“Once In A While A Dream Comes True” - The Virtual Woodshed interview with Sam Bush
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Interview by Pete Frostic
If you asked a jazz drummer to name three mandolin players, he might be able to come up with one… and it’s probably going to be Sam Bush. Known the world over as “The King of Telluride”, Sam is probably the most recognizable picker of the eight-string alive today. He’s been a front man, a side man, a session man, a band leader, a singer and a songwriter, but through it all, his inimitable sound has remained the common denominator. Sam’s earliest musical experience was that of an award winning young fiddler at contests all over the country in the 60’s. Later in his teens (much to the chagrin of Bill Monroe) Sam would take up the mandolin and kick down all the barriers that had been established by the traditionalists. In creating his unique mandolin approach, Sam combined elements of fiddle and rock guitar with his spirit of innovation, and the result was a technique so controversial that Bill Monroe himself advised a young Sam to “stick with the fiddle.” But Sam was undaunted. In the 70’s his remarkable mandolin became the centerpiece for the groundbreaking group The Bluegrass Alliance, which also featured a young guitarist named Tony Rice (ever heard of him?). After some personnel changes, that band quickly evolved into the now legendary New Grass Revival which would help ignite the careers of such luminaries as Curtis Burch, Courtney Johnson, Bela Fleck, John Cowan and Pat Flynn. For nearly twenty years, Sam and the NGR traveled the world spreading the gospel of Newgrass music with a heavy influence on the mandolin. It’s no exaggeration to say that Sam virtually created a new genre of music with the group. But sadly, all good things must end and the New Grass Revival called it quits in 1989. Not content to sit idle, Sam didn’t waste much time getting back on his feet. He quickly teamed up with fellow instrumental heavyweights Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas, Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer to form Strength in Numbers, a group that both inspired and humbled all who witnessed it. And while Strength in Numbers seemed to make sense, his next move left some fans scratching their heads. The lifelong front man suddenly accepted a role that took him largely out of the spotlight for five years as a sideman for Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers. In fact it was during an Emmylou gig where Sam would live out a lifelong dream to play beside Bill Monroe onstage at the Ryman Theater in Nashville. After leaving Emmylou in ’95, Sam would go on to take brief gigs as a sideman for Lyle Lovett and Bela Fleck before coming back to his roots as a front man and releasing a string of successful albums for Sugar Hill in the Newgrass genre. Of course, all this is to say nothing of the countless sessions for which Sam lent his creative talents. If you keep a sharp ear, you’ll notice Sam’s distinctive mandolin on albums by Garth Brooks, Wynonna, Doc Watson, Trisha Yearwood, Radney Foster, Bela Fleck and dozens of others.
But voluminous as his recorded body of work may be, Sam’s greatest legacy may lie in the influence he’s had on the next generation of players. There’s hardly a mandolinist alive who wouldn’t credit Sam as a major influence. Chris Thile, Adam Steffey, Shawn Lane and Ronnie McCoury all hold Sam in the highest regard, and without his influence, it’s likely that modern mandolin playing would not be where it is today in terms of precision and finesse. Through it all, Sam has never lost his humble, down to earth spirit. You can still hear the excitement in his voice when he recalls artists and records that inspired him some 30 odd years ago. And you can hear the awe in his voice as he tells stories of Bill Monroe and John Hartford. In today’s age of overnight internet fame and American Idol, it’s comforting to speak with artists like Sam and be reminded that there are still a few real, self effacing musicians out there. But perhaps most importantly, Sam reminds us how critical it is to not lose sight of the childlike wonder of music that inspired us to play in the first place. Sam certainly hasn’t and it’s evident in every note he plays. This month, Virtualwoodshed.com arranged for Old School Freight Train mandolinist Pete Frostic to sit down with Sam for a little one on one shop talk. Being a huge Sam fan himself, Pete jumped at the chance to interview one of his heroes. In a freewheeling conversation that covers all things mandolin, Pete really pulled some great stories out of Sam, and as a bonus we also got the exclusive scoop on Sam’s new album, Circles Around Me which is available now from Sugar Hill Records. In fact, the good folks over at Sugar Hill have been nice enough to provide a free download especially for Virtualwoodshed.com readers! All you have to do visit www.sambush.com and enter the promo code “woodshed” to receive your free download of “Midnight on the Stormy Deep” from Sam’s new album. Please be sure to get your free