Tag Archives: Molly Tuttle

The Return of Easy Ed’s Broadside – February 2022

Photo by Easy Ed

A local and respected concert series has been going strong for years, and while they’ve maintained their home base at the local Unitarian congregation which was sadly unused for most of the pandemic, the building was severely damaged this past year in a storm.Now there’s a new home to hear music at a nearby church, albeit with a pandemic-era slimmed down roster of events. I’ve been both a patron and volunteer over the past ten years, and I admit that I much prefer being a paying audience member as opposed to selling at the merch table, seating guests or working the door.

The photo above was obviously taken from the stage a few minutes before a show was about to begin, probably sometime in 2015. Can’t recall who was playing, nor why I hopped onstage to take a snap of the waiting audience, because a photographer I am not. I actually enjoy taking pictures, but I just forget to do it most of the time. But this one has been sitting around in my library for too long not to share, so here it is for better or worse

A few years ago I submitted this image to No Depression to use for my then-weekly Broadside column and my editor rejected it. I think the main issue was that there was a child at the center, but there was a larger question of did I have permission of the other people in the frame to use it. Of course I didn’t, and it was not a huge issue for me to just pick something else. But II’ve always wanted to share it beyond the fleeting Instagram post, so here it is. I’m sorry that almost everyone in that one moment looks sad, but life isn’t all about smiling selfies.

For this concert, a one-off venue was utilized. It was a once grand old building at the edge of the Hudson River, mostly abandoned and not in very good shape, The electricity and plumbing worked, and I’m sure there was an elevator, but the facilities were rather rough. We were using a room on the second or third floor, with maybe a hundred seats. With raw cement walls and an open ceiling exposing pipes, it seemed better suited for a hardcore show from the 70s or 80s instead of whatever folk or blues musician was headlining that night.

If not mistaken, it was a very successful evening. While I can’t recall who or what was presented, I have a vivid memory of the intermission where coffee and tea were sold, along with these really delicious brownies. There was quite a bit of conversation taking place, as this was a community event, and many people knew each other. It strikes me of something that we once had but has disappeared over the past two years. Small concerts, traveling musicians, a time for people to get out of their homes and into a crowd to interact in whatever way they choose, and an escape for a couple hours of the pressures of life that we endure.

I know that all around the world there are small to mid-size community venues that have brought so much joy to people in showcasing art, films and music, and it’s gotten away from us. The impact shows up in the latest conversations about the inability of earning an income in a digital world which pays a pittance for artistic creation. And for most musicians, they aren’t complaining much because they only got a check for $1.79 from Spotify last month, but that they aren’t able to safely put together a tour from town to town where they can earn money by selling tickets and merchandise. They can’t see the audience’s faces from the stage, or feel the energy. That’s the real loss.

So, that brings me back to the picture. I think it is a pretty good representation of life in early 2022. It feels to me that we are simply waiting, which as the man once sang, “is the hardest part”.

All The News You Already Know, Might Have Missed or Even Forgotten If You’re As Old As Me

American Songwriter reported that Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder have announced their new collaborative album, Get On Board: The Songs of Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. The new LP, which is set for release on April 22, is the duo’s first collaboration in more than a half-century.

The two musicians have released a new live video for the song, “Hooray Hooray,” which y’all can watch below. “They were so solid. They meant what they said, they did what they did … here’s two guys, a guitar player, and a harmonica player, and they could make it sound like a whole orchestra,” Mahal said in a statement about his connection with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. Added Cooder, “It was perfect. What else can you say?”

Don Wilson, the last remaining original member of The Ventures, passed away in January of 88. Along with guitarist/bassist Bob Bogle, they formed the Ventures in 1958 when they were both Seattle-area construction workers moonlighting as musicians; just two years later, their electric guitar-led rendition of Johnny Smith’s “Walk, Don’t Run” rose to Number Two on the Hot 100. A quartet for most of its existence, they helped to popularize the electric guitar in the United States and across the world during the 1960s.

