(Editor’s Note: Today, award winning fiddlers Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland announce their upcoming debut duo album, Carter & Cleveland, out March 14. To celebrate the announcement and the project’s lead single, we’re premiering a special live performance of the track, “With A Vamp In The Middle,” from the fabled stage of the Grand Ole Opry.)
Artist:Jason Carter & Michael Cleveland Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee and Charlestown, Indiana Song: “With A Vamp In The Middle” Album:Carter & Cleveland Release Date: February 5, 2025 (single); March 14, 2025 (album) Label: Fiddle Man Records
In Their Words: “This song has always felt like a national anthem for fiddle players and it’s our tribute to the legendary John Hartford and Vassar Clements. It’s long been a favorite for Michael and me to jam on – perfect for twin fiddles and a blast to improvise and trade licks on. Having Darrell Scott’s harmony vocals on [the studio version of] this track was an absolute honor, and his contribution took it to another level. I hope y’all enjoy it!” – Jason Carter
Credits: Jason Carter – Fiddle, vocals Michael Cleveland – Fiddle Alan Bartram – Bass, harmony vocals Cory Walker – Banjo Bryan Sutton – Guitar Harry Clark – Mandolin
On January 9, 2025, there will be a special performance – more so a once-in-a-lifetime celebration – of the groundbreaking music of Old & In the Way at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium.
Led by the “Bluegrass Buddha” himself, Peter Rowan, the legendary singer-songwriter and founding member of the group will be backed by the Sam Grisman Project. The gathering will also feature a murderers’ row of talent: Sam Bush, Tim O’Brien, Lindsay Lou, Ronnie & Rob McCoury, and more.
“In bluegrass, you just do the beautiful grace of presenting the music, being good neighbors and all that stuff,” Rowan told BGS in an exclusive 2022 interview. “But you could hear us in the band going, ‘go, man, go.’ Go for it, that’s where we came from. That’s what Old & In the Way was – the ‘go for it’ signal to everybody.”
To preface, Old & In the Way started as impromptu pickin’-n-grinnin’ sessions in the early 1970s between Rowan, his longtime friend, mandolin guru David Grisman, and Jerry Garcia, iconic guitarist for the Grateful Dead, who reached for his trusty banjo during the gatherings at Garcia’s home in Stinson Beach, California.
“We started picking every night after supper [at Jerry’s],” Rowan remembers. “We went through old song books and learned a bunch of material.”
At the time, Garcia was searching for new avenues of creative exploration, seeing as the Dead were in the midst of taking a much-needed hiatus after years of relentless touring and recording. He was also, perhaps subconsciously, trying to tap back into his roots before the Dead, this landscape of the late 1950s/early 1960s where Garcia was heavily involved in the San Francisco Bay Area folk scene.
“And you realized that Jerry was an intergalactic traveler, just dropping in on the Earth scene for a little while, but he was totally at home,” Rowan says of Garcia’s restless penchant and lifelong thirst for acoustic music.
When Old & In the Way formed in 1973, the trio recruited bassist John Kahn, as well as a revolving cast of fiddlers (Richard Greene, John Hartford, Vassar Clements). Sporadic gigs were booked around the Bay Area, with the vibe of the whole affair casual in nature – the ethos one of camaraderie and collaboration, but without expectations or boundaries.
“I remember singing the ending of ‘Land of the Navajo’ at the first rehearsal and I looked over at Jerry,” Rowan recalls. “He kept nodding his head like, ‘go.’ It was like Jack Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s poetry reading at City Lights Bookstore – ‘go, man, go.’ Encouragement, encouragement.”
By 1974, Old & In the Way simply vanished into the cosmic ether, but not before capturing a handful of live performances that have become melodic sacred texts of a crucial crossroads for acoustic music. To note, Old & In the Way’s 1975 self-titled debut album went on to become the bestselling bluegrass album of all-time – until it was dethroned by the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack released in 2000.
As it stands today, Rowan, now 82 years old, is the only remaining member of Old & In the Way still actively performing. Garcia, Clements, Kahn, and Hartford have all sadly passed on, with the elder Grisman and Greene retired from touring. Grisman’s son, standup bassist Sam Grisman, is now carrying his father’s bright torch.
And although the tenure of the Old & In the Way was short-lived, the ripple effects of the band’s ongoing influence and enduring legacy remains as vibrant and vital as it was those many years ago, when a handful of shaggy music freaks kicked off a jam that will perpetuate for eternity.
In preparation for the upcoming Old & In the Way showcase at the Ryman on January 9, BGS recently spoke with Sam Grisman, who talked at-length not only about his continued work with Peter Rowan and the intricacies of Jerry Garcia, but also why a band Grisman’s father started over a half-century ago still captivates the hearts and minds of music lovers the world over.
You were five years old when Jerry Garcia passed away. You were really young, but do you remember anything that you hold onto?
Sam Grisman: Yeah, I have a very vivid memory of what our house felt like, smelled like, and just what the energy was like when Jerry was around. And I remember that sort of ease, just the way that he made people feel. It seemed like my parents were at ease when he was around.
And he probably felt at ease being around them. It was probably a safe haven at that house.
Definitely. And, you know, my parents smoked weed in the house. But, my mom was pretty strict about cigarettes. [She] wouldn’t let anybody smoke cigarettes in the house. But, when Jerry was around, he smoked cigarettes in the house. So, part of this smell in my blurry five-year-old memory is the smell of cigarettes. And Jerry would sometimes wear a leather jacket, maybe the smell of leather.
I remember the sound of his laugh. I remember all that music, and some of it I remember so vividly that I just know that part of that memory is reinforced by being there as a little toddler when they were working up [music]. Because they would often work on tunes upstairs in the living room and then take them down to the studio, put them on the mics and pull them.
You just wanted to be around it all and soak it all in.
I was a really curious kid.
With the Ryman show coming up, there’s been a lot of celebration of Old & In the Way as of late, especially with you touring with Peter Rowan and the current Jerry Garcia exhibit at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame & Museum. You’ve been around those songs your whole life. But, when you think about the context of Old & In the Way, and what you’re doing at the Ryman, what really sticks out with why that was such a special time in not only bluegrass, but in the lives of those people?
I mean, what a lightning-in-the-bottle chapter of all those people’s lives, you know? I think 1973, ’73/’74, was a particularly fertile time for Jerry. He was playing a full schedule with the Dead. He had Jerry Garcia Band stuff. He was playing in Old & In the Way. He was playing pedal steel with the New Riders of the Purple Sage. It seemed like he really had an itch to go back to where his roots were, especially when you look at [the Grateful Dead album] Workingman’s Dead [that was released a] couple years prior.
For all of us, who are looking back on it 50 years in the future, it seems like this momentous, heady time that was just meant to be. But, for those guys in the moment, it was just total serendipity. And the quintessence of just going with the flow – Stinson Beach, California, vibes. They just kind of stumbled into this reality.
“Y’all wanna play?” “Sure, why not.”
Yeah, where it would just be really fun to have this bluegrass band that they didn’t take super seriously, which I think really comes across in the recordings, you know? Because there’s all this joy in that music that might not necessarily have been there if those guys were taking it super seriously or if they needed it to pay their bills. It was a very interesting circumstance.
And for them to call their hero Vassar Clements into the mix, on a sort of whim because Peter found his number on a card in his wallet. It was sort of like a fantasy camp for these guys. Like a bunch of hippies sitting around on the beach, smoking a joint, thinking: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had the world’s greatest fiddle player just show up?” “I bet you we could book a gig.” “Hey Jerry, you got these legions of people following you around, you could probably get us a gig, right?”
And that’s kind of how it happened. Those gigs were so magical, because they happened mostly for all of these Deadheads in Marin [County, California], for like 16 months or something.
So, if you really had your finger on the pulse of it and you were going to the Keystone [music club in Berkeley, California], to see [the Jerry Garcia Band] and you loved what the Dead were doing, you knew that they were going to take this time off, but you just saw Jerry the week before and he never took his guitar off. He just finished the [Jerry Garcia Band] set and walked backstage with his guitar on and was smoking a cigarette, and then you saw him 30 minutes later talking to somebody off the side of stage, still had his guitar on — you’re thinking, “Gee, this guy’s not going to stop playing music this year, so I better keep my eyes peeled for what’s next.” And they played all these little gigs mostly around the Bay Area — they kind of captured some lightning in a bottle.
With playing these Old & In the Way melodies not only throughout your life, but also extensively nowadays with Peter Rowan, what’s been your biggest takeaway on what makes those songs and the ethos/history behind them so special to you? What about in terms of musicality, technique, and approach?
It’s hard to articulate how special it is to be exploring these beloved songs that mean so much to so many folks, myself included, with Peter and a cast of some of my best friends and favorite musicians. It’s a catalog that’s got a lot of depth.
Old & In the Way would play anything from songs by bluegrass heroes like Bill Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Reno & Smiley, and Jim & Jesse to Vassar [Clements], Jerry [Garcia], and my pop’s instrumentals, to the tunes that Peter was writing at the time, which are some of my absolute favorite songs ever written.
Songs like “Midnight Moonlight,” “High Lonesome Sound,” and “Panama Red.” Playing these tunes with Uncle Peter makes me feel connected to the times he spent with David and Jerry in Stinson Beach in the early ’70s.
I grew up in Mill Valley and loved going to Stinson Beach with my friends, so I have a pretty vivid image in my mind’s eye. They played tunes, hung out, relaxed, took in the sea breeze, smoked a bunch of great weed, and developed a highly individuated “West Coast” approach to playing and singing this bluegrass music that they all loved and respected so much.
And then, they called one of my bass heroes, John Kahn, and their fiddle hero, the inimitable Vassar Clements and gave the world about one glorious year – I think around 50 shows – of a rare and lovable breed of bluegrass.
