NOTE BOOK

Co-host and artist interviewer Craig Havighurst presents stories, sounds and scenes from Music City Roots: Live From The Factory, Nashville's old-time radio show for modern times. We feature the finest in roots/Americana music every Wednesday at 7 pm CST. Watch our video stream at www.musiccityroots.com.

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Our Show Blog Has Moved!

Hey Friends,

When we redesigned our website this blog became kind of redundant. We are now posting all our show previews and reviews at MusicCityRoots.com. Please visit us there for news and links to all our social sites. Thanks!

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Literature - 11.4.15 Review

Generally my early November review comes with a snarky sidebar about the CMA Awards, which shares our our Wednesday evening time slot. But this year, I’m nonplussed. I’m gobsmacked. Somewhere during our second hour, rhapsodic tweets started flooding in about the televised duet with Chris Stapleton and Justin Timberlake. So back home I FF’ed through some whatever whatever (pausing to check out and cheer for the wonderful “Girl Crush” which netted song and single of the year for Little Big Town and some awesome female writers) and I watched Mr. Memphis and bearded bearlike Mr. Nashville perform “Tennessee Whiskey” and “Drink You Away,” and yes, it was probably the best performance on a TV awards show I’ve ever seen. Commanding, expressive voices. A basically perfect performance by band and singers. And more than that, an extended arrangement took its time and let the artists have fun together and rip the roof off the place. Did you see Jerry Douglas’s priceless wide-eyed devil smile in reaction? Did you see the baffled incredulity of just about everyone else, including performers who make millions who knew right then and there they’d never pulled off anything that powerful in their careers? Oh it was delicious, and especially so since Stapleton, who’d already earned a Best New Artist trophy went on to win album and male vocalist of the year. A sea change in the trajectory of country music? We don’t know yet. But for a shining moment, authentic roots and soul left the radio-driven establishment slack jawed and confused.

We’re proud to say that Stapleton is an MCR alum. We didn’t get to hear him during his pivotal time with the Steeldrivers (though they did play Bluegrass Underground with him), but in February 2011 Stapleton closed our show leading his southern rock project The Jompson Brothers. We’ve been on board as fans for so long, and his Traveler album is indeed great. So let me give credit where it’s due and salute whatever forces in and around the CMA led to a triumphant night for some great artists. That said, we had a dandy show too! It had fewer flash bombs but loads of great music AND with writing that can only be described as literary. That’s the wonder of roots music – its capacity to make great language sing.

Our first wordsmith was Minton Sparks, armed with her purse on her arm, her hyper-cool backing band and a bunch of new stories for us. She versed about creepy carnies in “Carnival Ride” and her dad’s penchant for letting it all hang out in “Streaker.” As they say, you can’t make this stuff up, and Sparks swears she does not. She has a vault full of memories that come spilling out with verve and vividness and delicious language. In “Desperation” she rhymed “fender bender” with “state defender” and in the heart breaking “Harrison” she said “Our headboard became a headstone.” And these were just the lines I had the presence of mind to jot down. It was a flood of beauty and truth and character, as it always is with Minton. Again, kudos to guitarist John Jackson, bass player Dave Jacques and drummer Megan Jane Carchman who made moods and grooves that perfectly suited the spoken words.

Here’s a fresh idea for how to make your audience remember you in a crowded field of folk ensembles. Bring big peach crates with the name of your band painted on the side. Then stand on them to perform. That’s what Fort Defiance did, arraying themselves so that the “Fort” box was stage right holding up multi-instrumentalist Laurel Lane. Jordan Eastman was on his “Defiance” box on the other side. Drummer Dave Martin played in between. The music had bounce and blues and emotion, with songs like “Love As Strong As Doubt” which addressed a big relationship paradox head on. Laurel let her keening voice shine in the lead on the minimal “Let Love Grow” while the set closer “Grace” defied its title by rocking pretty hard. Boxes make for good foot stomping too.

Brent Johnson proved to be a quirky, funny interview, and that smiling spirit infused the music of his band Hope Country. On opener “I Need Grace,” he began with acoustic quiet but the quartet swelled up to a full roar for the latter choruses. The intensity continued on “Your Love Is Rich” as guitarist Josiah Christian and bassist Lucas Anderson slashed around with skinny jean rock and roll fervor. I enjoyed the fusion of power pop and alt-country in “Let Love Grow” and then Johnson wrapped things up with a tender waltz delivered solo with spare electric guitar backing. Thanks for bringing your wiry, hard rocking band and the cow jokes too.

Kevin Gordon is the steadiest of artists. Mr. Consistency. He looks like a guy about to start his shift down at the docks, and then he’ll don his electrified arch top guitar and turn on the song spigot and out will come golden moonshine. “Walking On The Levee” is one of the quieter songs from his new Long Gone Time album and this beauty became the opener of the set. It’s a reminiscence that includes a former flame who died by lightning. Again, you can’t make this stuff up. Kevin’s band of 20 years came on to lend smoldering slow jam grooves to his bouquets of words. “Letter To Shreveport” was a molasses sweet and slow blues. Then “Church on Time” and closer “GTO” brought the spanky Louisiana funk that enlivens so much of Gordon’s hookiest songs. Paul Griffith laid down the time with his unique lefty underhanded style and Joe McMahan, Gordon’s guitarist and producer, offered his tasteful glowing lines fretted and slid.

The Gordon band distinguished itself in the Nashville Jam as well, which was a slow and easy take on “Goodnight Irene.” Tyson Rogers’s keyboard solo slid into Joe’s slide electric in a way that was just as powerful as anything that was sung. Music and words. Words and music. We need them both. 

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

“Like A Fierce Habit”

My title this week comes from our musical guest Kevin Gordon, quoted in a recent cover profile in the Nashville Scene. He’s telling super-journalist Geoffrey Himes about the visual artists whose work he collects and brokers as a sidelight to his music career. These southern painters and sculptors fall in the “outsider” category, and Gordon sees a purity of expression in their unschooled and guileless outpourings. They are, he believes, born artists who are unaware there might have ever been a choice in the matter. He compares it to his own fierce habit of songwriting, recording and performing, something he does with as much impact and lasting quality as any artist in our fecund Americana terrain. Oh, and that’s my assessment, not his. He’s as humble as they come.

Gordon has wrestled with whether his path is “realistic” and whether it can support a family and offer a validated self to his loved ones. But we know about irrepressible callings. We feel it ourselves and we see it in most of the musicians who play our stage, with this week being no exception.

To us music commentary types and a great many fans, Gordon validated his place in the first tier of American music a long time ago. His 1999 album title song “Down To The Well” appeared on the Oxford American Southern Music sampler in a duet with Lucinda Williams. That was my initial electric zap of recognition of immense talent and reserve. His song “Deuce And A Quarter” was recorded by Keith Richards, Levon Helm and Scotty Moore. Gordon’s “Colfax/Step In Time” is perhaps his best–known masterpiece; I heard it at a tiny stage at a tiny festival around 2003 and it rearranged my molecules with its piercing poignancy. He is an exceptional writer and memoirist from a story-rich place (Monroe, Louisiana) whose medium happens to be songs.

Allow me to borrow some of Geoffrey’s words summarizing Gordon’s strengths, because I’d only offer a pale imitation:

The songwriter doesn't have the prose writer's luxury of descriptive catalogs; the lyricist has to find the few telling images that can evoke a time and place and introduce the tale's leading characters. This Gordon does with rare vividness and economy. The songwriter then has to allow his opposing forces to collide and ricochet where they will, resisting the all-too-human temptation to impose a happy or exciting ending. This too Gordon does better than almost anyone.

As a songwriter, he tells Himes that he honors “a whole mess of traditions,” and with so many regional influences and a trained poet’s observational powers, this leaves enormous room for Gordon’s individuality to animate and inhabit the music. He disdains pat answers and tidy resolutions. His characters realize things and feel things and lose thing but they won’t catch him pretending that they figure it all out. You feel that as vividly as ever on his new Long Gone Time album, which is a half-and-half affair. There’s a moody, minimalist side with personal recollections such as the going-home song “Walking On The Levee,” while the rest is classic roadhouse country swampbilly set to the irresistible beats of Paul Griffith and the guitars of Gordon and Joe McMahan. We are thrilled to welcome Gordon back to Roots at a time when this album is getting widespread attention and acclaim. 

The work of Minton Sparks makes a perfect bookend to Gordon’s songs, for they are both storytellers who traffic in vivid southern characters. Sparks’s musically levitated spoken word pieces spring from her like a fierce habit. Like many of the outsider artists Gordon admires, Sparks found her voice and muse well into life, and the results feel unforced and intrinsic. We’ve loved watching her show evolve from a rather spare affair with one backing musician to fronting a band that fleshes out the sound with cinematic flair. Her most recent album is 2014’s Gold Digger, but what we remember is her most recent set at MCR, which was spellbinding. 

Hope Country is the project name of Brent Johnson, a Wisconsin-reared, Minnesota-based songwriter who’s been playing and touring since his teens. He’s unafraid of beauty and ennobling sentiments in songs that come across as straight-up Americana with a salty grandeur. When CMT Edge caught up with him in 2014 upon release of his Mumfordish single “On Our Own” he was about to open shows with Nashville’s Judah & The Lion. Anyone who enjoyed them at Roots a few months ago (and how could you not?) will get swept up in Johnson’s romantic fervor.

