By Matt Brown
The podcast currently has 16 episodes available.
In this episode, Matt interviews GRAMMY-award winning fiddler Jason Carter (The Del McCoury Band, The Travelin' McCourys) about his recent solo album Lowdown Hoedown. Jason sings lead on the record, plays brilliant fiddle parts, and is joined by an all-star cast that includes Tim O'Brien, Sarah Jarosz, Billy Strings, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush, Dierks Bentley, Aoife O’Donovan, Marty Stuart, and many more.
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Many regard Olov Johannson as Sweden's greatest craftsman on the nyckelharpa. With his brilliant solo playing and as a member of the group Väsen, he has been largely responsible for the explosion of nyckelharpa playing that has been witnessed recently in Sweden.
Olov grew up in Tärnsjö in northern Uppland and began to play the nyckelharpa at age 14. About a year later he began to study with Curt Tallroth, a well-known bearer of the tradition from Harbo. Through Curt, Olov has learned tunes that have been played in northern Uppland for centuries, passed on from musician to musician. Olov has also played with Eric Sahlström, the most prominent nyckelharpa player of the 20th century.
Since 1989, Olov has worked exclusively as a musician, principally with Väsen. But he also plays with Anders Bromander, Nyckelharpsorkestern, Björn Ståbi, Mats Berglund, Kalle Almlöf and as a solo artist. The popularity of the folk-rock group Nordman has brought the sound of Olov's harpa to the ears of more than one million record buyers. In 1997 he was honored to be the first Swedish folk musician to work with the world renowned American ensemble, the Kronos Quartet. Olov has toured in the U.S.A., Canada, India, Libya, Slovenia, France, Ireland, Scotland, Luxembourg, Italy, Japan and elsewhere.
Olov works actively to pass on his musical inheritance, and has become a role model for many young nyckelharpa players. He gives instruction both at The Eric Sahlström-Institute and through the Royal Music College in Stockholm.
Olov has received many awards and scholarships for his achievements as a musician. In 1984 he was selected as a National Musician, in 1989 he was awarded the Viksta-Lasse Scholarship, and in 1990 he was chosen as World's Master of both the modern and older type of nyckelharpa. In 1992 he received the Ceylon Wallin Scholarship and in 1995 the Vuxenskolan's Artist Stipendium. 2013 he received the Zorn Medal in gold, possibly the finest reward a traditional musician can get in Sweden.
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Joey Ryan is best known as the taller member of The Milk Carton Kids. The group has been nominated for three GRAMMY Awards: Best Folk Album in 2013 (The Ash & Clay); Best American Roots Performance in 2015 (“The City of Our Lady”); and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, in 2018 (All the Things That I Did and All the Things That I Didn’t Do). In this episode, Matt talks to Joey about what touring feels like after 2 years of Covid-19, the band's Sad Songs Summer Camp, and what to do about the obligatory encore. They also reminisce about the time Matt gave Joey banjo lessons so he could accompany Robert Plant on tour.
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Bronwyn Keith-Hynes is an acclaimed bluegrass fiddler originally from Charlottesville, VA who now makes her home in Nashville, TN. She currently divides her time between touring with Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway and being a session musician in Nashville. In 2021 Bronwyn won the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Fiddler Player of the Year Award. She is a graduate of Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. During her time in Boston she co-founded and toured all over the world with progressive bluegrass band Mile Twelve and won the IBMA New Artist of the Year with them in 2020. Bronwyn has performed and recorded with Molly Tuttle, The Milk Carton Kids, Dailey and Vincent, Sierra Hull, Sarah Jarosz, Tim O’Brien, Chris Eldridge, Peter Rowan, Darol Anger, Tony Trischka, Michael Daves, Vince Herman and more. In this episode, she talks to host Matt Brown about her debut solo album Fiddler's Pastime, those years with Mile Twelve, and her path to bluegrass.
