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    Mumford & Sons

    Photo: Steve Granitz/WireImage.com

    News
    exploring-american-roots-nominees

    Exploring The American Roots Nominees

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    Go inside the nominations in the American Roots categories for the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards
    GRAMMYs
    Dec 2, 2014 - 4:06 pm
    GRAMMY.com

    You've seen the list of nominees, now take a closer look at the artists nominated in the American Roots Field categories for the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards.

    This year's American Roots Field includes first-time nominees such as the Avett Brothers, John Fullbright, the Lumineers, Special Consensus, and Steep Canyon Rangers. Previous nominees looking for their first GRAMMY include Dailey & Vincent, Ruthie Foster, Mumford & Sons, Noam Pikelny, and Joan Osborne. Veteran artists looking to add to their GRAMMY totals include Ry Cooder, Dr. John, Bonnie Raitt, and Yo-Yo Ma.

    Best Americana Album

    The Avett Brothers, The Carpenter

    The Avett Brothers are up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of their careers.

    John Fullbright, From The Ground Up

    Fullbright is up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of his career.

    The Lumineers, The Lumineers

    The Lumineers are up for two nominations this year, marking the first GRAMMY nominations of their careers.

    Mumford & Sons, Babel

    Mumford & Sons are up for six nominations this year. They have three prior GRAMMY nominations.

    Bonnie Raitt, Slipstream

    Raitt is up for one nomination this year. She has 25 prior GRAMMY nominations and nine prior GRAMMY wins.

    Best Bluegrass Album

    Dailey & Vincent, The Gospel Side Of

    Dailey & Vincent are up for one nomination this year. They have one prior GRAMMY nomination.

    The Grascals, Life Finds A Way

    The Grascals are up for one nomination this year. They have two prior GRAMMY nominations.

    Noam Pikelny, Beat The Devil And Carry A Rail

    Pikelny is up for one nomination this year. He has two prior GRAMMY nominations, including one as part of Punch Brothers.

    Special Consensus, Scratch Gravel Road

    Special Consensus are up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of their careers.

    Steep Canyon Rangers, Nobody Knows You

    Steep Canyon Rangers are up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of their careers.

    Best Blues Album

    Shemekia Copeland, 33 1/3

    Copeland is up for one nomination this year. She has one prior GRAMMY nomination.

    Dr. John, Locked Down

    Dr. John is up for one nomination this year. He has 14 prior GRAMMY nominations and five prior GRAMMY wins.

    Ruthie Foster, Let It Burn

    Foster is up for one nomination this year. She has one prior GRAMMY nomination.

    Heritage Blues Orchestra, And Still I Rise

    Heritage Blues Orchestra are up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of their careers.

    Joan Osborne, Bring It On Home

    Osborne is up for one nomination this year. She has six prior GRAMMY nominations.

    Best Folk Album

    Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden

    Caroline Chocolate Drops are up for one nomination this year. They have one prior GRAMMY win.

    Ry Cooder, Election Special

    Cooder is up for one nomination this year. He has 13 prior GRAMMY nominations and six prior GRAMMY wins.

    Luther Dickinson, Hambone's Meditations

    Dickinson is up for one nomination this year. He has four prior GRAMMY nominations, including three as part of North Mississippi Allstars.

    Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile, The Goat Rodeo Sessions

    Ma is up for one GRAMMY nomination this year. He has 24 prior GRAMMY nominations and 16 prior GRAMMY wins. Duncan is up for one nomination this year. He has 10 prior GRAMMY nominations and three prior GRAMMY wins. Meyer is up for one nomination this year. He has four prior GRAMMY nominations and two prior GRAMMY wins. Thile is up for one nomination this year. He has 13 prior GRAMMY nominations and one prior GRAMMY win as part of Nickel Creek.

    Various Artists, This One's For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark

    Best Regional Roots Music Album

    Keola Beamer, Malama Ko Aloha (Keep Your Love)

    Beamer is up for one nomination this year. He has one prior GRAMMY nomination.

    Radmilla Cody, Shi Kéyah — Songs For The People

    Cody is up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of her career.

    Weldon Kekauoha, Pilialoha

    Kekauoha is up for one nomination this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination of his career.

    Corey Ledet With Anthony Dopsie And André Thierry, Nothin' But The Best

    Ledet, Dopsie and Thierry are up for one nomination each this year, marking the first GRAMMY nominations of their respective careers.

    Wayne Toups, Steve Riley & Wilson Savoy, The Band Courtbouillon

    Toups, Riley and Savoy are up for one nomination each this year, marking the first GRAMMY nomination for Toups. Riley has five prior GRAMMY nominations and Savoy has four prior nominations.

