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GRAMMYs

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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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

Gillian Welch

Gillian Welch

Photo: Shannon Kelly

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Backstage With Folk Master Gillian Welch exclusive-gillian-welch-vinyl-songwriting-o-brother-more

Exclusive: Gillian Welch On Vinyl, Songwriting, 'O Brother...' & More

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The accomplished singer/songwriter reflects on her career, creative process and some of her most memorable songs backstage at World Of Bluegrass
Derek Halsey
GRAMMYs
Oct 12, 2018 - 5:10 pm

Picture this: it is late in the evening on Labor Day 2018, Sept. 3, and a wrap-around wooden deck topped with party-goers surrounds an A-frame home on the southern side of Beech Mountain, N.C. near the mountain resort town of Banner Elk. The outdoor tables are filled with grilled chicken and other brought foods, the libations are plenty and the spread-out tiki torches are providing just the right amount of flickering light.

Soon, a bonfire is lit, made up of old wooden deck chairs and seasoned logs, and the relaxed partygoers begin to migrate to the yard. Two musicians decide to strike up some fireside music and begin to contemplate on what to sing to fit the occasion. They choose a song they both know and love: Gillian Welch’s 2003 modern classic “Look At Miss Ohio,” written by Welch and her long-time musical partner David Rawlings.

Welch's songs, including "Look At Miss Ohio," are played and sung around the world, whether it be amongst tall bonfire embers, or in the shadows of small, tended cooking fires or in coffeehouses and clubs found throughout the land. With its memorable lyrics and unhurried-yet-funky chorus, the song is stark and real and special.

The two house-party musicians are Fireside Collective guitarist Joe Cicero and western North Carolina vocalist Hope Harvey. As they roll through their impromptu version of “Look At Miss Ohio” Cicero throws some dissonant chords and a Major 6th into the bridge, giving their inspired rendition an otherworldly groove, and it works. Then, as their blended voices fade, the sound of thousands of late summer katydids eases the disappearance of the final notes as they atomize into the mountain air.

Fast-forward 25 days later and Welch is sitting in a dressing room in Raleigh, N.C., the Tar Heel State capital. The sights and sounds are of a different nature here: traffic, car horns, pavement, police whistles, parking garage echoes, and electric scooters clogging the sidewalks. It is the height of the 2018 International Bluegrass Music Association World Of Bluegrass convention and musicians, concert bookers, publicists, and radio DJs are here to do the business of bluegrass in tall buildings. Towards the end of the week, the industry talk gives way to the music as the Wide Open Bluegrass Street Fest gets underway.

On Friday evening, Sept. 28, Welch is about to perform at the 5,000-seat Red Hat Amphitheater located in downtown Raleigh, wearing one of her trademark vintage dresses. Welch is a special guest with the headlining First Ladies of Bluegrass band, an all-star group of women musicians who have all made history by being the first to win an IBMA Award for playing their respective instruments.

Welch’s temporary band mates on this night include Missy Raines (Bass Award), Alison Brown (Banjo Award), Sierra Hull (Mandolin Award), Becky Buller (Fiddle Award) and Molly Tuttle (Guitar Award). Also onboard for the highly anticipated set is GRAMMY Award winner Rhiannon Giddens.

When Welch hears about her song “Look At Miss Ohio” being sung in such a cool setting, she is proud and happy. But her eyes really light up when talking about her and Rawlings’ efforts to release that cut and the rest of their music on vinyl albums.

While the resurgence of vinyl in recent years has been well documented, Welch and Rawlings never left the old school appeal of that technology.

“‘Look At Miss Ohio’ is one of our most popular songs,” says Welch, smiling. “And, we could talk a long time about how profoundly meaningful it is to have our records released on vinyl. Because, my thing is, I listen to records while at home, and it was listening to vinyl records that changed my life in the first place. That is how I decided to do this (career). Sometimes I wonder if it would have happened while listening to CDs. Listening to vinyl is a profoundly different experience.”

