Skip to main content
GRAMMYs Breaking News
Breaking News
  • MusiCares Launches Help for the Holidays Campaign Apply HERE
  • Recording Academy
  • GRAMMYs
  • Membership
  • Advocacy
  • MusiCares
  • GRAMMY Museum
  • Latin GRAMMYs
GRAMMYs
  • Advocacy
  • Membership
  • GRAMMYs
  • Governance
  • Jobs
  • Press Room
  • Events
  • Login
  • MusiCares
  • GRAMMY Museum
  • Latin GRAMMYs
  • More
    • MusiCares
    • GRAMMY Museum
    • Latin GRAMMYs

The GRAMMYs

  • Awards
  • News
  • Videos
  • Music Genres
  • Recording Academy
  • More
    • Awards
    • News
    • Videos
    • Music Genres
    • Recording Academy

Latin GRAMMYs

MusiCares

  • About
  • Get Help
  • Give
  • News
  • Videos
  • Events
  • Person of the Year
  • More
    • About
    • Get Help
    • Give
    • News
    • Videos
    • Events
    • Person of the Year

Advocacy

  • About
  • News
  • Issues & Policy
  • Act
  • Recording Academy
  • More
    • About
    • News
    • Issues & Policy
    • Act
    • Recording Academy

Membership

  • Join
  • Events
  • PRODUCERS & ENGINEERS WING
  • GRAMMY U
  • GOVERNANCE
  • More
    • Join
    • Events
    • PRODUCERS & ENGINEERS WING
    • GRAMMY U
    • GOVERNANCE
Log In Join
  • SUBSCRIBE

  • Search
See All Results
Modal Open
Subscribe Now

Subscribe to Newsletters

Be the first to find out about GRAMMY nominees, winners, important news, and events. Privacy Policy
GRAMMY Museum
Membership

Join us on Social

  • Recording Academy
    • The Recording Academy: Facebook
    • The Recording Academy: Twitter
    • The Recording Academy: Instagram
    • The Recording Academy: YouTube
  • GRAMMYs
    • GRAMMYs: Facebook
    • GRAMMYs: Twitter
    • GRAMMYs: Instagram
    • GRAMMYs: YouTube
  • Latin GRAMMYs
    • Latin GRAMMYs: Facebook
    • Latin GRAMMYs: Twitter
    • Latin GRAMMYs: Instagram
    • Latin GRAMMYs: YouTube
  • GRAMMY Museum
    • GRAMMY Museum: Facebook
    • GRAMMY Museum: Twitter
    • GRAMMY Museum: Instagram
    • GRAMMY Museum: YouTube
  • MusiCares
    • MusiCares: Facebook
    • MusiCares: Twitter
    • MusiCares: Instagram
  • Advocacy
    • Advocacy: Facebook
    • Advocacy: Twitter
  • Membership
    • Membership: Facebook
    • Membership: Twitter
    • Membership: Instagram
    • Membership: Youtube
GRAMMYs

Wide Open Bluegrass 2019

Photo: Shannon Kelly/Recording Academy

News
Wide Open Bluegrass 2019: Past, Present & Future wide-open-bluegrass-celebrates-past-present-future-raleigh-nc

Wide Open Bluegrass Celebrates Past, Present & Future In Raleigh, N.C.

Facebook Twitter Email
Get the inside scoop on the biggest week in bluegrass: "This convention is such an amazing opportunity for bluegrass musicians," said Fireside Collective's Jesse Iaquinto
Derek Halsey
GRAMMYs
Sep 30, 2019 - 6:00 pm

It is a fascinating change of groove when the business side of the International Bluegrass Music Association’s (IBMA) World of Bluegrass Conference ends and the public begins to arrive and fill the streets of downtown Raleigh, NC, for the Wide Open Bluegrass Festival that follows.

HUGE NEWS! The Wide Open Bluegrass Main Stage will be FREE to the public in 2019! A limited number of tickets will be available for those wanting guaranteed access and a reserved seat.

Read the full press release here!https://t.co/XU0lVWzkN0 pic.twitter.com/3DUduVfjI2

— IBMA (@IntlBluegrass) March 12, 2019

For three days, the bluegrass music industry has met in Raleigh to showcase new and up-and-coming talent, hold various workshops focusing on what it takes to successfully run a band and succeed in the genre, to connect concert promoters from around the country with bands ready to put a tour together and to honor the top musicians in the bluegrass world with the 30th annual IBMA Awards Show.

