John Jorgenson Revisits His Southern California Bluegrass Roots

John Jorgenson is not only a man of many talents, he’s a musician with many interests. Perhaps you’ve heard his gypsy jazz, or remember when the Desert Rose Band — a neo-trad country group that included Jorgenson, Chris Hillman and other luminaries of the California country and country-rock scene — was riding high at radio, or perhaps you saw him playing an indispensable role in Elton John’s touring band. As Jim Reeves might have put it, he’s done a lot in his time.

Even so, you might not know that John Jorgenson is also a bluegrass guy — unless, that is, you saw him on the road with Earl Scruggs during the legend’s final touring years, or happened to buy his 2015 box set, Divertuoso, which included a disc of bluegrass alongside one of gypsy jazz and another of eclectic, electric music. Earlier this year, that disc was issued as a standalone album, From the Crow’s Nest. Featuring the regular (and equally eclectic) members of the John Jorgenson Bluegrass Band (J2B2) — Herb Pedersen, Mark Fain and Jon Randall — it’s a delicious collection that scatters well-known songs (Pedersen’s “Wait a Minute”; Randall’s “Whiskey Lullaby” co-write; and the Dillards’ “There Is a Time”) among a trove of newer material, much of it written or co-written by Jorgenson.

From the Crow’s Nest ought to go some distance in alerting wider audiences to a new standard-bearer for a style of bluegrass that, while its roots trace back to the early 1950s, hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Though Southern California is a long way from the Grand Ole Opry and other spawning grounds for the original bluegrass sound, it served in the post-World War II years as a magnet for job seekers from both sides of the Mississippi River, and that meant bluegrass pickers, too — and so, when we met up, that made for a good starting point for our conversation.

Listening to your album reminds me that you are a product of a Southern California roots music scene that included bluegrass from early on. How did you get exposed to it?

Probably the first time was when a band came to my high school and I thought they were from another planet, because I’d never heard anything so fast in my life. I played music already — I played classical music, and rock — but that was sort of an anomaly, and then I didn’t really see it again for a while.

I came to it sort of in a backwards way. I had a scholarship to the Aspen Music Festival. They brought me in as a jazz bass player; they wanted to start a jazz program. And I accepted the scholarship as long as I could also be in their classical program, playing the bassoon. Well, I had my tuition paid for, and my room paid for, but I didn’t have money for meals. So I needed to figure out how to make some money, and then I saw an ad that said: Wanted: strict jazz player for immediate gigs. So I checked out an upright bass from the school and went to this audition. And they weren’t playing jazz — what they were playing was David Grisman’s first album. This was the summer of 1978, so this album was new. I’d never heard it.

So they’re playing all instrumental stuff and I thought, OK, I really like the sound, especially of that mandolin. I liked the flatpicking guitar, too. I was already a guitar player, but I just loved the mandolin. When I got home that summer, my neighbors had a Gibson A model and I borrowed it. Not too long after that, I ran into a friend who had been instructed to put together a band that could play bluegrass and Dixieland to cover two different areas of Disneyland. And he asked, “Hey, do you know anybody that could play bluegrass fiddle and Dixieland cornet?” And needing a job at the time, I said, “I can play mandolin and clarinet.”

And then I kind of learned backwards, whatever I could. I learned from New Grass Revival, and then Bill Monroe, and Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers, and the Osborne Brothers. And all the others — Tony Rice, Sam Bush, the Bluegrass Cardinals, whoever was playing around at the time. Larry Stephenson was playing with the Cardinals at that time, and I remember I was — I don’t want to say shy, but I’m shy around people I don’t know. And to me at the time, they were real bluegrass musicians and I was a pretender. I sort of felt an attitude from some people, too, but he was not like that at all. He was really friendly.

Did playing bluegrass at Disneyland motivate you to build connections with the larger bluegrass scene, or was it a standalone kind of gig?

Actually, when we first started, we were terrible! We learned three songs and then we’d play those, move to a different place and play them again. But everyone was ambitious, so we all practiced; we learned songs, we got better. And then we started to play out around Los Angeles. I think the first time we played out as an act, we opened for Jim & Jesse at McCabe’s [Guitar Shop]. There was also a venue called the Banjo Cafe, with bluegrass every night, on Lincoln [Boulevard] in Santa Monica. So the Cardinals played there; Berline, Hickman & Crary would play there; and touring acts, too — Ralph Stanley would play there. And a young Alison Brown, a young Stuart Duncan.

