Tag: summer

MIXTAPE: Anna Vogelzang’s Dream Summer Camp Cabin

Posted on by Editor

Now that summer is finally here and I’m about to embark on tour to support the release of my new album, I’m dreaming about idyllic summer pastimes, driving with the windows down, and crossing my fingers that I can force the band to have ice cream on the beach at least once. My new album, Afterglow, celebrates the rebuilding of self and who we become in the wake of life’s big cosmic shifts. The album has an ethereal, playful energy unlike any other record I’ve ever put out and it feels fitting that it’s being released in June (a Gemini baby!).

I never went to summer camp. My best fantasies about it fall somewhere between Wet Hot American Summer, The Parent Trap, and the tales my best friend spun while sitting on top of her sparkly pink trunk, freshly home in the late summer of 1999. In my dream scenario here, I am in an old school bunk with the most amazing women and songwriters four walls can hold; can you imagine what the moonlit campfire harmonies would sound like?! – Anna Vogelzang

“Limelight” – Tune-Yards

This song has the best groove of the summer; I cannot stop listening to it. “We all get free in the family” –Merrill is an incredible soul and I want to be around her fierceness all the time.

“The Light” – Anna Vogelzang

Of all the songs on the new record, this one is the most groove-forward. When I think about summer I think about wanting to move and groove, and this song makes me move every time I play it (or hear it!).

“Night Still Comes” – Neko Case

If I puked up some sonnets, would you call me a miracle?

Neko Case is one of my musical heroes and this song is so singable. That transition from intro to tempo, the way the background vocals fill the spaces – it all feels like dancing on a warm night.

“(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” – Aretha Franklin

The clip of Aretha playing this song at the Kennedy Center just resurfaced on my algorithm. Watching Carole King watch Aretha sing is such an incredible joy bomb and brought tears to my eyes, even though I’ve seen the clip a million times.

“Can I Talk My Shit?” – Vagabon

I love Vagabon’s melodies so much; I started hearing about her around town when I lived in LA and have been soaking up each album since. This “honestly I’m ready to go” hook is so dreamy.

“True Blue” – boygenius

“You said you wanted to feel alive so we went to the beach…”  There are so many songs I love on this record, but this one is all summer, all the time. Belting out harmonies on this near-perfect chorus while driving along Lake Michigan is something everyone should try at least once.

“Baby I’m Sorry” – mmeadows, Monica Martin

I’m obsessed with this new song from two of my all-time favorite singers. I know from experience that Moni is down to belt it out late into the night and the production on this entire track is so killer, I can’t get enough.

“The Returner” – Allison Russell

When Alli does this song live with her Rainbow Coalition, it’s otherworldly. I had the joy of jumping on stage with them for this tune at Thalia Hall and the energetic power of singing out, “If you think you’re alone, hold on, I’m comin’” cannot be denied.

“Make It Hot” – Mirah

I have been in love with Mirah since I saw her sing in a basement of a neighboring college almost 20 years ago. I love the descending chord progression on this chorus so much and arriving at the outro feels like a moment of pure triumph.

“not a lot, just forever” – Adrianne Lenker

I got to hear Adrianne play this song at a campfire hang at Kerrville once and it felt like a spell being cast – her specific song sorcery is unmatched.

“We the Common (For Valerie Bolden)” – Thao

I am a forever Thao stan and could’ve chosen so many different songs of hers, but this one’s chorus is so goddamn catchy and such a great sing-along moment (and all while speaking truth to power).

“Scaled to Survive” – Leyla McCalla

Summer laid out for us in a groove! This guitar tone, the percussion groove, and Leyla’s heavenly voice create the perfect summer storm. I love Leyla and have such a deep respect for her artistry.

“Ancient Light” – I’m With Her

Another mixed meter groove-forward campfire jam. I love this song, especially the breakdown, but really I’m loving the whole new album so much. These ladies are such a great hang and I would love their hilarity and power trio vibes in our cabin party!

“California” – Joni Mitchell

There is no song hero greater than Joni, and there is no song that feels more like summer to me than California. The opener might as well be today: “They won’t give peace a chance; that was just a dream some of us had.” On days where I really miss LA, I find myself humming this tune without even realizing it.

“King & Queen” –Anna Vogelzang

This track opens Afterglow and is a totally casual ode to toxic relationships – and really hits how good it feels when you realize you’ve outgrown someone, or something, and finally leave them in the dust. It’s giving running on the beach and into the sunset.