So much of everyone’s personality comes through in the music, and you can hear their camaraderie in the recordings. I guess my biggest take away from getting to play this music with Peter is how important it is to bring your own approach to these timeless songs that we love, while still honoring what it is that makes us love them in the first place.
You’ve known Peter Rowan since you were born. But, what has this latest endeavor together meant to you, to play the Old & In the Way catalog to not only lifelong fans, but also a whole new generation of acoustic music fans and bluegrass freaks?
It means the world to me to get to spend some time out on the road sharing space and time in service of this music with Uncle Peter. Getting to meet all of these folks who care so much about this music and feeling their appreciation and gratitude for Pete has been truly special.
There are so many people from so many different ages and different walks of life for whom this music has been the soundtrack to many fond memories, and I’m honored to be one of them. It’s also been a joy to see fresh faces in the audience and some folks taking in this music with a new perspective.
In your honest opinion, what is the legacy of Old & In the Way when you place it through the prism of the history of bluegrass and the road to the here and now, especially this current juncture where the torchbearers are selling out arenas and creating this high-water mark for acoustic, traditional and bluegrass music?
For many folks who know and love the music of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, Old & In the Way has been their first exposure to bluegrass. So many people over the years have told me how listening to Old & In the Way led them to further explore bluegrass music and its roots and branches. And others have told me how it inspired them to become pickers and start bands of their own.
I think Old & In the Way has been pivotal in bringing a wider audience with a more adventurous musical palette into the bluegrass universe. The legacy of Old & In the Way is one of exploration and preservation, and they certainly paved the way for many of us to walk a similar path — honoring the music that we love, while exploring its boundaries and finding our own voices and approaches.
It’s wonderful to see my friend Billy Strings out there playing for so many folks on such a big scale simply being himself, playing his own songs with a great group of friends, and also honoring the material that made him the musician that he is — maybe that’s a part of the legacy of Old & In the Way.
Photo Credit: Elliot Siff Poster Credit: Taylor Rushing
In our last Bluegrass Memoir, “Beginnings,” I described David Hoffman’s documentary, Earl Scruggs with his Family and Friends. By the time NET aired it, the Revue was already off and rolling with Earl’s new music.
In 1970, bluegrass festivals – the first was in 1965 – were becoming quite popular. The music’s supporters had discovered that such events could present their favorite music to broader, younger, urban audiences. These larger crowds brought their tastes and preferences with them. At these booming festivals, new acts like the Earl Scruggs Revue spoke to musical perspectives shaped by contemporary popular music.
The Revue played to large numbers at Monroe’s Bean Blossom Festival that spring and to Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs Festival on Labor Day weekend. Earl’s solo album, Nashville’s Rock, and Randy and Gary’s solo album, All the Way Home, were released that year.
The Earl Scruggs Revue at Bill Monroe’s annual Bean Blossom festival, Bean Blossom, Indiana, June 1970. (L-R) Unidentified bassist, Jody Maphis, Randy Scruggs, Earl Scruggs, Gary Scruggs, and Leah Jane Berinati. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer.
In 1971, Columbia released Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends (C 30584), a soundtrack album that included much of the content of Hoffman’s documentary along with two additional fine vocals by Doc Watson. In its liner notes, Don DeVito characterized the show’s topic:
Earl Scruggs is a man who has paid his dues. You can forget the generation gap … Earl has always been an innovator and an adventurer…
Also in 1971, newgrass music emerged. Its key figure at that time was singer-songwriter and banjoist John Hartford, whose “Gentle on My Mind” had been a 1967 Glen Campbell hit. John had flourished in the LA television business as a writer for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and a performer on The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.
Hartford and Scruggs – they’d met in 1953 – had developed what Bob Carlin, in My Memories of John Hartford (University Press of Mississippi) calls “a deep friendship.” When Hartford returned to Nashville in 1971, he recorded what is now considered the first newgrass album, Aereo-Plain. The Revue’s Randy Scruggs played bass on this ground-breaking disc alongside Tut Taylor, Vassar Clements, and Norman Blake.
The Revue and Hartford were at the center of Nashville’s jam-based music, which embraced musicians from new scenes blending rock and older genres – folk, bluegrass, and country. Both bands appeared at a number of bluegrass festivals in 1971 and the Revue was busy recording in Nashville.
I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends(1972)
Earl was working on his next album, I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends: Earl Scruggs with Special Guest Stars. The back liners of the album (Columbia KC31354) described it as “Earl Scruggs and The Earl Scruggs Revue in performances with Linda Ronstadt/The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band/Stacey Belson and Arloff Boguslavaki.”
Stacey Belson was a pseudonym for blues singer Tracy Nelson, then with the band Mother Earth. Arloff Boguslavaki was Bob Dylan’s pseudonym.
Bill Williams’ liner notes describe the fabulous jam sessions that were happening at the Scruggs family house – hence the album’s concept:
Picture, if you will, the group sitting around together at the Scruggs home (although the actual locale was shifted to Columbia Studios) …
For this album, the studio became the living room and the producer was Don Law, the Nashville vet who’d worked in the ’30s with blues legend Robert Johnson and western swing pioneer Bob Wills and in the ’50s with Flatt & Scruggs.
At this Scruggs family jam session were Earl and sons along with their Madison High School contemporary, drummer Jody Maphis. Also in the room were fiddler Vassar Clements, in the process of moving from Hartford’s band to join the Revue, and several others who’d later join the Revue, including pianist Bob Wilson, a Detroit R&B musician who’d moved to Nashville and subsequently recorded with Bob Dylan.
Each of the featured star guests are heard in solo, sometimes singing in harmony with each other. Earl plays on every cut. Great to hear his backup work with all its nuances! Randy’s lead guitar and Vassar’s fiddling appear throughout.
It was as if these people had showed up at the Scruggs home one evening to play for and with each other – an old-fashioned domestic music session, with the host going around the room inviting each to perform and providing musical backups for all. The evening’s repertoire was the kind of stuff you might expect at such an event: mostly recent country, folk, blues and rock – things you might have heard on the radio lately in 1971.
The sound was that of contemporary popular music, suggesting that this was what you’d hear if the Earl Scruggs Revue came to your living room, festival, or auditorium.
The album’s first side opens with an LA country soul rock tune, Bonnie and Delaney’s “Lonesome and a Long Way From Home.” Gary is singing lead and playing bass; Nelson adds harmony. This is rocking R&B – Wilson’s piano opens the break and, with fiddle and drums, keeps it rocking to the end. Earl’s banjo is out front throughout.
Next comes Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings,” sung by Linda Ronstadt with harmony by Nelson. The backup piano and Dobro are joined by a fiddle break. Straight-ahead Nashville country.
Track three features “Boguslavaki” (Dylan) singing Charles E. Baer’s 1896 hit, “It’s a Picture From Life’s Other Side,” a song that had gone into the folk tradition and been frequently recorded by hillbilly and gospel singers in the ’20s and ’30s. The laid-back fiddle, bass, and drums, along with Nelson’s harmony on the chorus, mark this as a parlor folksong.
It’s followed by Nelson’s performance of “Motherless Child Blues,” where accompanying musicians Earl, Norman Blake, Randy, and Vassar stretch out with some nice blues breaks.
This side closes with Mike Nesmith’s “Some of Shelley’s Blues,” performed with members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, with Gary Scruggs and Jeff Hanna doing the singing and Earl and Randy both taking instrumental breaks.
The second side of the album opens with a vocal by Gary on another Bonnie and Delaney cover, “Never Ending Song of Love.” Ronstadt sings a county cover, Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”
Dylan brings out another pre-war country folk oldie, a great “Banks of the Ohio.” While Nelson is featured singing folksinger Bruce “Utah” Phillips’ “Rock Salt and Nails,” a song first recorded by Flatt & Scruggs in 1965, with Ronstadt adding harmony on the chorus.
The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band contributes another Nesmith song, “Propinquity.” The side closes with the album’s title track, a sing-along for everyone, “I Saw the Light.” The album was released in 1972.
Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1972)
Around the same time as I Saw The Light was made, banjoist John McEuen of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band asked Earl to be on their new three-LP concept album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken. Scruggs was playing in Denver with the Revue when he and McEuen met. The Dirt Band’s sound, with McEuen’s skilled Scruggs-style banjo, appealed to him, as did their project to honor and make music with the earlier generation’s pioneers. That had been his own goal in bringing Maybelle Carter into the studio to record with Flatt & Scruggs back in 1961.
Earl, well-connected in Nashville as an Opry star with record, television, and movie hits, helped bring a number of his country music friends into the project. Both Gary and Randy were also involved, as were several of Hartford’s Aereo-Plain band members, notably fiddler Vassar Clements and Dobro player Norman Blake.
Unlike Earl’s Nashville’s Rock album, which covered recent rock and pop hits on the banjo with Nashville studio backing including electric instruments and, on several cuts, a soulful female vocal trio and a string section, this album had completely acoustic backup by the Dirt Band as they covered legacy hits by country, bluegrass and folk pioneers like Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Doc Watson, and Jimmy Martin.
Earl played a pivotal role in the making of these recordings, playing guitar or banjo on sixteen tracks. The whole Scruggs family can be heard: Randy contributed guitar, autoharp, or voice on eleven tracks, Gary sang on eight, and Louise and Steve sang on one track.
Of the many interesting performances on this award-winning album, Randy Scruggs’ acoustic guitar version of “Both Sides Now” was perhaps the most remarkable; the final selection in the set, it followed a group sing-along of the title track, similar to the closing on the Earl’s I Saw The Light, in which all of the Scruggses sang. These recordings, released in 1972, were made in August 1971.
