Tag: the osborne brothers

New Freedom Blues: A Conversation with Town Mountain

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The very first instrument you hear on “New Freedom Blues,” the new single from Town Mountain, is a kick drum. Wait, what?! As the title track of their upcoming album (out on October 26), it’s a mildly, slyly defiant poke at bluegrass tradition (or, more precisely, one interpretation of that tradition) before the full band piles in behind Robert Greer’s gruff, wry lament from a guy who just can’t win for losin’. (Stream the song below.)

Yet as a conversation with banjoist Jesse Langlais makes clear, the members of Town Mountain are more determined than ever to dish up a different take on the bluegrass legacy—one that hearkens back to some of the greatest work by some of the music’s greatest masters during their times of greatest creativity. That should come as no surprise to those who have followed the independent-minded group since they first attracted attention in and around their hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, more than ten years ago.

For while it’s easy to hear the individual progress they’ve made as players, singers and songwriters, and the collective progress they’ve made as an ever more confident and tightly-knit band, their unrestrained energy and freewheeling approach were there right from the start. Whether you’re talking about their shows or about their growing body of recordings, they’ve always had one foot in the honky-tonk and one foot in the jam band world, all the while following the rambunctious roads paved by the King of Bluegrass, Jimmy Martin, as well as his best-known banjo man, J. D. Crowe.

That’s a powerful combination, and it’s taken Town Mountain on a unique journey—one that’s found them as much at home in muddy festival fields filled with energetic dancers as at ground zero for traditional bluegrass, Nashville’s World Famous Station Inn. Still, they’re like almost everyone else when it comes to trying to figure out the 21st century music business, and that’s where our conversation began.

Twenty years ago, it was clear what making a record would do for you as a band: you’d sell it, and hope to get some airplay, so the writers at least would make some royalties. But there was a much bigger economic component to making records back in the day than there is now. So what motivates you guys to make a record?

You’re completely right about the business. I don’t know, it’s just to get that stuff out. The record sales are not what drives the reasoning behind an album for bands at our level anymore; financially, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. The bulk of the material that gets sold is such a small percentage of the music out there. A lot of independent artists are just trying to get people to come to their shows—and one catalyst to do that is to release music. And personally, it’s also gratifying, just to be able to have that tangible object with which you as an artist can say, this is my material.

You guys pretty much write all your own material?

Yes. Phil Barker and I tackle the bulk of the material, Robert contributes a couple of songs here and there, and then we sprinkle a couple of covers in. But yeah, that’s been the premise of the band from the beginning: let’s utilize the songs. And really, for the longest time, songs would come to the chopping block and we would say, well, how bluegrass is this song? And that would be the parameters for how we would choose our material; we succumbed to the ways of the bluegrass world. That was almost dictating the material that we would choose, and all the while, there was all this other material that you’re turning the page on, so it’s just sitting in song notebooks, which we finally realized. So our last album and previous albums are much more of our brand of bluegrass, while I’d say half of the new one is more of a departure from that, but still maintaining the Town Mountain sound.

That’s funny, because it sounds very much like a bluegrass album to me. What are the ways you feel like these songs are less bluegrass than in the past?

There is some bluegrass material on this album, hands down. But if you sit down and analyze the songs musically, you would probably understand a little more of what I’m saying. I would say one thing is that we’ve got a full drum kit in there, which changes the feel immediately. Adding a snare in a bluegrass band totally works, and sometimes you bury it in the mix and can’t even tell it’s there. But with a full kit, it allows some of these tunes to breathe a little bit. We just said, OK, let’s not chop these songs at the chopping block because they don’t fit the mold; let’s move forward with them. And I guess that still maintains some bluegrass integrity, which is good to hear.

It’s not imitative but it reminds me of what the Osborne Brothers were doing, or what J. D. Crowe was doing, in the 1970s—the Starday album, You Can Share My Blanket, the Keith Whitley stuff. And then I notice you hit that low C note on your banjo more than a lot of other banjo players I hear these days, and that’s kind of a throwback thing to Scruggs, J.D., and Sonny. It sort of skips back a generation.

That’s the highest compliment we could be paid. I don’t think anyone could say anything that would make us feel more proud. If you’re getting that vibe of the Osborne Brothers and J.D., that’s totally what we’re going for. Everybody in Town Mountain just loves that ‘70s music so much; My Home Ain’t in the Hall of Fame, anything that Crowe put his stamp on is like the best stuff ever in my opinion, and I know Robert and Phil and the other guys feel the same. Now, I am a huge Osborne Brothers fan; not everyone else in Town Mountain is a huge Osborne Brothers fan, but I am. I’ve personally always loved the mix of hardcore country and the hardcore grass sound—and yeah, collectively Town Mountain is trying to emulate and bring some of that sound back into the scene.

One of the things about the classic bluegrass band creation pattern was that people played in somebody else’s band, went through an apprenticeship, played with people older and more experienced, and then went off to do their own thing. And around the turn of the century, something new started to happen—bands began more like garage rock bands, where people heard the sound of bluegrass and wanted to do it, but they didn’t go through the apprenticeship. How did Town Mountain get started?

None of us grew up in the ranks of the bluegrass community, doing what you’re describing. None of us have. Did we all play in other projects prior to Town Mountain? For sure. But they weren’t products of that hardcore bluegrass environment. Robert and Phil and I were all in bands based out of Asheville, but they were more like pick-up bands—buddies playing music. I’ll say, there’s nothing wrong with what you describe but it does create parameters when everyone’s coming through the same sounds and is being taught how to play the same way—I’m generalizing—and it creates this precedent and guidelines to adhere to, and all the musicians and bands end up kind of getting into that sound. I dig that sound, I get it for sure, and it’s a lifestyle and a way of music and a genre, and totally cool. But developing in that garage rock kind of way allows for a little more outside influence, a little more of a creative approach to the music. And that is how Town Mountain started, for sure.

One of the implications of that is that you have to be more deliberate about learning the older stuff. How’d you guys find your way through the bluegrass canon? How’d you get into that Crowe stuff?

Digging, lots of digging. Personally, my foot was put in the door through Old & In The Way. But as soon as I found out Old & In The Way, I found out who Flatt & Scruggs were, the Stanley Brothers, Jimmy Martin, Jim & Jesse and Bill Monroe. And I found a banjo teacher who would tell me to check out stuff. So then, for five to seven years, the only thing I would listen to was classic bluegrass, or bluegrass in general. I dug in full force. Because at that time in my life I had no idea what it was. I grew up in Maine; it wasn’t part of my life. So I immediately immersed myself in it. And after that period, I could cover so much of the bluegrass canon; I knew by then who J.D. was, and the sound that I love. And then, when I moved to Asheville and met Robert and Phil, it was like, oh, these guys would love Jimmy Martin, too. You know how everybody loves everybody, but this one’s a Monroe guy, this one’s a Stanley guy? We were all Jimmy Martin guys. So our musical taste in bluegrass was very similar from the beginning of the band.

When I look at the band’s recording career, you self-released, then you signed with Pinecastle—that’s a hardcore bluegrass label—and then you made your way kind of back out of the bluegrass mainstream. I look at the variety of material on the album, but right in the middle there’s a very straightforward bluegrass instrumental. I looked at your schedule – you’re playing a lot of clubs and music festivals, but then you’re playing mainstream bluegrass events like Festival of the Bluegrass or Joe Val. Do you feel like you’re in a balanced place between the bluegrass world and all the other stuff?

