The Avett Brothers brought a bit of their North Carolina heritage to Ohio on Tuesday with a tribute to bluegrass forefather Doc Watson. Brothers Seth and Scott Avett honored Watson with a cover of “Black Mountain Rag” during their show at KEMBA Live! in Columbus.
Long before Seth and Scott merged their respective high school bands Margo and Nemo to form The Avett Brothers in 2000, there was Doc Watson. As Seth revealed in a 2012 Garden & Gun piece shortly after Watson passed at age 89, Avett met the legendary guitarist when he was just 13 years old. As a budding guitar student whose scope seldom reached beyond Kurt Cobain and Jimmy Page, Seth described his day with Doc Watson and his concert that evening as nothing short of artistically life-altering.
“I had never experienced a performance like it: simple in presentation, technically complex at times, highly professional, engaging, relatable, and vastly entertaining,” Avett wrote. “He was funny and friendly and human and powerful but not in a way that I had ever seen before. In my mind at the time, “power” in musical performance was often synonymous with “volume” or even “aggression.” The power Doc had as a musician, and as a person, was not of the variety that required loudness. On the stage his ability to tell a story and to interpret a song so fully and with such a natural feel for melody was enough to draw the undivided attention of everyone in the room, no matter the size.”
“Doc Watson changed the way I saw the acoustic guitar,” Avett concluded. “He changed my understanding of how a song could be presented in sound and mood. He made me laugh, and he made me listen more intently to the melody. He helped lead me to a uniquely rich tradition of music, and to a path of research and inspiration that continues for me daily. I am eternally grateful to this man who spent so much of his life sharing songs, and who was kind enough to share some with me all those years ago, on a clear day in the Blue Ridge Mountains.”
That reverence was on full display Tuesday in Columbus when Seth, Scott, bassist Bob Crawford, cellist Joe Kwon, drummer Mike Marsh, pianist Bonnie Avett-Rini, and violinist Tania Elizabeth went into the instrumental “Black Mountain Rag”. With Scott on banjo and Seth on an electric Les Paul guitar, The Avett Brothers brought the classic bluegrass song into a modern context in much the same way they have contemporized time-honored folk traditions throughout their quarter-century career.
Watch The Avett Brothers cover “Black Mountain Rag” by Doc Watson below and check out a gallery of images from the show courtesy of photographer Lindsey McCutchan. The band’s tour rolls on this week with shows in Ohio, Kentucky, and South Carolina. Visit The Avett Brothers’ website for tickets and a full list of tour dates.
The Avett Brothers — “Black Mountain Rag” (Doc Watson) — 8/20/24
[Video: Eric Pirwitz]
Setlist: The Avett Brothers | KEMBA Live! | Columbus, OH | 8/20/24
Set: Never Apart (w/ Vocal Prelude), Down With The Shine, Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise, Forever Now, Orion’s Belt, Black Mountain Rag (Doc Watson), Love Of A Girl, Murder In The City, I Wish I Was, Le reel du pendu / Les bars de la prison, Country Kid, Go to Sleep, Talk on Indolence, I and Love and You, We Are Loved, Vanity, Kick Drum Heart, Cheap Coffee, Ain’t No Man
Encore: As Good as I Once Was (Toby Keith), Paranoia in B Flat Major, The Prettiest Thing (David Childers & The Modern Don Juans), No Hard Feelings
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