Craig Havighurst

The Telluride Bluegrass Festival launched in 1974 as an out-of-the-way town party for locals on the Fourth of July. A year later, they reached out to a promising Kentucky band called New Grass Revival, setting in motion a musical revelation and revolution. In the decades since, Colorado’s loftiest roots music fest has been the stage where old and new bluegrass have coexisted and fed one another. Craig was able to get out for the 53rd annual event, and he filed this report.

The Sentimental Gentlemen are like stray energy kicked off by Nashville’s historically rich contemporary bluegrass scene. You may recognize them if you follow the top tiers of Americana music, because mandolinist Josh Rilko, fiddler/guitarist Oliver Bates Craven and bass player Geoff Saunders are the acoustic touring band for country star Sierra Ferrell. When she’s off the road, these guys team up with a rotating cast of extra pickers such as Jacob Groopman, Kyle Tuttle, George Guthrie, and Tod Livingston to round out their sound. They’re touring more and now starting to release music of their own. As we saw last fall when they played a showcase at World of Bluegrass, they have a way with Sentimentalizing old folk and rock songs, and this week they offered up Neil Young’s “Love Is A Rose” and we’re excited to share it with you. Also, we lead off with an exciting first single from Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’s next album (“Sticks And Stones”), along with the news that she’s taken the step of shortening her performance name to Bronwyn alone. She can do that because she’s one of a kind.

I’m learning to hear the subtle variations in the way different clawhammer banjo players approach the age-old instrument, but there’s no mistaking the language of Benny Bleu. He’s a contemplative songwriter/composer from the Finger Lakes region of New York. And his bio puts it this way: “As a former geologist, his songwriting is Earth-focused and inspired by the natural world. Benny’s performances are soothing journeys through tunes from his homeland, old songs learned by growing up next to a jug-bandleader, and original modern folk contemplations.” His piece “March of the Mollusk” was released in 2023 as the title track of a solo banjo instrumental album. He reanimates it here with Huck and Gus Tritsch of the Wild Shoats (which got our attention). The result is an old-time groove unlike anything we’ve heard, yet deeply down to Earth. Also this week, some artists getting set to play the Telluride Bluegrass Festival (if they rename it Telluride Bleugrass, maybe Benny will play.) Also new music from Nashville, including newgrass trio Arcadian Wild, banjo picker Taylor Shuck, and charming, country-leaning songwriter Rylie Bourne.

Songwriter and artist Tenille Townes is a certified star in Canada where she’s won heaps of awards and seen her moving songs top the country charts. In over a dozen years in Nashville, she’s been an impressive songwriter with one foot in major label country and another in Americana. Now with a lovely self-produced acoustic album called The Acrobat, Townes points to an independent future with a unique vision and a renewed sense of self.

Folk rocker John R. Miller can be dry and understated, but get beneath the surface and you’ll find an artist keen to write music that helps people be better people. Inspired by John Prine and others, the Nashville based West Virginian has earned widespread acclaim and released three albums for the prestigious Rounder Records, the latest being the sweeping and fiery The Great Unknowning. He spoke with Craig at his Madison home studio.

A bunch of experienced Kentucky-based bluegrass musicians who happened to be good friends (and vice versa) started getting together to jam on Thursdays during the Covid pause. So when they decided to put together a formal band, the name Throwdown Thursday came to mind. Newly signed to Mountain Fever Records, the group includes Kati Penn-Jenkins on fiddle and vocals, Justin Jenkins on banjo, Evan Maynard on mandolin and vocals, Ronald Mosley on guitar, Kyle Perkins on bass, and Austin Maynard on harmony vocals. We’re digging the much-loved and covered Shawn Camp and Billy Burnett song, “My Love Will Not Change,” a good showcase for Kati’s voice and fiddling. That arrives late in the show, but on the way, a block of music chosen by Amy (who hosts solo this week) features artists playing at the Mt. Airy, NC fiddle convention and contest. She was excited to see a new album out from the folk duo Mama’s Broke. And she brings New Orleans band The Clover Valley Boys to the Old Fashioned for the first time.

Last fall at the Earl Scruggs Music Festival I saw an early performance by a new trio made up of some of western North Carolina’s outstanding traditional musicians: Billy Cardine on dobro and slide instruments, Anya Hinkle on vocals and guitar, and Mary Lucey on vocals, upright bass, and clawhammer banjo. And at that moment I began to pine for an album we could play on The Old Fashioned. Well, it’s here, the self-titled debut of TANASI, pronounced TAH-nuh-see (even if I get that wrong in the broadcast), billed as a “worldgrass trio channeling global folk traditions through the drive, textures, and close harmonies of an Appalachian string band.” We’ve played a song or two before, but to celebrate the album’s May 8 release we spin “Sweetest Breeze.” Also this week, the title cut from the Steep Canyon Rangers’ new album, a new single featuring Billy Strings from Full Cord, a first-time artist here in North Carolina’s Redbud, and good ole good ‘uns from Jimmy Martin and Cliff Waldron.

Country Hall of Famer Don Williams enjoyed some of his most successful and productive years in the late 70s and early 80s, and now his son Tim Williams has unearthed some never-heard master recordings from that era. He and Don’s longtime producer Garth Fundis have enhanced and enriched those performances with contemporary tracks to make the new album Epilogue: The Cellar Tapes. They spoke with Craig Havighurst at Williams’s favorite studio about this special release.

Andy Leftwich was a Tennessee string picking prodigy who crushed it at fiddle competitions and was working by his late teens. Then, before he turned twenty, he was offered a job (on stage no less) by legend Ricky Skaggs. For 15 years with Kentucky Thunder, he built a reputation as one of the most complete and technically gifted musicians in bluegrass, sharing in numerous IBMA and Grammy Awards. Now, after a few years of being independent, he’s fired up his solo career with two enthralling instrumental albums.

Nashville band Greenwood Rye has made some changes, adding fiddler Ruth Shumway for example, and moving their residency from the late Jane’s Hideaway (we miss it terribly!) to the downtown hotel venue called the Countrypolitan. Guitarist and singer Shawn Spencer started the group just as the pandemic eased up, and the band has been a staple on the local scene ever since with its stacked harmonies, tight instrumentation and creative mix of originals and covers (Taylor Swift night was always popular). We’ve played songs from their debut album Hideaway in the past, but this week, they bring a wacky and hard-driving new single, co-written by Spencer and Mason Via. Vince Herman and Vickie Vaughn also lend their voices to this literal barn burner of a song. Also this week, we’ve got the first single from the first-ever instrumental Punch Brothers album, a teaser from the Susto Stringband’s Vol. 2 album, and a brilliant new take on “East Virginia Blues” by the duo of Jed Clark and Nathan Beaumont.