The Bluegrass Revival: What Americana Music Can Learn

A while back I wrote a column titled “The Aging of the Americana Music Audience,” and expressed concern that as baby boomers get older there may not be a younger crowd to replace them. This topic has been on my mind for years, as I have witnessed it firsthand time and time again at concerts, festivals, and clubs. After seeing 26-year-old award-winning singer, songwriter, and instrumentalist Molly Tuttle play to a crowd largely comprised of folks who could be her grandparents, and also noting that the current Americana Music Association airplay chart lacked diversity in both age and various sub-genres of roots music, I received a lot of feedback. While No Depression has eliminated the ability to post comments, my own Americana and Roots Music Daily page on Facebook lit up with feedback:

Kathy Sands-Boehmer, who has contributed articles on this site and is a concert presenter from the Boston area, shared her insight: “We find the same thing to be true. It doesn’t matter what the age of the artist is … those who support the music are on the more ‘mature’ side. Haven’t been able to crack this nut.”

A folk music fan from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, commented, “I always wonder about the future of these shows in 10 years. Same is true for the local jazz shows I attend. Everyone at these shows appears older than me and I’m in my 60s. Finding the key to attracting a young audience for folk and jazz shows is something that needs to be solved or there won’t be anyone left to attend them.”

And an observation from someone who attended the same Molly Tuttle show I did with a completely different experience: “I am 65 years old. I was at the back of the space and there were younger people and those of all ages. I came to see a guitar slinger (IBMA Guitar Player of the Year for the past two years) and what I saw was a singer-songwriter. This might have a greater appeal to a younger audience but not for me. I was at MerleFest a few weeks previous, and she was one of the main acts I was interested in seeing and she played about the same show. Also, I’m too old for the Mercury Lounge, where you have to stand for the entire time packed like sardines.”

There was a strong consensus that it wasn’t a lack of interest keeping younger people away, but competition from other entertainment options. Gaming, sports, Netflix, cable television, and high ticket prices were cited. Devon Léger, owner of the music marketing company Hearth Music and another No Depression contributor, shared some statistics from Billboard magazine showing that concert attendance is generally growing, including among millennials, but it doesn’t drill down on genres or the type of venues.

Two weeks after my column, Emma John at The Guardian published a story that caught my attention. Titled “Plucked from Obscurity: Why Bluegrass is Making a Comeback,” she gives a deep dive on the genre’s history, politics, geography, cultural aspects, and a change in the audience. The latter gives me hope, and might be applied to the entire Americana genre. She writes:

“Perhaps it’s an issue of geographical constraints — bluegrass’s popularity remains concentrated in a small portion of the southern Appalachian mountains, where the state lines of Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee converge. More likely it has simply been considered unworthy of notice: low art, uncomfortably associated with white redneck culture.

Something is changing, though. Acoustic music, live and unfiltered, is in vogue. America’s hipster generation, in its continual search for authenticity, is chasing roots music back to the country’s earliest string bands, and their sound is being replicated in trendy bars in New York, Los Angeles, and London.”

She also acknowledges both Rhiannon Giddens’ efforts in reclaiming the music’s African-American roots and the work of Bluegrass Pride, a Bay Area group advocating for gays and women “in a musical community that is still overwhelmingly white and male.” John goes further, citing the current crop of performers’ ages and backgrounds that are reaching out and opening up to a new audience:

“A progressive, metropolitan scene is, arguably, securing the music’s future. From the highly trained brilliance of Ivy League graduates such as Brittany Haas to the rollicking rock of stadium-fillers Greensky Bluegrass and Trampled by Turtles, their genre-bending efforts are reaching audiences younger and many hundreds of times larger than anything the traditionalists can hope for.”

A suggestion I’d make to the Americana Music Association is to follow the path of the International Bluegrass Music Association when it comes to youth programs. Their outreach to schools, low-cost membership to those under 17, and the Kids on Bluegrass annual showcases not only have made a difference, but also are replicated by dozens of regional bluegrass organizations. In fact, the abovementioned Brittany Haas was only 8 years old when she became a student of Molly Tuttle’s father, Jack. He is highly active in teaching both kids and adults, and is known as the “Dean of Bay Area Bluegrass.” (More about Jack and the entire Tuttle family here.)

Meanwhile, back on my Facebook page, the responses to John’s article came fast and furious. Here were the first two comments:

“Plucked from obscurity? Bluegrass never went anywhere! Hillbilly music? Hell yes! All you gear heads and technophiles need to pay attention. This is a pure form of American music that does not rely on electronics!”