Photo Credit: Audre Rae Photography

WATCH: Meadow Mountain, “Count Me In” (SkyTheory Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Meadow Mountain
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “Count Me In”
Album: June Nights
Release Date: May 22, 2024

(Editor’s Note: Over the last four weeks, Colorado-based bluegrass band Meadow Mountain has premiered a series of exclusive, live performance videos of tracks from their just released album, June Nights. This is the final installment of their SkyTheory Sessions. Find links to the full series below.)

In Their Words: “I originally conceived of this song as a ‘rewriting’ of ‘Rocky Mountain High’ by John Denver. The first lyric from ‘Count Me In’ is: ‘Twenty-seven came and went like a storm, hanging on by the songs I wrote on the day that I was born,’ which is an homage to Denver’s lyrics: ‘He was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he’d never been before.’ From there, the song took on its own life. It is a celebration of life in The Rocky Mountains. You want to go play up in the talus fields and by the ice cold mountain lakes? ‘Count Me In.'” – Summers Baker

Track Credits: Written by Summers Baker

Photo Credit: Video still by Erik Fellenstein

Video Credits: Videography – Erik Fellenstein
Lighting – Payden Widner
Mixing – Vermillion Road Studio

WATCH: Meadow Mountain, “Waiting for Tomorrow” (SkyTheory Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Meadow Mountain
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “Waiting for Tomorrow”
Album: June Nights
Release Date: May 13, 2024 (single)

(Editor’s Note: Over the last few weeks, Colorado-based bluegrass band Meadow Mountain has premiered a series of exclusive, live performance videos of newly releasing tracks. Watch each installment of their SkyTheory Sessions right here, on BGS. The final installment will be released next week.)

In Their Words: “This song attempts to answer the question, ‘What if, instead of starting the band Foo Fighters, Dave Grohl had picked up a mandolin and spent a year exclusively listening to Alison Krauss & Union Station?’ I guess I was doing a lot of thinking and writing about time – the great healer, but also that which brings an end to all things. And then a new beginning. This is a song about time, and hope.” – Jack Dunlevie

Track Credits: Written by Jack Dunlevie

Photo Credit: Video still by Erik Fellenstein

Video Credits: Videography – Erik Fellenstein
Lighting – Payden Widner
Mixing – Vermillion Road Studio

WATCH: Meadow Mountain, “Trail to Telluride” (SkyTheory Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Meadow Mountain
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “Trail to Telluride”
Release Date: May 6, 2024 (single)

(Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks, Colorado-based bluegrass band Meadow Mountain will premiere a series of four exclusive, live performance videos of newly releasing tracks. Watch each installment of their SkyTheory Sessions on Thursdays each week for the next three weeks right here, on BGS.)

In Their Words: “I have attended the Telluride Bluegrass festival every year for over 12 years now. It is where I fell in love with bluegrass music and it is where I felt my first calling to write the music of the Rocky Mountains. This song tells a fictional story of a miner in the late 1800s who traveled from Denver to Telluride in an attempt to strike it rich mining for silver. While I am no miner, I do feel that the story tracks with the life of a working musician. You go out there to try something new, and if it doesn’t stick, you reset and get back to work.” – Summers Baker, guitar and songwriter

Track Credits: Written by Summers Baker

Photo Credit: Video still by Erik Fellenstein

Video Credits: Videography – Erik Fellenstein
Lighting – Payden Widner
Mixing – Vermillion Road Studio

WATCH: Meadow Mountain, “June Nights” (SkyTheory Sessions)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Meadow Mountain
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “June Nights”
Release Date: April 30, 2024 (single)

(Editor’s Note: Over the next few weeks, Colorado-based bluegrass band Meadow Mountain will premiere a series of four exclusive, live performance videos of newly releasing tracks. Watch each installment of their SkyTheory Sessions on Thursdays each week for the next four weeks right here, on BGS.)

In Their Words: “It sometimes feels like my life is split up into eras – periods of a year or two that, upon looking back, have a distinct, overarching feeling. As I get older I’ve started to recognize when I’m on the edge of one era, moving into the next one, and I begin to get a sense of the overall color of my recent life. I had that feeling as spring moved into summer last year and wanted to document it in a song. It recounts moments in the Colorado wilderness, misadventures in love, and my abiding wish to be Sam Bush in the 1980’s.” – Jack Dunlevie, mandolin and songwriter

Track Credits: Written by Jack Dunlevie.