The Scruggs Brothers (1972)
Also recorded in 1971 was Gary and Randy’s second Vanguard album, The Scruggs Brothers (Vanguard VSD 6579). Some of the same musicians who played on I Saw The Light performed here, like Tracy Nelson, the Dirt Band’s Jeff Hanna and John McEuen, pianist Bob Wilson, and drummer Karl Himmel; but the album had more of a country rock sound. It opened with “Little Maggie,” a song Flatt & Scruggs had recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1962. With Gary’s bass and Jody Maphis’ drums leading the way, it sounded something like the Nashville studio A-listers Area Code 615’s 1969 version.
Throughout the album, Randy played a majority of the solo breaks, some on acoustic guitar but most on electric, in a heavy metal style similar to what I heard him playing in Maine in 1975. Four tracks were their own compositions, two by Gary and two collaborations.
On one, the instrumental “Trousdale Ferry Rag,” Earl played banjo. This up-tempo, bluegrass-style piece has an unusual ending, shifting to a slow blues beat. Most notable is Gary’s “Lowlands,” a great ballad set to the tune of Earl’s “Sally Ann,” which both brothers had been hearing at home all of their lives (Flatt & Scruggs recorded it in 1960). Gary plays guitar, Randy picks banjo.
Covers of older (dare we say traditional?) material includes a rocking version of Jimmie Rodgers’ “T for Texas,” and the other cut on which Earl played banjo, “Hobo’s Lullaby,” which features a sing-along chorus similar to that on the closing of the I Saw The Light and Will The Circle Be Unbroken albums. Another older piece was “The Johnson Boys” (Flatt & Scruggs did it 1962) on which John McEuen’s frailed banjo created the album’s most old-timey sound.
The Earl Scruggs Revue at Bill Monroe’s annual Bean Blossom festival, Bean Blossom, Indiana, June 1970. Randy Scruggs, Earl Scruggs, and Gary Scruggs. Photo by Carl Fleischhauer.
The boys’ continuing involvement with country rock is reflected in two songs that originated in 1967 with the LA band Hearts and Flowers. “Rock and Roll Gypsies,” which closes the first side of the album, seems to have been an attempt to garner radio play – it’s the only track on the record to include string section backup. The other Hearts and Flowers-connected track, “Bugler,” a sad song about the death of a dog, had recently been covered by Clarence White with the Byrds.
Live at Kansas State (1972)
During this year of extensive studio recording, the Revue was also out playing on the road. Although Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends included a few examples of the group in action outside the studio, Live at Kansas State (Columbia KC 31758) was their first full show album.
Many of the songs the Revue did at this 1972 concert remained in the band’s regular repertoire and showed up, for example, at the 1975 Maine concert, including “T for Texas,” “Paul and Silas” (they titled it “Bound in Jail All Night Long”), “Sally Goodin[g],” “Carolina Boogie,” “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven,” and “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”
Several were on their recent albums, like “You Ain’t Going Nowhere” and “Both Sides Now.” Bluegrass classics included “Good Woman’s Love” and “Bugle Call Rag.”
In 1998, a reviewer for No Depression wrote that Live at Kansas State was “probably their album most deserving of a full reissue … a surprisingly cohesive ‘bluegrass-rock’ blend, the likes of which has seldom been heard since.”
In 1972, the band included fiddler Vassar Clements and Dobroist Josh Graves, a bluegrass icon who’d just left Lester Flatt’s band. The album package has several photos of the band; these are notable in that they include everyone but pianist Bob Wilson, who is very much present in the album’s audio.
Wilson had moved to Nashville from Detroit’s R&B scene. His first years in Nashville were slow going, but that changed when Bob Dylan came to town to record Nashville Skyline and wanted “a funkier piano sound than the usual Nashville cat could produce.” The success of his work on Dylan’s album gave him plenty of studio work and he also found time to go on the road with Scruggs.
“When I was with the Earl Scruggs Revue,” he recalled, “Earl always introduced the band, and when he came to me, he always told the crowd, ‘And this is the man who played piano on Nashville Skyline, Bob Wilson.’ I must admit the applause felt really good.”
In his memoir, Bluegrass Bluesman, Graves spoke of the challenges he enjoyed while rocking with the Revue: “Earl and that bunch forced you to work up new licks. You had to come in there on the stuff they were playing. It was so loud I couldn’t hardly stand it, but I really enjoyed it. It opened a lot of doors for me. They were into a lot of things. …”
“Earl was doing the same old tunes with a little modern touch. Earl got bored with bluegrass – I’ll tell you that. He just didn’t want to play it anymore. They had that big beat, that sound behind it, and that’s what he liked.”
“He’d play ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ with that band and people would go wild.”
The Revue carried on into the early ‘80s, with albums that drew from contemporary pop music and brought younger country, folk, and rock stars in as guest artists. We’ll touch on a few of these next time.
Earlier this year, David “Dawg” Grisman was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at IBMA’s annual awards show in Raleigh, North Carolina. Grisman was unable to attend, but gave remarks via a pre-recorded video; his acceptance speech was striking. Dawg poured forth unmetered gratitude, listing so many artists, bands, peers, and forebears who gave him a shot, hired him, got him started, stuck with him, and contributed to his success.
It was a laundry list of names, some enormous in his creative life – Jerry Garcia, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger, Roland and Clarence White, Ralph Rinzler – and others with much more granular and specific impacts. Though his speech was barely four minutes long, Grisman gave a remarkably holistic overview of his broad and varied career, pinpointing respective “dominos” in his musical life that each tipped over into the next, leading to the decades-long, groundbreaking musical output for which we all know, respect, and adore the Dawg.
He even remembered the very moment he heard bluegrass music for the first time, beginning his self-taped video mentioning the Mike Seeger-produced vinyl compilation, Mountain Music Bluegrass Style, and Earl Taylor & the Stoney Mountain Boys’ rendition of “White House Blues,” his first pivotal taste of the music that would define his life – and that he would re-define, time and time again, over the course of his career. He thanked Doc Watson, a frequent collaborator and recording partner, for being “the first professional musician to ever invite this mandolin picker on stage, when I was 17 years old.”
But Dawg’s musical pedigree – unassailable as it is – wasn’t the focal point of his Hall of Fame acceptance. Instead, Grisman positioned his lengthy and name-drop-heavy resumé not as proof of his own bona fides or validation of his music and impact, but as evidence of his own gratitude. Gratitude at the honor of being inducted into the Hall, yes, but more importantly, gratitude at having been given the opportunity to find, become, and be himself, unapologetically and with mandolin in hand.
Whether in duet with Tony Rice, Del McCoury, Jerry Garcia, Tommy Emmanuel, or Andy Statman, or in groups like Old & In the Way and the David Grisman Quintet (or Trio or Sextet), Dawg has routinely and effortlessly pushed every musical envelope he’s inhabited. He, his friends, bandmates, and collaborators invented new genres and sub-genres, brought bluegrass to hundreds of thousands of new fans, and folded in virtuosos (often unknown to bluegrass) from across the roots music landscape and around the globe. No matter how “out there” or fringe Dawg’s music became, it was and continues to be indelibly rooted in a reverence and love for the traditional, vernacular roots of bluegrass and old-time – as genres, yes, but as communities and folkways, primarily.
It’s why his catalog includes music made for and with folks like Stephane Grappelli, Frank Vignola, Jerry Garcia, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor, but in his acceptance speech he went out of his way to thank and spotlight bluegrassers like Frank Wakefield, Curly Seckler, Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, and Herschel Sizemore instead. It’s also why, despite building a career and identity out of coloring outside the bluegrass lines, Dawg is still proudly claimed by the bluegrass hard liners and “that ain’t bluegrass” sorts – as well as the wooks, hippies, jamgrassers, and chambergrass acolytes.
From the highest-selling bluegrass album of its time, Old & In The Way, to The Pizza Tapes; from “E.M.D.” to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty; from Tone Poems to “Dawggy Mountain Breakdown” playing at the beginning of each and every episode and rerun of NPR’s quintessential hit, “Car Talk;” David Grisman’s legacy is resplendent, exhaustive, and one-of-a-kind. But it’s not just a resumé to Dawg – or just a history, benign and objective. To David Grisman, the most important thing about making music is people – the ones who make it, the ones who hear it, and the ones who love it.
All month long we’ll be celebrating Dawg in December. Enjoy Artist of the Month content like our Essentials Playlist (below), plus we’ll be chatting with friends of Dawg about what it’s really like to know him and make music with him, we’ll dip back into the BGS Archives for our favorite Grisman content, we’ll feature his son’s new band, the Sam Grisman Project, and much more. So join us as we celebrate Dawg’s induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and his entire groundbreaking career for Dawg in December.
If you were to try to typify bluegrass as being about any one singular thing, that one thing might be family. Not just biological family, but musical family, chosen family, and the way the music survives generation to generation, passed down as a folkway and aural tradition. Often, though not always, this music is a family tradition, passed along family trees like an heirloom or like more typical family businesses.
John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Zoe Weinstein, bluegrass duo and band leaders of Zoe & Cloyd, have made a brand new album that, on the surface, might just seem like a standard bluegrass album paying homage to the folks who came before them, their forefathers. But Songs of Our Grandfathers is so much more complicated and nuanced, wrinkling a format that’s as old as these genres themselves: the tribute album.
On the new record, released in May on Organic Records, John and Natalya pull songs from the catalogs of their musician grandfathers. Miller’s grandpa, Jim Shumate, was a renowned Western North Carolina fiddler who played a stint in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and can be accurately credited with helping get Earl Scruggs the banjo gig that made him famous. Natalya’s grandfather, David Weinstein, was a working klezmer musician who fled unrest in Russia, moving to the U.S.
