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Tag Archives: Bluegrass Today

Becky Buller shares her thoughts on why music really matters

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Azlyrics

Becky Buller – photo by Shelly Swanger

Becky Buller is an exceptional singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. Hailing from St. James, Minnesota, she’s contributed songs to albums by a host of notable names, among them Ricky Skaggs, Rhonda Vincent, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver, The Infamous Stringdusters, and The Travelin’ McCourys, among the many. She’s also the recipient of no less than ten IBMA awards, including wins for the 2020 Song Of The Year (for Chicago Barn Dance, co-written with Missy Raines and Alison Brown), the 2020 Collaborative Recording for The Barber’s Fiddle, her 2016 Fiddler and Female Vocalist Awards, and the 2018 Best Gospel Recorded Performance for the song, Speakin’ To That Mountain.

With three albums to her credit, including Distance And Time, a nominee for the 2021 IBMA Album Of The Year, she also devotes her time to teaching fiddle, singing, and songwriting at workshops and camps around the world, a practice she’s pursued for the past 20 years. In addition, she currently serves on the board of the IBMA Foundation.

We caught up with Buller at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival which was held over this past Labor Day weekend, and took the opportunity to hear insights not only about her career, but the continuing popularity of bluegrass itself.

Bluegrass Today: This is the first Earl Scruggs Music Festival. How did you come to be involved?

Becky Buller: They contacted our booking agent, and offered us a slot on the festival. It’s just such a huge honor to be part of this inaugural event, one that’s honoring Earl Scruggs and his music and his legacy, his life.

Nevertheless, you have quite a storied career yourself with all the honors that you’ve won. When you’ve attained that level of success, is it almost like, “Well, okay, now I’ve got to follow it up. Now, I’ve got to reach those heights again.” Is it intimidating at all?

Absolutely. Yes. It’s very intimidating. I feel like I’m just kind of now getting to the point where I’m enjoying what I want to be able to enjoy. But I’m also still trying to keep up, and so I want to continue to do good. I want to continue putting out music that people enjoy. I’m really grateful for the places we’ve been able to play and the people we’ve been able to play with. Jerry Douglas got on stage with us today, and he joined me on the song, Woodstock. We performed that today for the first time ever together… live and in person. And that was just such a thrill. Never in my wildest dreams, would I have imagined that I would get to do that. I think about being a kid growing up in Minnesota, learning how to play bluegrass music, and I just wonder what the older me would tell that kid. Maybe something like, “You have no idea where you’re gonna end up.”

Did you ever have any idea that your love of this genre would lead you to become a successful musician? And play with such wonderful people?

No, no, I just sort of did it all along. I’ve played music. I’ve written music. I’ve just done it because it’s just who I am and what I do. And songwriting is artistry, but it’s also therapy and my way of dealing with what’s going on around me… trying to dig into it, trying to understand the world and to interpret it. I just I can’t imagine doing anything else.

You did some interesting covers today. Woodstock has been covered a number of times, but your version was definitely unique. You just sort of remade and it was definitely distinctive. And your version of James Taylor’s Millworker was exceptional.

Yeah. It’s weird, because James actually wrote that from a woman’s perspective. So he’s taking on that character as this widowed mother, who has to work in the mills to make ends meet. it was part of a musical called Worker that Studs Terkel wrote. Bluegrass is really so flexible, that it allows you to take on these classic standards and redo them, refine them, remake them in the bluegrass genre. And it seems that’s another way that bluegrass is connecting with a different audience than it did originally. 

Bluegrass has this history that goes back decades, and yet it’s still at the crest of its popularity. It’s become this populist movement, as evidenced by these festivals and the bands that are able to break the boundaries between the traditional and the contemporary. So what are your thoughts as to how bluegrass has maintained its stature, while also expanding its appeal into more modern realms. If you were to ask people about bluegrass 30 or 40 years ago, they might have thought about a bunch of pickers up in the mountains sitting on the front porch. It’s so much broader than that. Why has it been able to sustain that popularity?

At its core, it’s music by real people about real people. That’s evergreen, and it’s something that resonates with everybody from everywhere. And it’s very accessible in that in its basic form, it’s often just two chords, three chords. There are a lot of simple songs that are easy for people to access, write, and jam on. If you’re a beginning player, you can just get in there and, and pick those easy songs and then grow from there. And that’s the thing about bluegrass music that I think is very interesting, and much different from other genres. Oftentimes, the fans are also musicians as well, And so they have a different sort of investment in the music than with other genres. 

There’s also a great deal of variety as well. 

I love a festival like, like Earl Scruggs fest, where you have such a variety of music and yet there’s a thread running through where it all comes back to Earl Scruggs. You have a group like ours that’s more on the contemporary side of bluegrass music. Last night you had Alison Brown and she takes it into the realm of jazz, and you had the the Earls of Leicester and Béla Fleck and Bluegrass Heart. So I love that all these different branches of the bluegrass family tree have been represented at this events. You have other bluegrass events that are staying strictly straight ahead traditional bluegrass, but a lot of those are starting to atrophy. And that’s unfortunate, because I grew up going to festivals like that, and I have a very special place in my heart for those kinds of festivals. But for some reason, the young people aren’t stepping up in the leadership roles to help those festivals continue. And I think that’s a sad thing. But then other festivals are growing. So it’s kind of always ebbing and flowing. I love that bluegrass music has a following just about anywhere you go in the world.

So what’s ahead for you?

We have a Christmas album about to drop on December 2. 

How do you toe the line between staying true to tradition, but also adding contemporary appeal, and more importantly, adding your own voice and making yourself distinctive?

I’m very selfish. I play when I like to play and hope that the audience likes to hear it. And the covers that we do are generally songs that I’ve grown up singing, or I’ve learned along the way. A lot of what we do are songs that I’ve written, which are influenced by every branch of the bluegrass family tree. I love the Stanley Brothers and Jim and Jesse. That’s what I grew up on. And then of course I love Alison Krauss and Lonesome River Band. I love, love, love that. When I heard that stuff, it really hooked me and made me a lifer in bluegrass music. And then I went on to Allison Brown and New Grass Revival. I didn’t hear New Grass Revival and Sam Bush until I got to college. It changed my life. So we’re the sum of our influences.

I think all of that is reflected in the music that I make with the band, whether it’s a song that I’ve written or a cover that I’ve chosen. Plus, we’re all over social media. If you go to my website, Beckybuller.com, you can see all out social media stuff and our YouTube videos. We try to keep everything really light and fun, whether you see us on stage or you are interacting with us online. We want you to walk away just refreshed and rejuvenated. We just want to give you an escape from reality for a little while. And hopefully once we’ve done that, you’re able to go out and be light in life and share hope and healing with your friends and your family community in the world.

Wow. Are you thinking of running for office? With thoughts like those, you ought to consider it.

Thanks, but I think I’ll just stick to the fiddle.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Becky Buller, Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Bluegrass Beyond Borders: Bluegrass Jam Along podcast from London

Posted on July 14, 2022 by Azlyrics

Matt Hutchinson is a British bluegrass enthusiast, one who takes his devotion to a deeper level. As Bluegrass Today reported early last year when he was initiating his efforts, he has a podcast called Bluegrass Jam Along, which finds him sharing free backing tracks for various fiddle tunes while encouraging others to play along from home.

As a result, anyone with the desire to delve in deeply will find plenty of opportunity to indulge their enthusiasm. An initial run-through provides a typical backing track that finds Hutchinson playing through the chords four times in order to allow the listener to become acquainted with the melody and variations. The second track finds him playing the melody four times through for the sake of offering opportunity for accompaniment. On the third time around, the listener is given the chance to trade leads.

In addition, Hutchinson offers free chord charts for each the songs he shares. There’s no limiting either the possibilities or potential, given that the charts can be used for banjo, guitar, fiddle, mandolin, or reso-guitar.

Although its handle states the purpose succinctly, it’s clearly an innovative idea. Fully fascinated, we decided to ask Hutchinson how the concept came about.

So how did you come up with this idea?

The original idea wasn’t to create a podcast at all. I was just looking for backing tracks to use, and I couldn’t find what I needed, so I started making my own. I wanted tracks that ran through the tune more than once or twice. When you play through a tune a few times, you settle into a groove much better — or I do anyway — so I wanted tracks that lasted at least four times through. Then I went looking for tracks where someone else played the tune so I could practice back-up. However, I couldn’t find any. Back-up is what you play 95% of the time, but I suspect most of us don’t spend that much time practicing it. So I started recording some tracks that had me playing fiddle tunes so I could accompany myself. The obvious next step was to create some that swap between the tune and the back-up, like you would in an actual jam. 

What inspired you to share the idea with others?

I found the tracks really useful and wondered if other people might as well. This was back in March 2021 and the UK was in lockdown, so there weren’t any jams to go to. I figured people would be glad to have anything that simulated what it was like to be jamming along with a buddy. I shared a few tracks with a couple of people, and they found them useful, so I started thinking about ways to get them out. A podcast seemed like a really simple way of doing it. I didn’t have loads of tracks, but if I could stick to releasing something every week, I thought it would all add up into a useful resource.

So what’s been the reaction? And how many followers do you have at this point?

That’s one of the weird things about a podcast – you send the episodes out into the world and know people are downloading them, but it’s a one-way thing, so you don’t get to see the reaction. People do message me, and I also use Instagram and Facebook to share the episodes, and that’s a great way to connect with people.

How many episodes have there been so far?

I recently released the 200th episode and, to date, I’ve had over 80,000 downloads from 121 countries. The bulk of those, as you’d expect, come from the US – around 75%. After that it’s the U.K. (about 10%) and Canada (5%), with the remaining 10% spread out all over the world. It’s really cool to think that people in Honduras or Uganda have downloaded an episode and jammed along!

So how does it work? Are you playing and then have people join in virtually? Do you or they know who is participating?

It’s really simple. I pick a fiddle tune and record three separate backing tracks at a set tempo. One is me playing the tune through four times on the guitar, one is me playing back-up through four times, and the other switches between the two so that people can practice making those transitions between back-up and lead. I release them as separate episodes and also add in one with me playing melody and back-up together, so that people have a performance of the tune to listen to if they’re not familiar with it.

How do you choose what you share?

I tend to stick to fairly modest tempos, as I figure people using the podcast won’t be playing at 120 bpm or above! I’ve done around 25 different tunes so far, starting at 75 bpm. I’ve done over half of those at 85 bpm as well and a few at 95. The plan is to keep adding new tunes, but also keep adding quicker versions of the ones I’ve done already. I mostly stick to the tunes people are most likely to find at a jam – things like Whiskey Before Breakfast, Cherokee Shuffle, and Old Joe Clark – but I also throw in the odd favorite of mine that might be slightly less common (Waiting for the Federals, Shove the Pig’s Foot a Little Further Into the Fire, etc.)

Did you intend for it to get to this level? Were you surprised?

To be honest, I’m not really sure what I intended. I had no big plans. I just wanted to keep going and try and release something every week. I haven’t quite managed that, but I’ve put something out most weeks. Getting to 100 episodes felt like a real achievement. I celebrated that by having Bryan Sutton on as a guest, which was fantastic! The podcast turned a year old in March, and I’ve since hit the 200th episode. The plan is just to keep going and getting more content out!

What instruments do you play?

I started out as a drummer in my teens but picked up the guitar not long after. Despite forays into dobro and pedal steel over the years, guitar was my main instrument. But then in 2007, I left a job and they bought me a mandolin as a going away present. I hadn’t asked for one, but they knew I loved acoustic music and figured I’d like it. So I started learning how to play. That was my introduction to learning fiddle tunes, and mandolin was my main thing after that. 

Did you stick with it?

In 2020, the UK went into lockdown and I found myself craving a bigger sound and started picking up the guitar again. I learned a few of the fiddle tunes I already knew from mandolin on the guitar, and just got hooked. Going back to guitar felt like opening up a room in my house I’d forgotten was there – there was something deeply satisfying about it. So I signed up for lessons with Bryan Sutton on ArtistWorks and guitar has been all I’ve really played for the past two years. I do have a rare gig as a drummer in a couple of weeks, probably only my second in the past 15 years!

Are you personally in touch with any of these musical masters you reference?

After I’d being going for a few months, I thought it would be cool to add some interview episodes to the podcast. Coincidentally, right around then, I got a message from Jake Eddy, guitarist with The Becky Buller Band. He had a new record out and asked if I’d be interested in having him on. That turned into my very first interview episode. After that, I started messaging people, hoping to get a few responses. My second guest was Marcel Ardans, from the Lessons With Marcel YouTube channel. I thought, given how much time he’d spent transcribing bluegrass, he’d have some interesting insights to share. He definitely did!

The only real connection I had at that point was with Bryan Sutton. He’s my guitar teacher on ArtistWorks, so I asked him if he’d do an interview, expecting him to say he was too busy. He said yes! As you can imagine that once you’ve had someone like Bryan on your podcast it becomes a bit easier to convince others! Since then I’ve interviewed people like Mike Marshall, Tony Trishchka, Chris Eldridge, Justin Moses, Jarrod Walker, Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, and several other players. I’m also keen to widen the discussion to cover other areas of bluegrass too, so I’ve had authors on, including Josh Turknett, a neuroscientist who wrote a great book on how our brains work when we play music and how to practice more effectively.

It appears that the interview possibilities really blossomed. Who else have you had on?

I also interviewed Happy Traum from Homespun about the company’s 55-year history and what it was like working with legends like Tony Rice, Bill Monroe, and Norman Blake. Homespun has played such an important role in helping people like me learn bluegrass, but they’ve also documented some of the music’s leading players along the way. That was a special interview to be part of. I’m planning on having some instrument makers on the podcast next.

Are you surprised that these famous names were so willing to participate?

The thing that has really amazed me is how easy it’s been to get in touch with people in the bluegrass world. Most of the time, I just send a message on Instagram or an email via their personal website. Nobody has ever asked how many downloads I get, or what’s in it for them. The general response I get is ‘sure, that sounds like fun!’

Obviously there are a few people that you need to go through a publicist to reach, and that’s a little harder, but as the podcast grows, I’m sure I’ll be able to tick off most of the names on my ever growing wish list!

What is the bluegrass scene like where you live?

Pretty healthy, in fact there’s more going on than I realized. I’m in London and there are a few regular jams. I’ve been going to the same one for about 15 years. It’s monthly and a bit more song based than fiddle tunes, but it’s a really friendly group and lots of fun. There’s also another jam on the other side of town from me I need to find time to get to more! That one’s much more traditional bluegrass. We also have a few festivals over here and we get US bands over on tour. We don’t get to see them as often as you do over in the US, but the bonus is, when we do, they’re often in smaller venues. I saw Billy Strings a few months ago in a record store, playing in front of about 350 people. That was incredible,

Who were some of your early bluegrass icons? What got you interested in bluegrass?

I grew up in the north of England in the 1970s, so bluegrass wasn’t on my radar at all. My dad had one Johnny Cash LP, but that was the closest thing to bluegrass we had in the house. I started listening to a lot of singer/songwriters in my early twenties, back in the early ’90s, people like Neil Young. I ended up listening to a bit of country and starting to hear bits of bluegrass as well. That led me to listening to Steve Earle, who is one of my all-time favorite musicians. When his Train A Comin’ album came out, I was fascinated by the sound. It was my first introduction to people like Norman Blake and Peter Rowan. But it was a couple more years before the bluegrass bug really started to bite. 

Then, around 1999-2000 there were three records that really got me into bluegrass in a big way. The first was Steve Earle’s album, The Mountain with the Del McCoury Band. That’s just such a complete album. I love the combination of a killer band with such great songs. Then a few months later, someone gave me a copy of Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue. I put it to one side for a while, thinking it would be a bit of a novelty, but how wrong I was! Again, the combination of songs, singer, and band on that record is just so on the money. The year after O Brother, Where Art Thou? came out, and suddenly, bluegrass was everywhere for a while.

After that, I started looking for more. I picked up a copy of Skip, Hop and Wobble by Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg and Edgar Meyer, and from there, there was no looking back. Funnily enough, I think the one person who links all of those records I mentioned is Jerry Douglas. Maybe I need to try and get him on as a guest. Jerry is such a cool player. I love all those records I just mentioned, but I’m also a huge fan of his work on Transatlantic Sessions. Those TV shows are still something I watch regularly, and the UK tour they do annually is an absolute highlight of my year.

What do you think accounts for the worldwide popularity of bluegrass?

I think it’s maybe as simple as how inclusive it is. If you learn half a dozen fiddle tunes, you can turn up pretty much anywhere in the world and sit down with other bluegrass players and have a connection, whatever your nationality, your politics or your background. That’s always wonderful, but maybe it’s particularly so in these times when we seem to be better at focussing on what makes us different, rather than what we share.

 

 

 
 

 
 

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Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today, London | Leave a comment |

Kody Norris Show named Blue Blaze award winner at Smithville

Posted on July 5, 2022 by Azlyrics

Kody Norris Show accept Blue Blaze award at the Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree – photo by Dwayne Page/WJLE radio

Standing on stage in the sweltering heat of a July 4 weekend, The Kody Norris Show accepted the Blue Blaze Award at the 51st annual Smithville Fiddlers Jamboree. The honor gives kudos to a group or individual that “keeps the embers of bluegrass music glowing for future generations.”

“Our mission is first and foremost to carry the music on, to play it forward, and to try to get a younger audience involved all the time so that 80 years down the road we still have bluegrass and traditional country music,” front man Kody Norris told Bluegrass Today July 2 on his tour bus prior to receiving the award. “That’s our goal. An organization like this—they’re all about preserving things that matter, and in my opinion country music really matters. I feel wholeheartedly that this organization will go on for many years.”

Norris, along with his bandmates Mary Rachel Nalley-Norris (fiddle), Josiah Tyree (banjo), and Cousin Charlie Lowman (bass), performed for the enthusiastic Jamboree crowd.

“Everybody’s kind of giving us a forewarning on the heat,” Norris said before the show. “We’re going to try to really do a good job today. I think there will be a whole lot of eyes on us. We’re utterly excited and so happy to be a part of this.”

Norris grew up around the contests scene in places similar to the Jamboree in Smithville, TN.  

“I played a lot of contests growing up in east Tennessee, southwest Virginia, and North Carolina—just the hotbed of the contest world up there. I’ve even been a contest judge quite a bit. Actually, Josiah Tyree, my banjo player, I saw him the first time I was judging the contest at the Wilson County Fair in Lebanon. He won the contest that day. I had my eye on him for quite some time. Contests are very near and dear to my heart.”

Past recipients of the Blue Blaze award include Sierra Hull, Danny Roberts of The Grascals, Darrin Vincent, Jamie Dailey, Ronnie Reno, Michael Cleveland, and Tennessee Mafia Jug Band.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Bluegrass Beyond Borders: FlamenGrass plays flamenco with banjo and fiddle

Posted on June 2, 2022 by Azlyrics

As noted in last month’s Bluegrass Today review of their current album, Alegria, FlamenGrass defy the notion that bluegrass and flamenco are mutually exclusive. The Barcelo-based band — Lluis Gomez (5-string banjo), Carol Duran (violin/fiddle), Maribel Rivero (vocals, stand-up bass), and Javier Vaquero (Spanish guitar) — exude the emotion expressed by the album title (which translates as “Joy” in English) while utilizing their instrumental dexterity in a way that serves both genres well, ensuring a delivery that’s both assured and intriguing. 

Duran, Rivero, and Gomez are veteran musicians who performed as a trio, and worked with other outfits before FlamenGrass took root. They also served as support for American musicians who toured in their native Spain. Vaquero, who Gomez had known for 20 years previously, came on board when the trio decided that a flamenco guitar was needed to complete their combo.

Nevertheless, the mesh of styles came about gradually. “I studied classical and jazz guitar,” Gomez explains. “When I was 15 years old, I began playing electric bass in a hardcore rock band, even though I was always been attracted to folk music. Flamenco is part of Spanish culture, so it always was there for me. When I  began playing bluegrass music, I adapted the flamenco language to my banjo playing, and I think it made sense.”

