From Mandolin Cafe
Sam Bush - A Perpetual Motion Musician at Play
By Bill Graham
July 20, 2008 - 7:00 pm
Sam Bush is only a few steps away from his tour bus when deep reggae bass notes make him smile and break into a cakewalk dance step enroute to the stage.
There's no audience, he's alone, but for stage hands conducting a sound check and getting ready for a free outdoor concert in the park at Olathe, Kan., on a hot afternoon.
Bush is simply moved by musical joy.
It's the same type of joy he will pour out that night in a profound, nonstop newgrass, bluegrass, rockgrass and jazzgrass set lasting more than two hours.
Audience members would have been happy with the same old Sam.
Instead, they sat stunned as he burned through all types of material—old and new—with a band that is likely his tightest and hottest ensemble yet, one that takes his newgrass influences to new levels.
Which is a feat since Bush has been at this since the 1970s.
Yet he's still playing with fire and emotion, still creating.
"I just feel like I've got a long way to go myself," Bush said, sitting in his tour bus before the show. "I'm not where I want to be as a player."
Playing with great musicians feeds the fire, he says.
On this tour it's Byron House, bass; Chris Brown, drums; Scott Vestal, banjo, and Stephen Mougin, guitars.
And it's a tad more complicated than that description.
House on this night plays five-string bass, four-string fretless and a plugged in version of a standup acoustic bass.
Brown's drumming is always on the money, never in the way.
Vestal plays all styles of banjo on various instruments, including one plugged through a synthesizer that gives electric organ-type chords on new age and rockgrass tunes.
Mougin plays both acoustic and electric guitars in various tunings.
Bush plays acoustic mandolin, straight fiddle and phase-shifted fiddle, a National resonator mandolin set up with four strings for electric slide work, and electric four-string Fender mandolin that he absolutely seared a rock number with as if he was on a Tele.
As great as all the individual players are on stage, it's obvious they're following Bush's lead—his influence is guiding—even if he encourages them to jam out.
"I get to playing in so many different (musical) areas, it keeps me in need of practice and trying to stay sharp on these tunes," Bush said, "That's my goal, to try and stay sharp."
What a huge musical spirit he must have burning inside.
And there are still new paths.
Such as Bush helping one Bill move closer to another Bill, as in Evans to Monroe.
Saxophone great Bill Evans, a Miles Davis and John McLaughlin alum, has two Soulgrass recordings out. They offer bluegrass-influenced jazz that he's written and recorded with Bush and other acoustic legends. Bush has also appeared onstage with Evans.
"Bill explains it to me, he's enjoying learning a new language," Bush said. "I play Bill Monroe stuff for him and he loves it."
Bush doesn't consider himself a jazz player, but rather a guy unleashing newgrass licks in a jazz chord setting.
Such as a version of "Darling Cory" that Evans took from a Monroe record and added jazz chords and timing.
That's what he lives for, the music and the changes in that different players bring, the sounds that bounce back from people.
"If I can't play with other musicians," Bush said, "I can't think of anything new."
The talent he hears in young musicians wows him.
As for the music's future though, he doesn't know, it's a surprise.
"I've never planned a direction," Bush said. "It really boils down to the opportunities with the musicians you get to play with. You never know when you're going to meet a musician who's great that you're going to get to play with for a long time."
More for Bush fans:
Old Hoss, the '37 Gibson F5: "Hoss is still on the road. Last year David Harvey of Gibson put on the fourth fretboard since I've owned Hoss. I thought maybe he was done for, but he brought it back."
The Sam Bush model: he owns several and uses them onstage and in studio. However, nothing is as totally satisfying to him as Hoss.
Website: www.sambush.com - good tour and other info.
What's next: "I've been writing a lot in the past year, singing songs and instrumentals. I've never put out an all original recording. But I've been writing a lot, and hopefully I'll go into the studio in January and record one for a spring release."
Stage show key: soundman Ryan Reynosa did a great job of mixing numerous instruments played in various styles in a loud outdoor setting.
Bush up close: "Sam is one of the most generous people I've ever worked for," said road manager Rob Stokes, "and generous in many ways."
© Mandolin Cafe
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.
