contents
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October 2017
Features
Rhonda Vincent
The Rage Inside The Queen Of Bluegrass
KNOWN AS THE NEW QUEEN OF BLUEGRASS,
RHONDA VINCENT IS EQUALLY AT HOME IN THE
WORLD OF TRADITIONAL COUNTRY AS SHE PROVED
RECENTLY ON AMERICAN GRANDSTAND WITH DARYL
SINGLETARY. SHE TALKS TO DUNCAN WARWICK.
B
11 The Fundamentals of Bluegrass
luegrass queen Rhonda Vincent is equally at
home in the world of traditional country as
her recent duets album - American Grandstand
- with Daryle Singletary conclusively proves.
And it’s not the first time the multi-award winning star
has lined up with a stone country singer at her side with
the Gene Watson duets album - Your Money And My Good
Looks - still fresh in the minds of country fans.
A guide to the music that came out of Kentucky by Tom Travis.
18 Rhonda Vincent
Duncan Warwick talks to the New Queen of Bluegrass who is equally at home in the world
of traditional country.
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OCTOBER 2017 - cmp
26 Doyle Lawson
With more than fifty years in the business, Doyle Lawson is a true bluegrass legend.
56 Mac Wiseman
“You try to keep the
music intact, keep
the tradition there,
and yet stay in the
current time.”
Doyle
LAWSON
Walt Trott on how Mac Wiseman is still singing and recording at 92.
TASK MASTER
DUNCAN WARWICK MEETS THE BLUEGRASS
LEGEND WITH MORE THAN FIFTY YEARS IN THE
BUSINESS.
58 Thomm Jutz
D
oyle Lawson is considered a mandolin virtuoso, which
ain’t bad for someone who taught themselves to play by
listening to the radio. “I had a natural ear for music. I
figured out…I don’t read music, I play by ear. So I figured
it out and on the way developed a few bad habits,” is how the
Bluegrass Hall of Famer modestly puts it.
Along with his band Quicksilver the septagenarian is one of the
most respected purveyors of bluegrass in the business. Between
2001 and 2007 nobody else could get a look in when it came to the
IBMA’s Vocal Group of the Year award and his new album is his 41st,
or is it his 42nd? Lawson himself isn’t sure, “I don’t count I just do
them,” he laughs, and indeed he does with what seems like at least
one album a year since the late 1970s.
“Well, you know, it’s the, what we call the supply and demand. I
try to stay, so to speak, in the public sphere and keep the recordings
out. We live in such a fast paced world these days that you just about
have to do things like that to keep their attention because there’s so
much going on. That’s one of the reasons I do try to keep something
going for the people to look at, listen to, and hope they buy.
“You have to stay visible, and when I say visible I mean audible as
well. More than ever these days the old phrase, ‘Out of sight, out of
mind.’ You can kind of disappear and there’s so many things going
on in the world today that people can entertain themselves with. If
you’re not careful you’ll be one of those ‘What ever happened to so
and so?’”
Inspired by the high lonesome sound of Bill Monroe on the Grand
Ole Opry broadcasts, Lawson still remembers the first time he
heard the Father of Bluegrass. “I can tell you I was about five years
old. I was born and lived up in East Tennessee, up in the North East
corner. My hometown is Kingsport but I live about twenty miles
away in Bristol. That’s where the historic recordings were made in
1927.
“We listened to the Grand Ole Opry on Saturday nights and I heard
this music and it just really grabbed me and my mother told me who
it was. It was Bill Monroe, and he could play the mandolin and he
could sing really high. But there was something about his music, as
small as I was, that grabbed me and has never turned me loose to
Singer, songwriter, producer, and Green Card Lottery winner.
60 Don Williams
The Gentle Giant remembered.
62 Troy Gentry
Tribute to half of Montgomery Gentry whose recent death shocked the Nashville
community.
Reviews
30 Album Reviews
49 Live Review
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Nice to meet y’all...
GANGSTAGRASS
W
e live in a world where every teeny bopper
t hat falls out of the cookie cutter thinks
they can deliver a country song like a
rapper and Nashville producers lean more
towards Luther Vandross than Luther
Perkins.
Sometimes what we need is a whole new genre.
However, that’s not always as easy as it sounds. Randomly
throwing things together can be fraught with disaster and
what sounds like a good idea after a few beers and a
couple of spliffs could well be ridiculous in the cold light of
day. Other things just sound ridiculous. For many people
country-rap was summed up best by Eddie Rabbitt on
Country Rap (or C-Rap) back in 1991 like some prophetic
warning to the world of Sam Hunt. Only Colt Ford has
brought any kind of real hip-hop to that party.