Gomez arrived at his conclusion in a logical manner, given that his key influences included Earl Scruggs, J.D. Crowe, Bill Keith, Tony Trischka, and Béla Fleck, to name but a few. “Béla has really been an important part of this new banjo language,” Gomez insists. However he also makes it clear that he’s never limited himself in terms of his musical scope or diversity. 

“I have many influences, from classical to jazz and beyond,” he maintains. “In terms of flamenco, Paco de Lucía is the big influence. However, it’s impossible to mention everybody. I think all of us, depending on where we are in our lives, listen to different musicians. Right now, I’m listening to a lot of classical music.”

Happily then, Gomez and his compatriots managed to do justice to the meld of styles and sounds. “I think we respected the soul of both genres, and tried to make something that makes sense,” he suggests. “It’s not enough just to say, it’s a fusion or whatever. I don’t like the word ‘fusion’ to begin with. After all, all music is influenced by different styles, and flamenco and bluegrass are no exception.”

Nevertheless, Gomez concedes that the band’s evolution was, at times, unexpected. “It was a coincidence, and the pandemic forced the process,” he reflects. “Every time we would travel throughout the rest of Europe or, specially, to the USA, people would ask us to play something from our native country. However I would always say, ‘Well, I play the banjo.’ Still, I always wanted to learn bluegrass. A few years before the lockdown, I remember talking with Martino Coppo, Red Wine’s mandolin player, backstage at the La Roche festival and him telling me about wanting to play something from my country. I also had the same conversation with Tony Trischka.”

Ironically, it was the pandemic that helped bring the process to fruition. “When the lockdown arrived, I was really lucky to be part of a weekly Zoom call with banjo colleagues like Jake Schepps, Adam Larrabee, Hank Smith, Nat Torkington. and Béla Fleck,” Gomez says. “That was a dream come true. The first time he appeared on the call, I was speechless! During these calls I asked Béla if he was interested in flamenco, or had ever played flamenco music. Then he started playing, which was amazing enough. He told me, ‘Since you’re from Spain, you have to open this door to the banjo.’ So during these past two years, I’ve shared my process of learning this really difficult language with the rest of the band. Javi  taught me a lot of the language, and, in fact, we trade banjo and flamenco lessons!”

To date, the band have only released the one album, but Gomez says that as individuals, they’ve each recorded prolifically, given the fact that they’ve each been making music for awhile. 

Gomez notes that his first solo album, Quartet, came out in 2007, and that ten years later, he released a follow-up titled Dotze Contes. “Between these two albums, I recorded several others with different musicians, specially three albums with the Barcelona Bluegrass Band, which found Tony Trischka and Alison Brown recording twin banjos with me,” he recalls. “Carol had been a member of a really well known band here called La Carrau, and she’s also been involved in many projects as has Javi, who has released two albums. As for Maribel, she’s a well known, in-demand bass player.”

As a unit, FlamenGrass have performed in a variety of venues, ranging from festivals to clubs and theaters. They also we did an online showcase for IBMA last September 2021.This summer, they’re scheduled to perform at two important European festivals, the Rotterdam Bluegrass Festival and at La Roche. They’ve also been selected to play a showcase at the World Of Beer festival in Raleigh this September. Gomez says that in the meantime, they’re trying to raise the funds to go and perform in person at the World of Bluegrass.

Happily, the reviews the band has received have been overwhelmingly positive. “We’re really pleased with the comments and reactions from friends, music colleagues, and the press,” Gomez maintains. “In general, all the people say that it’s a combination that may have seemed far away, but that it’s really closely-knit acoustic music. We’re really happy with the support we’ve received from so many people.”

Naturally, then, that’s encouraged Gomez to continue to progress. “Right now, I’m really into the flamenco language, and trying to learn the style while also trying to adapt it to the banjo,” he reflects. “That’s been really difficult. However, I was also working for Mel Bay before the pandemic, and they told me to write ten banjo books. As of now, I have three published and I continue to work to finish the others. In addition, I’m writing new material for the next FlamenGrass album. I’m also practicing everyday to improve my playing, because I have a lot of things to learn!”

That said, Gomez offers his own thoughts about why bluegrass is so popular worldwide. 

“I think it’s because you can play music with other people, and it’s a really unique thing,” he responds when asked. “For example, if you go to a pop or rock festival, you go home and that’s about the extent of the experience. However, if you’re going to a bluegrass concert or specifically, a bluegrass festival, there will likely be a jam after the concert is over. That’s a great thing. Since I began playing bluegrass, I’ve made friends all around the world. When people come to see us in Barcelona, the first they ask is, ‘Where’s a jam?’”

In fact, Lluis says the bond runs even deeper. “All the musicians are really humble and great human beings,” he says. “I’ve been lucky enough to meet all my banjo heroes, and I can honestly say that they’re all wonderful people.”

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Nolan Faulkner passes

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Azlyrics

Kentucky mandolin player Nolan Faulkner passed away on Wednesday, May 25, 2022. He was 89 years old.

He was a huge Monroe fan, but also studied Hungarian, gypsy, jazz, and early black blues music to make his style truly unique. 

Lee Nolan Faulkner was born in 1932 in the Bear Pen community, south-west of Campton in Wolfe County, Kentucky (between Lexington and Hazard).

Life was tough on the family farm, but he survived a hand-to-mouth existence until music became part of his life in 1946. He began playing a guitar before switching to mandolin and studying Pee Wee Lambert and Bill Monroe, who featured on radio stations WCYB and WSM respectively.

Faulkner’s first experience in a band came while playing at pie suppers with the King Boys. Following that, when 16 years old, he took over from a guitarist in the Powell County Boys and played in a trio with Harold Booth and Ramah Boyd. They performed on the Kentucky Mountain Barn Dance on radio station WVLK in Lexington, a show that appears have run from September 1949 to May 1951, and featured Flatt & Scruggs, the Stanley Brothers, and the Davis Sisters during that run. 

At the start of the 1950s he joined Dallas Riddell’s band, the Kentucky Troubadours and, while he continued to play guitar, he learned a lot from the group’s mandolin player Johnnie Johnson, notably two-string harmony picking. They performed on WVLK Radio in Richmond, Kentucky and even ventured as far as having gigs in Hamilton, Ohio. 

Having also done some farming back home, Faulkner followed his brother Jim up to Brighton, Michigan and worked for a gravel company, income from which enabled him to buy a new Silvertone mandolin. He stayed with American Aggregate for 15 years. 

It was while in the state that he became aware of Arkansas-born multi-instrumentalist and bluegrass singer/songwriter Red Ellis, then a DJ on Ann Arbor’s WHRV. Faulkner credits Bill Christian (mandolin player with Ellis) with being a further influence. 

Occasionally, Faulkner would play with Ellis and his Huron Valley Boys and circa. May 1963, they recorded two fine original songs – Christmas Is Not Far Away and Home For Christmas, both of which Faulkner co-wrote with Bill Carpenter, their Dobro player. 

While these two seasonal songs can be heard on the Rebel Records’ collection Christmas Time Back Home, they were apparently originally released by the obscure Pathway Records.  

About the same time the band’s recording of Two Little Rosebuds features Faulkner’s vocals. 

 

During the 1960s Faulkner cut sides for a few obscure labels, such as Sun-Ray, Happy Hearts and Irma.  

Nolan(d) Faulkner & Bill Carpenter – Abraham / The End Of The Day 

Nolan Faulkner and Ed Bryant – Alimony Blues 

 

This original by Faulkner reflected his personal circumstances at the time. 

While at the University of Michigan, Doug Green (the Blue Grass Boys and Riders in the Sky) got his start in the music business with Faulkner. 

He continued to be a big influence on many bluegrass musicians in the Detroit area, and that was cemented by his collaboration with The Miller Brothers. 

After meeting Earl Miller – a fellow Kentuckian – in a tavern in the Walled Lake district of Detroit, Faulkner joined him and his brothers – Charlie and James. 

They worked together during the early to mid-1970s playing barroom-style bluegrass, reminiscent of two decades earlier, with lots of bluesy notes. Faulkner is quoted as saying, “We were brought up real hard. That kind of music we played, you kind of played the way you felt. Everybody can’t play that kind of music – with that blues in it.”

The Miller Brothers recorded material for four LPs and three singles, two sides being released in 7” format only. 

Subsequently, Faulkner and James Miller released three albums. 

However, before that Faulkner cut an all-instrumental The Legendary Kentucky Mandolin Of Nolan Faulkner (he penned all but one of the featured tunes) LP.

 

Throughout the 1970s Faulkner was in great demand in the studio with sometimes uncredited recordings with Lee Allen; Wendy Miller & Mike Lilly; Bob Smallwood; Larry Sparks; Wade Mainer; Joe Meadows; Clyde Moody; Charlie Moore; and John Hunley’s Kentuckians. 

Lee Allen with Nolan Faulkner – Praise God I’m Ready To Go 

 

Nolan Faulkner and Wendy Miller – Twin Mandolin Waltz

Also, he Filled in with The Case Brothers occasionally during the latter part of the decade.  

In 1979 Faulkner was critically wounded by a gunman and he had to have extensive treatment, recuperation, and prolonged therapy that included learning to walk again. 

As a consequence, he was unable continue doing any heavy-duty jobs and Faulkner returned to work with John Hunley, and travelled and recorded with Roy McGinnis and the Sunnysiders, Robert White and the Candy Mountain Boys, as well as James Miller. 

Nolan Faulkner and James Miller – Knocking On Your Door (circa. 1990)

Dana Cupp, with whom Faulkner started The Cass Valley Ramblers in 2012, said … 

“Nolan has been such a tremendous influence on me since I met him back in the ’70s. He always encouraged me and helped me with my music.”

Among the other songs that he wrote are Alimony Blues, Empty Cradle, Playing Hard To Get, Lonesome Wind, Changed, Afraid To Be Afraid, Lexington Girl, and Ham Tramack (sic.) Waltz. 

Having lived in Michigan for so many years, Faulkner returned to home state recently. 

R.I.P., Nolan Faulkner 

A Discography 

Nolan Faulkner

  • The Legendary Kentucky Mandolin Of Nolan Faulkner (Old Homestead OHS 90064, released 1976)
  • Nolan Faulkner and James Miller (Old Homestead OHS 80041, 1981)
  • Land of the Thoroughbred (Niptune NPB 014, 1990) with James Miller (cassette)
  • From The Heart Of Bluegrass (Old Homestead OHS 80099, 1991) with James Miller (cassette) 
  • Black Robe/Alimony Blues (Irma FB 102, 1969), with Ed Bryant and the Big Sandy Boys

Noland (sic.) Faulkner & Bill Carpenter

  • Abraham/The End Of The Day (Sun-Ray SRR 113, 196?)  

Red Ellis

  • Two Little Rosebuds
  • Old Time Religion Bluegrass Style (Starday SLP-273, May 1964) 

The Miller Brothers

  • Teenage Angel In Heaven (Jessup Michigan Bluegrass MB 117, 1972)
  • Sacred Songs With A Down Home Flavor (Old Homestead OHS 90005, 1972)
  • Detroit Blues (Old Homestead OHS 90022, 1973)
  • Bluegrass Sound Of The Miller Brothers (Old Homestead OHS 90039, 1974)
  • I’m Losing My Family (And Breaking Up My Home)/That Old Moon (Old Homestead 45-5006, 1973)

Lee Allen And The Dew Mountain Boys

  • Lee Allen with Nolan Faulkner – Praise God I’m Ready To Go
  • Sacred Songs And Mountain Ballads (Old Homestead OHS-90006, 1972) 

Wendy Miller & Mike Lilly

  • Twin Mandolin Waltz
  • New Grass Instrumentals (Old Homestead OHS 90017, 1972)

Bob Smallwood

  • Have You Seen Papa’s Coal Loadin’ Hands (Old Homestead OHS-90021, 1973)

Roy McGinnis and The Sunnysiders

  • Sacred Songs Of Life (Old Homestead OHS-70015, ca. November 1977)
  • Bluegrass (Old Homestead OHS-80071, 1985)

Joe Meadows

  • Black Mountain Rag – West Virginia Fiddler (Old Homestead 90076, 1977) 

John Hunley’s Kentuckians

  • John Hunley’s Kentuckians (Old Homestead OHS-80022, 1979) 

Various Artists

  • Christmas Time Back Home (Rebel Records REB-1600, 1980)

Bluegrass Today gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Gary B Reid, who found some lesser-known facts and confirmed others.  

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Rodney Dillard looks back on his music career at 80 years young

Posted on May 18, 2022 by Azlyrics

Even as late as the early ’60s, bluegrass was largely ignored by the mainstream folk and country community. Mostly referred to as “hillbilly music,” it was a sound confined to back porches and community hoedowns in rural Appalachia in the minds of the average American. Though unknowingly at first, the Dillards — the namesake outfit helmed by brothers Rodney and Douglas Dillard with Mitch Jayne and Dean Webb, and featuring at various times future illuminates Herb Pedersen, Byron Berline, Glen D. Hardin and any number of other luminaries who came and went in the various line-ups that continue tot his day under Rodney and his wife Beverly’s aegis — brought that music to the mainstream when they were tapped to portray a fictional band known as the Darlings on the ever-popular The Andy Griffith Show during a successful run that lasted from 1963 and 1966. Twenty years later, they reprised their role on a reunion show, Return To Mayberry, but by then, the band had made its own mark, courtesy of such landmark albums as Backporch Bluegrass, Live!!! Almost!, Wheatstraw Suite, Copperfields, Roots and Branches, and Tribute to the American Duck, albums which coincided with the emergence of the West Coast convergence of country, roots, and rock and roll, as spearheaded by such influential fellow-travelers as the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Rick Nelson’s Stone Canyon Band, Michael Nesmith’s First National Band, and others of that ilk. 

It was hardly a coincidence then that Doug Dillard would eventually join forces for Byrds’s lead singer Gene Clark and bassist Chris Hillman to form Dillard & Clark, whose two albums, The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark and Through the Morning, Through the Night are widely hailed as classics in the category of early Americana. 

Sadly, Douglas Dillard passed away in 2012, and both of the band’s original members, Dean Webb and Mitch Jayne, are no longer with us, but Rodney Dillard continues to share the band’s lingering legacy, courtesy of various solo efforts and the long-awaited 2020 Dillards album, Old Road New Again, the first album in 25 years to bear the band’s name. It also featured a stunning array of fellow travelers who give the Dillards credit for inspiring their own careers, among them, Don Henley, Sam Bush, Bernie Leadon, and Ricky Skaggs.

Speaking on the phone with Bluegrass Today from his home near Branson, Missouri two days before his landmark 80th birthday, Rodney Dillard hints that there will soon be a special event to honor the Dillards’ lingering legacy. Indeed, he’s only too happy to look back and reminisce to share his memories of a remarkable career that continues to bring him from past to present. 

“I’m truly blessed,” he insists. “I grew up here in the Ozarks, and my brother and I lived on a farm that’s been in the family since 1865. So I came from rural roots. We had no running water, and no electricity. It isn’t like I was a city boy who discovered the wonders of bluegrass and wanted to identify with it.”

So how did you get started on this journey?

I went away to college, but after one year there, I realized college wasn’t really for me. I just didn’t fit in. So two weeks before the finals during my first year, my brother and I decided that we were going to pursue music, so I just quit. We decided we were going to head for Los Angeles and kind of figure out what we were going to do.

Dean Webb was part of the original line-up as well. How did you recruit him? 

I made a deal where I would give him banjo lessons in exchange for a dog. But the dog was chasing the cattle, so I had to get rid of him. But anyway, we got together and just started picking. I was teaching him how to play and after a while we decided to go and  do something with our music. So rather than going to to Nashville, like a lot of people do, I felt it wasn’t a good choice because it wasn’t going to open new doors as far as bluegrass was concerned. People weren’t accepting it at that time. So we got a ’55 Cadillac, a one wheel trailer and maybe $20 between us, and then headed to California.

When was that?

It was either ’63 or ’64. I think we spent Christmas ’63 in Los Angeles. Anyway, after we started out and left the Ozarks, we ran out of money in Oklahoma City and ended up taking odd jobs. By that time, we had almost no money. So we checked into the YMCA down there in Oklahoma City. Two of us checked in, and we snuck the other two guys in and wired beds together.

The YMCA isn’t what one would call costly accommodations. You were that broke?

We were fighting over crackers in the waste cans. We ended up going to work for this guy who had a club in town, which was on the music circuit where everybody came in work. We just started gravitating toward that place and eventually we auditioned for him, and he ended up hiring us. So we stayed there two weeks and made enough money to head for California. The first night we arrived I can remember checking into a place down on Melrose, a hotel that rented by the hour.

What was the first place that you frequented once you arrived?

It was called the Ashgrove. It later became the Comedy Store. We were very innocent. We just pulled up in the foyer and started playing.

So how did you get connected with Andy Griffith?

We ended up signing with Elektra Records through this producer we knew named Jim Dickson, who went on to produce the Byrds and a lot of other people that were part of that LA scene. Dickson knew Jan Holzman who had just started this label called Elektra. I’m still friends with Jac. He’s in his 90s now. Anyway, the company put an ad in Variety magazine that said, something to the effect of they had signed these funny looking guys from the Ozarks who play this funny music.

That seems like an odd way to advertise you…

Well it worked, because the show’s producer saw the ad. One of the scripts included a hillbilly group called the Darlings. So he looked at that ad and said, call these boys up. So they called our manager and we went over to the audition at the Gulf and Western Studios, which at that time was called Desilu. So we walked into the big old soundstage. Andy and Bob Sweeney, who was the director, said, “Show us what you got.” So we started playing right away. There was no microphone or anything. Then, about halfway through, Andy said, “That’s it.” We thought he was kicking us out and we started to leave. That’s when he said, “Where are you going? You got the job.”

After the first show we did, the producer, Sheldon Leonard, comes over to us with this big stack of letters, and said, “This is what they think of you. You’re doing another show.” That’s how it started. We ended up doing five or six. It started as a very schizophrenic career, because people knew us mainly for the Andy Griffith Show. I’m not trying to be arrogant, but in fact, we were one of the first major bluegrass groups. We helped expose bluegrass to the to the world. The Andy Griffith Show is still shown in repeats all over the world.

You brought bluegrass into America’s living rooms. That was very significant.

That’s right. And at that point in LA we were like the newest thing. After that, we went on a tour that took us to New York, and then the Newport Folk Festival. We started hooking up with a lot of different people and getting to know folks like John Sebastian from the Lovin’ Spoonful, Eric Weisberg, and other people who were big in the folk scene at the time. From there, we started appearing on other network TV shows and started getting into the college circuit. It was more the folk scene, because we still weren’t being associated with what was happening with country music in Nashville. After a while, we began introducing comedy into what we were doing so we could give people a little variety. I’m not talking about the burlesque style of comedy. We were considered a little more sophisticated comedy. 

It sounds similar to the route the Smothers Brothers took. 

Well, not really. But Tommy Smothers did steal some of my stuff.

Wow. There’s a scoop right there!

We played all the major folk clubs in New York, including the Hungry I. That was the big one. Everybody played there. Bill Cosby opened up for us and Gabe Kaplan. Pat Paulsen too. And the guy that played the Hippy Dippy Weatherman…

George Carlin?

Yeah, that’s it. He had been a disc jockey in Florida and he played our records. So,we just started to seep into everybody’s lives. And then we started making records, but we just got blasted by the bluegrass people. They didn’t want the music to move forward or backward or anywhere. They wanted it to stay right where it was. That’s when Herb Peterson came into the group. Herb had been down in Nashville, and he had subbed for Earl Scruggs when Earl had his back problem,. He was from San Francisco and we met him at a place called the Troubadour in LA. That, to me, that was the beginning of what I feel was when the Dillards career took us from that traditional bluegrass thing into another genre, which hadn’t yet been developed.

The bottom line is that the Dillards were a major influence on so much of the music that came out of that period in the ’60s. It must be very gratifying.