“Having been a long-time bluegrass fan for 60 years, I’m not a big fan of the new style of bluegrass by these younger bands. They seem to think more is better and try to throw in every note and chord known to man. The old timers knew better. I accepted when Seldom Scene came around and changed the style of bluegrass but I don’t know about this new high tech stuff.”

Yikes. So I guess that there is a group of bluegrass fans who aren’t appreciative of the “youngsters” coming up, nor what they bring to the genre. But there is a crack in the sky and I loved reading these counterpoints that came from three of my page’s followers:

“I was thinking about all of this since you posted that last piece about Molly Tuttle. I went to Winter Wondergrass in Lake Tahoe last March. The crowd was overwhelmingly young, people in their 20s/30s. I was kind of surprised by that, but it seemed like a good sign.”

“Just saw Steep Canyon Rangers, originally a modern version of a classic bluegrass band, formed in a college dorm in North Carolina. Now, nineteen years later, they are a big festival band that has held on to a younger crowd by evolving into prog-grass and now jamgrass rock (rock-based drummer with big sound). Most songs are 6-8 minutes with some vocals at beginning and end and a lot of wild jamming in between.”

“One reason for the changes by younger bands may have to do with trying to stay relevant (i.e., marketable) in a time when so many interesting styles of music are available to consumers for dirt cheap. In addition, they probably grew up playing or listening to rock and other types of music when they were teens and may have a hard time playing bluegrass night after night in the traditional way. They need to stay challenged and to experiment.”

Please forgive me if you think that I’m sounding the alarm on a problem that doesn’t exist, but with age comes a tiny bit of wisdom and a whole lot of experience. Musical genres wax and wane in popularity, and sometimes they just simply fade away into obscurity. While American roots music is growing in popularity, it needs new blood on the stage and in the seats in order to thrive and not just survive. At the heart will be a concerted outreach, and we really need people and organizations to drive it.

This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression:The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Two Dylans, Two Films

It’s a few days before Father’s Day and I’m thinking about Bob and Jakob Dylan newly released films as I sit at a long wooden table at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, on the grounds of Lincoln Center. A 16-acre campus of theaters and concert venues, it is the center for our city’s ballet, philharmonic symphony, and opera, along with extensive programming and educational community outreach for all sorts of other musical genres, from jazz to blues to Americana and beyond. My oldest son seems to spend much of his time here researching and writing, and often suggests that I might enjoy a visit. It is indeed a nice quiet space, and I’m enjoying the feeling of being surrounded by thousands and thousands of books, manuscripts, sheet music, and recorded music.

I have given myself two hours to write this week’s column, as I have a ticket for Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese at the center’s film theater. Playing at only two theaters in Manhattan, it’s also now available to stream on Netflix which I had planned to do first thing this morning. But the lure of a bigger screen and a much better sound system was enough to reel me in. And it shall be the second of two films connected to the Dylan name that I’ll have seen in as many days.

As a columnist and music news aggregator I usually spend a few hours each day surfing for articles to post, or threads of ideas that might inspire a writing itch I’ll need to scratch. It’s a hobby and it is as enjoyable as collecting baseball cards, doing woodcraft, or working in the garden. And while I can’t tell you Babe Ruth’s stats, what a lathe does, or even how to choose a ripe melon, I can tell you that Dylan and his son Jakob own the internet this week with hundreds of articles, stories, reviews, and social media posts about the above-mentioned film and Jakob Dylan’s work with Andrew Slater on the mid-’60s Laurel Canyon documentary Echo in the Canyon.

Echo is from an independent company and not in widespread distribution. In what is called the specialties market, it has grossed over $260,000 at the box office in 14 days. That’s a far cry from the $46 million that The Secret Life of Pets 2 took in over one weekend or Rocketman‘s $50 million in two weeks, but nevertheless it held its own in just 43 theaters compared to the thousands where the top dogs are playing.

I attended a late-afternoon showing of Echo just north of the city, and was one of only five people in a theater with a hundred seats. I’d been enjoying the soundtrack of cover songs from 1964 through 1967 since the release a few weeks ago, and broke my own rule by reading about a dozen reviews, so I knew what to expect. When you’re armed with too much information it can dampen and shape the experience, yet it’s a joy and blessing when the event exceeds your preconceptions.

While it’s Jakob’s interviews with folks like Tom Petty, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Michelle Phillips, and others from that era that have garnered the most press, along with criticism that they excluded Joni, Love, and The Doors, trust me when I say that those writers have gotten it mostly wrong. It’s the music that’s the center of attention, performed live in concert and in the studio by one of the best groups of session players I’ve ever heard along with a number of guest vocalists and players. While most of the players weren’t even born back in the era the film explores, they capture the music and magic of the time with impeccable performances. If you enjoyed seeing McGuinn and Hillman perform the Byrds’ songs last year with Marty Stuart and his band, you’ll love this film.

