Thanks for carving out a little time for this my.
Pleasure. You know, I so I have a couple
of bigger picture questions for you and then some more specific
things. So I want to begin with the the,
the biggest picture of all, which is the biggest festival is
a very particular event and you have so much history with it and
you've also played, you know, other festivals all over the
world for many years. There's something that is
specific to big ears. What is that?
How would you articulate that for yourself?
Oh, it's, it's one of my favorite festivals because it's
just so open. And if I was to go to a festival
myself, that's where I would want to go because I would want
to hear people exploring the edges of the musical
consciousness. And for me, that's what this
festival celebrates. It's like it's, it's not so much
about labels because there's a lot of folks in my bluegrass
family who somehow fit as well. And you would say, well, that's
not modern music or that's not edgy music or whatever you want
big ears to be. But I think it's just about
listening stuff that's really made to listen to.
And you have to bring a certain listening consciousness when you
show up. And, and what, what I find
fascinating is that there are actually people that want to do
that. Like sometimes when you're
playing music that's on the edges, you get used to people
not caring. And it being, you know, one
person called it, what did he call it?
Minority. Taste that's.
What he called it minority taste.
I was like, oh, that's what I I didn't know.
That's what I was this, this big promoter I met in Ireland years
and years in the 80s said, oh, yeah, that's what you are.
You're a minority taste said, OK, so is it bad to be a
minority taste? Not if you have enough people
that love what you do and you get to do it and you get to make
a living doing it, then you're winning.
So I think this is a place where a lot of people gather who have
been doing that, fighting the good fight their whole lives to
do something unique and personal.
And this is a place where it's beautifully celebrated.
It's interesting to think about that phrase because, you know,
during that one weekend in Knoxville, the minority is the
majority. You know, on the ground in
Knoxville. It's like this strange utopia
where, you know, and that can encompass people who are really
deep, serious listeners of one particular tradition, but during
big years they're also sort of tourists, you know, happily
jumping into these other. Yeah, musical tourists.
It's musical tourism. Yeah.
Now, it's interesting to think about an artist like yourself,
and I think Big Years sort of collects artists like this who
can speak with authority in a whole lot of different
circumstances, you know, and I think about, you know, you've
performed solo there. You've performed with Abigail.
You, you know, did a duet with Edmar Castaneda.
You've done things with with, you know, orchestral.
Setting Besico culiate, Angoni player, yeah.
So I mean, quartet, Strindberg book and writer, string quartet.
Those are some of the ones I can think of at the moment, yeah.
Yeah, and, and, you know, and still, like, still counting,
right? So, you know, I think about you.
I think about Rhiannon Giddens, you know, very recently.
Christian McBride became a part of the family.
And you know. Frizzell is sort of, he's the
natural, you know, just more perfect for this kind of thing.
But I think The thing is we tend to think that those people that
want to explore the edges are usually in, you know, you know,
New York or, or in, in jazz or the edge of jazz or, or, or, or
all kinds of, but, but we don't always remember that they're,
they're everywhere. They're in every musical form.
There are people that want to explore and create and find
something very personal. And actually our livelihood is
is somewhat dependent on it too, because you have to stick out.
You have to make your own sound. You have to have your own
personality to get attention, especially when you're doing
music that's as esoteric as some of the stuff that we all get
into. So I think I'm very comfortable
with it. It's not for everybody, but
there for some reason, there are these people that really care
about music. Like not just I love Taylor
Swift, but I like to hear what people are doing and they have
enough knowledge of what's been going on for the last 20-30
fifty years that they know when they're hearing something that's
pure and honest and straightforward or, or coming
from a new place or refresh or, you know, changing the changing
the the structure a little bit from what we've heard before,
right. I think it's really special to
be around this because I know these people, like I meet them
around the country and they're just people I know from, you
know, Colorado Springs. I know a a teacher there at the
at the university. He always comes to big ears,
even whenever I see him. He wants me to hear, you know,
out guitar playing because that's one of his favorite
things, like really out, which is not where I normally go, but
I love it. It's like great, you know, I
want to hear this. I want to hear everything and
see how mostly because I I love all the music so much and it
also when I hear something new IT it changes my ideas of what
is possible for me. And obviously you can't do
everything, but you can certainly be influenced by the
great things that you hear and can't be what you're not.
But you can you can keep on growing and trying.