I’ll just say that I have never regretted one moment of it. We were four hillbillies from the Ozarks, but what we got to experience was just incredible.

You really played a major role in moving the music forward. Without the Dillards, a lot of the popularity that bluegrass music now enjoys might not have been possible.

I’ve never looked at it from that perspective. Thank you.

It’s true. The albums you made early on are now considered classics of the genre.

I’m grateful and thankful for it. Music soothes the soul, and all music is important to me. I don’t care how you put it together. When I look back on those days, when we all used to hang around the Troubadour, everybody would be there. There was a scene there that will never be seen again. Kind of like that period in Paris in the 1920s, the Golden Age.There was something coming out of that that was really, really unique.

The last Dillards album, Old Road New Again, was the first album under the band’s name in 25 years. So the obvious question is, why did it take so long?

Well, I have been doing stuff. I had a studio here in Branson for ten years or so, completely state of the art. I cut all of the local people here. Andy Williams, Roy Clark. I had Disney here. We were doing the music for some of the stuff for Disney World in Japan. I had a great, great run here with the studio. I also put out some albums of my own. I did some stuff on Flying Fish Records. It looks like the Smithsonian wants some of that stuff. So I’m trying to chase it all down and see where it lies. I’ve got one album left in the tank and I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time. 

Of course, people will forever connect you with the Darlings and The Andy Griffith Show. That would seem inevitable.

They did a market research study on Andy Griffith fans. It’s one of the largest markets in the world. It’s never been off the air. So my wife Beverly and I are working on some songs that refer back to the Andy Griffith references he used to share on the air. So far, we have ten titles. Will You Love Me When I’m Old and Ugly, that’s one of them. During COVID, we sat down and wrote an album we’re going to call The Songs That Made Charlene Cry, and it consists of lyrics drawn from the different sayings from the show. The idea is to get all the big guys who are fans of the show to come in and do a song, so that’s what I’m trying to get it done. So that’s my next project, to do that album for all those Mayberry fans. Sadly, Maggie Peterson, the actress who played Charlene passed away just the other day. I had hoped to get her involved.

So what are you doing these days? Are you still playing regularly?

I do occasionally. I just like playing with the boys. I’ve got a really neat band that I play with. One of the guys is a doctor. Another is a jazzer. I’ve got Cory Walker in the band, whose brother plays with Billy Strings. And then I have another fiddle player out of North Carolina, George Giddens, who’s played with Moe Bandy and a whole bunch of people. 

What you think of some of the bluegrass bands of the current generation? Do you find them continuing that tradition you started, to ensure that the music remains current and contemporary?

First of all, I think music always ought to grow. It needs fresh blood in order to grow. I do respect the want for the music that came before, but maybe you ought to put it in a museum. You know, the Monroes and all the other originals. But you can’t be an original forever. So I like the folks that have come along recently. I hear the Dillards in a lot of these guys. They’re just great. They respect the old but they also want to contribute, and I think that’s wonderful. It’s wonderful to see these young people coming up, and it gives me hope for the future.

That was you at one point.

I am just now beginning to think that maybe we did have some effect on musical history. I was watching this documentary the other day, and John Paul Jones was talking about how we had influenced him. I’m looking at it and going, “Really?” I just know that I’m very fortunate. I know I don’t take anything for granted at this point. I’m just an earth man who’s just passing through.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Andy Griffith, Bluegrass Today, Dean Webb, Rodney Dillard | Leave a comment |

The School of Bluegrass with Doyle Lawson – Alan Munde with Jimmy Martin

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Azlyrics

In this recurring column, bluegrass legend Doyle Lawson answers your questions about his storied musical career. To ask a question, either comment below, or send us your question by email.

Howdy folks howdy… (my best imitation of Mr Monroe) and I must say it looks a lot closer to him than it would sound if verbal! So here we go with more answers for inquiring minds.

While I’ve other memories of you and your band, as things turned out my memories are always going to feature the tornado scare in Charlotte, Michigan, last June (loved the unaccompanied Gospel set at the end, by the way). So: Any stories about storms and bad weather to tell?

Thanks, of course, for years of excellent music.

Joel Dinda

Joel Dinda, that was quite a scare last year in Charlotte, MI for everyone attending the festivals, as well as everyone in the surrounding area. I was pretty amazed as to how everyone stayed pretty calm during the crucial tornado watch  I don’t remember which one of my guys suggested us leaving to try and get out of the potential storms way, but I said that we were better off staying out than trying to outrun the tornado should we get in its path. I was just thankful that it passed and the festival was able to continue with some adverse weather, and we gave our best to the people who stayed with us that day.

I will share this story and try to make it as brief as possible.

In March of 1963 I was on a 33 day tour as a banjo man for Jimmy Martin, and we were out in western Canada and working a series of shows. One night we finished a concert in Calgary, Alberta and headed back to North Battleford, Saskatchewan where we were based, and encountered a snowstorm unlike anything I had ever seen. Needless to say we were not prepared for weather this severe. We toured in Jimmy’s ’59 Cadillac, and of course, had no snow tires or chains, and the car started riding up on the snow and losing traction. It was either Paul Williams or Kirk Hansard driving, and I was sitting up front on the passenger side when I just happened to see a little side road off to our left, and suggested that we try and back the car into that road and maybe some vehicle would come along and knock the snow down enough to continue on.

So we did get parked and proceeded to wait and hope, but we were getting low on fuel and had to shut the engine off to save gas. And if that wasn’t bad enough, while we were doing our show in Calgary someone had broken the wing glass on the passenger side trying to break into the car. All I had with me for warmth was a sports jacket that I sometimes wore onstage, and I tell you I thought I would freeze to death! Thankfully we hadn’t been there long before I saw a set of headlights headed in our direction, and when they went by us we saw that it was a Volkswagen and looked much like a snow plow the way it was scattering the snow. And yes, there was a big Cadillac on its tail for sure.

There’s more to the story, but we made it back to North Battleford sometime after lunch and where the temperature was a balmy 13 below zero.

Doyle, thank you for bringing up the Tucker mandolin you once owned. I own that mandolin now, and would love to learn its history while it was with you. Thank you for being here.

Gerald Harbour

Gerald Harbour thanks for your question regarding Tucker mandolins.

Melvin Tucker was a fine fellow, and I met him at The Lewis Family festival in Lincolnton, GA. As I recall someone, and I don’t remember who, introduced me to Melvin, and he said that he built mandolins and asked if I would have a look at one. Of course I said yes, and I sat and played for awhile and told him that I thought it was a fine instrument. He then asked me if I thought it was good enough for me to play onstage, and I said yes. It wasn’t long before he brought me a mandolin as a gift, and I told him that I wouldn’t be using it as much as he might want because I had an agreement with John Paganoni, and that was my first priority. He understood that, and so that’s how it began.

When Dale Reno and Paul Williams heard it they both liked and got a Tucker. Later Melvin brought me the prototype of the A model he built for awhile, and I bought that one and kept it for a good while. In truth, I let them both go because I felt that they needed to be where they would be played more than they needed to be just sitting around.

Hey, Doyle, so glad you are a part of the Bluegrass Today site.

Looking back at your time with King Jimmy Martin, I am curious to know if you personally worked with Alan Munde on developing his style to to fit Jimmy. He is a monster with fiddle tunes and flawless melodic style, but his playing during his time with the Sunny Mountain boys was punchy and Crowe-like all the way (IMO). Alan is one of the greatest for sure. Thanks!

David Russell

Hey David, here’s my recollection regarding Alan Munde coming to Jimmy Martin.

When I decided to go back to work for Jimmy in ’69, it was to fill the banjo slot because Chris Warner (another mighty good banjo man) was going back to Pennsylvania. Chris stayed on board for awhile, so I was playing mandolin and Vernon Derrick had moved over to just the fiddle. When I went to work with J.D. in ’66 I pretty much stopped playing banjo other than occasionally doing a twin banjo instrumental with him, and I was really out of practice, banjo wise.

So I suggested to Jimmy that we find a banjo picker and leave Vernon on the fiddle and me on mandolin. During the DJ convention week that they used to do in Nashville every year I happened to run in to Alan downtown, and after small talk I asked what he was doing at present. He said he was sort of at loose ends and I said, “do you want a job, Jimmy’s looking for somebody.” I had met Alan sometime before and I seem to recall he, along with Sam Bush and a fellow named Wayne Stewart working as a trio, and I was really impressed with Alan’s banjo work. Anyway, I went back to Jimmy’s and told him I had found a good banjo man and who it was.

Surprisingly, Jimmy had heard him pick, but said that he didn’t play his (Jimmy’s) style, to which I replied, “no but he can.” Jimmy then said that he just wasn’t up to teaching somebody to play like he wanted, and I told him if he would hire him that I would rehearse him and he wouldn’t even have to be there. Well the beauty of it all was that neither I nor anyone else had to teach Alan Munde anything about banjo. He’s a stylist in his own right, and always when I heard him I knew who it was.

And yes he played Sunny Mountain banjo!

Doyle – Born and raised in New York City and a big fan. Thanks for so much great music over the years. I was surprised when Randy Graham joined Quicksilver, and wondered how you could have two such strong and similar tenor voices in the same band – which it clearly did! How did you go about making that work?

Eric Savage

Eric, you’re digging deep into my memories, but this is my answer.

Lou Reid left to go to Ricky Skaggs’ band in 1982, and everyone knows what powerhouse vocalist he was and still is. It was crucial to find someone who could bring it the way Lou had done, and as it happened Randy Graham had relocated to Arizona after several years as a founding member of The Bluegrass Cardinals. Hey, it was a shot in the dark but I called him (  believe that it was Baucom who came up with his number) and offered him the job, and was surprised and happy he accepted.

Regarding blending the vocals, I knew that there would be no problem on the high end, and so each song we did we looked for where the vocals worked best. Being the first replacement in DL&Q there couldn’t have been a better choice than Randy!

That’s it for this week, and wish al you the best for now.

Doyle

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Alan Munde, Bluegrass Today, New York City | Leave a comment |

Some thoughts on Spotify and its value to music makers

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Azlyrics

The following is a thoughtful article originally shared on Facebook last week by Rachel Hurley, a long time music industry professional and writer. She currently runs her own publicity firm, Sweetheart Pub, which provides services to a great many artists in the acoustic and Americana world. Rachel has also worked as a music supervisor and talent buyer, and has written for major newspapers, worked at cable music channels, live concert events, at a record label, at a legendary recording studio, and as a publicist for many years.

Here she shares her thoughts on Spotify and the many arguments that the company’s actions raise in music circles. Rachel brings forth many trenchant and cogent thoughts on issues like the rates Spotify pays to artists, and the value of the service to the musicians with whom she works.

We commend her article to all our readers, not as an official statement from Bluegrass Today, but for rational consideration of a debate that continues to rage within our industry. It appears with her permission.

You can subscribe to her Sweetheart Pub newsletter on SubStack.

As always, your comments are welcome.

This is probably a bad idea.

Okay. I’m going to say my piece about Spotify. I realize that some people won’t like what I have to say, so here goes nothing.

Spotify and streaming are not the problem. Too much music is.

With the Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan battle coming to a head this week and Neil Young losing (what a poorly thought out maneuver that was 🙄), I’ve seen a renewed battle cry about Spotify being some demon corporation that devalues music and keeps musicians from making a living.

It’s hard to take seriously anyone who thinks that quitting Spotify will have any impact on anything. It feels performative and hollow. It doesn’t present any viable solution. And it tells me that they obviously have not looked at the numbers.

Streaming has been around for over a decade, plenty of time for musicians to unite and form a union or an advocacy group that could study Spotify’s extremely transparent numbers and come up with a more fair payment plan. But no one has and that’s because the math doesn’t work.

Even if Spotify doubled what they paid out, which they can’t afford to do, it would make no significant difference.

Streaming isn’t keeping musicians from making a living. The real issue is that music is an over saturated market. There are too many musicians and too much music. Spotify estimates that there are 60k songs uploaded to their platform DAILY. Now think about how much music is uploaded to Soundcloud, Youtube, Tidal, Apple, Amazon, and on and on and on.

You know the whole economic theory about the more there is of something, the less it’s worth?

The barrier to becoming a musician has been lowered to the ground. And that’s great in terms of giving everyone equal access, but due to the influx of people participating, well, that’s what has devalued the product.

If diamonds grew on trees we could get a basket of them at the corner market for $3.99.

Plus, the lower bar hasn’t created an influx of more musical geniuses, but it has given us an abundance of very good musicians. The downside to so much great music is it’s harder for individual musicians to rise to the top. I listen to and read about music for a living, and I still can’t keep up with all of the good music just in my niche. Every single day I come across new music from new artists.
The simple truth is that the market can not supply every good musician with a full time living making music. If NO ONE created another song from this moment on, you would still never get through all of the music that has already been made. As a matter of fact, the popularity of catalogue music, songs more than 18 months old, rose from 60.8% in 2018 to 66.4% in 2021. In sharp contrast, new music listenership is falling. That’s why all of these legacy artists are selling their catalogs right now. Investors are forecasting that older music can be repackaged for commercials, tv, movies, etc and bring in major dollars. Yes, this is something that has been done in the past by individual artists, but now there are going to be one-stop-shops where you can choose from a David Bowie, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, NEIL YOUNG, or John Lennon song. Publishing rights usually stay with publishers and songwriters and recorded rights belong to labels and performers, but with companies like Hipignosis spending 100s of millions to purchase back catalogues, it will be easier than ever to purchase rights to use this older music.

But I digress. Back to musicians making a living from music.

There was ONE golden period in the mid to late 20th century when a significant number of musicians and the music business were able to harness the market well enough that it really seemed like being a successful professional musician meant being well paid (even though they were all ripping each other off back then too.) The truth is, there was still always a very limited number, as compared to other professions, of musicians who were able to make a good living from music for an extended period of time. For the majority of musicians, just having a 2 to 3 successful album cycle was an epic win. And most professional musicians still made a low to middle class salary, it was only after the idea of the musical star was born that a limited number started raking in the big bucks.

For the majority of human civilization, making a living from being a musician was obtainable by a very small number of people. Music used to be just passed on through friends, families, communities, churches, etc. Music as a commodity is fairly new. Before the idea to sell music on a large scale came about, once you heard a song, it was yours forever, because the only way to hear it again would be to sing it yourself. We as humans have over-glamorized and overvalued music. It’s a natural, abundant resource that the majority of humans can create. Just about anyone can learn to play an instrument. It’s no harder than any other skilled profession, the only thing you really need is time. Human brains love patterns and patterns create dopamine, we are biologically wired to love and make music.

Obviously, the invention of the phonograph, record players, radio, television, etc had a huge impact on people’s relationships with music, but none more so than the internet. The World Wide Web has made it very easy for people to be extremely well versed in music: to know its history, to learn to play it, to learn theory, recording techniques, network with other musicians, book shows, market their music, etc etc etc. I think you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who would argue that this low bar of entry has been detrimental to the evolution of music. But what it HAS been detrimental too is the selling of music.

Fans have a finite amount of time and money to expend on musicians and listeners are spending more today than they ever have in history. Music listening is up 10% since 2020. 10% is HUGE.
But for every 10 musicians the average person might be a fan of, they only have the time and money to support 2 or 3. I realize that most of the people reading this are probably hard core music fans, but I’m talking about the average person, whose attention is being pulled by an inordinate amount of entertainment options like tv, movies, social media, books, video games, and other hobbies. Add this to the before mentioned love of older music, or music by musicians that listeners no longer feel the need to support financially, and herein lies our conundrum.

It’s simple supply versus demand.

Not to mention, that streaming services and social media have over inflated most musicians’ sense of their fanbase. Are people who have never purchased anything from a musician really fans? Or should we change the valuation system from people who clicked a button to follow them with people who are actual customers, because measuring a fanbase based on streaming and social numbers is a complete fallacy.

It’s not that difficult for a song to reach 100,000 streams if added to the right playlist, but that doesn’t mean 100,000 people liked the song. You can gauge true interest in the artist by looking at the streams of all of their songs. You can have 100k streams on one song and an average of 2k on your other songs. This tells me that your song with the high streams is not converting people to listen to your other music. But the artists often look at it like they have a ton of streams which means they have a large fan base and their not making the amount of money that they think is equivalent to the amount of people listening, when in fact, all that’s really happened is 100,000 people got to sample a song and it didn’t convert. But without streaming services, they would never have had that opportunity in the first place.

I often feel like I am in a giant feedback loop of people saying that Spotify is stealing money from artists without anyone ever acknowledging the massive benefits of streaming. And I don’t just mean the convenience of it. Most people would never have access to such a huge variety of music and on the flip side of that, so many musicians would not have access to such a variety of fans. Streaming has allowed so many different styles, genres, and people to enter the conversation. It has also knocked down the income barrier, giving those with less money access to the same variety of music as those with plenty of disposable income.

Do you remember the time between ages, say 12 and 18, when music was SO important to your life? Well, not every teenager has access to the money to purchase music from all of the artists they love. Only 17% of teenagers work. And we all have way more bills than we did 20 years ago. At the height of my music purchasing time period, I wasn’t also paying for a cell phone, internet, all the streaming accounts, etc etc. Streaming makes music accessible to everyone and has expanded our horizons exponentially, affecting every aspect of our culture.

So, should musicians just give away their music for free?

Well, they do and they always have, and they always will.

But no one is making anyone give their music away. No one is making anyone put their music on streaming services. They can just sell their music the old-fashioned way. But most musicians won’t go this route, because they know the enormous opportunities, NOT GUARANTEES, that streaming services give them.

The fact is most bands that have listeners on streaming services, would not sell an equivalent amount of records. I listen to hundreds of records every year, but I would not purchase 100 records a year, due to the laws of time, space, and money. With streaming I can read about an artist and immediately go check them out. If I had to go purchase an album every time I wanted to listen to someone’s music, well, I just wouldn’t do it.

I also never see anyone talk about all the negatives of purchasing music before streaming. Like, it was sort of a scam, and definitely a seller’s market. If you’re over 40, how many times did you buy an album because you heard a song on the radio, and the rest of the album was terrible. Or you bought an album and listened to it 3 times and then just forgot about it. Or you bought an album because of the cover, and again, it was not good. How many times did one of your LPs break or melt, or your CDs get stepped on and shattered, or even stolen. How many CDs are sitting in landfills? How many of your cassette tapes got jammed in your car stereo or just stopped playing? I do not want to go back to any of that. The pendulum has swung and now listeners have more power. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t swing again and become more even. More on that later.

Let’s talk about the math of paying musicians more for their music streams, even if some of those streams are just people sampling their music who would never actually purchase anything from them.
It’s with an uncritical eye that anyone could look at Spotify’s revenue and think that they should just pay more and that would solve everything.

First of all, only 15% of Spotify’s artist base made over $1000 in streams in 2020 – (and streams count whether people listened and hated it or played via algorithmic playlist that the listener had no control over. ) So let’s say that 15% is the number of musicians on their platform with actual fan bases. It’s not an exact analogy, but it works for this discussion.

That dollar amount seems paltry until you add in the context that that 15% was over 187,000 artists. Now, $1000 is just the minimum amount paid out to be a part of this top 15%. But to keep it simple, let’s say they gave 187000 artists $1000. That’s 187 million dollars. Some of these artists have streams in the billions. 13000 of those made over 50k. They are paying out a LOT of money spread out among a lot of artists.

In 2020, Spotify brought in 8 billion dollars in revenue – NOT profit. As a matter of fact, Spotify has never published an operating profit. In 2020, it posted a 581 million euro loss. But just for fun, let’s say you you took every dime of their revenue – and they didn’t pay their CEO, or a single employee, electricity bill, server cost, marketing – (and on and on) and split that money between the artists with enough streams to make 1000 bucks – that would only be $4200 bucks per artist. Now split that between the publisher and the songwriter and the band members and the manager, etc, and that is hardly enough for anyone to live off of.

