As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Alison Brown doesn’t play the banjo. Alison Brown plays music on the banjo.
In the instrumental food chain, the five-string banjo is one of the more dominant beasts: loud, brash and very hard to tame. In 1945, Earl Scruggs made the biggest leap in harnessing its raw power, bringing a revolutionary precision of touch and depth of tone.
Thousands of three-finger style banjo players have since made their marks, but none has cut such a path or moved so far along it as has Alison Brown. She’s acclaimed as one of today’s finest progressive banjo players, but you rarely find her in a conventional bluegrass setting. Instead, she’s known for leading an ensemble that successfully marries a broad array of roots-influenced music: folk, jazz, Celtic and Latin.
With her new Compass project, The Song of the Banjo, the 2015 IBMA Distinguished Achievement Award and 2001 GRAMMY Award-winning musician/composer/producer/entrepreneur plants another flag in her ongoing journey of sonic exploration.
“It’s amazing to me how much the banjo changed in the 20th Century,” Brown says. “And here we are in the dawn of the 21st; who knows where it may go?”
For one answer to that question, look no further than The Song of the Banjo.
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
“Ain’t we all the stars playing the leading part in our own soap opera?” Brandy Clark belts out that question to kick off Big Day in a Small Town, positing the premise of not just the opening track (“Soap Opera”), but all 10 songs that follow it. The towns that anchor Clark’s new album may be small enough to warrant only a single blinking light, but the lives lived in them are anything but … and neither are the hopes and dreams that rise from their backroads and bedrooms.
When you grow up in a small town, oftentimes, your dreams are all you have. Whether it’s to become a football star or a father, a homecoming queen or a hairdresser, your dreams might be the only thing that keep you going. For Clark, the dream she harbored in her small hometown of Morton, Washington, was to be a country singer. Sure, once she moved to Nashville, she had successful cuts as a songwriter [The Band Perry’s “Better Dig Two,” Miranda Lambert’s “Mama’s Broken Heart,” and Kacey Musgraves’ “Follow Your Arrow” which won the CMA Song of the Year Award in 2014], but being an artist in her own right was a dream she had stopped dreaming until three years ago when her first album, the stunning 12 Stories, debuted.
Along with Sturgill Simpson, Ashley Monroe, Chris Stapleton, and Kacey Musgraves (who provides guest vocals on “Daughter”), Clark is part of a new vanguard in country music — one that tips a hat to tradition, while not eschewing its evolution. “I see what’s happening right now and I feel this groundswell of people who love… I would say ‘country’ music, but I’ll take it a step further and say ‘real’ music. I feel like there are people who are starved for that,” she says. “The only music I’ve ever made is country music. The only music I’ve ever really listened to consistently is country music. And I want to keep that alive, so there’s a responsibility in that, for me.”
But, for Brandy Clark, that responsibility is a dream come true.
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn present their eponymous debut album as a duo, after many years of prominence as banjo players and composers in their own eclectic avenues. Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn is a front porch banjo and vocal album of new music, Appalachian murder ballads, gospel, chamber and blues; the culmination of a yearlong tour as a duo in 2013, following the birth of their son, Juno.
Béla, an icon and innovator of jazz, classical and world, with more multi-category GRAMMY wins than any other artist (15 total), and Abigail, a formidable talent with triumphs in songwriting, theater, performance, and even Chinese diplomacy by way of banjo, turn out to be quite a fortuitous pairing with a deep, distinct and satisfying outcome. The culmination is an album like no other. The record reveals their astounding chemistry as collaborators, as the two seamlessly stitch together singular banjo sounds (through an assortment of seven banjos spanning the recording) in service to the stories that their songs tell, with no studio gimmickry needed.
According to Béla, “finding a way to make every song have its own unique stamp, yet the whole project having a big cohesive sound – with only two people,” was at the core of their joint vision. Demonstrating seemingly unlimited rhythmic, tonal and melodic capabilities, Fleck and Washburn confirm the banjo’s versatility as the perfect backdrop to the rich lyrical component that Fleck and Washburn offer, “Sometimes when you add other instruments, you take away from the banjo’s being able to show all its colors, which are actually quite beautiful.” Thanks to this album, the musicians’ palette has never been more vivid or pure.