Rounding out our night of fierce habitués of song is emerging trio Fort Defiance, a Nashville-based folk group that got rolling just last year as the newly acquainted duo of Jordan Eastman and Laurel Lane. They added drummer Dave Martin and began to get in front of audiences with what writers have called “vigorous honesty” and “bellies of fire.” This year they released the debut album Worry Has No Home, a sentiment that seems to go with this week’s theme. The corollary of no worries is not, as a sweet pop song once said, being happy. It’s being alive and creative.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

The Spooky South - 10.28.15

The season of haints and all saints is upon us, and while I haven’t been much interested in costuming up for Halloween in decades, I do enjoy the people watching and the trickle down effect of having a daughter who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. I’ll join you in getting ready for the holiday at our October 28 show because whether by design or accident, there will be ghosts. Cool ghosts. Musical ghosts. Southern ghosts.

One of our acts is explicitly inspired by the supernatural. A group of leading Nashville musicians, including Neilson Hubbard, Ben Glover and Farewell Drifter Joshua Britt, camped out at and sought the historic soul of The Octagon Hall, a famous and famously haunted antebellum mansion in Franklin, KY. Under the banner The Orphan Brigade, they made both an album and a film with the help of luminaries like Kim Richey, Gretchen Peters, Kris and Heather Donegan and Eamon McLoughlin. I’ve not heard the whole thing but the inklings are as spectral as you’d expect yet also (at least in the case of “Trouble My Heart (Oh Harriet)”) bristling with existential passion. The documentary did well at the Nashville Film Festival and several others. The spirit of the project is perhaps best summed up by the enthusiastic liner notes of Marshall Chapman:

“The tragedy surrounding this place is palpable in each song. I Google “Octagon Hall.” Several sites proclaim it “one of the most terrifying places in America.” So who would go to such a place? Let alone, to write and record an album? Surely they must be mad!”

Mad? Haunted? Sounds perfect for this time of year.

The blues is roots music’s never ending séance, and the Delta sound that informs and inspires Ted Drozdowski and his power trio Scissormen teems with ghosts and souls in limbo. Ted’s a friend to all of us in the music scene as an award-winning journalist (and frequent patron of our show, thanks so much). But since the 80s he’s advanced his own sound making agenda. It’s taken many forms and colors, but in this decade-old group he’s built on a foundation of Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside with Jackson Pollack splashes and tie-die patterns. The new album Love & Life has been his best-reviewed project to date, evoking praise for its psychedelics and pyrotechnics. I’m looking forward to drawing out Ted on some of the views about the blues in modern life that he shared in a new profile/interview in Guitar Player magazine. 

“I would like to see the blues become the inventive, growing, all-encompassing medium I think it is. Most people playing the blues today do not see it as this timeless, evolutionary foundation. They see it as a museum piece. I am actually offended by that.”

Don’t hold back your feelings Ted. You’ll have every chance to say it with your slide guitar on Wednesday.

MCR alumnus Amy Black grew up around Southern spirits as a child of Muscle Shoals. It wasn’t always her home per se, but it was her family turf and a regular place of rest and rambling. Once she became an accomplished songwriter and singer, she got truly in touch with the legacy of the place working on a 2013 EP recorded in the music hotbed with area icons like keyboardist Spooner Oldham. Amy’s new FAME Sessions album takes its name from Rick Hall’s world-famous studio where so much legendary American soul and rock and roll was birthed. A mix of originals and craftily chosen cover songs, the project sets Amy’s ginormous, glowing voice against clean, hand-crafted instrumentation, artfully mixed by Nashville’s Lex Price. Amy’s bringing horns and an expert rhythm section to this week’s Roots, for what will surely be her most ambitious set of the many she’s done for us. It’s exciting to have her return with such inspirational winds at her back.

One of these things is not like the others this week, and that’s the sunny, inspirational artistry of LynnMarie Rink. I remember her popping up on my radar when I was at the newspaper in the early 2000s, because it was hard not to notice a local female accordionist who made crossover polka and who’d earned a Grammy nomination for one of her albums. The genre came from her family history and her twists and turns on it came from being a wide-open curious and empathic person. She took her squeezebox all over the world and played the Tonight Show. Then I didn’t see anything about her for a while. When she turned up again more recently it was as author of a forthcoming memoir and writer of a one-woman show that shares her transformational story of parenting a son with Down’s Syndrome and autism. She’s had wild ups and downs but has emerged with wise resilience. I have no idea what her live show is going to sound like, but I know from knowing her it will be joyful and likely have that kicky bounce of the infectious polka groove.

Or if she wants to play mournful songs of death on the accordion, that’ll fit right in too.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

Munford and Son!

I’ve been waiting a long time to use that headline, but that’s the life of a pun hunter (or punter as we’re known by some). One must have patience and cunning. But I admit this one, which occurred to me a couple years ago, takes some unpacking. Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen is one of my favorite bands, and a big part of that is their smoking instrumental chops, and a big part of that is banjo player Mike Munford, a fountain of tasty licks and musical ideas. The other thing you need to know is from bluegrass lore. Guitar god Tony Rice was likely to holler out “Son!” at a moment when the music got particularly good or a solo had truly achieved transcendence. So Frank and company kind of adopted the expression and put it on stickers that you can put on your instrument case. I have one on my shrine of stickers, because FSDK regularly inspire me to holler “Son!” And thus was I able to mangle the name of a certain popular yet controversial English folk pop ensemble.

I had a strong case of Tony Rice Exclamatory Syndrome all evening at this week’s show. After a few weeks of high volume rock and roll, MCR got back to its transparent, rootsy basics. FSDK closed the show with their power and complete musical attack. But rolling up to that were a fantastic brother duo, an exciting young picking/singing Nashvillian and a family bluegrass band from Appalachia.

The young folks in Mountain Faith manage to come off as wholesome and hip at the same time, which is kind of a slick move. As singer/fiddler Summer McMahan said in our interview, gospel’s a big part of their mix but they are a mix, and they showed that in a five song set. The sunny, bouncy “Emily” opened and a hard driving blues on “Call Me The Breeze” closed, with a lot of vocal and instrumental skills in between. There were extended passages and ideas pulling mando, banjo, fiddle and guitar together with attention to detail and a big Celtic-inspired groove. Summer sang with spark and clarity. As gracious as they were about being at MCR, truly the honor was all ours.

As you could tell from my preview, I was pretty jazzed about my first chance to see Molly Tuttle and band in a live setting. She’s a paradox – forcefully talented yet shyly demure. She approaches the mic with a gentle demeanor and then she blows your mind with speedy flatpicked guitar. Opener “Friend And A Friend” rolled like a Greyhound, appropriate because it’s about the highs and lows of the road when you’ve got “a big dream and a worn out D-18.” That brisk bluegrass was offset by the cooing ballad “Save This Heart” with a lofty melody that found Molly showing a cultivated high register and Alison Krauss-like silvery sweetness. Her musical companions were emerging instrumental stars themselves – Wes Corbett on banjo and John Mailander on fiddle - plus bass mistress Missy Raines. They wove some killer solos together as one in “Swept Away” and John Hartford’s “Gentle On My Mind.” And the closing “White Freightliner” became a showcase for Molly’s most remarkable guitar solos in a generally remarkable set. If you were with us live, check the livestream archive of her performance and you’ll hear even more detail and punch in her guitar than was audible in Liberty Hall.

Breaking up the bluegrass was the self-described “beach and bayou” music of the Pawnshop Kings. The former comes from a life in California and immersion in everything from rock and roll to Laurel Canyon songwriting. The latter draws from the Mississippi River Delta and the swampy south. The guys fused these vibes artfully and soulfully, notably on the gospel stomping “Love Like Jesus.” Then “Outside Memphis” brought a country calm and spotlighted the guys’ leathery voices. They pulled together a fine band from guys they knew in Nashville, including their new friend Jason Goforth who gave the whole sound his usual golden glow with lap steel, harmonica and moody effects. The brothers gave off a lot of love too, proving the point that they may not remember what you say but they’ll remember how you make em feel.

Frank Solivan and Dirty Kitchen always make me feel good. Chill bump good. It really happened. I put it in my notes. If you’re in a band and have aspirations of chill bump induction (which you should), check out these guys’ ability to build tension and stack their songs with drama and dynamics. They came out with the blue mid-tempo groove of “No Life In This Town” and earned applause for every featured moment. Frank’s voice is in top shape, mining new territory in the fusion between bluegrass and soul. Mike Munford truly is one of the most intricate and exciting banjo players working today, as he showed on his instrumental “Yeah Man.” There, Chris Luquette took a gobsmacking solo that started close to the melody and then went nuts. Frank and Chris did some fun show-off picking to lead into the heavy wood of “She Said She Will,” and the boys wrapped the set with “Pretty Woman,” somehow making it a vessel for extended acoustic jams.

It had to be a bluegrass tune for the Nashville Jam, so the pickers picked “Salty Dog Blues” and pulled it off with watchmaker precision. Sometimes there’s nothing to say but “Son!” 

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

New Grass Retrieval - 10.14.15

The first weekend of October presented a wickedly hard choice for roots music fans, with four major festivals going on around the country, including the World of Bluegrass and the IBMA Awards. Our Roots team went east to Raleigh to film the awards for a web stream and an edited broadcast next year. I went west to the Bluegrass Situation’s annual festival and filed a report for our friends out there. It was stellar and I was glad to get a feeling for roots music in L.A., but the day-long affair was light on bluegrass music per se, and I definitely missed IBMA, an event I’ve been loving for 15 years. The aspect I missed most after the people was IBMA’s amazing forum for discovering new bands and artists.