So… what kind of madman would try and combine
bluegrass and hip-hop? A guy known as Rench, that’s who.
Rench is a New York producer whose idea it was in 2006
to experimentally bring bluegrass and hip-hop together for
a one-off project that was given away free online. Hundreds
of thousands of downloads later Rench realised he might
be onto something and Ganstagrass was born. Critical
acclaim came next and it’s easy to hear why. Unbelievably,
this seemingly odd combination, not only works, it
works really well. It shouldn’t, but it does, and they were
commissioned to provide the title theme for the TV show
Justified which went on to become a hit with viewers and
see Rench and T.O.N.E-z being Emmy nominated.
One of the main reasons for the success of Ganstagrass
is Rench’s vision to do it properly. This is so much more
than somebody rapping on a bluegrass record, and
a million miles from the pseudo R&B of much of the
country chart. There are key elements of hip-hop, MCs
and DJ break-beats in synch with more typical bluegrass
instrumentation of banjos, fiddles, and Dobros giving
Gangstagrass more credibility than Thomas Rhett can
ever dream of. “That is an essential part of my formula for
creating Gangstagrass. It has to be real bluegrass pickers
and real emcees. I wouldn’t do it any other way,” states the
Brooklyn-based producer and artist.
Joining Rench in Gangstagrass are Dan Whitener on
banjo/vocals, Melody Berger on fiddle/vocals, Landry
McMeans on Dobro/vocals and R-Son The Voice of Reason
and Dolio The Sleuth providing vocals. Rench sheds light
on how they came together, “The musicians are into good
music in all styles but were not necessarily deeply fluent in
the other styles, so there has been a wonderful process of
exposing each other to great aspects of each genre.
“I like a few different kinds of country music - I was
exposed to a lot of honky-tonk music by my dad, who
is from Oklahoma. But I grew up in the 80s when hip-
hop exploded into the mainstream and I was hooked on
Run-DMC and early hip-hop as a kid. Now those are my
influences I bring to my production. I started listening to
more bluegrass in the early 2000s and that’s what led me
to try also bringing that influence in,” says Rench, who
admits that the whole concept is not always an easy sell.
“It is hard to sell it by describing it - when people try to
imagine bluegrass-hip-hop they usually imagine something
bad and run away. The easy sell is when people just hear
what we do first. It’s gotta be done right, in a way people
may not be able to picture, but if you play people this
sound they are usually into it right away.”
As one might expect, not everybody gets the
Ganstagrass philosophy, least of all what might be
considered the major players that go to make up the record
industry establishment.
“The establishment is in chaos right now with the
changes in the music industry and we don’t make any
sense to them so the response there is total silence. We
do get a lot of bluegrass fans and hip-hop fans that love
what we do, even bluegrass aficionados. There are a few
that don’t accept it and that’s their business. We see more
when we travel there are a lot of people who already have
eclectic taste in music and they are just enjoying the good
stuff from lots of styles, so we make sense to them and
they love it, not as particular bluegrass or hip-hop fans, just
as music fans.”
Rench has no qualms about upsetting any music
purists from either side of the fence, and might even be
rather enjoying it. “I feel fine about upsetting a few purists
because they are wrong. There is no purity. All American
Music is an evolution of combining other kinds of music into
new forms. Bluegrass itself was a way of putting together
Appalachian music and Gospel music and European
ballads into a new form, and immediately from there it
started growing and changing. That’s how it goes.”
With bluegrass traditionally having been very resistant
to change, Gangstagrass are seemingly alone in the new
genre (or bluegrass sub-genre) which they have created.
Rench laughs, “I wish we were part of a movement but
currently it’s lonely out here for this style of real bluegrass-
hip-hop. Someone please join in.”
Meanwhile, Rench is more than happy to be the boot on
the foot that is challenging perceived ideas.
“Everything needs a kick up the arse. That’s usually how
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things grow and change.”
“
There is no purity.
All American Music is an
evolution of combining
other kinds of music into
new forms.
”
Rench: Them’s The Breaks is out now.
www.ganstagrass.com
www.renchaudio.com
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Regulars
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MAC
WISEMAN
Charts
64 Americana & UK Country Charts
65 Billboard Country Charts
Courtesy of Billboard Inc.
Top: Mac with a dear pal he’s known since Ronnie Reno was in diapers. Reno co-produced
Mac’s album with Merle Haggard.
Centre: Mac with John Prine.