The artful way this pair of musicians and life partners combine the styles of their families, of their youths, and of their present lives together, as touring, professional musicians, feels expansive, rich, and bold, like newgrass that’s never been newgrassed before. But, there’s a timelessness here, a patina, that speaks to the greater tradition this record can lay claim to perpetuating. (Thank goodness.)
Songs of Our Grandfathers isn’t just nostalgia, heritage, lineage, legacy- and canon-building. It’s not just carrying on tradition for tradition’s sake. It’s effortlessly and wholly bluegrass because it innovates, it complicates, and it challenges its listeners to think outside of preconceived notions of what bluegrass, string band, and old-time music are. Because that’s exactly what bluegrass’s grandfathers, grandmothers, and grandparents were doing as they invented this music.
We began our phone chat about the new album discussing each of their grandparents and their musical idiosyncrasies.
Can we start by talking about Jim Shumate? His presence is throughout the record and he’s influenced you both, can you tell us a bit about him and his music making?
John Cloyd Miller: He was born in 1921 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on a mountain called Chestnut Mountain. He started playing fiddle as a young boy, as a teenager. His older brother Mac, who was 10 years older – the same age as Bill Monroe – got him his first fiddle, which is a fiddle he kept his entire life and we actually have, now. It’s an old Sears & Roebuck Strad copy, but he played some tone into it! His Uncle Erby played fiddle so he heard him a lot growing up and then he got into Arthur Smith and all that kind of stuff. He moved to Hickory when he got older, when he was a young man, and was playing on the radio down there when Bill Monroe heard him and asked him to be in the Blue Grass Boys. That was the time that Stringbean was in the band and Sally Ann Forrester, too.
When Stringbean decided to leave the band and go off with Lew Childre, Bill needed a banjo player and it’s now a pretty well known story that Jim knew a banjo player – he knew Earl Scruggs – and really pushed, begged him really, to audition for Bill. Earl was pretty reluctant to do it, but he did, and the rest is history. Later on, when Flatt & Scruggs broke off [from the Blue Grass Boys], Jim was their first fiddler, as you know. He recorded on their Mercury sessions. But he didn’t like touring, he wasn’t a touring kinda guy at all. He had four kids at home – three at the time, when he was younger, and one later.
Natalya Zoe Weinstein: He liked Mama’s cookin’.
[both laugh]
Jim Shumate, L (John Cloyd Miller’s grandfather); David Weinstein, R (Natalya Zoe Weinstein’s grandfather)
JCM: He did! He liked his own bed and grandma’s cooking, for sure. He liked to go up on the mountain. He worked in the furniture industry pretty much his whole life, but he also had his hand in the music. He ran a place called “Cat Square,” kind of a small town sort of Hickory Opry, a music show. He was always playing. I have photos of him through the late ‘40s and through the ‘50s with all sorts of people, Don Reno – all those guys. He made records and he had his own band called Sons of the Carolinas, which had George Shuffler in it and some other guys. He was always playing. He played with Dwight Barker and the Melody Boys; he did some sides with Don Walker, who he played with before he met Bill Monroe. He was always making music.
After Flatt & Scruggs it was largely regionally, because he wasn’t out touring, but he said people would always come by. Any time guys like Lester and them were in town they would always drive the bus and park it right in the yard. He was always in the music, but his influence was not felt as widely later on, I think because he wasn’t out [touring]. He did come back to recording in the ‘90s and made five cassettes for Heritage Records and those got disseminated kind of regionally. Michael Cleveland cut one of the songs that was on one of those tapes a year or so ago. People know his music, but we enjoy getting his legacy out there a bit more. He’s got such a unique style and certainly was influential.
He was a great songwriter, too! He was my main musical influence. I heard him play a ton growing up. He was so bluesy and slidey, he was a real master of syncopation, which is something that got ingrained in me. People always forget about his songwriting, but the way I grew up, I always thought that being a musician meant that you sing stuff, you write songs. You pick, too, but you do all of it. It was just part of being musical and I think that came from him as well.
It makes me think of, well, I talk a lot about how the most “bluegrass” someone can be is being innovative and being themselves, whether that comes across as “traditional bluegrass,” genre-wise or not.
JCM: That’s really insightful and it’s so true, when you look at those early players – everybody always looks at the first generation and, that’s good, that can be very grounding, but those guys were all unique! They were all unique artists, they had their own styles – sure, they were listening to one another, but Lester Flatt doesn’t sound like Bill Monroe who doesn’t sound like Carter Stanley. They don’t sound like each other!
Natalya, I wanted to ask you about your grandfather, too. If you could tell us a bit about the musical influences that represent him on this record, as well.
NZW: He passed away when I was fairly young, my dad had me when he was fifty-one, so my grandfather was quite older than me – I think I was eleven when he passed away. [My father and he] had an interesting relationship; he wasn’t always a well-liked man. He escaped a lot of violence and poverty in Russia, so he wasn’t a very kind man and my dad didn’t have a very close relationship with him. I don’t have any audio recordings of his music, I have a couple of audio interviews that my dad and uncle did with him, but I don’t have any recordings of his music.
My dad was moving a few years back and found all these old music notebooks from my grandfather. He asked me, “Do you want these old, handwritten, junky notebooks?” And I was like, “Yes!! Please give those to me!” [Laughs] That was the source, for me, for my grandfather’s music. I didn’t have one-on-one experiences with him, I didn’t have recordings of him, so these notebooks are really the only link to his music that I have. We have about five or six notebooks that have songs in them – they’re pretty hard to decipher, they’re forty or fifty years old. They have all different kinds of material in them, from klezmer to mambos and tangos even to “Tennessee Waltz,” which shows up in one of them as a jazz standard. He also played some classical music, he didn’t do just one singular thing. Klezmer players were like the wedding band musician of their time, where they had to play a bunch of different styles based on who their audience was.
JCM: We definitely got a little bit of a sense of who he was from these audio interviews that her uncle and dad had made with him. We got to hear his voice, you know he didn’t speak English very well so it’s mostly in Russian and Yiddish. You get a sense of some of the stuff he saw, in these interviews. You can tell it hardened him.
NZW: He had a tough life for sure, he struggled a lot and music was really the only thing [he did]. He wasn’t really educated. He talked about how when he came here [to the U.S.] he tried to be a plumber and he tried to be an electrician, but he kept making mistakes. He said, “I couldn’t do anything except play music.” He felt almost like he was stuck with it. He loved it and he was passionate about it, but I got the sense that it was his only option.
There’s a similar energy from both grandfathers around being musicians, but not just in a traditional touring, “road dog,” sort of lifestyle.
NZW: You’re right, and they were both kind of skeptical of the past.
JCM: They both came from very humble beginnings. My grandfather didn’t have any education, either. Natalya’s grandfather, apparently, escaped the Bolshevik revolution on a hay wagon. He was a teenager and they were trying to conscript him into the army to fight – it’s crazy stuff!
Bluegrass is always considering lineage and tradition and how those things are passed along. One of the things that I think is really interesting about it is there aren’t a lot of marginalized identities represented in the historical record of bluegrass, but there are Jewish identities represented. There’s not a whole lot of representation as you go back through the years, but it’s there. How do you connect the music you’re making, that’s infused with Jewish influences and has that cultural identity, to past Jewish music makers in bluegrass and string bands? You’re clearly thinking about lineage and family with this record, and that’s so bluegrass, but through a different lens with your Jewish identity and the other cultural music styles on the album, too.
NZW: David Grisman was one of my biggest musical influences early on, he was a big bridge, for me, between my dad – who plays jazz – and the bluegrass connection as well as the Jewish connection. We talk about how this album was inspired by Songs of Our Fathers, the 1995 album by David Grisman and Andy Statman. Andy Statman, who played on the record, is another one – one of the first shows that John and I went to see when we met in Asheville in 2005 or 2006 was to see Andy Statman at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, which is this tiny little listening room. It was an incredible show, I remember just being blown away. I remember thinking, “Wow! What a cool fusion.”
JCM: That was the first time we heard that fusion with klezmer music. He was also playing clarinet, he was playing mandolin. He is the bridge between these kinds of music. David doesn’t do as much klezmer, but those two guys together for sure.
NZW: John and I both came into bluegrass through the Grisman/Garcia connection then I kind of worked my way back from there. Someone gave me a burned CD of Bill Monroe and I was like, “Oh my God, what is this!?” [Laughs]
JCM: So many people have stories like that. That Old & In The Way album was such an influential record, it was like the number one selling bluegrass record for a long time.
NZW: Yeah, the way I got into bluegrass, I was out in Tacoma, Washington, for an anthropology conference in college and somebody at my hotel was like, “I’ve got an extra ticket for Wintergrass, which is happening right next door.” I said, “Okay, cool!” So we go and I saw Old & In The Gray there [Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, Grisman], it was an incredible experience. I didn’t really know what I was seeing at the time, because I was so new to bluegrass, but that was my “Ah ha!” moment. Someone handed me a fiddle and I dunno, I played “Angeline the Baker” and that was it! [Laughs]
JCM: When I first heard Grisman play mandolin, his tone and everything, that was like sinking a hook into me. That’s why I even wanted to play mandolin. I wanted to work on getting tone like that! He was a huge influence on so many of us.
Going back home one time, when I had been living out West or whatever, I was listening to Old & In the Way or something and I asked, “Grandpa, do you know this stuff, like ‘Pig in a Pen,’ and all this?” And he was like, “Oh yeah! I know everything on this record!” And he would play them, and that was so cool to me. I hadn’t quite made the connection before. He asked me, “Who’s playing fiddle on that record?” And I said, “Vassar Clements!” He says, “Oh yeah, that’s a good friend of mine!” I was like, “WHAT!?”