Fortunately, this week at Roots offers a bit of the emerging artistry I might have seen, including an iconoclastic band from North Carolina and a young woman from California and now Nashville by way of the Berklee College of Music who’s giving me premonitions of a big bright future (for her, not me). She’s got a clear, shaded voice. She works with great collaborators in settings from deep old-time to contemporary folk. And if I may pay her a compliment that really means something, after listening to her pick for 20 minutes on line, Molly Tuttle inspired me to pull out my acoustic guitar and try to play just a little bit like her.

Molly grew up playing in a family band with her dad, a well-known bluegrass musician and educator. And at some point, and I can’t wait to ask her about this, she decided to take the guitar way beyond strumming or even fiddle tune convention. Whether it’s single line leads, melodic figures opening a tune or complex fills, her flatpicking is remarkably clear, articulate and fresh. She cascades notes with lush use of open strings, and she keeps tone and melody absolutely front and center. Like all of us, she’s been influenced by Tony Rice and Doc Watson, but being from a new generation, I hear shades of David Grier, Scott Nygaard and Bryan Sutton.

Her skills are being noticed, to say the least. Molly’s made the stage at Prairie Home Companion, won the Merlefest songwriting contest and become one of the few woman ever featured on the cover of Flatpicking Guitar Magazine. She’s made a gorgeous 5-song EP with fiddler John Mailander and is now prepping a fan-funded debut full-length album of her own original music. I’ve heard Molly Tuttle’s name around for a while, but now I’m so glad to be focused on her burgeoning artistry, as we all will be on Wednesday night.

Of course I could write all day about Frank Solivan, our show closing favorite. I’ve been a fan and friend for some time now, and I wrote a feature profile when he played Roots a couple of years ago. But to update things, Frank’s band Dirty Kitchen was recognized as the top instrumental group in bluegrass at the IBMA Awards last year. That’s a powerful accomplishment for a quartet but look at the constituent parts: Frank’s versatile mandolin, Chris Luquette’s fleet fingered guitar and the dazzling banjo of Mike Munford. In 2014 the boys released the deep and mesmerizing Cold Spell album, which was nominated for a Grammy Award. The ensemble simply cleaned the floor at their home-town Washington Area Music Association Awards, winning eight categories including album and artist of the year. And now Frank’s wrapping up production on an upcoming Family, Friends & Heroes album, featuring guest appearances by Del and Ronnie McCoury, Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas and assorted family members including a posthumous recording of his late mom singing on “Wayfaring Stranger.”

Rounding out our bluegrass trifecta will be the young, traditionally-minded band Mountain Faith from Sylva, NC in the mountain region of the state. As the name implies, the gospel is strong with these guys, but not the whole picture. When they auditioned (successfully) for that wild television show America’s Got Talent, they played One Republic’s “Counting Stars,” and they embrace touches from other genres that are shaping modern bluegrass. Three of group are siblings and the band has been rolling since 2000. An anchoring gig at Dollywood has put them in front of a lot of new fans. They arrive at Roots with a new single and an album coming soon.

We weren’t planning a bluegrass theme show as this all came together. Nevertheless, holding down the vital “something-else” slot this week, in the third set, is the brother duo Pawnshop Kings. And they are something else. Joel and Scott Owen took what they soaked up in their home state of Arkansas, moved to Los Angeles and made an album while overdosing on Stevie Wonder and the Beatles. So it’s accessible folk pop with a rootsy core, and they pack a striking vocal blend. They’re touring hard and inspiring new fans and followers.

So it seems there’s exceptional picking, songwriting and band craft on tap this week. Good thing too because that’s why we get up in the morning.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

Playoff Performances - MCR 10.7.15

(Editor’s Note: Due to travel and other business, we’ve missed posting a couple of show articles here. Those posts and much more can be found at the show’s website.) 

It’s that time of year when our Wednesday, 7 pm shows are likely to overlap with that most sacred of rituals, Major League Baseball playoff games. And yes during this week’s show, I was monitoring the Cubs versus Pirates one-game wildcard showdown, determining who survived to play the St. Louis Cardinals and have a shot at the World Series. As the son of a Chicago-raised Cubs fan and a lover of underdogs, this was too tense to ignore. But I can walk and chew gum at the same time. It was easy to be awestruck by Jake Arietta’s pitching performance while simultaneously appreciating in full the varied sounds and personalities coming across our stage. Ours was an evening of four innings, each with its own score.

The bluegrass around the Front Range in Colorado has a free and windy feeling that kindly compliments the more formal and buttoned up bluegrass of the Southeast. And Trout Steak Revival brought just that vibe to start the show. I was surprised to learn in the interview that aside from fiddler Bevin Foley, the guys had picked up their instruments relatively recently, for they were very good pickers who kept the music rolling forward. And there were multiple lead vocalists for variety. Bevin sang a swinging, gospel inflected “Go On” that was about the sweetest “get out of here I’m over you” song I can recall. Banjo man Travis McNamara conspired with the fiddle for a moody intro before singing the light-and-dark final number, which I’m pretty sure was the title track to the album Brighter Every Day.

The music of The Lowest Pair creeps into your bones subtly but surely. Kendl Winter sang in a birdlike voice with a warble and coo. Palmer Lee blended well with her, often in a woven vocal fugue, and the same went for their intricate banjo lines, which spun around each other as on a loom. Opener “Minnesota Mend Me” was lonesome and melancholy. They offered a twist on “Oh Suzanna” with new, original verses. “Rosie” had a mountain purity. And I appreciated their extended instrumental passages with two banjos playing specific, clean lines against each other, like a two-person version of what Dave Rawlings does with Gillian Welch. 

It was a family affair when the AJ Ghent band took the stage. AJ’s background singers flanking the artist and looking sensational in black dresses, were his sister and wife. Father Aubrey was in the wings, waiting. The opening tune started mellow and grew to a big vocals-meets-steel-guitar climax. The drumming from Javares Dunn was sensational throughout but especially when things needed to get slippery and syncopated. Dad came on halfway through the program to offer biting single line solos and highlights on the gospel rocking “99 And A Half Won’t Do.” Father and son trading breaks with their very different styles was grand, and the band earned a standing ovation for their sweaty efforts.

You never met such good old boys as the Kentucky Headhunters. They are utterly what they appear to be and even 40+ years into their musical journey, they rock like teenagers back in their rustic old practice house. They came out tipping their hat to their past and to the Bluegrass State with their punchy cover of Bill Monroe’s “Walk Softly On This Heart of Mine.” “Stumblin’” was nice grit and grind rock and roll, coming at just the time that the Cubs turned a crucial double play with the bases loaded to stifle the biggest threat to their 4-0 lead so far. The Heads evoked the grease of good barbecue with “Shufflin’ Back To Memphis” and Richard Young sang commanding raspy blues on “Have You Ever Loved A Woman.” Finally the band pulled out its upbeat, indelible hit “Dumas Walker” to close.

“Don’t Let Me Down” sang the gang for the Nashville Jam, and I’m happy to say that at least for now, the Cubs did not. (Fortunately MCR artists are much more consistent.) I saved the last two innings for viewing at home, to prolong the suspense. Arrieta pitched a complete game shutout. So it was an evening when everybody brought their A game.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

For The Benefit of Mr. Womack

This week’s show preview comes from journalist and artist Peter Cooper, who knows the musicians involved better than anyone we know. It was his idea and his connections that pulled together this special benefit show for Tommy Womack. And he’ll be our musical host this Wednesday too. So I’m very glad to take a week off and hand the MCR blog over to my old pal and colleague Peter. – Craig H.

“I worry often,” Tommy Womack once sang. “I live in terror of what life may have in store.”

Tommy—who has long been among Nashville’s most inventive, idiosyncratic and essential roots musicians—was right to worry. In June, he was driving to a gig when, suddenly, he wasn’t driving anymore. Instead, he was being rushed by ambulance to a Kentucky hospital. The verdict: cracked pelvis, cracked vertebrae, cracked sacral bone and cracked bank account.

So, here’s what we’re going to do about it at Music City Roots: On Wednesday, September 28, at 7 p.m. we’re throwing the greatest rock ‘n’ roll party of 2015. And you’re invited, but you’re going to have to pay some dough to get in. Not a lot of dough, but enough so that if enough folks pay it, it’ll help Tommy, his wife Beth and his son Nathan through a difficult time.

But, friends, this will not be a night of somber reflections on the frailty of life. This is a night of celebration, of redemption, of victory. Tommy Womack is carrying on, like a cockroach after the bomb. And even if you’ve never heard Tommy’s amazing, amusing, acerbic music… or read his genius memoir, The Cheese Chronicles… or read his monthly column in The East Nashvillian… or seen his weekly Monday Morning Cup of Coffee video blog… or heard his Friday Happiness Hour on East Nashville Radio… or heard Jimmy Buffett or Todd Snider or Jason and the Scorchers or Government Cheese or Daddy or The Bis-quits play his songs… this show is going to be epic.

How epic? Lots epic. Why epic? Because so many of Nashville’s city-shaping rock ‘n’ rollers love Tommy Womack, and they’re coming out to give to him by playing for us.

Jason and the Scorchers invented country-punk and became Music City’s first important rock band. They’ve toured with Bob Dylan, played the Kennedy Center and won the Americana Music Association’s Lifetime Achievement in Performance award. They haven’t played Nashville in years. They’re playing this show and offering a set that will likely include the searing “Self Sabotage,” which Scorchers’ frontman Jason Ringenberg wrote with Tommy.