According to Business Insider, Spotify pays rights-holders between $0.003 and $0.005 per stream on average. Approximately 70 percent of the total revenue earned per stream goes to the artist, while the rest is absorbed by the platform itself. So in order to double what Spotify pays artists, they would have to raise their revenue to at least 13 billion dollars.

I also see people say that if they took away the crazy salaries of their top executives, you could use that money to pay musicians. The salaries of many higher ups at Spotify may seem outrageous, I get it – but if you paid Spotify’s top 11 executives nothing at all, it would literally have no effect on the amounts paid to musicians. It would be like taking away someone’s extravagant dinner to solve the hunger problem of a major city.

The ONLY way to raise the monetary amount that musicians make from streaming is to raise streaming prices SIGNIFICANTLY for consumers.

But it’s hard for any streaming company to do that since they all offer basically the same product. If Spotify raised their subscriber fee to 19.99 a month, people would just switch to Apple or Tidal, if those 2 services also raised their rates, people would switch to Youtube. If they ALL raised their rates, a new service would just come in and undercut them all. You should never underestimate the average person’s total disregard for if someone is getting paid enough for the product they are purchasing. They just want the product at the cheapest price available.

And let’s say that you could get an across the board payment hike on streaming services, well now you’ve started to price some people out. And you’re probably definitely going to damage the discovery aspect of streaming services. If Spotify had to pay a significant amount to artists whose songs their algorithms and editorial playlists served to their customers, that would be like them paying to promote the music themselves.

But the HUGE problem, that I’ve never seen anyone address, is that as time goes on, the economics of streaming only get worse. There are still 60k songs being uploaded daily – which means there is even more music to listen to and more musicians who want a cut of the pie. The song pool is further diluted. Which means the amount of money that can be garnered from streaming can only diminish no matter how much you charge customers to access it. The only way to make the math work is to limit the amount of music on Spotify while still significantly increasing their user base.

So why do I continue to work with musicians when I think that the market is oversaturated and selling music can’t lead to a full-time living for the majority of musicians?

Because I don’t think the modern day music business is solely about music. I think it’s about the people behind the music. It’s a total package game. You’ve got to be a good musician, a good performer, a good storyteller, a good marketer, and basically be good at having people buy into YOU. Sometimes it’s hard to gauge exactly what the thing is that makes a person drawn to someone, but if you do it right, they’ll be your lifelong fan and they’ll buy whatever you’re selling. Just go take a look at Taylor Swift’s merch store.

The musician is the brand and the music is just one of the products. People will buy stuff from musicians that have value – whether it’s tickets to a show or live stream, t-shirts, specialty products, one on ones, VIP packages, music lessons, deluxe editions, demos, books, etc etc. Musicians are only limited by their own creativity when it comes to selling products.

Personally, I think making money is easy. Just like learning an instrument, it may take time and effort to become adept at it, but the steps are pretty simple. Build your audience through building connections with them, get to know your audience, provide products for your audience that have value.

All you have to do to be successful as a musician is know who you are, what you stand for, have a story to tell and SERVE your audience rather than have them serve you. Hell, you don’t even have to be a good musician. There are plenty of bad ones out there making money.

Musicians get upset because they JUST want to play music and not have to do the business part. But business owners are the ones who make the money. Making music and making money are two very distinct talents. You can be a musician and not sell your music. There’s no shame in that. But if you want to make money from your music, you’re going to have to have an entrepreneurial outlook. This means you’re going to have to learn and perform tasks that make your business profitable. Sure, I’d love to just do the fun parts of my job, but I own a business, so I have to do tons of stuff above and beyond just publicity.

The reason why you’ll never hear me complain about these conditions is because I know that working in the music business is a privilege. I work in an industry that’s only goal is pleasure. New music is not needed. “Paid Musician” is not a job that society needs. As mentioned before, we have plenty of music to last any individual a lifetime. Plus, people will alway make and play music, even if they outlawed anyone ever making a dime from it again.

In conclusion, I believe streaming has been vastly beneficial. I don’t believe that it is keeping anyone from making a fair living, there are other far more likely factors that have affected the economics of musicians, the most important one being the over abundance of them. I think that it is naive for musicians to hold Spotify accountable for not paying them money that doesn’t exist for streams from listeners that they probably would not have without streaming. I think that all of this energy bashing Spotify was wasted when it could have been used to find a solution. Maybe there’s a tiered subscription plan option, or after you stream a song so many times you own it, or after your song hits a certain amount of streams, you no longer get paid for it and the money goes to less popular artists who need the money more, or maybe, and I can hear some of you groaning, NFTs and Web3 streaming will solve a lot of these problems.

I saw quite a few people on Twitter cheering that Spotify lost 2 billion dollars this week due to the Neil Young controversy. I don’t understand that. Spotify is not a person. It’s a publicly traded company, so it was really just people with individual investments and people with retirement funds that lost money. And with NO solution being offered by the naysayers, it was all for nothing.

I’m not some corporate apologist, free market worshipping, Ayn Rand fan. I just like to look at the full picture of situations and acknowledge that there are hardly ever any easy answers. Nothing I saw this week came close to actually solving any problems, because that takes time and effort, something that few people want to actually do.

If you want to disagree with me on my position, that’s fine, I’d love to hear your fact-based plan on how to keep all of the benefits that Spotify provides and make it a viable income stream. But be ready to show your work.

Rachel Hurley, Sweetheart Pub

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The School of Bluegrass with Doyle Lawson starting soon at Bluegrass Today

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Azlyrics

Big news for fans of the great Doyle Lawson, and anyone interested in the history of bluegrass music.

We are delighted to announce that Doyle will be joining us for a regular column called The School of Bluegrass, where he will take your questions about his heralded career, and provide answers to the best of his ability. With a sharp memory for details, it will surprise me very much if anyone is able to stump him with a query.

Lawson, of course, has been involved in bluegrass as a professional musician since he joined Jimmy Martin’s Sunny Mountain Boys on banjo in 1963. From there he spent a memorable five years with J.D. Crowe & The Kentucky Mountain Boys on both mandolin and guitar. That was followed  by a notable stint with The Country Gentlemen (’71-’79) on mandolin, which produced five strong recordings, including the classic, Award Winning Country Gentlemen.

The world of bluegrass was forever altered when Doyle left the Gentlemen in 1979 to launch his own band. Popular opinion at the time was that he had made a bad move, leaving such a successful group to strike out on his own. But Lawson has had the last laugh, keeping Quicksilver on the road for 42 years, right up to his retirement from full time touring at the end of 2021.

He insists that he won’t become invisible, or live the life of a hermit far from the music. Doyle plans to continue producing in the studio, and performing at such selected shows as pique his interest. There may even be some recording in his future.

And to stay in touch with fans while he’s off the road, he will answer questions each week at Bluegrass Today.

So get your submissions queued up by commenting on this post (below), or by sending it to us directly by email. He is ready to address inquiries about the many bands he toured and recorded with, the large group of bluegrass contemporaries he has known, and the dozens of recordings he has made over a professional career getting close to 60 years’ duration.

You ask… he’ll answer. We hope to have the first edition of School of Bluegrass with Doyle Lawson within the next two weeks.

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Nashville legend Bob Moore and his bluegrass connections

Posted on November 18, 2021 by Azlyrics

Bob Loyce Moore, who passed away on September 22, 2021, was a charter member of Nashville’s original studio A-Team, with over 17,000 documented recording sessions. He played upright bass for top country music acts such as Patsy Cline, Sammi Smith, Kenny Rogers, Roger Miller, Marty Robbins, George Jones, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Jeannie C. Riley. Some of the recordings on which he is featured were #1 country singles

He also worked in the studio with a diverse set of artists, including Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Brook Benton, Simon & Garfunkel, Brenda Lee, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, and Bob Dylan. 

Having gotten his start with the Grand Ole Opry comedy team Jamup and Honey, Moore went onto become a very talented musician and arranger leading his own orchestra for 20 years. He lifted bass playing out of the shadows and brought it to a greater prominence in Nashville. No longer was the role to be simply associated with slapstick and disguise. 

In common with so many of the very best he had a way of pulling a string that got a better tone and volume from a bass. Moore owes this to a strong right hand, gained from working on it from an early age. 

With those musical skills he also embraced the challenges of bluegrass music. Beginning in 1952 he worked with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs; from Monday to Friday, he awoke at 4.00 a.m. to accompany them on their live, 15-minute WSM show. 

While part of the Foggy Mountain Boys Moore did two sessions (in August 1953) both at the famous Castle Studio at The Tulane Hotel in Nashville. During the first Moore played bass on four songs, and during the following afternoon he helped on four more cuts. All but two cuts were released on singles.  

I’ll Go Stepping Too (Columbia 21179) was recorded on August 29, 1953 

 About two years later, on a Saturday afternoon in September, Moore again assisted Flatt and Scruggs as they recorded four Gospel songs, one of which was Bubbling In My Soul ….

 

All the tracks are on the 2-CD set Flatt & Scruggs Foggy Mountain Gospel (Columbia C2K 92574, 2005). 

Also, the Flatt & Scruggs recordings from the first decade (or so) are on a Bear Family box-set Flatt & Scruggs – 1948-1959 (BCD 15472 DH (4CDs), 1991)

Towards the end their partnership Flatt and Scruggs called upon Bob Moore to work with them on a few occasions. In September 1966 he worked on one number Why Can’t I Find Myself With You, while in May the following year they recorded five songs three of which remained unissued. 

One single California Up Tight Band/Last Train To Clarksville (Columbia 4-44194) first appeared on the Billboard chart during July 1967, peaking at #20.  

 

[Material like this didn’t really suit Lester Flatt and was a part of the reason he eventually parted ways with Earl Scruggs.] 

Then, during 1968 and 1969 Moore took part in six sessions at the Columbia Recording Studio A, in the Music Row area, with Flatt & Scruggs, recordings that are included on the LPs Nashville Airplane (Columbia CS 9741) and Final Fling-One Last Time (Just For Kicks) (Columbia CS 9945). 

Recordings from the last five years are documented on Flatt & Scruggs – 1964-1969, plus (Bear Family Records BCD 15879 FI (6 CDs), 1995). 

From June 1952 to March 1953 Moore played on 16 of Jim & Jesse McReynolds’s 20 sides for Capitol Records. Seven singles were released the first being in September 1952 and the last during June 1955. 

I’ll Wash Your Love from My Heart was the first song recorded at the June 1952 session …. 

Two songs Waiting For A Message and Two Arms To Hold Me were not issued until the release in 1969 of Twenty Great Songs by Jim & Jesse The McReynolds Bros (Capitol Records DTBB-264). 

All of the Capitol recordings were reissued on Jim & Jesse, 1952-1955 (Bear Family BCD-15635) in 1992, while Jim & Jesse – First Sounds: The Capitol Years (Capitol Nashville 72435-42065-2-8, 2002) is devoted to those 16 cuts on which Moore played. 

In February 1969 Moore was again in the studio with the brothers as they did five tracks for the Jim And Jesse – Saluting The Louvin Brothers LP (Epic BN-26465, May 1969), their penultimate album for the label. These consisted of Must You Throw Dirt In My Face, When I Stop Dreaming, Knoxville Girl, I Take The Chance and I’m Hoping That You’re Hoping, all of which are included on the 5-CD box-set from 1994; Bluegrass And More (Bear Family Records BCD 15716 EI). 

Another well-known act with whom Moore recorded was the Osborne Brothers, initially helping them out in September and October 1971. During the first session they did three numbers for their Country Roads LP (Decca DL 75321, 1971), and during the following month they cut three more songs all of which were released on the album Bobby & Sonny (Decca DL 75356, 1972). For all of them Moore used an electric bass. 

The brothers recorded Merle Haggard’s Shelly’s Winter Love on September 28, 1971…. 

 

Not surprisingly, Richard Weize re-issued these in another box set (4-CDs); The Osborne Brothers, 1968-1974 (Bear Family Records BCD 15748 DI, 1995). 

They were reunited in the studio early in 1978 when they gathered at the Hilltop Recording Studios in Madison where they laid down tracks for The Osborne Brothers’ Bluegrass Collection (CMH 9011, 1978) (2 LPs). These 24 “contemporary recordings of outstanding and memorable bluegrass compositions” gave Moore a real test of his bluegrass chops. In 1989 the label re-released all of this material on a CD (also CMH 9011). 

For a while – during the years 1975 onto 1980 – The Lewis Family, the bluegrass Gospel musicians from Lincolnton, Georgia, had some recording sessions in the Nashville area with Bob Moore on bass. All were for the Southern Gospel label Canaan Records, based in Waco, Texas. 

Together they recorded four LPs in the name of the Lewis Family – Absolutely Lewis! (Canaan CAS-9764, released August 1975); Lewis Family Style Gospel (CAS-9782, May 1976); Country Faith (CAS-9820, 1977); and Wrapped With Grace And Tied With Love (CAS-9836, ca. November 1978) – and two – Little Roy Lewis – Entertainer (Canaan CAS-9811, 1977) and Super Pickin’ (CAS-9870, 1980) showcasing Little Roy Lewis’s individual talents. 

You Can’t Be A Beacon is the opening track to the Absolutely Lewis! LP … 

Bob Moore also recorded with Japanese bluegrass and country singer and multi-instrumentalist/promoter Kazuhiro Inaba. On the first occasion, at The Fiddle House, Nashville, on May 23, 2002, they did 10 tracks; most of the material, including five songs penned by Hank Williams, was predominantly from the country music catalogue. 

These are on the album Teardrop On A Rose (Copper Creek Records CCCD-0216, 2003). 

Inaba shares these thoughts on working with Moore …. 

“Everyone has a dream. Every musician has a dream to record with his or her heroes. I had a dream to record with one of the best bassists, Bob Moore, ever since I listened to a lot of recordings of him especially with the Statler Brothers during 1970s and the Osborne Brothers’ Bluegrass Collection.

It happened when I recorded my Teardrop On A Rose album (previously Copper Creek Records and now Southern Breeze Records) in 2002. I asked Buddy Spicher to get him for me. I had a reckless plan to record 10 vocal songs in one day in Nashville while I conducted my small tour group from Japan. It was a crazy plan for me to see now, but it did happen, and we, Buddy Spicher, Bob Moore, Keith Little, and Kathy Chiavola, got it done! It took us 10 or 12 hours in the studio without dinner break. Everyone was so co-operative and they understood the situation, and I didn’t hear any complaints. Bob Moore’s playing and his notes are so incredible, and Keith Little expressed ‘his playing was like a freight train!’

In 2009, I had another opportunity to record a country album called Country Heart (Southern Breeze Records), and I was so lucky and fortunate to record with those Nashville A-team session players like Lloyd Green, Pete Wade, Hargus ‘Pig’ Robbins, Charlie McCoy, and again with Buddy Spicher and Bob Moore. My friend and mentor, Buddy Spicher, called them up for me at Burns Station Studio, and they hugged each other and talked about the good old days. It was truly their ‘reunion.’ We spent two days for recordings – four 3-hour sessions.

Right before the first recording session started, a noted bassist, Dennis Crouch, brought his old RCA microphone for Bob. I realized how much Dennis admired Bob. 

Bob was always reliable on what he did, and cheerful at the studio.

About 10 years ago or so, I talked with Sonny Osborne. All of a sudden, Sonny told me that he really enjoyed listening to Bob’s playing on the Osborne Brothers’ Bluegrass Collection with such an excitement. I told Sonny that we knew it and enjoyed it since some decades ago. It seemed Sonny didn’t have time to listen to the bass carefully before his retirement. Sonny did love Bob’s playing and he was blown away by what Bob played.”

As intimated, the subsequent sessions were more country music inclined. Country Heart (Southern Breeze Records SBR-9001, 2009) features some standard 1950s country songs/tunes, an old folk song, and a couple of western swing classics. 

Moore, as part of the A-Team, was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2007.

R.I.P. Bob Moore 

(November 30, 1932 – September 22, 2021) 

Bluegrass Today gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Kent Blanton, Gary B Reid, and Kazuhiro Inaba. 

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Love Somebody – The Goodfellers

Posted on November 8, 2021 by Azlyrics

Covering someone else’s song isn’t necessarily an achievement. If it’s done consistently, it becomes either a pale excuse for a lack of original material, or a fallback position to keep an audience satisfied while biding time until one’s muse returns. On the other hand, taking a well-known tune and interpreting it in a way that’s original and unexpected can become a feat in itself, and indeed, a sign of skill and savvy. 

The Goodfellers seem to get that, and on their excellent new album, Love Somebody, this highly praised ensemble pursues that tack with skill, passion, and polish. It boasts eight well-chosen covers from pop and rock music, and while some find a clear connection to bluegrass — Peter Rowan’s Last Train and David Grisman’s E.M.D. being two of the more obvious examples — other offerings may at first seem somewhat unexpected. Their remarkable version of the Bee Gees To Love Somebody — which, not surprisingly, debuted at #1 our own Bluegrass Today Grassicana chart — is a perfect example, a melding of a beautiful melody, sincere sentiment, and an articulate arrangement courtesy of its massed mandolins. The result plies the basics of bluegrass while conveying an innate organic appeal. More surprising still is the band’s take on U2’s Where the Streets Have No Name, shared here with the passionate determination of the original, and steady banjo picking for additional emphasis.

That’s not to say that the music deters from its essential origins. Songs such as Get In the Wind, Somebody Loves You, Darling, and I Know Where Love Lives (featuring John Cowan and Pat Flynn on backing vocals) provide an ideal mesh of tone and technique, even while emphasizing an accessibility factor to an even greater degree.

Ultimately, this is quite the skillful bunch. Lead singer Teddy Barneycastle has an engaging presence that brings each song into full focus. Guitarist Kyser George, vocalist, bassist and reso-guitar player David George, singer and mandolin player Ralph McGee, banjo player Tommy “Moss” Morse, and guest banjo pickers Hersie McMillian and Rex McGree, each make an emphatic contribution of their own.

It’s a team effort to be sure, one that creates a perfect formula all round. Taken in tandem, Love Somebody reflects the endearing sentiments its title implies.

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The Next Mountain – Rick Faris

Posted on October 20, 2021 by Azlyrics

Rick Faris can claim an impressive backstory, one which found him well equipped to pursue his prowess as both a picker and performer. His father was a touring bluegrass musician who had the distinction of playing at the Grand Ole Opry, as well as making appearances on Hee-Haw and Nashville Now. Faris himself had a role in the Faris Family Band, a touring outfit that spent twelve years on the road while weaving its way through the festival circuit, and sharing their skills with students in schools across the country. His big break came when he was recruited by Greg Cahill to audition for Special Consensus, trading his guitar for a mandolin and helping the band reap a pair of Grammy nominations and several nods from the IBMA.

Faris’ first album, Breaking In Lonesome, provided an avenue for establishing himself as a solo star, winning him kudos from Bluegrass Today and any number of other esteemed publications. With his sophomore set, The Next Mountain, he’s taken another significant step forward, courtesy of a dozen songs that show an astute ability to shift his stance as needed, whether engaging in upbeat, effusive offerings such as Deep River, I’m Asking You Today, Evil Hearted You, and Time To Move On, or the more reflective rumination found in What I’ve Learned, Laurel of the Mountains, and Tall Fall. He’s assisted in these endeavors by a superb supporting cast that includes Ronnie Bowman, Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Rob McCoury, and Mike Bub, among many others, but it’s to Faris’ credit that his singing and picking still manage to take center stage.

Given his credentials, it’s hardly surprising that Faris has created such a naturally engaging and enticing offering. Beyond the quality of the songs themselves — all of which Faris had a hand in writing — the musicianship is first rate, practically a given considering those that are involved. The fact that the melodies and arrangements fit so well in sync makes it clear that even at this point in his career, Faris is firing on all cylinders. It’s not hard to imagine that his efforts will result in contention for various best-of lists at the end of the year. At the very least, The Next Mountain ought to take Faris to the next plateau.