[both laugh]
JCM: I was just this stupid, deadhead college kid – I mean, I’m still a deadhead – but it really clicked. This is a bridge between grandpa’s world, which had always seemed like something in the past, to my world as a young, coming-of-age musician, realizing, “Oh, it’s all the same stuff!”
To an uninitiated listener, they might hear your record and they might hear the influences that aren’t “traditional bluegrass” as modern cross-pollinations, as something that’s coming from you both and your generation and your own creativity. But, I really wanted to unpack the lineage of the music, because I can sense even in the playing on this album that colors “outside the lines,” it’s clearly part of this bigger tradition in bluegrass of being a bridge between these kinds of disparate parts. Even this “nontraditional” album you’ve made is based on so much tradition – familial tradition, cultural tradition, musical tradition.
NZW: I think we wanted to honor those traditions and where these songs came from, but we also wanted to put our own spin on it. We hope our grandfathers would have liked that!
JCM: [Jim Shumate] was very much a traditional musician, but he was always innovative at the same time. Some of the things he did in the ‘50s were very jazzy, with electric guitars playing with him. And he always loved Natalya’s playing. You know, Natalya came from a classical background and anytime she would play something classical for him–
NZW: Or a waltz.
JCM: He just loved to hear her play. They didn’t sound like each other, they had very different styles, but he was always very open and he loved everything.
NZW: I think he would like [the album]. John’s mom texted us yesterday as she was listening to it and said, “I think grandpa would’ve enjoyed that!” So hopefully our grandparents aren’t rolling over in their graves.
To commemorate the 10th birthday of the Bluegrass Situation, co-founders Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs are taking it all the way back to the beginning. In the first installment of an ongoing interview series, the enthusiastic bluegrass fans reveal how they first met, their shared vision for a modern aesthetic, and the meaning behind the unexpected (yet appropriate) name.
Amy: As we’re looking back on 10 years of The Bluegrass Situation, it occurred to me that you and I have never really reflected on how all of this started and how this thing kind of built up. So I wanted to get our own take on it and… reminisce, stroll down memory lane a bit, and think about it.
Ed: We need a little oral history for the archives! [laughs] And for our own… ’cause it’s exciting to reminisce a little bit.
Amy: I’ll kick it off and ask, what was your intro to bluegrass? Why do you care about this music to begin with and what drew you into it?
Ed: The earliest I can trace back would be growing up in Atlanta, Georgia. My mom’s from Nashville, so we would take road trips from Atlanta to Nashville all the time. In addition to that, I spent many, many summers at a summer camp in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina. That’s another road trip that’s about a three or four-hour drive from Atlanta.
So, on those drives, we’re always pulling off at truck stops and whatever, and we would pick up cassette tapes at the checkout counter. And my dad, who grew up in Alabama, was always a big fan of opera and classical music. He would grab these string band tapes for some reason. And I started listening to these very generic, early string band tapes when I was 8 years old in the car. They didn’t resonate with me as artists, but the music connected with me somehow. And I associated it with those places — Nashville and the North Carolina mountains.
Then as I got older, I was one of those kids that kind of thought everybody was fake, you know, like Holden Caulfield. Just distressed by all the artificiality of our world and of the people around me and like, “Oh, everyone at school, everything is so performative. Like, who’s real? Who’s the real deal?” And that kind of drew me, musically, into older and older music. I got obsessed with authenticity and where are the roots of things. … I think it scratched some itch that I had for authenticity-seeking, and probably allowed me to feel superior to all my classmates in junior high.
Then when I could actually get to a record store, I remember the very first bluegrass album that I bought was the Bluegrass Album Band. I didn’t know who J.D. Crowe and Vassar Clements and Jerry Douglas were, but all I knew was that on the cover of this CD at Turtle’s Records & Tapes in Atlanta was guys holding banjos and guitars and mandolins. So I bought that album and to this day it’s one of my favorite albums. I’ve never asked Jerry Douglas about this, I should, but it felt like the intention of those albums was to kind of just be the ultimate catalog of, you know…
Amy: I mean, it’s called the Bluegrass Album Band.
Ed: Right. They just called themselves the most generic name. And it’s almost like they were just trying to create a library of excellent bluegrass artists playing the canon or something. Or maybe they were really ahead of their time with like meta irony and they were just like, “We’re going to call ourselves the Bluegrass Album Band, ’cause it’s hilarious.”
And of course Tony Rice’s guitar playing on that – I was very much into guitar at the time, I later picked up a banjo – Tony’s guitar playing was so magical to me. I could not understand how human hands could play what he was doing. I would just pour over these solos. I remember the solo to “Your Love Is Like a Flower,” it just was like, how the hell is that being played? I could not wrap my head around it. And I listened to it a million times, and I didn’t have the technology to slow it down, so I couldn’t do that.
Amy: That album and that band really represent a generational shift. It’s not newgrass. It’s playing the canon, but with this mix of the new guard and some folks with some real cred from the second generation.
Ed: You’re right. It isn’t an old sound, what they’re doing. It’s a new sound at that time, because no one was doing Tony Rice licks before Tony Rice. But the harmonies are timeless and the structure of the songs is very traditional. That album means so much to me and I listen to it to this day and I’m still blown away! I actually can play that solo from “Love Is Like a Flower” now, but only at about half speed. And it’s one of the proudest things, when I finally found – someone had transcribed it in tablature, and I was like, “This is string theory explained. This is like if you had Carl Sagan sit you down and explain the mysteries of the universe.” I was like, “Holy shit, I got it! The holy grail!”
Amy: Yeah. To me, it’s still magic. ‘Cause I am not someone who can play an instrument, at least very well, so when I first heard bluegrass, I was just like, “How does that happen? How do you even get the notes from your brain to your fingers and do it so well, and in a way that I’ve just never heard before?” It still kind of blows me away.
Ed: Can I ask you the same question? Where did you first connect to bluegrass music?
Amy: I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, and there was a lot of country and bluegrass around there. Admittedly, I didn’t like it because to me it represented… I mean, I was really busy listening to showtunes and learning Sondheim lyrics and stuff. I was that kid. And I just thought country and roots music was inherently uncool and representative of this place that I felt like I was stuck in.
It wasn’t until I went to college in North Carolina… It was probably the first few weeks of school, one of my housemates who is still a very dear friend of mine invited me to a show, and it was Nickel Creek. I had never heard of them. I had no idea what I was going in to and Erin said, “I just think you’re going to like this. Just come with me to the show. I’ll drive. We’ll go.” And I can honestly say, that show changed my life. I can still remember the whole show so clearly.
Ed: What year are we talkin’?
Amy: 2005? Somewhere around there. I was kind of reeling from it, because it had been a really long time since I felt like I had been challenged by music that was being played by young people, that I really connected with, but also was just kind of flummoxed by. From there it became a deep dive. I was really fortunate going to school where I did, that there was great bluegrass around. I mean, there was this bar about 30 minutes away called The Cave in Chapel Hill, and we used to go see the Steep Canyon Rangers play there every month. And I mean, this is a tiny underground basement bar, maybe holds 50 people, and they would just have bluegrass jams.
Ed: How close were you to Asheville?
Amy: It was about three hours from Asheville. Asheville is where we went for, like, fall break and our little weekend trips and stuff. We would go to Boone and Asheville, and even Mount Airy had a bluegrass fest that we went to. So that’s when I really started getting into it. And I could say, I think my first significant album purchase was pretty soon after that first concert. It was Why Should the Fire Die? by Nickel Creek. I played that into oblivion and had it in my car for like, 10 years, back when we kept stacks of CDs in our cars.
From there it kind of fell into the background, because I was studying film and I moved to New York. I was working all the time and didn’t really make space in my life for music. By the time I moved out to LA, I was working for a producer and I had one or two friends out here that I knew. Again, working a lot, not making any money and trying to find my place in the city, and not really connecting with a lot of the other assistants that I was meeting at the agencies. And I remember going to see the Get Down Boys at some bar on the west side of LA and having this thing reignited in me that I had felt back in college and was like, “OK, I think these are my people.” There was this momentum happening in LA at that particular time. And that’s how I started getting to know the scene out here and had the idea for the BGLA blog.
Ed: Tell us about BGLA.
Amy: I admittedly was a little bored at work. I was working at the Academy of Motion Pictures at this point, which was exciting, especially for three months of the year around the Awards, but the rest of the time was kind of slow. So I started this Blogspot and wrote about what was happening on the scene in Los Angeles. And then people started pitching me, cause I don’t think anybody was really covering it out here. So suddenly I was getting inquiries to interview these people… I mean, I started going really deep in the music and the history and background and getting to know the scene out here. But I remember getting connected to Sean Watkins (of Nickel Creek), and it was this beautiful, full-circle moment. It was the first time I met Sean and got to talk to him, and we became friends and kind of opened a whole other door to the roots music scene and what it could be. And then I think I met you pretty soon after that.
Ed: So when did we meet? I cannot remember.
Amy: Well, I remember when we first met, but I doubt you remember when we first met. I remember this because it was probably the most nervous I’ve been in my whole life. I saw you at a Sarah Jarosz show at Hotel Cafe. And I walked up to you and gave you one of my business cards for Bluegrass LA. And I was like, “I think you’ll like my blog.” That was it! And I don’t imagine you remember that, but that is technically the first time I met you.
Ed: At some point we had a cup of coffee to talk about possibilities.
Amy: Yes, that’s true.
Ed: But then maybe we bumped into each other… I assumed it was Largo, but I have the vaguest memory of getting a business card from you. So yeah, that part tracks.
Amy: Why don’t you talk about the LA Bluegrass Situation, because that predates me.