Rough and tumble guy Webb Wilder and his Beatnecks band arrive on our stage just days after the release of Webb’s brand new album, Mississippi Moderne. In 1986, Webb trumpeted Tennessee’s rock readiness with a sparkling debut album called It Came From Nashville. In the years since then, he has maintained his hybrid vigor and demonstrated his mastery of what he calls both kinds of music: rock and roll.

Also with a brand new album - one called Get Loud! - is Dan Baird, with a band that thrives on the guitar weaving of Baird and Scorchers’ guitarist Warner Hodges, and on songs that are often co-written by one Tommy Womack. Half of Dan’s regular band, Homemade Sin, is already overseas, readying for a major tour, but Dan and Warner stuck around to play one last stateside show, for their fractured friend. Dan came to worldwide attention in the 1980s as the wild-eyed guitarist/singer for the ferocious Georgia Satellites.

At this Tommy-fest edition of Music City Roots, we’ll also hear from one of Tommy Womack’s dearest friends and most frequent collaborators, Will Kimbrough. Joining Will is Nashville’s godfather of pop, Bill Lloyd, who shares Bowling Green roots and an elevated musical sensibility with Tommy. Then there’s long, strong, and tall Marshall Chapman, a singing, songwriting Nashville fixture since the Outlaw era. Marshall’s songs have been recorded by Emmylou Harris, Joe Cocker, Irma Thomas, Jimmy Buffett, and many more, and American Songwriter magazine called her most recent song-set, Blaze of Glory, “One of the year’s finest singer-songwriter albums.” Oh, and also joining will are his bandmates from the roots rock collective, Daddy. That’s all of his bandmates. Including a fellow named Tommy Womack.

I first became aware of Tommy in the 1990s, while visiting Nashville from my home in South Carolina. I was riding in Jason Ringenberg’s truck, listening to the Scorchers’ not-yet-released Clear Impetuous Morning album.

“I wrote this with Tommy Womack,” Jason said.

“Who?” I said.

“You don’t know who Tommy Womack is?” Jason asked.

“No.”

Then Jason took a hard, fast left turn into the parking lot at Bookstar on West End Ave., said, “Wait here,” and jogged inside. He emerged with a just-purchased copy of Cheese Chronicles, handed it over and said, “Read this. Love it, and buy it for somebody else someday. Everybody needs to know Tommy Womack.”

I’ve bought more than twenty copies of Cheese Chronicles, and given all but one of them away.

We at Music City Roots are pleased to present this one-of-a-kind evening, in support and celebration of an artist who is an important part of our tribe. Tommy Womack graced our stage in June, just two days before his accident, appearing with his Government Cheese bandmates. His music exemplifies the spirit, the honesty, the edge and the humor that are at the core of what we do.

Peter Cooper

[musiccityroots]

Reaching The Whole World

“Nashville has my heart,” said Bex Chilcott aka Ruby Boots during her set this week at Roots. I think she spoke in some way for just about all the Australian artists who took the stage this week for our annual night of Down Under overdrive. Aussie Night features artists who have worked very hard and established enough bona fides in their home country to qualify for travel money and promotion from Sounds Australia. And the end of their 10,000 mile journey is Music City, for good reason. Others have come before, from Keith Urban to that sweet O’Shea couple, establishing careers. This is the place where you can put a U.S. career together. And as Bex said, contemporary Nashville with its open-hearted community of creators, is very special. And we’re all about welcoming pilgrims, especially when they’re as talented as these folks.  

Rick Price has actually emigrated to Nashville, and I can’t believe he’s been singing and writing in our midst here the whole time Music City Roots has been on the air. This guy’s quite incredible, with a supple and powerful voice that can leap between chest and head with a falsetto that’s tender yet manly. I recently fell for the stomping energy of his opening track on the new Tennessee Sky album called “Work That Fire,” and to make up for the lack of band he got the crowd singing the “on my way home” refrain. His finale was a brave and brilliant a cappella song called “Until We Meet Again.” Playing a well-worn Maton guitar and looking clean in a vest and shirt, he owned the stage and got us off to an energetic start.

I for one am kind of devastated that the next two artists live so very far away. I’d sign on as a fan clubber for both Raised By Eagles and Oh Pep! These Eagles played country rock but sounded almost nothing like that California best-selling band that may or may not have raised them. The rhythms were clean and propulsive. Up to four voices at once made the harmonies lush in a Band of Heathens kind of way. The electric guitar playing by Nick O’Mara, Telecaster and lap steel, was brilliant. But my fondness came from an overall feeling, an ease and cool the band maintained on both the rocking material like “Jackie” or the ambience of “Waiting For Ghosts.” Fly on young Eagles. Fly on.

Pep is an old fashioned word, but Olivia and Pepita who make up Oh Pep! (get it?) have put together a properly modern folk rock band with poetic lyrics, fascinating musical textures and a radiant positive energy. “The Race” had truth-in-advertising briskness and a melody that really sticks in my head. The epic “Tea, Milk & Honey” ended the set with a long introductory passage and then great dynamic playing by the full four-piece band. Pepita’s use of fiddle in unusual ways is another plus. Oh Pep! is embarking on a full US tour, so wherever you are, check em out.

Ruby Boots came on with red hair and a black cowgirl outfit (my favorite color scheme, to adapt Richard Thompson). The five-piece band conspired to make crisp, uptempo country rock that framed Bex Chilcott’s bold voice nicely. This time the fine electric twang and slide came from guitarist Lee Jones, especially on the desert lonesome “Middle Of Nowhere.” That set the table for Mark Moffatt’s St. James Infirmary, about which we knew nothing, because this was their fourth gig. Let’s call it a high quality bar band with good taste in cover choices. I haven’t heard “Poke Salad Annie” in ages, but they came out with that one and it was funky and Southern. Lead singer Greg Mangus can often be found singing fearsomely difficult lead vocals for the Long Players and rock and soul projects in the city, and he was fantastic, with gravel and grease and a massive physical presence. Moffatt played blistering guitar solos. And a night that had been pretty mellow hit a rock and roll climax as it ended. The assembled bands did a joyful version of “Let The Good Times Roll.” Not exactly an Australian anthem. But certainly apropos to the feeling of the night.

Thanks to the AristoMedia family for coming out to help us salute the late great Jeff Walker. Thanks to Dobe Newton for once again shepherding some great Aussie bands and artists our way for a great lineup. It’s fun to have a relationship with a country that’s so very far away. It makes reaching the whole world feel possible.

 Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

My Brain On Americana

The morning after our Music City Roots AmericanaFest blowout with The Mavericks and three other fantastic artists, I moderated a conference panel on the state of research into music and the brain, including some exciting new initiatives at Vanderbilt University. This deep geek dive into neuroscience may seem far afield from the club rambling, hand shaking and head bobbing of the Americana Music Association conference. But it’s actually a confluence of my favorite subjects. Some years ago I discovered a revelatory book called Music, The Brain and Ecstasy and more recently you’ve perhaps heard of Daniel Levitin’s best-seller This Is Your Brain On Music. Both get at the vital, mysterious question: Why do we love organized sound so much? Where do the chills and tears come from? Can music heal us and make us more emotionally whole beings? Sure this gig is fun, but that’s not the end of it. Americana is a space for music that’s meaningful and resonant in our deepest selves, where we harbor our empathy and connectedness and our desire for love and touch. The fact that scientists here in Music City are making such headway toward understanding this is validating and inspiring. So was the convention in general, and I just wanted to share a few observations including a short review of Wed. Sept. 17 at Liberty Hall.

The Americana Honors & Awards show lived up to its track record of artistic excellence combined with buttocks  endurance. The three-plus hour show featured stunning moments from Rhiannon Giddens, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings and the new, unexpected collaboration of Ricky Skaggs, Ry Cooder and The Whites. It was wild to see Buffy Sainte-Marie sing “Universal Soldier,” and Keb’ Mo’ played a smoking tribute to President’s Award winner B.B. King on what would have been his 90th birthday. The Rock My Soul combo of the Fairfield Four and the McCrary Sisters opened the show with Robert Randolph shooting lightning bolts of lap steel guitar. And the legendary Los Lobos brought it home at night’s end. If there was an award for best award show, this would win every year.

In the clubs I caught Buddy Miller in a casual sitting-down set with fellow guitar wizard Marc Ribot. MCR alums The Hillbenders did their full cover version of Tommy in a very late set at 3rd & Lindsley. Our friends from the Quicksilver agency in Washington presented great daytime tunes from The Stray Birds, Caleb Klauder and Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen. Irrepressible Frank made tangy pork chili verde for all in attendance. The next day, I found so very fetching the songs of Emma Swift at the annual Australia lunch, and there also I got a tasty preview of this week’s MCR artist Oh Pep! and Raised By Eagles. On Friday night, Lee Ann Womack asked her audience “How country can you take it?” as triple fiddles assembled for a couple of her numbers during a gorgeous set. Indeed the whole night posed the question with sets by Sam Outlaw, our own Jim Lauderdale and ultra-honky-tonker Whitey Morgan. I am now very eager to see the powerfully Waylonesque Whitey on Roots. Saturday night I slid over to East Nashville where I caught MCR buddy Kai Welch (man, is his thing developing) and Erin Rae, a Nashvillian whom I hope finds her way to MCR soon too. Lovely voice and songs. 