Then, early Friday morning, the city of Raleigh shuts down almost seven blocks of prime downtown streets to set up the Wide Open Bluegrass Festival. Billed as the “The largest free urban bluegrass festival in the world,” the thoroughfares slowly become inhabited, surging by noon as folks get off work early on Friday to take in the live music offered on multiple stages.

The Recording Academy was on-the-ground for this year’s Wide Open Bluegrass Festival Sept. 27 and 28, walking the streets of Raleigh and taking in what should be considered an amazing accomplishment by this state capitol city.

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

About eight years ago, Raleigh presented an impressive plan to the IBMA that was, at first, hard to believe. If the organization would consider moving their convention week to North Carolina from Nashville, the city of Raleigh and the local Pinecone Traditional Music Association would provide the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts for the IBMA Awards Show, they would offer the wonderful 5,500-seat Red Hat Amphitheater for a weekend of special performances and they would shut down a wide swath of their downtown district and hand it over to live bluegrass music. Seven years into the change, the event is as strong and popular as ever.

It is noon on Friday of Wide Open Bluegrass, and the streets of Raleigh begin to swell with festival goers as live bluegrass music fills the nine official outdoor stages stretching from the Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts to the Capitol Building. There are many other stages to choose from as well, including the impromptu jams found at the various music industry booths in the convention center as well as unofficial stages that have sprouted up along the avenues.

On the City Plaza Stage, we caught up with the band Fireside Collective. This is a group that has successfully taken advantage of the IBMA Convention and its late night Bluegrass Ramble showcases and the Wide Open Bluegrass Street Fest. Just a short few years ago, the group was working hard just to get noticed. Now, they recently signed with the Mountain Home Music record label and just released their new single “She Was An Angel” from their new album that will drop in the coming months.

GRAMMYs

Fireside Collective
Photo: Shannon Kelly/Recording Academy

Fireside Collective’s Jesse Iaquinto takes a moment to talk about the band's journey just before they are about to play in the high profile 5 p.m. slot.on the City Plaza Stage after Sierra Hull's set and before the Gibson Brothers show.

“The very first year we came to the IBMA, we were relatively obscure, and we kind of just played the fringes of the convention and had our Raleigh friends come out and support us,” said Iaquinto. “Back then, it was a nice yet small and intimate view from the outside. In the next year, we were a showcase band and we played 15 shows that week. We played eight shows in one day starting at 11 a.m. and ending at 2 a.m. I think I lost my voice on the last note that night. But, it was totally worth it as we made so many connections here with festivals around the country and other venues and bands. This convention is such an amazing opportunity for bluegrass musicians. Today, to play this prime time show on the Plaza, it is an honor to feel accepted into the whole IBMA community.”

As Fireside Collective completes their show in front of a packed crowd, GRAMMY-winning singer/songwriter extraordinaire Jim Lauderdale congratulates them on a great set and says hello. 

Just the night before, Lauderdale co-hosted the IBMA Awards Show with Hall of Famer Del McCoury. Lauderdale began as a bluegrass artist before branching out to make country music. But, over the last two decades, he has come back to the genre, releasing both country and bluegrass albums along the way.

We'll see you all at the 30th Annual International Bluegrass Music Awards tonight in Raleigh. Get ready for the biggest night in bluegrass!

Get tickets at the Duke Energy Center box office or before the show online:https://t.co/aQNKCJFhRa pic.twitter.com/To90AbjS5T

— IBMA (@IntlBluegrass) September 26, 2019

Some of the highlights from the 2019 IBMA Awards Show include Billy Strings winning the Guitar Player of the Year award, Alan Bibey winning his first-ever Mandolin Player of the Year award, and Sister Sadie, who we profiled at last year’s IBMA Convention, becoming the first female artists to ever win the Vocal Group of the Year Award.

A day later, however, Lauderdale has other things on his mind. Three days earlier on Sept. 23, acclaimed Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter died at 78. Not only did Hunter write many of the most well-known Grateful Dead lyrics, he also wrote more than two album’s worth of songs with Lauderdale.

“I lost a good friend of mine in Robert Hunter this week, and we wrote a couple of bluegrass albums together,” said Lauderdale. “When I first started working with him, it was because I was going to work with Ralph Stanley, and that is how he became interested. Robert and I branched off from that and we wrote a lot of other, different kinds of songs together. I have recorded about 87 of the songs I wrote with Robert, and we co-wrote about 100 songs in total. He would either give me lyrics or I would give him melodies, both long distance and while together. He was an incredible man and it really hit me hard this week.”