As far as the Rolling Thunder Revue, the film critics have said it’s great and there’s no reason to doubt that. (Pondering if I should edit this column before turning it in to tell you I was absolutely blown away, the full house sat still and glued in their seats until the credits finished rolling, and we all applauded before filing out. No, I’ll save that for another day.) If you love Bob Dylan, you’ll love this, and even more so since you can stream it endlessly on your iPad while lying in bed next to a snoring and wheezing significant other.

If you’ve made it this far you and aren’t feeling as if you’ve got your money’s worth, I’ll leave you with a couple of thoughts.

The 1960s and ’70s are to the baby boomers what the Depression and World War II was to my parents. What sets these generations apart is that while there was little nostalgia in poverty and death, my generation is still alive and kicking, and some folks have disposable income to be drenched in nostalgia at any price. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it also holds the door open for a certain level of commercial exploitation. On the flip side, Dylan’s 14-disc set of the Rolling Thunder Revue was priced on Amazon today for only $110 on CD and merely $75 for all you vinyl fanatics. It’s almost heresy not to buy it. The only problem I can foresee is the ability to carve out the amount of time it’ll take to actually listen to it, what with all of the baseball card collecting, woodcraft, and gardening y’all got planned. But I guess it’ll look good sitting on the coffee table.

The second and final point: ever wonder what Father’s Day at the Dylan household was like? There has always been a level of privacy within this family that I have truly respected, especially in the era of sharing every moment of our lives. This morning as I surfed for a little of that inspiration I spoke of earlier, killing time before watching Rolling Thunder Revue, I discovered a 2005 interview with Jakob Dylan by Anthony DeCurtis for the New York Times. Intimate, respectful, and loving, it seems about right to share a bit of it for all fathers and sons.

“If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall. I still go into a restaurant and people say, ‘I love your dad’s work.’ Yes, he was affectionate. When I was a kid, he was a god to me for all the right reasons. Other people have put that tag on him in some otherworldly sense. I say it as any kid who admired his dad and had a great relationship with him. He never missed a single Little League game I had. He’s collected every home-run ball I ever hit. And he’s still affectionate to me. Maybe he doesn’t want people to know that, but I’ll tell you, because it’s my interview.”

An Afternoon At The Museum With Leonard Cohen

Photo by Rama, CC Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France

He was neither Porter Wagoner nor Merle Haggard. There was no thread of connection with either The Byrds or The Beatles, nothing in common with Amon Düül or Harry Partch’s 43-tone scale. At the time I was more curious about smoke, potions, powders, girls, and Garcia than a poet from Canada. Close to the date I turned 19 I was handed a copy of Leonard Cohen’s Songs of Love and Hate by the editor of my college newspaper and instructed to write a review. I did not. Instead I submitted an article titled “The Only Dope Worth Shooting is Richard Nixon,” which resulted in surveillance by the FBI, a phone tap at my parents’ house, and possibly a manila file by now yellowed with age and tucked away in a dusty basement in Washington.

As long as I had Tim Hardin’s version of “Bird on a Wire,” recorded with an army of jazz musicians by a man with a velvet and smoky voice and unique phrasing who spent half his life as a heroin addict, I had no need for Leonard Cohen. He could keep writing his beautiful music, releasing albums that I ignored, and, if I truly needed a fix, there were the legion of interpreters to translate his work. Before I leave Mr. Hardin, here’s one thing of many things I did not know: He appeared at Woodstock but his performance was never captured in the film nor soundtrack, save for an acoustic version of “If I Was a Carpenter” that appeared in a 1994 box set that likely not many noticed or cared about.

In 1988, Cohen’s I’m Your Man disc landed on my desk and would have been thoughtlessly tossed or donated had I not been made aware that among the many session musicians was Sneaky Pete Kleinow of the Flying Burrito Brothers. That piqued my interest enough to listen, and for the next year I did so endlessly until I drifted away and moved on. I thought I had enough Cohen, stayed away from The Future, and forgot about him as he retreated to the Mt. Baldy Zen Center for a five-year period of seclusion, becoming ordained as a Rinza Zen Buddhist monk and serving as a personal assistant to Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi.

Nineteen years passed and I was living in a valley between San Diego and Palm Springs with summer daytime temperatures in the low hundreds and cool early evening ocean breezes that whipped over the mountains and through the passes. My career in music had come to an end, half the homes in my neighborhood stood empty from foreclosure, my marriage was unravelling, and a puppy we named Shaky Lennon King reintroduced me to Mr. Cohen through our daily long walks as he sniffed and strutted while I pumped songs into my ears.