But of course the majority of our energy and focus was on our own Wednesday night extravaganza, and once again the good folks at AMA slipped us some ringers to lure folks southward on a night of many choices. Our house was packed as Whitehorse took the stage with exciting songs that were built before our eyes and ears with naturally recorded drum loops, keyboard surges, shimmering guitar riffs from Luke Doucet and tent stake bass playing from Melissa McLelland. When this attractive couple sings together it’s kind of hot, and the songs are just fascinating. Our ration of folk music was served by the utterly likeable and sincere Joel Rafael. He sang of sitting in jail in 1960s Portland (street cred!). His ties to Woody Guthrie were on bright display during the Okemah, OK setting of “Sticks & Stones.” It was extraordinary to have Greg Leisz, a past AMA instrumental winner and icon of the pedal steel backing Joel up with sparkling strings.

Things got louder and rowdier with the arrival of Shemekia Copeland and her four-piece band. With big city force and passion, she opened with the title cut from the new Outskirts of Love album and then stewed on a slow rocker with cutting slide electric from Arthur Neilson. Her tabloid-worthy story song of a Nashville record deal gone way wrong, with the line “country music ain’t nothing but the blues with a twang” and a railroad beat got a huge surge of affection from the crowd. Copeland covered a “baby making” Solomon Burke tune that really showed off her versatile, powerful voice. And she wrapped with a song of her father’s that took her home to the core of the blues. Of all the Alligator Records artists working today, Shemekia was the one I was most eager to see on our stage, and I’m impressed that the team pulled it off.

And at last the big ticket. The main event. The  hot tamale. Rock stars were among us and they – The Mavericks - hit the stage about 9 pm. Lead singer Raul Malo lurked behind shades and a big black hat with an orange Gretsch guitar slung low. Jerry Dale McFadden is Malo’s sartorial foil, wearing in this case a bight salmon colored seersucker suit as he made postures toward his keyboards that resembled a point guard playing defense. Eddie Perez was an East L.A. playboy in a brown silk suit and hat, and drummer Paul Deacon sits church upright in a suit vest and whanged the set with force and steadiness. Support came from an upright bass player, a two-man horn section and an accordion guy. And all this adds up to a joyful, gut shaking sound that melds Marty Robbins/Roy Orbison countrypolitan with the Latin impulse to dance forever. Malo’s voice remains worthy of an opera house. The new songs and old ones segued seamlessly together. And they hit seven moods in as many songs, from the 50s R&B bounce of “Stories We Could Tell” to the hard ska of “What You Do” to the slow shuffle and sway of “Do You Want Me Too,” with its magnificently sexy sax solo.

By the time they hit the wiry rock and roll of “Come Unto Me” the front of the hall was flooded with dancers and most of the audience was standing. Waves of Tesla like energy flowed back and forth. Jim Lauderdale schemed with the boys to make “All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down” the Nashville Jam, so not only did we get an encore’s encore, but the other artists clearly loved joining forces on the Maverick’s biggest hit. We reveled too, because that song marks one of the biggest hits in this format we celebrated for a week. I can tell you from my neuroscience reading and listening that our brains were all synched up, motor neurons firing in time, and we were all enjoying plentiful dosings of dopamine, the legal squirts of satisfaction we carry around in our bodies. But of course in the end, this collective euphoria is not something we need to analyze. It’s best just to feel it, smile a lot at one another and make plans for the next AmericanaFest.

Craig H.  

[musiccityroots]

Mavericks By Nature - 9.16.15

The dictionary defines a maverick as “an unorthodox or independent-minded person” with synonyms including individualist, nonconformist, dissident and free spirit. Isn’t it kind of weird, in a nation built on the ethos of the individual and premised on free thought, that we even need a word for such people? I’ll bore you with my opinions on this in the realm of politics over beers if you like, but here I’d just like to observe that maverickism is pretty much a given in the realm of Americana music. It’s a format born of independent thought and nonconformism and it’s been giving shelter to maverick musicians for 15 years. The band that took the name The Mavericks was fortunate indeed, as it conjures just the right kind and degree of courageous uniqueness, not to mention a certain country/western aura. Now, the sprawling Americana community is gathering in Nashville for its annual festival, and we are proud to be hosting a showcase for the fifth year. The Mavericks may be the best known to us Nashville-based folks, but this will be a night of mighty mavericks down the line.

Opening up will be Whitehorse, the Canadian duo of Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland. I got to know this fascinating, always evolving outfit at past AmericanaFests. Then really I fell for them through the 2012 album with an extravagant sound and the extravagant title The Fate Of The World Depends On This Kiss. Whitehorse is indeed romantic, in a film noir kind of way. They’ve grounded a lot of their sonics on unison singing, spooky melodies and Luke’s reverb-drenched Gretsch guitar. And they’re a real life couple who’ve been pictured holding hands on at least two album covers. On the new Leave No Bridge Unburned, they’re running together toward something or from something in animated silhouette. And the music is more intense and textured than ever. The current live show is a complex dance of multi-instrumentalism supported by deft use of looping software. I’m particularly jazzed about this Roots debut. 

AMA suggested the West Coast songwriter Joel Rafael for our show, and that one sent me to the bookshelf. What a story! An early artist at the legendary folk clubs The Ash Grove and The Troubadour, Rafael became fully swept up in the tumult of the 1960s counterculture and anti-war movement, staying one step ahead of the draft and making music where he could while plying other trades. He was in a duo with Rosie Flores, to my fond surprise. He recorded for Jackson Browne’s record label, did some theater music and became part of the Woody Guthrie Festival posse as one of the handful of artists entrusted with Guthrie lyrics by Woody’s daughter Nora. That led to a major Kennedy Center appearance celebrating Woody’s legacy. Joel sings in a dead sincere, fibrous baritone and speaks his mind plainly. This will be a gratifying MCR debut by a guy who’s been there and done that.

Shemekia Copeland says she’s “an old soul marching to the beat of my own drum,” and anybody that’s followed her ascent would agree. Most folks know she’s the daughter of Johnny Copeland, the eclectic Texas blues man and rock and roller who made a blazing career out of the New York area. Shemekia was all the buzz by the time she was in her late teens and began making superb, visceral albums in the late 90s on the iconic Alligator Records. Sadly that was about the time her dad died too young after a life of battling heart disease. But she picked up the torch in so many ways, building on the Copeland legacy. She brings to the blues a kind of all-American pride in roots music, with original songs that dig in and draw from soul, gospel, R&B and country music. On her incredible and incredibly new (last Friday!) album Outskirts of Love, she sings a funny, bitter anti-tribute/murder ballad to Nashville and country music, which “ain’t nothing but the blues with a twang.” Oh I hope she sings this one. There’s also a lot of potent songwriting about lives lived on the edge and with resilience. Copeland was handed the crown and named the new Queen of the Blues by the daughter of Koko Taylor, Alligator’s mega-star Chicago-based wonder. So it’s an honor to have her on the show.

The Mavericks have built a world of music and a strong identity that borrows from various pockets and eras of cool but comes out as its own thing. Big broad strokes of Bakersfield country music, Roy Orbison orchestration and 60s Cubanismo all swirl together, bound by the magisterial voice of Raul Malo. The grooves are profound, with drummer Paul Deakin wielding sticks as big as batons and cracking them on the skins from above his head. The horns are sumptuous. Eddie Perez plays the snarliest twang known to man on vintage guitars. And accordion gives the music the ultimate, gliding Latin gloss. It truly is one of the most vigorous and beautiful band sounds ever to make country music, and it’s been a blessing to have them back on the scene after a hiatus.

You probably know the basic story, though it’s hard to believe it stretches back 25 years. Malo and Deakin were original founders of the band, which injected a wildly retro yet visionary sound into the Miami rock and punk scene. Their move to Nashville and success via MCA Records on country radio is testament to the insight and passion of producer Tony Brown, the last man on the Row capable of such bravery. They had multi-platinum albums and won a Grammy and some CMA Awards. After a decade of intense living and music making, they called a hiatus and were gone for a while. The return of the Mavericks brought in classic country guitarist Eddie Perez and brought back long-time keyboard man Jerry Dale McFadden. They satisfied the anticipation with their album In Time (early 2013) and then topped that work with this year’s Mono.

Raul Malo, one of our favorite singers ever, told Glide magazine that everything is clicking with the band and that he expects longevity: “I think everybody is excited to do this. We’ve always been guided by where the music takes us, and I think if there’s more Mavericks records to make than we will make them. I really feel right now that we can do this for the rest of our lives.”

Artists aren’t the only mavericks in our Americana ecosystem by the way. A great music culture depends on fans being free-thinking individuals as well. The pop music business is premised on building herds clustered around a few consensus acts. Americana has its favorites to be sure, but it’s really about finding the sounds and artists that light you up on a deep and personal level and then supporting them actively. I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but we can all do more to evangelize to those around us who aren’t on the path yet. That’s what AMA is all about and it’s why we have a radio tower and a weekly broadcast. We want to make more mavericks.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

Strings Attached - 9.9.15

I caught the first half of Stephen Colbert’s first Late Show on Tuesday and finished it after arriving home from Roots on Wednesday night. Little did I know that on top of our fine night at The Factory, I was in for one of the most exciting media moments for Americana music since O Brother. Please see my personal blog for extended remarks on this, but let’s say if we feature the Nashville Jam, Late Night’s closing number (“Everyday People”) was a magnificent National Jam and one that foretold a major new platform for roots, jazz, soul and generally excellent American music. By bringing on New Orleans/New York musician Jon Batiste as band leader (and special opening-night guests like Mavis Staples, Brittany Howard, Derek Trucks and Buddy Guy), Colbert is placing trust in the public and bringing intelligent music curation to network television, something that’s been lacking for decades.