Sure, in the abstract, a banjo duo might seem like a musical concept beset by limitations. But when the banjo players cast in those roles are Abigail Washburn and Béla Fleck—she with the earthy sophistication of a postmodern, old-time singer-songwriter, he with the virtuosic, jazz-to-classical ingenuity of an iconic instrumentalist and composer with bluegrass roots— it’s a different matter entirely. There’s no denying that theirs is a one-of-a-kind pairing, with one-of-a-kind possibilities.
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Jim Lauderdale is both a “songwriter’s songwriter,” who’s written/co-written many modern classics for iconic artists, as well as an intuitive sideman, who’s enhanced the music of a bevy of esteemed musicians. As a solo artist, since 1986 up until now, he’s created a body work spanning 29 albums of imaginative roots music, encompassing country, bluegrass, soul, R&B and rock, as well as helping pave the way for the current Americana movement.
A longtime ambassador of the Americana genre, Jim received the WagonMaster Lifetime Achievement Award, presented by George Strait, on Wednesday, September 21, 2016, as part of the 15th annual Americana Honors & Awards.
“I know him mostly as a songwriter; a really, really, really good hit songwriter, and I’ve been very fortunate to cut a lot of his songs over the years,” Strait said in his speech. “Like Porter Wagoner, Jim Lauderdale is a consummate entertainer, a sharp dressed man as well, a terrific songwriter and a great singer.”
Lauderdale has released at least one, and sometimes as many as three, records every years since 1998. He is the second most recorded writer in George Strait’s canon, as well as responsible for country hits for Patty Loveless, George Jones, Mark Chesnutt and the Dixie Chicks. He’s also recorded albums with Dr. Ralph Stanley, the North Mississippi Allstars, Donna the Buffalo, Elvis Presley’s band, Elvis Costello and Buddy Miller, as well as collections written whole albums with long time Grateful Dead collaborator Robert Hunter. He’s the co-hosts a weekly radio show on SiriusXM with Buddy Miller, “The Buddy & Jim Show”. He is also co-host of Music City Roots, the weekly live and radio, podcast and PBS series.
June 30th Lauderdale released his 29th album, London Southern that was recorded in London at Goldtop studios and produced by Neil Brockbank and Robert Trehern. London Southern features co-writes with Dan Penn, Joan Oates, Odie Blackmon and Kendell Marvell alongside six Lauderdale solo compositions and a host of celebrated guest musicians.
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Hubby Jenkins is a talented multi-instrumentalist who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn he delved into his Southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through country blues, ragtime, fiddle and banjo, and traditional jazz.
Hubby got his higher musical education started as a busker. He developed his guitar and vocal craft on the sidewalks and subway platforms of New York City, performing material by those venerable artists whose work he was quickly absorbing. An ambitiously itinerant musician, he took his show on the road, playing the streets, coffee shops, bars, and house parties of cities around the U.S.
After years of busking around the country and making a name for himself, Hubby became acquainted with the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Since 2010 he has been an integral part of the Grammy award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops and continues to make solo performances.
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Lean in to Mandolin Orange’s new album, Blindfaller, and it’s bound to happen. You’ll suddenly pick up on the power and devastation lurking in its quietude, the doom hiding beneath its unvarnished beauty. You’ll hear the way it magnifies the intimacy at the heart of the North Carolina duo’s music, as if they created their own musical language as they recorded it.
“We talked about the feel of each song and pointed out loosely who was going to be taking solos,but it was mostly a lot of fresh takes, a lot of eye contact, and a lot of nods and weird winks,”says Andrew Marlin, who anchors the band with fellow multi-instrumentalist and singer Emily Frantz.
Released September 30, 2016 on Yep Roc Records, Blindfaller builds on the acclaim of Mandolin Orange’s breakthrough debut on the label, 2013’s This Side of Jordan, and its follow-up, 2015’s Such Jubilee.
Since then they’ve steadily picked up speed and fans they’ve earned from long stretches on the road, including appearances at Austin City Limits, Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Newport Folk Festival, and Pickathon. It’s been an auspicious journey for a pair who casually met at a bluegrass jam session in 2009.