At one point, Lauderdale and musician and former Nashville journalist Peter Cooper were able to take Robert Hunter backstage at the Grand Ole Opry, which thrilled Hunter. Later on, after Lauderdale recorded the albums that he co-wrote with the renowned late lyricist, he was able to bring out Hunter to perform on the Grand Ole Opry stage.

“About four years ago, I was playing on the Opry and I took Robert and I got him and (IBMA Hall of Famer) Jesse McReynolds to sit in with me to play a song that Robert and I wrote called ‘Headed For The Hills,’” said Lauderdale. “That really meant a lot to me to have Robert onstage at the Grand Ole Opry. He wasn’t a very demonstrative person, but he was very kind and let me know he really enjoyed it and appreciated it.”

The key to the modern success of bluegrass music is the effort put into cultivating and encouraging young musicians. Those who visit either the IBMA Convention or the Wide Open Bluegrass Street Fest are always blown away by the amount of young players that are walking around and showcasing their incredible ability to sing or play an instrument. In fact, there are two stages set up at the Wide Open Bluegrass Street Fest that are dedicated to younger musicians. The first one is the IBMA Youth Stage, which featured performances by the Burnett Sisters, the all-star group Kids On Bluegrass, the Shiloh Creek Girls and more.

The IBMA Youth Stage also showcased many bands from the colleges that now offer a bluegrass music degree. Some of the groups featured included the Eastern Tennessee State University Bluegrass Pride Band, the Mountain Music Ambassadors from Morehead State University, the High Lonesome Senate band from Walters State Community College, the Tigertown Roots band from Clemson University, the Warren Wilson College Bluegrass Band, the Glenville State College Bluegrass Band, the Carolina Bluegrass Band from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, The Ruta Beggars band from the Berklee College of Music, the Eastern Kentucky University  Bluegrass Band, the Pellissippi State Bluegrass Band, the Bob Jones University Bluegrass and the Denison University Bluegrass Band.

Your once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catch The Ringers is coming up tonight at @RedHatAmp at 8pm. See you there! #wob2019 #PNCWideOpenBluegrass pic.twitter.com/F0k7MaBRin

— IBMA (@IntlBluegrass) September 28, 2019

A mile or so away on Martin Street is the very popular Junior Appalachian Musician Stage. The Junior Appalachian Musician (JAM) program is an amazing entity that sets up weekly classes and music lessons for kids in over 40 rural towns and cities in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

At the side of the JAM Stage is the organization’s Director Brett Morris, who brings the best of the musicians involved in the organization to perform on the streets of Raleigh.    

“We had a really good crowd on both days, especially during the evening time,” said Morris. “It was pretty impressive. ShadowGrass and Cane Mill Road were the last two bands on Friday night and the crowd stretched all of the way to the main street. ShadowGrass features guitar great Presley Barker, who is only a freshman in high school, and Cane Mill Road features 17 year old multi-instrumentalist Liam Purcell. Cane Mill Road just won the IBMA Momentum Band of the Year award on Wednesday and their banjo player Tray Wellington won the IBMA Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year award as well.”

There are a lot of other genres that could take bluegrass music’s lead when it comes to building up a new generation of artists.

“I mean, if you don’t like to watch kids that are totally killing it while playing music onstage, than there is something wrong with you,” said Morris. “We let Cane Mill Road play a little bit over their allotted stage time and they had this huge crowd eating out of their hands. And, what is cool is that there are a lot of even younger kids that are coming along right behind them.”

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

GRAMMY.com Genre Pages

The Recording Academy/GRAMMY.com

News
GRAMMY.com Launches New Genre Pages grammy-genre-pages-music-discovery

GRAMMY.com Launches New Genre Pages To Expand Music Discovery

Facebook Twitter Email
Updated daily, the genre pages will help GRAMMY.com fans explore the latest news, read artist interviews, watch original video series and exclusive performances, and discover your next favorite artist
GRAMMYs
Jan 20, 2021 - 8:00 am

The nature of music genres has changed. Today, we live in a genre-bending world where sounds and styles transcend boundaries. While the music you listen to and love can no longer only be defined by labels and categories, genres continue to provide music-lovers unique ways to discover new music and next-gen artists.

That's why we're launching our brand-new genre pages on GRAMMY.com, a dynamic feature aimed at fostering music discovery and expanding your musical knowledge. Updated daily, the genre pages will help GRAMMY.com fans discover their next favorite artist, stay up to date on the latest music news, read insightful artist interviews and explore our vast library of original video series, exclusive performances and archival footage. 