Bottom: Mac Wiseman and the Country Boys in 1953. Chubby Collier, Mac Wiseman,
Wade Macey, Enos Johnson.
ac Wiseman is bluegrass
and country music’s senior
surviving star, still singing and
recording at age 92. He’s also
the last surviving founding
father of the Country Music
Association, and was a founding member
of the International Bluegrass Music
Association (IBMA).
Known as “The Voice With a Heart,”
his staying power is remarkable. W itness
I Sang The Song: Life Of the Voice With
a Heart, a tribute album co-produced
by Thomm Jutz and Peter Cooper for
Mountain Fever Records, released last
January.
While cutting his featured duet for that
CD - ’Tis Sweet To Be Remembered with
Alison Krauss - (his signature song) last
fall, Mac celebrated his 70th anniversary
recording, recalling his 1946 disc debut in
Chicago with legendary Molly O’Day.
After learning in June that he was being
inducted into the Blue Ridge Hall of Fame
M
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in Wilkesboro, N.C., lo and behold the
IBMA announced its nominees for the
2017 Bluegrass Awards in Raleigh, N.C.,
disclosing a surprised Mac was in the
running for three awards. Actually, he’s
in competition with himself via two nods
in one category: Best Recorded Event. He
and Alison’s . . . Remembered duet earned
a nomination, as did Shawn Camp’s
cut Going Back To Bristol, which gives
Mac co-writer recognition. In addition,
Camp’s version of … Bristol is also up for
Best Song, which includes co-writers
Wiseman, Cooper and Jutz.
The back story to this welcome news
is after Wiseman invited Cooper and
Jutz to his home, they began perusing
Mac’s memoirs: “Mac Wiseman: All My
Memories Fit For Print” (authored by
CMP’s Walt Trott). That sparked an idea
to create new songs relating to different
chapters. According to Wiseman, the
three spent nine weekends collaborating
for 10 songs inspired by the life he led, as
documented in the publication, which in
May won the ARSC award as best country
book. In turn, these songs comprise the
IBMA-nominated music paying homage to
Mac’s life, thanks to Mountain Fever.
Despite the career uptick, the last
few years haven’t been all sunshine and
roses, as Mac’s marriage to the former
Marjorie Brennan came to an end after
53 years; death claimed both his sister
Naomi Johnson, and his daughter Sheila
Taylor; and his attorney son Randy
was diagnosed with cancer. He also bid
goodbye to some of his close friends,
including Randy Wood, George Riddle,
Charlie Dick, Hank Cochran, Jean Shepard,
Merle Haggard, Jo Walker-Meador and
Pete Kuykendall.
Mac’s no stranger to adversity, however,
having been diagnosed at six months
with Infantile Paralysis of his right leg,
but the Virginia farm boy never let this
affliction hold him down. After studying
at the Shenandoah Conservatory of Music
in Dayton, Va., Mac landed a job as an
announcer at WSVA-Harrisonburg. Apart
from his radio role, he began performing
professionally with singer Buddy Starcher
(I’ll Still Write Your Name In the Sand),
who encouraged the budding young
talent. While at WCYB-Bristol, Mac met up
and performed with the Stanley Brothers;
in 1948 he became one of Flatt & Scruggs
Original Foggy Mountain Boys; then Bill
Monroe hired him to perform with his
Blue Grass Boys, and to make his WSM
Grand Ole Opry debut.
Finally, Mac launched his solo career
full steam in 1951, and while featured on
KWKH-Shreveport’s Louisiana Hayride,
recorded for Dot Records. Label head
Randy Wood then summoned Mac to
Hollywood to pull double-duty as Dot’s
A&R country chief, producing Reno &
Smiley, Bonnie Guitar, Cowboy Copas and
Jimmy C. Newman.
Mac, hailed for his high tenor vocals and
flat-top guitar stylings, won wide acclaim
was lauded with the National Medal of the
Arts’ Heritage Fellowship Award (2008),
presented with a $20,000 purse. Attesting
to his diversity, Mac was inducted into the
Country Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
Among his disc successes are Ballad Of
Davy Crockett, Love Letters In The Sand,
Your Best Friend And Me and Jimmy Brown
The Newsboy, but he’s also recorded with
an array of talents, including Woody
Herman, the Osborne Brothers, Charlie
Daniels, John Prine, David Grisman,
Johnny Cash, Leona Williams, April Verch,
Jett Williams and Merle Haggard.
So despite that difficult childhood
affliction, Wiseman has managed to put
his distinctive footprint on America’s
musical landscape. As Mac concludes:
“Now I look forward to future endeavours
and indeed I’ll confide, it’s still so sweet to
be remembered!”
