This week’s String show notes are adapted from the radio script.
Twenty years ago this summer, the late great Nashville guitarist and songwriter Mike Henderson made some phone calls. He had a pile of songs he’d been working on for the past few years with a little known, 27-year-old country soul artist named Chris Stapleton. The sound Henderson heard in his head was a fresh take on bluegrass, and he had some friends and colleagues he knew could enhance that vision.
Fiddler, singer and songwriter Tammy Rogers had history with Henderson via the early Americana label Dead Reckoning Records. He called on his old college friend and bandmate Mike Fleming to play bass. And he tapped local favorite banjo player Richard Bailey. They jumped in and started gathering on Sunday nights to work up this new material. And they felt something happening right away. Because it wasn’t Little Cabin Home On The Hill bluegrass. It brought Henderson’s blues background to the fore. Stapleton sang like the soul of Muscle Shoals and Memphis infused with his Kentucky Upbringing. Even with all that, it’s the songs that Rogers and Fleming talk about most as they consider the grand career arc of The SteelDrivers in Episode 324 of The String.
“Sitting around that first night in a circle, I think we did learn (the Flatt & Scruggs standard) “Sleep With One Eye Open,” Fleming says. “But then they started trotting out these songs, you know” ‘Drinkin’ Dark Whiskey’ and ‘If You Can’t Be Good, Be Gone.’”
“Yeah,” Rogers replies. “I remember that, thinking, how have I missed this old traditional song? I mean, I grew up on this stuff. I could not believe that they were pulling out these songs that were so authentic. That's what hooked me.”
The wider world caught on quickly. Rounder Records sought them out and released their self-titled debut album in 2008. They quickly won the IBMA New Artist of the Year award and snagged a Grammy nomination. They were hard edged, a bit dark, and heavy with soul. Stapleton moved on from the band obviously and launched one of the most credible and massive star careers in country music this century. Henderson left at the end of 2011 to spend less time on the road. But the band has made savvy personnel moves, and 20 years on, they’ve built a consistent catalog and sound, plus the most important thing, a large, loyal fan base. The SteelDrivers’ latest win was something they never expected, landing on the revived Sun Records with the brand new album Outrun.
This interesting development started with an offer a few years back from Nashville’s Gaither Music to record an album of original and classic gospel bluegrass songs. The result, 2023’s Tougher Than Nails was their first release not for Rounder and their first gospel project. But it was a good fit and it became a shakedown project for the drivers’ newest lead singer Matt Dame. As I reported here this winter, Gaither, a huge historic player in the gospel space, was acquired about four years ago by Primary Wave, a music catalog company that also picked up the masters tapes and trademarks of the long quiet Sun Records.
Following Tougher Than Nails, the label team reached out and pitched a secular project with a vision that the band says felt like much more than merely the honor of being on Elvis’s former record label. “They did a presentation like I'd never seen before,” Fleming says, with analytics and demographics and a plan. “And it's like, wow, I've never seen anything like that from a record label. So, yeah, it was amazing. And they’re right here in town!”
In the post Henderson/Stapleton years, Tammy Rogers has carried most of the band’s songwriting. So with a new record on the agenda, she had plenty of material to pitch and try out with the group. They’d also been through the untimely passing of Mike Henderson in 2022, a profound loss that we talked about in detail in this feature from a couple years ago. In that spirit, they worked up two Henderson compositions, and Matt Dame lifts them up with a voice that effortlessly mingles classic country, soul, and blues. The title cut, a gothic tale of revenge and a shattered family, came from a late-breaking writing session between Rogers and Nashville veteran Leslie Satcher. It was the last one recorded, Tammy says, but with its implications of outrunning time itself, it felt like the perfect opening title song.
This entertaining and informative conversation was taped on video at WMOT’s East Nashville studio. So you can watch that version here. You can stream the audio version of The String with full commentary and music samples above. Or you can grab (and subscribe to) the show’s podcast.
