The String

Mac Gayden was a Nashville native, with family roots that go back to the founding of the city. But his upper crust upbringing was no hindrance to his passion for African American music as a teenager. He snuck into R&B clubs on Jefferson Street in the 1950s and soaked up the late night sounds on WLAC radio. When he started working in studios and writing songs, he found himself comfortably and happily in the overlapping zone between soul, blues, country and R&B. Besides writing Everlasting Love with his colleague Buzz Cason, a song taken to the top ten by Robert Knight, Gayden wrote one of the signature songs of Nashville’s Night Train era. He plays guitar on it too. The Clifford Curry hit “She Shot A Hole In My Soul”

Other accomplishments: Gayden came up with a combination of wah wah pedal and slide guitar for a J.J. Cale record that became a famous technique. And he was a founding member of Area Code 615 and Barefoot Jerry, supergroups that let Music City’s best studio pickers stretch out and tell the story of the real Nashville in the late 60s and early 70s.

My radio colleague Gina Frary Bacon arranged a sit down with Gayden to talk about his musical life and philosophy then and now.

Danny Barnes became a major player in the evolution of alternative country music when his acoustic trio the Bad Livers broke out of Austin Texas. Danny, Mark Rubin and Ralph White wielded tuba, accordion, fiddle, upright bass and banjo in ways that might have been considered scandalous had they not been so creative, witty and cathartic. They toured with big punk bands and wrote smart, quirky songs. They were able to twist roots and bluegrass music so far by knowing and loving the genres so well. There was never a band like them before or since.

After that chapter closed in about 2000, Danny Barnes pursued projects as wide ranging as his taste, always nipping the avant garde, finding a role in American music somewhere between John Hartford and Frank Zappa. He developed the esthetic he calls barnyard electronics, which he says combines various bits of bluegrass, noise, rock, and electronic music. Live, he often performs solo with computer effects and looping equipment. But this year, Barnes took the completely opposite tack when he made and released the first straight ahead, no-frills bluegrass record of his career, Stove Up.

Also, the story of The Jimmy Nalls Project.

Danny Barnes became a major player in the evolution of alternative country music when his acoustic trio the Bad Livers broke out of Austin Texas. Danny, Mark Rubin and Ralph White wielded tuba, accordion, fiddle, upright bass and banjo in ways that might have been considered scandalous had they not been so creative, witty and cathartic. They toured with big punk bands and wrote smart, quirky songs. They were able to twist roots and bluegrass music so far by knowing and loving the genres so well. There was never a band like them before or since.

After that chapter closed in about 2000, Danny Barnes pursued projects as wide ranging as his taste, always nipping the avant garde, finding a role in American music somewhere between John Hartford and Frank Zappa. He developed the esthetic he calls barnyard electronics, which he says combines various bits of bluegrass, noise, rock, and electronic music. Live, he often performs solo with computer effects and looping equipment. But this year, Barnes took the completely opposite tack when he made and released the first straight ahead, no-frills bluegrass record of his career, Stove Up.

Also, the story of The Jimmy Nalls Project.

It might be the most frustrating thing about Nashville. Periodically, a guy will emerge who’s obviously on par with the great country icons. This guy will write, sing and play guitar as if ordained. Everyone in town testify to his gifts. But this guy will spend years getting better instead of bigger. He will tend to his art while the industry struggles to find a box for him. He will be seen by some as too country for country radio and too country radio for Americana. I’m not alone in seeing that guy in the remarkable Charlie Worsham. The Mississippi reared guitar slinger, songwriter and singer has just released his second album, with high hopes and stratospheric industry respect.

It might be the most frustrating thing about Nashville. Periodically, a guy will emerge who’s obviously on par with the great country icons. This guy will write, sing and play guitar as if ordained. Everyone in town testify to his gifts. But this guy will spend years getting better instead of bigger. He will tend to his art while the industry struggles to find a box for him. He will be seen by some as too country for country radio and too country radio for Americana. I’m not alone in seeing that guy in the remarkable Charlie Worsham. The Mississippi reared guitar slinger, songwriter and singer has just released his second album, with high hopes and stratospheric industry respect.