download and please stop by www.sugarhillrecords.com to check out their outstanding roster of artists. So as usual, go grab a cold (or warm) beverage, sit back and soak in the wisdom of a great artist! Pete Frostic: So Sam, you’ve got a new record out right? Sam Bush: I do, it’s called “Circles Around Me.” Pete Frostic: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how the songs came together. Sam Bush: Well, I’d been going through a process of writing with friends and writing instrumentals by myself. And my first concept for [the new CD] was to do it entirely self written or [written with] friends. Then I started thinking about tunes that go together and fit together on one CD, and [I thought] maybe I should include some that I didn’t write or some that we’ve always enjoyed playing. The song “Circles Around Me” itself was written by Jeff Black and me. And that seemed like an appropriate title for the project because [it’s been] comfortable to come back to certain styles that I grew up playing: Newgrass and Bluegrass. Maybe you have to go through a process of trying to prove yourself with your own music for years and years to all of a sudden be comfortable enough to play some old Bill Monroe tunes if you want to. So it’s kind of a mix of the old and the new. I also wanted to keep it all acoustic this time. In other words, the CD before this one, “Laps In Seven”, mixes acoustic and electric instruments, and I’ve always loved to do that, and they obviously work together. But this time I wanted to keep it all acoustic except for Byron House occasionally playing his electric bass as well as his upright bass fiddle. So, the “Circles Around Me”, Jeff and I wrote it and it’s not really about coming “full circle” but that’s kind of an underlying theme of the whole record, of being able to come back and have fun with roots music that you haven’t played in a long time but you still love to play. So the song “Circles Around Me” is really just kind of a song of thanks. You know, that we’re all thankfully still here and still get to play together. We’ve made friends through music and we still get to see our friends through playing music together. It actually says in the lyric, “thank you for all the good friends I’ve found”, so [it’s about] being glad that we’re all still here. Pete Frostic: How did you guys record the new CD? Was it done in a live setting? Was it different than say, the way you recorded “Laps In Seven”? Sam Bush: There were some things on “Laps In Seven” where we always played together. And that’s part of the thrill and the feeling of doing it. And of course, if I’m the producer and I’m playing along, sometimes it’s a hard judgment to know “did that one feel the best?” Cause, everybody will have little things they want to fix. Everybody except Scott Vestal who seems to play perfectly all the time! Pete Frostic: He does, doesn’t he?! Sam Bush: Yes he does! So, more than ever, the way we cut this [new] one, I had to sing it as we played it because the feeling is just so much different. And the way the guys play backup behind the vocalist, I mean it’s really important to get that feeling on the immediate track. So then, a lot of times, I would have to go back and fix my mandolin part because I was definitely going to work on my vocals. Or, something I learned from Lyle Lovett, which is a good way to do it, cause Lyle just always records him and his guitar and we’re backing him, a lot of times he never fixed anything! Pete Frostic: Wow! Sam Bush: But, so, when he does [fix a mistake] he fixes the guitar and the vocal at the same time. You have to punch them in at the same time because of the bleed of the vocal and vice versa. [Ed note: musicians will often fix recorded mistakes with a technique called “punching in”. In this technique the musician plays along with the recorded track while the engineer re-records a very short segment of music in hopes of capturing a better take. Sam also refers to “bleed” which is a technical term for a microphone picking up the ambient noise of another instrument, such as a vocal mic inadvertently picking up a guitar as well] So really what I did on this record was when I needed to fix things, I would go back in and play the mandolin at the same time while I sang, and that way we could still get that feeling and have the option of using what was recorded on the original track. Cause nine times out of ten, [the original] feels the best but obviously there’s vocal imperfections you want to fix cause you’re gonna have to listen to this for a long time! [laughs] Pete Frostic: Right! Sam Bush: And we have the option of doing that now. Technology is so advanced that you could easily drop in a few words from another track and it just all fits together. And then it depends on the engineer too, and David Sinko is the person I’ve been fortunate to work with for years now. Pete Frostic: Your live playing has so much energy and I notice that really comes across well on recordings which might not be the case if you guys did a whole lot of isolation. [Ed note: isolation is a method of recording in which musicians are largely