Launching with sections for Rap, R&B, Pop, Country and Rock, the genre pages will give GRAMMY.com readers all the newest updates in music to know now, all packed in one, easy-to-use destination.

GRAMMY.com will launch more genre pages soon where you can explore all the artists, sounds and styles we celebrate every year at the annual GRAMMY Awards. 

Much like genres themselves, the GRAMMY Awards have evolved with the ever-changing music industry throughout the decades. Originally launched in 1959, the annual GRAMMYs, music's only peer-recognized award and highest achievement, honor artists and music in a wide field of categories across more than a dozen genres. The number of awards and categories recognized at the GRAMMY Awards has changed throughout the years with the emergence of growing sounds and styles, like rap and Latin, while certain awards have been discontinued or combined into larger umbrella genres. 

This year, at the 63rd GRAMMY Awards, airing Sunday, March 14, on CBS, the Recording Academy will recognize 83 categories across a vast array of genres. 

As music continues to progress and fans expand the ways they consume music and culture, GRAMMY.com remains your go-to destination for new music discovery, Recording Academy and industry updates and engaging, music-first content.

2021 GRAMMYs: Complete Nominees List

Michael Romanowski

Michael Romanowski

Photo Courtesy of Michael Romanowski

News
Michael Romanowski Talks "Angel From Montgomery" michael-romanowski-interview-dolby-atmos-immersive-audio-john-prine-angel-montgomery

Mastering Engineer Michael Romanowski Talks Dolby Atmos Mix Of "Angel From Montgomery" And The Benefits Of Immersive Audio

Facebook Twitter Email
Romanowski spoke to GRAMMY.com about the song's double mix and master treatment and the differences between a typical audio experience and one with Dolby Atmos
Lily Moayeri
GRAMMYs
Dec 21, 2020 - 5:00 pm

When John Prine died due to COVID-19 complications this past April, a notable group of Recording Academy members quickly released its version of the revered songwriter's classic, "Angel From Montgomery," the following month, on May 22. 

Led by Michael Romanowski, a GRAMMY-nominated mastering engineer and trustee of the Recording Academy's San Francisco chapter, the aim of the release was to honor Prine, with revenues from the song going directly to MusiCares' COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Nearly seven months later, Romanowski and his formidable team of collaborators, which includes Tammy Hurt, Eric Jarvis, Susan Marshall and Jeff Powell, among many others, re-released their version of "Angel From Montgomery" last week (Dec. 16). This time, it's mixed and mastered in Dolby Atmos.

One of the forerunners in the immersive sound space, Dolby Atmos takes the surround sound concept to the next level. Where surround sound focuses on the two-dimensional sound axes of the standard left and right and the additional front and back, Dolby Atmos adds a third axis: height.

A 30-year studio and sound veteran, Romanowski is a leader in mixing and mastering immersive audio. In fact, he had already mixed and mastered the recording of "Angel From Montgomery" in Dolby Atmos at the same time he did the conventional stereo mix. 

Romanowski spoke to GRAMMY.com from the mixing and mastering hub of his Coast Mastering in Northern California about why "Angel From Montgomery" received the double mix and master treatment, what the differences are between a typical audio experience and one with Dolby Atmos, and how come we're hearing the immersive version so many months after the original MusiCares release.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What's the difference between Dolby Atmos and other iterations of immersive audio? 

It started with quadraphonic sound [4.0 surround sound] in the '70s, which was an attempt to do multichannel with four corners with a phantom center image from the left and right and a phantom side image from the back and front. In the mid- to late-'80s, we got into 5.1 because of movies and games, and it took hold in music. In the '90s, we had Super-Audio CDs and DVD-Audio—competing formats, but same-sized discs. Ultimately, consumers just ended up listening to what was coming out of their computers. Now with Dolby Atmos, we've taken immersive audio a step further and added a height component, which is built on psychoacoustics and how the brain perceives localizations, frequency and height at different angles.

How does Dolby Atmos, which began in movie theaters, make the shift to consumer listening spaces?

It was originally geared toward the rake of the floor of the theater. Because the floor goes up, the back speakers are essentially the height speakers. That was a built-in feature—or a flaw, depending on how you want to look at it. 

Moving to music, when consumers don't have the right floor, and they're sitting in their living rooms or cars or on headphones, we still want to give them that sense of what's in front of them and what's behind them. All the localization cues that give us direction that tell our brains that we are in a space are enhanced by having a more dedicated ceiling system array. 