Ed: You weren’t even a part of the first LA Bluegrass Situation?
Amy: No. I was there. I went one night. But we didn’t know each other at that point. I just went as a fan.
Ed: The first time I ever went to Largo was when John Krasinski took me to see Aimee Mann playing at the Fairfax Largo. We went in through the back and I just was like, “Whoa, what is this incredible vibe?” This whole place is just so, so cool. And eventually Flanny (the owner of Largo) invited me to do stand-up on some people’s shows, and one night he said, “Why don’t you do a show?” And I thought, “OK, cool. It’d be fun to mix music and comedy.” So I think the first show that I did at Largo was called “Hams and Jams.” [Laughs] The idea was like, “Oh, it’s hams, like comedy people, and jams, music people!” And I just mixed up some comedians and musicians with a terrible name that Flanny was so gracious about rolling with.
We really loved that combination, but I was really struggling to wrap my head around the LA bluegrass scene. It just was so disparate, but somehow we managed to get excited about trying to cultivate the scene and coalesce things a little bit more. And I think that was the idea… that was the sort of original inertia behind the first LA Bluegrass Situation. The name literally just came from Flanny talking about it before we named it. He just kept talking about it as the bluegrass situation that we were dealing with. So then when it came time to be like, “What are we going to call it?” I was like, “Well, you’ve been saying this awesome thing because there’s something a little cheeky about a ‘situation.'” Like, it feels like, you know, “We got ourselves a situation, here!” Like it just kind of has some irreverence built into it.
So that’s what we named it, and Flanny and I both pulled as many strings as we could with whatever relationships we had at the time and put a totally magical lineup together. Like I still can’t wrap my head around it. I mean, it was Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch and Steve Martin and Steep Canyon Rangers and Nickel Creek and Punch Brothers and the Infamous Stringdusters… Oh, and of course the Lonesome Trio, my crew, with my friends Ian and Jake. We were sort of the hosts.
Amy: I remember I got an email from you not long after that, which was pretty shocking. What was the impetus of that, do you remember?
Ed: Yeah, I think that I was feeling pretty heady after that first LA Bluegrass Situation and probably getting over my skis a little bit and being like, “We can create the ultimate hub of bluegrass for Los Angeles and it will be this Tower of Babel that everyone will flock to!” I had so many ideas. There were so many things that I found lacking in Los Angeles that I had taken for granted in New York. There are just so many website resources. “You want a banjo teacher? Look here, there’s tons in New York City. You want to see what shows are happening? Look here!” You could just find stuff in New York City and you couldn’t find stuff in Los Angeles.
Amy: I look at the branding of that initial site and that first logo — I think DKNG did our first logo in Santa Monica — and I remember being really proud of the fact that we didn’t look stereotypical of the era.
Ed: You’re so right. And I give you so much credit for that because the very first LA Bluegrass Situation, Hatch Show Print did a bunch of posters for us. And they were so cool. I still have a bunch and I’m really proud of that, but it was also leaning really hard into a very conventional, stereotypical bluegrass aesthetic. It was a funny wake-up call for me – that plus your input. It helped me realize that what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go as fans and supporters of this idiom was not retro, like it was…
Amy: Forward-thinking.
Ed: Forward. And that artists like Chris Thile were doing that musically, right? But there was a little bit of a reckoning of “What’s our brand going to feel like? What do we want it to evoke? And who do we want to connect with? Do we want to connect with young people who are finding this stuff for the first time and finding it really fresh and exciting?”
Amy: That was always the crux of it for me. To a large extent, that aesthetic is still very alive and well within the roots music community. I had an inkling that there was an audience that had different tastes, but still could love this music and that it didn’t all have to look the same way. I could have never predicted where it went and what we’ve worked on since, but I think at the beginning we were very “of the moment.” It was the same time that Mumford & Sons and the Lumineers were on the top of the charts, and there was this kind of “authenticity” movement taking place.
Ed: I remember going to business meetings with Hollywood producers and one guy had a banjo in his office. And I was like, “You play the banjo?” And he’s like, “No, no, but I want to learn!” But you’re right. It was a moment. I’ve felt like an old fuddy duddy since I was 12 years old, but I was like, “Was I ahead of the curve here?”
Amy: Yeah, similarly, I’ve kind of always felt like an old soul; I never really felt like I truly fit in to my time, so I think there was something that really drew me in to that zeitgeist, but what amazed me was that once we really got into it, it was so much more complex and modern and exciting than I ever expected.
Editor’s Note: Look for the next part of this conversation with Ed Helms and Amy Reitnouer Jacobs in the weeks ahead.
Waltzes are my favorite. Can’t explain why, but they touch me in a way that other songs don’t. In honor of my album, Ten Thousand Roses, and its title track, here are twelve of my favorite waltzes — some by dear friends and some by long-gone greats. — Dori Freeman
Erin Rae – “June Bug”
Erin is one of my favorite artists — I just love her voice and the style of her records. This song is so simple (my favorite kind of song), but so sweet and effective lyrically and in the arrangement. The last minute or so of the melody being played on piano is particularly lovely.
Kacy & Clayton – “Down at the Dance Hall”
Kacy and Clayton are dear personal friends and some of the most genuine and truly original people I’ve ever met. This is such a classic-sounding waltz it’s hard to believe it was written only a few years ago. Kacy is also one of my favorite singers *of all time.*
Ric Robertson – “Julie”
Ric is another good friend of mine and easily one of the best songwriters of the time. He writes with a vulnerability and honesty that most people are afraid to share. I also had the privilege of singing harmony on this lovely track with my friend Gina Leslie.
Teddy Thompson – “Over and Over”
I have to include a Teddy song on this playlist since he’s been such a big part of my own music. He produced my first three records and continues to be such a kindred spirit in music making. This song has such a heartbreaking honesty lyrically and a truly haunting arrangement.
Iris Dement – “Sweet Is the Melody”
Iris has one of the most instantly recognizable and unique voices in music. I had this album on cassette tape and used to listen to it driving around in my old Subaru when I was like 19. Such a tender song.
John Hartford/ Tony Rice/ Vassar Clements – “Heavenly Sunlight”
My husband introduced this song to me a few years ago and we’ve been performing it at shows ever since. I never get tired of singing this beautiful song and this is my all-time favorite version. A good gospel waltz is hard to beat.
Linda Ronstadt/ Dolly Parton/ Emmylou Harris – “Hobo’s Meditation”
This song is twofold in its importance to me. First, these are three of the most talented singers ever singing together on one album. All three of these women have had a huge influence on me individually and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find another country singer who wouldn’t say the same. This is also a song that my dad’s band performed and recorded when I was a child. I can vividly remember sitting in the audience listening to them play this song.
The Louvin Brothers – “Blue”
If you want a master class in harmony singing, the Louvin Brothers are it. I love to listen to them dance around each other when they sing, jumping all over the place with grace and finesse. This waltz is a classic heartbreaker with lots of tender swooning falsetto.
George Jones – “Don’t Stop the Music”
Another one of our greatest singers, George Jones. This is one of my husband’s favorite waltzes and makes the cut for me, too. That jump up to the sixth he sings right in the opening gets me every time.
Rufus Wainwright – “Sally Ann”
Most people familiar with my music know that Rufus Wainwright’s music is very dear to my heart. He has a couple beautiful waltzes to choose from, but I included this one from his first record. A weird thing to note perhaps, but I love that you can hear each breath Rufus takes before singing on his recordings.
Lee Ann Womack – “Prelude: Fly”
This album was on heavy rotation when I met my husband in 2016 so when I hear this song I’m reminded of how sweet a time that was. It’s got a special place in my heart. And Lee Ann is one of those singers who makes me cry every time.
Richard Thompson – “Waltzing’s for Dreamers”
My daughter used to like this song when she was littler so that makes it an especially sweet one for me. It has one of my favorite lines — “waltzing’s for dreamers and losers in love.” So funny, so sad, so true.
It’s summer, our second in the “after times,” where road trips, national parks, and scenic byways are king. As you head off on your COVID-aware vacations this summer, don’t leave all the driving music to indie, easy listening, country & western, or rock ‘n’ roll. The chop of the mandolin, thump of the doghouse bass, and rapid-fire roll of the five-string banjo are just as suited to soundtrack your sunny forays. To prove that point, here are 16 bluegrass songs perfect for inclusion on your summer vacation playlists. (Listen to the full playlist on Spotify below.)
“Highway” – Claire Lynch
Bluegrass being an itinerant livelihood and a nomadic community, traveling songs are just as expected a feature as murder ballads, train tunes (a form of travel song unto themselves!), and moonshine running tales. This modern classic via Claire Lynch — written by Lynch and Irene Kelley — is a perfect example of the form, more ‘90s country offered by a string band than a traditional, four-on-the-F-style grassy track. It’s delightful — and perfectly winsome and longing when you find yourself listening while traveling down the highway.
“Handsome Molly” – Tim O’Brien
Our July 2021 Artist of the Month Tim O’Brien’s rendition of this bluegrass classic is a far cry from, say, a Flatt & Scruggs’ cut. O’Brien’s has a slight transatlantic bent — with a distinct island detour, perhaps through the sunny Caribbean. If you’ve found a craving to set your foot on a steamboat and sail the ocean ‘round deep inside your soul, this one’s for you.
“1952 Vincent Black Lightning” – Del McCoury Band
Another track with a transatlantic story, this ever-popular, most-requested number covered by the Del McCoury Band is a road trip staple — whether you get in or on your vehicle to hit the highway. It would be a sin to make a bluegrass summer vacation playlist and not include “1952 Vincent Black Lightning!”