    (Note: The videos embedded reflect official videos available through official artist and record label channels.)

    Mumford & Sons

    Photo: Larry Busacca/Getty Images

    News
    diversity-and-talent-fill-american-roots-nominations

    Diversity And Talent Fill The American Roots Nominations

    Hilton 55
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    GRAMMYs
    Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

    This year's 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards nominees reflect the rich and diverse community of talent that celebrates some of the genre's finest.

    It is inspiring to see excellent representation of Americana, folk, bluegrass, and country music artists, not only in their respective categories, but in the broader General Field categories such as Album Of The Year, which includes a nomination for Mumford & Sons' sophomore outing Babel, and Best New Artist with Alabama Shakes and the Lumineers for making the list.

    Mumford & Sons garnered an impressive total of six nominations, including Best Americana Album and Best Rock Performance for "I Will Wait." Babel producer Markus Dravs was also nominated for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical. The band even received a nod for Best Long For Music Video for Big Easy Express, a film chronicling the Railroad Revival Tour featuring Mumford & Sons, Old Crow Medicine Show and Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros.

    Pop/Americana newcomers the Lumineers are nominated for two GRAMMY Awards, Best New Artist and Best Americana Album, for their self-titled debut. Rounding out the nominees for Best Americana Album are the Avett Brothers for The Carpenter, blues/rock legend Bonnie Raitt for her latest Slipstream, and the extraordinarily talented Oklahoma native John Fullbright for his second release From The Ground Up.

    The Civil Wars were nominated for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for "Safe & Sound," their collaboration with Taylor Swift for The Hunger Games soundtrack.

    Nashville Western swing ensemble the Time Jumpers are nominated for two GRAMMYs for Best Country Dou/Group Performance for "On The Outskirts Of Town" and Best Country Album for theirr latest self-titled release.3

    Nominees for Best Folk Album are Carolina Chocolate Drops (Leaving Eden), guitar legend Ry Cooder (Election Special), the solo outing for North Mississippi Allstars' Luther Dickinson (Hambone's Meditations) and The Goat Rodeo Sessions featuring Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile. This One's For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark also received a nomination.

    Best Bluegrass Album nominees are The Gospel Side Of by Dailey & Vincent, Life Finds A Way by the Grascals, Beat The Devil And Carry A Rail by Noam Pikelny, Scratch Gravel Road by Special Consensus, and Nobody Knows You by the Steep Canyon Rangers.

    Other categories in which Americana is represented are Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical for The Goat Rodeo Sessions, Best Album Notes for Banjo Diary: Lessons From Tradition, and Best Historical Album for Old-Time Smoky Mountain Music: 34 Historic Songs, Ballads, And Instrumentals Recorded In The Great Smoky Mountains By "Song Catcher" Joseph S. Hall. 

    Find out who will emerge the winner in the American Roots Music Field during Music's Biggest Night on Feb. 10.

    Mumford & Sons' Marcus Mumford and Adele

    Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.com

    News
    year-grammy-firsts-americana

    A Year Of GRAMMY Firsts For Americana

    Hilton 55
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    GRAMMYs
    Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

    Mumford & Sons win Album Of The Year

    I was honored to fulfill my third year as the Americana GRAMMY.com Community Blogger. GRAMMY Week proved to be another unique experience leading up to Music's Biggest Night, beginning with Play It Forward, the GRAMMY Foundation's 15th Annual Music Preservation Project, the Social Media Rock Stars Summit, the Pre-Telecast Ceremony, and concluding with the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards. Behind a trail of tweets, instagrams and Facebook posts, I reflected performances, conversations, insights, camaraderie, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, all through an Americana lens.

    The Pre-Telecast Ceremony served up a heavy listing of awards for Americana acts. Folk/rock artists were awarded in the Best Long Form Music Video category, with the trophy going to Big Easy Express, a documentary that traces the 2011 Railroad Revival Tour featuring Mumford & Sons, Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros and Old Crow Medicine Show. Steep Canyon Rangers picked up their first GRAMMY for Best Bluegrass Album for Nobody Knows You. Yo-Yo Ma, Stuart Duncan, Edgar Meyer, and Chris Thile picked up a GRAMMY for Best Folk Album for The Goat Rodeo Sessions. The album also won in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category.

    Taylor Swift was on hand with producer T Bone Burnett and the Civil Wars to receive the GRAMMY for Best Song Written For Visual Media for "Safe & Sound" from The Hunger Games.