They were among the first to employ and popularize fuzz and flanging guitar effects, concept albums and twelve-string guitars in rock music. Their instrumental virtuosity, innovation, and unique sound influenced many musicians and bands, earning the group the moniker “The Band that Launched a Thousand Bands”. And one could argue that surf music was not a product of Southern California as much as it originated in the Pacific Northwest.

While their popularity in the United States waned in the 1970s, the group remains especially revered in Japan, where a reconstitued band tour regularly to this day. The classic lineup of the band consisted of Wilson on rhythm guitar, Bogle (initially lead guitar but he switched to bass), Nokie Edwards (initially bass, switched to lead guitar), and drummer Mel Taylor.

From Getty Images/The Ventures, 1960. Don is second from the left.

Singer-guitarist Molly Tuttle has moved to Nonesuch Records, and will be releasing her new album “Crooked Tree” on April 1. No fooling. Rolling Stone reports that “The new album explores Tuttle’s bluegrass roots, which stretch back to her banjo-playing grandfather and music-teacher father.

Helping Tuttle craft those sounds are her new band Golden Highway (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Dominick Leslie, Shelby Means, and Kyle Tuttle) and an all-star group of guests. In addition to Price, Strings, and Hull, contributors to Crooked Tree include Old Crow Medicine Show, Dan Tyminski, and Gillian Welch, along with co-producer Jerry Douglas.”

Here’s a video of the title track. This woman can shred.

That’s it for this month. Remember, I post multiple times every day at Facebook on The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily page.

And for even more stories, I am constantly updating my e-magazine on Flipboard, Americana and Roots Music Daily

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.

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.

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.

Molly Tuttle: From Her Tweens to Her Twenties

The Tuttles With AJ Lee

Considering that she is only a quarter-century old and just released her first solo album, one might suggest I could be jumping the gun on writing a retrospective of Molly Tuttle’s musical career and highlights. And had she not grown up in the era of the magical time machine also known as YouTube, we might have thought she just landed under a Nashville cabbage patch one day and — poof — a star was born. But this young woman began playing guitar at the age of eight, recorded her first album of duets with her dad at 13, and has won more awards than the number of ants on a Tennessee anthill.

Molly, Michael, and Sullivan Tuttle’s bluegrass version of “El Cumbanchero” was uploaded in 2006 and has been viewed more than 1,750,000 times. And just to see what four additional years of practice and growing up can do to one’s musical skill sets, here is their 2010 version, with Molly moving from guitar to banjo:

Jack Tuttle is a distinguished bluegrass musician, teacher, author, and historian, and he came from a musical family in rural Illinois where he first learned to play guitar at age 5. Migrating to California, he began developing a complete lesson program for fiddle, banjo, mandolin, and guitar and has taught thousands of kids and adults since 1979 from his home base at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto. Known as the “Dean of Bay Area Bluegrass,” he taught his own three children how to play and through the years they’ve been highly active on the festival circuit and at music camps, through the California Bluegrass Association (CBA), Northern California Bluegrass Society (NCBS), and the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA).

For those of us guitar players who’ve been around a while and think we might be pretty proficient, watching Molly Tuttle’s right hand technique is a jaw-dropping experience. It seems to be a hybrid of Merle Travis’ style combined with clawhammer banjo, and the result is stunning. When you add in her abilities as a cross-picking, lightning-fast flatpicker, it’s no surprise that in 2017, Tuttle was named the IBMA’s Guitar Player of the Year, an honor that was repeated the following year. She also won this year’s Americana Music Association’s Instrumentalist of the Year award. In addition to her fretwork virtuosity, she’s an exceptional banjo player, singer, and songwriter. Here’s one she wrote back in her teens.