As the duo’s songwriter, Marlin sharpens his lyrical prowess here, touching on broad themes of growing older and feeling helpless in a world torn by injustice. Sure, the album sounds classic, but it is rooted in the here and now of our daily headlines.
Take “Gospel Shoes,” a gimlet-eyed critique of how politicians have used faith as a weapon. “Freedom was a simple word, so reverent and true/ A long time ago, it meant the right to choose/ Who you love and how to live, but now it’s so misused/ And twisted by the politics of men in gospel shoes,” Marlin sings.
“When we finished Such Jubilee, I started writing these songs with a different goal in mind. I thought about how I would write songs for somebody else to record,” Marlin explains. “I ended up with a bunch of songs like that, but we chose ones that I still felt personally connected to.”
“We really chose everybody who played on the record, because we trusted them,” he adds. They found kindred spirits in Clint Mullican on bass, Kyle Keegan on drums, Allyn Love on pedal steel, and previous collaborator, Josh Oliver, on various instruments. “We’ve always liked to record fairly live,” Frantz says, “and it’s pretty easy to do that when it’s just Andrew and me. So it was fun to hone in on the guys who played on this record.“We really jelled as soon as we got into the studio, and everyone’s playing was driven by intuition instead of details orchestrated in advance.”
Holed up at the Rubber Room studio in Chapel Hill, N.C., they laid down the tracks in a week between touring. They’ve always been keen on the notion that drawn-out recording sessions don’t necessarily yield better results. A good song, and just one good take, will always shine through any studio sorcery.
For Frantz, Blindfaller, which Mandolin Orange produced, was something of a turning point.
“Now that we’ve put out quite a few records and toured so much, I think a standard has been set and people expect a certain thing,” she says. “But you don’t want to get into a place where you’re just making the music you’re expected to make. You have to push yourself a little bit.”
The passage of time, and the regret that often accompanies it, courses through these songs. “When did all the good times turn to hard lines on my face/ And lead me so far from my place right by your side?” Marlin ruminates on “My Blinded Heart.”
In fact, there’s heartache by the numbers on Blindfaller. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear “Picking Up Pieces” is a tearjerker George Jones or Willie Nelson sang back in the early 1970s. It’s a Mandolin Orange original, of course, and also a poignant reminder of the economy and grace with which Marlin imbues his songs – say what’s important and scrap the rest.
A country dirge with soulful washes of pedal steel and mandolin, “Wildfire” details the the lingering, present-day devastation of slavery and the Civil War, with Marlin’s voice locking into close harmonies with Frantz on the chorus. “Take This Heart of Gold” opens with perhaps the best classic-country line you’ll hear all year: “Take this heart of gold and melt it down.” (Marlin admits it was inspired by a Tom Waits lyric he misheard.)
But there’s also room for detours. Straight out of a honky tonk, “Hard Travelin’” lets the band shift into overdrive. A freewheeling ode to life on the road, it had been kicking around for a while but never fit on previous releases.
As for the album title, it’s meant to evoke a sense of wonder, of contemplation. A “faller” is someone who fells trees, and in this case that person is blind to his/her own actions and those of the world. The spectral cover photo, by Scott McCormick, is open to interpretation, too: Either those trees are engulfed in flames or sunlight is pouring through them. It’s up to you.
“We wanted different vibes and different intuitions on these tracks,” Marlin says, “and I feel like we really captured that.”
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
A true Americana band comprised of members originally from the northeast, The Devil Makes Three originated in Santa Cruz, California over 15 years ago and continues touring today. Their unique sound comes from a blend of multiple styles of music with hints and associations across a broad spectrum.
Without having to listen closely, you’ll hear bluegrass, country and blues influences in addition to old time, folk, jazz and ragtime tones. The band released their fifth and most recent full length album, Redemption and Ruin in September of 2016 in addition to a few live recordings.
“After TDM3 contemplated countless songs to record, a dozen made the cut to be recorded in Nashville this past fall. With those twelve songs (give or take a few bonus tracks…), Redemption & Ruin, consisting of carefully selected hand-picked cover songs, was set into motion. Why so careful you ask? Well, because there were two rules…
REDEMPTION & RUIN HAS TWO DISTINCT SIDES; it’s half gospel songs with a proclivity towards the darker end of the spectrum of religious music (Redemption) and half songs of vice (Ruin). In a very strict sense, the band-members were looking for songs which fully and wholeheartedly fit in one of those two categories. There could be no in between; it was all or nothing. “Drunken Hearted Man”is the first “ruin” debut and a new spin on the original by blues ghost Robert Johnson.
