Amelia White didn’t set out to write an album that honored her mentor, much-loved musician Duane Jarvis, perhaps best known for co writing “Still I Long For Your Kiss” with Lucinda Williams.

Yet when fifty-one-year-old Jarvis died of cancer in 2009, White felt her songwriting muse take over.

“I think it just comes naturally to me,” said White of the songwriting. “A lot of people learn to write because they sing and play; I learned to sing and play because I write.”

Although the songs on Beautiful and Wild, White’s recently released fifth studio album, are beautifully written, there’s no denying that she and the players on the album—including John Jackson (Dylan, Shelby Lynn), Frank Swart (Patty Griffin) and Tim Carroll (Elizabeth Cook)—are first rate.

Continue reading ‘Your Country’s Right Here: Amelia White Creates “Beautiful and Wild” Musical Tribute’

Steep Canyon Rangers have always been a much-loved bluegrass band, but this past year has taken it to new heights.

The band’s 2011 album with Steve Martin Rare Bird Alert went to No. 1 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Chart and won a GRAMMY Award nomination. The band’s 2010 album Deep in the Shade stayed in Billboard’s Top 10 Bluegrass chart for eighteen weeks. Headlining gigs at MerleFest, Bonaroo and other high profile events have followed.

Now the band is set to join with Martin again when it co-headlines DelFest, named for founder and bluegrass legend Del McCoury, the annual bluegrass extravaganza on Memorial Day Weekend in Cumberland, Maryland.

Although other events with Martin will follow, the band’s main focus this year is touring behind its just-released album Nobody Knows You.

Steep Canyon Rangers guitarist and lead vocalist Woody Platt took time out of his jam-packed schedule to talk to OurStage about the past year and just where Steep Canyon Rangers is headed in the near future.

OS: It had to be great working with Steve Martin and playing all the high profile events you’ve done in the past year or so. How did you work in a new record, too?

WP: We had great success with Steve and we wanted to follow that up with a solo record from us. The exposure we got through Steve was great but we also want to work on just our own music. When we’re traveling, we are usually out ten to twelve days in a row and sound check isn’t until about 4:30 so we had some time [to write, demo and otherwise develop the album]. We worked very hard on it last year. Charles [R. Humphrey III, the bassist) and Graham [Sharp, the banjo player] are very, very serious about songwriting and very good at it, so they worked on [the new songs] all the time.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Steep Canyon Rangers’ Woody Platt Talks Steve Martin, DelFest, and Just Where Bluegrass is Headed’

Even months after Amy Ray released her latest solo project Lung of Love, it is difficult to listen to it and not hear nuances that weren’t apparent earlier.

Like some of the best movies that need repeated viewings before you begin to grasp the full intent of the filmmakers, Lung of Love is filled with such subtle variegation that repeated listening is a joy. Perhaps some of that variation can be credited to Ray, half of the internationally renowned GRAMMY Award-winning folk duo the Indigo Girls, taking inspiration for the array of artists she enjoys.

“I love all the different kinds of music,” said Ray. “I listen [to] Josh Ritter and Patti Smith and a lot of funky stuff. I always go back to that for inspiration. There is so much good stuff, it’s hard to name it all.”

The same, of course, can be said for Ray’s music both in her Indigo Girls’ partnership with Emily Saliers and as a solo artist. On this album, Ray stepped out of her comfort zone—she and Saliers write alone for the Indigo Girls—and co-wrote four songs on this album with producer Greg Griffith.

Continue reading ‘Your Country’s Right Here: “Lung of Love” Tour is Amy Ray’s Labor of Love’

The South Memphis String Band is one of those musical happy accidents that give roots music fans a taste of real old-time music.

It all started when long-time friends Luther Dickinson (lead guitarist of the Black Crowes and front man/lead guitarist of the North Mississippi Allstars), GRAMMY Award-winning blues/rock musician Alvin Youngblood Hart and critically-acclaimed musician Jimbo Mathus (of the Squirrel Nut Zippers) joined together musically. The trio had played together in various incarnations through the years but it wasn’t until they truly bonded over the music of their joint homeland, informally dubbed the Hill Country of Mississippi, that the South Memphis String Band was born.

“It was electric,” said Dickinson of the trio’s combined music for South Memphis String Band, which combines traditional string numbers with original songs primarily written by Mathus. “It just came together right away. That’s something that doesn’t happen very much.”

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Luther Dickinson Leads South Memphis String Band on a Musical Tour of the Old South’

It seems safe to accept it as a given that Cathy Fink and her musical partner Marcy Marxer didn’t win GRAMMY Awards because they played it safe. Their latest album takes the same non-traditional path with songs that owe more to Pete Seeger than Pete Townsend as played on the once lowly uke.

“In the old days, people used to laugh at us because we played for kids,” said Fink recently about the duo’s untraditional musical path that led to the recent release of the thirteen-track recording Rockin’ the Uke. “Now they are trying to play for kids. And we have been sprinkling uke cuts [throughout our albums and shows] for years.”

More like decades, to be exact. Fink carved out her initial musical niche in her hometown of Baltimore during the height of the folk revival before moving on to Montreal and beyond. Multi-instrumentalist Marxer has played folk, Celtic fingerpicking, bluegrass, old time and swing for years as a studio musician, performer and producer. Perhaps it was something akin to destiny that these two virtuosos would work their way to the uke.

