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Photo: Rob Laughter

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Wide Open Bluegrass 2019 Comes To Raleigh, N.C. photo-gallery-ibmas-wide-open-bluegrass-2019-takes-over-raleigh-nc

Photo Gallery: IBMA's Wide Open Bluegrass 2019 Takes Over Raleigh, N.C.

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Follow us through the streets of Raleigh for an inside look at Bluegrass' main event of the year
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2019 - 3:59 pm

In case you couldn't make the trek to Raleigh, N.C. for this weekend's International Bluegrass Music Association's Wide Open Bluegrass festival, we've got you covered. The Recording Academy is on the ground in the Tar Heel State to bring you all the action, including exclusive interviews, backstage snapshots and more from what its organizers call the largest free urban bluegrass festival in the world.

*All Photos by Shannon Kelly 

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Progressive folk upstarts Fireside Collective were all smiles for the third of their three performances throughout the week.

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Award-winning Colorado string band Trout Steak Revival took some time to talk with us backstage at Wide Open Bluegrass. Stay tuned for the full interview...

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Acclaimed songwriter/bassist Missy Raines and Leigh Gibson of the Gibson Brothers both posed for some quick pics while hanging out backstage.

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We caught up with bluegrass phenom Sierra Hull for an exclusive interview backstage.

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The great Jim Lauderdale posed for our camera on the Raleigh streets. The GRAMMY winner was busy all week at the IBMAs, hosting the Awards show and performing a tribute to late Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter.

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Folk supergroup I'm With Her, made up of Sara Watkins, Sarah Jarosz and Aoife O'Donovan, played a stunning set to close out Friday night's festivities.

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One of the bluegrass' brightest young stars, Molly Tuttle, treated the Raleigh crowd to tunes from her debut album, When You're Ready. Read our full interview with Molly here.

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Denver quintet The Lonesome Days shared their songwriting-forward sound with bluegrass fans and took a beat to pose for our cameras.

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Balsam Range delivered a special performance on Friday accompanied by the North Carolina State Symphony Orchestra.

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Headliner and GRAMMY-winning headliner Del McCoury Band lent their legendary status to Saturday night's grand finale, complete with once-in-a-lifetime guest appearances from Dierks Bentley, Sierra Hull, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and more. See for yourself:

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Stay tuned for more coverage from Raleigh and the 2019 Wide Open Bluegrass Festival...

Molly Tuttle On 'When You're Ready,' Her Modern Nashville Bluegrass Classic | Newport Folk 2019

 

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Trout Steak Revival

Photo: Shannon Kelly/Recording Academy

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Trout Steak Revival Talk Colorado Bluegrass colorado-string-band-trout-steak-revival-reveal-their-rocky-mountain-beginnings-wide

Colorado String Band Trout Steak Revival Reveal Their Rocky Mountain Beginnings At Wide Open Bluegrass

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Backstage at the IBMA's annual festival, the Denver-based quintet told the Recording Academy their origin story and talked about the musical magic that makes their state special
Derek Halsey
GRAMMYs
Sep 30, 2019 - 4:13 pm

Colorado and the majestic Rocky Mountains have produced many successful bluegrass and newgrass bands over the years. From Yonder Mountain String Band and Leftover Salmon to the legendary GRAMMY-nominated group Hot Rize; the Centennial State has brought a different perspective to the bluegrass genre time and time again. Enter the band Trout Steak Revival, who is following in the same footsteps as the acclaimed groups mentioned above.

Like so many of the Colorado groups, their music tends to be more wide open, heavily influenced by the relaxed lifestyle of Colorado and by nature itself, as in the mountains, the canyons and the high desert.

What is fascinating about the Colorado music scene and many of its most successful bands, including Trout Steak Revival, is that the musicians are mostly non-natives. The groups are almost routinely made up of folks who grew up elsewhere then moved to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains seeking adventure and cameraderie, and that spirit is found in the sounds they create together.

Thursday at @IntlBluegrass
4:20PM: Convention Center Workshop Stage
11:00pm: @DaddarioandCo Marriot Suite 1727 pic.twitter.com/a6l1RXXAIz

— Trout Steak Revival (@troutsteak) September 26, 2019

Hot Rize, for instance, the great band from Colorado that won the first-ever International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA) Entertainer of the Year award in 1990, was filled with migrants. Original member Pete Wernick was from New York City, Tim O’Brien was from West Virginia, Nick Forster ventured west from the Hudson River Valley of New York, and Charles Sawtelle came north from Texas. After Sawtelle’s untimely death, Bryan Sutton stepped in to fill the guitar chair as a native of Asheville, NC.