THE BAND SELECTED SONGS WRITTEN BY THEIR HEROES: TDM3 wanted to give fans and new friends a look at their inspiration when creating original material. These are covers, with the full TDM3 treatment, but the writers of each of the covers were selected with purpose.
**Guests include Emmylou Harris, Jerry Douglas, Tim O’Brien, Darrell Scott, guitar great Duane Eddy and many more.”
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Donna the Buffalo is joining forces with legendary Producer/ Engineer Rob Fraboni to record their next album February 2018 at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, TX. It is the world’s largest residential recording studio and is built around an 80-year-old hacienda and 3,300 acre pecan orchard right along the Mexican border.
Fraboni is well known for his work with Bob Dylan, The Band, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Tim Hardin, The Beach Boys, Joe Cocker, and Bonnie Raitt, and as Vice President at Island Records where he oversaw the remastering of the entire Bob Marley catalog. He produced the soundtrack on Martin Scorsese’s groundbreaking concert movie, The Last Waltz, which included an all-star cast of famous rock and roll performers. He built and designed the legendary Shangri-La studios in Malibu to the specification of Bob Dylan and the Band and is referred to as a “genius” by Keith Richards in his bestselling autobiography Life.
Donna the Buffalo’s fanbase, The Herd, will be excited to hear this news since their most recent album, Tonight, Tomorrow and Yesterday, came out nearly five years ago in the spring of 2013. All Music Guide says of it, “This is what 21st century Americana sounds like, a little bit of this and that from anywhere wrapped up into a poignant, jamming dance reel, a place where the past and history meet easily in the immediate now and everybody feels like dancing.”
Known as one of the most dynamic and determined bands continuously touring America since 1989, The Erie Times says, “They craft spirit-soaring songs with distinct sensibilities: Nevins’ songs are unfailingly melodic, brisk and buoyant, powered by her reassuring, wisdom-soaked vocals and ever-present fiddle and accordion. Puryear’s songs accentuate the groove, his exceptional guitar work and sly, Dylan-like way with lyrics.”
New Haven Register expands upon this to say, “Donna the Buffalo knows a thing or two about rhythm. Cajun, zydeco and old-time rhythms. A bit of reggae rhythm. Various guitar and fiddle rhythms. The rhythm of traveling by bus year after year for more than a quarter-century now, criss-crossing America… over and over again.”
Donna the Buffalo is Jeb Puryear (vocals, electric guitar) and Tara Nevins (vocals, fiddle, guitar, accordion, scrubboard) joined by David McCracken (B3 Hammond organ, Hohner Clavinet & piano), Kyle Spark (bass) and Mark Raudabaugh (drums). “It’s been really fun with this lineup,” Puryear says. “You get to the point where you’re playing on a really high level, things are clicking and it’s like turning on the key to a really good car. It just goes.”
Donna the Buffalo drew it’s original inspiration from a cherished part of the American heritage: the old-time music festivals of the south that drew entire towns and counties together. Not only was it playing music at these events, it was the vibe and the togetherness that bonded the people that attended.
“Those festivals were so explosive, and the community and the feeling of people being with each other, that’s the feeling we were shooting for in our music.” Puryear says, “Donna the Buffalo is an extension of the joy we’ve found.”
“It’s a great feeling to promote such a feeling of community, like you’re really part of something that’s happening, like a movement or a positive force…” Nevins says. “All those people that come and follow you and you recognize them and you become friends with them — you’re all moving along for the same purpose. It is powerful. It’s very powerful, actually.”
Donna the Buffalo has released ten albums and are affiliated with several others including two solo albums from Nevins: 2011’s Wood and Stone (produced by Larry Campbell in Levon Helm Studios) and Mule to Ride in 1999, Puryear’s 2007 solo album Hopes and Dreams, and a 2003 release, Wait Til Spring, with Jim Lauderdale. The band’s 2008 release, Silverlined, as well as the 2013 release, Tonight, Tomorrow and Yesterday, (both on Sugar Hill Records) did well on the Americana Music Chart, each placing well into the top ten.