Live in London, Cohen’s 18th album and the first in 30 years that was recorded in concert, was released and became my daily elixir, soul fixer, and the aural medicine that I needed to cleanse away the mental debris, and it soothed me like no other album. In one of the first articles I posted for No Depression, I believe I wrote something to the effect that this double disc set would be the only thing I would need to take with me when the apocalypse commenced. I had made my way back to Leonard, thanks to a dog we called Lenny for short.

In November 2017, a year after Cohen’s death, an exhibition titled Leonard Cohen: A Crack In Everything opened at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (MAC). This is how it was described in the museum’s program: “A multidisciplinary exhibition offers the public a collection of brand-new works commissioned from and created by local and international artists who were inspired by the great master’s style and recurring themes. These artists represent the visual arts, performance art, music, the written word and film, thus providing visitors with a dynamic, participative and immersive experience.”

A year later it was announced that the exhibition would be embarking on a worldwide tour, beginning at New York City’s Jewish Museum on April 9 of this year through September, followed by showings in Copenhagen and San Francisco. John Zeppetelli, one of the curators of the exhibition, has explained that MAC received Cohen’s personal approval and endorsement for the project.

“When we came up with the idea for this exhibition, we went to seek the agreement of Leonard Cohen, who accepted because of the angle we were proposing. It was important for him that this exhibit would not be of a biographical nature. From the start, the project was conceived as a contemporary artistic exploration of a life’s work, and in that sense, he was thrilled to be able to inspire other artists through his art. Given his recent death, our exhibition has taken on a new meaning. It has also become a tribute to a local icon and a global star.” (e-Flux)

A few months ago, when the exhibition opened here in New York City, an art critic for the Washington Post named Sebastian Smee wrote a review with the extremely long and lower-case title of “I wanted to love this Leonard Cohen exhibit, but was overwhelmed by gimmicks and kitsch.” My heart sank as I read that his experience at the museum left him feeling “squeezed dry of all but secondhand sentiments, my best thoughts hijacked at every turn by a pantomime of feeling, a parody of catharsis. Leonard Cohen was a poet. This is an attempt to collapse poetry into groupthink.” He also added this: “Let me reiterate: I love Leonard Cohen. But I wanted to puke.”

While I am not driven to action by reviews, and believe firmly that one person’s vanilla is another’s chocolate, this one was so strongly acidic that it gave me pause. I hesitated to attend until the stench of his words dissipated, allowing me to experience it on my own terms without prejudice. And this past week, on a most beautiful sunny day, I got to the museum around noon, sat across the street in Central Park while I ate my packed lunch and people watched (I am being poli-#metoo-correct; I mostly looked at women passing by in their summer clothes) paid my “old guy” discount and wandered through the dozen or so installations spread out over two and a half floors.

If you’re expecting from me some sort of rebuke to Mr. Smee’s review, I’ll pass. He has every right to express his opinion, with the only sadness being that many people might actually consider that his experience will be their experience. What I’ll tell you is that for three and a half hours I was immersed in music and visual imagery that touched me deeply and drained my body and soul from any anxiety and despair. It was as if I was existing in my own personal Cohen bubble, feeling only briefly annoyed at one particular woman who insisted on staring at her iPhone and occasionally taking photos of empty white walls. I let it pass. À chacun son.

On April 7, 2013, I attended what would be Cohen’s last concert in New York City at the midpoint of the Old Ideas World Tour, which was his last time out on the road. It was possibly the most musically rewarding night of my life. He did two sets of 22 songs followed by three more for the first encore, another three for the second, and at the third and final encore he performed “I Tried To Leave You.” He didn’t, and still hasn’t.

My afternoon with Leonard Cohen this week brought back the same warmth and wonderment of that night, for which I’m eternally grateful. On reflection, I am sad that his music came to me in fits and starts, and that it wasn’t until I was mature enough — likely a contested opinion — that my head, heart, and ears opened to him. I am a better person for it.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

The Aging of The Americana Music Audience

CC0 1.0 Universal/Public Domain Dedication

Since moving to New York from California almost seven years ago, I’ve been to a number of music venues in the city, but last week was my first time at the Mercury Lounge, which is down in the East Village. When I looked at the roster of upcoming events over a three-month period, the only names I recognized were Juliana Hatfield and Molly Tuttle. It was the latter whose show I attended, and the booking seemed to make sense since it’s a great little club for seeing a musician up close and the acts and audience skew to a young demographic. Since Tuttle is only 26, my expectation was that at age 67 I would be the oldest person in the room. As it turned out, I was not.