“Val’s Cabin” – Laurie Lewis
A rare example of a bluegrass song actually about summer vacations, this Laurie Lewis original, “Val’s Cabin,” begins as a simple retelling of childhood memories — nostalgia being a common rhetorical device (and when attempted by many other writers, a well-worn trope) in bluegrass. But Lewis, a veteran through-hiker, wilderness excursioner, and backpacker as well as a Grammy-nominated bluegrass singer and songwriter, tinges the story with melancholy and the existential questions raised by the ever-worsening climate crisis. The song is as evocative as it is gorgeous; though the singer can’t find the way to “Val’s Cabin” any longer, every listener can.
“Paddy on the Turnpike” – Vassar Clements
If you ever happen to find yourself Crossing the Catskills on a summery jaunt, “Paddy on the Turnpike” must be in your listening rotation. Avoid the tolls, but still go for a ride on the turnpike with Vassar Clements’ wild, unpredictable, jaw-dropping, wonky fiddling. “Paddy” is a blank canvas for Clements and a study in bluegrass’ unending affinity for flat seven chords.
“Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler” – Tony Rice
A hit in nearly every jam circle that ever circled, “Don’t Give Your Heart to a Rambler” is almost as if “Gentle on My Mind” had been written by a much less kind or compassionate protagonist. Tony’s solo vocal stylings are as iconic as his six-string licks, nearly obliterating any memory of this song ever having been sung by anyone else. What’s more, the titular advice of the track still stands. Just don’t.
“Highway 40 Blues” – Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time
Because “Interstate 70 Blues” just doesn’t roll off the tongue. And that melodic hook should go down in history as one of the best country licks to ever lick! Cordle wrote one built for the long haul with “Highway 40 Blues.” It’ll keep you good company as you go wherever and back.
“Banjo Pickin’ Girl” – Annie Staninec
Is there any better reason to go around this world than being a banjo picker? There are never enough banjo pickin’ girls and this anthem, no matter how many times it’s picked up, studied, and retooled by another banjo pickin’ girl, always SLAPS. (Clawhammer pun intended.) Fiddler and multi-instrumentalist Annie Staninec, who’s traveled around the world making music quite a bit herself, gives an excellent old-time rendition of this favorite.
“A Crooked Road” – Darrell Scott
Darrell Scott turns a literary device pretty common in songwriting on its ear, with a tender eye for detail and emotion that he brings into all of his musicmaking. Life is, after all, about the journey — not the destination. Why not take the crooked, and thereby, the road less traveled?
“Up and Down the Mountain” – David Parmley & Continental Divide
Work life doesn’t suit you? Does “paradise” mean a fiddle and the open road? If so, “Up and Down the Mountain” is for you and your road trip playlist. Especially if you’re planning on trekking through the Rockies, Sierras, Ozarks, Applachians, or what-have-you. Turn off cruise control, watch for the runaway truck ramps, and go up and down those mountains! David Parmley & Continental Divide know something about geography and topography, after all…
“Roving Gambler” – The Country Gentlemen
Not sure why you’d be headed to Las Vegas during one of the hottest summers on record, but if you’ve got your sights set on a casino — wherever it may be — crank up “Roving Gambler” and hope your 2 a.m. slot machine binge or your evening “re-learning” blackjack ends more amiably than with gunfire. Speaking of which, perhaps “Blackjack” deserves a slot on this playlist…
“Travelin’ Prayer” – Dolly Parton
The kick-off of one of Dolly Parton’s masterpieces, her 1999 bluegrass album The Grass Is Blue, “Travelin’ Prayer” was actually written by Billy Joel. Yes, that Billy Joel. The original, from 1973’s Piano Man, featured banjo playing by Eric Weissberg and Fred Heilbrun. So of course the tune stands up to the bluegrass treatment and then some, between Stuart Duncan’s haunting fiddle cadenza to begin the track, the rip roarin’ tempo and train whistle harmonies, and the lonesome feeling of being away from your baby while he travels the world. We’re gonna assume Dolly’s blessed pen and ink added the lyric: “And keep him away from planes / cause my baby hates to fly!”
“Road to Columbus” – Kenny Baker
Growing up this writer frequented a bluegrass jam in Granville, Ohio, about 25 miles east of the state’s capital, Columbus. Like clockwork, every week as the jam wound down around noon on Wednesdays, Troy Herdman — a local bluegrass community stalwart, Doc Watson-style flatpicker, and mentor of many who lived in or around Columbus — would call this tune. Everyone would chuckle, and we’d play “Road to Columbus” as everyone, but especially Troy, hit the road to Columbus.
Herdman passed away last week at the age of 91. I certainly wouldn’t be the musician I was today if it wasn’t for Troy, and I know quite a few others who would say the same. So no matter where I travel, I always keep “Road to Columbus” nearby. Especially when I’m headed home to Ohio.
Many pickers speculate over whether Kenny Baker and Bill Monroe were referencing Columbus, Ohio, or Columbus, Indiana. But, according to Roland White — who introduces the song with an anecdote from his time on the road with Monroe — it’s about Ohio. For this Ohioan, that’s confirmation enough!
“That’s How I Got to Memphis” – Tom T. Hall
His own recording of one of his most popular hits may sound more like straight up and down country than ‘grass, but even the most casual fan of Tom T. Hall knows that this Bluegrass Hall of Famer is bluegrass to his core. If you’re headed down I-40 from Nashville — or, really, towards Memphis from any direction, no matter how direct or circuitous, this song is a must-add for your road trip playlist.
“Where Rainbows Never Die” – The SteelDrivers
This song is about a decidedly different kind of journey, not often referred to as a “vacation,” but even so it’s a poignant, encouraging, and downright delicious song to background any journey. If you’re road weary — or life weary — “Where Rainbows Never Die” is a certified pick-me-up that doesn’t shy away from reality, like the grit and coarseness in Chris Stapleton’s lead vocal wrapping you in its warmth. There’s a comfort in life not being sugar-coated — and in knowing somewhere, west of where the sun sets, rainbows never die.
“Home Sweet Home” – Flatt & Scruggs
Home never feels so sweet as when you’ve just returned after a long, restful, relaxing vacation. So we’ll close our summer vacation playlist with Flatt & Scruggs’ rendition of this tune pulled directly from the American songbook, “Home Sweet Home.” We hope a banjo roll always greets you at your door, and if not, this playlist will at least cover that for you. Wherever you roam, there’s no place like home! And no music like bluegrass.
Boiling Springs, NC on Saturday, September 26, 1987: My workshop in the Gardner-Webb College Library with Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Sherrill and the Hired Hands ended at 4:30 that afternoon when Dan X. Padgett presented Snuffy with a hat. From my diary:
Afterward I hung around and listened for a while to the Hired Hands’ young banjo picker Randy Lucas play the Bach “Bourrée,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and another classical piece expertly on the banjo.
Here’s a nice example, from Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor, of Randy’s recent work in this milieu:
Then, supper time came.
I went for some barbecue (big regional difference thing — this barbecue was red, vinegary; with shredded pork) with Tom [Hanchett] and Carol [Sawyer] and then was kind of enticed away by Dan X Padgett…
I’d met Padgett the afternoon prior, when I first arrived in Boiling Springs; a respected local banjo elder, he was the teacher of the young banjo player in Horace Scruggs’ band whom I’d met earlier today. Padgett had a long and interesting career, with deep connections to Earl Scruggs and Snuffy Jenkins, as well as memories of an earlier generation of banjo greats. He was interviewed for the Earl Scruggs Center by Craig Havighurst in 2010.
I went with him…
…to his car (an old Cadillac) to look at various memorabilia like photos of him with various important country and bluegrass people. He also showed me a very worn copy of the very first F&S songbook and when I expressed a strong interest in copying it he loaned it to me. I also talked with him about the possibility of obtaining a banjo like one he played during the afternoon, a miniature Mastertone about the size of a mandolin with an actual tone ring, flange, and resonator. He said he’d see about it and we ended up standing at his trunk trying out various instruments.
I was picking away on “St. Anne’s Reel” when I noticed there were some people standing around me, and when I finished and looked around there was Doug Dillard looking at me with that big smile. Quite an introduction!
In an edition of the Shelby Star a week or so earlier, Joe DePriest wrote of Dillard’s association with Earl Scruggs, telling how in 1953 the Salem, Missouri teen first heard “Earl’s Breakdown” on the car radio. It hit him so hard “he ran off the road into a ditch.” Dillard got his folks to take him to Scruggs’s Nashville home. “We knocked on the door, and he came, and we asked him to put some Scruggs tuners on my banjo. He invited us in.”
A newspaper clipping from a 1987 edition of the ‘Shelby Star’ of an article by Joe DePriest on Doug Dillard
Earl welcomed banjo pickers to his home, especially if they wanted Scruggs Pegs. In the “Suggestions for Banjo Beginners” on the first page of Flatt & ScruggsPicture Album — Hymn and Songbook from 1958, Earl invited those interested to contact him in Nashville, and many did:
The first page of the 1958 ‘Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook’
In 1962 Doug and his brother Rodney went with their band The Dillards to LA, where they were “discovered” at the Hollywood folk club The Ash Grove. With best-selling Elektra LPs, they toured extensively in the West and appeared on CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show as “the Darling Family.”
In 1966 Doug left The Dillards and ventured into what would soon be called “country-rock,” touring with the Byrds and forming a band with former Byrd, Gene Clark. Dillard’s banjo playing had been strongly shaped by his close listening to Scruggs. In the ’60s when players like Bill Keith and Eric Weissberg were pushing banjo boundaries in bluegrass, Doug was pushing boundaries in a different way by finding a place for Scruggs-style banjo in rock. He fitted solid, straight-ahead rolls into pieces like Gene Clark’s “The Radio Song”:
Dillard was heard often on popular Hollywood studio recordings and movie soundtracks during the ’70s. He even had on-screen roles in Robin Williams’ Popeye and Bette Midler’s The Rose.