I know that there are a lot fans of Desert Rose Band among bluegrassers, and some gypsy jazz fans, too, but for a lot of people, you came onto the radar when you were going places with Earl Scruggs — 15 years ago, maybe? How’d that come about?

Actually, it was because of Brad Davis. He was playing with Earl, and we were kind of guitar geek friends. We ended up sitting next to each other on a plane one time, and were chatting, and he said, “I’m playing with Earl Scruggs,” and I said, “I’d love to do that.” He said, “You know, they like to have an electric guitar, maybe there might be a spot.” He really set that up for me.

I said, “OK, I’m happy to play electric guitar, but I would really love to play the mandolin.” So I would bring both, and if I played too much mandolin, Louise [Scruggs] would say, “John, don’t forget that electric guitar.” Then they said, “Don’t you play saxophone? We used to have that on a song called ‘Step It Up and Go.’” So I said, “What about the clarinet? It’s not quite so loud.” And as it turns out, Earl said his favorite musician was Pete Fountain, and he loved the clarinet. So every time after that, Gary Scruggs would call me up: “Dad says don’t forget the moneymaker.”

The J2B2 record was originally part of a box set — a disc of gypsy jazz, one of bluegrass, one of electric stuff. So you have these different musical itches, and some musicians would choose to try to synthesize these things into something new and different and unique, but you seem to have an interest in keeping them each their own thing. Why is that?

It’s because, to me, the things that I love about bluegrass are what make it bluegrass. I love the trio harmony, I love these instruments, the way each instrument functions in the band. And I love gypsy jazz, and some folks might say they’re closely related — they’re string band music, they both have acoustic bass and fiddle and acoustic guitar, and each instrument has a role. There are a lot of similarities, but the things that I like about each one are what make them different. I think each music has an accent, and a history and a perspective, and I really want to be true to those, because those are the elements that touch my heart.

I feel like what I do and what this group does is quite traditional, compared to a lot of people. It’s not jamgrass. It’s not Americana. It’s bluegrass. There are folk elements, and all those other things, of course. But really, my touchstones for that style of music are all the classics: the trio harmonies of the Osborne Brothers, and the slightly softer Seldom Scene and Country Gentlemen sounds, the early Dillards, the Country Gazette, and the whole Southern California sound… you don’t think of Tony Rice’s roots as Southern California, but they are.

And probably at one point, if I could have sounded like I was from Kentucky, I wouldn’t have minded that. But at the end of the day, well, I love Bill Monroe as much as the next guy, and I’m going to take inspiration, but I feel like I’m part of a lineage of bluegrass that’s just as viable as any other, and why not have that sound be a part of me?


Photo credit: Mike Melnyk

Dismissing the Suits: A Conversation With The Milk Carton Kids (1 of 2)

The Milk Carton Kids have been about nothing if not duality. That’s down to their very name, which evokes both comedy and tragedy, and their stage presence, in which some of the stateliest and most delicate songs possible are broken up by riotously deadpan banter. They’ve always been about duo-ality, too — two voices and guitars, gathered around a single microphone, contemplative Everlys for the 21st century, unaugmented by anything that would have seemed rank or strange to the Stanley Brothers back in the 1950s.

But now, suddenly, almost everything you know about the Milk Carton Kids is wrong — at least the formal elements. They’ve dropped the formal suits and picked up separate mics… and a full band, too, while they were at it. Could this be their Dylan-goes-electric moment? Not to worry — there probably won’t be any cries of “Judas!” greeting their fifth album, All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do, or a touring ensemble that no longer fits in a single front seat. It’s not just that the new material is superb — although that never hurts — but that the fuller arrangements sound like a natural progression in what is still scaled for intimacy.

Before we get to the Kids, we queried producer Joe Henry for his thoughts about how necessary or smooth the transition was, going from duo to band configuration. He admitted there was at least the fleeting consideration of a backlash — “I don’t imagine it possible that the Kids weren’t individually and collectively pondering the response of an audience that has been so steadfast in their devotions to the band’s brazen and brave duo commitment to date.” But, Henry says, “I saw no evidence that the looming question gave them any pause… And no one involved that I’m aware of had any doubt that such a shift was now not only timely but imperative: they’d reached a point where the color of the light, so to speak, needed to reflect their growth as musicians and songwriters––this batch of songs being so particularly strong as to invite, nay, insist on a presentation equal in its evolution.”