Looking over at last week’s Americana Music Association’s playlist chart, Tuttle is likely one of the youngest artists listed, while the rest are pretty much evenly split between those in their 30s and 40s and the “heritage musicians,” ranging from Steve Earle to Mavis Staples at the upper end of the age demographic. What’s missing from the chart are many of the musicians and bands who might appear at festivals, major events such as AmericanaFest or Folk Alliance, or small clubs, coffeehouses or house concerts. There is also very little American roots music diversity in the sub-genres of blues, gospel, soul, folk, singer-songwriters, Ameripolitan, and bluegrass, nor many people Tuttle’s age. That’s not a fault with the AMA or their charts, it’s just representative of the reporting radio stations and the limitation of having only 50 slots.

The question sort of nagging at me is why Molly Tuttle plays to an audience of mostly grandparents, and what it might say to both the sustainability and growth of this style of music. While I know there is sizable group of Gen Z and millennial musicians playing and recording our favorite genre and attending fiddle camps and music schools like Berklee in Boston, I wonder why their contemporaries aren’t buying tickets to their concerts? While I understand that not many can afford the annual Cayamo cruise —neither can I, for that matter — a ticket to see Tuttle at the Mercury was only $15, and that included Dee White as the opener.

Being a numbers dude, I have navigated through my share of statistical reports on the listening and ticket purchasing habits of various demographics and genres. Not surprising, there isn’t much reported on our type of music, as it’s dwarfed by the “big box” mentality of the music industry. But I can tell you one thing: It’s not that younger people don’t spend money for concerts. Last year Ed Sheeran had the highest gross ever recorded for a touring artist in a single year, and if you add in Taylor Swift at number two, they accounted for 14% of all major worldwide tour ticket sales, for a total of $777,000,000 in revenue.

American roots music, and perhaps its worldwide counterparts as well, are likely going through something similar to what blues and jazz music have experienced in the past 10 years. You hear little if any on non-satellite radio, music streams are about one percent or less of the entire genre pie chart, clubs have shut down in record numbers, and it is rapidly becoming an historic music form. Jazz has fared a bit better, as younger artists are fusing their skills with hip-hop and going beyond the traditional, festivals are on the upswing, there is a growing international audience, and it’s being introduced into music education programs through grants and donations.

If I had a voice loud enough to be heard, I might suggest that what’s missing from Americana and roots music is visionary leadership and unification. An entity that could reach out to all the various organizations under the “big tent,” to what I call the “Alphabets and Foundations”: AMA, FAI, JAI, IBMA, GMA, SGA, AFM, TTMA, NAME, CAAPA, AAIM, NSAI, SESAC, both The Blues and Rhythm and Blues Foundations along with the hundreds of regional alliances, festivals, club owners, educational organizations, publications, and websites. If you want to keep a genre of music fresh and innovative, and not just an historic format for the few, it’ll require outreach, clear goals, inclusion, and funding. A tall order, but someone out there might get what I’m suggesting and be able to bring clarity to my vision.

Meanwhile, back at the Mercury Lounge, I chose not to stand in line an hour before showtime and sat across the street outside a local market eating a healthy dinner of fruit, nuts, and seeds. Just before the lights went out and Dee White took the stage for a killer set of classic-style country, I navigated my way to the front of the stage. The lights went down and I was surrounded by seniors with iPhones in hand. What is up with that? I’ll never understand the need to watch and make a blurry video of a concert through a five-inch screen with awful sound. Is it to remind them where they were in case they forget, or is the frantic drive to post on Facebook or YouTube a fractured version of getting their 15 minutes of fame? I stand with Bob Dylan and Jack White on this subject: Keep the devices in your pocket and silent. Guitarists such as myself who came to witness Tuttle’s flying fingers were not disappointed, although bluegrass junkies probably didn’t understand that she’s got a tight and loud electric band backing her. And the thing is … people her own age? They would have loved it.

This was originally posted an an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 7

Photo by Dong Cheol/Pixabay License

An occasional series of Americana and roots music videos. Sharing new discoveries, and revisiting old friends.

Since I began posting my seasonal review of mostly new music videos, an interesting shift has occurred. In the past I’ve often used live performances from providers such as Folk Alley, KEXP, Austin City Limits, Paste, NPR, Under the Apple Tree, and The Bluegrass Situation, to mention just a few good sources. But late last year the recording industry nonprofit IFPI published the findings of its global Music Consumer Insight Report, which found that 47 percent of time spent listening to on-demand music is now happening on YouTube. That may explain the sharp increase in both artist and label-funded videos that go beyond the basic two-camera live setup and into more artistic and elaborate productions.