This weekend, as the Recording Academy hit the road to cover the IBMA's Wide Open Bluegrass Festival in Raleigh, NC, we found the members of Trout Steak Revival relaxing at the 10th and Terrace Rooftop Bar at the Residence Inn overlooking downtown and the State Capitol.

It is Saturday of the festival, and in a few hours Trout Steak Revival will be performing on the Capital Stage, one of the nearly dozen official and unofficial stages that can be found on the blocked off streets during the Wide Open Bluegrass festival. There are literally over 100,000 people in town for the event, and the band members are all looking forward to performing for a large and enthusiastic audience.

Based in Denver and various other mountain towns in Colorado, Trout Steak Revival has been together for about ten years now and include Bevin Foley on fiddle, Casey Houlihan on bass, Steve Foltz on mandolin and guitar, Will Koster on Dobro and guitar and Travis McNamara on banjo. One of their big breaks came when they won the band contest in 2014 at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Since then, they have risen up the festival poster with their name written in bigger and bigger fonts as their popularity has increased. The group also won an Emmy Award for their original music used in the highly praised PBS documentary called Rocky Mountains.

Foley is the only band member of Trout Steak Revival who grew up in Colorado. The rest of the group grew up in either Wisconsin and Michigan. Houlihan was one of the first to venture west having grown up in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“I went to school at the University of Minnesota, where I met Steve, and while I was in college I was a camp counselor in Michigan, which is where I met Will and Travis,” said Houlihan. “After graduation, I got a job at a camp in Conifer, Colorado, located a half hour west of Denver. It is still considered in the Front Range, although it is in the mountains. The Rocky Mountains are a huge playground, but it is also very humbling. If you want to hike to the top of one, you better be ready because they will kick your butt. When I first moved there, I was in man-versus-mountain mode, but I have curbed that back a little bit as I’m no longer in my 20s.”

Koster is from Casnovia, Mich., which is just north of Grand Rapids. He told us a bit about the band's formation, playing shows at small Colorado bars.

“Casey, our bass player, got a job in Colorado working in the mental health field and I was working at a summer camp in Michigan living in a tent,” said Koster. “One day, Casey said, ‘Hey, I have this job out in Colorado working with kids and they have an opening.’ So, I took the job and I moved out there and I got to stay in this cabin on 150 acres for free while working at this school. It was a pretty cool way to start living in Colorado. We would work for two days and then have four days off, so we started playing music together. It wasn’t really bluegrass picking then, but we began to learn tunes. We lived in Conifer, Colorado, and there was this bar called the Buck Snort Saloon there near Pine Junction that was so tiny, you felt like if there were 100 people in the place it would fall off the cliff. We started playing there doing cover tunes and some originals.”

Koster did not initially play bluegrass music, but was later introduced to it due to an unexpected road trip.

“One year, I went to the IBMA Convention when it was in Louisville with a friend and I walked in and saw all of the jamming going on,” said Koster. “I thought it was cool, and I liked to jam, but all I played at the time was the blues and not bluegrass. I found myself in a jam with these gals playing ‘Salt Creek’ or some other traditional tune and they ended up rolling on the floor laughing at me. I was bending strings and didn’t have a clue. Then one of the girls said, ‘If you like to bend notes, why don’t you get a Dobro or something?’ And, I did.”

“I followed Will and Casey out to Colorado after Will ran this PR campaign on me because he wanted to get me out there,” added McNamara, who is from Grand Rapids, Mich. “Whenever it was rainy and grey, which was nearly all of the time in Michigan, he would call me up and leave messages on my phone saying, ‘Hey Trav, this is your friend Will. Did you know that Denver, Colorado, experiences 300 days of sunshine every year? That is more than in Tampa, Florida, my friend. Give me a call back.’”  

Foltz, oringinally from Rhinelander, Wis., near the incredibly beautiful Upper Peninsula region of Michigan and Lake Superior, talked about joining the band after his burning desire to get back into music steered him toward the group.

“I graduated with an Architecture Degree at the University of Minnesota and moved out to Vail, Colorado, for my first architecture job and worked in that field for about five years,” said Foltz. “Slowly, our band started to grow while I also got my Masters in Architecture in Denver, but then came the economic crash of 2008 and there were no jobs whatsoever. I did some accident reconstruction work for a couple of years, but what I really wanted to do was play music.  That experience taught me that you got to do what you love in life because there are no guarantees about any career path. So, I took a chance on Trout Steak Revival.”