Photo Credit: Video still by Erik Fellenstein

Video Credits: Videography – Erik Fellenstein
Lighting – Payden Widner
Mixing – Vermillion Road Studio

LISTEN: Frontier Ruckus, “Clarkston Pasture”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Frontier Ruckus
Hometown: Detroit, Michigan
Song: “Clarkston Pasture”
Album: On the Northline
Release Date: February 16, 2024
Label: Loose Music

In Their Words: “There’s a wonderful tension running through the songs on this album that marks a monumental faultline in my life. I wrote half the songs before I met and fell in love with my now-wife Lauren, and the rest in direct response to that life event – trying to make sense of how I got so lucky (see: “Mercury Sable” and “First Song for Lauren”).

“‘Clarkston Pasture’ was definitely in the former batch. It’s a dead-of-winter, lonesome-as-hell sort of song, where bachelorhood had lost its luster and I was fantasizing about a brighter future full of love and purpose. That’s why the verses are set in these dismally frigid, Michigan-winter landscapes: Cheering on a bar fight, turning off the furnace so as not to waste the warmth on just myself. Then the choruses flash to the glory of a Michigan summer – cruising through the towns on the northern edge of metro Detroit where the subdivisions start to dwindle and the fields start to open up. There aren’t many diametric opposites as stark as a Michigan winter and a Michigan summer, and that polarity turned out to be the perfect metaphor for how love changed my world.” – Matthew Milia

Photo Credit: John Mark Hanson

WATCH: Hannah Kaminer, “Heavy on the Vine”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Hannah Kaminer
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina (technically Black Mountain, North Carolina)
Song: “Heavy on the Vine”
Album: Heavy on the Vine
Release Date: November 17, 2023 (single); January 5, 2024 (album)

In Their Words: “Over the last few years I started gardening and going to the community garden to learn whatever I could. One day in late summer I showed up and the gardener in charge told me we had to take out all the tomatoes and summer plants. I was stunned because all of those plants were still going strong, in full bloom. She gently let me know that it was time: If we did not take the summer plants out, there would be no fall planting and no fall harvest. Pulling the tomatoes out was a spiritual experience – letting go of one thing so another could grow – but it’s a lot harder when it’s not just tomatoes that you have to let go of. This song is about those moments when your vision narrows and you realize that only a few things in life are actually important, and you find yourself bargaining with the universe for the one thing you want but can’t have.” – Hannah Kaminer

Track Credits: Hannah Kaminer – vocals, guitar
Kevin Williams – keys
Ross Montsinger – drums
Melissa Hyman – bass, harmony vocals
Jackson Dulaney – pedal steel

Photo Credit: John Dupre
Video Credits: Produced by Old Home Place Recordings
Director – Aaron Stone
Audio Engineer – Mike Johnson
Photography – John Dupre
Executive Producers – Tim & Susan Griffin

LISTEN: Alex Leach, “Summer Haven”

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Artist: Alex Leach
Hometown: Greeneville, Tennessee
Song: “Summer Haven”
Release Date: September 1, 2023

In Their Words: “I couldn’t be more excited to release this brand new one written by my wife Miranda and I. It’s a feel-good song about holding on to the last days of summer with good friends, camping in the mountains, and making everlasting memories with the ones you love. It’s also very special to me, as we recorded it at the late great Steve Gulley’s Pinnacle Studio in Campbell County, Tennessee. Steve was a huge mentor to me as I began getting into the music business, and his engineer/bandmate, Bryan Turner, has since taken over the studio and graciously allowed us to come in and cut this one. It will be the first nationally distributed single recorded there since Steve’s passing in 2020. I hope it brings you back to the mountains and the crisp, late summer air, the songs around a campfire, and the full moon surrounded by stars above. No matter when or where you listen from, I hope Summer Haven will take you into the mountains for a night you’ll never forget.” – Alex Leach

Photo Credit: Miranda Leach

Top 10 Sitch Sessions of the Past 10 Years

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

Since the beginning, BGS has sought to showcase roots music at every level and to preserve the moments throughout its ever-developing history that make this music so special. One of the simplest ways we’ve been able to do just that has been through our Sitch Sessions — working with new and old friends, up-and-coming artists, and legendary performers, filming musical moments in small, intimate spaces, among expansive, breathtaking landscapes, and just about everywhere in between. But always aiming to capture the communion of these shared moments.