    Clad in black, John Fullbright performed a rousing version of "Gawd Above" from his Best Americana Album-nominated From The Ground Up.  But when the winner was announced in that category, Bonnie Raitt took the prize for Slipstream and walked away with her 10th GRAMMY. Speaking with Fullbright later, the newcomer showed a maturity beyond his 24 years by remarking, "There's no one I'd rather lose to."

    The GRAMMY telecast supplied many instances of Americana representation. Best New Artist nominees the Lumineers had the crowd dancing and singing along to their hit "Ho Hey." Resplendent in a rhinestone peacock feather creation by Manuel, Jack White began with his all-female band (appropriately called the Peacocks) to deliver a rustically languid rendition of "Love Interruption," from his Album Of The Year and Best Rock Album-nominated Blunderbuss. White then moved to his wild side with his boys, the Buzzards, for a flailing and feedback-drenched "Freedom At 21."

    Mumford & Sons performed "I Will Wait" under lights strung from the ceiling of Staples Center that were reminiscent of those in their "Little Lion Man" video. Last year's big GRAMMY winner and fellow British artist Adele awarded the band the GRAMMY for Album Of The Year for their sophomore effort, Babel.

    The highlight for me came during the In Memoriam portion of the telecast. The great Levon Helm was honored with a passionate performance of the Band's "The Weight" by Elton John, Mumford & Sons, Mavis Staples, Zac Brown, and Alabama Shakes singer Brittany Howard. The tribute also featured Burnett, who served as musical director. Helm died in 2012 at age 71 after battling cancer. 

    It was another stellar year of GRAMMY firsts for the American Roots Field.

    John Fullbright

    Photo: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

    News
    rise-roots-music

    The Rise Of Roots Music

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    Artists such as Mumford & Sons, the Lumineers and the Avett Brothers have blurred genre lines all the way to Music's Biggest Night
    Lynne Margolis
    GRAMMYs
    Dec 2, 2014 - 4:06 pm
    GRAMMY.com

    As one of the top nominees for the 55th Annual GRAMMY Awards, Mumford & Sons share nominations for Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song with Alabama Shakes, Jack White, the Black Keys, and Bruce Springsteen, while their sophomore album, Babel, is nominated for Album Of The Year as well as Best Americana Album alongside releases by the Avett Brothers, the Lumineers, John Fullbright, and Bonnie Raitt.

    One might wonder how an acoustic, banjo-driven "hoedown folk" band, to quote British publication The Guardian, could land next to White and the Black Keys, two blues-oriented electric acts, and the Southern soul/R&B-inspired Alabama Shakes.

    But the presence of the Shakes and the folk-rocking Lumineers in the Best New Artist category — along with Babel's distinction as the fourth best-selling album of 2012 — suggests that the lines between roots and rock are continuing to blur, and those crossing them are gaining more acceptance than ever, and at a faster pace. Alabama Shakes, the Lumineers and Fullbright are all nominated for debut albums or songs from debut albums.

    Some music experts and artists alike say it's all about shared roots — in fact, roots-rock is a label commonly used to define these artists' work. And even though Americana was labeled alternative country before it found a place in Merriam-Webster's dictionary, it contains elements of blues, R&B and rock, as well as folk and bluegrass. Jed Hilly, executive director of the Americana Music Association, says artists today gain inspiration from tracing the music back to its roots, similar to how legendary artists such as the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin channeled their respective inspirations.

    "I see a direct link from Emmylou [Harris] to Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings to Old Crow Medicine Show, the Avett [Brothers], Mumford [& Sons] and now the Lumineers, with these artists passing the torch from one to another, and back," Hilly says.

    The Avett Brothers' Scott Avett didn't set out to become part of that chain, it just happened."

    "When I was a teenager, I really admired a very fast and loud and abrasive aesthetic," says Avett. "I was listening to hardcore, hard rock; I was looking for what's after this great movement of grunge and punk rock and what happens now?"

    Some cite Americana's authenticity — whether rooted in Appalachia, the Delta or the industrial Midwest — as key to its growth. But according to GRAMMY Awards telecast Co-Producer and "Austin City Limits" Executive Producer Terry Lickona, other factors include the Internet, the increasing influence of independent record labels and the popularity of music festivals, along with the cyclic nature of a business in which something old becomes new nearly every decade.

    "Somebody hears a Mumford & Sons song, it spreads by word of mouth, [and] kids go searching for the music online," Lickona notes. "Hundreds of thousands of kids see them at music festivals all over the country, and then maybe radio finally gets onboard and the artists start showing up on the Billboard charts."