While the three major music-only streaming platforms are becoming the clear winners in delivery to the masses, in order for an artist to make a thousand dollars, their song needs to be heard something like one million times. On the other hand, YouTube offers a potentially lucrative opportunity to those who are interested in not only sharing their music, but also building their brand and developing followers. Niche genres such as Americana music, and all that fits under that umbrella term, might actually benefit more than others. A quick story before I jump into the clips.

A young woman I know began posting quite silly non-music videos several years ago, while she was in high school, that usually lasted about five minutes, were shot by herself on her iPhone, and focused on games, comic books, fashion, and pop culture. At age 22 she now has over two million rabid followers and earns six figures per year through ad revenue. Can’t say that can happen to every old-time stringband, folksinger, country band, blues musician, or singer-songwriter, but it’s certainly something to ponder.

J.S. Ondara: “Torch Song”

Since releasing his debut album Tales of America last February, a 26-year-old has landed an Americana Music Association nomination in the emerging artist category, toured extensively, and just landed a few opening slots for Neil Young. After winning a green card lottery six years ago that allowed him to move to the United States, Nairobi-born folksinger J.S. Ondara settled down near Minneapolis, learned to play guitar from scratch, and scored a major label album deal. A Dylan freak who learned most of his lyrics while a teen in Kenya, Ondara has studied American folk music and made a mark in the States by playing open mics and showcasing his fashion sense with vintage suits.

Ordinary Elephant: “The War”

Crystal and Pete Damore met at an open mic in Texas in 2009 and were each working in successful non-music careers: she as a veterinary cardiologist and he as a computer programmer. The short story is that they got bitten by the creative bug and Crystal quit her job, they bought an RV, and they hit the road and started to play wherever they could. Pete was able to continue working since he wasn’t chained to a desk and they’ve been blessed. Performing and recording under the name Ordinary Elephant, they were named 2017 Artist of the Year at the International Folk Music Awards last year. Crystal handles lead vocals and acoustic guitar, while Pete plays clawhammer banjo and sings harmony. The clip above is from their latest album titled Honest, and I’d also recommend checking out their first, Before I Go.

Emily Scott Robinson: “Borrowed Rooms” and “Old Wooden Floors, and The Dress”

Another RV-traveling singer-songwriter who took to the road with her husband, Emily Scott Robinson has received an incredible amount of press and rave reviews for her studio debut album Traveling Mercies. A native of North Carolina, she claims to have already done over a quarter million miles of driving across the country since she began her career in 2015. Along the way she’s won several awards, starting with American Songwriter, a Kerrville New Folk Winner trophy in 2016, and a Wildflower Performing Songwriter Contest win the following year. Much of the press about her is about the song “The Dress,” which speaks to a sexual assault that occurred when she was 22.

Justin Townes Earle: “Frightened by the Sound”

Here’s a confession that I never thought I’d share: With each year that passes, I find myself looking forward to the next album from the son rather than the father. Ten years ago when I started listening to Justin‘s music and following him on social media, it felt as though he might not make it past his 30th birthday. In 2010, after a nasty public fight at a club, he entered rehab, not for the first time, and it seems to have kicked his butt down a better path. He was married in 2013, they had a baby four years later, and today he releases The Saint of Lost Causes, his ninth album.

Molly Tuttle: “Cold Rain and Snow” and “Once More”

I got my first chance to see Molly Tuttle live and up close, and it would be an understatement to say that she and her band were exceptional beyond my expectation. The small Mercury Lounge in the East Village of New York City was sold out, and about 150 of us were stacked up like sardines inside a can. It was, how should I say it, a mature crowd who seemed to be full of guitar hero worshippers, after-work daters, and those who prefer to view their concert experience through the screens of their iPhones. While the videos above and below are acoustic, Tuttle’s touring band rocks. About “Once More”: Molly’s brother Sully, who is also an amazing and rapid-fire picker, is a member of A.J. Lee and Blue Summit, a great acoustic stringband in Northern California. Last Father’s Day Molly and Angelica Grim joined A.J. for some fine harmony, supported by the band.

Four Year Bender: “Annalee”

This song is off the band’s second album and features lead singer and songwriter Ryan Smith. As a well-known Bay Area-based band, their career was cut short by Smith’s alcoholism and addiction, which spanned ten years. After recovery, it took him two years to open the guitar case and begin writing again. The result is Gettin’ Gone, 11 songs recorded with his longtime collaborator Michael Winger. There’s some good stuff here.

Son Volt: “Devil May Care”

Union, Son Volt‘s ninth album, is a political statement about our times in addition to just being another great album from the band. Three of the songs were recorded at the Mother Jones Museum in Mount Olive, Illinois, and four others at the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It got some rough reviews — American Songwriter gave two out of five stars — but I beg to differ. I’ve always been more Farrar than Tweedy when it came to the Uncle Tupelo split, so maybe I’m just a bit biased. But don’t let it slip away without checking it out.