The first album Tuttle recorded was in 2006, a duet project with her dad titled The Old Apple Tree. Around that time, the IBMA began a program for pickers between ages 4 and 17 called Kids on Bluegrass. Held during the annual World of Bluegrass festival, the kids get to meet up with others for the chance to play and perform together. Tuttle was one of many talented participants, as were Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Alex Hargreaves, Molly Cherryholmes, and another Californian, a bit younger than Tuttle, named AJ Lee. Here’s Lee, Tuttle, and Angelica Grim with Luke Abbott in 2009 at the Brown Barn Bluegrass Festival in San Martin, California:

Like Tuttle, Lee began studying and performing bluegrass at a very young age. She was about 10 or 11 and attending a CBA event when Jack Tuttle introduced himself to her father, Rodney, and shared that he was working with groups of kids and wondered if Lee might want to join in. That was the genesis of The Tuttles with AJ Lee, featuring Jack on bass and occasional vocals, with the three Tuttle kids and Lee taking the spotlight. Here they are in 2010 at the Strawberry Music Festival at Camp Mather, California. Molly Tuttle is 17 here.

The group released their first self-titled album in 2010, followed by a second release titled Endless Oceans. Lee, whom I’ve written about before, is now 21, plays in the band Blue Summit that also features Sullivan Tuttle on guitar, and has won the Best Female Vocalist award from the Northern California Bluegrass Society seven times. Her mom, Betsy, has told me that “what AJ learned mostly from her work with the Tuttle family was humility among greatness and the ability to play with intent.” While Lee was poised to make the move to Nashville, as Molly Tuttle has done, a year ago, she’s backed off for now, telling me not too long ago that her “heart is in California.”

In 2012, Molly Tuttle had a huge year when she was awarded merit scholarships to the Berklee College of Music in Boston for music and composition as well as the Foundation for Bluegrass Music’s first Hazel Dickens Memorial Scholarship. She won the Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest and received both Female Vocalist and Guitar Player awards from the Northern California Bluegrass Society. (The Tuttles with AJ Lee took home the NCBS’s Bluegrass Band award that year.)

In October of that year, she and her father participated in a duet contest on Prairie Home Companion and won second place. In an article for Bluegrass Today, she wrote:

“I have been listening to Prairie Home Companion since I was a kid, so it was a dream come true to play on the show. I loved seeing how it all comes together. Everyone who worked on the show was so professional, but also really friendly and nice. After the show Garrison invited us all to his house for a party, which was wonderful with lots of good food and people. He led a jam around the piano and asked if I would like to sing a Hazel Dickens song with him, so we sang ‘Won’t You Come and Sing for Me.’ All in all it was such an honor to be on the show and one of the best weekends of my life!”

Over on the Tuttles with AJ Lee website, on the front page it says “We don’t really play together as a band anymore but most of us still do still play music a lot. Thank you for being so supportive of our music over the years. Please keep in touch with us and we hope to see you some time at a show or festival.”

Molly Tuttle is on tour supporting When You’re Ready — you can check the dates on her site. This is the link to AJ and Sully’s Blue Summit site, and if you’d like to learn more about Jack Tuttle and perhaps want to take some lessons, just click on his name. I’ll close this one out with one of Molly’s signature concert tunes, the Townes Van Zandt cover she’s been doing for years. This video is from the family band’s Freight and Salvage gig in Berkeley in 2014 and it’s a barn burner. Great music from fine folks.

This was originally published 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 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.

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 6

Photo from Custom Rodder website

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

Like a prospector panning for gold, I usually spend an hour each night looking for live performance videos on YouTube that I can share with y’all. Sometimes it leads to a column featuring one artist or just a particular topic, and other times it gets tucked away for a rainy day … a euphemism for not being able to meet a deadline on time. But my time management failure this week is your win, because there are a few things I think you’ll enjoy checking out. Mostly roots music, a few not. Old or new, there’s a musical fortune to be found on the digital lost highway.

Hayes Carll

It’s been a few years since the Texas troubadour’s last album, and now Carll is set to release What It Is on Feb. 15, which is also the first date of his tour. Fiancée Allison Moorer co-produced the 12-song collection with Brad Jones, and she helped co-write a number of the songs. Carll told Rolling Stone Country that “She’s wildly eloquent but sometimes uses her own made-up language. She’s really practical, but will do things like paint the front porch ceiling turquoise because she believes it keeps the evil spirits out. She’s a unicorn and I just try to enjoy her magic and not screw it up.”