Our own show was a wonderful run from deep bluegrass to heady classical crossover with super-solid Americana in between, with even more mandolins and bowed instruments than usual. We opened with a bonus performance by our Tamworth Australia friend and Aboriginal songwriter Warren Williams, who’d made a lifetime dream trip to Nashville to cut an album. He and singing partner Dani Young performed a duet called “Desert Water” with some heart-tweaking harmonies. Then the mandolins took over the world as leaders and campers from the Monroe Mandolin Camp hit the stage. Six mandolins by my count, plus a guitar to keep the groove, picked “Bluegrass Breakdown” with solo turns by each. Mike Compton was the ostensible leader, while Roland White held down senior veteran status. The youth brigade was Casey Campbell and Chris Henry, each of whom brings a personal style to the Monroe canon. Henry’s vocal duet with David Davis on “Live And Let Live” was a pure old-school highlight. And on the ballad “Louisiana Moonlight Waltz” triple mandolins made a harmonious shiver on the beautiful theme.

The harmony action shifted to female voices as the Bay Area’s T Sisters came on, opening with an a cappella cover of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds,” the one in which “every little thing gonna be all right.” Their own “Sonnet #4” added two dude musicians on bass and mandolin and conjured a beguiling mood. “Thief” pushed out big dramatic vocal gestures and showed the ladies at peak, soulful power. Then there was a minor-key riff on “This Train” and a fraught love song as set closer called (I think) “Sticks And Stones.” Andy Allen-Fahlander played some smoking mandolin and electric guitar solos. The group is set to play an Americana showcase next week. I’m sure the City Winery audience will find T Sisters as glowing, warm and joyful as we did. 

I always remind people that Americana is a framework and a format but not a genre, yet if you forced me to think of a particular sound of Americana as genre, it would be the acoustic/electric jangle country of Steve Earle, Chris Knight, Rod Picott and this week’s guest Stephen Simmons. Robust melodies were answered by silvery electric guitar lines from the trusty instrument of Dave Coleman. Molly Jewel offered delicate harmonies from her keyboard. And Simmons himself is 100% pretention-free and clearly communicative as a singer. Opener “Spark” was tight and tuneful. The narrator lights out for the “West” in the song of that name. The road trip song “The Music Highway” was moody and atmospheric. And I loved the closer, a country tune with 70s soul called “Hard It Goes.” The “it” is love, by the way. 

I had a nice chat with Simmons as our stage team displayed Formula One pit crew professionalism, setting up one of the trickiest acts we’ve had in under five minutes. And that got things ready for the eleven-person Annie Moses band. Yet “band” is an understatement I think for this sumptuous string ensemble, complete with two keyboards, drums and harp. Six siblings made the front line, with Annie Wolaver at the center with her voice and violin. The music and arrangements were refined and grownup but also kind of rocking, and the singing, whether Annie alone with her moving soprano or in ensemble mode, was powerful and deeply layered. The orchestrations had Gershwin lushness, and there were strong allusions to Celtic music without lapsing into Riverdance cheese. “Chocktaw Cowboy” was an instrumental evoking newgrass with a hard stomp and lead mandolin from Gretchen Wolaver. Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times” started moody and soared to a heady, rapturous ending. Then they offered a ferocious and inspiring take on the Hoe Down section of Aaron Copland’s score for the ballet Rodeo, which premiered in 1942. As I said on stage, we’ve heard it in commercials and movies, but it’s simply a smashing piece of Americana and the Annie Moses Band played it with passion. Wrapping things up overall was a well arranged Nashville Jam on “I Saw The Light.” 

The Late Show’s Jon Batiste has conceptualized something he calls “social music” which looks like a portable band popping up in the middle of the city on some random day and time and creating a party and/or parade with a tambourine, a melodica and some horns. It’s something to which more musicians should aspire. We can’t parade around at Roots, being on the radio and all, but our show felt like “social music” and we hope we live up to that every week.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

From Trad to Strad - MCR 9.9.15

I’m writing this from the road and an extravagantly happy occasion. My Mom and Dad have just celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and a dozen family members have gathered in North Carolina to make a fuss over them and spend time together. They’re doing great, I’m thrilled to say. And I’m certainly reflecting on what a great gift I was given to have them as examples in life and marriage and so many other things.

One of those things, which actually does relate to the topic at hand, i.e. Music City Roots this Wednesday night, was early entrée into the world of classical music. I got violin lessons and youth orchestra and a lot of excellent concerts, plus big doses of Mozart and Schubert on the stereo at home. It’s not the typical story for somebody who now dreams of picking like Doc Watson and John Scofield, but my exposure to the heavenly mountaintop of music back then helped guide me later when I went foraging on my own down the back roads and through the wilderness of American folk and roots music. This week’s show will be something like that journey. We start with a bunch of Bill Monroe purists, move through some folky eclectica and deep songwriting to a group called the Annie Moses Band, which fuses folk and classical more explicitly than any ensemble we’ve hosted since Black Violin a couple of years ago.

It’s never wrong to start a show by tipping the hat to Bill Monroe. He’s anniversary-ready as well, since this December will mark 70 years since the amalgamation of the seminal and historic edition of the Blue Grass Boys in Nashville with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt. The Monroe Mandolin Camp gathers in the summer to learn more about Monroe and the magical miniscule instrument with which he changed the world. Leader Mike Compton has long been one of the Monroe Doctrine’s finest modern day interpreters and teachers, including long stints playing with the Nashville Bluegrass Band and John Hartford. Recently, he treated us to a set by his new Helen Highwater String Band. This week he brings some of his faculty and campers to our stage to dive deep into the music of the guy we bluegrass fans affectionately call Bill.

On a Nashville-heavy night our one out of town act is Bay Area sibling band the T Sisters. They bring verve and many years of harmonic honing to the stage. The San Jose Mercury News recently wrote this about them: “As a snappy stage moniker the T Sisters makes perfect sense for Erika, Rachel and Chloe Tietjen, who perform together as an irresistibly joyful sibling combo steeped in American roots music. But given their far-ranging creative proclivities, they could be more accurately described as the A to Z Sisters.” Sounds promising.

Singer/songwriter Stephen Simmons is returning to Roots during an incredibly fruitful and prolific period, having released by my count four albums and digital collections in the past two years. I rang him up this week and he told me that he’s always written more songs than the typical two-year CD release cycle allowed. So he’s taking advantage of the digital now to put out more music, most recently Silly, Sad & True. Stephen comes from the gritty poetic troubadour tradition of Steve Earle (he gets that one a lot) and Robert Earl Keen. Noting fancy. Just a lot of honest observation and sharing set to sturdy tunes. This has earned him a strong fan base in Europe where he goes often (“I really, really love to travel,” he says). He’s long been associated with East Nashville, but now he’s moved to the Ryman Lofts, the artist housing apartment on Rolling Mill Hill. He likes it, with its thrumming of music at most hours and artists from many other disciplines and media to inspire.

Closing out the night will be the aural equivalent I think of a bow tie worn with overalls, a look sported often by the aforementioned Mike Compton. The Annie Moses Band is a string ensemble from Nashville with more than a few striking features. They’re all brothers and sisters from the Wolaver family (Annie Moses is the name of a family forebear). They all started classical training around age four, and most of them got involved with The Julliard School in New York for some rigorous conservatory training. They all steered away from pretty sweet opportunities in classical music to pursue a family ensemble concept that they call “classical Americana.” And they’ve taken this buttery smooth, bountiful sound to Carnegie Hall and the Grand Ole Opry and a lot of places in between, racking up tens of thousands of fans and an impressive tour schedule. They’re touring in support of their new album American Rhapsody, which, inspired by George Gershwin, arranges standards like “Shenandoah” and “Summertime” in a swirling timbre fest with Annie Wolaver Dupre taking the lead vocals. It’ll be refined and down home at the same time, which as I said at the top, feels like how I grew up. 

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

A River Show With Flow

The night’s first good omen was arriving at The Factory and hearing a saxophone blowing outside. Leaning against the brick was a guy with a hat on his head, tattoos on his arms and an instrument, warming up and running arpeggios. Then I enter the backstage and I’m face to face with a burnished, well-used Sousaphone on a stand, with a trombone next to it. I took a picture. These – the dude outside and the instruments inside – belonged to the Dirty Bourbon River Show, the act from New Orleans that was waiting to close out our Wednesday night at Roots with their hurricane of wild spirit. It’s great to have things to look forward to.

It was a great show run-up all around. Time moved slowly. Kristi Rose and Fats Kaplin were on hand, waiting to go on with the opening band Aqua Velvet. I had a great dinner talking about life and politics with Vance Gilbert. (He wasn’t as zany then as he would be later.) On nights with smaller crowds (unlike last week, sheez!) visiting is easier. And that’s a big part of Roots y’all. It was an easy approach to a dynamic and surprising show that flowed like a river.

Aqua Velvet brought nine musicians to the stage, all of them seasoned Nashville top-of-the-liners. Leader Jim Hoke switched between keys and wind instruments. Co-founder Randy Leago played saxes of all sizes. Fats Kaplin manned the pedal steel. And there was a string section with violinist Kristin Weber and Jim’s son Austin on cello. All this added up to something one might call sumptuousity. Thick harmonies and stacked timbres. Flowing old-school rhythms and jazz chords, topped off with the dramatic, magnetic vocals of Kristi Rose. She sang “Back In Baby’s Arms” to a Mambo beat and “Folsom Prison Blues” over a smoldering ambience that conjured Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode To Billy Joe.” Oh, and that one featured the famous guitar solo played in one case on clarinet and a second time on dobro, which encapsulates the neo-classicism of the whole thing perfectly. The band’s take on “Jolene” was wild and packed with unexpected dissonance, lending the song even more than its usual despair. Closer “Hey Little One” featured a very cool kind of countrypolitan en Espanol vibe. Sing it with me: There’s something about an Aqua Velvet band.

