Logan Ledger (photo by Tracy Allison)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Logan Ledger is No Depression’s Spotlight artist for September 2023. Learn more about him and his new album, Golden State, in this interview, and watch a performance, with Erin Rae, of “Some Misty Morning” in this video for ND readers.
I always wanted to be in a band. I think it was because I wanted to be part of something larger than myself. When I was a kid growing up in the Bay Area in the early aughts, my first foray into music was via classical guitar. My guitar teacher at the time was classically trained, and by his estimation, that was the natural place for me to begin my studies. I learned some simple pieces, nothing too complicated (I didn’t really get too far down that path), but something wasn’t really clicking. It wasn’t that I disliked the music, but for some reason I felt isolated by it. I remember going with my father to a symposium of young classical guitarists in San Francisco. It was in a beautiful old Masonic hall, resonant and full of amber light — I can still see it. As I watched the young guitarists pick their way through that mostly solo repertoire, a thought came to me: Do I really want to play music alone?
Now certainly there are classical guitar duos and trios, and other formats in that tradition, but I wasn’t really hip to that idea at the time. My vision of the classical guitarist was the lone bespectacled Segovia. By contrast, there was another world of music I was simultaneously discovering that had a completely different philosophy. The same guitar teacher that started me on the classical path had also introduced me to the music of Bob Dylan. At first it was just a book of cowboy chords — simple versions of Dylan songs to get my hands used to the basic first position chords on the guitar. But it lit some kind of fire in me. At the same time that I was learning those simple classical etudes, I was diving deep into the background of this Dylan fella. I wanted to know what his influences were, where the shape of these songs came from.
That started me on the deep dive into the world of folk music. I learned about Mississippi John Hurt and Doc Watson, whose fingerpicking styles were accessible to me as a budding classical player. Soon after, I started playing banjo and learning about old-time music and bluegrass. I amassed a small collection of CDs — mainly from Smithsonian Folkways, whose liner notes I loved — and tried to learn as much as I could about the history of the old music. I particularly loved the albums of the New Lost City Ramblers, revivalists who replicated old recordings from the pre-war era, and wrote meticulous notes about the origins of the songs. From there, I was able to learn about all sorts of people: The Delmore Brothers, Dock Boggs, The Carter Family. What I loved about this music was a sense of deep history and the feeling of being a part of a larger tradition. Even though I wasn’t in a band yet, I felt like I was on the path toward a truly communal kind of musical experience, the one I’d been craving.
Logan Ledger (photo by Tracy Allison)
As I got a little older, my interests started to crystallize and I became obsessed with bluegrass, first as a banjo player, but soon after as a flat-picking guitarist. This was the moment when I really began to jam and play with other people. Bluegrass is a wonderful idiom for many reasons, but one of its finer aspects is the fact that it is a shared musical language and repertoire. You can put together a bluegrass band with people who barely know each other, and while it may or may not be the tightest outfit in the world, they’ll at least know basically what to do. This made it the perfect training ground for a young musician trying to get the hang of being in a band. I fell in love with it. I felt a part of something big.
I moved to Nashville about a decade ago searching for this same kind of communal feeling, and things took an unexpected direction. A demo of mine passed into the hands of T Bone Burnett, and through a lightning series of events I found myself in the new role of solo artist. At the time, I only had a handful of songs. I was not actively trying to pursue my original music or position myself as a lone singer-songwriter. This new role could have been isolating, but thankfully T Bone made sure that I was set up with two amazing humans and musicians: Dennis Crouch (who initially passed T Bone my demo) and Russ Pahl. I could not love these guys any more. They have been my mentors, and two of my best friends. They helped me get my music together at a time when I really wasn’t sure what being a solo artist even entailed. They challenged and inspired me. I started writing songs in earnest. Together, along with T Bone, we crafted the arrangements that made my first album.
Since then I’ve learned that the idea of the solo artist — at least when it comes to the type of music I play — is a bit of an illusion. There is a vast support network of friends, fellow musicians, and influences that make the whole thing possible. In the past several years I’ve been lucky to make great friends that have become lasting musical collaborators — folks like Dennis and Russ, and my great pals Misa Arriaga, Ryan Keith, Shooter Jennings, Nick Bockrath, Jamie Dick, and Frank Rische … the list goes on. I wouldn’t be able to make the music I want to make without their help.
I certainly do enjoy playing a solo set, but for me there’s always a little something missing. I almost have to approach it as a completely different thing, more about the direct one-on-one energy transference with the audience (a subject I would probably need another essay to ramble on about). But really, I enjoy the musical communication of being in a group, the interplay, that vast sea of feeling and intuition. We are social animals after all. And whether we think of ourselves as lone traveling bards on this journey or not, we are all — in one way or another, I think — playing in the band.