And Now for Something Completely Different …

This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds Reclaim The Music

Beginning in the 18th century, immigrants from Britain, Scotland, and Ireland made their way across the ocean and into the backwoods and mountains of America. They brought with them their customs, culture, and music, which included both ballads and reels. The ballads were often just stories, shared by songbooks rather than recordings, and over time the lyrics, melodies, and titles were often changed. A new album by Naomi Bedford and Paul Simmonds titled Singing It All Back Home: Appalachian Songs of English and Scottish Origin takes many of these titles and presents them in a new light that restores the traditional while also adding in current country and Americana flavors. The result is a feast of tastefully executed acoustic instrumentation coupled with Bedford’s powerful voice that soars into the stratosphere along with Simmonds’ solid instrumentation and vocals.

Fans of folk music are likely familiar with the work of Shirley Collins, considered to be the doyenne of English roots music. From the mid-1950s through the late ’70s, she recorded some of the most beautiful albums of classic ballads you’ll ever hear. Some of you may also know of her through her relationship with folklorist and field recorder Alan Lomax and their 1959 song-catching trip through America’s South. A compilation album titled Sounds of The Southwas released soon after, and a few decades later the Coen Brothers used some of the songs in their film O Brother, Where Art Thou?

In 1978, after a painful divorce with her second husband Ashley Hutchings of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span fame, Collins literally lost her voice. She developed a form of dysphonia, a condition often associated with psychological trauma, and for the next 38 years supported herself by taking a number of mostly menial, non-music jobs. In 2004 she documented her time with Lomax as both his assistant and lover in the book America Over the Water,bringing her a new generation of fans and acknowledgement for her contribution to traditional music. Almost four decades after stepping away from music, she released a new album in 2016, and last year a documentary film about her life, The Ballad of Shirley Collins, was released. She was also kind enough to assist Bedford and Simmonds with their project, which elevates this release from simply an album to an event.

Simmonds, vocalist and songwriter for the British folk-punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang, who’ve been together since 1984, plays guitar, bouzouki, mandolin and keyboards. Bedford grew up learning the music of folksingers such as Collins, Jean Ritchie, and Hedy West from her mother. Her family also lived next door to Andy Summers from The Police, and she was the babysitter for his daughter. In 2001 she co-wrote and sang on electronic dance band Orbital’s “Funny Break,” a Top 20 hit in the UK. After working with several other groups, she took a break from music to backpack through India and raise a family.

Sometime in 2010, while Bedford was working on Tales from the Weeping Willow, the first of three albums that she and Simmonds worked on together that focus on traditional music, she tried unsuccessfully to take an English folk singing group class taught by Collins but was too late in signing up. She inquired if she could perhaps pay to have a one-on-one session with her, and Collins agreed — in exchange for a jar of honey. A friendship began, and as Bedford shares:

“We were asked to play at one of her birthday parties, invited to join her at one of her large theater shows, and have got to know her a bit better. She has always been encouraging, particularly with regard to my Appalachian material. For Singing It All Back Home I went to her house for lunch and conversation and came away with some wonderful research materials. A songbook she lent me was Dear Companion (from the Cecil Sharp Collection), which we used as a prime source.”

The album was produced by Ben Walker, a multi-instrumentalist who is quite well known in England for his six albums with Josienne Clarke, extensive production work, and amazing solo guitar work, which you can hear on the EP The Fox on the Downs. Some of the other players assisting on the album include Lisa Knapp, Rory McCloud, and Justin Currie of Del Amitri fame, whom Bedford befriended years ago through his MySpace page and subsequently toured with as his singing partner.

On the liner notes of Singing It All Back Home, Simmonds speaks about the genesis of the project and some of the liberties they have taken:

“We began this project in January 2018 with a very simple premise: to rediscover, explore and celebrate the ballads that had been such a strong influence in Naomi’s childhood and which I felt were somehow intrinsic to the craft of storytelling in song. It was not always easy to find the exact melodies to some of these songs, and where that was the case, we added our own layer of interpretation. We hope and believe that this is acceptably within the folk tradition.”

Across the Atlantic, where Bedford and Simmonds are revered and treasured in the folk music community, the reviews on the project have been outstanding. Iain Hazelwood from Spiral Earth wrote that “You can feel what those Appalachian settlers must have held in their hearts, what they hoped for and the memories of home that drifted into their dreams. It’s an evocation and a celebration, plus it’s just damned good fun.” And over at Folk Music UK, Neil McFayden shares that the album “has all the passion & history of the characters that populate these stories; Naomi Bedford & Paul Simmonds paint them in a fascinating new light, while holding fast to their enduring heritage in an outstanding album.”