The producer adds that the Kids are “still very much a duo in ethos and execution. There is real drama in the intimacy of Ken and Joey pushing up to a single mic in symbiotic solitude, and it was important to all three of us going in that that image remain intact ––even as new sonic weather kicked up and swirled around them.”

When we sat down with Kenneth Pattengale and Joey Ryan at a Van Nuys coffee shop in June, we found that off-stage they’re just like they are on-stage… only more so.

As part of changing things up, you’ve decided this is also the right time to go for street clothes in concert, right?

Joey: Talk about decisions that were never actually made.

Kenneth: Yeah, that one’s still TBD. I mean, we get on the tour bus tonight. Joey’s near his closet, but I didn’t bring anything from Nashville, so if I’m wearing a suit tomorrow, I’m gonna have to go to the Men’s Warehouse in Tucson. The advice I’ve gotten from literally everybody on earth is that they’re gonna be saddened to not see me in a suit, and that we should be wearing them. But… f— ‘em. [Laughs.]

Joey: Well, I never wanted to wear a suit. The reason that we wore suits in the beginning was as a part of a collection of survival techniques.

Kenneth: Given your druthers, you’d dress like an ass-clown, that’s why. And you can quote me on that!

Joey: [Sighs.] See, how can people not love us? No, it was a part of a suite of survival techniques that we developed when we were playing in very…

Kenneth: Techniques or tactics?

Joey: Techniques.

Kenneth: There are survival techniques? I think they’re mostly tactics. It’s interesting to hear you’ve developed survival technique. It sounds like something they’d sell in the Valley.

Joey: Those words are synonyms. It’s a survival tactic and a technique. In any case, in the early days, we were playing this really sonically fragile show, and the only places that would book us were like the smallest rock club or bar or coffee shop sometimes in town. In a dive bar, we would wear suits to visually indicate that it was just something different than what they would maybe expect to see in that room, so that you could have some chance for the first couple minutes of people taking note and going, “Alright, what is this gonna be? I’m going to shut up and listen for one song.” You at least have a song. You have that chance to get ‘em to stop talking loudly in the bars that they’re used to talking in and maybe pay attention to the show, because our show required that.

It’s not like an attention-seeking preciousness. It’s like a physical, sonic fragility that we had, because we mic-ed our guitars, and you just can’t turn it up that loud. The perfect example is how we played at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio, many times. It’s a great place but the beer fridge is louder than we could get the PA, so we had to ask the bar to unplug their beer fridge, and they were so accommodating. I don’t know what happened to the beer. And they would also bring in rows of folding chairs, which literally no other band would ever even ask them to do. But we always wanted to be in a theater where people would be able to receive what we were trying to present, and the suits were just part of that. Now, with the band…

Kenneth: You’re gonna go back to flip-flops!

Joey: With the band… [Long, exasperated pause.] See, people always say we’re antagonistic. I think it’s just him. No, with the band, we don’t have the sonic fragility that we had before. … And so the whole misdirection of wearing a suit in unexpected places is not required. That was a long way of saying: I’m excited to not wear suits.

How early or late in the process did you decide to go with a band for this album?

Joey: We decided three years ago in Dusseldorf, Germany that we weren’t going to make the next album as a duo… It was just a moment. It wasn’t like we even talked it out. [To Kenneth:] You were like, “I think we should probably do the full-band thing next.” And I was like, “Oh, thank God you said that, because I’ve been worrying about how to bring that up.” But you always break the ice.

Kenneth: Yeah. I’m a talker.

I’m always interested in how people who are identified with a very specific thing decide to change it up… or not. A lot of times, people back away from giving up the thing that people identify as unique.

Kenneth: It’s always risky to go down these philosophical rabbit holes in interviews like this, because invariably they come out not reading exactly as intended, but I’ll go anyway, because who gives a shit? One of our blind spots -– and I think it’s a common blind spot for artists specifically — is that Joey and I for a long time had a complete inability to understand what was good about our band, while also knowing it in our core. And it’s necessary. If we knew what that was, I think that we would lean into it, and it would get tired very quickly and wouldn’t mature and evolve.