secluded from one another in separate recording booths. They are able to hear each other through headphones but usually have limited or no ability to see one another. While this usually allows for the best sound quality, some purists feel this is not an accurate way to capture a recording because the live “feel” of the recording is lost.] Sam Bush: Yeah! Like the instrumental “Blue Mountain”, when we cut that, once again, that’s the great thing about being able to throw a couple of licks in. You know, when you’re improvising, you want to be able to use as much as possible of the original track. But as many improvisations go, there will be times when you just got lost for a second and then you come back and continue. So now you can come back and fix those few lines that you didn’t like and make ‘em connect back up as a musical thought. So that’s the way to keep that energy going. For instance, the improvisations we did on “Souvenir Bottles” there’s a spot where Scott and I [tried to] intermingle our lines without having a true plan. And we lucked out on this version of it really [because] we were able to mix it to where he fades out of his solo and I fade into mine and we make it criss cross with each other. Pete Frostic: That’s kind of the benefit of bro-doggin’ it together. Sam Bush: Absolutely! And sometimes it’s gonna go together better than others. Pete Frostic: Do you have a favorite track on this album? Sam Bush: Well, I don’t know. Not one in particular. But there’s a few that seemed to stand out to me. I think we did a great job capturing what Guy Clark and Verlon Thompson and I had in mind when we wrote “The Ballad of Stringbean and Estelle.” So that one turned out great. I think we captured the feeling of that song while not making it… well, cause you know it’s about the murder of Stringbean and his wife. [Ed note: In one of Music City’s most sobering tales, legendary banjoist and comedian David “Stringbean” Akeman and his wife Estelle were murdered by thieves outside their Nashville home in 1973.] I mean, it is a sad tale, but… I guess it goes down to when Steve Martin said “Can you really do a sad song with the banjo?” Pete Frostic: Right! [laughs] Somehow I guess lots of people have! Sam Bush: Oh yeah. But we wanted to tell a story and we’re getting a good reaction out of that song. And that’s a story that we couldn’t believe nobody had told before. Pete Frostic: Sam, you’ve also played on a lot of other people’s records. For example, I was thinking about [Bela Fleck’s] “Drive” and “Acoustic Planet Part 2” albums. Can you talk a little bit about some of your favorites and maybe how you approach some of those sessions? Sam Bush: Well yeah. I mean they’re all kind of different. One of the greatest sessions I ever got to play on was “Memories” with Doc and Merle Watson, and that’s where we met Garth Fundis, who now owns the studio where we recorded that stuff, and where we recorded this record. ‘Cause when I play with Doc for instance it’s about… timing and just the way things feel. I noticed that about Doc and he always impressed upon me that it’s not about technical perfection but it is about the feel of the songs. Years later I would record with John Hartford, you know we’d be sitting around with great musicians like Buddy Emmons mixing up steel guitar and piano with Bluegrass instruments. And [in those sessions] you’d fix your mistakes, but as well you’d go for the feeling of it. Now, of course when you mentioned the Bela records, on those records, we all cut at the same time, but we all really worked hard to make our solos as outstanding as we could. And of course Bela is one fine producer, and when he produces he cracks that whip so to speak! [laughs] Pete Frostic: Oh really? Does he?! Sam Bush: Yeah, I mean he knows what he wants. He wants you to play like you, but he also keeps pushing you to keep going further, maybe and play something you haven’t played before. So yeah, we all cut those at the same time. Now, by the time Bela did “Tales From The Acoustic Planet – Part 2” now we’re into the digital ProTools era of recording. [Ed note: almost all recording today is done digitally, in which music is converted to a digital signal and stored on a computer hard drive] The “Drive” record was still recorded on 24 track, two inch tape. But by the time we got to “Tales From The Acoustic Planet – Part 2”, that was cut at Bela’s house, umm… Pete Frostic: Was Bill Vorn Dick there? He [engineered] that one didn’t he? Sam Bush: I guess Bill did, but I think Richard Battaglia also did some of it too. Pete Frostic: Oh yeah, OK. Sam Bush: And then we went with the approach of just playing the tunes over and over. Some more than others. And so Bela is really well versed at editing now, so in that case we didn’t really overdub on that one per se, it’s just that Bela would edit together different takes, or sometimes it would all just be one take. You know, where we played it the way he so desired and he would just keep [that take]. But he’s really wonderful at digital editing and he has the time and the patience to do it right. He’s really good at it.