Continue reading ‘Your Country’s Right Here: Cathy and Marcy Uke It Up’

GRAMMY Award winner Marty Stuart has been way off the radar as of late. We haven’t seen him at award shows. He isn’t on late night TV. And we don’t see him playing the big country musical festivals. Just last week, Stuart released his new, ten-song album Nashville, Volume 1: Tear The Woodpile Down that is some of the most traditional country music released by a major artist arguably in years. The music is a pure joy with plenty of steel guitar, fiddles and harmonies. But just why has this member of Nashville royalty, who has played with everyone from Lester Flatt to Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard, purposely taken himself out of the eye of the mainstream public? Stuart took some time out of his busy schedule to tell us just that.

OS: Your last album, Ghost Train, was so well received. What was the plan with this album Tearing Down the Woodpile.

MS: Just carry on because Ghost Train was part of a lineage. This whole traditional country music trajectory that I seem to be on right now, it’s where my heart led me. It was a long time coming. When I started [my current band] the Superlatives about eleven years ago now I knew it was the band of lifetime. We found ourselves in the role of cultural missionaries.

Other than the Grand Ol’ Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, we were kind of not part of the system of trying to chase hits or awards or [appear on] red carpets.

In the beginning we were simply looking for a place to play. My only request of our booking agent was to book us as far back in the woods of America as you can. I don’t want to mess with charts. I don’t want to see demographics. I don’t want to see numbers. I just want to play music. We will play ourselves right back to the light or as Merle Haggard said we have found ourselves right square in the middle of the forgotten land.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Marty Stuart Talks New Album, “Forgotten” People, and Johnny Cash’

Watching Nathan and Jonathan McEuen open a recent show for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was something close to a religious experience for many fans of the iconic roots band.

The brothers are sons of the highly-lauded “String Master” and Dirt Band co-founder John McEuen (and nephews of its other co-founder Jeff Hanna) so their talent is almost a given. What was moving, though wasn’t their musical [and extensive] musical skills but the emotion they brought to the songs, many of which were reminiscent of the sound that brought the Dirt Band to international fame – and has kept it there – for more than 45 years.

As all fans know, the Dirt Band made its name and then some with a host of brilliant albums including the 1972 release “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” that includes collaborations with such country greats as Hank Williams and Roy Acuff.

What’s perhaps most refreshing is that while the band pays due diligence to its heritage, it also looks to advance it with everything from new studio albums to fresh arrangements on classic songs.

That’s why its history includes collaborations not just with country luminaries such as Mother Maybelle Carter but rockers including Aerosmith.

Continue reading ‘Your Country’s Right Here: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Rolls On’

Darryl Worley fans are in for a red-hot summer.

Worley’s first album in two years, One Time Around, is slated for June release, the same month he’ll host the three-day BamaJam music extravaganza, and that’s just for starters.

The man behind more than twenty charted hit singles including “A Good Day to Run,” “I Miss My Friend,” “Have you Forgotten” and more took some time from his busy schedule to talk to OurStage about his latest single, his new album and more.

OS: We’ve missed you! Where have you been?

DW: I took a little time off. I have still been touring but I put the whole routine of grinding out one album after another on hold for a while. I have a little four-year-old daughter and I needed to eliminate something from my busy schedule to be a better dad. We toured pretty heavily last year and had a good year, but we’ve been off the radio for almost two years now. I got back in the mood to work on music. I made my own record on my own dime. I had no problem putting a deal together…with complete funding from outside sources.

We have a real determined team of people together that are excited to make this thing work and we’re having a blast working it. Watching it start to grow is a hoot. It’s your baby and people out there are very receptive.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: Darryl Worley Gears up for ‘One Time Around’’

Chuck Prophet didn’t set out to pay homage to San Francisco.

When he first started writing for his latest album, his style was more in the flavor of Leonard Cohen. That changed as he kept writing and discovered he had the makings of an album about the City on the Bay.

“When [my co-writer, San Francisco-based poet klipschutz and I] realized that, we got excited and started talking about [baseball great] Willie May, the Dead Kennedy’s and all the things about San Francisco and how they overlap,” he said of the songs that filled his latest album Temple Beautiful. “The excitement for me kept growing. Growing up in Orange County [California] and coming here was fun because I hadn’t been exposed to much of the culture.”

Those positive vibes are shared by fans of both Prophet and the city as evidenced by a sold-out, one night only “Temple Beautiful” San Francisco Bus tour that Prophet used to kick off his current US tour.

Although ideas for the album were plentiful, Prophet said the project presented challenges.

“Believe it or not the hardest part [was] resisting the temptation to make it more musical,” he said. “I wanted to hear the hooks, a big fat back beat and it was hard to strip that stuff away.”

Continue reading ‘Your Country’s Right Here: Chuck Prophet Discovers a “Magical Place”’

Ready for The Further Adventures of the Saw Doctors?

The latest album by the Irish-based roots rockers with the folky edge just became available in the US and it boosts some of the grittiest music the band has made in its twenty-five-year history.

As the band made its way around the US during a major tour before returning to the UK to play dates—including Fairport Convention’s major Cropredy Festival in August—guitarist Leo Moran took time out to talk about the band, its fans and just what keeps it going.

OS: You have an amazingly loyal fan base that basically follows you all over the various countries in which you tour.

LM: Yes, we have a small name but very loyal fans. We are very fortunate for that.

OS: You are headlining Fairport Convention’s Cropredy Festival in August, though, so you’re clearly very popular with folk fans. What do you plan for that gig?

LM:  [The members of Fairport Convention and their fans] are very lovely people. We are just going to go and play for as long as they want us too. We really don’t do anything different except be ourselves. Hopefully we will get to [hang out] with Fairport. They are just lovely people and we always enjoy it, though we’ve only met them about once or twice. We haven’t played the festival since the ‘90s.

Continue reading ‘Exclusive Q and A: The Saw Doctors Show off Fresh [Sonic!] Cuts’