

Photo courtesy of the artist.