That’s something we’ve always toiled with, making sure that we’re maintaining a foot in all these different scenes. But we’ve always kind of been a fringe band within the bluegrass world. I don’t think anyone’s ever looked at Town Mountain and said, “There’s traditional bluegrass.” So we’ve always kind of been right where we are right now. We maybe used to do more bluegrass festivals. We made a conscious decision to balance that out with other, all-around, eclectic music festivals. But we hope to get some play on the bluegrass radio stations, and that that will help to keep us in that scene. We certainly want to be part of that music scene as much as it wants us to be part of it.

 

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

Give Me the Wintertime: 10 Bluegrass Songs for the Cold

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If we really have no choice but to endure winter (other than high-tailin’ it toward the equator), we might as well give in, cozy up, and spin some wintry bluegrass songs. Cold rain, cold snow, cold wind, cold hearts … some folks like the summertime when they can walk about, but wintertime … well, it’s a season that happens, too.

Tony Rice — “Girl From the North Country”

The north country = where the wind blows cold on the borderline. It feels like Tony sings about winter and its themes quite a lot. It just fits.

Emmylou Harris — “Roses in the Snow”

Not to throw around the term “iconic,” but this one is iconic. We’re familiar with the idea that love is like the seasons, but this time, love is like a greenhouse. It can grow roses in the snow! It’s a refreshing twist on a concept that usually ends up with the flower of love frozen over and wilted in the cold.

Larry Sparks — “Snow Covered Mound”

The only conscionable reason to highlight any recording of this song besides Ralph Stanley’s is … Larry Sparks. His voice captures winter and its grief perfectly. It will send a shiver up your spine.

The Osborne Brothers — “Listening to the Rain”

Some places aren’t lucky enough to enjoy the austere beauty of snow in the winter months, getting rain, and gray, and mud, and gloom instead. Of course, cold rain with a heapin’ helpin’ of lost love sounds about right.

Ronnie Bowman — “Cold Virginia Night”

IBMA’s 1995 Song of the Year leans into the cold heart metaphor. It is beautiful. And catchy. And still reverberating off the walls and in the halls of every former IBMA convention host hotel.

Jim Mills — “Sledd Ridin’”

If you gloss over the strange spelling of “sledd,” you’ll find this rollicking banjo tune feels like a day spent on the snowy neighborhood hill. Time for hot cocoa.

Reno & Smiley — “Love Oh Love Oh Please Come Home”

In a dynamic twist, the woman has left the man alone, at home, with their baby, while the snow has covered up the ground.

Del McCoury — “Rain And Snow”

It’s a murder ballad. It’s a lover’s lament. It’s sung in an astronomically high register. And it’s pretty sexist. It’s bluegrass to a T. It also happens to be a goddamn classic. Del McCoury does it right.

J.D. Crowe & the New South — “Ten Degrees and Getting Colder”

Somehow the saddest part of this song isn’t that he’s traded off his Martin. This song is a masterpiece and distillate of the troubles of a working musician: The coldest months are always the hardest months.

Bill Monroe — “Footprints in the Snow”

Once again, we are reminded that the father of bluegrass not only originated the genre, he’s responsible for a good many of its themes, too. In this case, winter isn’t an analog for heartbreak; it’s a silver lining, guiding the song’s speaker to his love via her footprints. You can’t trace footprints in the summer!

Photo by The Knowles Gallery on Foter.com / CC BY

11 Bluegrass Songs about Bluegrass

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Every genre of music out there has its self-referential moments, certainly, but bluegrass accomplishes these meta masterpieces with a specificity, nostalgia, and flair that is unparalleled. It just wouldn’t be bluegrass without bluegrass songs about bluegrass. (Now if that ain’t a hook for a song …)

Junior Sisk & Ramblers Choice — “A Far Cry From Lester & Earl”

To start us off, this bluegrass chart smash hit is the perfect example of the bluegrass-songs-about-bluegrass phenomenon. But it isn’t just about the music; it also gets into the nitty gritty of how the music has changed since … well, Lester and Earl. Essentially, it’s the bluegrass “big tent” debate in song form!

Tom T. Hall — “Bill Monroe for Breakfast”

Country Music Hall of Famer Tom T. Hall gives us a textbook example of the pure reminiscing and sentimentalism that makes these songs just so dang easy to love. Bill Monroe: an important part of a balanced breakfast.

Steep Canyon Rangers — “Bluegrass Blues”

Do you think the Steep Canyon Rangers still got those blues? Probably not. The road-dogging required of bluegrass bands will get just about anybody down, so we understand where this one is coming from. It’s just one of the many causes of the “bluegrass blues.”

Jerry Salley — “The Night Flatt & Scruggs Played Carnegie Hall”

Not to be outdone by bluegrass songs that are simply about the genre itself, or its founders, or an iconic song, Jerry Salley goes a step further and writes a song about a specific album that was recorded at a specific concert. Does it start with applause, like the record? Yes. Is each banjo break a reference to a different song from said show/album? Yes. Do the pickers each take turns referencing licks played by the Foggy Mountain Boys? Yes. It’s a 3:34 distillate of what ended up being an almost 70-minute double album in its final form. Bluegrass sparknotes!

The Gibson Brothers — “They Called It Music”

This may technically be a song about the music(s) that preceded bluegrass, but when you know a little about the Gibson Brothers’ approach to creating and performing, you know that this is a pure-and-simple reference to their worldview. Other people may call what they do bluegrass, but to them, it’s just music.

Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time — “Black Diamond Strings”

There’s a joke that pickers and guitarists have been making for as long as we can remember about how Black Diamond Strings were so great, they used to come pre-rusted! After a dose of Larry Cordle’s longing for the simpler times and simpler strings, it makes you miss those pre-rusted wires bad enough that you wish you hadn’t laughed. Wonder if they still make ‘em …

Donna Ulisse — “It Could Have Been the Mandolin”

Donna Ulisse conjures Bill Monroe’s mandolin wafting over the radio in a classic Cadillac on lover’s lane — it could’ve just been love, but it could have been the mandolin. Let’s be honest: We already knew that good ol’ traditional Monroe style is pretty much an aphrodisiac.

Rhonda Vincent — “Bluegrass Saturday Night”

Rhonda poses an important question herein: How is anyone supposed to resist bluegrass and its intoxicating call? Oh, and heaven apparently has a bluegrass band. Our heaven definitely does. Hope yours does, too.

Irene Kelley — “My Flower”

Thanks to Irene Kelley for straightening out one of the most perplexingly crooked traditional songs ever written … and in a beautiful, catchy, heartfelt homage. Doing meta bluegrass right.

The Osborne Brothers — “Fastest Bluegrass Alive”

Now, the Osborne Brothers definitely did accomplish some of the fastest bluegrass known to man (with musical integrity entirely retained … an important caveat). Interestingly though, this is not a particularly fast song. But those speedy bluegrass playin’ outlaws mentioned need to be fast to outrun the tempo sheriff and his posse! Run ‘em right outta town!