But for the first year and a half of our band, Joey and I didn’t realize that we were good just because when we sang together, it sounded like something that people either had never heard before or hadn’t heard in a while, or it bore a trueness that was just apparent in its physics. Joey and I thought that it was a result of all the hard work we do about making sure our harmonies are tight or about phrasing or about all these marginal things that we quibble over. You really lose sight of what the fundamental thread is that actually is the reason the whole thing exists. And we still have that blind spot. There’s something that’s just innate in what you do from the beginning that we take for granted.

So what is the thing you have the blind spot about, that your audience totally gets?

Kenneth: To put it really simply, when Joey and I sing together, it reminds people of Simon and Garfunkel, the way they actually physically combine, like alchemy in the air, or the way the Everlys did it, or the Louvin Brothers. When Joey and I sing together, there is some physical chemistry that is actually, like, we have to try hard to f— it up. And we have from time to time, but we’ve got an advantage coming out of the gate to other people singing harmony together, in that there’s something that just works about it.

And then there’s a similar shared vision in our writing and stylistic choices, and even essential life administration, where, outside of a few blowouts where we figured out what the problem was, the way they rub together results in this strange band that people haven’t kicked out of life yet.

Read the second half of this interview.


Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

New Freedom Blues: A Conversation with Town Mountain

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

MIXTAPE: Sons of Bill’s Songs by Other Brothers (and Sisters)

“What is it like to be in a band with your brothers?” is always the introductory question we’re asked in interviews. Sadly, I never really have any salacious stories of drama or rivalry. I just love, trust, and respect my brothers, and we share a deep history. There’s just no one I’d rather be in a band with. — James Wilson

The Louvin Brothers – “The Great Atomic Power”

The Louvin brothers made such terrifying and beautiful music. They are the first band that comes to mind when I think of the famous Tom Waits quote – “beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.” Their gospel music can seem so superficially brimstone Baptist but that’s all just a front for brothers who really knew the depths. You can hear it in their voices. Ira was a wild man – his wife shot him four times. Their gospel music still gives me chills and strangely seems to increase in depth and staying power with the passing decades.

The Beach Boys – “Warmth of the Sun”

This is band that definitively kept us from laying claim to “The Wilson Brothers.” We grew up with their music from my mom’s record collection. I know the term genius is thrown about too often, but Brian Wilson deserves it. He did all of the writing, all of the elaborate vocal and instrumental arrangements, and yet completely abandoned the glory of performing live at the height of their careers. Such a pop music purist.

The Replacements – “Left of the Dial”

We don’t often think of the Replacements as a brother band, since Paul Westerberg is considered the main artistic force of the group, but I think that Bobby and Tommy Stinson are a big part of what made this band so legendarily great. They gave the band this shambolic-fearless-Midwestern-blue collar front which Paul wore like a mask, giving him the courage to be the face of the Replacements. It always seemed that the Replacements “thing” — the drinking, the self-defeating “fuck you” attitude — was all some sort of elaborate defense mechanism for a guy who was probably much too existentially sensitive to handle life without it. It’s this strange combination of ennui and bone-head rock and roll that made me fall in love with this band.

Lamb of God – “Walk With Me in Hell”

As Virginians we’ve got to give it up for Richmond’s Lamb of God. The Adler brothers manage to make virtuosic angry music that is completely free of pretension. We’re taking a band field trip to see them again this summer with Slayer on their farewell tour.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – “April Skies”

I just love this band. You could say they were the brothers that made me want to start a band but it’s more accurate to say they’re the band that made me want to have brothers.

The Stanley Brothers – “Are You Afraid to Die”

My dad loved the Stanley Brothers and we grew up with their songs long before I heard their recordings when bluegrass music came back into fashion in the early 2000s. Individually the Stanley Brothers voices are so raw and honest but when they sing together something altogether different happens—their voices take on this angelic purity. We learned how to sing harmony from a lot of these songs.

The National – “Fake Empire”

Matt Beringer is often the face and spokesman for this group, but I think it’s the two sets of brothers that make them one of my generation’s greatest rock bands, instead of a summer art project. The depth of compositions and chemistry between the brothers is so compelling. You’ve got to experience it live.

