Mandolinist and fiddler Sam Bush has been at the forefront of progressive bluegrass music for as long as the genre has existed. A true musical pioneer, he helped establish a new style of string music more than 50 years ago along with Béla Fleck as a member of New Grass Revival—a group that, like Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys, inadvertently became the namesake of a burgeoning movement. Blending jazz improvisation and rock and roll jamming with traditional bluegrass, the group gave birth to newgrass and laid the foundations for the modern jam grass scene.
Bush continues to tour the festival circuit and collaborate with the new generation of musicians who have taken up the bluegrass mantle, and next month, he will take his new eponymous band to the conservation-focused Annapolis Baygrass Music Festival to perform alongside a lineup featuring many of his musical successors, including The Infamous Stringdusters, Leftover Salmon, Kitchen Dwellers, Sierra Hull, and Daniel Donato’s Cosmic Country, as well as Oteil Burbridge & Friends and Trouble No More. L4LM caught up with the youthful 72-year-old to discuss his role in the newgrass revolution and transition to elder bluegrass statesman. [Note: Transcript has been edited for length and clarity.]
L4LM: You have had an extraordinarily prolific career when it comes to studio output. In fact, it was difficult to come up with the actual number of studio albums you’ve appeared on. What’s your secret?
Sam Bush: Well, I’ve just been fortunate enough to work. Sometimes I get so busy on other people’s projects that I forget to record my own music. I’m trying to get into the studio with my own band before the end of the year.
L4LM: Let’s go all the way back to the beginning. When you got New Grass Revival going back in the day, was there any sense you were doing something special?
SB: Not really. I think the special part when we got the band founded back in 1971 was that the four of us were so like-minded, musically and personally. It’s been asked if we were trying to change music in general or bluegrass specifically, and honestly, the answer is no. If anything we were just playing the way we played together. That’s the sound we made. All of our influences, we just allowed them to come through. Rock and roll, country, jazz, folk, bluegrass, and reggae—even gospel. All we were trying to do was just make our own sound. People caught on and we were able to keep doing it.
L4LM: The impact New Grass Revival and some of your contemporaries like John Hartford and Old & In the Way had has proven to be profound. What’s it like seeing the influence you had bear so much fruit?
SB: It’s pretty gratifying, especially when you have young entertainers like Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle say they were influenced by New Grass Revival and follow along in their own way. I’m just grateful that I’ve managed to live long enough that I can see the music that the actual style of music we made with New Grass Revival is helping create. It’s now its own generic term, ”newgrass.” We were just one of the bands making that kind of music at the time.
Sam Bush – “Circles Around Me” – Suwannee Roots Revival 10/14/14
L4LM: In the end, you guys got to be the Bill Monroe & His Blue Grass Boys of your generation. You got to slap your name on an entire genre.
SB: I guess we just happened to pick the right name! With our name we were just trying to be self explanatory. We were just trying to continue music that already existed, coming from bands like The Osborne Brothers, The Country Gentlemen, and The Dillards. We were just following along with our influences who were already reviving bluegrass. They were getting on the radio with it, and, in a way, our name was just paying tribute to our heroes who were already playing progressive bluegrass.
L4LM: What was the reception like from the old guard of single-mic-style bluegrass musicians and the genre’s pre-existing fanbase?
SM: They were most accepting of us, and I think it’s because they knew we respected them and their type of bluegrass. We just didn’t see that as our role. That’s just not the way we needed to play, but we were totally accepted by the other musicians. The Country Gentlemen would help us get jobs and we were regularly opening for The Dillards. We were always accepted by the artists.
If anything, at the time in the early ’70s, there was more of a division in the audience down to the short hairs and long hairs in the audience. But, that being said, the music always shone through. People could tell that we knew how to play bluegrass and respected the music. We just had our own sound. There’d be a little resistance from the folks in the audience we’d call “chair snappers.” They wouldn’t just walk away when we’d start playing, they’d snap their chairs loud enough for us to hear so we would know of their displeasure.
That really stopped after a few years, and by the end of the ’80s, it got to where Bill Monroe himself was hiring New Grass to come play on his festivals too. So it changed while we had the band and we could see the turnaround.
L4LM: One of the things I noticed in preparing for this conversation was that no one had a negative thing to say about you. What’s the secret to having such a long career and yet still being so beloved?
Sam Bush – “Riding That Bluegrass Train” – Suwannee Roots Revival 10/14/14
SB: Honestly, it’s my parents and the way I grew up. They were very friendly people. I grew up on a farm, and when I got out and started playing music, my mother assured me that “if I catch you being a smart aleck out there you don’t get let off the farm.” In other words, you be polite and courteous to people or you don’t get off the farm. That was instilled in us, me and my sister. Try to be nice to people and be good people. It came from our parents.
L4LM: For the record, the closest thing I could find to anyone having a grudge against you were a few Chicago-area players who were, perhaps, unhappy with your choice of baseball teams to root for.
SB: [Chuckles] That’s the great part about baseball. We can root for different teams. I like The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. I was rooting wholeheartedly for the Cubs in the World Series and they won it. See, I’m not from Illinois or Missouri, so I can root both Cards and Cubs, but if they’re playing each other, I’m rooting Cardinals. It’s just great to have a team to root for.
L4LM: Over the years, you’ve gotten to play the most hallowed of bluegrass venues, like Nashville’s beloved Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry, and the Spirit of the Suwannee Music Park. Any favorite stages for you out there?
SB: Well, I’d be kinda remiss if I didn’t mention the Telluride Bluegrass Festival out there in Colorado. I mean, I just hit my 50th year in a row! And yeah, I do love the Spirit Of Suwannee festivals. [Festival directors] Beth Judy and the late Randy Judy are good friends. It feels like a bit of a homecoming to play Telluride or the Spirit of the Suwannee. The Ryman I have been getting to go to since I was a teenager when my father and I would get to hang out with Roy Acuff, so I have literally grown up there I guess.
L4LM: Finally, it’s summer and you’re out on the summer festival circuit hitting events like Annapolis Baygrass Music Festival. What’s the protocol for someone asking you to sit in with a band, and how do you usually go about asking other artists to sit in with you?
SB: A lot of times it just comes down to the fact that I’m there and I see a friend and they ask me if I want to come out and pick one or two. Not many of them do we call each other and plan it out, although that happens too. This past year at Telluride I knew it was gonna be a big one for me, it being my 50th one consecutively. At that one I called people in advance and we had it well planned out ahead of time.
But a lot of the time it’s just spur of the moment. Like at Telluride, if I’m just there hanging out and I see someone I know and they ask me to come out, I go. That’s how it happens with people sitting in with my band as well. I didn’t know and there they are, one of my favorite musicians. A lot of it happens on the spur of the moment, and that is the best way to do it!
Catch Sam Bush and his band on the road this summer and fall, and at Annapolis Baygrass Music Festival on September 21st–22nd [get tickets]. For a full list of his upcoming shows, head here.
Sam Bush – “In Tall Buildings” – Suwannee Roots Revival 10/14/14
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