How does mixing and mastering in immersive audio lend itself to the consumer listening experience?

We're creating a sound stage and a place and an environment where the listener can feel like they're engaged in active listening versus passive listening. It's a way of having folks attentive to what they're hearing, to be present when listening to audio, rather than letting it be in the background or covering up kitchen noise when they're making dinner.

For a lot of folks, mastering has been relegated to finishing the mix. When we leave the stereo world and think about what immersive mastering is, you're adding not just two speakers, but 12 or 16 speakers. There are potential problems with translatability: phase problems, level problems, EQ problems, clashes, comb filtering, all sorts of stuff.

Do you have separate rooms at Coast Mastering for mixing and mastering in stereo versus in immersive audio?

Ninety percent of my work is in the stereo field, but we're starting to see overlap between the stereo component and the immersive component. The difference between a stereo speaker room setup and an immersive room setup is dimensionality. When you have a well-tuned stereo room, throwing speakers up can cause more problems like frequency response, reflections in the room and speakers' time arrival. 

I engaged acoustician Bob Hodas, who has been working with me for just about every room I've ever been in. When we designed the room, we already knew what the dimensions were going to be, scientifically: the room reflections, calculations with absorption, diffusion, height, bass trapping. We worked all that out in advance to make sure this was an effective stereo room and also an immersive room.

Were your fellow musicians who worked on "Angel From Montgomery" aware of Dolby Atmos when you were working on the song?

No. At that point, the conversation was, "We don't know what that is, but sure, go ahead." It gave great perspective to not blend the contributions, but pull them apart so we could envelope the listener in a very cool way, a chance to create a 3D canvas and texture that pulls you in even further. When you listen to music in a club or go to a show, you're not just listening in stereo; you're listening to the environment, the reflections on the walls, the localization. This gave us a really great opportunity to do that with this track.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAgGl0YBjpq

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Michael Romanowski (@coastmastering)

Do you see remixing and remastering in immersive audio as a way to update classic recordings?

My intent is not necessarily the reworking of back catalog. That's cool, but we're given a fixed perspective in the back catalog. For us in the Recording Academy, this particular project is a way to inspire people who are creating music moving forward to think about the possibilities of what they could do to create this listening experience for the consumer, the fan. 

How does mixing and mastering in immersive audio have an effect on what's heard through streaming services, which generally have lower-quality audio?

If the consumer is playing it back with slow bandwidth, it's more important for them to hear something immediately than to wait a few seconds to allow it to play. In this instant-gratification world, you hit play, it's buffering and you have to wait five seconds or two seconds, you're already gone. Some companies send small data first to get you in and stay while buffering the high-resolution stuff.

This is something that is greatly expanded on by multichannel. If you've got 12 channels of audio, the encoding process becomes very particular. This goes back to mastering. By using multichannel audio, we deliver multiple versions of encoding layers of complexity and resolution, so there [are] less differences between the smaller low-resolution and larger high-resolution files.

Is this one of the main benefits of mixing and mastering in immersive audio?

Having a great mix and a great master is hugely important for lots of reasons, among them: future aspects of recordings. We got into the digital world at 16-bit/44.1 kHz recording, then we moved to 24-bit/48 kHz. As technology allowed us to get higher resolution, musicians that had recorded in 16-bit/44.1 kHz were locked into that. As technology and digital distribution evolve and resolution gets higher, you will always be limited to the top of what you got. You can't make it more resolute than it is. 

At the moment, Dolby Atmos is limited to 24-bit/48kHz. Most people are recording at higher resolution than that. I recorded "Angel From Montgomery" at 24-bit/192 kHz. We're locked in at 48K for now, but that doesn't mean that I'm not prepared for when we go higher. 

Will a non-audiophile consumer be able to notice the difference between the stereo version and the Dolby Atmos version of "Angel From Montgomery?"

When you listen to "Angel From Montgomery" in the stereo world, the phantom center image is right in the middle of your head. In the immersive world, we're trying to engage the listener in a sense of space. The music and the musicians are coming from all directions, rather than [from] two speakers in front of you. Stereo music can't recreate the same sense of environment. With "Angel From Montgomery" in Dolby Atmos, and the collaborative nature of the recording, we could better highlight each part that is additive to the bigger picture, rather than squeezing it down into two channels. This gives the listener a more active and engaging experience.

