It’s hard not to smile when you watch Sam Bush play. Joy pours out of his body and shines through every note, lifting up everyone around him, whether they’re on stage, front row, or deep into a vast festival audience. […]
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New Grass Revival: Bela Fleck, me, John Cowan, and Pat Flynn at the KFC Festival in Louisville, KY, 1986(?).
Early New Grass Revival, 1974. Curtis Burch, Courtney Johnson, Sam Bush, Butch Robins. My favorite pic of Courtney.
With early New Grass Revival, California, 1974.
One of the criteria for excellence in bluegrass music is maintaining tradition while expressing it in new ways. Are these changes merely the changes of fashion, putting new covers on the same unchanging framework? Or are they organic, coming from […]
Bill Monroe once said in an interview with George Gruhn: “Bluegrass is a pure music. You follow the melody right, and you don’t put in no hot, know-it-all fiddle that don’t belong in there” (Ewing 2006, p. 195). Bluegrass music […]
When I was a high school teacher, lo these many years ago, as the school year began to draw to a close members of the senior class would sometimes say, “Let’s start a tradition!” with the idea that they would leave their […]
In the 1970s during the punk versus disco wars, there was also a revolution going on. Even though it was somewhat of an underground one and garnered not much attention outside certain circles, it nonetheless moved a mountain. The mountain […]
One early Sunday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, Irene and I found ourselves driving north through Florida’s midlands, heading from a bluegrass festival to a state park near Orlando where we enjoy the quiet, the terrain, and the change […]
Without the New Grass Revival, there would never have been a Leftover Salmon, String Cheese Incident, or Yonder Mountain String Band. The band formed in 1972 with Sam Bush (mandolin), Courtney Johnson (banjo), Curtis Burch (guitar) and Ebo Walker (bass); […]
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