“Though it will always be hard to pinpoint the key to an act’s staying power, distinctiveness and consistency surely can’t hurt.” Pittsburgh City Paper says, “Donna the Buffalo has carved out a niche; it has weathered trends, and even made some of its own by being unapologetically itself.”
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Rodney Crowell has been doing this for a while. In fact, his career has been so long and varied that you have to specify exactly which this you’re talking about. There’s the record-making, which dates back to 1978 (when he released Ain’t Living Long Like This), peaked commercially a decade later (with Diamonds & Dirt, which yielded five number-one country hits), and has only grown in sophistication and power in recent years. There’s the fiercely lyrical and personal songwriting, which has attracted the attention of everyone from Bob Seger (who famously covered “Shame On the Moon”) to Keith Urban (who had a number-one hit with “Making Memories of Us”). And then there’s the autobiographical writing, which extends beyond the music world to a memoir, Chinaberry Sidewalks, which was published in 2011.
Now there’s a new album, Close Ties, on which Crowell both demonstrates his strengths as a songwriter and illustrates how he has learned to balance personal recollection, literary sophistication, and his profound musical reach. It’s at once his most intimate record and his most accessible, the product of years of understanding the ways songs can enter—and be entered by—life. “It’s a loose concept album, you could say,” Crowell says. “And the concept is related to how you tell stories about yourself. Having a few years ago written a memoir, my sensibilities toward narrative—especially trying to find a common thread in different pieces of writing—had become a part of my songwriting process. One of the reasons I brought Kim Buie in as a producer is that I wanted her to work with me the way an editor works, to look at a number of songs and find the ones that worked together to create a tone.”
Close Ties is a roots record, in the sense that Crowell himself has deep roots that stretch back into the alternative country scene of the early seventies. But is defies easy classification. Is it country? Is it a songwriter record? Does art need categories? “Well,” Crowell says, “when I was a quote-unquote country star for my fifteen minutes of major fame, I hated the label. I bristled at it and got myself in trouble. I would go around to radio stations and that early morning drive-time, chirpy optimism, and I would come across as grumpy. They knew my mind wasn’t in the right place. I was an interloper in that world. I didn’t fit it. It soon spit me out. In hindsight, it should have: I was no asset to their goal, which was to satisfy their advertisers.”
On the other hand, the rise of Americana music struck a nerve with him. “I have declared my loyalty to Americana. It’s a hard category for people to get their heads around, or at least the terminology is. But all the people who represent it—Townes van Zandt, Guy Clark, Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle and more recent stars like John Paul White and Jason Isbell—share a common thread, and that thread is poet. Whether they are actual poets or their music exemplifies a poetic sensibility, generally speaking, the Americana artist shuns commercial compromise in favor of a singular vision. Which resonates with me.”
One trait of a poet, Crowell explains, involves the careful handling of memory. “A few years ago I made a record called The Houston Kid that triggered Chinaberry Sidewalks,” he says. “Those memory muscles are pretty strong in me. They have a natural pull. And so many of these songs use those memories as raw material.” They range from songs about Crowell’s childhood in Texas (“East Houston Blues”) to songs about arriving in Nashville as a young songwriter (“Nashville 1972”) to songs about friends (the anguished “Life Without Susanna”) and lovers (the rueful “Forgive Me, Annabelle”). “It’s not always autobiographical memory,” he says. “There’s fictional writing involved in it, too. But it’s all about thinking through the places that I’ve been, and how I might use them as backdrop for reflection. In ‘East Houston Blues,’ for example, I’m talking about the place where I grew up. Central Houston is broken into wards. The Fifth Ward is where Lightnin’ Hopkins came from. The Third is where I come from. Traditionally, the third ward was home to the poor white population, and the song doesn’t shy away from that: it talks about poverty and petty crime but also communicates the joy of music.”