Bill Monroe — “Uncle Pen”

If you assumed that this style of song came long after the first generation of bluegrass, oh no, you are mistaken. Bill Monroe — the pioneer, master, father, and creator of the form — had more than one bluegrass inception song; “Heavy Traffic Ahead,” considered the first bluegrass song ever, is arguably a song about … bluegrass. So this tradition is well-entrenched in the genre for good reason. If Bill was singing about what he was doing on stage while he was doing it on stage and playing songs about tunes that quoted those tunes from the beginning, who are we to change course? Bluegrass bluegrass forever!

Photo by Joerg Neuner on Foter.com / CC BY-ND

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Bobby Osborne

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Artist: Bobby Osborne
Song: “They Called the Wind Maria” (originally from the 1951 Broadway musical, Paint Your Wagon)
Album: Original

Where did you first hear this song?

The first ones I ever heard do it were the Browns — Jim Ed and Maxine Brown. I kind of liked it then, but my brother and me didn’t want to cover it right then. It’s been a long time ago since I heard it. This project that Alison [Brown] came up with, with me and Compass Records, I thought about that song. My son and me were trying to get some songs together so we put it down on the list. The chord progression on it and the song itself, I’ve always really liked it. Of course, the Browns did a great job with the recording they had on it. I never did hear anybody else, maybe I didn’t listen, but I didn’t hear anybody else do it.

When I put it down on the list, Alison wrote me back, she said, “That was one that I wanted you to do!” [Laughs] So that turned out real good. Then I had to learn the thing, then. The melody and the harmony and all that on it. To me, it was just right down my alley.

What about the song made you think it would be such a great fit for bluegrass?

Well, it’s different from what most people would do, I think, in the story of it. A lot of people nowadays are doing arrangements like that, something similar to the way the melody and the harmony goes with that song. A lot of people are doing stuff that they didn’t do back when the Browns did it. If you went into a key that wasn’t just G, C, and D, you lost a lot of people, way back then. Nowadays, why, it’s not unusual at all.

My brother and me did some things — I don’t know if we were the first or not — but a lot of people in country music were doing that [sort of a thing]. But, as far as bluegrass goes, most of the time it was just plain Monroe-type music, Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers. A lot of folks didn’t go to those keys — what I always called it, the off-keys — with the melody of a song. My brother and I, we got tied in with that harmony we’d come up with and the endings that we had, everything just fit right into the melody of “Maria.” I was really familiar with that type of thing.

Fans might think, “He’s changed that around. I don’t like that kind of music.” But the song was written like that, so you can’t deny that. It fit us so good. Alison said it was always one of her favorite songs, too. Her being the producer, she asked me to do that, and it just tickled me to death. The more we worked with it, the better it got. It turned out to be a great recording.

You and your brother have always covered non-bluegrass songs throughout your career, and it’s kind of a tradition in bluegrass to take songs from outside the genre and repurpose them for bluegrass. Why do you think this is a tradition and why have you always made a point of recording these types of songs throughout your career?

You remember the song, “Once More”?

Yeah, of course!

We were doing just plain bluegrass, you know, Monroe-type and Flatt & Scruggs. Just G, C, D, bluegrass — three chords to it. Well, we were up in West Virginia, and a man up there by the name of Dusty Owens had a band and he had written that song, “Once More.” He had recorded it on a little label up there. He gave me one of the copies of it and, when I listened to it, I felt that would be a great thing for us to do with the harmony that we had. When we first recorded it for MGM Records, they were strictly [having us record] three-chord bluegrass.

I got the words to “Once More.” We had a couple hundred miles to drive home from Wheeling, and Red Allen was with us at the time — it was just three of us. We got to singing it just like we would normally do any other song, but there was just something missing with it. Of course, we were just doing regular harmony singing then. We had never featured a high lead on a thing in the world. My voice being the type that it was, it was made for high lead. We were just sitting in the car driving along. We didn’t have any instruments or nothing. We were just trying to learn the song. All of a sudden, I don’t know, I started singing the lead in a way-up-higher register. Red Allen was a tenor singer when he came to work with us, so he just started singing the tenor, but then it was the low part. My brother was good on the parts and chimed right in with the middle part and, boy, when we got to singing it like that, we knew right there we had run into some kind of harmony that we had never heard before. We had 200 miles to go and we sang that song all the way home so that we wouldn’t forget what we had learned. That’s how we came across that type of harmony.

When we went to Nashville to record again, we were dead set on putting that on a record, because that was brand new and it was different from Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and all that. It was so different from anybody. Wesley Rose was the A&R guy for MGM at that time, so we approached him with that type of harmony, and he looked at us and said, “You can’t do that. That’s some other kind of music and harmony besides bluegrass.” We had a talk and talk and talk. He said, “You put something like that out after what you’ve already done, you’re liable to lose your recording contract.” We were so set on it we said, “We’ll just take a chance on it, if you don’t care.”

When we recorded it, we had been using everything regular bluegrass people used — fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, and bass. We figured the snare drum was perfect with bluegrass. We went back to [Wesley] and said we wanted to add dobro and drop the fiddle. Well, he had a fit over that, too. We hesitated to mention that there was one thing we’d like to do with the rhythm on it, the snare drum, but just the brushes. The guy says, “You’re getting completely away from bluegrass!” Well, no. It’s just going to match our singing. We finally talked our way into him letting us do “Once More” just like the recording is now. He was not happy with that at all.

Well, we all know how that turned out!

[Laughs] Back then, I think it was on the top 40 country, I believe. It made number 15 or 16 on the charts. We never heard another word out of Wesley. [Laughs] That right there led us into going deeper and deeper into that kind of harmony. It became our trademark.

What’s your favorite thing about performing “They Called the Wind Maria”?

I kind of like the hesitation between each line, you know? I like that because we were kind of used to that kind of thing and changing from one key to another. That’s one of the main things that really took the song off with me. The hesitation between each set of two lines. Then the tune of it, the melody to the song. When we put the three parts to it, it really dressed it up and made it even different from what the Browns did.

Now you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

Well, after what me and my brother have done, there’s not much we can say to argue with what anyone thought! [Laughs] People still ask us about it.

When we switched from MGM to Decca Records, Owen Bradley was the producer over there. He knew about us and he latched onto [what we were doing] in a hurry. He said, “Do what you want to do. You know more about what you want to do than I do.” We got a taste of country to go along with the bluegrass, and he went right along with us. It really worked out pretty good. When we were allowed to just do what we wanted to with the harmony, the instrumentation, and the lyrics to the songs, when we got into that, it became a standard thing for the Osborne Brothers. A lot of other people jumped on that type of harmony in a hurry. It became a standard thing about every one of them wanted to do.

I love that on your latest record, Original, you’re carrying on that tradition of doing songs that some people might not expect to be on a bluegrass record.

Oh yeah, that was a thing we knew [from the begining] with one playing the banjo and one playing the mandolin and singing [in the Osborne Brothers]. There’s no way we’d ever get away from the sound of bluegrass instruments. What we had in mind was to play those instruments and make them fit with what we were doing. We were putting bluegrass and country music right together, and people just loved it. Our harmony singing fit bluegrass and country music, both. In one sense of the phrase, we had it made right there.