    "A lot of it has to do with younger people having the ability to learn every detail of an artist they like in about 10 seconds," Fullbright adds. "People used to have to scour through record stores in the dusty sections to find guys like Muddy Waters and Townes Van Zandt. Now you've got a Wiki page that's got a little section that says 'influences' under almost every artist."

    Alabama Shakes' Brittany Howard says one distinction these artists share is a willingness to take chances and not follow trends — not to mention an aversion to categorization.

    "I think people my age and younger are yearning for something different," she offers. "The thing I love about the Alabama Shakes is that we are just as influenced by AC/DC, Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath as we are by Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin or James Brown."   

    The Lumineers' drummer Jeremiah Fraites says a notable characteristic of his band, Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers is "a big pulse."

    "There's a beat, there's a pop sensibility to it all," says Fraites. "It's not as folky as a lot of people are trying to categorize it."

    Avett, who shared the stage with Mumford & Sons and Bob Dylan in a tacit tribute to Americana music at the 53rd Annual GRAMMY Awards in 2011, suggests an even larger commonality.

    "Ultimately, a Beyoncé song and a Ryan Adams song and an Avett Brothers song and a Queen song and a Mumford & Sons song, when you break it down, it all ends up being about a melody and lyric," he says. "There's really nothing dividing any of them." 

    In another testament to the influence of roots music, the 55th GRAMMY telecast will feature a special tribute to the late Levon Helm. Artists set to perform in tribute to the American icon include Elton John, Howard, Mumford & Sons, and Zac Brown.

    As Fullbright  notes, "American roots is the continuing innovation of somebody else's roots. All music is roots music."

    (Austin-based journalist Lynne Margolis currently contributes to American Songwriter, NPR's Song of the Day and newspapers nationwide, as well as several regional magazines and NPR-affiliate KUT-FM's "Texas Music Matters." A contributing editor to The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen from A To E To Z, she has also previously written for Rollingstone.com and Paste magazine.)

    The Lumineers

    Photo: Cooper Neill/Getty Images

    News
    looking-back-americana-2012

    Looking Back On Americana In 2012

    Hilton 55
    Facebook Twitter Email
    GRAMMYs
    Dec 2, 2014 - 3:22 pm

    From Virginia holler porches and Texas honky-tonks to New York coffeehouses, Americana is as diverse as the nation from which its namesake is derived. It is perhaps that diversity that made the genre a thriving economical force in 2012, evidenced by the growing popularity and crossover appeal of artists such as Mumford & Sons, the Avett Brothers and the Lumineers, among many others.

    This year also an influx of Americana artists featured on late-night TV shows such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," and on the stages of major music festivals such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival, Bonnaroo and the Sasquatch! Music Festival. Americana also had a strong showing on many non-genre-specific best-of lists, most notably Paste magazine's 50 Best Albums of 2012 tally, which included releases by artists such as Alabama Shakes, Punch Brothers, Justin Townes Earle, and the Lumineers.

    Americana infiltrated television as songs by artists such as the White Buffalo and Alabama Shakes were featured on "Sons Of Anarchy" and "True Blood," respectively. Additionally, genre luminaries such as the Del McCoury Band and Sam Bush made guest appearances on "Nashville," a city whose growing Americana exports can be attributed to GRAMMY-winning producer and Americana pioneer T Bone Burnett.

    The Americana Music Festival & Conference broke attendance records and, for the first time ever, sold out its annual Americana Music Honors & Award ceremony, which featured performances by Bonnie Raitt, Booker T. Jones and Richard Thompson. The ceremony was also aired live on channels across the nation for the first time.

    In new music, 2012 saw releases from Chelle Rose, Elizabeth Cook, Chris Knight, Doc Dailey, Dwight Yoakam, Shovels & Rope, Jason Eady, and Gretchen Peters, among others. In my six years of blogging, I am having a difficult time picking a top year-end list. This is what's known as a "good problem."

    Though 2012 was a year of great gains, we'd be remiss not to acknowledge those we lost: GRAMMY winners Levon Helm, Doc Watson, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Earl Scruggs, and pioneering female country music legend Kitty Wells.

    One of the best ways to continue to honor Americana music is of course to continue to put out great new music. With the unfolding of unreleased material from Townes Van Zandt and a new album from Kris Kristofferson, 2013 is shaping up to be as hot as a $2 pistol. 

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    Some of the content on this site expresses viewpoints and opinions that are not those of the Recording Academy. Responsibility for the accuracy of information provided in stories not written by or specifically prepared for the Academy lies with the story's original source or writer. Content on this site does not reflect an endorsement or recommendation of any artist or music by the Recording Academy.