The Everly Brothers – “Bye Bye Love”

We grew up with the songs from the Everly Brothers and it’s still some of the best pop music ever recorded. I find myself listening to the Everly Brothers when I want to listen to the Louvin Brothers, but don’t want to hear so much about Satan. It’s a rare occurrence but it does happen.

AC/DC – “Thunderstruck”

Angus got most of the air time but Malcolm held it all together. Everything you could ever possibly want from two guitars.

Dawes – “That Western Skyline”

When you see this band live you can really detect a special chemistry between Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith. It’s such a cool thing to see a band whose primary trust and chemistry is between the drums and vocals. It anchors the song and creates such a cool space and freedom.

Radiohead – “The National Anthem”

Jonny and Colin greenwood are such masters of their respective instruments. So much of what breaks up bands with brothers is ego, but all of their parts feel so perfectly and completely egoless. They are both of one mind in simply serving the music.

Haim – “Falling”

This band gives me faith in modern pop music. It’s so important to be reminded in 2018 that pop music doesn’t have to be terrible.


Sons of Bill’s new album, Oh God Ma’am, will be released on June 29. Photo credit: Anna Webber

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Bobby Osborne

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.

3×3: My Politic on Time Traveling, Tree Climbing, and the Stanley Brothers

Artist: Kaston Guffey (of My Politic)
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Latest Album: 12 Kinds of Lost
Personal Nicknames:
Nick Pankey: Snickolias Mozart
Jen Starsinic: Jen Stars in it!
Wilson Conroy: Willie Peyton
Will Cafaro: Will Cafero (We spelled his name wrong on the back of a record once …)
Kaston Guffey: I don’t think I have one …

If you could safely have any animal in the world as a pet, which would you choose?

Miniature giraffe. Like, a dog-sized giraffe.

Do your socks always match?

Not a chance, I’m colorblind.

If you could have a superpower, what would you choose?

Time travel, if that counts.

#fishin

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Which describes you as a kid — tree climber, video gamer, or book reader?

Tree climber

Who was the best teacher you ever had — and why?

Jaime Carter. He wasn’t a “school” teacher, but he did teach us how to make records on our own. We made three with him in high school. Also Mr. Davidson and Mr. Roberts, Nick and my choir teachers. Their passion for music was amazing.

What’s your favorite city?

We’ve had an incredible four years here in Nashville, so I guess Nashville, for now.

Tonights stage at Urban roots farm. Springfield MO. 😀

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Boots or sneakers?

Sneakers

Which brothers do you prefer — Avett, Wood, Stanley, Comatose, or Louvin?

The Stanley Brothers

Head or heart?

Depends on my mood. A healthy dose of both.


Photo credit: Ross Jaynes

MIXTAPE: Kacy & Clayton’s Traditional Folk Favorites

The traditional folk realm spans several countries and numerous styles. But Canadian folk duo Kacy & Clayton know their way around the terrain. That’s why we asked them to gather up a bundle of their favorites. Taking a break from promoting their new album, The Siren’s Song, Clayton answered the call.

Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys — “Ida Red”

This song has its origins in the country square dancing tradition. Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys recorded it in 1938, with the lead vocal provided by Tommy Duncan. I once read that Tommy Duncan got his job with the Texas Playboys through a series of auditions that eliminated 64 contenders down to two — Tommy Duncan and a cross-eyed man who sound just like him. Subsequently, Duncan got the job.

Bert Jansch — “The Waggoner’s Lad”

The first track on the first Bert Jansch album I heard (Jack Orion). That plunky, buzzy guitar sound you hear in the left speaker has had a lasting impression on my own playing. It was only a couple years ago that I learned John Renbourn was the one playing guitar and Bert’s on the banjo.

Steeleye Span — “The Lowlands of Holland”

Gay Woods sings this Scottish tune on Steeleye Span’s 1970 debut album, Hark! The Village Wait. It is a dramatic story of a young lady mourning the death of her husband who died in the navy.

Henry Thomas — “Arkansas”

Something about Henry Thomas’s guitar style has always mystified me. I never tire of hearing him plunk away on bass runs and slap out those big thumb strums on every beat.