Singing Like He Feels: A Conversation with Bobby Osborne

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I’d be willing to bet that, if you spent a day in New York City asking strangers to name a bluegrass song, seven out of 10 would look at you funny and walk away. The other three would say “Rocky Top.” It may be a mystery how any song permeates the popular consciousness to that depth, but my theory is that “Rocky Top” had one very unmysterious special ingredient: Bobby Osborne’s voice.

In a genre synonymous with “high, lonesome” tenor singing (See Monroe, Bill; Stanley, Ralph; Flatt, Lester; and McCoury, Del) the fact that Bobby Osborne’s high notes can turn heads and drop jaws is, itself, impressive. Even better, his bio skims like a Marvel comic origin story for the ultimate bluegrass musician. Born in rural Kentucky, he grew up helping his dad stock his granddad’s general store and absorbing the songs on the Grand Ole Opry, eventually dropping out of high school to form a band with his brother, Sonny. Within a few years, he had played in bands with the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin, and on bills with Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. At age 16, his voice changed: It got higher.

By 1964, the Osborne Brothers were members of the Grand Ole Opry, shorthand for country music royalty. Their calling cards were Sonny’s banjo playing, Bobby’s mandolin playing, and a slight adjustment to Bill Monroe’s formula for bluegrass trio harmony: Instead of jumping up to the tenor harmony for choruses and giving someone else in the band the melody, as Monroe did, Bobby sang the melody on top in tenor range. Monroe’s high tenor gave his bands’ harmonies a magnetic intensity and rawness — but the melody had to be traded to another singer. Bobby’s version allowed the audience to follow him on melody, from verse to chorus, right up to the stratosphere. His high tenor gave choruses a sense of lift-off.

No one can be better than Bill Monroe at bluegrass harmony. He invented the sound. It’s more like Michael Jordan and LeBron James: a new generation with a fresh, slightly higher-octane version of the formula.

Take “Rocky Top,” for example. (Please, take it.) There may be better examples, but I think it’s instructive to confront the cliché case in point. Despite its borderline parody lyrics and the kitschy associations it’s gathered in the intervening decades, it’s still a great example of the recipe that made the Osborne Brothers — and bluegrass, as a whole — exciting.

On first listen, “Rocky Top” sounds like the record player is on the wrong speed. Blazing fast banjo, a mandolin break that almost goes off the rails, and a voice — very high, so high you have to squint your eyes and turn your head to take it all in, but also effortlessly high, beautifully high, somehow competing with the banjo for the status of most impressively piercing element of the song — a voice that makes your brain search the animal kingdom for comparisions, because those notes shouldn’t be possible for a human, certainly not a human male.

Here, it’s important to stop and consider the historical trajectory of bluegrass: When “Rocky Top” hit the country charts in the late ’60s, what we now call “bluegrass” music was still really young. Hardly 25 years had passed since 1945, when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe on the Opry and kids around the South gathered around their radios to hear the Blue Grass Boys. Their sound was new and wild and intense, and it made perfect sense in those heady post-WW II days of new technology and American optimism. Scruggs’ banjo was a musical hot rod, fast and loud and metallic. Bluegrass had a moment of pop culture enthusiasm. Then rock ‘n’ roll stole its thunder. Louder, brasher, groovier — the same recipe, to be sure, but a better vehicle for the energy and anxieties of the era. (Still, listen to Chuck Berry’s guitar intro to “Jonny B. Goode” or Elvis’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Would any of it have been possible without Monroe?)

The 1950s were the lean years for bluegrass. In the shadow of rock and electric country music, acoustic bands inspired by Bill Monroe chugged along, barely making ends meet. Then, thankfully, a new musical movement swept cities and college campuses across America. The Folk Revival considered bluegrass, if not exactly old, at least a sort of stepbrother to the blues and ballads and fiddle music that was unassailably, organically American. It passed the authenticity test. In other words, 1945’s hot rod of high-flying testosterone had become, by the 1970s, traditional and worth preserving. Bluegrass, thereby, gained a capital B and became its own community, its own brand. It wasn’t just a branch on the country tree anymore; it had become its own genre with its own heroes and hierarchies and rules. Point being: By the time the Osborne Brothers got famous — not just Opry famous, but “Rocky Top” famous — bluegrass had done a lot of growing up and settling down. So, when they added drums and pedal steel and string sections to their recordings, there were plenty of folks ready to offer a cold shoulder or a brisk “tsk tsk.”

To their eternal credit, Bobby and Sonny just kept doing their thing, as they had been doing all along, like when they performed a new Elvis song on a country program in West Virginia … in 1951. To them, music was music, whether bluegrass, rock, or country. Bobby heeded the example of older musicians (see Monroe, Bill) who made recordings they wanted to make and sang what suited their voice, no matter whether their peers sounded different.

Which brings me back to “Rocky Top.” Just as it’s a shame for any musician’s multi-faceted, decades-long career to be reduced to one song, it’s a shame for the praise of a remarkable singer to be reduced to genre-specific superlatives. Bobby Osborne isn’t just a great bluegrass singer. He’s a singer — like Roy Orbison or Freddy Mercury or Robert Plant — who can, at his best, make you stop what you’re doing, turn up the radio, and wonder how the hell someone can make that sound.

Would you tell me a little bit about Alison Brown and how she put the record together?

I’ve known of her a long time as a banjo player. The first time I ever seen her was out in Telluride, Colorado. How I got acquainted with her was through Pete Rowan — I’m sure you’re familiar with him. He approached me out there in Colorado and asked me to do a song with him on a CD [The Old School, produced by Brown]. I said that would be fine. I went down there and did that, got acquainted with her for the first time. I know she was familiar with my singing for a long time before I ever met her. Time went on and I got to wondering if she would want to do a CD on me. So I just wrote to her and asked her and she said, “Yeah, I’d be interested.” Everything just sort of worked out from there.

How did you choose what songs to record? It’s an eclectic batch, from Elvis to the Bee Gees …

Well, I hadn’t recorded for a while. First of all, she said, “You start picking out some songs you’d like to sing.” I really didn’t know what to put down. So I just put down some country songs of Merle Haggard and George Jones and Don Gibson. Then I went down to that meeting, and she started pulling out brand new songs I hadn’t ever heard before. And I liked every one of them! That was the thing about it. She figured out, with the way that I sing, that those songs would suit me. Being a producer, I guess, that’s the sort of thing you learn how to do when you’re going to produce a CD on somebody. I just liked every one of them. “Kentucky Morning” and “Eight More Miles,” practically every one of them.

There are a lot of great young players on the record. Sierra Hull and Trey Hensley. Were you introduced to them for the first time? There are also some folks who’ve been around a long time like Rob Ickes and Stuart Duncan.

Well, I knew Rob. I’d never met Trey Hensley. Or I might’ve met him and forgot about him. Most of them I knew just from knowing them, not by being around them. Buddy Spicher, I knew him as well as I knew anybody, because he’d been on a lot of sessions I’d been on. Sierra [Hull], I met her once on the Opry. She’s turned out to be such a great player and singer.

Another young player taking the mandolin into great territory.