In the simmering “I Don’t Care Anymore,” he reflects ruefully on his current self-confidence (“I don’t care anymore / if I stand out in a crowd”) but only in contrast with earlier incarnations of himself. “That song is based on sketching who I was at my commercial peak, when I had five number one records,” he says. “I had a mullet and I was trying to strut my ass around and make the girls buy my records. I look back on that with some bemusement and a certain amount of sarcasm. I pick on the work more than I should, maybe. In the song, the guy is writing middle-of-the-road songs. That’s not exactly autobiographical. But it’s the feeling of not being completely honest to yourself.”
“It Ain’t Over Yet,” a vocal collaboration with his ex-wife Rosanne Cash and John Paul White, addresses how the passage of time can burnish love. “I don’t care what you think you heard / We’re still learning how to fly,” he sings, and Cash answers with “I’ve known you forever and ever it’s true / If you came by it easy you wouldn’t be you.” The record also features a duet with Sheryl Crow on the haunting “I’m Tied To Ya.” The wisdom of women is never far from Crowell’s mind, either in song or in life. “If you follow my path I think it was there from the start,” he says. “Susanna Clark, who was married to the songwriter Guy Clark, became a very close friend when I was in my early 20s. We weren’t lovers and in fact she offered me more than that. She was this incredibly intelligent, creative woman—and my first ever muse. In my quest to please her artistically, I became a realized songwriter. The same goes for Emmylou Harris whose natural grace has impacted my life since 1975. Then there was my partnership with Rosanne Cash. The marriage ended but from time to time the musical collaboration goes on. My wife now, Claudia, offers the gift of stability to both my personal and professional endeavors. And with four daughters and two grand daughters, my corner of the world is populated by formidable women.”
As he moves into elder-statesman territory, Crowell continues to extend the path carved out by the top-tier songwriters who preceded him. “All are so important,” he said. “Bob Dylan would of course be an archetype, as would Neil Young, Johnny Cash, John Lennon. Every time they release work I find something in it.” He would add a name to the pantheon. “Kris Kristofferson belongs in there, too. He personifies all that intelligence and emotional vulnerability and magnetism. I spoke about him at Austin City Limits and said he changed the face of Nashville, and he’s continued to give us deeply meaningful work like This Old Road.”
Fifty years after Crowell first started playing as a teen in Houston garage bands, he still believes in the power of songs, and the responsibility of singing them. “The interesting thing about that garage band back then is that we would go from ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ by the Beatles to ‘Honky Tonkin’’ by Hank Williams. In southeast Texas those songs fit side by side. ‘Drinkin’ Wine Spo-de-o-dee’ went right next to ‘Crossroads’ by Cream. That was the beauty of it, that all of that existed side by side.” Crowell finds himself going back to that music, but also going even earlier. “Recently, I think—I hope—that my study of the blues is starting to show up in my music. Those artists, whether it’s Lightnin’ Hopkins or John Lee Hooker or the acoustic Delta players, connected to something fundamental. With that in mind, I’m trying to move forward but also get back there.”
As MerleFest 2018 approaches, a highlight from one of the 100+ performing acts will be featured daily…
Town Mountain on Fire After Grand Ole Opry & Ryman Auditorium Debuts
New Album In The Works For 2018 – Recorded at Echo Mountain Studios in Asheville, NC
ASHEVILLE, NC — Raw, soulful, and with plenty of swagger, Town Mountain has earned raves for their hard-driving sound, their in-house songwriting and the honky-tonk edge that permeates their exhilarating live performances, whether in a packed club or at a sold-out festival. The hearty base of Town Mountain’s music is the first and second generation of bluegrass spiced with country, old school rock ‘n’ roll, and boogie-woogie. It’s what else goes into the mix that brings it all to life both on stage and on record and reflects the group’s wide-ranging influences – from the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia and the ethereal lyrics of Robert Hunter, to the honest, vintage country of Willie, Waylon, and Merle.
The Bend Bulletin’s Brian McElhiney says Town Mountain, “has serious country and rock ’n’ roll DNA.” Town Mountain features guitarist and vocalist Robert Greer, banjoist Jesse Langlais, mandolinist Phil Barker, fiddler Bobby Britt, and Zach Smith on bass.
Town Mountain is working on their 6th studio album and was recently recording in Echo Mountain Studios with Producer Caleb Klauder. The forthcoming album will be full of new original material and released later in the year. They are also excited to be the host of the 2018 MerleFest Midnight Jam and will be performing at Joe Val Bluegrass Festival and John Hartford Memorial Festival among others in 2018.