Foley, who began playing the violin as a kid, mostly performing with the school orchestra, concentrated on classical music throughout her college years. Later, she began to notice the sound of the fiddle on jazz records and Stuart Duncan’s fiddle work on some Garth Brooks albums. She eventually joined a folk group and took Texas fiddling lessons to expand her musical horizons. Eventually, Foley went to her first small bluegrass festival.

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Photo: Paul R. Giunta/Getty Images

“Then, I started listening to the Yonder Mountain String Band, who in Colorado were a gateway group for people who didn’t know what bluegrass or newgrass was, and Hot Rize as well,” said Foley. “Yonder put out those live Mountain Tracks albums and I had a friend who gave me three of those CDs. She just wrote the words, ‘Bluegrass good,’ on them. They were the first group that I listened to that made me think, ‘Wow, this is awesome. Maybe I could play this music.’”

After the four men met Bevin and eventually talked her into joining Trout Steak Revival, the musical journey has been hard yet magical and upwards in trajectory. Now, they tour the country from Atlanta to New Mexico, from Montana to here in Raleigh, North Carolina. They have a new album in the works, which will further showcase their fun and original music inspired by Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

“The view of those mountains does not get old,” said Foltz. “To go into the mountains with just a backpack and some food, being in the wilderness with no city sounds or lights but just stars; it is beautiful. Natural experiences have changed my life. And, it affects our music a lot.”

Sierra Hull Takes Her Place In Bluegrass History, Talks Legacy & New Music At Wide Open Bluegrass

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Nathaniel Rateliff

Photo: Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan/Getty Images

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High Water Fest Lineup Announced nathaniel-rateliff-wilco-more-perform-charleston-scs-high-water-festival

Nathaniel Rateliff, Wilco & More To Perform At Charleston, S.C.'s High Water Festival

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Find out who's headed to the fourth annual fest next April in the Holy City
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Nov 5, 2019 - 11:36 am

High Water Festival announced its 2020 lineup today, featuring Nathaniel Rateliff, Wilco, Brittany Howard, Mavis Staples, Andrew Bird, Sharon Van Etten, Drive-By Truckers, Shovels & Rope, Angel Olsen, Rufus Wainwright and more.

Your #HighWaterFest lineup is HERE  The Previous Buyers Pre-sale begins tomorrow 11/6 at 10 AM EST and the Public On-sale kicks off Thursday 11/7 at 10 AM EST. Explore tickets, experiences, and more → https://t.co/e5NrLcRYtb pic.twitter.com/GeZBQ3EsgN

— High Water Festival (@highwaterfest) November 5, 2019

The Charleston, S.C., fest returns for its fourth year on April 18-19, 2020 at Riverfront Park. Curated by hometown folk heroes Shovels & Rope, made up of musical duo Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hears, the two-day festival will be a celebration of music, food and libations. 

Andrew Bird Covers "Harvest Moon" For ReImagined

The stacked lineup also features Delta Spirit, Liz Cooper & The Stampede, Drew Holcolm & The Neighbors, The Felice Brothers, Cedric Burnside and more. High Water also offers unique, immersive oyster education classes and community service opportunies through its charitable partners. 

Weekend passes for High Water go on sale Nov. 7 at 10 a.m. EST, with VIP passes and a new ticket tier, The Platinum Pearl Experience, also available via the festival's website.   

Ringo Starr And His All Starr Band Announce 2020 Tour Dates

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Sierra Hull

Photo: Shannon Kelly/Recording Academy

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Sierra Hull Talks Legacy At Wide Open Bluegrass sierra-hull-takes-her-place-bluegrass-history-talks-legacy-new-music-wide-open

Sierra Hull Takes Her Place In Bluegrass History, Talks Legacy & New Music At Wide Open Bluegrass

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The mandolin phenom opens up about helping write the next chapter in the storied history of bluegrass, paying tribute to dobro great Mike Auldridge, new music and more
Derek Halsey
GRAMMYs
Sep 29, 2019 - 4:39 pm

The International Bluegrass Music Association’s (IBMA) yearly convention and Wide Open Bluegrass Festival in Raleigh, NC, is a gathering of the biggest names in bluegrass, and one of the most impressive musicians in the genre is GRAMMY nominated phenom Sierra Hull. 

Hull first performed at an IBMA Convention back when she was just 10 years old, playing on the Little Pickers Stage in Louisville, KY. Soon after, she was discovered by artists such as Alison Krauss and her band Union Station, who brought Hull onto the stage of the Grand Ole Opry as a youngster.