The lack of auditory depth on CDs that you do get to hear when listening to vinyl albums is important for other reasons, according to Welch.

“A bunch of the more detailed sonic information has been lopped off of CDs,” says Welch. “And, it is just that little bit of nuance that is particularly meaningful to musicians. Because, what CDs eradicate is the part that you really need as a musician to figure out how our heroes are doing what they are doing. You can hear the musicians addressing the microphone on vinyl. You can hear the touch on the strings. Sadly, that stuff just didn’t make it onto the CDs. So, we are very excited that people are going to get to hear our music that way, especially because it was all recorded in analog in the first place. Our recordings have always been analog, as in completely analog. But, it has been a lot of work because we are doing it all ourselves. We have a custom lathe, so we’re fully committed to doing it the best way you can do it.”

So far, the evaluations of the vinyl releases have been positive for Welch and Rawlings.

“We just got a review on this audiophile website called Analog Planet by Michael Fremer and he reviews the music and the sound quality with a one-to-ten rating, and with the Soul Journey album he gave us an 11,” says Welch. “That makes me really happy because we worked hard on it. We are working our way through our whole catalog by going backwards.”

Vinyl albums can be like family members to those that love them.

“Vinyl albums are really nice things to have in your home,” says Welch. “They are very comforting. They are like books. They are like friends, really. You see those faces on the covers, and they are life-size. You see that face looking back at you."

The recordings that inspired Welch to seek out Appalachian roots melodies as a young woman were made by the Stanley Brothers, who walked the line between bluegrass and old-time mountain music.

“Those Stanley Brothers records really changed my life,” says Welch. “It was one of those live tapes recorded by Peter Kuykendall [musician and co-creator of Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine] called ‘Legendary Stanley Brothers Volume 1 and 2.’ There is a black and white photo of Ralph and Carter Stanley on it, and one record has a red banner and the other record has a yellow banner. [As for other influences,] Norman Blake also blew my mind. The Stanley Brothers blew my mind because of their sound and their harmonies and the old-time stories. I knew those folk songs from growing up, but to hear them with this crazy mountain harmony; I loved it. But then, Norman Blake was the one that made me think, ‘You mean you can write new songs that can sound old?’”

And, Welch has done just that with many of her classic cuts. If you listen to “Six White Horses” off of The Harrow and the Harvest album, you will swear that it was written 150 years ago, but not so.

“David and I wrote ‘Six White Horses,’” says Welch. “It was meant to sound that way. We were trying to write songs that had that ‘good stuff’ in them. I want that ‘good ole stuff,’ and then I want to also express what is going on in my life. Not to get morbid, but that song is not a museum piece or a recreation thing. My Mom was dying when we wrote that song. That is all I was thinking about. These things are real. This is the stuff that happens. This is what happens to people. Your parents die. Your lover cheats on you. Your baby is sick. You’re broke. All of this stuff happens. This is not back in time. It all depends on how you feel like voicing it. For me, voicing that stuff, as in the way of ‘Six White Horses,’ that is how I like to talk about these things. I like to boil it all of the way down to the image of it all. That works for me, but it may not work for everybody else. Some people like the real modern conversational and confessional approach. But I like to use folk poetry. It helps me.”

Although Welch has been nominated for a GRAMMY Award multiple times, she won her one and only GRAMMY for her work on the 2000 O Brother, Where Art Thou? movie soundtrack, which went on to sell nearly eight million copies and help create a new generation of lovers of bluegrass and old-time music. There is still an “O Brother Generation” coming to age now that took up playing musical instruments because of the impact of that movie and its songs.