Pete Frostic: Cool. You know, you have a very recognizable sound and tone, and I wonder if that’s something you consciously worked on or if that’s part of the way you mic your instrument, or Hoss itself, or just how the music comes out of you? [Ed note: Hoss is the nickname Sam gave to his 1937 Gibson F-5 mandolin] Sam Bush: Well, I think it’s all connected. In other words, there’s no one thing, but… It was a long, long time ago, like in the late 70’s, and of course, David Grisman and I met in 1965, so we’ve always been pals and mandolin pals. We like to play together. But I loved the way his mandolin would sound, especially on those early David Grisman Quintet records. And I would ask him, “What do you do?” And really he just said “Well, the one thing you need to do so that you bring your best sound to the table, is you always gotta have good strings on your instrument!” And I didn’t think as much about changing strings all the time back then. I just broke ‘em on stage all the time [and replaced them as needed]. So I’ve been influenced by David [such that] I try to have good, new strings on in any professional application that I play, especially recording. And due to my acidic sweat, over the course of so many takes per hour, my strings will go dead and I’ll have to change my 3rds and 4ths on the mandolin because it really does respond better. [Ed note: Sam is referring to the G and D strings on the mandolin. These wound strings tend to go dead faster than the plain steel A and E strings] When I got Hoss in 1973, it started changing my playing for the better because no matter how hard or soft you play, it responded well in both situations. And I’m still playing Hoss! I’m on the fourth fingerboard now… Pete Frostic: Wow…[amazed] Sam Bush: Because I’ve literally worn out three fingerboards. I mean, I guess this [current one] might be the last fingerboard it ever needs, who knows?! [laughs] Pete Frostic: Yeah! It’s a great instrument. And you know the other thing that strikes me about just having played with Grisman a whole bunch is how hard he plays and how he’s able to pull out such beautiful tone even though he hits it so hard! Sam Bush: Yeah! Yeah he does. That’s his mandolin “Crusher”! [Ed note: David Grisman’s Gibson F-5 mandolin is signed by Lloyd Loar and dated December 20, 1922. It earned its name for obvious reasons]
Pete Frostic: So you know we’ve got a lot of readers at Virtual Woodshed who are new players just starting out and I wonder if there are any recordings that you can point them to that were influential when you were listening or that you still enjoy nowadays? Sam Bush: I don’t know [if it’s still available] but there was an MGM record, an instrumental record by the Osborne Brothers. And I always loved the way Bobby Osborne played fiddle tunes on the mandolin because he sounded more fiddle-like than some mandolin players. Bobby’s a wonderful player. And of course I used to listen to Jim and Jesse [McReynolds] a lot. And I know how to cross pick, but I can’t do it fast enough to make it effective! [laughs] Pete Frostic: You know that’s true for me too! Every time I feel like I got it, I put on a recording of him and I say “man I am so far from this!” Sam Bush: Well Jesse is the one mandolin player that truly is his own person on the instrument, and maybe more than anyone else, because all the rest of us still play certain things like Bill Monroe. But Jesse never tried to do that. He is truly unique. But you know as far as rhythm chopping goes, I was always influenced the most by [Seldom Scene founder] John Duffey. I loved his rhythm chop better than anyone’s. And I listened a lot to Dean Webb, with the Dillards. Dean wasn’t the fanciest of players but everything he played sounded great on those songs to me. I mean, they’re the perfect mandolin solos for those songs that that the Dillards used to do. There’s also an old record that influenced everyone who heard it called “Beatle Country” by the Charles River Valley Boys. Of course that was Joe Val on the mandolin and singing. And that record really influenced the New Grass Revival. And Jim and Jesse had actually done a whole album of Chuck Berry tunes before that! Pete Frostic: Really?! Sam Bush: Yeah! It’s called “Berry Pickin’ Time In The Country”, it’s really neat! But the Beatle Country record, yeah, when you listen to it now it may sound a little dated, but their ideas were tremendous. They took Beatles songs that I never would have thought of playing the way they did it. Like “Baby’s In Black” is a great song and they made it into a waltz. And you know, there’s just really great ideas there. So, of course, I’ve been influenced by a lot of different people. The very first Bill Monroe record I ever bought was, I think he called it “My All Time Country Favorites” or something like that. It was the record with Cheyenne, Roanoke, Uncle Pen, and New Muleskinner