However, Hull was always much more than a cute kid playing bluegrass. Now in her mid-20s, she has worked hard to master her instrument and to present her beautiful singing voice as well. Her unique combination of humbleness and confidence fuels her ability to play lead solos on the mandolin every bit as inventive and dynamic as any man or woman has ever done in bluegrass music.

Hull’s innate talent and solid work ethic combined with an open mind as to where the music can go has led to her breaking an important barrier in bluegrass music. In 2016, Hull became the first woman ever to win the IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year Award. She went on to win the award again in 2017 and 2018.

Those awards ensured Hull’s inclusion in the acclaimed group The First Ladies of Bluegrass, which includes other women who broke the glass ceiling by winning an IBMA Award with their respective instruments. Featuring Missy Raines on the bass (1998), Alison Brown on the banjo (1991), Becky Buller on the fiddle (2016), Molly Tuttle on guitar (2017) and Hull on the mandolin, the band headlined last year’s IBMA Wide Open Bluegrass show at the Red Hat Amphitheater.

At this year’s IBMA Convention, the First Ladies of Bluegrass made a surprise appearance with the Po’ Ramblin Boys band on Tuesday, September 24. Happening at the Pour House club in downtown Raleigh, the late night Bluegrass Ramble showcase was originally billed as “The Po’ Ramblin Boys with Special Guest Alison Brown.” But, Brown decided to bring all of her historic band mates to the show to join in an all out jam.

When the Recording Academy catches up with Hull, it is three days later. She has just finished a wonderful concert with her husband Justin Moses on the outdoor City Plaza Stage. The Wide Open Bluegrass Street Fest is officially underway and Hull has just played before tens of thousands of music fans on the blocked off streets of Raleigh.

Even though Hull is in her 20s, she is well-aware of the musical history that she is experiencing in her life. She has watched many first and second generation bluegrass artists pass away. In fact, the night before, Hull was asked to collaborate on a tribute to the late Mike Auldridge at the IBMA Awards Show. A master of the dobro and an original member of the ground-breaking group the Seldom Scene, Auldridge was being inducted into the IBMA Hall of Fame.

As a part of Auldridge’s induction celebration, four living IBMA Dobro Player of the Year award winners perform the Seldom Scene’s classic song, “Wait A Minute.” Those players included Jerry Douglas, Rob Ickes, Phil Leadbetter and Justin Moses. Hull was asked to join them onstage, creating a truly special moment, especially when all four played the melody of the song together at the end. It was emotional and sonically mesmerizing.

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Photo: Shannon Kelly/Recording Academy

“I feel like I was at the tail end of the lives of a lot of first generation bluegrass musicians,” said Hull. “I never got to meet Bill Monroe as I was five years old when he passed away and did not start playing the mandolin until three years later. But, early in my career I met folks like Ricky Skaggs, who was a direct connection to Bill Monroe and he had many stories to share. A lot of my heroes have taken me under their wings along the way and I think that is the beauty of this style of music. I met Chris Thile (The Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek) when I was 10 years old and he took me backstage to meet my other hero Alison Krauss for the first time. Thanks to Alison later on, I did get to spend some time with Ralph Stanley as well.”

Mike Auldridge was known for his innovative talent on the dobro, his crisp and clean long sleeve shirts, his always creased pants and his ability to be kind to others. That is what made the tribute to him at the IBMA Awards show so special for Hull and the four dobro greats who performed in his memory.

“The cool thing about last night was that Jerry Douglas was playing Mike’s dobro,” said Hull. “Backstage, I was just thrilled that Jerry asked me to sing ‘Wait A Minute’ with Shawn Camp and play mandolin. I never got to meet Mike Auldridge, but I have heard the sound of his dobro for years on the Seldom Scene recordings. It is also special to be married to Justin and see his him onstage with the rest of those guys.”

The awards show collaboration turned out to be one of a string of events that proved emotional for Hull and her husband that day.

“Justin and I laughed because we had just been watching the Ken Burns ‘Country Music’ documentary, and Justin has also been a Cincinnati Reds fan since he was a kid and their long-time radio broadcaster Marty Brennaman [46 years on radio] was retiring and broadcasting his last game ever yesterday,” said Hull. “We were at the hotel and Justin was like, ‘We have to hear some of his last broadcast.’ So, we are getting choked up listening to Marty and this is happening after getting choked up while watching Ken Burns’ documentary. Then we go over to the rehearsal and Jerry Douglas is running through what he is going to say about Mike Auldridge for the Hall of Fame induction and that was moving as well.”