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playing the Hollywood Bowl, Carnegie
Hall, Newport Folk Festival and Renfro
Valley Bluegrass Festival. He launched
that latter Kentucky festival, after having
breathed new life into the historic WWVA
Wheeling Jamboree in West Va., when
it was near-bankrupt. Wiseman also
went to bat on behalf of fellow players,
serving as secretary-treasurer of AFM’s
Nashville Association of Musicians
union, and five-times president of the
Reunion Of Professional Entertainers
(ROPE). Mac, the CMA’s first secretary,
was later a member of their secret
nominating committee for the Country
Music Hall of Fame, but resigned when
younger members were unaware of the
accomplishments of some of his peers up
for consideration.
As most fans are aware, Wiseman is a
first-generation bluegrass pioneer, named
to Virginia’s Music Hall of Fame, and is
enshrined in the Bluegrass Hall of Honor
(1993); and by Presidential proclamation
Mac Wiseman: All My Memories Fit For
Print is available now.
OCTOBER 2017 - cmp
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4 News
8 Tour Guide
10 The David Allan Page
25 Nashville Skinny
50 Nice to meet y’all - Summer Brooke
53 Americana Roundup
54 Nice to meet y’all - Gangstagrass
Still A Busy Man
by Walt Trott
SINGER, SONGWRITER AND PRODUCER, THOMM JUTZ’S NAME HAS BECOME SYNONYMOUS
WITH QUALITY. THE IBMA SONGWRITER OF THE YEAR NOMINEE TALKS TO DUNCAN WARWICK.
T
homm Juzt has a simple
recipe for success, literally.
“I just try to keep things
simple and book players that I trust
and that I love and put them in a room
and keep even the recording simple,”
he says of his work as a producer. And
that recipe is working out rather nicely
for him, his name gracing more than
twenty albums in the past five years
in that capacity, all the while his name
becoming synonymous with quality
acoustic-based productions. With his
own studio - TJ Studio - just outside
of Nashville he has recorded the likes
of Hall of Famer Mac Wiseman, Nanci
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Griffith, and Jason Ringenberg (Jason
& The Scorchers). The ever modest
and ch arming Jutz adds, “You wouldn’t
believe how simple I keep it because to
me that’s just the best way. It’s also the
only thing I know to do really,” before
admitting that, “I have had a really good
couple of years.”
Indeed, Jutz has had his name on the
songwriting credits of four #1 bluegrass
hits since April, 2016 as well as on nine
other top-20 bluegrass songs over the
same period. Due to that success Jutz is
now in the running for Songwriter Of
The Year at the upcoming International
Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)
Awards and releases his own Crazy If
You Let It album this month.
“I’ve always been in love with
bluegrass music. I obviously didn’t
grow up in that culture but it’s the kind
of music that’s really dear to my heart
and everything I’ve done always has to
have this very strong acoustic vibe to it.
But this is a full blown bluegrass record
because I’ve had good luck in that world
the last couple of years as a writer and
I just felt myself gravitating more and
more to that.”
The culture in which Thomm Jutz
grew up was further removed from the
grass of Kentucky than it is for most in
his field. Growing up in the Black Forest
region of Germany, a young Thomm Jutz
was captivated by a TV performance of
Bobby Bare and the dream of Nashville
was first planted in the guitar obsessed
boy’s mind. As well as playing in a
number of bands as a teenager, Jutz
learned sound engineering in local
studios and studied classical guitar at
the Stuttgart Conservatory. In 2003
Jutz was able to enter the USA thanks
to the “Green Card Lottery” scheme.
He headed for Nashville and it wasn’t
long before he found work with Mary
Gauthier’s band and Nanci Griffith’s
Blue Moon Orchestra.
“I’ve never felt like anybody did
not accept me because I was from
somewhere else,” says the in-demand
writer and producer.
“It takes a little while for people to
trust you as a songwriter but people
have heard enough of my songs now, I
think, to go, ‘Yeah, this is genuine stuff.’
And I’ve had enough cuts for people to
know that if they come to me for songs
they get quality stuff. All of that takes
a little while and you have to write for
the right people and get some kind of
credibility in that world. You have to pay
your dues to get in on all of that.”
It was his Civil War inspired 1861
Project which brought Thomm Jutz
greater recognition and enabled him to
work with many of his musical heroes,
including, some 33 years later, the man
whose Detroit City and Tequila Sheila
had inspired him as a boy, Bobby Bare.
Those connections didn’t hurt any when
Jutz began work on the Mac Wiseman
tribute - I Sang The Song - which was
released earlier this year.
“My friend Peter Cooper and I had
become good friends with Mac over the
last couple of years and we knew a lot
of the stories that Mac likes to tell about
his life and they’re such interesting
stories about growing up in the
Depression in rural Virginia,” he recalls.