In honor of our 10th year, we’ve gathered 10 of our best sessions — viral videos and fan favorites — from the past decade. We hope you’ll enjoy this trip down memory lane!

Greensky Bluegrass – “Burn Them”

Our most popular video of all time, this Telluride, Colorado session with Greensky Bluegrass is an undeniable favorite, and we just had to include it first.

Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris – “The Traveling Kind”

What more could you ask for than two old friends and legends of country music reminiscing on travels and songs passed and yet to come, in an intimate space like this? “We’re members of an elite group because we’re still around, we’re still traveling,” Emmylou Harris jokes. To which Rodney Crowell adds with a laugh, “We traveled so far, it became a song.” The flowers were even specifically chosen and arranged “to represent a celestial great-beyond and provide a welcoming otherworldly quality … a resting place for the traveling kind.” Another heartwarming touch for an unforgettable moment.

Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan – “Some Tyrant” 

In the summer of 2014, during the Telluride Bluegrass Festival we had the distinct pleasure of capturing Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O’Donovan’s perfectly bucolic version of “Some Tyrant” among the aspens. While out on this jaunt into the woods, we also caught a performance of the loveliest ode to summertime from Kristin Andreassen, joined by Aoife and Sarah.

Rhiannon Giddens – “Mal Hombre”

Rhiannon Giddens once again proves that she can sing just about anything she wants to — and really well — with this gorgeously painful and moving version of “Mal Hombre.”

Tim O’Brien – “You Were on My Mind”

Is this our favorite Sitch Session of all time? Probably. Do we dream of having the good fortune of running into Tim O’Brien playing the banjo on a dusty road outside of Telluride like the truck driver in this video? Definitely.

Enjoy one of our most popular Sitch Sessions of all time, featuring O’Brien’s pure, unfiltered magic in a solo performance of an original, modern classic.

Gregory Alan Isakov – “Saint Valentine”

Being lucky in love is great work, if you can find it. But, for the rest of us, it’s a hard row to hoe. For this 2017 Sitch Session at the York Manor in our home base of Los Angeles, Gregory Alan Isakov teamed up with the Ghost Orchestra to perform “Saint Valentine.”

The Earls of Leicester – “The Train That Carried My Girl From Town”

In this rollicking session, the Earls of Leicester gather round some Ear Trumpet Labs mics to bring their traditional flair to a modern audience, and they all seem to be having a helluva time!

Sara and Sean Watkins – “You and Me”

For this Telluride session, Sara and Sean Watkins toted their fiddle and guitar up the mountain to give us a performance of “You and Me” from a gondola flying high above the canyon.

Punch Brothers – “My Oh My / Boll Weevil”

The Punch Brothers — along with Dawes, The Lone Bellow, and Gregory Alan Isakov — headlined the 2015 LA Bluegrass Situation festival at the Greek Theatre (a party all on its own), and in anticipation, the group shared a performance of “My Oh My” into “Boll Weevil” from on top of the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood.

Caitlin Canty feat. Noam Pikelny – “I Want To Be With You Always”

We’ll send you off with this delicate moment. Released on Valentine’s Day, Caitlin Canty and Noam Pikelny offered their tender acoustic rendition of Lefty Frizzell’s 1951 country classic love song, “I Want to Be With You Always.”

Dive into 8 of our favorite underrated Sitch Sessions here.

BGS Top 50 Moments: BGS On Deck – Our First Music Cruise

Posted on by Shelby Williamson

It’s been over nine years since we first boarded the Norwegian Pearl to set sail with some musical friends. Back in 2013, BGS joined the team at Sixthman as well as host band, the Steep Canyon Rangers, on the first Mountain Song at Sea cruise, sailing from Miami to the Bahamas alongside the Punch Brothers, David Grisman, the Del McCoury Band, Tim O’Brien, Della Mae, Bryan Sutton, and Peter Rowan.

You can get a glimpse of the riotous fun that was had onboard that first cruise here.

This month, BGS returns to the high seas on board Sixthman’s Cayamo cruise. While onboard, we’ll be hosting the Party of the Deck-Ade, our kickoff birthday event celebrating ten years of BGS. The jam will be hosted by Sierra Hull and Madison Cunningham, and backed by our house musicians Hogslop String Band.

Get your sunscreen ready, and we hope to see some of you in Miami very soon!