She plays what I think of as today’s style of mandolin playing. She plays it and she plays it good. My style of mandolin playing, it isn’t over the hill or anything, but it’s not like they play today. So Alison got her to play the mandolin. She was on “Kentucky Morning” and “Got to Get a Message” and we did some harmony on “Country Boy.” Then she got Del McCoury and his two boys, Ronnie and Rob. I played some harmony with Ronnie on “Goodbye Wheeling.” Then Sam Bush came in and played mandolin on “Eight More Miles.” So Alison had mandolin players and guitar players … and when we were getting songs together, I remembered way back in 1951 when my brother and I were playing up in Wheeling, West Virginia, on that jamboree, Elvis came out with “Don’t Be Cruel.” At that time, we hadn’t thought about bluegrass being different from anything else. We were just singing any kind of song. So we started singing “Don’t Be Cruel.”

You mean even back in the ’50s you were singing bluegrass versions of Elvis?

That’s right. Then right out of the clear blue sky, I told Alison, I said, “You may not believe this, but my brother and me were singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ back when it first came out.” She wrote me right back and said, “That’s the one I want you to do!” That suited me because I’ve always liked that one. She said, “I’ve got an idea on that.” She said, “All I’m going to use on that one is bass, mandolin, and guitar.” I thought, “What can you get out of just three instruments on a song like ‘Don’t Be Cruel?'” But that’s what she used. Sam Bush played mandolin on that, Jim Hurst played guitar, and Todd Phillips played the bass. I don’t know how she knew to do that, but she knew more about sound than I did to think of that. And she got the same sound, with a little echo in it, that they used back then with Elvis Presley.

I’ve heard Sam Bush say that in the late ’60s and early ’70s, you were his hero and that the Osborne Brothers were the kings of progressive bluegrass. There’s that great video of the Camp Springs festival in 1971 when the Osborne Brothers played alongside young Sam Bush and Tony Rice in the Bluegrass Alliance. What did you think of those young kids playing bluegrass? Did you have a sense they’d be important musicians?

Of course, back then in the ’70s — it’s a different bluegrass we have today than we had then, for sure — Sam Bush and Bluegrass Alliance had kind of a rock beat with bluegrass. But since they were programmed as bluegrass, well, Carlton would have just about anybody on that festival. They were different from anybody else. Sam played just about the same style he plays now, I guess. I met him then, but I never did get acquainted with him until the years went by, worked on a lot of shows with him, talked to him at the Opry. He’s a guy who can play like Bill Monroe or he can play like me or like Jethro Burns. Whatever type of mandolin is called for, whatever anybody wants, he can play it.

Before Sam Bush, you were one of the first mandolin players to expand the style outside of what Bill Monroe was doing. You mentioned playing Elvis songs in the early ’50s. How did you go about becoming an original player and forming your own sound?

Back when I first started trying to learn how to play, the guitar was the main thing I learned first. I always liked fiddle tunes for some reason — “Sally Goodin” and “Fire on the Mountain,” things like that. I wanted to be a fiddle player to start with, but never could do it. I’ve got about six of them here at the house. I’ve got one good fiddle — one that Kenny Baker gave me, that black fiddle he played all the time — I’ve got it. I pull it out all the time. I take it on the road and play it sometimes. But the fiddle players today, they make me look sick. I got tired of looking sick and quit playing one. [Laughs] Anyway, since I always liked fiddle tunes and the mandolin is tuned like a fiddle — and I was good with a flat pick from guitar — I got completely wrapped up playing the fiddle tunes with the mandolin. I got to following Howdy Forrester, playing hornpipes and things. I finally got into learning some of those on the mandolin, so when it came to taking breaks on songs, I kind of transferred that over.

And your guitar playing influenced your mandolin, too?

You remember a guy named Hank Garland who played the guitar? I patterned my guitar playing on his, because he was such a good player back in those days. Boy, he could play those fiddle tunes on electric guitar. I learned to do that, then I transferred that over to the mandolin. It made me different from other players. Back in those days, there was only Jethro Burns and Bill Monroe. There wasn’t anybody else to try and learn from on the mandolin. So I learned those fiddle tunes and it helped me with the mandolin. The breaks I’ve took on songs throughout the years I’ve played like a guy would take on a fiddle. And I learned a long time ago that there was only one Bill Monroe.

I read that you shared a dressing room on the Opry with Bill Monroe for a long time. What was that like?

I enjoyed it. Bill was hard to get to know. But once he got to know you — and he was another guy who figured out if he liked you or not, and if he didn’t, well, he didn’t hang around with you at all. But I got to be good friends with Bill. Been on stage with him many times. I’d have to sing the lead, of course, because he had to sing tenor. And you had to do his songs. He wouldn’t do nobody else’s songs but his. I got along with him real good. The last 15 years he lived, I shared the same dressing room with him, got to know him real good. People like him, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Snow — all of them. I really feel so thankful, the way I see it nowadays, that I was able to live in the premier day of country music and bluegrass. Bluegrass has changed so much today. But of course everything has to change. If the world didn’t change, there wouldn’t be no world after a while. But I’ve just sort of stuck to my style. I appreciate what Sierra Hull plays and the other new players do. I appreciate what they’re doing because that’s what they were brought up to do. I was brought up to do traditional.

You played with almost all of the early bluegrass players. You played with the Stanley Brothers for a while when you were young, right?

That’s right. Just before I went into the Marine Corps, for about three months, I got to play with Carter and Ralph. I loved that time. I planned on going back with them when I got out of the Marine Corps, but by that time, Sonny had learned how to play the banjo. I thought to myself, “You know, maybe we ought to start all over again.”

And that’s when you started playing with Jimmy Martin, right?

Yeah, that’s right.

I’ve heard — I mean, he was a pretty difficult guy to work with, wasn’t he?

He was a real character. As long as things were going his way, he was okay; but when it wasn’t, he wasn’t. There’s got be a bend in the river somewhere, you know? [Laughs] But Bill was kind of like that, too. But he did it — of course, Bill never did use alcohol or drugs or anything like that. He was a different type of a person. Just about all of those people — Hank Snow, too. But Hank was from another country — Canada. I mean I never did hold that against him or anything. But he was a little bit peculiar. He’d learned his way of doing things, but he was a good guy.

Who else from the Opry did you learn from?

Well, Ernest Tubb was the first guy I ever tried to sing like. And I got to know him real well. I saw Uncle Dave Macon on stage once, but I never got to know him. Uncle Dave played the clawhammer banjo. He was a show within himself. He never got on the Opry until he was about 60 years old. The Opry started in ’25, and Uncle Dave lived in those days there, when the Opry started. He wouldn’t never have no kind of band with him. And he carried about five different banjos with him at all time. He’d throw them up in the air and catch them. He was a good showman. A great showman.

So did you grow up listening to the Opry?

Yeah, that was one of the first things I ever remember hearing on the radio growing up.

So that must have been an incredible feeling, when you became a member of the Opry. What was that like?

That’s hard to explain. I dreamed about it before I even saw a guitar or anything. I dreamed about what kind of people that those guys were, back in those days — the food they ate, how they lived. I thought about all of that, all about them.

They were really the rock stars of the day back then.