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Family & Friends – Shawn Lane

Posted on October 9, 2021 by Azlyrics

A favorite voice for many in the bluegrass world is Shawn Lane, whose instantly recognizable vocals have graced a multitude of top tracks from Blue Highway, as well as several hits under his own name. While lots of bluegrass male vocalists today find their singing influences in country music, Lane’s sound has always harkened back to his southwest Virginia upbringings, with shades of Ralph Stanley’s mountain tones mixed with a singer-songwriter sensibility. On his latest effort, a seven-song EP called Family & Friends, Lane effortlessly mixes those two styles, giving listeners a tight, concise record that will certainly leave them wanting more.

The EP title is certainly apt, with Lane’s supporting cast consisting of family harmonies (sons Garrett and Grayson Lane, brother Chad Lane), and several well-known friends as the studio band (Barry Bales on bass, Clay Hess contributing guitar on several tracks, banjo from Patton Wages, and Gaven Largent’s dobro). The songs, including six written or co-written by Lane, slip effortlessly from banjo-fueled traditional drive, to lonesome mountain Gospel, to softer folk sounds.

A few songs from the EP have already found much success on the radio and charts. Opening track I Met the Man spent over six months in the Bluegrass Today Gospel Top 10, with seven weeks of that at number one. It’s certainly a powerful number, based on the true story of Lane’s father’s recovery from a stroke and coma. Wages’ gritty banjo and urgent mandolin from Lane underscore the moving words of a man pulled back from death: “Thought I was gone, but He had another plan, I met the man.” This song pairs nicely with the a cappella, Stanley-esque I’ll Wear a White Robe. Sung in a call-and-response style, the clear, resonant vocals will grab listeners’ attention immediately.

The other radio hit, One More, has a gently rolling singer-songwriter vibe. Lane penned the song with Ronnie Bowman, and it shares an uplifting message of hope after struggles and pain. A solid bass backing from Bales accompanies Largent’s fine dobro work. American Factory Town, written with Bales, has a similar feel. Filled with images of a working-class town hit hard by shifts in the economy, it goes for optimism instead of blame and anger. “I’m proud to have the ones who stayed to tough it out, cause we’re all American-made. We won’t stay down, so don’t you underestimate what we’ll be,” Lane sings, personifying the town itself. 

Rounding out the EP are a pair of modern traditional numbers and a thoughtful love song that calls to mind James Taylor. Free as the Wind has Richard Bennett as a co-writer, and it has a definite Bennett vibe to it, with a breezy sound that mimics the narrator’s journey across Texas. Wages’ banjo leads Footsteps Falling, which is probably the closest thing to a Blue Highway song here, with its full band sound and hints of desperation in Lane’s voice. New Days, written with Gerald Ellenburg, is a winding, poignant piece that finds the singer recovering from many hard years with the discovery of a new love. 

With Family & Friends, Lane offers listeners plenty of hope and encouragement in a year when they’ve been difficult to find. The seven songs here are all well-written, with enough variety in their content and sounds that it keeps you hitting the rewind button to listen through once more. As with many EPs, the only complaint I have is that I wish there was more.

For more information on Shawn Lane, or to purchase his new EP, visit him online.

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Hillary Klug fiddles, sings, and dances for Bluegrass Today

Posted on October 1, 2021 by Azlyrics

We had an unexpected treat today when Sammy Passamano with 615 Hideaway brought Hillary Klug down to the media room at World of Bluegrass to perform a mini showcase for us. Hillary played fiddle, sang, and accompanied herself buck dancing, supported by Cristina Vane on banjo and Evan Winsor on guitar.

Hillary has established a reputation as a bluegrass/old time entertainer through her viral videos on YouTube and Facebook, with some reaching more than four million views. She is a buck dancing champion, and combines the two skills in a pleasing and engaging fashion, earning her this substantial following. This tasty merging of techniques came about organically several years back when Klug was busking on the streets of Nashville. One chilly afternoon, with passersby passing her by, she added some footwork to help stay warm, and found that suddenly people were stopping to admire her performance. Ever since, she is known as the buck dancing fiddler with the long blonde hair.

Cristina is a noted performer on her own merit, working both in the old time and roots music world, and in classic rock and blues as well. Her debut project, Nowhere Sounds Lovely, is available online. 

Evan is not only an accomplished Nashville multi-instrumentalist, he is Hillary’s fiancé.

Here is their impromptu take on The Cuckoo.

They also recorded a video of Cristina singing Way Down The Old Plank Road, which we will add as soon as we can.

Well done all – and thanks for stopping by!

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Bluegrass Today at World of Bluegrass 2021

Posted on September 27, 2021 by Azlyrics

Once again, we will be joining a great many people in the bluegrass community as we head down to Raleigh, NC today to be part of IBMA’s 2021 World of Bluegrass convention. The three-day business conference runs this Tuesday through Thursday at the Raleigh Convention Center, followed by the big IBMA Bluegrass Awards Thursday night at the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, and the IBMA Bluegrass Live! festival at the adjacent Red Hat Amphitheater on Friday and Saturday. 

Our contingent is a bit smaller this year, owing to concerns about COVID infection, IBMA’s restrictions on entry, and other unrelated factors, but we will do our best to bring the many events associated with World of Bluegrass to those who can’t be with us in Raleigh. You can keep up with IBMA goings on by visiting us through the week as we offer updates on activities on the ground, and photographs of the many performances, awards, and conference functions.

We will again be headquartered in the IBMA Media Room, typically Room 302 in the Convention Center. This is on the opposite side of the building from where most of the conference sessions and showcases occur, on the Lenoir Street side. Please feel free to stop by any time to say howdy, or to share any new recordings or information you may have.

Hope to see the tops of your smiling faces there.

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Happy Birthday to us! 10 years of Bluegrass Today

Posted on September 24, 2021 by Azlyrics

Yesterday, September 23, was the 10th Anniversary of the day we first lit up Bluegrass Today in 2011. We went live just before the IBMA World of Bluegrass convention, which was held in Nashville at that time.

Of course we had been working most of that year on building out the site, developing a business plan, finding people to help out, and talking with advertisers and web developers, but we picked World of Bluegrass as the appropriate time to launch. The staff at that time were all on hand for the big IBMA week, and we offer special thanks to Woody Edwards and Eric Tapp who have since left the company.

Ten years have gone by fairly quickly, and when we look back it becomes clear that we owe our success to the wonderful folks who visit and read the site on a regular basis, our radio partners who contribute to our charts, and our advertising partners in the bluegrass industry. Likewise the many publicists and independent artists and festival promoters we coordinate with on news stories, plus the people who send us information about news we might not have seen otherwise.

From the beginning, we envisioned Bluegrass Today as a sort of hometown newspaper for the bluegrass world. We report important industry news and new music releases, alongside band personnel switches, new products, birth and death notices, and wedding announcements. Like any media source, the biggest stories are usually the saddest, when a member of our community passes on, but we feel fortunate to be able to remember them all to our readers. That is a commitment we take most seriously.

Today, it is myself, my business partner Terry Herd, and our Advertising Manager, Ashley Lewis, who handle the bulk of the work. We are deeply thankful for the many correspondents and photographers who contribute, including Chris Jones, Richard Thompson, David Morris, John Goad, Sandy Hatley, Tabitha Benedict, Braeden Paul, Bill Warren, Dale and Darcy Cahill, Daniel Mullins, Dave Berry, Pamm Tucker, Gina Proulx, Katy Daley, Lee Zimmerman, Laura Ridge, Tara Linhardt, and Frank Baker. An extra special thanks to The Chief, Sonny Osborne, whose weekly columns light up our Fridays here.

So all of you, please accept our sincerest gratitude and respect. On to ten more!

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Urban Haglund passes

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Azlyrics

Knowledgeable Swedish bluegrass record collector, scholar, activist, and musician, Urban Haglund, passed away on Sunday morning, July 26, 2021, after a heart attack. He was 73 years old. 

Born October 10, 1947, in Borlänge, north-west of Sweden’s capital Stockholm, Haglund had a liking for music from an early age, and in due course he learned to play rhythm guitar and bass. 

He became a bluegrass music fan in 1962 when he was about 15 or 16 years of age and heard the Osborne Brothers’ recording, Jesse James, on Swedish Radio. 

Haglund became a member of the Stanley Brothers Fan Club – even though Haglund had never heard them at the time – and started to build a small library of 45 rpm records by corresponding with artists. He developed a passion by adding LPs and magazines to his collection, which was speculated might have been the best in Europe at one time. 

In March 1966 the Stanley Brothers, as part of a package tour, played several dates in Europe and, naturally, Haglund was in attendance for the Stockholm show. 

From shortly after 29:00 minutes Jan Johansson talks to Haglund about the Stockholm date. Prior to that is a live recording of The Stanley Brothers and a discussion with Gary Reid.

In the mid-1960s Haglund (guitar) with his brother Mats (banjo) started the group The Tennessee Travelers. Later they were joined by another brother Thomas (fiddle). Subsequently, the group became known as the Midnight Cowboys and then, in 1972, the Blue Grass Swedes.

On one instance the young Urban, the eldest of the three, and Mats supported another brother Thomas in a fiddle contest that he won in Stockholm.  

Later Urban Haglund played bass as a member of the quartet Country Comfort. 

In the various guises these bands recorded a few singles, an EP and several albums. 

Haglund was an occasional visitor to the USA, the first time in 1970 being to attend the Sixth Annual Labor Day Blue Grass Music Festival, spending time in the Washington, DC area visiting with Dick Freeland, and Don Reno and Bill Harrell, and seeing Buzz Busby and Leon Morris perform in a local venue; another – in September 1985 – to enjoy time at Bean Blossom, Indiana; and, having been an early member of the association, to participate in the IBMA Convention and Fan Fair activities, Owensboro, Kentucky (1987), to mention just three instances. 

In recent years he would play informally attending jams at the Lilla Parkcaféet and O’Connells Irish Pub in Stockholm, where he continued to be welcoming and encouraging to others, sharing his bluegrass music knowledge with locals as well as like-minded folk far and wide. 

Haglund inspired many within our genre. Compatriot, but US resident since 1986, fiddler and teacher, Jan Johansson, is among those that learned much from him over many years …. 

“Urban and I were friends for a long time. Since the mid-70s. He was extremely enthusiastic about bluegrass music and he used to have a record collection that was very impressive. He was like a bluegrass guru who introduced me to a lot of the bluegrass culture. 

Over the last several years we talked at least once a week but a lot of times we would talk on an almost daily basis.”

R.I.P. Urban Haglund 

A Discography 

Tennessee Travelers

  • Kountry Korral Is Proud To Present… (Blue Horizon LP 500, 1969) 
  • Country … A New Swedish Hit Sound… (Kountry Korral Records KLP 501, 1971)

The Midnight Cowboys

  • Midnight Cowboys, Kenneth Swanström Jamboree… (Kountry Korral Records KLP 502, 1971)

Blue Grass Swedes

  • Midnight Cowboys (Rondo Ron M 102, 1973)
  • Blue Grass Swedes (GM-Production AB GLP755, 1975)
  • Mystery Train (GMP GLP7712, 1978)
  • Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin (AWR 27916, 1979)

Country Comfort

  • Country Comfort (Duc Records SLP-1001,1979) 
  • Comfortable (Aktiv Musik HEJ LP-006, 1985)

All are Swedish releases. 

Bluegrass Today is grateful for the assistance of Joe Ross who wrote an excellent article about bluegrass music in Sweden (Bluegrass Unlimited, July 1989). The Scandinavian bluegrass discography accompanying that feature was compiled by Haglund. 

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Anders Beck talks Greensky Bluegrass and the two paths they tread

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Azlyrics

Anders Beck and Greensky Bluegrass at Shagbark Farm in Michigan (7/16/21) – photo © Bryan Bolea

Greensky Bluegrass straddles two worlds, one that nods towards bluegrass and the other that uses it as a springboard for seeking other plateaus. While their name clearly indicates their affection for traditional picking and singing, the band make it a point not to be confined to any particular parameters. Those that insist on labeling their sound often refer to it as nu-grass, grassicana, Americana, or jamgrass, but one thing is well established — their mix of classic and contemporary sounds definitely defies any easy description. While banjo, mandolin, and dobro play a decided role in their instrumental make-up, spontaneity and improvisation allow them to pursue other avenues, and keep them in tune to a wide realm of possibilities.

Formed in 2000 in Kalamazoo, Michigan by banjo player Michael Arlen Blount and guitarist Dave Bruzza, the band has undergone several changes in personnel over the past 20 years, resulting in the current line-up consisting of Blount, Bruzza, Anders Beck (dobro, resophonic guitar), Michael Devol (bass, vocals), and Paul Hoffman (mandolin, vocals). A win at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival Competition in 2006 elevated their visibility, and now they currently count ten albums released between 2004 and 2019. With the pandemic slowing their outside activity and bringing their touring to a halt, they opted to make the most of their time off by releasing a series of digital only offerings which they dubbed The Leap Year Sessions.

“There was a lot going on,” Beck insisted when Bluegrass Today spoke with him by phone. “We all went to St. Louis and recorded a series of closed performances on high definition video in an empty venue. They’re high quality recordings that were well shot and well edited, and we released them during quarantine. We wanted to create something for people that were stuck at home, and the best thing we came up with were these video sessions. And then we released them every week or so. We got great a reaction from people who saw it as a further way for fans to experience the music without having to go anywhere, or leave the safety of their living rooms. For us, it’s a little window in time. We were really excited to be playing together, but also, it was really freaking weird to be playing in a venue with no people in it.”

To an outside observer however, the bigger challenge might be how to keep their influences aligned while trying to ensure their appeal to a decidedly diverse audience.

“The answer to that can run a gamut of responses, depending on whatever day we’re talking about,” Beck muses. “It works because we are raising the reverence for bluegrass while varying the template at the same time. I like listening to bluegrass music as much as I like to listen to rock and roll music, or jazz music, or reggae music, or whatever. Our influences are just all across the gamut, and of course, bluegrass is one of them. But just because we sort of stumbled on playing music on bluegrass instruments doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to stick with bluegrass. For me, learning that style of music was incredibly important. It gave us a jumping off point to do what we like to do. That’s our reverence for the music right there in a nutshell. You have to be able to play bluegrass, quote, unquote, correctly or properly, and play it well in order to start to monkey with it.”

Still, that begs the question of how the band attempts to please traditional bluegrass lovers while still bringing newer fans into the fold. Asked if they might worry about alienating anyone in that process, Beck quickly demurs. 

“I’ll tell you, we don’t worry about it anymore,” he insists “Honestly, we sort of forget about that. The key to understanding the name is that green sky is literally the complete opposite of blue grass. Okay, so we are bluegrass, but we are also the complete opposite. Now that we’ve grown into that name, it’s become a witty little pun. The name itself has really come home to roost, because we are often so far away from bluegrass a lot of the time during our shows. For so long, we felt like we were trying to appease this bluegrass audience, or else those people would get mad at us if we didn’t do bluegrass the way the traditional camp expected us to. We thought they would hate us. We’d be screwed. We felt we needed to do it the right way and all that other stuff. But what we found is that no one was really getting mad at us ever. At least they didn’t express it. We never got the death threats we were expecting.”

Beck attributes some of that acceptance to the bands that came before, noting that Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, and Yonder Mountain String Band actually made that transition earlier. “They were starting to bend the genre a little bit, so it wasn’t like we were doing anything different on that level,” he suggests. “We were just sort of continuing on this evolution, and we certainly invested our Midwest roots into it as well.”

In a sense, it’s that combination of credence and confidence that allows the band to move forward without having to second guess their own MO. Beck readily agrees. 

These days it’s less about having to stand up for ourselves,” he maintains. “We can just say we do what we do, and if people like it, that’s awesome. We didn’t do that for a long time because we were really nervous about it. Because bluegrass was in the name of the band, we felt like we had this need to show that side of the band. We have these bluegrass chops, but now it’s sort of just evolved into something past that.”

That said, Beck is quick to counter any notion that bluegrass is no longer an important additive as far as their sound. “We play anywhere from two to ten traditional bluegrass songs in any given show,” he says. “And we enjoy the hell out of it. Our catalog is pretty big. We still love to play that kind of thing. We definitely still play those songs and enjoy them. Sometimes, after a show in front of 4,000 people, when it’s around one in the morning, we’ll go and play a set of bluegrass songs around a single microphone on a small flatbed trailer. We’ll focus on traditional songs for maybe about an hour. That’s our traditional connection. It kind of reminds us of our musical juxtaposition, which I think is still very obvious.”

With the pandemic slowed, at least at the moment, Greensky Bluegrass is back on the road, in a scaled down mode. They’re playing mostly on weekends at the moment as they navigate the course of COVID while trying to calculate what they’re able to do.

“We’re really trying to figure out how to play music in weird times,” Beck admits. “But it’s starting to feel kind of normal out there I suppose. We’re looking forward to a bunch of really cool events. We’ve got three nights at Red Rocks in Colorado, which is my favorite venue in the world. We’re doing the 4848 festival in West Virginia, which is something we love to do. We’re actually kind of partners in that festival. We’ll be doing Bonnarroo again and we’re gonna be in Alaska pretty soon as well. There’s a thing up there called the Salmon Fest that we did a few years ago. Then we’re doing two nights at the Ryman Theater in Nashville for Halloween which I’m excited about as well. We’re also gonna have some fun Nashville special guests there but I can’t tell you about that just yet.”

That said, Beck does admit that it can be a challenge at times when it comes to capturing that live energy and spontaneity in their studio recordings.

“I think that we straddle the line of both those things very well,” he allows. “One of the reasons is due to the fact that we really take pride in creating albums that are unique, because they’re the ones that really represent what we’re going to do in the long run, like, say, 50 years from now. The albums need to stand the test of time. So, we put a lot of effort into creating really good studio albums. We’re not necessarily trying to make it like the live experience all the time. Sometimes we do, but we prefer not having to be tied to that so much. I guess what I’m saying is that I’m proud that we can we can exist in both worlds. That’s a big deal for us. We really felt like we had to prove ourselves, because there was this fear that there would be this mob of traditional people coming over the hill, and that certain people would be saying, ‘that’s not bluegrass or that’s not what it’s supposed to be, or those guys aren’t good,’ or whatever it might be. It was just a weird thought that I had.”

Ultimately though, Beck says the band arey content to do their best at whatever they attempt, and continue to progress and go forward. “We put a lot of blood sweat and tears into this,” he insists. “We’re just trying to evolve, but mainly, we’re just trying to be ourselves.”

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From The Side of the Road… concerns about IBMA voting changes

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Azlyrics

Hello from North Carolina. This week I’m in the studio recording some Christmas songs with the Night Drivers. Between writing charts, and watching A Christmas Carol and Elfto get into the Christmas spirit in late July, I’m a little pressed for time, so I chose this column to rerun, and unlike Christmas music, it’s actually seasonally appropriate.<

Last week I said we’d spend some time discussing recent changes in the IBMA awards procedure, naming, and criteria, most of which have been covered here in Bluegrass Today.

It’s only natural there would be adjustments in this area through the years, either to adapt to changing times, or often just to correct problems that may have arisen in what is never a perfect process.

These are certainly not the first changes in the awards procedure. Many don’t remember that in the early Owensboro years, the “Entertainer of the Year” award was given to any artist or band that “demonstrated the greatest ability to entertain an audience, using any of the following methods: clogging while yodeling, fiddling while singing, playing Orange Blossom Special behind one’s back, playing spoons against one’s head, or having a bass player with enormous shoes.” Today, after an extensive rewriting of the criteria, the “Entertainer of the Year” award is understood to mean simply the “Artist of the Year.”

All members of the IBMA should appreciate the effort and hours that go into revisions like this. Many of this year’s changes addressed some of the redundancy in the award names: for example, “Bluegrass Broadcaster of the Year” is now simply called “Broadcaster of the Year.” Clearly, since it’s the International Bluegrass Music Awards, it’s going to be an award for a bluegrass broadcaster. When the CMA (Country Music Association) holds its awards show, they don’t feel the need to call their “Single of the Year” the “Country Single of the Year.” Obviously if it’s voted on by the Country Music Association, the music is going to be . . . Maybe that’s not a good example. 