The Stanley Brothers — “Mother Left Me Her Bible”

The Stanley Brothers at their very best. Carter on the soaring lead vocal, Ralph taking the tenor, and George Shuffler singing baritone and picking the guitar triplets. I don’t know how many songs they recorded about their mother, but I think it’s around 11.

Willie O’Winsbury — “Anne Briggs”

I find this song very peculiar. The king meets the boy who impregnated his daughter out of wedlock: “And it is no wonder,” said the king, “that my daughter’s love you did win. If I was a woman as I am a man, my bedfellow you would have been.”

Ron Kane & Skip Gorman — “If Your Saddle Is Good and Tight”

Despite growing up on a cow ranch and seeing working cowboys regularly, I’ve never been too keen on riding and roping myself. However, our friend Mike Tod (Calgary, AB) turned me onto the music of Carl T. Sprague, the Original Singing Cowboy, and I’ve since developed an obsession with cowboy songs. I love the humorous side of this old song and the style in which Ron Kane sings it.

Davy Graham — “Mustapha”

Davy Graham is my favourite, and certainly the most influential British acoustic guitar player of the 1960s. I’m not sure where he sourced this song, but I know it has roots in both the Mediterranean and Middle East.

Cilla Fisher — “Blue Bleezin’ Blind Drunk”

Topic Records included this on their 70th anniversary compilation, Three Score and Ten. The title got my attention, and Cilla Fisher’s intense diction and phrasing had me hanging on every line.

Peter Bellamy — “A-Roving on a Winter’s Night”

Peter Bellamy is undoubtedly my favourite singer of traditional material. Though he typically sang songs from his home county of Norfolk, he learned “A-Roving on a Winter’s Night” from a Doc Watson recording. Bellamy’s version of the song is a rewarding homecoming to Britain, after a couple centuries of transformation in the Appalachians.  

The Balfa Brothers — “‘Tit galop pour Mamou”

I love Cajun things and I love these guys.

Nic Jones — “Bonny Light Horseman”

Nic Jones is a master of melody and phrase. His guitar playing and singing are so perfectly unified, hearing him is like being struck by a tidal wave of musicality.

Incredible String Band — “Black Jack Davy”

The origins of this folk song can be traced back to Greece in the 4th century B.C. My favourite version of the last few centuries was made in 1970 by the Incredible String Band.

Jean Ritchie — “False Sir John”

The plain, innocent voice of Jean Ritchie perfectly explains the scandal of this European tale.

The Green River Boys featuring Glen Campbell — “Brown’s Ferry Blues”

For a good part of last year, “Witchita Lineman” was the song my alarm clock played. That Bass VI solo really fired me up for the day. Before his days of international celebrity, Glen Campbell made a couple unsuccessful bluegrass records for Capitol. This song’s from his debut LP, Big Bluegrass Special.

Shirley Collins & the Albion Country Band — “Poor Murdered Woman”

A straightforward re-telling of hunters searching through bushes with their dogs and coming across a woman’s decomposing body.

Playing with Purpose: An Interview with Leigh Gibson

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.

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Dale Ann Bradley

Artist: Dale Ann Bradley
Song: “Summer Breeze” (originally by Seals & Croft)
Album: Somewhere South of Crazy

Where did you first hear “Summer Breeze?”

Well, I probably heard it on the local radio station. And I can’t remember exactly what year it came out, but I know that I was small. Loved it then — of course I loved everything Seals & Croft done — but that song, for years and years, was just one of those you heard every time you went into a grocery store. You know, wherever you went, you’d hear that playing on the system there, as you still do today. I heard it probably, I guess, when it first came out. Just on the radio, though — static-y AM — ’cause I had trouble getting any kind of recorded music and that one might not have been available anywhere near me! [Laughs]

What do you think makes “Summer Breeze” a good bluegrass song?

Well, to me — now I don’t know what everybody else will feel about the song — but the song sounds Celtic to me, which would be the roots of this music in one way or another. It has so many roots — blues and what-have-you, jazz — and it’s made up of so many styles. Once I started listening as I got older, like I said, I first heard it when I was a little kid, when I got to listening to different banjo players and I got really into the Country Gentlemen, Seldom Scene, New Grass Revival, and started hearing different styles of banjo playing — then, of course, I knew Alison Brown would just deliver like she always does.