DePriest’s article quoted Dillard: “During all this time, ‘I never said goodbye to bluegrass.'” He moved to Nashville in 1983 and started a band.
The bluegrass music business was booming in Nashville. A bunch of young pickers were there, touring in bands and doing studio sessions. New Grass Revival featured newcomers Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn; John Hartford, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas — all were in town. The Nashville Bluegrass Band started in 1984; that year Ricky Skaggs won a Grammy for his version of Monroe’s “Wheel Hoss.” Up in the Gulch district, between the Opry and Vanderbilt, the Station Inn was serving bluegrass seven nights a week.
I was introduced to the Doug Dillard Band this afternoon right there where Dan X Padgett and I had been jamming. His four-piece outfit drew from a pool of talented bluegrass musicians.
Rhythm guitarist, vocalist and emcee Ginger Boatwright was a seasoned veteran. During the ’70s she’d toured and recorded with Red White and Blue(grass), and later formed The Bushwackers, an all-female group that began as the house band at Nashville’s Old Time Picking Parlor. Her story is told well in Murphy Hicks Henry’s book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. Henry calls her “The first ‘modern’ woman in bluegrass” alluding to her folk revival roots, her styles of humor and dress, and, most importantly, “a softer, smoother, more lyrical quality” of singing.
Having a second guitar as a regular lead instrument in a four-piece band was uncommon at this time. When I met Doug’s young lead guitarist I was surprised to discover he was the son of Lamar Grier, whom I’d hung out with twenty years earlier when he was a Blue Grass Boy. David Grier was 26. He’d studied the lead guitar work of Clarence White (there’s a photo of him with White in Bluegrass Odyssey), Tony Rice, and Doc Watson. He was already an experienced pro.
Playing the electric bass, which was unusual for the time, was Roger Rasnake, a singer-songwriter from Bristol on the Tennessee-Virginia border.
In 1986 Flying Fish released this band’s first album, What’s That? (FF 377). Here’s the title cut. The band is augmented to six pieces by Vassar Clements on violin and Bobby Clark on mandolin; both played on the album. What we see and hear first is Ginger’s dynamic emcee work. Doug’s composition shows a banjo picker who knew fiddle music — a melodic “A” section followed by a punching Scruggs-style “B” part.
Rasnake made a point of telling me Roland White had sent his regards.
Roland was an old California friend, whom I’d met in 1964 and gotten to know when he was playing with Monroe. He’d just joined the Nashville Bluegrass Band. It was a pleasant surprise to hear from him.
Roger wanted to buy a copy of my book, so I took him up to the library and he bought one which I autographed. I signed several others during the day, including several that people brought with them.
I rested a bit before heading over to Gardner-Webb’s Lutz-Yelton Convocation Center.
That evening was the Doug Dillard concert in the gym. It was good, with Ginger Boatwright doing the MC work, Lamar Grier’s son David picking some nice lead guitar, and good singing by Roger, Doug, and Ginger.
Rasnake did one of his own songs from their album, “Endless Highway.”
It’s familiar today because Alison Krauss covered it in her 1990 album, I’ve Got That Old Feeling.
There was a grand finale at the end with picking by Horace and the boys, and also fiddler Pee Wee Davis, whom I heard briefly in the back room for a while. I bought a souvenir photo of the Dillards with Andy Griffith. Home and in bed by 11.
On Sunday morning:
Up and away by 7:30, carried my bags to Tom and Carol’s dorm. We hit the road and drove to Shelby where we went, on Joe’s advice, to the Pancake House, a local place on the strip which was sure to have livermush. We went in and sat at a table and when the menu came I eagerly perused it. Sure enough, at the top of the list on the right-hand side was “Livermush and Eggs.” And, in case I’d missed it, about halfway down the same list was “Eggs and Livermush.” So I ordered that and actually ate some. Very peppery, other than that not much taste and what there was didn’t really excite me. I mixed it with eggs, like one does with grits. Maybe it’ll help my banjo-picking, who knows.
In Chapel Hill I stayed the night with Tom and Carol and had a bit of time to visit friends and relations and buy a box of instant grits at a supermarket. Next day I was back home in Newfoundland, writing up my diary.
The weekend at the Earl Scruggs Celebration brought me face to face with a music culture in which bluegrass nestled. Seeing, hearing and talking with Snuffy, Pappy, Horace, and Dan put me in touch with generations older than mine, what Bartenstein has called “The Pioneers” and “The Builders” of this music. I feel fortunate to have seen, met and heard them all. Just as important for me was hearing new younger performers like Ginger Boatwright, David Grier, and Randy Lucas.
This was my first opportunity see my folk guitar hero, Etta Baker. It came near the start of her late-in-life performance career. In 1989 the North Carolina Arts Council gave her the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; in 1991 she won an NEA National Heritage Fellowship. Wayne Martin produced her first CD, for Rounder, in 1991. Later she collaborated with Taj Mahal. Meanwhile Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization “fighting to preserve American musical traditions,” gave her the support she needed to pursue her career as a musician up to her passing at the age of 93.
It was also my first time to see Doug Dillard. If Snuffy and Pappy personified the era when bluegrass emerged from old-time, Dillard’s new band blended the contemporary sounds of an era when classic, progressive, and newgrass elements were shaping and blending the sounds heard as bluegrass thrived in a festival-dominated scene.
Instead of an alpha male lead singer/emcee/rhythm guitarist, he had an alpha female. Replacing the mandolin or fiddle one expected in a band with a banjo was an acoustic lead guitar. Instead of an old “doghouse” upright the bass player had an electric. The lead vocals were shared between male and female. Repertoire ranged from bluegrass classics through old pop and rock favorites to band member compositions. The group was touring widely. State of the art bluegrass, 1987.
So how did all this fit together for me? I recalled the start of my visit when Joe DePriest took Tom, Carol, and me to visit the Shelby graveyard.
He showed us three graves: first that of Thomas Dixon, the local writer whose The Clansmen was turned by D.W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation. Not far away was the grave of W.J. Cash, author of the immensely influential The Mind of the South. Joe and Tom pondered how the two men would have felt about being buried so close to each other; the image that sticks with me is one of Cash glaring at Dixon.
Joe gave us copies of the Greater Shelby Chamber of Commerce’s glossy full-color brochure, Shelby…it’s home. In it Thomas Dixon is identified as the author “whose novel Birth of a Nation became the first million-dollar movie” thus avoiding the fact that book and movie inspired the racist revival of the KKK. It describes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist W.J. Cash simply as “author,” not mentioning his progressive stances in print against the Klan and Nazism.
Tom wondered, what if the paths of Cash (who lived in Boiling Springs) and the young Scruggs had crossed at the time? He told us:
Cash … thought that the South had no “Culture” to speak of — what would he have had to say about Scruggs’s contribution?
Joe took us to a third gravesite, that of a local Confederate colonel killed in a Civil War battle; after detailing that part of his life its headstone:
… describes him as a lover of the arts who twice rode by horseback all the way to a far-off northern city (Baltimore? New York?) in order to hear Jenny Lind sing. This tells you where Cash’s mind was when he spoke of Culture.
The Shelby brochure ended its historical section saying “Cleveland County has also produced two North Carolina governors and an ambassador, but our most famous son is country singer Earl Scruggs.”
So much for official culture in 1987!
Gardner-Webb’s decision to honor Earl Scruggs reflected a shifting intellectual landscape. A local musician of humble origins — a mill worker — had taken on new meaning and significance because of his national and international recognition and popular culture success. He deserved honor and celebration in his home. I was glad to help.
I don’t know if there were any further Earl Scruggs Celebrations at Gardner-Webb, but today there’s an Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, which is planning to hold its inaugural Earl Scruggs Music Festival in September 2022.
Multi-instrumentalist, sideman extraordinaire, podcast host, composer, and IBMA Award winner Justin Moses’ presence in bluegrass is as ubiquitous as it is unassuming — that is, in every way except when his picks meet the strings. Moses won Resophonic Guitar Player of the Year from the International Bluegrass Music Association in 2018 and 2020; he’s also recorded on countless sessions and albums, played on the Grand Ole Opry, and has toured with Dan Tyminski, Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder, and for more than a decade he’s been touring and recording music with his wife of three years, Sierra Hull.
A new track, “Taxland,” which features double mandolins played by Moses and Hull, marries his quiet, often humble virtuosity and his confidence on the mandolin. Moses can command any/all of bluegrass’s staple instruments, resulting in a melody that is all at once careening wildly towards its end and impossibly, impeccably clean. An unfamiliar listener might find it difficult to pick out which instrument belongs to Moses and which to Hull, a testament to their seamless musical gelling after years and years of collaborating. Inspired, loosely, by David “Dawg” Grisman’s new acoustic, post- jazz and swing bluegrass, the tune is housed in a cheerful minor key, as Dawg tunes often are, and Michael Cleveland’s wonky, edge-of-your-seat fiddle solo recalls Vassar Clements’ forays in new acoustic, but not without Cleveland’s own brand of idiosyncratic, bombastic bowing and double-stops peppered throughout.
That a song could feel so improvisational, melodious, and frenetic while retaining its impossible polish once again points back to Moses’ lifelong career in bluegrass and his endless professionalism not only as a creator, but as a technician of each instrument he commands. With Barry Bales and Bryan Sutton — two more lifelong friends and fellow music makers — rounding out the fivesome, “Taxland” will stick with you for longer than just its nearly three minutes and thirty seconds. If you’re a musician like Moses, it just might last you from April ‘til your extension deadline.
Photo credit: Kady Carter
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