In any case, it was worth fixing the redundancies in our awards. I’m especially glad the award “Bluegrass Banjo Player of the Year Who Plays Bluegrass-style 5-String Banjo” has been shortened to “Banjo Player of the Year.”

Meanwhile, the “Special Awards” are now called the “Industry Awards,” thus avoiding the possible stigma associated with the word “special.” “Oh, you won one of the special awards? How nice for you.”

Some other changes received less coverage, though (possibly because they don’t want you to know about them!), and I think they’re worth at least mentioning here. After all, I’m all about keeping people inaccurately informed.

Feeling that the final nominations had a tendency to go to the same people and groups over the years, leaving a number of trending artists, and even some veterans, under-recognized, an effort has been made to broaden the voting pool for the second round: some of the rigorous ID requirements introduced in the last 10 years have now been relaxed. It’s no longer necessary to show three pieces of government-issued photo ID, plus a photo of yourself playing one of the six acceptable bluegrass instruments, and looking like you can actually play the thing. The pre-voting exam, asking for answers to questions like, “Who were Molly and Tenbrooks?” and “Who was Lloyd Loar and why do we care?” has also been dispensed with.

Now, it’s possible to cast your IBMA nominations ballot vote when registering your car, with no questions asked (I mean, they won’t ask questions about your ballot; I make no promises about your car). McDonalds is also now making it possible to vote during the semi-final round when ordering a Happy Meal. Simply jot your choices down on your used hamburger wrapper, and give back two French fries as a service charge.

New categories were added in what are now called the “Music Awards,” given out during the Thursday night awards show. In addition to the new award you’ve already heard plenty about, “Bluegrass Drummer of the Year” (soon to be just “Drummer of the Year”), the IBMA has announced the following new awards:

Best Collaboration By People Who Can’t Stand Each Other

Best Gospel Hand Gestures While Still Trying to Play an Instrument

Openly-Pandering-For-Airplay Song of the Year

The awards show itself has also undergone some much-needed reform: an annual problem has been the show’s length, which has traditionally run between 45 minutes to a few days longer than its estimated time. Since no musical numbers are running particularly long, the primary culprit seemed to be the awards and Hall of Fame induction acceptance speeches. Beginning this year, all awards acceptance speeches will be limited to no more than three words in length.

For those who might not be able to handle that kind of brevity in this situation, some examples of effective three-word speeches might be:

“I finally won!”

“Man I’m good!”

“Well I’m speechless”

“Somebody pinch me”

“You’re surprised? Shhh.”

“Me again. Wow.”

“Like the dress?”

In honor of their age and contribution to the music, it was agreed to give Hall of Fame inductees a full five words. Here are a few ideas for ultra-brief induction speeches:

“Do you even know me?”

“Nice presentation. Who was that?”

“Now stop wrecking my music.”

“A word limit, huh? Tough!”

“I’m still alive, you know.”

Don’t forget to vote.

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Waiting Out the Storm – Billy Droze

Posted on June 9, 2021 by Azlyrics

Given the angst and uncertainty the world has encountered over the past 18 months, Waiting Out the Storm would seem to be an apt title for Billy Droze’s latest release. Then again, Droze knows a little something about longevity and making a mark over the course of a career. He’s written songs for The Grascals, Junior Sisk, Darryl Worley, Flatt Lonesome, Shenandoah, and Jamie O’Neil, and several of those recordings have climbed to the top of the charts. At the age of 35, he’s a seasoned performer who can claim some impressive credentials, including nominations for various IBMA and ICMA awards, as well as the honor of co-hosting the 2018 ICMA Awards at the Grand Ole Opry.

Still, like most artists, Droze’s abilities are best measured by his songs, and those that grace this latest album are clearly among his best yet. While the music is solidly enshrined within a bluegrass template, several could easily cross into country realms as well. As John Lawless, the esteemed editor of Bluegrass Today, once put it, “Billy’s not just a clever songwriter; he can sing bluegrass and country with the best of them. His voice betrays his love of both genres.”

That’s especially true here. Small Town Mystery, Miss Me Anymore, All You Gotta Do Is Listen, and the title track are solid and assured, songs that reflect both his confidence and conviction. Much of the music falls somewhere between an easy ramble and a tender tapestry, whether it’s the steady stride found in Here We Are, the ragged repast of Night Birds, the beguiling ballad, Bring on the Wind, or the down-home designs of She’s Still Here. Notably then, Droze produced the album single-handedly, and had a hand in writing all the material, save one track — Woman of My Life, a song which features his father Red Droze and, not surprisingly, boasts a distinctive countrified feel.

Taking this effort in its entirety, it’s evident that Droze’s wider recognition is only a matter of time. And indeed, if the name is any indication, Waiting Out the Storm should be the vehicle that affords him that fame. It’s an album flush with across-the-board appeal and the easy embrace that only the most memorable music can offer.

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Henhouse Prowlers bring bluegrass to the world

Posted on May 28, 2021 by Azlyrics

Modern bluegrass often tows a fine line. On the one hand, there’s a need to respect the musical heritage and stay true to tradition. On the other, it’s essential to secure contemporary credence and find ways to bring it to an audience that’s often unaware of that history by making it interesting, essential, and intriguing enough to lure a mainstream audience.

It takes a rare group that can straddle that divide, so credit the Chicago-based band, Henhouse Prowlers, with a career that’s encompassed the better part of the past 17 years. They’ve not only found success here at home, but also managed to share the joys of bluegrass worldwide as one of America’s musical ambassadors, touring the world as part of the U.S. State Department’s cultural outreach efforts.

The band plays over 175 shows a year, thanks to tours that have taken them to more than 25 countries and the furthest reach of the cultural chasm, including Africa, Russia, and the Middle East. At the same time, they’ve managed to absorb these international influences into their own music, both by learning the languages, and finding ways to integrate those specific sounds into their own musical vocabulary. In addition, they’ve been actively involved in furthering education and awareness, a mission that remains an intrinsic part of their own ongoing efforts.

Henhouse Prowlers’ new album, The Departure, offers an astute example of the band’s versatility and vitality. The first with their current line-up — founders Jon Goldfine and Ben Wright on bass and banjo respectively, and more recent recruits Chris Dollar on guitar and Jake Howard on mandolin — it finds all four members sharing in the singing and songwriting. As always, the music is upbeat, inspired and occasionally tweaked with a fair amount of both attitude and irreverence.

Bluegrass Today recently had the opportunity to chat with Wright and Goldfine, and we asked them to share some perspectives — on their music, their careers, and their ability to create an important international connection.

Bluegrass Today: What’s the reaction to your music in those countries where you perform? Do those audiences appear to relate to it even at the outset? Do they perceive any kind of connection to their own indigenous music?

Wright: That’s part of our job on those tours, to make that connection. And so before we go, we almost always learn a song that people will be familiar with there. And we take the time and effort to actually learn to sing in their language. We learn songs phonetically. So that really makes this kind of musical rope bridge easier to cross for people when we can show up. We’ll play a couple of bluegrass songs, a couple of our songs, and then we’ll play something they immediately recognize. And it just closes the gap instantly. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, we learned a Saudi song, which was interesting, because when we went things had changed quite a bit since we went back in 2016. 

Goldfine: In 2016, it was a very conservative Muslim country, and music wasn’t even legal. But we learned a song that was from the 1960s, before it became a super conservative country. And it was a song that was still in their collective memory. The funny thing is, the only place we could play because of the laws against public performance was actually on the property of the American government, the American consulates. So I am using consulates, but they’d have these big parties where they invite a bunch of people. And, you know, it’s still a very conservative place, but they’re still human beings. What we learned is that most people just do all the stuff that we do very privately in their homes. They have really good internet connections and can listen to music and watch movies and do all the things that we do, kind of without the eyes of the government on them.

One of my favorite stories to tell is when we were at the embassy in Riyadh, and after about our third song, this very conservative looking Saudi man dressed in his traditional Saudi garb motioned me over. So I kind of leaned in and asked, “Can I help you?” and he said, “Yes, will you play Country Roads by John Denver?” We hadn’t played it before. But our guitar player at the time was an encyclopedia, and we just pulled it out of our butts. Then the whole place went crazy because they knew the song. You know, there’s this almost cliche thing to say that the music is the universal language. We’ve seen it in person so many times. And it’s a cliche because it’s true. It transcends language and culture, and it’s something we share in common across humanity.

BT: So you actually learn these other languages?

Wright: We spend a lot of time memorizing these specific sounds. And then we come together, and the music is actually the easy part. Jon and I may disagree on that, but I think that once you know the words, getting the music right is the easy part. Memorizing sounds is way different than memorizing words,

BT: So how did you how did you connect with the State Department to get to get this gig in the first place? You know, knock on these doors, great connection?

Goldfine: There’s a program called American Music Abroad that’s been going on in some form since the early ’60s. It started when they would send jazz musicians overseas during the Cold War. The purpose was to try to extend American cultural influence. That program has evolved over the decades into what is now, American Music Abroad. 

Wright: We auditioned for this program in 2013, and they liked us, and then sent us on a tour of four countries in West Africa. So after that, we were kind of in the circuit and other embassies started calling us. Like if there’s an embassy in Nigeria and they want a bluegrass band for their fourth of July celebration at the embassy, they’ll call us. People in the State Department only stay in the same post for a few years and then they move around. So someone might ask a friend in Mauritania, hey, do you know a good bluegrass band for our fourth of July celebration? And then we get recommended.

BT: Is it still exciting for you to be touring all these other countries after all these years?

Wright:  Yeah, it’s still exciting. We were about to go to Cote d’Ivoire when things were starting to shut down. So that was a that was a big letdown.

BT: After 17 years of being so immersed in this, it would seem that these international encounters have really informed your music and your whole attitude towards what you do.

Goldfine: It has definitely changed the course of the band’s entire foundation. We realized that we had these opportunities to not only go to these countries, but also discovered that what we brought back was just as valuable as the experiences that we had when we were there. Once we learned the songs to play in these countries, they became part of our musical vocabulary. And so we played them when we got back home. And people loved it. It started these conversations with people about Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, and all these parts of the world that people barely could pronounce. We could have legitimate conversations with people about what incredible experiences we had.

We could go into schools and work with young kids and do the same thing. That’s what inspired our nonprofit Bluegrass Ambassadors program, which in turn was really inspired by the original Jazz Ambassadors program started by the State Department in the ’50s. That’s where the name came from. So now we’ve created these educational programs not only for kids, but we also give workshops at festivals. We can really speak not only about the music of these countries, but also about the cultures, because we’ve been there and have had direct contact with people, and had our minds blown repeatedly by places we never imagined we’d get a chance to go to.

BT:  Do you perform any of that international music during your live performances?

Goldfine: Yeah, at every stop really.

Wright: We also recorded a live album from Kyrgyzstan. And we put a Ugandan song on that album. We’ve been to Russia twice, and by the second time, we had Russians requesting a Nigerian song! It’s about really taking those opportunities and flipping them back on themselves.

BT: How have these experiences impacted you personally?

Goldfine: On that first trip to West Africa, we had this evaluator with us. The State Department always wants to evaluate the programming they’re doing, because they spend a lot of money on this stuff. So sometimes they’ll send somebody to come along and handout surveys after the programs. We got to know this guy really well, and we were sitting on the banks of the Niger River, and I remember, he turned to me and said, “I’ve seen a lot of bands do this stuff, and you guys clearly love doing it.” He said he always wondered why bands don’t take more advantage of these opportunities as a way to do something interesting. And yet, even with these opportunities, so few bands will come back and talk about what they did. Maybe they think it diminishes their music, because they’re doing work for the government. So when he said that, it definitely planted this seed that was like, what can we do with this? These are life-changing opportunities. How can we bring it back home with us? We’re still good friends with him, and that conversation was pretty profound for our our direction and our careers.

Wright: I think we’re certainly one of the only bluegrass bands that gets up at a traditional festival and sings in Swahili.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today, BT | Leave a comment |

Ask Sonny Anything… celebrating The Chief’s 100th column!

Posted on May 7, 2021 by Azlyrics

Good morning Chief, well it’s finally here… Ask Sonny # 100! On behalf of all our readers, your fans and admirers around the world, Mr. Lawless and myself, please accept our heartfelt thanks for this weekly journey through the pages of bluegrass history. The many stories recorded here will be preserved for generations to come, to read and enjoy. And of course, let no one overlook the support and contribution of your loving wife, Judy.

Thank you from all of us, and here’s to the next 100 columns and beyond!

T.

===============

Congratulations Sonny on your 100th Column in Bluegrass Today.

Please tell us about recording Bluegrass Collection. Did you rehearse those songs before you recorded them?

Sunny Side Of The Mountain – The second banjo break did you have that worked out before you recorded it? That break just says, ‘Hey I’m Sonny Osborne and you are??’ The Bluegrass Collection is the way bluegrass music should be played.

Mark K

Mark, welcome to our little get-together. I appreciate your contribution.

We asked Benny Birchfield if he would agree to help us do this album, mainly because we were used to singing with Benny and his voice matched ours well. So far as rehearsing for this album, the answer to that would be no, or really I should say not extensively. We grew up listening to this collection of songs and so they just came natural to us.

The 2nd banjo break on Sunny Side of the Mountain, just happened, when we recorded it. I didn’t work it out beforehand.

S

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Hello Sonny – Thank you for this bluegrass question column, all of your banjo tunes, all of your banjo skills, all of your stage showmanship, all of your recordings, and all of your, … well, … Lifetime Of Bluegrass!!

There was a great bluegrass album recorded in 1964 called Bluegrass Banjos On Fire by a band named Homer And The Barnstormers – many instrumental tunes and some songs with vocals. There are rumors around the internet, and during conversations, regarding just who the unknown musicians on this album were.

Have you listened to this particular album all the way through? There have been no credits provided to the pickers on this album, and I have always wondered if you were one of them.

I think that some tunes have similarities to your particular banjo technique, I’m only a beginner and I listen to and study your style and banjo technique over and over. You always put in sneaky goody notes and secret quickie licks – everything for a bluegrass banjo picker to have to work at to try to figure out. A good friend of mine picks a banjo exactly like you – when he concentrates and picks one of your tunes your way, I watch him tear into his Chief and I can’t get enough.

Some people say these tunes on this mystery album don’t sound quite like your fingers, and others say they do. I think some do but I can’t be sure. There are no credits on the album jacket or anywhere in print, or even on the internet.

Please tell me if you were the banjo picker on this album, or if you were one of the contributing banjo pickers on this album.

Also, please tell me if you know the other mystery bluegrass pickers on this bluegrass album and who they were.

Thank you.

Jaysyn S.
Tucson AZ

The album titled Bluegrass Banjos On Fire, I have not heard any part of this album although I knew that it existed. As far as my recollection goes, I did not play on this album and I don’t have any idea who did, however if I had to guess, I would guess that it is some bluegrass pickers around Cincinnati. That’s all that I can help you with, as far as who the musicians are on the album.

When you mention banjo technique, I honestly do not know what that means. I would like to know the name of this friend of yours who plays exactly like me.

S

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Sonny… I’ve been a big fan of the Osbornes for as long as I can remember. I’m an old codger, soon to be 83, so I go back and remember the good old days at Sunset Park and listening to you guys sing those great three part harmonies with the soaring endings. Almost made my hair stand up. I was lucky enough to catch you there a few times. I was wondering if you had any trouble learning the third part – baritone – of your trio when you started out. I’ve always been a parts singer, loving good three part harmony, and I can remember vividly trying to learn the baritone. I would sit by my old Magnavox vinyl spinner playing Jim and Jesse’s Tribute to The Louvin Brothers, and try to put the third part in. Jim seldom ventured far from the true tenor, so he didn’t get in the way of the baritone. I finally got it, but it wasn’t easy. Did you have any trouble learning it, or did it come easy for you? Tenor never gave me much trouble but baritone took a lot of work on my part. Just wondering how you got along with it, or did it cause you to throw your hands up in disgust sometimes?

Thanks for looking…

Bob A.
Seaford, DE

Bob, so you are an old codger soon to be 83, and that makes me one already because I’ll soon be 84. Baritone and parts singing came natural to me, and by that I mean it was easy for me to fill in that part. But Bobby and I exchanged parts so often, that it would be really hard for someone to sing with us, unless they had that same kind of talent. You mentioned Jim & Jesses tribute to The Louvin Brothers, and I’m here to tell you that is one fine album, and really I don’t see how it could be improved on. Baritone is a part that you just have to hear, and it can be very hard to learn. It was really easy for me.

S

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Hi Sonny, love the column.

Somewhere I read that you and Bobby were the first bluegrass group to perform at a college, I think it was Oberlin or Antioch in Ohio. What was that like, your remembrances of that gig? I read they wanted you all to play more old time traditional folk songs rather than your usual newer tunes.

All the best,
Chuck Van Dyke

Chuck, welcome in. Yes, we were the first bluegrass band to ever play at a college. It was in 1960 at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. You asked what I remember from that place, and I’ll tell you right now we were all nervous and scared, because none of us had ever been on a college campus. As the evening progressed, we found out that they, in fact, wanted more old traditional songs like She’’l Be Comin’ Round the Mountain, and Maple on the Hill, etc etc. We didn’t know that, to start with, and we came out and performed our latest records and at halftime in our show, we were all sitting back in the dressing room, and somebody had a jug and passed it around and it calmed us right down and our appearance at Antioch was a big success.

S

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Hello Sonny. I’ve seen the brothers many times in and around Burlington, North Carolina, at the Bass Mountain festival and The Big O Jamboree. Do you remember the Big O and any stories? One time I remember seeing Glen Duncan on fiddle, was that his first show with y’all? Bobby even twinned with Glen that night. Thanks for the article I look forward to it every week.

Randy

Randy, I remember Bass Mountain Festival very well, and my answer will be quite long so I’m going to save it for next week.

S

If you have something you would like to ask Sonny, be sure to post it in the comments below, or send it to us directly.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Ask Sonny Anything, Bluegrass Today, North Carolina | Leave a comment |

Drew Emmitt talks Leftover Salmon and Brand New Good Old Days

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Azlyrics

It would be hard to deny Leftover Salmon’s overriding influence, not only on bluegrass, but on other thriving musical forms as well. Credited as one of the originators of that particular niche known as “jamgrass,” they’ve found themselves in a unique position, one that gives due reverence to bluegrass traditions while also advancing the populist precepts initiated early on by the Grateful Dead in particular and later, outfits like the Allman Brothers, Little Feat, and other those that came to be known for both their technical prowess and an ability to sustain a loyal fan following. 

While Leftover Salmon has continued to expand their template over the past three decades, they’ve still managed to stay true to their rural roots. Indeed, even as various members have come and gone — and still others have opted to simultaneously undertake solo sojourns — the band remains a cornerstone of the Colorado music scene, one that’s inspired any number of others in their wake, including Greensky Bluegrass, Railroad Earth, Trampled By Turtles, Yonder Mountain String Band, and the Steep Canyon Rangers. That said, their upcoming album, aptly dubbed Brand New Good Old Days, marks a return to their initial origins in more ways than one. For starters, it finds them firmly entrenched in the grassicana style they established early on. For another, it reunites them with Compass Records, the label that once released their past product. Yet true to Leftover Salmon’s sensibilities, there are an ample number of twists and turns tossed into the musical mix as well, including an unexpected take on the Soundgarden standard, Black Hole Sun, a version that transforms the doom and gloom of the original into a joyous upbeat bluegrass bonanza. 

Bluegrass Today recently had an opportunity to discuss the new album, as well as the group’s trajectory, with guitarist, mandolin player, singer, and songwriter Drew Emmitt, who co-founded the group with fellow Salmon stalwart Vince Hermann, nearly 30 years ago. We found the ever-so amiable Mr. Emmitt at his home in Crested Butte, Colorado, the place where he’s resided for the past 21  years. “I’m almost a local,” he declares. “Almost. That’s the joke.”

You guys have always been known as one of Colorado’s finest exports regardless, although Vince now lives in Nashville. So you’re spread out a bit more now.