The Handsome Family

For over three years the Milwaukee Record has been hosting Public Domain. The music video series features musicians setting up at Colectivo Coffee Roasters to adapt some of the world’s best-known songs in ways never been heard before. “Home on the Range” was originally a poem written by Dr. Brewster Higley in 1872 and put to music by a friend of his named Daniel Kelley. It became popular in 1933 after crooner Bing Crosby released it, and it’s been covered endlessly and taught in schools and camps. Brett and Rennie Sparks do a fine job.

Eva Cassidy

Although I knew her name, I’d never listened to Cassidy or knew much about her other than she had passed away at a very young age from cancer. When I recently was doing research for a column about cover songs, I thought about a Cyndi Lauper song I’ve always loved but thought should have been produced completely differently than the hit single. This is what came up when I poked around. Eva Cassidy’s performance of “Time After Time” took place at the Blues Alley jazz supper club in DC’s Georgetown neighborhood on the Jan. 3, 1996. Ten months later, she passed.

Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper

Back in 1964 a film was released that was financed and produced by Hank Williams’ widow, Audrey. Country Music on Broadway was distributed by Howco International and packed with stars. Filmed in Nashville rather than New York, here’s a clip featuring Wilma Lee and Stoney Cooper, one of West Virginia’s best-known husband-and-wife country music teams. They performed for a decade on radio station WWVA’s Wheeling Jamboree USA, followed by 20 years at the Grand Ole Opry with their band the Clinch Mountain Clan.

Vivian Leva and Riley Calcagno

One of my favorite albums from last year was Vivian Leva‘s Time is Everything. With the exception of two songs, everything was written by her between the ages of 14 to 19. Joined by her music partner Riley Calcagno, a talented multi-instrumentalist, she recruited others to add fiddle, banjo, pedal steel, and percussion. As Calcagno explains it, “We started and ended the session as a duo but it was her vision and material that completely drove the process.” It created enough of a buzz that Leva was named one of Rolling Stone Country’s “10 New Artists You Need to Know” for 2018.

While both Vivian and Rileyare still in college and separated by a couple thousand miles, they spend their time off traveling across the country together and playing dates in living rooms and concert halls as well as old-time and traditional music festivals, workshops, and camps. Leva also accepted an invitation to join The Onlies, a trio from the Pacific Northwest that got together in 2005 when they were only seven years old featuring Calcagno, Sami Braman, and Leo Shannon.

“We met Vivian at Voice Works, a great camp in Port Townsend Washington, and hit it off, playing late into the night a couple nights in a row,” says Calcagno. “We started playing with her more and more, and she really has brought something special and fresh to the group.” Although scattered around the country for now, they’re working on plans for the summer. In the meantime, here’s another from Leva’s album.

Molly Tuttle

After last year’s debut EP Rise, Molly Tuttle took home a bucketful of awards. Her song “You Didn’t Call My Name” was Folk Alliance International’s Song of the Year, took home the Americana Music Award for Instrumentalist of the Year, and was the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year. She’s one of the brightest stars on the “this ain’t your grandfather’s bluegrass” scene today and will be releasing her first album, When You’re Ready, in April. Before she took off from her home in California to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and then Nashville, where she currently lives, she played in her family’s band, The Tuttles, featuring AJ Lee. Here’s an instrumental from 2010 showing off the talents of all three Tuttle kids, and I believe Molly is only 17.

So You Wanna Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star?

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

AJ Lee: A Flower Blooms in the California Bluegrass

Photo by Snap Jackson

When I reached out to Betsy Riger-Lee and asked her to give me a rough idea of how many views her daughter AJ Lee has had on YouTube, she came back to me in three hours and wrote: “As of this moment, it’s 3,358,333.” That right there tells you she’s one proud mama. It’s a simple fact that there are many musicians who have been working on the road and putting out albums for decades who have yet to hit that particular milestone, so a few months ago when I came across this young woman from Northern California singing the Gram Parson classic “Hickory Wind” with The Tuttles, a family of stellar musicians, I took notice.