TONIGHT — Join myself and @JustinMoses2 for the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival along w/ friends @FiddlerBeckyB + @trvlnmccourys.
: David Andrako pic.twitter.com/iMAVhCI04a

— Sierra Hull (@sierrahull) September 1, 2019

Douglas and Ickes made a final album with Auldridge in 2012 called Three Bells, and those sessions unfortunately included a final goodbye to Auldridge as he died from prostate cancer before the album was released.

“As Jerry practiced his lines, he was talking about when Mike walked over to Jerry’s campsite at the Berryville Festival when Jerry was just a teenager and how nice Mike was to him even back then,” said Hull. “He talked about Uncle Josh Graves being ‘Book One’ of the history of bluegrass dobro and Mike Auldridge being ‘Book Two,’ and that led to Jerry playing, which is why Justin is playing the instrument now. And once again, we get choked up. We just said, ‘Man, we have been hit with a lot of emotional things in regard to the history of the music lately,’ and it is a beautiful thing. I heard all four of them play the melody of ‘Wait A Minute” together in the dressing room while they were warning up, and they were passing around Mike’s dobro as well and Justin said later that even the instrument itself was just beautiful.”

On the following Saturday night, Hull is scheduled to participate in a special performance at the IBMA Wide Open Bluegrass Street Festival. She is on the bill as a part of “Delebration – Celebrating Del McCoury’s 80th Birthday.” The jam is happening at the 5,000 seat Red Hat Amphitheater and will include the Del McCoury Band, Country star Dierks Bentley, Jon Fishman from Phish, the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Jerry Douglas, Sam Bush and Sierra Hull.

As for Hull, she has a brand new album in the works that will be released at a later date. With each new Hull recording, music fans are able to hear the forward progress and direction that her musical muse is taking her.

“The older you get, the more that you learn about yourself,” said Hull. “Not that I have ever been uncomfortable in my own skin, but there is something about getting older where you become internally ok with where you are going. You say to yourself, ‘I am going to continue to grow and I am going to continue to work on things; but this is who I am as an artist in this moment and I’m going to try and give as much as I can of myself as an artist in the most genuine way. That will change as I grow older and my influences and surroundings change. And, I hope it all does change as I don’t want my music to be the exact same thing for the next 50 years.”

Photo Gallery: IBMA's Wide Open Bluegrass 2019 Takes Over Raleigh, N.C.

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Charley Crockett

Photo: Daniel Mendoza/Recording Academy

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A Walk Through 'The Valley' With Charley Crockett charley-crocketts-walk-through-valley-thats-what-artists-do-newport-folk-2019

Charley Crockett's Walk Through 'The Valley': "That's What Artists Do" | Newport Folk 2019

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"I think everybody in life has to walk through the valley, and a lot of times, we got to do it by ourself. That's part of the struggle and the beauty of being a human being," the country troubador told us at Newport Folk Fest
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Jul 27, 2019 - 3:00 pm

Some voices are unmistakable. True modern troubadour Charley Crockett has one such voice, and he knows how to use it. Street-trained and road-worn, Crockett's musical journey has bounced him around the globe, from his homeland of Texas, to New Orleans, Barcelona, Paris and more. At every stop in his journey, he's sharpened his skills as a singer of storytelling songs. But his latest twist in the road might also be his most cathartic.

Charley Crockett On His Walk Through 'The Valley'

On Sept. 20, he will release The Valley, his fourth album in three years, which he recorded in the weeks leading up to what would be a life-saving heart surgery. Sung by a man who's made a global voyage with the uncertainty of his own return, these songs read as the next chapter of his chronicles. According to Crocket, channelling his life experiences, no matter how dire, comes with the territory.

"It's what artists do," he says, when asked the complicated question of how such intense uncertainty shaped the songs and performances of his new album.

Just after Crockett's first-ever performance at Newport Folk Festival, we sat down with the sharp-dressed man to hear about his forthcoming project, the journey it took to make it and how singing songs on subways and in train stations taught him everything he knows about making music.

This is your Newport Folk debut - what makes this festival special to you?

Oh, it has to be the heritage. It has to be the history, my man, it really does. And I've been looking out over this harbor since we got here this morning, it's just a real special place. So I'm thinking about some of those greats like Lightnin' Hopkins and a lot of the Bob Dylan and the folk artists, and the just the roots music artists that transformed America through this festival and that decade and that era, that lives with me. That's what I know about the festival… and I was shocked to get invited. So thanks to whoever made that happen.