Sure was. And where I come from, back in Kentucky — you know, that song “Kentucky Morning,” that’s one of the main reasons why I did that song because it tells a true story of how I grew up. I think about my dad and mom, how the times have changed. Where we lived, there was no electricity, no inside bathrooms, no running water. We had a well back then for fresh water. Nothing to wash clothes. My mom would take the clothes to the creek and pat the dirt out of them with a rock. That was the thing that really got me in the lyrics to that “Kentucky Morning.” It just brought back so much of the early days of my life. My dad and my mom, they saw times that I didn’t ever see. My dad finally wised up and moved away from Kentucky, when I was about 10 years old.

You moved to Ohio, is that right?

That’s right. He went to Dayton, Ohio. First time I saw a loaf of bread or an ice box you put ice in — see, there weren’t no refrigerators back then and very little electricity used. So we had a big old icebox. You could get a 25-pound block of ice or 50-pound or 100, depending on the size of your icebox. That was the first time I ever saw anybody put food in there to keep it cold.

So what did your father do for work?

In the Kentucky days, he taught school. He was a school teacher. And he taught school in the building I’m in right now teaching the mandolin.

Wow. Full circle.

He sure did. We lived four miles out in the country, in a place called Thousand Sticks, Kentucky. My granddad had a little store. Very few people lived in that area back there. Only way you could get anywhere was walk or ride a mule. And when the creeks were up — the roads back then went right through the creeks — if it rained, why, it was so muddy you couldn’t get over. A lot of times you just couldn’t go nowhere …

So my dad helped my granddad at his store quite a bit. It was four miles from Thousand Sticks to Hyden, Kentucky, and about once a month, he would take a wagon and mule and go across that mountain to get dry goods from a dealer in Hyden. I would go with him. I was about seven or eight years old then. But finally he got tired of that. He heard there was work in Ohio, so he borrowed 50 bucks off of his sister and went to Dayton, Ohio. First place he came to was a place called Nashville Cash Register. They gave him a job. So he came and got the family and we moved away from Thousand Sticks and never lived there again. When we went to Dayton, the big city, everything was so different then. We learned how to live in the big city. But I never did forget where I came from. I still like the country.

That must’ve taken some guts for your dad to start over and move somewhere totally different. How did you feel about it as a 10-year-old?

It hurt me in my schooling. I started going to school — they did have a school over there in Thousand Sticks. I will tell you this, too: Back during the second World War, there was work in Radford, Virginia, in a powder plant where they made powder for the weapons we were using in the war. So my dad went there and worked in that powder plant and took the family. But every time we moved, they’d put me back a grade. I was supposed to be in the fourth grade when we moved to Virginia, but they put me in the third grade. He worked there seven or eight months, and when we came back I should’ve been in the fifth grade, and had to go back in the fourth grade again there. Then when we went to Dayton, Ohio, I was supposed to be up in the sixth grade, but they sent me back in the fifth grade. So I had a tough time trying to get any education moving around like that.

Were you playing music during that time?

I was trying to play the guitar, yeah. It was about fifth or sixth grade when I got my hand on a guitar. By the time I got to the 10th grade, most people I should’ve been in class with had already graduated. So I finished my sophomore year and, by that time, I was into this music. I made up my mind right there, wasn’t no more school for me. I wasn’t going to waste my time. I wanted to put all my time into this right here, and I guess I just got lucky. So I never got any kind of education to do anything up to the 10th grade, the way I bounced around. But I will say this: I learned a lot by traveling. I’ve been in all 50 states playing bluegrass music. I’ve been in foreign countries. I’ve been in Japan two or three times, Germany, and Sweden. You get an education when you travel, if you travel enough. You learn all about different types of people, how they talk. Even starting in Kentucky, when you get to Dayton, Ohio, they have another lingo — then the Carolinas and Georgia, too. So I got a pretty good education traveling.

That might be even better than a textbook education.

I guess moving around, you learn more about the world than you would sitting still.

How did you develop your own singing style? Who did you learn from?

If you wanted to sing bluegrass, if you didn’t have a voice like Bill Monroe or Lester Flatt, you just couldn’t sing bluegrass. I lived by the Grand Ole Opry — I listened to it all the time in those days — and I noticed that one guy sounded different from the other guy. Ernest Tubb or Eddie Arnold, how different they sounded. I got tied into Ernest Tubb. I liked his songs and his singing. When I first started singing, my voice was kind of low. I could sing Ernest Tubb songs in the same key. And I had never heard anything in the world about bluegrass. The only thing I knew about bluegrass was that they called Kentucky bluegrass country. So, in listening to Ernest Tubb, I got to know all his songs.

Anyway, one day I was singing and I noticed my voice couldn’t go that low. About 16 years old, my voice just went up. And I thought, “Man, what’s happened here?” I could sing the songs, but had to put them in a higher pitch. So that put me right out of singing Ernest Tubb songs like him. Then one day I was listening to the Opry and I heard something that jumped out at me. Boy, I thought I had it on the wrong station. I heard something come through that radio and I asked my dad, “What is that?” He said, “That’s the banjo.” I had never heard of a banjo. And I couldn’t figure out how they were doing that. I kept listening every Saturday night, over and over, and didn’t hear that sound again. Finally, one night, I heard it, playing that same song, same melody as the one I had heard some weeks before that. And the announcer said, “That was Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys with Earl Scruggs playing the banjo.” That was the first sign of the word “bluegrass” connected with music I had ever heard. Then I got to singing Bill Monroe songs and I figured out I could sing them in the same key he did.

So my voice changed and went high like that. By the time I got out of the Marine Corps — I had already been playing with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers in Bluefield, West Virginia, and Carter and Ralph Stanley before the military — so when I came back, I started with my brother singing Bill Monroe songs again. Flatt and Scruggs came along, and I got started singing their songs, too. But I never stopped singing country songs, either. I still sing Ernest Tubb songs today. On this new CD, I did Eddie Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away,” so I still sing country songs; I just sing them the way I feel like singing them and in my key. I guess that put me in a bluegrass class and a country class. My voice, once it got to where it was going, when I was 18 or 19 years old, it just stayed high pitch and hasn’t changed yet.

You were talking about how, even in your early days, you were playing Elvis songs and learning from electric guitar players like Hank Snow. One thing I appreciate about your music is how you always tried new sounds in the studio and new types of songs. You added drums to bluegrass early on. What did people think when you were experimenting and not trying to be traditional?

I never did try and sound like anyone else. I tried to sound like Bill Monroe at one time, and Ernest Tubb, but I found I couldn’t do that. I had a fiddle player come up to me one time and say, “Son, if I had a voice like you, I wouldn’t sing a Bill Monroe tune or Flatt and Scruggs, either one. Just sing like you feel.”

Who was it that told you that?

His name was Benny Sims. He was a fiddle player with Flatt and Scruggs, at that time. If you’re familiar with their Mercury cuts, that’s him. Yeah, we played a show with Lester and Earl, and he heard me sing. Back then, if we did a show with Bill Monroe, well, we’d sing Lester and Earl’s songs. We wouldn’t do Bill in front of him, cause that would make him mad. And if we sang with Lester and Earl, we’d sing Bill’s songs. But we worked a couple shows with Flatt and Scruggs, and of course we sang all Bill’s songs. Well, Benny heard me sing and he called me over by myself and said, “I’d like to tell you something.” He told me, he said, “If I had a voice like yours, I’d never be caught singing a Bill Monroe song or a Flatt and Scruggs song. I’d be you.” He said, “Just sing like you feel.” So I got to singing Jimmie Dickens and relying more on Ernest Tubb songs, Eddie Arnold. That’s what got me going — country songs. I’d always liked country songs. I never programmed myself to be all bluegrass or all country or all rock, or whatever. I just never did program myself any one thing, cause I could sing anything. If I wanted to sing it, I’d find the way I’d want to do it, and I’d do it.

Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

Playing with Purpose: An Interview with Leigh Gibson

Posted on by Editor

The Gibson Brothers are one of the tried-and-true mainstays of the contemporary bluegrass scene, and it’s no wonder why: With masterful, Monroe-style instrumentation and suits to match, they’re the picture of a sharp-dressed, classic bluegrass band. But their background — in the world of traditional bluegrass music, anyway — could hardly be more unorthodox.

Eric and Leigh Gibson grew up on a dairy farm in Upstate New York just a couple miles from the Canadian border. Gritty, mid-’80s New York City was only a few hours South, but they felt like outsiders in their home state’s cultural capital. They were raised on their father’s regimen of classic country music and daily farm labor. Their farmhouse got Canadian public access channels instead of MTV — Gordon Lightfoot instead of Michael Jackson, with a healthy dose of French Canadian fiddle music thrown in. Turns out the Stanley Brothers and Lester Flatt’s stories of rural life made them feel right at home. They didn’t miss the mainstream stuff.

But when they traveled South, they felt like outsiders all over again. At some traditional bluegrass festivals — places where “drink” and “bank” make a tidy rhyme, and the stars and stripes may be the second-most common red, white, and blue flag — they represented a special subset of foreigners called “Yankees.” Even there, they quickly gained respect. A boatload of IBMA Awards soon added the exclamation point. Their bluegrass success is a testament to their farm-style hard work and that timeless synergy of two brothers singing close harmonies. Also — sorry to bury the lede here — they write really good original songs. That probably has something to do with it.

I planned my conversation with Leigh Gibson expecting to talk about traditional bluegrass. Based on their appearance and the festivals they play — and, yes, their reverence for old bluegrass music — they’ve been neatly pre-categorized as “traditional” bluegrass. But when I listened to their record I had to remind myself: The easy distinction between traditionalists and progressives is as convenient as it is misleading. Like the Steep Canyon Rangers or Balsam Range or, for that matter, the Del McCoury Band, the Gibson Brothers only look the part of rigid traditionalists. They write songs reminiscent of Robbie Robertson or Bruce Springsteen just as often as the Stanley Brothers. Sure, they have a banjo in the band, but the interesting part is what they’re doing to expand the vocabulary of their chosen form.

Being a bluegrass band doesn’t make them just a bluegrass band. The Gibson Brothers are a good reminder that some folks with mandolins and banjos should be considered, first, as a great band, regardless of genre. Then you can call them bluegrass.

Let’s talk about In the Ground. I’ve been jamming to this for the last few days. It’s a great record. This is the first album of original tunes since 2011, right?

Right. And it’s the first one that’s all original. Eric and I, early on, were covering Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe, plus doing songs of the popular bands of the day, just trying to figure it out. As a really young picker — I don’t know if this is true for everybody — I didn’t have as much to say. I’d write a little bit, but it wasn’t the same thing it is today, where you feel like you have something to say and you can stand behind it after you say it.

So how did you make that process happen? How did you graduate from playing classic songs and learning to play other people’s licks to having your own sound and something to say?

As far as the sound goes, we were so far removed geographically from the center of things. Growing up in northern New York State, there wasn’t really a template. We didn’t come up in someone else’s band and then start our own band. I don’t want to call it peer pressure, because that’s not what it is — but we weren’t as affected by the question of what is bluegrass, what is the contemporary sound of bluegrass, because we weren’t picking with anybody who had any idea what that meant. We were mostly playing with French Canadians at fiddle contests who liked the banjo. We would go into Quebec into these jam sessions at someone’s house — some of these folks didn’t even speak English. It was a different sort of gateway into the music profession, for sure. But it was really cool sitting there singing old country songs, classic country from the ’50s and early ’60s. So we went North first before we went South.

I hadn’t thought of the geographic closeness of French Canada and the fiddle tradition there, but that makes a lot of sense.

We were exposed to Canadian television and radio because we grew up in such close proximity to the border. We were just two miles away. Behind our family farm, which started in 1860, there was nothing but woods and then the border. So we grew up watching Canadian television and we were exposed to a lot of Canadian artists — Gordon Lightfoot and others. And we might see some Opry stars on Canadian television, like Charlie Louvin or the Osborne Brothers, who had a bluegrass pedigree.

So this was the mid-’80s. What else was in the air at the time? Was it Michael Jackson and Cyndi Lauper? Were you exposed to that mainstream stuff, too?

Growing up like we did where we did, we didn’t have MTV. My wife is just a year-and-a-half younger than me and she grew up in downstate New York. She was totally influenced by MTV and that part of the culture. But not us. What I was hearing for rock ‘n’ roll was coming out of Montreal.

So for a lot of people your age — growing up on MTV — bluegrass might have felt exotic and old fashioned. But it sounds like it was closer to what you’d been exposed to as a kid, with the Canadian fiddle music, Canadian radio, and old country music.

Yeah, I didn’t feel so much like an oddball in bluegrass. At that point in time, if you were listening to country radio as we were, just when we were getting into the music — that’s when [Ricky] Skaggs was breaking out. All those influences from his bluegrass pedigree came into his country songs. It was a validation happening, in my mind, for what we were trying to do with these instruments — learning banjo and guitar and singing Flatt & Scruggs and Monroe. So I wasn’t missing the Cyndi Lauper stuff.

So even though you were in the same state as New York City, this cultural capitol of the world producing all these big modern stars, you felt closer to Canadian fiddle music and old country music. But then bluegrass was composed of mostly Southerners, so you were kind of both culturally inside and outside.

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. At the time, I didn’t feel like we were outside. You have to remember, we were living on a dairy farm. My father worked that farm 365 days a year, so we didn’t travel much. We’d find bluegrass radio stations — it was back in the cassette days. We would record a Sunday night radio broadcast out of Ottawa. We didn’t get the station really well, but at night in the summertime you could get it. So we’d hit record and listen to those shows throughout the week on that cassette.

That reminds me of stories you hear old bluegrass musicians tell. Folks would gather around the family radio in the living room and listen to the Grand Ole Opry. Why do you think y’all were drawn to country and bluegrass radio?

Once you get up above Poughkeepsie, New York gets really country. We were six hours north of New York City. They’re country people up there. There are mining communities. I think it’s more closely related to Appalachia than people would think.

So the North/South divide is the wrong spectrum to think about. It’s more the urban/rural divide?

I think so. I was never apprehensive about going to the South, but every time I cross the George Washington Bridge, I still get a tightness in my chest, like, “Oh, boy! Here we go!”

[Laughs] Even as a native New Yorker.

New York is exciting if you’re not bringing a car, but I still feel that way. Like that is a different world.

Sure, but thinking of that North/South divide, I mean, if I took a friend from New York City to a rural North Carolina bluegrass festival with funnel cake and chewing tobacco and banjo music, they would be like, “Where the hell am I?”