That clip, which accounts for about ten percent of that huge number mentioned above, was uploaded six years ago, when AJ was only 13. She gives credit to Jack Tuttle, who wisely invited her to join up with him and his kids in their band, for introducing her to that song and many others. And when they uploaded that song, AJ had already been performing in front of audiences for nine years. Not a misprint.

“The initial event to my introduction to bluegrass happened one night at an open mic at a pizzeria. I was 4 years old, my mom held me up to the mic, and I sang the song ‘Angel Band.’ There was a man named Frank Solivan in the audience who happened to be the director of a program called Kids On Bluegrass for the California Bluegrass Association (CBA). I stuck with the program every year for several years after that. That’s also how I got into other bluegrass events — through the CBA. Throughout this whole process, I was never forced to play music, but always encouraged and inspired. It helped immensely being around kids my own age, and to this day I am great friends with a lot of the kids who came out of the CBA kids programs. Having a sense of community and belonging through music is something greater than anything I could have asked for.”

Want to know what this 9-year-old girl sounded like onstage in Nashville back in 2007?

I’m going to let mom tell this part of AJ’s story:

“AJ was invited to be part of the first Kids on Bluegrass Fanfest in Nashville, where International Bluegrass Music Association’s ‘World of Bluegrass’ was taking place annually at that time. It was a pilot program that originally began in California, that has now become the standard for talented bluegrass children to meet up each year. AJ shared that stage with Molly Cherryholmes, Sarah Jarosz, Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, Angelica Grim Doerfel, and a host of many other gifted young female artists. She did that for several more years, and during that run, she was asked to be part of the revision of the ‘Discover Bluegrass’ video that the IBMA created for educational purposes, their intent being to spread the word of this genre of music.”

Author’s prerogative and detour: When Angelica Grim married TJ Doerfel in June of 2008, AJ and Betsy sang a duet of this Richard Thompson song y’all probably know at the wedding. It’s just basically a home video, but one that’s been watched watched over 65,000 times. And while I’m not exactly sure why, I keep coming back to this one over and over. Here’s a secret … somewhere about two minutes into it I can’t keep from crying.

AJ grew up in Tracy, an agricultural town that is being suburbanized as the Bay Area population looks for affordable housing in an area with a “Mediterranean climate.” AJ describes herself as preferring the rural lifestyle: “I grew up with horses, chickens, dogs, cats, rats, opossums, lizards, birds, snakes, frogs, quails, sheep … and a turkey. I’ve taken many trips to cities, but the country is where my heart will always stay.”

The family enjoyed the camping lifestyle, especially around the regional bluegrass festivals. It seems that it was the Riger side of the family from whose tree the music fell: AJ’s siblings and other relatives are accomplished players of various degrees and styles. Betsy is an excellent singer, guitarist, and dancer, and taught AJ how to find pitch and use basic techniques for singing. Rodney Lee doesn’t share in this talent pool … or, as AJ puts it: ‘My dad is NOT musical… haha. I’ve been trying to teach him how to play one song on the mandolin for years. I’m sure when pigs fly, my dad will learn how to play ‘Angelina Baker.’”

In 2011, when she was 13, Mother Jones published an interview with AJ titled “Could This Kid Be The Next Alison Krauss?” In addition to the mandolin as her main instrument, AJ plays fiddle, guitar, ukulele, and banjo, and her incredible vocals have earned her the Female Vocalist award for six years from the Northern California Bluegrass Society (NCBS). As the years rolled by she attended a number of music camps through the CBA and NCBS — “great organizations that are very supportive regarding kids and music,’…” she says — and she was playing in a number of band configurations, including The Tuttles with AJ Lee.