In episode 26 we went deep on the banjo. I asked three leading contemporary players how they’d fallen for their instrument and what they thought about the state of the banjo in 2017. There is a LOT we did not and could not cover, including the African American origins of the banjo and its multi century journey through many genres of music. But there are great resources out there on that subject including the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby NC and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma city. We were talking largely about bluegrass and its modern manifestations. And so I was intent on sitting down with Noam Pikelny, banjo player for the Punch Brothers and recipient of the first Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in banjo and bluegrass in 2010. That conversation was fantastic and it went on way too long to fit into the hour long episode. So here’s the rest of the interview. We talk about the development of the Punch Brothers project and the influence of that band’s instigator, mandolinist and musical master Chris Thile. We also get into a much deeper conversation about Noam’s new album Universal Favorite, featuring solo banjo instrumentals.

In episode 26 we went deep on the banjo. I asked three leading contemporary players how they’d fallen for their instrument and what they thought about the state of the banjo in 2017. There is a LOT we did not and could not cover, including the African American origins of the banjo and its multi century journey through many genres of music. But there are great resources out there on that subject including the Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby NC and the American Banjo Museum in Oklahoma city. We were talking largely about bluegrass and its modern manifestations. And so I was intent on sitting down with Noam Pikelny, banjo player for the Punch Brothers and recipient of the first Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in banjo and bluegrass in 2010. That conversation was fantastic and it went on way too long to fit into the hour long episode. So here’s the rest of the interview. We talk about the development of the Punch Brothers project and the influence of that band’s instigator, mandolinist and musical master Chris Thile. We also get into a much deeper conversation about Noam’s new album Universal Favorite, featuring solo banjo instrumentals.

In one of the early sequences of the celebrated new grateful dead documentary Long Strange Trip from Amazon studios, much is made of Jerry Garcia’s first real girlfriend. She’s feisty and adorable and ablaze with love for art and the bohemian life. She’s planning to make a life with Jerry until! He picks up the banjo and starts practicing hours a day. And she leaves him.

Man I wish Jerry could see the roots music scene today. Banjo has been, to use a term that’s ubiquitous now in politics, normalized. It's’ still essential to bluegrass and its progressive manifestations of course, but it’s also reconnected to its folky traditions, strummed lustily if simplistically in the music of Mumford and Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show. And in recent years, the banjo wended its way back into pop country and into indie rock as a texture on records by Modest Mouse, Sufjan Stephens and others.

The most visible and in-demand banjo player of this decade is and has been Noam Pikelny of the band Punch Brothers. The Chicago area native discovered the instrument and bluegrass culture before he was ten years old. In 2010, he became the inaugural recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass.

In this hour Craig talks banjo with Pikelny as well as leading players Ned Luberecki and Kristin Scott Benson. 

In one of the early sequences of the celebrated new grateful dead documentary Long Strange Trip from Amazon studios, much is made of Jerry Garcia’s first real girlfriend. She’s feisty and adorable and ablaze with love for art and the bohemian life. She’s planning to make a life with Jerry until! He picks up the banjo and starts practicing hours a day. And she leaves him.

Man I wish Jerry could see the roots music scene today. Banjo has been, to use a term that’s ubiquitous now in politics, normalized. It's’ still essential to bluegrass and its progressive manifestations of course, but it’s also reconnected to its folky traditions, strummed lustily if simplistically in the music of Mumford and Sons and Old Crow Medicine Show. And in recent years, the banjo wended its way back into pop country and into indie rock as a texture on records by Modest Mouse, Sufjan Stephens and others.

The most visible and in-demand banjo player of this decade is and has been Noam Pikelny of the band Punch Brothers. The Chicago area native discovered the instrument and bluegrass culture before he was ten years old. In 2010, he became the inaugural recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass.

In this hour Craig talks banjo with Pikelny as well as leading players Ned Luberecki and Kristin Scott Benson. 

Around 1970, a teenaged Tommy Emmanuel of New South Wales Australia wrote a fan letter to his guitar playing idol 10,000 miles away in Nashville. And Chet Atkins wrote him back with encouraging words. A couple of decades later, Tommy was performing and recording with Atkins, who recognized him with the honorary title of Certified Guitar Player. 

Tommy is an extraordinary fingerstyle guitarist, that’s for sure. In that he’s not alone, though he is clearly among the top in the world. What he has going for him that sets him apart is his gifts as an entertainer and communicator. And so this explains how a kid from Australia could climb a long international ladder of success, culminating in one of the most prestigious live gigs in the world. It’s documented on the new CD, Live at the Ryman. 

We’ll talk about this gorgeous recording in the hour ahead, but also about Chet Atkins and Doc Watson and the unique challenges of making hall filling magic with six strings and a few fingers.

Also, how two new bluegrass museums are aiming to transform the experience of bluegrass pilgrims to Owensboro and Rosine, KY.