What I would recommend to folks is [to] take the time, sit and listen to things; absorb it rather than judge it or compare it. Obviously, people are spending a lot of time listening on headphones. The best ear training anybody can have is to sit and listen with other people and talk about what they're hearing. That shared experience causes people's attention to hear things they wouldn't necessarily think about or listen to. 

Why are you releasing the Dolby Atmos version of "Angel From Montgomery" at a different time than the stereo version?

We thought that if we put it out at the same time, the message would get muddied. On Amazon, you'd see two versions and it would confuse people. The stereo release was to get it out there to do as much good as we could from the start. Holding the Dolby Atmos release gives us an opportunity to revisit it, to draw attention back to the good the song can do, but also, the possibility of imagining the release in a different way and how that can inspire folks. 

What is your ultimate goal with what you're doing with immersive audio?

My hope is we'll get to a distribution model other than streaming, like HDtracks or Blue Coast Music that sell high-resolution multichannel audio where people are putting their own servers together. We're going to get to where people are going to have that ability without limiting what they're doing now for convenience. Don't lock yourself down with resolution, distribution and download possibilities. Go as high as you can because, as we have demonstrated for 100-plus years, the audio industry will be moving forward.

Behind The Record Returns To #GiveCredit To The Behind-The-Scenes Music Creators

Grammys Newsletter

Subscribe Now

GRAMMYs Newsletter

Be the first to find out about winners, nominees, and more from Music's Biggest Night.
Aaron Lee Tasjan

Aaron Lee Tasjan

News
Aaron Lee Tasjan Performs "Computer Of Love" press-play-home-aaron-lee-tasjans-playful-performance-computer-love

Press Play At Home: Aaron Lee Tasjan's Playful Performance Of "Computer Of Love"

Facebook Twitter Email
"Some advanced technology is eating through my brain," Tasjan laments at the start of the lively folk-rock song
GRAMMYs
Dec 17, 2020 - 11:02 am

In the latest episode of Press Play At Home, Nashville-based singer/songwriter Aaron Lee Tasjan offers a playful yet piercing take on technological dependency in his performance of "Computer of Love."

"Some advanced technology is eating through my brain," Tasjan laments at the start of the lively folk-rock song. Watch his full performance below.

Aaron Lee Tasjan Performs "Computer Of Love"

Featured on his forthcoming, genre-bending album, Tasjan! Tasjan! Tasjan!, out Feb. 5, 2021, the song references the disconnection caused by technology and social media and the emotional barriers they create within and between people.

Press Play At Home: Bliss Out To Jazzmeia Horn's "Where We Are"

Grammys Newsletter

Subscribe Now

GRAMMYs Newsletter

Be the first to find out about winners, nominees, and more from Music's Biggest Night.
(L-R) John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and George Clooney in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

(L-R) John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson and George Clooney in 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?'

Photo: Universal/Getty Images

News
'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' At 20 o-brother-where-art-thou-20-year-anniversary

20 Years Ago, 'O Brother, Where Art Thou?' Crashed The Country Music Party

Facebook Twitter Email
In honor of the 20-year anniversary of the GRAMMY-winning album, GRAMMY.com spoke to the creative minds behind the groundbreaking soundtrack, including T Bone Burnett, Dan Tyminski, Luke Lewis and others
Jim Beaugez
GRAMMYs
Dec 5, 2020 - 1:29 pm

The Coen Brothers' 2000 tragicomedy O Brother, Where Art Thou?, set in Mississippi during the Great Depression, pulls deeply from the early-20th century American songbook to drive the film's Homeric storyline, which entangles the lives of escaped convicts Delmar O'Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson), Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney).

But while nearly all 19 tracks on the original soundtrack, released December 5, 2000, are once-popular songs enshrined in the Library of Congress, the music wasn't designed to be a hit outside the world of the Soggy Bottom Boys, the film's fictional band composed of the main characters. "Old-Time Music is Very Much Alive!" trumpets the faux Nashville Banner headline in the liner notes to the film's original soundtrack, "But you won't hear it on 'country' radio." 

The prophecy proved true. The popularity of O Brother, Where Art Thou? didn't help traditional music break into radio programmers' playlists—the single for "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" peaked at No. 35 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart—but it didn't matter. The soundtrack sold more than 8 million copies in the U.S., certified eight times platinum, and won Album Of The Year at the 44th GRAMMY Awards.