For The Record: 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

“I know that album inspired a lot of people, and I love it,” says Welch. “That was basically my record collection come to life. [Producer] T Bone Burnett said to me, ‘Who is doing this music?’ The answer was Ralph Stanley, John Hartford and Norman Blake as well as The Whites and Alison Krauss. The one thing about it that was funny was that at the time, it wasn’t meant to be the greatest people in bluegrass brought onboard. I feel like it turned into such a big thing that I think there were some hard feelings for people that were left out. But, nobody knew what was about to happen. We were just making the music for this movie. It wasn’t any big deal then. But then, it happened pretty quickly. The movie was a hit, and the movie did that great thing where ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ was also portrayed as a hit song in the movie and that is a powerful thing. That album was a really great overview and sampling of that music.” 

A few years ago, Welch admitted to a bit of writer’s block when it came to creating new songs. But, that has since changed and fresh music is on the way.

“We have been writing a bunch of new songs,” says Welch. “The Harrow And The Harvest has been out for a while now and we have written two albums since then, but they were under David’s name. Sometimes, I feel like people think I have been twiddling my thumbs, but I have not been twiddling my thumbs. We are just about ready to start recording and we have a little pile of songs. We write songs in all different ways by this point. Sometimes they take two days to write, and sometimes two years. ‘Look At Miss Ohio’ was written really quick, and ‘Everything is Free’ was written quick. ‘Tennessee,’ however, took a long time and the song ‘Elvis Presley Blues’ did as well.”

As a testament to her talents, Welch's quick songs certainly feel fully rich while her slow songs are definitely worth the wait. Her calming command of her craft balances the chaotic energy surrounding the World Of Bluegrass festivities, and the mountain music community she helped build show her due appreciation as she takes the stage in Raleigh.

Sister Sadie's Beth Lawrence And Gena Britt Discuss Their New Album & More

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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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J.S. Ondara

Photo: Daniel Mendoza/Recording Academy

News
Kenyan J.S. Ondara Tells His 'Tales Of America' kenyan-singersongwriter-js-ondara-telling-his-own-tales-america-debut-lp

Kenyan Singer/Songwriter J.S. Ondara On Telling His Own 'Tales Of America' With Debut LP

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The "Torch Song" singer describes how his new album aims to, 'Speak about my perspective on the times we're in in America as an immigrant"
Nate Hertweck
GRAMMYs
Aug 14, 2019 - 4:08 pm

Although he grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, singer/songwriter J.S. Ondara has more in common with Bob Dylan than you might think. After discoving the music of Bob Dylan, Ondara moved to Minneapolis, not far from where Dylan hailed from, to pursue a career. Also like Dylan, Ondara wrote songs - a lot of songs. This year, the prolific Ondara wittled down fhundreds of songs he wrote to the 11 stories comprising Tales Of America, his remarkable debut album.

J.S. Ondara On Newport Folk & 'Tales Of America'

"I was trying, in some ways, summarize my jorney so far of my time in America in a few songs, a few words, and speak about my perspective on the times we're in in America, as an immigrant," Ondara told us of Tales... backstage at Newport Folk recently. 

Ondara was making his Newport Folk debut, another Dylan parallel and another giant step in his American journey.

"I've known about this festival for a long time," said Ondara. "I used to watch videos of it when i was back home in Kenya all the time. Being here in person, experiencing it, is quite surreal."

Bringing his fresh take on Americana and the American experience, Ondara voice is a welcome and refreshing sound and perspective for the genre. On his latest single, a new version of an outstanding track on the album, "Torch Song (Echo Park)," he sings with a jarring fragility and wisdom beyond his years, "Don't hold a torch to the sun/My heart is never on time/Always a little behind/Oh when it's about to break/I close my eyes and count to ten."

Ondara's songs such as "American Dream," Television Girl," and "Lebanon" have stirred up quite a buzz, and Rolling Stone called him out as an artist you need to know earlier this year. 

"The reception has been great, of the record," he said. "I don't know what I expected really, but this is more than I expected. I'm pretty grateful for all of it."

Catch Ondara on tour this fall in North America and France, and watch our interview with him above for more.

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