One of the joys of being a fan of roots music is that while young artists expand the boundaries of the genre they also continue to celebrate their musical lineages across multiple generations.

Sometimes the “older generation” (i.e., the one that I now belong to) joins them in the fun.

In the midst of this summer’s festival season several writers, fans, and online music sites have helped me recall the great musicians I’ve had the privilege to see and hear over more than fifty years of following this music. I thought it would be fun to take a few songs as examples and see some of the “roots” of today’s roots musicians. I’ll begin with a real-time collaboration between generations where the young star also demonstrates how she has drawn inspiration from the genre’s trailblazers.

NOTE: These semi-regular Saturday Soundtrack posts are designed to break out of the more serious posts on other days of the week. Here I focus on musical events, musicians and bands that catch my ear. They won’t be to everyone’s tastes . . . in fact my wife says she doesn’t read them at all! So you have my permission to skip over these if you are so inclined, but you may miss something that grabs your heart. Or tickles your funny bone. Or not. 

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White Freightliner Blues: Townes to NGR to Molly & Tommy

I’ve written several times about the great Australian guitarist Tommy Emmanuel (here) who is my age (ahem), and the young bluegrass superstar and flatpicker Molly Tuttle (here, here, and here) who was born in 1993 a few months after my children. Even though from different generations, Emmanuel and Tuttle came together on Tommy’s 2024 album Accomplice Two to record the Townes Van Zandt tune White Freightliner Blues, which is now a feature of Tuttle’s live performances.

The song, of course, has a history. Van Zandt was an iconic Texas singer-songwriter who influenced a whole generation of roots musicians. White Freightliner Blues was first heard in 1977 on his Live at The Old Quarter, Houston, Texas album. While one can hear the composition’s bones in this recording, it does not have the pulsating drive that later bluegrass musicians provided to this “heading down the road” classic.

The band that really drove White Freightliner in a way that has now been followed by Tuttle and others was New Grass Revival, the progressive bluegrass band active in the 1970s and 80s. White Freightliner was released on 1983’s Live album when the group featured its most dynamic lineup: leader and founder Sam Bush, bassist and lead vocalist John Cowan, guitarist and vocalist Pat Flynn, and banjo wizard Béla Fleck. It became a staple of the group’s shows for the remainder of the decade until their breakup in 1989. There has only been a one-song reunion of this configuration of the band, when they played this particular song at the 20th anniversary Merlefest festival in 2007.

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I Know You Rider: Blind Lemon Jefferson to the Grateful Dead to The Seldom Scene to the Telluride House Band

The Telluride House Band is the pick-up all-star band—led by America’s only true king, Sam Bush—that plays at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. This year Bush, Jerry Douglas (dobro), Béla Fleck (banjo), MacArthur Genius Grant recipient Edgar Meyer (bass), and Stuart Duncan (fiddle) welcomed Chris “Critter” Eldridge (guitar) to the group for the first time. As is to be expected, they played a wide-ranging set but ended with an appropriate selection: I Know You Rider.

Fleck, Bush, and Douglas have been the mainstays of the House Band and many other all-star pick-up groups through the years. As Walter Tunis wrote about Bush and Douglas on his The Musical Box newsletter,

“. . . the two artists have spent the last five decades redefining the string music vocabulary that has long been the DNA of bluegrass and applying it to all kinds of multi-genre settings. Some were rooted in tradition, others explored wildly progressive terrain. The cool aspect to all this, though, is how many of these half-century adventures the two have explored together—with Douglas on dobro and Bush on mandolin and fiddle—as bandmates onstage or as studio players on the same recording sessions.”

Béla could have easily been added to that description.

Rider was a signature tune for the classic lineup of The Seldom Scene back in the 1970s, and Béla begins his banjo solo at the 6:38 mark with the same licks that Critter’s father Ben Eldridge—the banjo player for the Scene—used to kick off his break. Of course, Béla being Béla he quickly heads off into no-man’s land.

I have always enjoyed the Scene’s live version of Rider, heard from their classic Live at the Cellar Door LP.

The song actually has a long history. Most suggest that it originated with the great bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson as Deceitful Brownskin Blues from 1927. Rock bands also featured the song, perhaps the best known being the Grateful Dead. Of course Jerry Garcia‘s links to American roots music have been well documented thanks in part to his musical partnership with David Grisman.

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Can’t Stop Now: New Grass Revival to Greensky Bluegrass

Greensky Bluegrass  began playing together 25 years ago and they remain road warriors today. Based in Kalamazoo, Michigan, these five musicians play bluegrass music and much more on traditional bluegrass instruments. In fact, Greensky Bluegrass fits nicely into the progressive bluegrass and jam band category begun lo those many years ago by Sam Bush and the New Grass Revival, II Generation, and others. 

So it was appropriate at this year’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival that the band called Sam Bush up on stage and pulled out a version of Can’t Stop Now, a show-stopper for NGR back in the day.

The “official video” of NGR playing this song is pure 1980s . . . with lots of long but oh-so-good-looking hair and twirling musicians. But you’ll get the sense of the energy in the song and it is always great to hear John Cowan hit that note on the word “NOW” and hang on for dear life.

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And Now for Something Completely Different: Hartford to Bush to Billy Strings

John Hartford was a “true original” as his website notes. I’ve written that his quirky, hippy-bluegrass Aereo-Plain album may be my favorite of all time.

But in addition to the tune Holding from that project, Hartford wrote about his love of grass on more than one occasion. Granny Wontcha Smoke Some Marijuana is from the Nobody Knows What You Do album and its always been a fun song for the outlaws in bluegrass music to cover. Billy Strings is the newest musician from the current generation to have fun with the song, but I’ve also included Sam Bush’s version from his heartfelt tribute album Radio John, as well as John’s original. They are all virtually the same . . . it is a pretty simple and straightforward tune with a clear message.

“I used to get high and listen to the Beatles / Ain’t much fun now that its legal.”

Here’s the original Hartford version:

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Let’s End by Previewing an Upcoming Post

In a week or two I’ll be highlighting the new album by Watchhouse (fka Mandolin Orange). One of the songs that first drew me to a deeper appreciation for this folk duo was their cover of Bob Dylan‘s Boots of Spanish Leather. Here’s Emily and Andrew’s take on the classic work of an earlier master . . . another example of recognizing and celebrating one’s musical lineage.

Enjoy!

More to come . . .

DJB