1/14 Bellyup in Aspen, CO
1/15 Vilar Center of the Arts in Beaver Creek, CO
1/16 SkiJam in Steamboat Springs, CO
1/17 Cervantes in Denver, CO
1/18 KiMo Theater in Alburqueque, NM
1/20 Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO
1/21 The Orpheum Theatre in Flagstaff, AZ
1/23 Cains Ballroom in Tulsa, OK
Hope to see you there!
Charleston City Paper by Stratton Lawrence Photo by Joshua Curry
Man on Fire
This Bush's approval rating is high
"You never get over the stage fright jitters," said Sam Bush (pictured right) to a packed house at the Music Hall last Thursday, a place he told City Paper he'd wanted to play since hearing Ricky Skaggs' live album recorded there. If he was nervous about kicking off his spring tour in Charleston, it didn't show in his performance. Backed by an incredibly tight band that included bass, guitar, banjo, and drums, Bush rolled through a long set that featured plenty of tracks off his new release, Laps in Seven, and many old favorites. Mark Bryan of Hootie and the Blowfish joined the band for an encore that included "Uncle Pen" and The Band's "Up On Cripple Creek," taking front and center for a melt-your-face-off electric guitar solo while the crowd sang along in unison. —Stratton Lawrence
MUSIC REVIEW | EDGAR MEYER, JERRY DOUGLAS AND SAM BUSH
A Fusion of Diverse Sounds and Styles, With Jokes
Published: November 2, 2007
Anyone expecting straightforward bluegrass from Jerry Douglas on dobro, Edgar Meyer on bass and Sam Bush on mandolin or fiddle got just a little bit of it on Wednesday night. At the end of the trio’s concert at Zankel Hall, the musicians breezed through a banjo tune. Before then, nearly all the music they played was poised comfortably between genres: deeply rooted in bluegrass technique but toying with the parameters and options of string-band music.
The trio’s members were as attentive to structure and sonic detail as any chamber-music ensemble, while their tunes conjured mountain music’s Celtic roots along with blues, reggae, jazz and the modes of Eastern European or Middle Eastern music. Between the exquisite compositions, they cracked jokes.
They have been making musical hybrids for a long time. Mr. Bush started his untraditional New Grass Revival in 1971, and newgrass is as good a term as any for what these musicians do in their many bands. (Among other projects, Mr. Douglas is in Union Station with Alison Krauss, and Mr. Bush tours with Lyle Lovett when not leading his own band.) Their fusions now sound cozy and natural, without flaunting their tricky structures or technical feats. On Wednesday night the melodies sang, through pensive waltzes and unhurried reels and jaunty tunes like the Irish-reggae hybrid “The Lochs of Dread.”
The technical feats are there. Where most bluegrass bassists spend their lives playing oompahs, Mr. Meyer writes himself into the counterpoint, and he often conceives his bass fiddle as a fiddle, doing everything but putting it under his chin; he maintains a light touch and nimbly bows what could be fiddle tunes, only pitched lower. In a solo piece, Mr. Douglas used the richness of his dobro so that each gleaming melody note seemed to be just peeking above a pool of chords.
The three musicians have calibrated the ways they share textures; in one piece, mandolin and dobro pinged 16th notes back and forth, perfectly staggered at top speed, and in another, a bowed drone on Mr. Meyer’s bass brought out somber resonances.
The trio played pastorales and cheerful toe-tappers, though the toe-tappers were likely to move in odd meters or keep unfurling new material. When they wanted to, the musicians could pour on the razzle-dazzle, with Mr. Bush zooming around the mandolin fretboard and Mr. Douglas playing solos that twanged and skidded and chicken-plucked. Even with its musicianly flourishes and structural embellishments, the music was down-home.
But the trio was after more than good-timey grins and thrills. Their music was thinking all the time, just not getting pretentious about it.