True, true. And I sometimes forget because I’ve been to so many of those things. I do remember the first couple Southern Virginia festivals we played. You just couldn’t feel like you fit in, because — it was our first time being around Confederate flags flying at every campsite, and the only compliment you’d get is, “You guys are okay. For Yankees.”

Well, I guess that’s a really high compliment for some people!

[Laughs] Yeah, and they meant it! You know, the second or third time they’d see you they would come up and say, “Tell me true, now, you’re mama is from down here, right?”

That’s awesome. So, in other words, you passed the test. You weren’t dismissed for being Yankees because you got the music.

And when we first started, we were paying tribute to their music more than our own. Obviously we’d sing a little different, since we grew up talking around different people, learning how to speak and sing from different people. But we were singing Bill Monroe or Stanley Brothers or Jim & Jesse, so we didn’t introduce ourselves to them immediately. We didn’t know who we were at the time.

So, at that point, you started developing as a bluegrass band by hanging around bluegrass bands in the South? That’s how you developed your sound, too?

I think it was unavoidable that the rhythmic feel of, say, the Lonesome River Band or Nashville Bluegrass Band would creep into my guitar playing or Mike Barber’s bass playing. We listened to Sam Bush a lot. Of course, New Grass Revival was on country radio in the late ’80s. And Peter Rowan was a big one. Every one of those bands have great vocals, great songs, and can play. We were trying to figure it out like anybody would. Like when a rock band first hears the Beatles. They’re going to try and emulate that sound. So we did the same thing.

What are you listening for when you hear a great bluegrass band? Or, rather, what is it that makes a great bluegrass band great?

I guess the same could be said for any kind of music, what I’d listen for. It’s almost like you’re listening for purpose. There are people with great voices, but you still can’t stay engaged with what they’re singing about or what they’re saying. It doesn’t feel like it demands to be listened to. But look at Willie Nelson. He’s not the best singer in the world, but he makes you believe it. Del McCoury has that. There’s purpose there. You believe what they’re singing about.

Is it a question of authenticity?

Yeah, maybe. They’re authentic for sure. And the band doesn’t have to be full of the best pickers on each instrument, if it has that collective thing that makes you sit up and take notice.

Where do you think the Gibson Brothers’ sounds fits into the full picture of modern bluegrass?

I think we’re seen by most people as being traditional bluegrass. It has something to do with our configuration — we have mandolin, fiddle, guitar, banjo, and upright bass. That’s the instrumentation we’ve chosen, and the people we’re surrounded by, but I still don’t really approach it like a bluegrass band. It’s become more about us and our story. More about the catalogue of songs we’ve written and play at shows. I think those songs would still hold up if we had different instrumentation, because we believe in the songs so much.

So you’re saying that a bluegrass band is chasing after something authentic and honest, like any kind of band. They just happen to have fiddles and mandolins and banjos.

It’s true. Because those are the instruments we learned. What if my father had had a trumpet under the bed instead of a banjo that we could’ve learned on? It was a mix of timing and location that put us where we are today.

Why did a northern New York dairy farmer have a banjo?

He wanted to learn to play. He liked a lot of kinds of music — he had Mac Wiseman and Lester Flatt records. You know, that old stuff like, “’Tis Sweet to Be Remembered.” Classic stuff. He liked Celtic music a lot, too. At some point, the dairy farmer who was enjoying Celtic music and a little bit of country decided he was going to order a banjo from Montgomery Ward. So he did.

I noticed one of the songs on the new record, “Everywhere I Go,” was co-written with Eric’s son, Kelly, so it seems like he’s maybe following in your footsteps. Would you encourage your kids to become working musicians?

If it would make them happy, I wouldn’t discourage them. Let me put it that way. It would please me if I could make music with my children. But here’s the father in me — only if they approached it like a professional and worked hard, not just because they want to sleep in until noon. The way we grew up on the farm, it was hard work every day. They’re not learning that first hand, exactly — I mean, we’re not splitting wood to heat the house — but I think about how to show them what hard work can do for you. Hopefully they recognize that example in our career, that it’s hard work and it pays off.

I’m thinking of the title track, “In the Ground,” where you’re lamenting the loss of the family farm. That family farm seems like a big part of your story, going way back to your grandparents and great-grandparents, etc. Is that what you miss about that lifestyle, the ethic of hard work that came along with it?

For sure. The farm teaches you that hard work doesn’t guarantee success. You can’t control the weather. The music industry is like that. There are things you can’t control. But if you don’t do the work, you won’t have any success. That’s the best thing our dad gave us, a really strong work ethic …

When the farm was still there and my father was still working it, it was fresh in my mind. That life was still there to me. Then my father passed away, so that connection was frayed, and then you feel more and more disconnected from that life. Suddenly you start looking for it, and you’re a couple of decades removed from what was already a bygone era that we were living. Now I can’t find that connection. I don’t miss having to do it every day, 365 days a year, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Seems like that feeling really connects you to a tradition in bluegrass songs. You know, longing for the old cabin home, reminiscing about Uncle Pen — or a newer song like “Old Home Place” written in the ’70s. Mourning that connection to the land and to tradition that’s been lost.

Yeah, you think about Monroe writing “On My Way Back to the Old Home,” missing home when he was in Chicago living a different life. That’s kind of what I’m doing. If that farm in that same location still could’ve provided a living for the next generation, one of us probably would’ve taken it over. There’d be no Gibson Brothers. So it’s not a lifestyle I would’ve run away from, if my father hadn’t told us from an early age that it wasn’t going to happen.

Why wasn’t it possible anymore?

Back in the day, you could have three cows and consider yourself a dairy farmer, if you were selling a little bit of milk. You didn’t need much land. But in the ’80s and ’90s, the milk prices were falling as costs were going up. In order to stay in business, a farmer had to grow and grow, adding hundreds of cows. Then you’re deeper in with the bank and milk prices drop again, so what do you do? … When my father came along, he had come to the end of the line of what was productive and profitable. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just the way it happened. Sorry, I didn’t mean for this to become a lesson in the dairy industry …

No, it seems like important background. It strikes me that you’re almost telling the quintessential story of the American South and the way it was defined by change in the middle of the 20th century — but you grew up on the Canadian border in the 1980s. That’s wild.

True, yeah. That’s probably true. I think we have a lot in common with Appalachia historically.

Thinking of that track, “In the Ground,” and the tradition in bluegrass music of longing for an earlier time, I can imagine some kid from New York City or California who doesn’t know about bluegrass hearing that nostalgia for a better, bygone American era and being reminded of hateful, exclusive political rhetoric that also talks about getting back to a golden era. How do you convince them that’s not what you’re talking about?

I feel like our music … yes, it’s about the good old days and, yes, it has some nostalgia, but it’s our nostalgia. Although it has some common ground with traditional bluegrass, we really do sing about us. But how would I convince some 22-year-old kid in New York City? That’s a good question.

So you’re telling an honest story that comes from your own life. Maybe that’s all we can ask of any artist.

Yeah, that’s what we’ve grown into. Being our age, in our mid 40s now, we’re looking back and realizing what we’ve lost. That comes later when you get older and have children. Earlier, when you asked about the acts we love in bluegrass, it was about feeling like their songs meant something to them, that they were being authentic. That’s what I hope we’re being. We’ve spent a long time becoming us. It’s all we really know how to do.