Yesterday, you announced your new album The Valley is coming out on Sept. 20. What can your fans that have been following your career expect from this album?

I think everybody in life has to walk through the valley, and a lot of times, we got to do it by ourself. That's part of the struggle and the beauty of being a human being. And I've recently just been through some things in my life, and lots of people are going through stuff, but I had some life-saving heart surgeries that ultimately, to be honest with you, it just kind of transformed the way I see my life and the wold around me. Well, I recorded these songs about a week before those operations, just really uncertain about where I was going. If I was going to stay here, go up to the house, or just the quality of life. So, I made those recordings and I urged the people around me to put it out.

Hey, you can pre-order my upcoming album “The Valley” now: https://t.co/T5OVussdu6
Pre-save on @Spotify and hear “Borrowed Time” and “The Valley” today: https://t.co/wZXq5pm77H pic.twitter.com/pSDZIRKKmt

— Charley Crockett (@CharleyCrockett) July 26, 2019

How do you think that intense uncertainty manifested musically for you on this album?

That's what artists do, and it's our responsibility to reflect our times. That's what artists are here for, I think, or whatever you want to call it. So, that's all I'm doing. I'm just painting pictures of the life that I'm seeing, and I have learned from my journey to pull from tradition to find myself. But I am a man of my times, so I have to project this time too. That's all I can do, is reflect living now. And a lot of the spirituals that I've learned over the years playing in the street and traveling like I have, refer to life as the valley. A lot of the Carter Family stuff that I've really gotten into. Just that spirituality, it's a universal thing when you talk about something like the valley, or that mountain to climb. And we don't want the mountain to disappear, we want the strength to climb it.

Wow, that's an incredible answer. You've lived and played music all over the world. What's your approach to playing to a festival crowd where you've got some people who know you very well and are singing along, and you've got some people hearing you for the very first time?

I suspect most of them are hearing me for the first time, and it's why somebody like me, I might have a lot of anticipation coming to this place. I learned how to do this in public, like actually. A lot of people might be afraid to get out in public and play on a street corner or in a subway platform or inside a subway car. I have traveled around the world and just counting on people to lend you a hand, and when you come at music from that direction, people aren't asking you to be there. So, when people interact with you, that's a very real exchange that I can feel and see and understand.

I guess the short way to answer that question for you is, I've spent my whole life learning to stand behind my guitar, and the reality is half of what we do is the people listening. Literally, half of it. I'm only doing half of it because that's the whole thing. It wouldn't be an art if there wasn't somebody listening to it. And once somebody hears it, it honestly belongs to them as much as it does to you. If it means something to somebody, I'm lucky enough to have that going on.

"It wouldn't be an art if there wasn't somebody listening to it. And once somebody hears it, it honestly belongs to them as much as it does to you. If it means something to somebody, I'm lucky enough to have that going on."

What was the selection process like for your 2018 covers album, Lil G.L.'s Blue Bonanza? Are these songs you've been playing your whole life?

Yeah. To be honest with you, what it is mostly is songs I've known for years, and that's why I play so much stuff that comes from anywhere from gospel to country to blues to soul music or traditional jazz or whatever you want to call it. It's mostly songs that I've just been picking up over the years that I just always thought were so good, and look, I write a lot of songs. I write a whole lot of songs, but I just don't think I'm worth anything if I'm not learning the great songs from before me, for myself personally.

And a lot of the giants, the people that I see as maybe my mentors or heroes were anybody from even a Dolly Parton or a Etta James or Hank Williams or somebody like that, Willie Nelson, these people are amazing songwriters. But if you look at their catalog, half the stuff they ever recorded they didn't write, and there is something to be said for when a great artist knows when a song is so great it has to be sung. Because sometimes the song is best sung by somebody that didn't write it, and sometimes the only person that can sing it well is the writer.

You know of some kind that I can see that's growing, I just figure that each time I put out a record, it's doing better than the last one, and that's a real blessing. So I'm going to do what I've been doing, which is I live on the highway and I play really hard. I been doing that ever since my mama got me a guitar at a pawn shop, going toward the valley nonstop. I'm going to Europe in a few days. I got to get home to my lady for a few days and tell her I love her, and then I bet before we know it again it'll be Newport next year.

We look forward to seeing you there and good luck on everything.

Thanks a lot, I appreciate y'all taking the time to speak with me and I'll be twice as good next time.

Backstage At Newpork Folk Festival's 60th Anniversary

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