Their 5th studio album, Southern Crescent, came out April 1, 2016 on LoHi Records. Produced and engineered by GRAMMY winner Dirk Powell, Southern Crescent was recorded in Powell’s studio The Cypress House in south-central Louisiana town of Breaux Bridge. Since it’s release the band debuted on the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman Auditorium stages in 2016 bringing their sound to new audiences. The critically acclaimed album debuted at #4 on the Billboard Bluegrass Chart while staying for ten weeks on the Americana Music Association’s radio chart Top 40.
“This Asheville band killed it at the Ryman this summer [2016] opening up the bluegrass series and they put out this stellar collection of original songs that asserts them as the hippest, bluest traditional bluegrass band of their generation. In an era of bluegrass with manners, they cut with a serrated edge,” exclaims Nashville’s Roots Radio’s Craig Havighurst in his list of “Essential Americana Albums We Loved in 2016.” Town Mountain returned to the Grand Ole Opry in July 2017!
Other albums include Leave The Bottle (Pinecastle Records 2012), Steady Operator (Pinecastle Records 2011), and Heroes & Heretics (October 2008). They also independently released a LIVE album (2014 from a show at Isis Music Hall in Asheville) as well as a two-song EP (2015) of Grateful Dead tunes called The Dead Sessions. Their debut album (June 2008) is entitled Original Bluegrass and Roots Country and KSUT/Durango Telegraph’s Chris Aaland writes, “No critic has coined a better phrase to describe their sound.”
While the members have taken the road less traveled when it comes to the mainstream or traditional purists, they’ve been dubbed as “The Taco Stand Troubadours” by Aaland (due to their frequent stops at such establishments) and he calls them “one of those bands that has paid its dues and won over the Durango audience through the years, much like the Gourds and Leftover Salmon.
They have performed opening shows with Railroad Earth, Peter Rowan, Hard Working Americans, Greensky Bluegrass, Yonder Mountain String Band, Hackensaw Boys, Ralph Stanley and his Clinch Mountain Boys, The Del McCoury Band, The Seldom Scene, The Infamous Stringdusters, Bobby Hicks, The Steep Canyon Rangers, and Jim Lauderdale among others.
What has become one of the group’s more memorable live performance songs is their cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “I’m On Fire,” which they first recorded in 2008’s Heroes & Heretics, with Greer’s distinctive Southern drawl at the forefront. The track has reached over 3.3 million listens on Spotify. The Atlantic’s Matt Vasilogambros writes, “Bruce Springsteen is a natural fit for bluegrass… Even the Boss’s earlier music had hints of folk influences. Just listen to “I’m On Fire”… I keep turning to one cover, which I admittedly listen to more often than the original. It’s from Town Mountain… They dropped the synthesizer, added a banjo, a fiddle, and another singer for harmony, and made a gem.”
Another fan favorite is their Jimmy Martin-esque original “Lawdog,” penned by Barker in 2012, which music journalist Juli Thanki instantly called an “unearthed classic” when the album was released. They recorded a live version of the song at WAMU’s Bluegrass Country Radio in 2013 which has over 125,000 views and continues to be a barn burner to this day with the entire crowd singing along as barker sings, “I make my livin driving, I’m a bluegrass music man… Chasin the horizon, for another one night stand… I got a lot of miles to travel, and I’m runnin’ a little late… And a no show gets me nothin, so don’t you get in my way. I got no time for ya lawdog…”
“While it remains a bluegrass band in all things instrumentation and touring the bluegrass and festival circuit, it’s’ sound crosses into American roots and even outlaw country, perhaps as a result of the gritty, mournful tone of Greer’s vocals.” Durango’s KDUR radio’s DJ, Bryant Liggett says, “It is reminiscent of the 1970s truck-driving film sound, the perfect accompaniment to a car chase through the south á la ‘Smokey and the Bandit.’”
You can hear Town Mountain perform at one of their three sets on Saturday (April 28) at MerleFest, including a Midnight Jam, where they will serve as host along with Jim Lauderdale.
Red Dirt NC 