In the world of California bluegrass, Jack Tuttle is a legend. For over 30 years he’s taught fiddle, mandolin, banjo, and guitar, developed a solid curriculum, written a dozen instruction books, and put a band together with his daughter Molly and sons Sully and Michael. AJ joined the group in 2008, when she was about 10, and they released their first album two years later. I should note that Molly is making a lot of noise down in Nashville now, where she settled after attending Berklee College of Music, having won the first Hazel Dickens Memorial Scholarship from the Foundation For Bluegrass Music.

By the time AJ was 16, which is when the above clip was shot, you can see how she had developed not only strong musical skillsets, but was poised and polished onstage. She also began writing her own music and released her first EP, titled A Song for Noah, and was invited into the studio for The Prava Sessions, a series where “there are no overdubs, there is no Auto-Tune, the sounds aren’t pitch or time corrected with a computer. It’s all real, it’s all live and it only happens once.” As you’ll see, she began to drift away from the traditional bluegrass format.

The past couple of years, AJ has been playing locally throughout the Bay Area, and since graduating high school she’s taken some college classes, and is “off and running, away from home, working in the real world of service and people, busking and gigging to help pay rent, as honest and real living goes,” according to Betsy. “If she can handle all that life throws at her, she will probably stay the course with music as a career.”

AJ speaks about following the route Molly Tuttle is taking down in Nashville, but with the logic and reasoning of someone much older than their years, she’s quick to add that “those thoughts are still developing and I’m still trying to figure out what the best path for me to take is. At least in this time in my life.”

That’s AJ’s latest band, Blue Summit, with Molly joining in on banjo. The lineup includes Sam Kemiji on fiddle, Jesse Fichman and Sully Tuttle on guitar, and Isaac Cornelius on the standup bass. I’ve been told that AJ has helped engineer some tracks and is in the process of having it mixed and mastered.

Which brings me to the recently released self-titled EP, where AJ plays her smokin’ mandolin and a 1954 Martin acoustic guitar, handed down through the years from the Riger family, and she does covers from Gillian Welch, Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Herb Pedersen, and another updated version of “Hickory Wind.” This is the second time around with producer Jon Abrams, and the Shady Mountain Band features the pedal steel of Dave Zirbel (Phil Lesh, Dave Alvin), Hammond organ from Marc Doten (Stew, Shelby Lynne), and the Telecaster and drums of the cosmic country brothers Paul and Anthony Lacques (I See Hawks in L.A.). Here’s a sampler, and you’ll find the complete set on her own site, Spotify, and Apple Music.

There’s a reason I’ve become fascinated with AJ’s musical journey, especially at this particular time in America. She grew up with the opportunity to learn and play music in the world of bluegrass, one that has always worked hard to pass the baton down from generation to generation. In this particular political climate we have a new administration that doesn’t seem to give a damn not only about music, but any of the arts. Last April in an open letter to Donald Trump and Congress, the IBMA spoke directly to that point:

“The United States of America cannot afford to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (“NEA”) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (“NEH”). These two government agencies carry out three highly beneficial missions across our country: preserving and promoting the arts, educating and inspiring children, and expanding commerce through the grants provided by these public endowments.

An important principle of our nation has been to protect and promote our rich artistic and cultural heritage. Bluegrass music, as a core genre of American roots music, was created on American soil as an extension of our country’s working class communities. It is this cultural history, along with exceptional musicianship, that makes this music loved throughout our country today. This is not simply entertainment; it is a vital part of our nation’s identity.”

Amen.

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

Americana and Roots Music Videos: RPM 1

Pixabay License

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

It’s that time of the season again. Baseball and flowers blooming, fresh cut lawns and morning dew, new albums being released and music festival travel plans being made. Here in the beautiful Lower Hudson Valley it’s an eighty degree day and instead of cruising along the highway taking in the sights and new sounds, I’ve been struggling all day with a C-G-D-G-B-E tuning and a capo at the third fret while teaching myself some Hawaiian slack key. Somehow though it’s morphed into Richard Thompson’s ‘1952 Vincent Black Lightening’. So it’s time to take a break and share some new music that’s caught my fancy. I try to keep each song under three minutes….fat chance of that today.