The Nick Moss Band approached the stage like blues is serious business. Firm expressions. Big Chicago shoulders. Dudes ready to go to work. And that they did, though it wasn’t the 12-bar south side shuffles I half expected. Tunes like “Grateful” and “Shade Tree” borrowed from R&B, soul and southern rock. Moss himself is a burly bearded man with hands like bear paws, but he threw some really delicate country bends into his resolute solos. The big revelation for me came from the two songs where his sidekick Michael Ledbetter took lead vocals. It was tone and finesse and power that I’ve heard before from Amos Lee and Mike Farris. And when Michael and Nick stretched out and traded guitar ideas, especially the Allmanesque bits of the set closer, we all felt good.

I doubt if even 10% of our audience had any idea how surreal and funny and deep things were about to get when they saw Vance Gilbert on stage with his Albert Einstein hair and heavy glasses. But when the rambling monologue began, the essence of Vance quickly shone, and that’s humanity, humor and a sense of the absurd. His faux-NPR host narration of his own “new age” noodling with whale sounds was probably the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on our stage. He sang that “You can live on Pie & Whiskey, but you surely won’t live too long” and that if “you get too close to a bird, she’ll be gone.” He’s done “My Bad” before, but this time he sang it right at a 12-year-old kid in the audience who probably is still wondering what happened. And he cooed quietly in a slow and sensuous take on country classic “For The Good Times.” There were some grown up words that might have made the radio programmers wince at Hippie, but the whole thing overall was “warm and tender” indeed.

The heightened sense of theatrics and drama only grew as Dirty Bourbon River Show took the stage. Leader Noah Adams comes on in a cape and all the guys in the band were wearing coordinated vest and tie outfits of red, black and gold. Singer Sandra Love matched the red with her dress and looked altogether awesome in dreadlocks and heavy black boots. On opener “Mad,” she provided the stomps and vocal wails, while Adams sang in a raspy Waits-meets-Dr. John voice. The set had an edge of menace and madness matched with gospel fervor and circus frenzy. My favorite was the most second-line sounding tune “Go Ha Get It,” where the four horns (Sousaphone, sax, trombone and tiny cornet) wove together and the vocals were a four-person chant about being hard up for money but rich in rhythm and soul. We heard dat y’all.

That hard but easy New Orleans groove continued through the Nashville Jam, which was no Guy Clark finely wrought composition (the title phrase “It Ain’t My Fault” is repeated over and over). But it was a great vehicle for hot rhythm and instrumental solos, mostly horns. Anyway, the musicians had nothing to duck responsibility for anyway.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

Jim Hoke, Aqua Man - 9.2.15

Music City Roots has something in common with what I love about baseball, in that even though the big picture stays constant, every episode brings something new and surprising. Take this week. It’s Friday morning and I’m on the phone with master musician Jim Hoke, getting some background on his vintage suave band Aqua Velvet, our show-opening artist this Wednesday at Liberty Hall. Hoke created this small orchestra a decade ago with multi-instrumentalist Randy Leago to re-imagine standards and important tunes in fun, filmic ways. I’m especially interested in the wild harmonies Hoke discovers and adds to familiar songs, so that’s what I’m asking him about, on the phone.  

Aqua Velvet “gives me a chance to stretch my chord muscles and put in chords that are associated with other kinds of music,” he says. So far so normal as these things go. “Like in ‘Jolene’ I use poly-chords.” And suddenly he’s playing these thick rich tone clusters on a piano over the phone! I had no idea he was near a piano, so the music hits me from left field and felt that much better because of it. 

He cites 1970s Todd Rundgren and Laura Nyro as some inspirations for the tonalities he’s showing me, and there’s also touches of Steely Dan and Bill Evans and Ennio Morricone, the film composer. “The trick is to leave the melody alone,” he says. Then, “you can go hog wild with (harmonization) and get as lush as you want or simple as you want. In this case we went with the lush.”

“This case” is the new Aqua Velvet recording and show concept called Exotic Sounds In Country Music. With friend of the show Kristi Rose singing the commanding, brassy vocals (staying true to the original melody), the band swells and swirls with flutes, vibes, strings and percussion on songs like “Oh Lonesome Me” and “Back In Baby’s Arms.” Tempos are changed, sometimes radically. This is what arrangers do, and Hoke, who has played more instruments for more artists and more styles of music in Music City’s live and studio settings than perhaps anyone (no exaggerating), is among the best.

“Jim and I are simpatico in a lot of ways,” says the band’s dramatic vocalist Kristi Rose. “I don’t think there’s been an arrangement he’s ever brought I didn’t get. This is SO focused and SO good and the elements that he’s bringing in are so right. They’re smart and they’re effective and they cause a lot of the songs to be heard in a very different way.”

This is the kind of innovative cool we seek out at Roots, but I want to point out that this kind of project – the innovative and conceptually daring – used to have a better chance at success in Nashville than it does today. Aqua Velvet would have caught the ear of Owen Bradley and/or Chet Atkins. They’d have been on WSM live in prime time to the entire Eastern US. They’d probably have been given recording contracts or sought after as a backing band for country stars. The rules have changed, folks, and only in the ways that help radio sell commercial time not in ways that help the music.

“Yeah, it’s sort of a curveball,” says Hoke about the gulf between the Nashville and music biz he was inspired by growing up and the one he works around in his years of maximum expertise and experience. “The Chet Atkins people who had the clout and the foresight and musicianship to go for stuff like that (are gone). So we’ve had to adapt to an ever changing world. It has been disappointing. But all that inspiration is there an it’s not going to go away and it’s going to drive us on to do the things we have a knack for and a talent for. We’re going to keep doing it and finding a way.”

The rest of our bill of courageous strivers this week features visiting artists from Chicago, New England and New Orleans. Out of the former comes blues with the authentic stamp of that city’s history.The Nick Moss Band is a favorite of Buddy Guy and his namesake blues club. Moss has also earned huge accolades as a guitarist and performer and songwriter from greats like Ronnie Earl and Jimmy Thackery. That’s all I need to be on the edge of my seat.

Returning to Roots for a third visit will be songwriter and storyteller Vance Gilbert. Perhaps no artist has ever made us laugh as hard as this gentlemanly, colorful New Englander. Since opening a tour for Shawn Colvin in the early 90s, Vance has been a stalwart of the Boston area folk scene, releasing a string of moving albums. He touches on life, politics and culture, and he sings like a jazz man in a folk singer’s body. Will be good to see him again.

And lastly, by a bit of coincidence, we invited a couple of New Orleans bands on the show in as many weeks and this feels right as it coincides with the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Of course it’s always righteous to hear from the Crescent City, and this week’s treat is a show-closing blast from the Dirty Bourbon River Show. Self described as “Big Brass Circus Rock,” the sextet leaves butts shaking and jaws on floor. I know because they played our show at the Loveless and I wrote then that the DBRS stole the show – “as in packing it up, removing the furniture, absconding with the lights and sound gear, etc. I mean give other bands a chance! These guys RAVED and charmed with brazen vocals, slippery sweet drumming and a horn attack like we’ve never seen. . . .Please come back boys. Please come back.” And now they have! Or will. And they do so peddling their ninth album with the magnificent title Important Things Humans Should Know.

Me, I’m here to tell you about an Important Place Humans Should Be, and that’s MCR on Sept. 2 at Liberty Hall. There will be exotic sounds galore.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

The Love Show - MCR 8.26.15

Get comfortable; this could take a while. Wednesday’s Roots was like two shows in one, each with its own personality and integrity. Act One featured three wildly different but complimentary musical visions. Act Two was a coming out party for a superb album by a beloved Nashville musician. Together they added up to a night of immeasurable heart and joy. The musical skills on display in both halves were stunning for sure, but the evening affirmed that technique can get you on the highway but it can’t take you all the way home. Because home is about heart. I think the reason I gravitated toward roots music and away from the fashionable main stream had to do with temperature. Like a migrating bird, I needed to move away from the cool and toward the warm. Radio pop/rock depends on a posture that’s aloof, guarded, stylish and kind of cynical. The world’s harsh and ironic and touch-less as it is. I want my music to wrap me in something comforting and I don’t have time for masks. If something can be transparently beautiful, then why not?

Jake Shimabukuro is pushing 40 but his face, his energy and his body language on stage suggest something like half that. You know how Chris Thile can look like he’s about to bounce to the moon he’s so happy about playing? That’s Jake with his ukulele. He came out roaring with a flamenco-infused tune, played in sensitive partnership with only electric bass player Nolan Verner. It was so dazzling he got a full house standing ovation for the first song. (Good start to the night, said the producers silently to themselves.) Then the room hushed for the tender “Ichigo Ichie” and remained transfixed for his signature tune, the expansive arrangement of George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” It’s got delicacy and classical counterpoint here and polychromatic rocking power there. It led to some tandem jazz lines between the instruments and a fine bass solo. And the closer (I’m not clear on most of the tune titles at this stage) found Jake building harmonic ideas on a looping pedal and soloing over his own chords in a heavy metal meets blues kind of finale. I got to spend 30 minutes on the radio with Jake before the show and it was inspiring; watch for that conversation on the web site soon.