“We approached him one day and
we said, ‘Mac, we need to take these
stories and turn them into songs. Would
you be willing to do that?’ and he was
more than happy to do that. So Peter
and I went over to his house - he just
lives like ten minutes from my house in
Nashville - so we went over there for
about nine or ten consecutive Sunday
afternoons and just wrote those songs
sitting there with him. Mac can’t get
around too well anymore but his mind
is still incredibly sharp and his memory
is incredibly accurate. So he sits in that
big easy chair and we literally sat at the
feet of the master and wrote down the
stories and rhymed them and turned
them into music and turned them into
songs. And then we figured getting him
in a studio at this point might just be a
little too hard on him so we went, ‘How
about we turn this into a tribute record
to you, Mac, and have other people
sing these songs?’ He was very happy
about that idea so we called some of our
favourite people like Alison Krauss and
John Prine and they were all very happy
to participate and pay tribute to one of
the greats of bluegrass music. It was an
incredibly satisfying experience because
the process was so enjoyable and also
because it was fairly successful in that
world but mostly I would have to say it
was enjoyable because it made Mac so
happy. That’s his first bluegrass number
one as a songwriter - Going Back To
Bristol - so to see how much that meant
to him was just incredible. It’s so much
fun playing this kind of music; it’s so
organic because at the end of the day all
you do is book some players, get them
in a room and play music.”
The purity of the music is important
to Jutz, “I think bluegrass is very much
part of the real, traditional country
music that’s left now. Although there’s
obviously people like Chris Stapleton
and Jason Isbell and people like that
who are making great, more traditional
country music. I think this is a great
time for music and I think it’s a great
time for bluegrass. The genre is a lot
more open than it used to be and there’s
young people who are pushing the
boundaries of the genre like crazy and I
think that’s very healthy.”
Co-writing all the songs on Crazy If
You Let It, Jutz has again called in some
of his favourite muso mates to join him
on the recording, including Tammy
Rogers, with whom on the day we speak
Jutz has just finished writing another
song. “The single - Crazy If You Let It - is
a song that I wrote with Bill Lloyd and
Andrea Zonn, there’s one that I wrote
with Tammy Rogers of The Steel Drivers,
there’s a bunch of stuff that I wrote with
my friend Milan Miller who’s a very
successful songwriter in the bluegrass
world, and then there’s one that I wrote
with Jon Weisberger who’s another guy
who has a lot of success in bluegrass,
and Charley Stefl has. I try to figure out
a way to put a song on there that I co-
wrote with all of my favourite writers
and I think I’ve managed to do that.”
Crazy If You Let It marks Jutz’s first
release as an artist on the ever more
important in the bluegrass field,
Mountain Fever label.
“The Mac Wisema n thing came out on
Mountain Fever as well,” says the proud
US citizen now assimilated to the point
of the merest trace of an accent.
“I had written a bunch of songs that
came out on Mountain Fever by other
artists, like I wrote a couple of things for
Irene Kelley for her last record and one
of those was a song called Carolina Wind
that was a good hit last year. That’s how
the relationship with Mountain Fever
was established and then Mark Hodges
- the owner of Mountain Fever - and I
became really good friends over making
that Mac record. When I approached
him I said, ‘Look, man, I’m working on
a solo record and if you want to put it
out that’s great, if you don’t want to put
it out that’s not a problem at all’. And he
was like, ‘No, man, we’re family now and
I wanna put this out’. We’re just good
buddies and there’s just a really good
vibe between us. We take the work very
seriously but we don’t take ourselves
very seriously and that works good for
me.
“It’s a testament to the work ethic
and the intelligence of Mark Hodges.
He started seven years ago and it’s
remarkable what he’s achieved.
Obviously my record was recorded at
my studio and the Mac record too, but
he’s got a studio up where he lives and
he cuts most of that stuff up there and
it’s great. He’s a good guy, he’s smart, he
thinks on his feet and he trusts people
which is very important. We knew each
other a little bit before we made that
Mac record but Peter Cooper and I just
gave him a call one day and said this
is the idea, this is what we wanna do,
this is how much it’s gonna cost, do
you wanna do it? And he was like, ‘Yes,
I wanna do it’. And that conversation
took twenty minutes to make all the
decisions.”
Rarely are things quite as simple as
they seem, but Jutz’s work ethic seems to
be working out rather well for him at the
moment. Just seeing the name Thomm
Jutz on the credits assures quality.
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Thomm Jutz: Crazy If You Let It is
available on Mountain Fever Records
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