As we all know the financial challenges of being a musician in these times, I’d encourage y’all to check out their website for upcoming appearances and to explore their entire catalog. Each album, regardless of whether released under just Bedford’s name or credited to both her and Simmonds, are folk and roots music treasures, assembled in the handmade tradition of fine craftspeople, that add another foundational stepping stone on the path of what we consider American music. I’ll close this out with a favorite song from an older album, A History of Insolence, that I hope will leave you wanting to explore more.

This was originally posted as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Joan Baez: A Fond Farewell To The Road

Beacon Theater, May 2019 Image by Easy Ed

While I know many people enjoy reading about concerts after they’ve happened, I find the prequel more interesting to write about. And so it is that I find myself furiously keypunching away at this week’s column because in just a few hours I will hop on a train, travel on two subway lines, walk three blocks, wind my way through an elaborate security check, flash a ticket on my iPhone, enter the theater, walk up the stairs to the balcony, make myself as comfortable as I can in the narrow row, and spend a few hours listening to what will likely be the final concert in New York City from Joan Baez. And I only say likely because, well … you never know.

It’s a little difficult to track down who created the concept of a farewell concert or tour, but perhaps in modern times it was Cream in 1968, and Clapton, Bruce, and Baker pretty much kept to their word for 37 years. In 2005 they played a several shows together in just two cities, putting out an album and DVD. Clapton called it “a fitting tribute to ourselves” and hinted that it was to an opportunity for Bruce and Baker to put some money in the bank as each were having severe health problems.

We all know that The Band staged The Last Waltz in 1976 as their final performance, with a film and soundtrack to mark the occasion, and in six years four of the five members were back in the studio and on the road again. This year there are quite a few artists who are on their second, third, or fourth farewell tours. For example, there’s Elton John, who announced on Nov. 3, 1977, that he was finished with concerts; Ozzy Osborne, who retired 27 years ago; and don’t get me started on The Who: every single tour they’ve done since 1982 has been billed as the final one.

For the past year Joan Baez has been on the road with her Fare Thee Well Tour and she’ll be heading to Europe for her final performances, which will end on July 28 in Madrid, Spain. It’ll come just shy of the 60-year anniversary of her first appearance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959. I was just 7 years old back then, and it would be several years until I learned who she was. My sister was in her first year of college and going through her folk music and coffeehouse stage, playing Baez’s first album endlessly every single night in her room. I can’t tell you how much her voice grated on my 12-year-old ears, but like everything that is heard repetitively, she soon became comfortable and comforting to me.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Baez said that she’s happier with the phrase “retire from touring” rather than calling it simply retirement, explaining that she will possibly still play from time to time as long as her voice holds out. She hasn’t written songs in 25 years and at the moment doesn’t seem interested in recording another album.

When her tour was first announced I didn’t think it would be something I would be interested in seeing. There’s a bit of sadness at these sort of events, and I felt that even though I’ve never seen her live, I have the memories, images, and music forever etched in my brain. But a few days ago, when I read that she was coming to town this week, I felt a strong gravitational pull to be there. Almost robotically I went online, found an affordable ticket, and bought it in less than a minute. In spiritual terms, it was a calling.

Like a slice of warm blueberry pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, there are certain songs — and the people who sing them — that bring me great joy and comfort. Joan Baez is one of them. She has been with me for virtually my entire life, and unlike any other musician or performer, with the exception of Pete Seeger, she holds a space deep inside of me that is central to the core of my being. In my mind’s eye I can see her onstage in Newport as a teenager, singing about Joe Hill at Woodstock, linking arms and marching from Selma to Montgomery, playing and speaking at countless benefits and rallies for peace, justice, freedom, jobs, hunger, poverty, the environment, and human rights. She has been a model for composure, thoughtfulness, strength, commitment, and achievement like few others.

And for those reasons I can’t imagine not hopping on a train, traveling on two subway lines, walking three blocks, winding my way through an elaborate security check, flashing a ticket on my iPhone, entering the theater, walking up the stairs to the balcony, making myself as comfortable as I can in the narrow row, and spending a few hours listening to what will likely be Joan Baez’s final concert in New York City. Fare thee well, and thank you.

Postscript: The concert was more than I had anticipated. At seventy-nine I didn’t know what to expect, but Joan’s voice was solid and it soared and her stamina was surreal. The show lasted almost two hours with no intermission and included percussion by her son Gabriel Harris and multi-instumentalist Dirk Powell. It was indeed a fond farewell.

This was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music website.