On that February evening in 2002, bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley stunned the audience at the Staples Center in Los Angeles with an a cappella performance of "O Death," a traditional folk song featured on the soundtrack, delivered by the then-73-year-old under a single spotlight in the middle of the darkened arena. (Stanley went on to win the Best Male Country Vocal Performance GRAMMY for the track that night.)

"Having Ralph Stanley stand on a stool in the middle of the room and sing 'O Death' was the pinnacle of my entire career," Luke Lewis, whose Lost Highway label released the soundtrack and who also led the Nashville operations of Mercury, MCA and UMG at various points, tells GRAMMY.com. "I was sitting with a bunch of f*cking gangster rappers who were completely blown away."

But the odyssey began long before a host of country, gospel and bluegrass ringers upturned the industry on music's biggest night—before the Coen Brothers even began filming, in fact.

In the spring of 1999, producer T Bone Burnett convened at Sound Emporium in Nashville with a who's who of roots musicians from the city's vibrant bluegrass scene, including Gillian Welch and Alison Krauss & Union Station, to put the song cycle to tape. Lewis, who was just beginning to assemble Lost Highway Records as a creative haven for roots artists like Lucinda Williams, caught wind of the sessions and went to investigate.

"I walked into that creative process when all that was going on, and the Coen Brothers are hanging, T Bone's in there," Lewis recalls. "All these amazing artists come in there and do the record old school, with a mic in the middle of the room."

Classics such as "I'll Fly Away," "You Are My Sunshine" and "In The Jailhouse Now"—the latter sung by actor Tim Blake Nelson—are rendered slower and lower than typical bluegrass interpretations. That was an intentional move, Burnett says, to capitalize on the bass response of the subwoofer-loaded sound systems in movie theaters.

"The first thing we did was stretch the sonic spectrum that bluegrass was ordinarily recorded in, which was very high—the banjo was high, the singing was high, the violins were high, the mandolins were high—and we lowered it a couple of octaves and approached it more as a rock 'n' roll album rather than a traditional bluegrass record."

While Krauss took lead vocals on "Down To The River To Pray," elsewhere collaborating with Welch and Emmylou Harris on "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby," her Union Station guitarist Dan Tyminski was asked to audition for the cut of a lifetime: singing lead on "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow," the hit Soggy Bottom Boys song "sung" by George Clooney in the film. 

"I was happy to do it, but I honestly didn't feel like it made a lot of sense," Tyminski remembers. "I didn't necessarily see myself sounding like Clooney's voice at the time, but it's hard to see from your own perspective what other people see or hear. So, I went back and auditioned the next day, and somehow [I] got it, and just couldn't have been more shocked at what would follow."

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

The brains behind the soundtrack were just as surprised when the film opened in France, prior to its stateside debut, and sold 70,000 copies of the album within a month. It was a hint of what was to come in the U.S. 

As the film's signature song, "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" helped drive the soundtrack to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, where it spent 15 weeks during a 683-week run on the chart.

The song became Tyminski's calling card, but he almost didn't get to play it. After his version was done and filming had begun, Clooney himself asked to take a pass at the vocal. Tyminski went back to the studio on a day off from shooting and backed him on guitar.

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

"George is actually a really great singer and had learned the song well, and he sang a killer version of it," Burnett says. "But it didn't have the thrill in it that Dan's version had. And so I just said, 'This is great, but we're supposed to be making a movie about a hit record, and now we've got something that sounds like a hit record, so I think we should stick with that. What do you think?' And I think he was relieved, really."

Tyminski says the recording process also played a role in the decision to use his version. "It's not that he couldn't do the job," he says, "but for the sake of the movie, it had to be one take, live, no fixes. It was all really pure, all very organic. 

"After he had taken a couple of swings at it and got the words jumbled a couple of times, he says, 'Dan, I'll make you a deal: I'll act, you sing.' And quite honestly, I was so disappointed because I thought it was so cool to have recorded the song with Clooney. At the time, it felt like that was a bigger deal than singing the song myself. It wasn't until a little bit later that I realized what a loss that would have been. It ended up being the biggest song of my career, easily."

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

Tracking down the writers of songs composed nearly a century earlier proved to be an enormous job for Burnett and Denise Stiff, who managed Welch and Union Station. The songs were recorded and re-recorded over the decades, and many versions were unique enough to support their own copyrights. That meant when Burnett used or rewrote an arrangement, they had to determine which previous version of the song was closest and credit the right people. 

"'Man Of Constant Sorrow' has, I think, 50 copyrights in the Library Of Congress," Burnett says. "The one we worked with most closely was The Stanley Brothers' version. Even though we had done our own arrangement, we could've gotten sued by 50 people for infringement."