That’s right. Yeah, he’s a Nashville guy now. I’m from there originally. I grew up there and then moved to Colorado in the ’70s.

You’re also something of a multitasker, given your various solo albums, and the fact that you helm your own band. You’ve always been a busy guy.

Yeah, well, up until this last year with the pandemic. That’s true for most of us.

So tell us about this new album. It marks a return to your former label, Compass Records, and brings you back to bluegrass, which is at the heart of your essential sound. And yet you opt for that Soundgarden cover that opens the album.

Yeah, I thought that would confuse everyone. Actually, we’ve been doing that for years. So it’s definitely nothing new for us.

Obviously, you’re a very eclectic outfit, and you bring in a lot of diverse elements to the sound. It goes without saying that your musical mix is as fascinating as you are. So tell us, what was the thought behind the new album?

Well, as usual, not much of one. (Laughs) We fly by the seat of our pants, pretty much in every way, which is what makes it fun. We were just feeling like we needed to get back in the studio. And though everybody kind of had some songs going, nothing was really that solid going into this recording, which is just like with the last record we made. In fact, we were finishing up songs as we were in the studio. And while we were on tour, we were able to spend some some time at the studio in Asheville, North Carolina, Echo Mountain, which is fabulous. It’s just a great vibe and a great sounding place. The studio itself really kind of had a lot of influence on how the album turned out. It’s very rootsy and down home, and I think that it kind of cast that sort of light on the entire project, because I feel like it’s it’s a pretty rootsy record for us, especially as far as the other covers that we do, like the John Hartford cover (Category Stomp) and the Conway Twitty cover (Boogie Grass Band), and it’s a little bit leaning towards Americana, more of a country sort of thing which is kind of where we’re at as a band. 

Still, you’re a hard band to precisely define.

Being the kind of band that’s very hard to pigeonhole, I feel like this album is a bit of a return to our roots. And it kind of has that flavor. Everybody brought some really cool material to the project, which is nice. This is the second recent record where everybody really contributed. Back in the day, it used to be that Vince and I would bring in the tunes, but now it’s become much more of a collective within the band, because everybody’s really developing as a songwriter. And that’s really fun. There’s been some really nice offerings from everyone.

Given that eclectic sensibility you possess, how do you manage to narrow down the song selection?

It’s not that hard, because it’s not like everybody throws tons of material at a project. Plus, I think we’re really open to people’s ideas. So it’s not a huge process. On the whole, as a group, we’re really supportive of each other’s writing and influence. So it goes pretty smoothly. There’s not a lot we don’t want to play. It’s never “I can’t believe you wrote that.” We’re all pretty open to each other’s influence. We’re just so excited when somebody writes a song — it’s like, “Oh, great, cool. Yeah, let’s play that.” So it was pretty easy. And as far as the covers, we had already recorded the Hartford tune for a Hartford compilation and we were lucky enough to be able to also put it on this record. As far as the Conway Twitty song, I credit Ronnie McCoury with that one because he brought that song to us years ago and said “You guys should play this, this is really kind of right up your alley.” And so we’ve kind of kept that in our back pocket. 

That all seems to fit, but Black Hole Sun, like you said, is certainly a surprise, and wholly unexpected.

It was just like an idea I had after listening to it one day. I thought it was the coolest chord progression… so interesting and haunting, and the words are just really, really interesting and bizarre. I was just kept captivated by it. I thought, what if we did had is a bluegrass version. So that’s kind of how that one came about. And it works pretty well as a bluegrass song I think. It’s pretty cool. I’m not sure what the guys in Soundgarden would think of it, but it does work well.

That’s part of your talent, to be able to make these musical transitions the way you do and actually fascinate people in the process, too. 

Thank you. Yeah, we like to keep it interesting, and I’ve been noticing that in our in our genre, whatever you might want to call it —  jam band, grassicana — there’s really been a movement towards doing covers. So we thought, well maybe we should do some interesting covers and as a result, that’s kind of where that idea was born. We were thinking, what would be a really off the wall, interesting cover to do?  We couldn’t get too much more off the wall than that song. 

You’ve been at this for awhile now, have you not?

The band’s been in existence for 31 years, but Vince and I first started playing together in 1989. We had been playing together off and on since the mid ‘80s in various conglomerations. So we’ve known each other for over half our lives. It’s pretty crazy. So yeah, it’s been quite the long haul. That’s for sure. 

So how have you managed to keep it together for so long — not only the relationships, but also the impetus and inspiration for making new music without repeating yourself, while also keeping everything so fluid after such a long a period of time? A lot of bands can’t claim that distinction.

That’s a very good question. I’m not sure I have a good answer for you. I just think that probably my best answer for that is that it’s fun, and it’s still fun. And we love to play. The other part of that answer is that it’s probably due to our crowd. Our audience has really stuck it out with us. Plus, we’re always getting new people along the way checking us out. So we’ve been blessed with a very wonderful following, and a really great mix of people. This band doesn’t just appeal to one segment of the population. We run the gamut from young to old, from hippies to business people, to whoever. I’m always amazed at all the different people that support this band, and I think that our crowd has really kept us going in so many ways. That’s made it exciting and enabled us to keep doing this. And then just the excitement of being on stage together. There’s a lot of spontaneity and a lot of experimentation that goes on. We’re very uncalculated. We work stuff out, of course, but we also experiment a lot. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve certainly have had our share of train wrecks. That’s kinda in the tradition of the Grateful Dead. Sometimes they were incredibly brilliant, and other times, not so much. I think we have some of that as well. But it keeps you on your toes and I think it keeps the audience on their toes as well.

How do you manage to translate that live energy to the studio? Is it a challenge to capture that on record?

Well, I don’t think you can. I think way back, when we first started making records, we were really kind of frustrated with that whole thing. It was like, “Wow, we have so much energy on stage. It’s so much fun, with the crowd and people dancing. But I think that at some point you just kind of have to make peace with the fact that they’re two different worlds. When you get into the studio, it’s more of a focus, and you try to bring as much of that energy as you can. It’s not always possible, and I think that a lot of bands and musicians would agree with me on that. So you do the best you can. When you’re playing live, you can’t do what you do in the studio and also, you don’t get chances to do things over. And so they are just two entirely different animals. The sooner you can make peace with that, the better off you’re going to be. There are studio albums, and there’s live performance. The Grateful Dead was as an example of that. Their studio recordings are completely different from what they were live. People really wanted to hear the live stuff and I imagine they sometimes struggled with it in the studio. I think that as we’ve gone along, we’ve gotten better at making records. And we’ve gotten better at making peace with that difference. But yeah, it’s crazy. It’s like the worlds almost have nothing to do with each other.

You’ve obviously been given credit for being one of the forerunners of the whole progressive bluegrass, jamgrass genre, and so many other bands have followed your lead. Do you recognize your role in this evolution that you’ve been a part of?

Absolutely. When we started out, we really didn’t have a plan. As I said before, we always fly by the seat of our pants, and when we got out there in our old a school bus, we were touring before we even knew what we were doing. We didn’t know we were actually blazing the trail for other bands to follow. We had no idea. We were mainly bluegrass musicians just trying to make a living, playing music in bars and theaters and stuff. And the way we figured out how to do that was to get a drummer and some electric instruments, and to mix bluegrass with other styles of music that were fun for us to play. We were playing the kind of music that we liked and mixing in the different styles and stuff. So, yeah, we definitely recognize that we have kind of paved the way for other bands. It’s been interesting to see the different interpretations of it and how other bands have followed our lead, but yet taking it their own direction, like Yonder and like String Cheese and Greensky and on and on and on. It’s a big honor to know we were part of that evolution, and I think that it’s interesting, because we’re not the new guys anymore. We’re not the young kids that are getting out there now. You have to kind of accept that, but it’s okay. I feel like we’ve gotten to a good place with it all, and we’ve kind of found our footing as far as where we belong in this whole scene. It’s an honor and it’s really great to still be here and still be doing it quite honestly.

With the rise of this whole sort of movement that you guys have been so instrumental in developing, bluegrass music itself has been able to expand its reach as well. Where once folks thought of bluegrass music as strictly belonging to Appalachia, it’s now a really a populist of form of music with a younger reach. Why you think that is? Is it due to bands like, you guys and these other bands you mentioned? Or is it just a newfound appreciation for the roots of of Americana? What do you attribute it to?

A lot of different things. One thing I can say about bluegrass is that it’s a community. It’s a thing I noticed when I first got into bluegrass. It brought people together. It’s like a common language. It’s something that people can share really easily. You can stand around a campfire with people you’ve never met and play songs everybody knows. It’s just like this common denominator, and people want to be part of that. I noticed, because I came from more of a rock and roll background into bluegrass, although because I was raised in Tennessee, I was well-rounded. But when I discovered bluegrass, I realized that here was a different world of music, a way for people really to come together and to share this thing. Otherwise, it was just a band playing to an audience, but here was a kind of music where everybody could join in. 

What you’re describing is kind of the essence of an Everyman’s music.

It can be complex, like maybe the Punch Brothers, who are an example of the complexity that it can get to. But it can also be just really down to earth, not necessarily complicated music that people can learn. They can learn how to play guitar, mandolin, banjo, or fiddle at home, and then come to a festival and stand around a campfire with people they don’t know and play tunes they all know in common. The whole festival world seems driven by this music now, but it also has brought in other kinds of music to complement it — rock and roll, and jazz, and everything else. But the common denominator is this music that brings everybody together. I remember going to some of my first festivals in the ’80s and going, “I’ve never seen anything like this before, how cool is this?” People just hang out together to play music and party, and then there’s the main stage and you go watch the music, and then you come back to the campground and you’re inspired by the people on stage and you play. 

It really is an anecdote for these troubled times, isn’t it?

It’s just something that people need, especially more and more as the world gets crazier. It’s something that really brings people together. I think that’s probably the main thing driving that whole community. It’s also the traditions that go back so far. It’s also the fact that bluegrass encompasses so many different kinds of music and and lends itself to expanding into different areas. I’m really glad to see that it’s gotten more and more that way. There certainly was a time when it was more traditional and more in its own little box, but it’s expanded so much, and it’s really great. Bluegrass was never meant to be put in a box. It was meant to expand and to include different influences and different kinds of music. I think that that’s really what’s driven the whole thing. It’s exciting. It’s like jazz in the way that it’s improvisation based on a form. And it’s wide open, and everybody has their own take on it. And the more it expands, the more interesting it gets. And I’m really glad that it’s not in an isolated corner of the music world. You can go back and listen to the masters and the original bands that that made this genre and appreciate it, but also realize that it can go further.

Did you ever get any pushback from diehard traditionalists who resented the fact that you wanted to take it further?

We haven’t played a lot of traditional festivals, so we haven’t necessarily been put in that position very often, but yeah, for sure, we’ve experienced some of that. Plus, some of the real hardcore instrumentalists are also hellbent on doing things exactly right. So we definitely feel some of that vibe coming from that part of the world, and that’s fine. Sam Bush is a dear friend, and we’ve had a lot of conversations like this, and he says he’s gotten tons of pushback. There are always people that are going to be that way. I respect their opinion. I respect the traditions and I respect how bluegrass should be played, and in a lot of ways we can also do that. I’ve studied a lot of Bill Monroe and I incorporate a lot of that into my playing. I also pay attention to the modern players, like Sam and Mike Marshall and Tim O’Brien. 

Still, isn’t it better when folks have open minds.

I just feel like it would be nice for those people to also realize that we’re also from the bluegrass tradition, even though much as we’re a jam band or jam grass group or wherever you want to call it. We’re also bluegrass musicians. We didn’t start playing in a jam band and then incorporate bluegrass into it. We started playing bluegrass. We respect it and love it, whether it’s Jim & Jesse, or Bill Monroe, or the Stanley Brothers. I grew up going to the Rocky Mountain Bluegrass Festival, which is now called RockyGrass. I saw some great bands, like the Bluegrass Cardinals, Don Reno, the Johnson Mountain Boys. They were the real deal. So there’s certainly something to be said for that music when it’s really played in the in the traditional style with the harmonies and the solos and everything. There’s nothing like it. It’s incredible. And I mean, there was a time when I was really steeped in that world when I was in my former band, the Left Hand String Band. We were playing these bluegrass festivals and really trying to be a bluegrass band. But even back then, we got pushback because we had an electric bass. People really didn’t like it, especially when electric bass became part of the norm and Tim O’Brien bent strings on the mandolin and things like that. They got a lot of pushback, so yeah, it’s been going on for a long time.

Being that you once spent so much time on the road, sitting on your hands this past year must have been torture for you.

It has been something else. And while it’s been great to be home for a year, I also live to play live shows. That’s what makes me thrive and brings all of us together as well. So it’s been really hard not to have that. We’ve done a couple things here and there, but by and large, not having that outlet has definitely been challenging. It’s been hard not being around people. I don’t want to get too confident that things are coming back. A lot of people are going out already, but we don’t know how things are gonna go.

Regardless, watching your progress and all the beautiful places you’ve toured and the obvious joy you get from making music, one can’t help but get the feeling that you guys lead a wonderful life.

It really is. I feel quite blessed to be able to play music for a living. Yeah… I can’t really complain about anything. Even if I do, I guarantee. nobody’s gonna listen.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today, Compass Records | Leave a comment |

Rhonda Vincent Opry induction on Saturday night

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Azlyrics

Rhonda Vincent after learning that she has been invited to join the Grand Ole Opry (February 29, 2020)

Rhonda Vincent will be inducted into the Grand Ole Opry tomorrow night (February 6). Originally slated for last March 24, the event was put on hold when the pandemic hit.

“Some people say 2020 was the worst year ever,” Rhonda Vincent told Bluegrass Today. “For me I was asked to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry. How can this be a terrible year, right?”

This is the first time a brother and sister have become separate acts to be inducted into the prestigious music club. Rhonda’s brother, Darrin Vincent and Jamie Dailey of Dailey and Vincent joined the Opry in 2017. The Browns (Jim Ed Brown and his sisters) were inducted as a single entity.

“It’s a lifetime dream come true. My family was listening to the Opry long before I was ever born. This is like continuing the family tradition.”

The eight-time IBMA Female Vocalist of the Year, and her band The Rage, will be performing to a sold-out crowd Saturday night. 

“They can have 1,100 people right now. It’s like one of the only shows that’s sold out. There’s a young lady flying in from Washington state and people coming in from New York. There are people coming from everywhere for this induction.”

“We want to meet and greet, and we can’t do that at the Opry. I get to do a meet and greet over at The Troubadour Theatre after the Opry, and host the Ernest Tubb Record Shop Midnight Jamboree live once again. They have not had a live show for years.”

Vincent will be decked out for the induction in a royal blue dress New York designer Constance McCardle created specifically for the once-in-a-lifetime occasion. Rhonda hopes to perform three songs from her forthcoming album that she has been working on for more than a year and a half. The project includes a trio of tunes that Opry members have recorded—her latest single, a cover of Porter Wagoner’s What Ain’’ to Be, Just Might Happen, Jeannie Seely’s Like I Could, and Webb Pierces Slowly. But the one she’s struggling to work up the nerve to perform at the Opry is a bluegrass version of the daunting, Unchained Melody.   

“It took me 12 hours recording that song to get my vocal the way I wanted it,” Vincent recalls. “I was terrified to sing it, but they encouraged me to do it when we were at my Christmas in Branson. I’ve only sung it on stage one time. I was shaking after I finished singing it, but they gave me a standing ovation. So, I hope that’s a good sign.”

Vincent performed the last part of 2019 at the Andy Williams Moon River Theatre in Branson, MO in a different style show. While she included straight bluegrass like her IBMA Song of the Year, Kentucky Borderline, she also performed Christmas bluegrass with special guests and a living portrayal of the nativity.  

“People came away from that saying how powerful and amazing it was,” she says. “There was scripture read in there. You could just feel the spirit and an anointing on that particular segment. Then, we would have our special guests come out and sing a Christmas song. We ended with The Twelve Days of Christmas and then a finale song of Feliz Navidad.

The last song proved to be a bit challenging for the bluegrass star, but she did her homework.

“It wasn’t like I was going to graze over that. I called my cousin who speaks fluent Spanish, and we went over it and over it. [I thought] If I’m going to sing this, I want to sing it correctly. I would have special guests come out. When it came to that line, they didn’t sing. I am SO glad I learned how to sing that line.”

Prior to the start of her Branson shows, Vincent told Bluegrass Today that the future seemed uncertain for her and the band. But since that time, she’s happy to report a brighter day. 

“We are kind of holding our own as everyone else is I think,” Vincent said. “We’re still in business. I guess when I have to start selling our houses and the bus, then we’ll start worrying,” she adds, laughing. “So far, we’ve been able to sustain this. We’re probably in a different situation in that [my husband/manager] Herb is at retirement age. Next December he’ll be 65. He said, ‘Just retire and let’s fish and stay at the fishing shack!’ That is not something that would be fun for me.” 

Her heart and calling remain in the music. 

“More than anything, God has blessed us and been able to do what we do. As long as He continues, I feel like we’re doing His will. My daily prayer is God, what is your will for my life and give me acceptance of what that is no matter what it is.”

(Note: Rhonda Vincent and The Rage will be performing at the Bluegrass Hall of Fame and Museum on March 19 in Owensboro, KY. For more tour dates, log on to www.rhondavincent.com.) 

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Moments in Bluegrass: BG75 #10 – Mike Kear learns to love bluegrass in New Zealand

Posted on September 11, 2020 by Azlyrics

Following an invitation that the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) extended to its members that they share a memory from “75 years of bluegrass,” we thought that we would collect a few to share with you.

The exact moment when I became a bluegrass fan…

Mike Kear, from Palmerston North, New Zealand, moved to Australia about 40 years ago. Shortly afterwards he joined the Bluegrass & Traditional Country Music Society of Australia (BTCMSA). 

As a youngster he had some piano lessons before, at the age of 15, he got his first guitar and he started learning to play folk songs. Soon after joining the BTCMSA he formed his own band – initially called Foggy Hollow, though subsequently known as Flintlock. In typically humorous fashion, he says, “We are working steadily to get ourselves up to the standard of mediocre.”

Kear began working in radio in 1997, initially presenting a one-hour show during alternate Sunday mornings for the inner-city Sydney station, 2SER-FM. In 1998 an opportunity arose at Hawkesbury Radio 89.9FM at the same time as his show at 2SER was being cancelled, and Kear has been producing and presenting his five-hour show, Music from Foggy Hollow, there ever since. 

In 2000 he was invited to do a show for WAMU’s Bluegrass Country family – for three weeks, a proposal upgraded to three months – and that relationship continued through to 2017, and to this day as the Bluegrass Country Foundation took over the broadcast and internet operations of Bluegrass Country.

Kear is a contributing DJ to the Bluegrass Unlimited National Bluegrass Survey and the Bluegrass Today Airplay Charts. 

He is a nominee for the 2020 IBMA Broadcaster of the Year award.  

A web designer by profession, Kear built and hosts the Hawaiian Traditional and Bluegrass Music Society’s website.  

“I’ve lived in Australia more than half my life – since 1981 in fact. But I grew up in New Zealand – this was long before Lord Of The Rings. In the 1960s, when the folk craze was at its height, I was ending high school, and in 1969 I started at university in Wellington – the capital city. I’d been given a guitar when I was 15, and I joined in the folk craze. When I got to University some friends and I formed a folk trio called Amberly Grove, and I spent some of my spare time singing those dreary and earnest protest songs in coffee houses in and around Wellington. This was the time that the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band was stomping the boards in New Zealand. In fact, they were making such an impact in the nation; at the time the term “country music” conjured up images of banjos, fiddles, high harmonies etc. It was quite some time later that New Zealanders came to know this music as ‘bluegrass.’

In early 1970s the Woodstock movie came to our land and made a gigantic impact on New Zealanders, as it did everywhere else it appeared. I went to that movie too, just as everyone else I knew did. To a young university student with a full ration of hormones raging through his system; it all looked a lot of fun – the rolling about in the mud and skinny dipping in the river and all. 