If you’d sketched out a night that touched all the Americana bases you’d say: Hey right here we need some classic swing. So that’s what transpired as Gnarly Parkers came to the stage with young nine musicians in crisp white shirts and ties, save for lovely vocalist Anna Arata looking stylishly vintage in a Chinese print dress. The horns punched and swooped like Count Basie’s Orchestra. Leader Ryan Leet and fellow guitarist Josh Irwin strummed elegant four-to-the-bar chords on their well aged archtop guitars. Leet sang with panache in the vein of Chet Baker or Harry Connick Jr. on the cheeky “Big Ass World” with Arata in support. She took over lead vocals for the second half including “Sammy Shake” with its jungle drums and the sweet and mellow finale “Dream Of You.” That featured a really find light-touch piano solo by band arranger Will Padgett. I learned he’s the son of John Padgett, a friend and colleague of our founders from back in their WSM days. Nice family circle stuff there. 

The papers are filling up with stories and features about the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, that devil of a natural and man-made disaster. Any connection we can make with the Gulf Coast and the musical soul of the greatest American music city is always welcome. And at the pivot point of this week’s show came a blast of New Orleans swamp pop and rocking blues in the capable hands of the Honey Island Swamp Band. They offered the set-opening musical question “How Do You Feel?” which was really kind of a silly thing to ask the 800+ euphoria addicts in the crowd. I loved “Head Highwater Blues” with its slappy backbeat and its fusion of slide guitar and organ. The slide came from Chris Mulé who really made some magic happen. And partner Aaron Wilkinson can really sing. The two got into some fine Allmanesque twin guitar passages, especially on closer “Ain’t No Fun.” Again with the irony.

Usually the world of music scribing involves a separation between record reviews and show reviews, but this gets to be both at once. And several things occurred to me as we were taking in Andrea Zonn’s upcoming album Rise performed in sequence. First is that while I’d love to see us do more full album recital style shows, there just aren’t that many albums that hold up front to back with 100% satisfaction and sufficient variety, the way this one does. And while Andrea said in our album bio collaboration that her working title for the project was The Love Album, we can at least retroactively remember this event as The Love Show. For there was much of it zapping all around Liberty Hall.

I’m a music first/lyrics later kind of listener, and that’s why I’m in love with Rise; it’s a total immersion musical experience. It’s got many memorable lines and well wrought songs to be sure. But it elevates above so many fine Nashville songwriting displays with sonic ideas, like the daring major-minor-modal shifts in “Where The Water Meets The Sky” and the onomatopoetic chorus of “Rise”. So Andrea and team were determined to translate those nuances and tricky bits on stage, including the unprecedented commitment of a night-before dress rehearsal on the Liberty Hall stage. Thus was all that studio thoughtfulness translated into an hour of live sonic gorgeousness.

Songs one and five, “Another Side Of Home” and “Let Them Go” seemed to be written a bit under the influence of Andrea’s employer James Taylor, with their New England autumnal sweetness. On this night the much lauded studio wizard Mac MacAnally was on hand to sing the parts JT sang on the record. Blues icon Keb’ Mo’ came out for the gospel-infused “No Reason To Feel Good” which sounds like it’s not a feel-good song, but it is. Keb and Andrea trading solo ideas (his guitar, her fiddle) over the song’s sweet vamp was fabulous. Vince Gill emerged for the first of several support spots, playing guitar and singing on “Crazy If You Let It,” a graceful study in resilience. The mega-amazing Jim Oblon played guitar in the band and he kicked off my favorite track with the spooky simple riff that defines “I Can’t Talk About It Now.” I could bob my head to that one all night, savoring its deliciously jazzy chords. The joined voices of Andrea, Mac and support vocalist Drea Rhenee on closer “Let Them Go” were indescribably thrilling.  

I’m going on and on, but let’s say the B-side set was every bit as good with the title track as an emotional climax. Here, album collaborator Thomm Jutz got some prominent space for his acoustic guitar skills and Oblon took the solo with his fiery and fascinating approach. Alison Brown came on with her banjo for the tempo shifter and seventh inning stretch that is the swinging “Swing And A Miss.” Then more Vince with the beautifully written, easy-grooving “You Make Me Whole.” And the final guest of the night, incredibly tall and incredibly deep-voiced Trace Adkins, strode on to sing with Andrea in the album closer “Ships,” a kind of Celtic blessing. 

All this made me think of 20 Feet From Stardom, the Oscar winning film about Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and other classic background singers who leave us moved while we learn the names and faces of the stars they support. Andrea could have been in that movie. She’s one of the best and if anyone deserves to step those 20 feet to center stage it’s her. And like I said before, it’s more than just her ability to toss off a world class fiddle break or sing crystal clear tones. She projects herself and her inherent gentleness in all musical situations. She makes parts into a whole, just like her song says. She inspires loyalty and connections with the musicians around her - like the hugely famous bass player Willie Weeks who made time to do the album and this gig. That takes something songwriters and singers tell of all the time but show and share less often. You know what I’m talking about.

Craig H.

[musiccityroots]

Andrea Zonn’s “Rise”

This week’s show will be epic for all of us and a bit personal for me. Last winter I got a call asking to help out with the press notes for an upcoming album by a musician I’ve long admired and a person I adore, Nashville fiddler, singer and songwriter Andrea Zonn. That led to a lovely lunch and catch up where I heard about her adventures on the road in James Taylor’s band and the latest on her son. He had a health scare some years ago that would test any mom’s faith, and it turned out that those events also became a catalyst for the new project we were talking about, including its title track “Rise.”

We’ve worked on this Wednesday’s show for a long time in tandem with Andrea and her manager/our friend Brian Smith so that the album could be played in its entirety with most of the very special guests who graced the project and who make up Andrea’s world. Setting that up will be three splendid acts from very different places and styles, as is our habit.

When I heard the full Rise album for the first time it was in an early stage known in the biz as rough mixes. The songs were brilliant and bold, and it was easy to feel the vibrancy of Zonn’s voice and the skill of the dream team of players. It wasn’t polished, but it was enough to write the bio and appreciate the effort. Then recently I got to hear to final, mastered opus, and Holy Cats people. The voices of Andrea and her guests now saturate a huge, lush soundscape, and the smart interplay of acoustic instruments with drums, bass and keys really shines. This Compass Records release is going to be one of the finest albums of the year, and it ought to put this hard working artist on everyone’s map.  

Normally I don’t quote official press bios, but in this case I think I can indulge.

Zonn knows as well as anyone that the right players and the right chemistry are what elevates an album and serves the songs. The ten tracks that emerged in this case elude any neat genre descriptions – folk-rock suits as well as anything – but they’re heavy on groove, natural tones and spontaneous, transparent beauty.

Those players include long time friends and colleagues including Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Keb Mo, John Cowan, Vince Gill, James Taylor and mega Nashville session guy Mac McAnally. Central to her vision for the project was the rhythm section of bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Steve Gadd. Look these guys up. I loved Gadd from his Steely Dan work and so much more. Gadd can’t make this show but Weeks will be there, and he’s played bass with Eric Clapton, George Harrison and the Rolling Stones. Zonn also has gushing praise for her fellow mastermind and partner behind the album, MCR regular Thomm Jutz, the guitarist and producer we’ve seen with Peter Cooper, Mac Wiseman and Irene Kelley among others.

I mentioned the family health crisis that sparked Andrea. And when you hear the song “Rise” knowing that it was inspired by the confluence of news that her son would need dangerous brain surgery and the Nashville flood of 2010 its spirit and uplift will take on even more shades of meaning. Andrea said this: 

“I had always been a bit timid about writing, because I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some of the greatest writers ever, anywhere,” she says. “I wasn’t writing up to my own standards. Or I didn’t feel like I could.” The experience five years ago became a “catalyst for me learning to speak.” 

Andrea’s full back story, mixing classical training and bluegrass fiddle championships, is fascinating and reflecting of the best about Nashville, the creative process and Americana music. I hope you’ll read the whole thing. I felt incredibly lucky to experience a work like this early on. I feel lucky to know somebody capable of this level of musical beauty. I think you’ll feel the same way after Andrea covers the album over two sets. 

As for the front half of the evening, these artists could be a show in themselves. We’ll open things up with perhaps the world’s most famous instrumentalist of the YouTube era. And while ukulele master Jake Shimabukuro was one of the very first musicians to go viral when his performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” blew up in 2006, he was by then already a popular touring artist based out of his native Hawaii and signed to Sony. Like Earl Scruggs and Jerry Douglas, he’s made over and re-invented a venerable folk instrument, and his virtuosity and spirit have earned him entrée to the world’s biggest and best stages. We’re very fortunate to snag him during this visit to Music City.

Up next is (are?) Gnarly Parkers, a band that continues our run of groups with A) Belmont University ties B) a penchant for classic early jazz and blues and C) shows of consummate musicianship and youthful panache. They dress sharp, play smart and swing hard in a way that mingles barroom and ballroom. And then we’ll experience a return visit from the Honey Island Swamp Band, formed in the Bay Area by a bunch of Hurricane Katrina refugees who then eventually returned to their home city. In 2013 they brought what I scientifically observed as “funky butt sophistication” and killer musicianship. I said “It was a display of versatility and joie de vivre from one of the more celebrated contemporary New Orleans bands.” 

So if you’re with us in the hall on Wednesday night (as you should be) get ready for some stellar performances and the warmth that comes from true Nashville musical camaraderie. And be prepared to Rise up out of your seat a few times.

Craig H.