The version of "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" recorded for the film earned Tyminski a GRAMMY for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals at the 2002 GRAMMYs. In addition to the Album Of The Year win, the soundtrack also won for Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For A Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media, while T Bone Burnett won for Producer Of The Year, Non-Classical.

Two decades later, it's hard to say what lasting impact the success of O Brother, Where Art Thou? made on contemporary country music, or popular music in general. The widespread acclaim for the film and soundtrack is undeniable, and they both made gobs of money. But it could be argued—and Burnett does—that a revival of roots music was already underway when it all hit. 

"The reason I think it was so successful [was] because, one, there was already a very strong traditional music trend," Burnett says. "Kids were learning how to do it."

So-called "alt-country" bands like Wilco and Old 97's were impacting the lower rungs of industry charts, along with Jayhawks, Whiskeytown and others. Bluegrass trio Nickel Creek had hooked up with Krauss and released their 2000 self-titled, platinum-selling album, while bluegrass-adjacent bands Old Crow Medicine Show and The Avett Brothers were beginning to make names for themselves on the touring circuit. 

"Certainly, country radio didn't change, and you wish for things like that to happen," Lost Highway founder Lewis says. "But it makes you aware that there's a wider world than what you hear on mainstream radio, and for a lot of people who really love music, you need something to lead you down the path because it's hard to find guideposts to things you might like. I think O Brother had that sort of impact."

There's another reason, too, Burnett suggests. On the night of the 2002 GRAMMYs, Americans were still reeling from the September 11 terrorist attacks that took place just five months earlier. Tony Bennett and Billy Joel sang a duet on "New York State Of Mind," a nod to the resilience of the city amid tragedy. Alan Jackson performed "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)" in front of children's art created in reaction to the attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. And in the middle of it all, Ralph Stanley stood on the GRAMMY stage, alone and vulnerable, pleading with his maker, "Won't you spare me over for another year?"

"Art responds to events without the artists meaning to at all," Burnett says. "The Beatles weren't responding to Kennedy's assassination, and yet everything about The Beatles felt like the thing that we needed the most after the Kennedy assassination. People were looking for our identity as Americans. Why did we get hit like this? Who were we?"

While the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou? offered millions of Americans the comfort of nostalgia, it impacted others in more material ways.

"It did amazing things for the artists that were involved," Lewis says. "All of a sudden, they were going on the road and making 10 times what they made before the record came out. They got royalty payments that they probably didn't ever dream of."

Mississippi-born singer James Carter had forgotten about the day in September 1959 when Alan Lomax recorded him singing "Po Lazarus" at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman until producers tracked him down in Chicago to present him with a platinum record plaque and a $20,000 royalty check for his performance. The 76-year-old former convict even attended the GRAMMY Awards that night, though he could barely remember recording the song.

In the years that followed, Tyminski recalls that the demographics of Union Station shows began to swing younger than before: more rock T-shirts, more spiked haircuts. He also remembers the rousing applause for the song that George Clooney, as Ulysses Everett McGill, sang into a can in the film's pivotal recording scene.

"From that point forward, that song was in every single show that we did," Tyminski says. "But when you have a song that's been that good to you and that people identify with and they want to hear, shame on you if you're not willing to play that song for the rest of your life."

How 1995 Became A Blockbuster Year For Movie Soundtracks

Grammys Newsletter

Subscribe Now

GRAMMYs Newsletter

Be the first to find out about winners, nominees, and more from Music's Biggest Night.
Top
Logo
  • Recording Academy
    • About
    • Governance
    • Press Room
    • Jobs
    • Events
  • GRAMMYs
    • Awards
    • News
    • Videos
    • Events
    • Store
    • FAQ
  • Latin GRAMMYs
    • Awards
    • News
    • Photos
    • Videos
    • Cultural Foundation
    • Members
    • Press
  • GRAMMY Museum
    • COLLECTION:live
    • Explore
    • Exhibits
    • Education
    • Support
    • Programs
    • Donate
  • MusiCares
    • About
    • Get Help
    • Give
    • News
    • Videos
    • Events
  • Advocacy
    • About
    • News
    • Learn
    • Act
  • Membership
    • Chapters
    • Producers & Engineers Wing
    • GRAMMY U
    • Join
Logo

© 2021 - Recording Academy. All rights reserved.

  • Terms of Service
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
  • Copyright Notice
  • Contact Us

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.