Willie Nelson: An album of all-new recordings, God’s Problem Child adds 13 new songs to the artist’s repertoire, including seven recently written by Willie and Buddy Cannon, his longtime collaborator and producer. The album is Willie’s first to debut all-new songs since Band of Brothers in 2014. “He Won’t Ever Be Gone’ is a tribute to Merle Haggard.

Bonnie Prince Billy AKA Will Oldham: A longtime fan of the “Okie From Muskogee” Hall of Famer. Best Troubadour is the culmination of that decades-long love affair with Haggard’s music, featuring 16 tracks from various stages of Haggard’s lengthy career. Oldham recorded the songs in his home with the Bonafide United Musicians. (Rolling Stone Country)

Molly Tuttle: She’s going to be huge. Originally from the Northern California bluegrass scene and playing in The Tuttle Family with AJ Lee band, she graduated Berklee College of Music and moved herself down to Nashville. With a beautiful voice and her lightning speed flat picking style, she can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant hill. And she’s all over the place….touring with The Goodbye Girls, doing a duet with Front Country’s Melody Walker and getting ready for her own release in June. Here’s ‘Bigger Than This’….Molly on the left, Melody on the right…a great song from two outstanding talents.

Amelia Curran: A total shift of gears. One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Watershed is her eighth album in the past 17 years. An album with a specific theme, it ‘variously addresses her frustration with the established operating model of the music industry, with the systemic disadvantage at which that “intimidating and icky” model still places female artists and, by extension, with what the persistent sexism inherent in that model says about 21st-century human society’s treatment of women in general. Further simmering discontent arises from the added frustration Curran has come over the past few years since taking on the role of an activist fighting for better institutional treatment of and better attitudes towards the many fellow Newfoundlanders (and Canadians at large) living with mental illness.’ (thestar.com)

Aimee Mann: There is a thread to Curran’s themes, as Mann is ‘rightfully pissed that she’s nevertheless pigeonholed as a dreary fabricator of slow, sad-sack songs. So she’s answered her critics with her slowest, sad-sack-iest album yet, one populated by ordinary people struggling against operatic levels of existential pain at odds with their humdrum lives. Mental Illness is accordingly made of skeletal strings, coolly regulated commentary, and minimal drums. Juxtaposing elegant chamber folk against the discord of lives out of balance, it’s musically more delicate than even her soft rock models. (Pitchfork)

Peter Bradley Adams: I’m sure he hates it when people like me note in their first sentence that he was one-half of one of my favorite one-album duos, Eastmountainsouth, back in 2003. But I still listen to that album and I’ve been following him ever since, especially enjoying some recent collaboration with Caitlan Canty on a project called Down Like Silver. ‘On my previous albums, I had more of an array of players on the record and this one is kind of more my core group of people that I’ve been playing with and touring with. It’s a little bit more contained, which I think is a good thing. I’m always writing songs so there are a lot that get tossed aside and… these are the ones that I thought needed to be on it.’ (Fairfax Times)

Pieta Brown: I’ve spent years listening to and writing about Iowa City-based Pieta Brown. ‘Postcards features a number of Brown’s musical friends, including Calexico, Bon Iver, Mark Knopfler and the Pines. She compiled the album by writing simple acoustic demos of what would become the album’s songs, sending them to the musicians that make up Postcards‘ roster of guests, and having those artists finish the tracks. Brown and her collaborators never worked in the same room, which lent the album its distance-implying title.’ (American Songwriter)

Marty Stuart: I’ll admit not to loving every single track on this new album of his that’s just getting a ton of press. Marty has been around so long and has done so many amazing performances that it’s hard for me to buy into the hype. Nevertheless, this video from the Colbert show shows that he and his band rocks damn hard and I like it. Eighteenth studio album….Way Out West.

Well that’s all she wrote….I’ll leave you humming along to Koko the Clown’s version of ‘St. James Infirmary Blues’ and we’ll see you next season for more of my Picks to Click.

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