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Jake Schepps is an uncommon banjoist & composer creating music for the traditional American string band that is anything but traditional. In this episode, he speaks with host Matt Brown in his capacity as director of the Banjo Summit, a progressive 3-finger banjo workshop for intermediate, advanced, and professional musicians. The next Banjo Summit will be held February 11-13, 2022 on Zoom. It features an extraordinary cast of banjoists including Kristin Scott Benson, Noam Pikelny, Bill Evans, Wes Corbett, and Jayme Stone. Jake also describes his recent online camp featuring the band Hawktail, and forthcoming banjo transcription books he will publish featuring the original music of Béla Fleck, Wes Corbett, Adam Larrabee, and Max Allard. Jake has taught at NimbleFingers, Berklee College of Music, Steve Kaufman Acoustic Kamp, British Columbia Bluegrass Workshop, University of Northern Colorado, and produced an instructional DVD entitled Modern Banjo Ideas & Techniques.
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Visual artist Gregory Block was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1986 and moved to Colorado at an early age. During his childhood, he attended a Waldorf school where he discovered a love of painting, sculpture, music, and the natural world. He continued to develop his skills as an artist and musician throughout high school, and painted whenever he could while earning his BA in biology at Colorado College. As a student, he made a conscious decision not to take any painting courses or adopt a mentor, opting instead to learn through experimentation and close scrutiny of paintings by artists he admired. After graduating in 2009, he devoted his studies to painting and has since gained recognition as “one of the most promising young artists in the representational art world” (Fine Art Today). He lives in Denver, Colorado.
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Juilliard grad Natalie Haas is one of the most sought after cellists in traditional music today. She and Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser have toured as a duo for twenty years, wowing audiences at festivals and concerts worldwide with their unique sound. In this episode, Matt asks her about a number of their albums, including the latest, Syzygy. Natalie has also toured with Mark O'Connor as a member of his Appalachia Waltz Trio. As a studio musician, Natalie has been a guest artist on over 50 albums, including those of Cape Breton fiddler Natalie MacMaster, Irish greats Altan, Solas, and Liz Carroll, and Americana icon Dirk Powell. She is an associate professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, and an instructor at music camps all around the globe.
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Deemed a "banjo virtuoso" by the Washington Post, Adam Hurt has fused several traditional old-time idioms to create his own elegantly innovative clawhammer banjo sound. A highly respected performer and teacher of traditional music, Adam has played at the Kennedy Center, conducted banjo and fiddle workshops around the world, and been featured on the cover of Banjo Newsletter. In this episode, Adam talks about how his celebrated banjo approach references the Round Peak style, the difference between tempo and drive, and several of his albums: Insight, Earth Tones, Inside Out, and Back to the Earth. The latter album, his most recent, includes collaborations with Ricky Skaggs, Brittany Haas, and Paul Kowert. Patreon supporters of this show have exclusive access to a video in which Adam shows off an assortment of beautiful antique banjos. Pledge your support at $2/month to become a Relax Your Grid Superfan and gain access to every episode's bonus content.
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Max Allard is a banjoist, guitarist, pianist, and composer from Chicago. He has performed in a duo with his brother Otto and with a trio (From the Start) featuring Ruben Whitaker and Otto Allard. Max recently toured with the Minneapolis-based progressive bluegrass band Barbaro. He was the winner of the 2018 RockyGrass Banjo Competition and the 2019 FreshGrass Banjo Award. He was also selected to participate in the 2020 Acoustic Music Seminar in Savannah. He is now a freshman composition student at Oberlin Conservatory. Max spoke to host Matt Brown in August 2021 about his forthcoming solo album Odes/Codes, which was produced by Jayme Stone.
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Bruce Molsky is one of the most revered “multi-hyphenated career” ambassadors for America’s old-time mountain music. For decades, he’s been a globetrotting performer and educator, a recording artist with an expansive discography including seven solo albums, well over a dozen collaborations and two Grammy-nominations. He’s also the classic “musician’s musician” – a man who’s received high praise from diverse fans and collaborators like Linda Ronstadt, Mark Knopfler, Celtic giants Donal Lunny and Andy Irvine, jazzer Bill Frisell and dobro master Jerry Douglas, a true country gentleman by way of the Big Apple aptly dubbed “the Rembrandt of Appalachian fiddlers” by virtuoso violinist and sometimes bandmate Darol Anger. Matt reminisces about studying fiddle with Bruce, and they cover a wide variety of topics including Bruce's highly-anticipated guitar album, his responsibilities as an educator, and why he likes collecting fountain pens.
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The podcast currently has 16 episodes available.