So the lyrics and the melody both, it was just haunting, it was minor. Everything about it, to me, was just like our traditional songs, it just had different instrumentation, but rhythmically and everything else. “Leave the curtains hanging in the window” — of course, we’d say “winder” — “in the evening on a Friday night. Little light shining through the window lets me know everything’s alright.” Well that’s, Lord, Bill Monroe and everybody’s written songs like that for years!

When it come time to do Somewhere South of Crazy, which that song is from, I never had done a cover tune before just to have one on an album. The fact that Alison Brown was going to play banjo on it had a whole lot to do with that, because I knew, like I said, that she would deliver what I heard in my head. Having Steve Gulley and Kim Fox doing harmony had a lot to do with it, too, because they’re like me — they like all styles of music. It’s not a traditional [harmony] stack, even though I hear all the tradition in it. It would take maybe people that were familiar with other styles of music for that harmony to be natural and comfortable for them. Not that anybody else couldn’t do it, but I was excited about those two.

Bluegrass artists have reworked popular songs and turned them into bluegrass songs since the beginning. Why do you think they do that?

I think it’s because it’s all entwined. You take those songs, you’re talking first generation, Lester and Earl even, people who had done “That’s Alright Mama,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” or “Johnny B. Goode” — I guess Jim and Jesse was famous for that. It was a blues thing — it’s the blues in all of that that connected it. And even the lyrics. Even though those lyrics came from wherever, Mississippi or wherever, it still rang true to the whole South — and the whole place where bluegrass started. Of course, it’s evolved and every demographic has latched onto it and it’s become everybody’s music. I think that’s why. The blues sound. It’s fun to play.

That’s actually my next question: What is your favorite thing about having this song in your set and performing this song?

If we’re talking about “Summer Breeze,” in particular, it brings back for so many people my age and older — because that song has been around a long, long time — it spans generations of listeners. It’s still familiar today. So I love to see that in their eyes like, “Oh, yeah, I love that song!” And I want to showcase what bluegrass musicians can do. And how it’s all so similar. It’s music. Some things may work better than others, but you know, I’ve found that mostly it will work.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

[Laughs] “It ain’t bluegrass” … Well, I’ve heard that for so many years! Now, I’ll tell you: I am hearing a different theory to that now, just from basically people my age and a little bit younger. You hear so many of the ones that were so dyed-in-the-wool — and God bless ‘em, and I’m dyed-in-the-wool, too — I just figured that it can expand.

Bluegrass artists, you can put them anywhere, any setting, and they’re gonna be able to execute anything. It is true. If people would just listen, they will see so many similarities. “Summer Breeze” is more than three chords, but listen to Bill Monroe’s “My Last Days on Earth” and compare that melody to “Summer Breeze.” Or any of that! The Stanley [Brothers] stuff, even though it’s more Appalachian, there’s still similarities. All people have to do is not purposefully block their thinking. And if you’re listening to it and it’s something you don’t like it, turn it off! [Laughs] People have to go a long way to say, “Well, I got up and left when this one got up, and I got up and left when this song was played.” Well, good! Leave and hush about it, ’cause there’s a bunch of people that liked it! [Laughs]

3×3: Jenny Gill on Pandas, Sandwiches, and the Stanley Brothers

Artist: Jenny Gill
Hometown: Franklin, TN
Latest Album: The House Sessions
Personal Nicknames: Tina

 

#todayinnashville #Brennin #RipOffTheRearview #werkin #bgv

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If you could safely have any animal in the world as a pet, which would you choose?

Panda

Do your socks always match?

Always

If you could have a superpower, what would you choose?

Flight

 

What a night this was. thank you @theshowroomnashville for this little number #Opry #thehousesessions #theshowroom

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What’s your go-to road food?

I’m a sucker for a Wendy’s spicy chicken sandwich

Who was the best teacher you ever had — and why?

Cecilia DeKraai. She was my high school honors English teacher. Her classes were never boring, and she made me believe in myself as a writer.

What’s your favorite city?

Aspen, Colorado

 

Sock it to me #Wolfpack #sunday #wolfpackweekend

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Boots or sneakers?

Boots, no question

Which brothers do you prefer — Avett, Wood, Stanley, Comatose, or Louvin?

Stanley

Head or heart?

❤️