Blues with Vassar [Clements] on fiddle. Pete Frostic: Oh yeah, sure! Sam Bush: Of course I didn’t know who the fiddler was when I first got it, I just knew that I loved it. And then later to get to play many times with Vassar and be pals together… Now cut to the 70’s, and one of the most influential records ever was “Aereo-plane” by John Hartford. Pete Frostic: Absolutely. Sam Bush: The way that album was a true marriage of fancy licks and just playing what was right for those songs. The way Norman Blake would play, and the way Tut [Taylor] played on the dobro. For me that record was sort of Vassar’s coming out party! And I’ve got all John Hartford records; even the ones before that on RCA that didn’t feature bluegrass style picking in any way, but he was always writing these tremendous songs. Pete Frostic: He was, absolutely. Sam Bush: But also Hartford had reached a point where his pickin’ came up to the standards of the guys in [the Aereo-plane band] and John’s banjo playing was really influential on a whole bunch of young banjo pickers. Pete Frostic: So Sam, to close up here, you’ve mentioned Bill Monroe a couple times here. Do you have any funny stories about you and Bill? Sam Bush: [laughs] Probably! Pete Frostic: Any that you can share?! Sam Bush: [laughs] Oh yeah! Well, there’s one that’s been told before, but when I was a kid, we’d come up to Bean Blossom, Indiana and go to the Brown County Jamboree. So I had the opportunity to hear Bill many times, and he really thought of me more as a young fiddler. You know, he really loved fiddle playing. So now it’s about ’68 or ’69 and Byron Berline was in the band on fiddle and Roland White was on guitar, Victor Jordan on banjo… Pete Frostic: Right. Sam Bush: So we were up at Bean Blossom jamming around outside, and it wasn’t the Bean Blossom music festival yet, it was just the Brown County Jamboree. So we’d hear [the Blue Grass Boys] play a matinee show in the afternoon around 3:00 o’clock, and I think around 7:00 they’d do an evening performance. So it was in between those two performances, and I knew Byron Berline from the fiddle contests and Roland as well, so I was getting to jam with Byron and Roland [between the two sets]. So Roland was playing guitar and I was playing [Roland’s] mandolin and Bill was standing behind me for a while. So finally we did the last tune ‘cause they were gonna have to get ready to go play. And Bill Monroe, says to me while I was playing the mandolin, “Now I want you to stay with that fiddle, we ain’t got enough good young fiddlers coming up.” So when Bill Monroe himself told me to play the fiddle instead of the mandolin I thought “A Ha! I’m getting somewhere with this thing!” And another funny story was when Emmylou Harris made her “Live At The Ryman” record, Bill was invited. And he was a dancer as a young man. So Emmylou was having fun dancing, clogging and stuff, buckdancing, you know. And so, Bill was invited to play the three nights of tapings that we did for audio recording as well as video recording. So there was hairdressers and what have you, and I had pretty long hair. And a person is working on my hair right before we go on, and Bill popped his head in the door of the dressing room and said “Now, I’ve got some scissors if you need ‘em!” And then later on, the third night of the taping, it so worked out that this [show] was recorded on 24 track 2 inch tape out in the Record Plant mobile truck which had been brought in from New York to record the show out in the alley behind the Ryman. Well, they needed to make a tape change and it was gonna take like ten minutes right in the middle of the show. And somebody yelled up “hey, would you and Bill play a duet together?” And I went “uh, Yeah!” So Bill used my mandolin. He didn’t have his mandolin, so he used Hoss and I played John Randall’s mandolin and we did a duet on the Bill tune “Southern Flavor.” Pete Frostic: Oh, that’s a great one! Sam Bush: And you know, I’m standing on stage and all of a sudden I looked out at the Ryman Auditorium and I remembered where I was sitting the first time I ever heard Bill Monroe in ’65 and Pete Rowan was on guitar. And of course, I always dreamt that someday I’d get to play with Bill on that very stage at the Ryman Auditorium at the Grand Ole Opry. Never envisioning that we’d do a mandolin duet, but I thought you know, maybe I’d be his fiddle player or his guitar player or something. And all of sudden I realized that a dream was coming true! I was getting to play with Bill Monroe and it was a wonderful moment. I remember getting chill bumps while I was on stage with him, it was like a dream come true, well, it was a dream come true! I had daydreamed about it, that someday maybe I could play with him on that stage. Pete Frostic: That’s really cool Sam. Sam Bush: Yeah, once in a while a dream comes true. Copyright 2009 Virtual Woodshed Media LLC |