Just a week or so after I’d seen the Woodstock movie, my house mate Keith came in and said “Hey guess what? There’s a banjo pickers music festival in Hamilton this Easter. Let’s go!” Hamilton is a day’s drive north of Wellington – not a big step for a young university student with plenty of hormones in his blood. I knew what kind of girls went to those music festivals, after all I’d seen the Woodstock movie!!  

So, on the Thursday before Easter 1970, Keith and I had our tents and sleeping bags packed into my car, and we were heading north to a great fun weekend. Neither of us was really concerned about the music we were hoping to spend the long weekend partying. Forget your spring break, this was a MUSIC FESTIVAL!!!!  

Keith and I both had pretty fanciful ideas of what this festival was going to be like for us. We weren’t basing anything on reality, but we had a mind’s eye vision of what we were going to find in Hamilton. As we pitched our tents and unpacked our stuff, we both had eyes gazing around looking for happenings somewhere or other around the campsite. In particular, for some of these accommodating, very friendly girls that our dumbass imaginations had assured us would be there in large numbers.

By late morning on Friday, it was pretty clear that in terms of our objective, the weekend was going to be a total failure. It turned out that the girls at the Banjo PIckers Convention weren’t any more accommodating than the girls we knew in Wellington. In fact, they were all girls my mother would call “thoroughly nice girls,” which for the two of us was something of a disappointment. 

Keith and I soon came to realise that our hormones had better calm down and we would just have to listen to the music and maybe learn some new songs and see if we could find someone to play with. (That proved to be the easiest thing in the world to achieve). 

Right after lunch, the afternoon program began with the Hamilton Country Bluegrass Band doing a set with the guest of honour from the USA, Bill Clifton. The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band were the local stars of the show, and a mainstay of the music for the weekend. At the time they were the only professional bluegrass band outside the USA, and two years later they would distinguish themselves by being called on stage at Bill Monroe’s Bean Blossom, by the Father of Bluegrass himself. I have listeners who still remember them after nearly 50 years, doing a set and playing with the Blue Grass Boys’ instruments because they didn’t have their own with them.     

The second song they did with Bill Clifton that sunny Good Friday afternoon in 1970, was Little Whitewashed Chimney. The Hamilton County Bluegrass Band kicked the song off with Paul Trenwith on the banjo, and during the few measures of that introduction and up until the end of the first chorus, I had an epiphany no less impactful on me than Saint Paul did on the road to Damascus. I turned to Keith and said, “This music is much better than that dreary stuff we’re doing now. I want to do some of this stuff instead of all those protest songs!” 

In the following few hours, I forgot all about the original objective of our travel to Hamilton. Easter, 1970 turned out to be a dismal failure in terms of a romantic romp with accommodating girls in our tents. Instead we both acquired something far more long-lasting and valuable – a taste for high energy, all acoustic, “Country music” with high, whiny singing and tight 3-part harmonies. What we now call bluegrass.  

A postscript: Soon after the festival was over, the organizers brought out a vinyl album of the highlights of the festival, and there,  track 4 side 2, is the recording of the exact moment where I had my epiphany. Little Whitewashed Chimney – Bill Clifton with the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band. And on the front of the jacket, at the bottom left, is a picture taken from almost where Keith and I were sitting. And that’s Bill Clifton and the Hamilton County Bluegrass Band on stage at the time. I often wonder if anyone else in that group of guys and “thoroughly nice girls” were having an epiphany at the same time?”

Here is an audio clip of that recording … 

The National Banjo Pickers’ Convention, Claudelands, Hamilton, North Island, New Zealand, Easter 1970 (Kiwi ‎SLC-91, released 1970).  

The Feltex Award-winning video documentary on the 1970 National Banjo Pickers’ Convention can be found at the Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision website …. 

Footnote: 

The first National Banjo Pickers’ Convention took place in 1967.

OK, readers, does this story trigger any thoughts of bluegrass music in days gone by? What related event would you like remembered? Please share in comments. Thanks. 

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today, Bluegrass Unlimited, Foggy Hollow, New Zealand | Leave a comment |

The Secret of Life – Daryl Mosley

Posted on June 29, 2020 by Azlyrics

Daryl Mosley is probably best known to bluegrass fans for his tenure as vocalist and bass player for The Farm Hands, but his songwriting is what has drawn the notice of artists and writers from across the music industry. In addition to earning several SPBGMA awards for Song of the Year and Songwriter of the Year while with the Farm Hands, Mosley’s originals have been featured on albums by numerous country, bluegrass, and Gospel artists. His recent Pinecastle album, The Secret of Life, provides a further showcase for Mosley’s songs, highlighting 11 numbers from his pen.

Opening track A Few Years Ago kicks things off with bright fiddle and mandolin from Adam Haynes and Danny Roberts, respectively. It’s found a welcome audience with radio programmers, and recently cracked the Top 10 of Bluegrass Today’s weekly chart. It’s a pleasant stroll through memories of youth, with a more experienced man looking back on a life before regrets. The Secret of Life also offers life advice, told from the perspective of a respected small-town barber. It’s a nice, thoughtful number, with quite a few common sense pieces of wisdom for a simple, well-lived life.

It Never Gets Old takes a stripped-down approach, with soft guitar and dobro accompaniment through most of the song. It’s a quiet love song, again appreciating the simple things in life that sometimes become the most important: “The edge of your smile cuts deep in my soul, just looking at you never gets old.” A bit grassier than some of the other songs on the album, which lean toward the singer-songwriter sound, is another love song, I’d Write You. Mosley imagines himself as a variety of artists, all with the goal of his expressing his feelings to the woman he loves. 

On the flip side of love songs is the uptempo Heartaches Moving In, cowritten with Danny Roberts. It’s a straightforward “my woman done left me” number, with a catchy chorus and enjoyable banjo from Aaron McDaris. The other cowrite on the album is the bluesy Do What the Good Book Says, a fun Gospel number penned with Rick Lang. Mosley’s smooth lead vocals work well with this style of song, and it seems like one that would be very enjoyable live. 

Other highlights include two songs that find connections between the singer’s earthly father and his heavenly one. Hands in Wood is a heartfelt ode to a hard-working father who spent his life using the things he built from wood to help others. It makes a clever connection to the Biblical carpenter in the last verse. All the Way Home finds the singer looking to his dad for protection as a young child walking through dark woods, then turning toward Jesus for peace and security when he’s older. Perhaps the album’s best song is the well-written A Piece at a Time, which recalls Thirty Years of Farming in its story of a farmer who can only watch as “the only life he’s ever known is leaving in pickups someone else owns.”

Overall, The Secret of Life has a calm, singer-songwriter feel that works well with the slice of life songs that comprise most of the album. Mosley does a fine job at capturing the memories and emotions of everyday people in songs that may seem simple at first listen but are filled with clever turns of phrase and strong imagery. Though most of the songs aren’t necessarily hardcore bluegrass, he’s joined by a strong crew of musicians. In addition to Roberts, Haynes, and McDaris, the album’s band includes Tony Wray (guitar), Michael Stockton (dobro), and Mosley himself on bass, as well as three fine harmony vocalists in Irene Kelley, Jaelee Roberts, and Jeanette Williams. If you’re looking for good original songs that don’t rely on overused bluegrass images, Mosley is your man.

For more information on Daryl Mosley, visit his website. His new album is available from several online retailers. 

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

The big 4-0-0: A major bluegrass milestone

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Azlyrics

It’s hard for me to believe, but this is my 400th column for Bluegrass Today. I had assumed I’d be out of ideas by about number 12 or so, and perhaps I was, but I guess this is a testament to the breadth and scope of our bluegrass music world and the bits of humor to be found in it, even when, or maybe especially when, we’re taking ourselves very seriously.

Regular attempts at humor can sometimes rub people the wrong way, and I knew there was a risk of that going into this, but I’ve been fortunate to have received very little blowback over these several years. Sure there were some people heavily invested in the IBMA board “troubles” of  2014 (if you don’t know what I’m referring to, consider yourself lucky), who were unhappy with my making light of the situation a couple of times in passing. There was also the incident in which the International Bluegrass Music Museum threatened to pull advertising from Bluegrass Today because I had invented a fictitious museum employee, song researcher “Peter Van Kip,” in a story about lost original lines of some famous bluegrass standards. Note: this was under previous museum management; the current management thought it was funny. Other than that, though, I’ve had pretty calm waters.

But if there’s one problem I’ve had more often than others—and it does relate to the museum story above—it’s that I have too many people taking me seriously or at times literally. This was particularly worrisome when I often wrote columns that could be classified as “faux advice,” like a 12-part series I did on band management in the early years of the column. In one January 2012 installment, I dispensed “advice” on band photos, in which I recommended avoiding new band photos entirely, theorizing that they’re actually the cause of many personnel changes. One solution I offered:

“Convince the public that your new member is actually the same as the person in the old photo. It’s not necessary to insist that the new person take on the name of the old one (although it wouldn’t hurt, if he or she is willing); you’ll have to insist, though, that the new musician dress as much like the previous one as possible and have the same hairstyle and facial hair, if applicable. The wearing of dark sunglasses at all times would be helpful. Weight differences can be handled by encouraging the new band member to gain or lose as much weight as needed to approximate the girth of the person he or she is replacing. Height differences are more difficult to manage, therefore I discourage the hiring of any new person who is more than 3 inches taller or shorter than the previous person. Otherwise the new member will just have to sit down as much as possible, including on stage.”

Anyone taking this seriously and following this advice would very quickly have some serious band management problems.

Then I occasionally have publicists or the artists themselves asking me to write about their current release or just to give them some exposure, and I’ve wanted to say, “Have you read what I’m writing here? You don’t want this kind of exposure.”

I’ve also had people say sincere and earnest things about what I’ve written, urging me to write about other topics: “Your discussion of band photos was very interesting and informative. Would you consider writing something about song publishing? That’s a topic of great interest to me, as I am an aspiring songwriter.” I thought, “Sure, I could write one, but it could lead to the quick yet painful death of your budding songwriting career.”

Is this the reader’s fault, though? It has been pointed out to me that the column has no name, so nowhere is it even implied that this is a humor column at all. Leaving it unnamed wasn’t really deliberate but was possibly influenced by the fact that I only expected to be writing the series for about three months. 

All this brings me to the present 400th column turning point: I think it’s time this column had a name, and I would like your help. 

We’re going to hold a naming contest, and I would like you to submit your ideas in the comments section below. The winner will be selected by me and the Bluegrass Today management. We’re not offering any prize vacation packages or anything. This being the COVID-19 era, no one’s traveling anywhere more exotic than the backyard anyway, and heaven knows, a trip to Raleigh for the IBMA World of Bluegrass ain’t happening. With all the cancelled shows, I’m not exactly flush with legal tender, either, so the prize is just the knowledge that your title was the chosen one. I’ll also throw in a Truegrass request and dedication, if you’re a listener, as well as a mention in this column, of course, and on my new web site’s blog.

There are no formal rules except that I’d like to allow two entries per contestant, in case you have more than one idea, but please don’t submit a list.

If you’re competing in this, you’re someone who reads all the way to the ends of these things, and I thank you. I’d even like to thank those who just read the first paragraph and move on, but unfortunately they won’t see my thanks. I also want to offer my heartfelt thanks to the publishers of Bluegrass Today, John Lawless and Terry Herd. They have always been supportive and encouraging, and they have given me an almost entirely free hand in what I do every week. I appreciate them so much.

Finally, I’d like to apologize to anyone who took any of my words too seriously and whose careers and lives suffered irreparable damage as a result.

I’m kidding about that last part.

The new title will put the pressure on me to write at least 100 more of these, and I hope I’m up to the task. Thank you for reading, and I do mean that.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Q&A – attending a Virtual Wold of Bluegrass

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Azlyrics

Well, if you’ve checked your email, yesterday’s Bluegrass Today stories, or just talked to one of your perpetually in-the-know friends (that third one is usually the least reliable of these sources), you’ve already heard that the IBMA World of Bluegrass will not be happening this year, at least not in the physical sense.

Since it was in the physical sense that we enjoyed this annual gathering, the concept of a “Virtual World of Bluegrass” is leaving a lot of people skeptical and with a lot of unanswered questions. 

These are a few of those questions:

Will a seminar on web site design be as interesting even if I don’t oversleep and run from my hotel to get there 10 minutes late?

Answer: Probably.

Will the keynote address be enhanced by the fact that I’ll be doing a load of laundry while I’m watching it?

Answer: Possibly. I know of at least one keynote address that would have been greatly improved by my doing laundry at the same time. I’m thinking specifically of the keynote I helped deliver myself.

Will a virtual awards show still run an hour and 40 minutes overtime?

Answer: Yes. With all the change going or in our lives, we really shouldn’t mess with tradition. The schedule will be drawn up once again based on the assumption that all speeches will be an average of three seconds long.

Will schmoozing and trying to drum up business be the same when it’s done virtually?

Answer: No. It’s too easy to end a virtual conversation by claiming that the internet went out. 

Will the money I save by not physically attending the IBMA World of Bluegrass enable me to take my family on a cruise of the Grecian islands?

Answer: Have you been following what’s happening in the cruise industry? Or on Grecian islands?

These are all valid questions, and we’re all wrestling with the profound disappointment of the loss of our “Bluegrass Christmas” on top of all the other losses of 2020 piling up. The Christmas analogy is fitting, since at least at first glance, a virtual IBMA World of Bluegrass seems about as exciting as a virtual Christmas celebration, with its virtual caroling, opening of virtual presents, drinking of virtual egg nog, and having virtual family arguments via Zoom.

This news was pretty inevitable, though, and we have to support the IBMA’s prudent decision. Let’s face it: the World of Bluegrass was already a health hazard, with the event being an almost perfect environment for the spreading of germs and for those germs to wreak havoc on a large group of people who spent the week doing all the things known to compromise the immune system: sleeping less than 4 hours a night, consuming more than the recommended daily allowance of caffeine and alcohol, singing in stairwells, etc. This behavior was always followed up by close contact with other attendees, a lot of handshaking, and of course plenty of face-touching (last year’s seminar, “Face-touching in Bluegrass Music, a Retrospective” was very informative).

In years past, some attempted to blame the hotel ventilation in Nashville, Louisville, and even Owensboro for the number of people who got sick the following week, ignoring the obvious culprits. In fact the last person who talked to me about that theory did so loudly, talking over a band that was playing, after which he coughed in my face. No, this is probably not the time to put our powers of disease-resistance to the test.

You know what, though? We’re going to get through this, even if things may not look quite the same on the other side. We’ll have our virtual experience this year and then look forward to an IBMA World of Bluegrass like none other in 2021, with in-person schmoozing, in-person jamming, very little sleeping, and yes, some face-touching. See you then.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today | Leave a comment |

Whatever happened to Samantha Snyder?

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Azlyrics

We have long enjoyed covering family bands here at Bluegrass Today. It is always fun watching young musicians interacting with each other, and with audiences from the stage, and often we see them grow and mature into seasoned young adult artists.

One thing we rarely see them do is stay together and continue performing as a family. There are so many pressures that make that difficult as children get older. New opportunities, new relationships, and college plans often interfere with touring opportunities, and parents get older too, and may not enjoy herding a group of young adult around as much as they did young children.

The Snyder Family Band was one such who delighted bluegrass and acoustic music fans for several years. It included Zeb Snyder on guitar, his younger sister, Samantha, on fiddle and vocals, and their dad, Bud, on bass. In just over six years the two young Snyders established themselves as forces to be reckoned with in bluegrass. Interestingly, they resisted all calls for them to expand from a trio into a full band, though even younger brother, Owen, did take the stage with them on banjo on occasion.

Here’s how they sounded early on when they first appeared on Song Of The Mountains.

They recorded several independent albums before signing with Mountain Home Music Company, for whom they produced two very well-received projects. Samantha was developing into a fine singer and an aggressive and powerful fiddler, while Zeb was showcased as a fiery flat picker as well as on banjo and mandolin.

The last time we covered them was in three years ago with a video of them cutting the song Far Away, which Samantha had written and which served as the first single from their The Life We Know record.

When Samantha started college in 2017, their touring slowed down a great deal, and these days Zeb is a member of Appalachian Road Show, one of the most popular acts in the business – at least when touring was allowed. So when we stumbled across a recent video Samantha had made at school, we reached out to see what was going on in her life.

She happily agreed to a quick interview to catch us up.

So where are you in school? Studying what?

I am a rising senior at High Point University in High Point, NC. I’m majoring in Mathematics and minoring in History. Can’t believe this is my last year – college has really flown by!

Are you envisioning a music career once you graduate?

I definitely envision myself playing music on at least a part-time basis once I graduate. I am already teaching fiddle part-time via Skype, and have really loved learning alongside my awesome students. I am still writing songs and am currently considering and developing different ways I can share them with an audience. There are some exciting possibilities that I can’t announce yet but I hope to pursue very soon!

I am also in the final editing stages of a fiction book that I have been writing for years called The Map of Griffyngrein, so my ideal picture of my post-graduate future involves a combination of music and authorship. I also hope to continue posting videos on my YouTube channel.

So you still have the fire for playing bluegrass, or are your tastes opening up a bit?

I will always love bluegrass! But, honestly, I’ve been interested in a wide range of musical genres for most of my life. I particularly love rock, in many of its different branches, which have influenced my style the most recently. But my sound will always be deeply rooted in the bluegrass, country, and folk traditions with which I was born and raised. Being in touch with where I come from definitely helps guide my stylistic choices as a musician.

Getting to perform at all at school?

Actually, without really intending to, I’ve kept my academic and musical lives quite separate throughout my time at college. My math major keeps me pretty busy!

So much talent, and so many ways to express it!

Here’s a look at the video that caught our attention recently, her acoustic cover of I’m Only Happy When It Rains, which had been a hit for alt-rockers Garbage all the way back in 1995.

Best of luck to Samantha Snyder, and we hope to hear much more from her in the coming years.

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Appalachian Road Show, Bluegrass Today, Far Away, Zeb Snyder | Leave a comment |

Final edition of Whiskey Sour Happy Hour airs tonight

Posted on May 14, 2020 by Azlyrics

Here’s another sign that we are coming to the end of the COVID-19 restrictions under which we have all been struggling this past few months.

Tonight marks the final edition of the Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, which Bluegrass Today is delighted to help promote alongside producers Ed Helms and The Bluegrass Situation. Helms came up with this idea a few weeks back, and has each week invited friends from both the acoustic music and comedy world to join him virtually for an hour or so of good, clean fun. The online video is presented at no charge, with donations requested for MusiCares and Direct Relief, two national charities doing COVID-19 relief.

MusiCares is an organization run by The Grammy Foundation, and they are raising funds to assist music industry professionals while live performances have been forbidden, and Direct Relief focuses on aid to health care workers, many of whom (surprisingly) have been laid off as well during the shut down.

In addition to raising money for worthy causes, Helms’ concept was to provide artists with some high profile exposure while forcibly off the road, and music lovers with some entertainment while stuck at home. Now that things are starting to re-open, it’s time to bring this series to a conclusion.

Tonight’s final show (May 13) will include performances by Chris Thile, Chris Eldridge, Molly Tuttle, Indigo Girls, Stephen Colbert, Mandy Moore, and Rosanne Cash, all recorded at home with social distancing observed. Ed will supply his comedy stylings, along with Stephen Colbert.

Like the previous editions of the Happy Hour, tonight’s will be live-streamed on Facebook, YouTube, and at The Bluegrass Situation.

But you can also watch it right here at Bluegrass Today. Simply come to this page at 8:00 p.m. eastern (5:00 Pacific) on Wednesday evenings to watch the live stream. It will also be available on our FaceBook page.

You can read more about Whiskey Sour Happy Hour, and see previous episodes, here.

And be sure to donate using this DonorBox link!

Posted in Lyrics | Tags: Bluegrass Today, Direct Relief, Mandy Moore, Stephen Colbert | Leave a comment |
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