Can you think of any personal discoveries from the festival?
Something that you stumbled into or somebody pulled you aside?
You know, I have my own, you know, rolling list, but what
about you? Well, it's a little hard for me
because a lot of times I am rushing from thing to thing and
then I'm practicing until it's time to go play.
And so I haven't gotten to go so much as a spectator, as much as
I would love to. So yeah, I don't.
You never can think of things when people ask me this.
But then after you get off, I'm all go.
I should have told them about this.
But what I actually really value is, you know, at the hotel, you
go in the lobby. Mark Ribeau is sitting there.
Or, oh, who's that fantastic gal who plays very modern guitar?
Mary Halverson. Yeah, yeah, I got to hang out
with them and for over breakfast, you know, and, and,
and find out that, you know, we all like each other.
Even though we do different kinds of music, we're all
interested in music as a very soul help, a soul satisfying
experience. And we share a lot of things
and, and even like each other, you know, things that each other
are doing, although you wouldn't necessarily assume that.
Right, right now there, there's a name I haven't mentioned yet
that is really important to this conversation.
Of course, Ashley Capps And you could say that Big Ears is, you
know, a kind of extension or, or extrapolation of, you know, the
musical enthusiasms of this one, you know, really incredible
listener. Yeah.
I. Have some thoughts about Ashley,
but I also have some thoughts about the power that one person
can have to change a community and its appreciation of music.
Because there was a guy this back when I was in, in, back in
the 80s, that's the 1980s. I, I, I used to play a lot in
Louisville with New Grass Revival and we would play a
place called the Center for the Arts.
And this place was, was a home to people like us who were
pretty, pretty out there. We didn't get a lot of
Performing Arts Center gigs in those days, but this guy named
Richard Van Kleek ran it and he had big ears.
And he was a perfect example. He brought in all kinds of
stuff, all kinds of music into this Performing Arts Center.
And he made it a home for people, you know, that didn't
have a lot of a lot of homes where they could go play their
music. And over the course of a number
of years, he made, in my opinion, he made Louisville into
a listening music town where they actually thrived and loved
hearing new imaginative music. And I really pin it to him.
And there are other people in certain towns maybe, you know, I
don't know if Lowell, Lowell Jacobs is a guy, you know, who's
who runs the Dakota in Minneapolis and the, and the
Mim, he used to run the Mim Musical Instrument Museum in
near Phoenix. People who just curate and bring
in great stuff. And then gradually the people
start to come. So that's it's one little club
in a town, in a small town. Sometimes it's the only person
who'll take a risk on something. So anyway, Ashley's that guy in
Knoxville and he's been that guy in Knoxville since the 80s.
Like what for me, maybe before, I don't know because I wasn't
there. But when I came to town, he had
this club called Ella Gurus. And Ella Gurus would play New
Grass Survival and, and we got to know Ashley.
He was just the guy who ran this little club.
But it was a club that had a list of artists that you would
die to. You want to be there every night
to see who who was playing. It wasn't like a jazz club, it
wasn't like a singer-songwriter club.
It wasn't like a bluegrass club, but it wasn't a world music
club. But you know, you could see
anything in that club and it was just constantly full of.
So I think he started building that audience for people.
And he also had a radio show that he curated as as far as I
know, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my impression that
he had this this great radio show.
And in and with that radio show, he also got a lot of people in
that town aware of a lot of music that they might not have
found out about. And so when when I left New
Grass and started the Flecktones and he was one of my first
calls. Is there any chance I could come
play your club with my new weird group with a drum guitar and a
harmonica and a electric bass and me, my banjo?
And he was like, yeah, let's just put it on the book.
You know, he was always enthusiastic.
He was always supportive. Then I gradually watched him
turn into one of the biggest music moguls of the Southeast,
you know, and become Bonnaroo, you know, chief partner, one of
the big partners at Bonnaroo and lots and lots of promotion all
over the South. And but it was neat to know that
he was a guy who loved real music of all kinds.
I mean, he loved it all. And he he's one thing I've
noticed about Ashley. He's not the kind of guy who
says if you could come off stage, yeah, you guys suck
tonight, man, I hope you do better tomorrow.
He's the guy who says, man, that was so, that was so great.
That's what he always says. And that's not because I'm so
great, because he says that to everybody because he loves
music. And even after everything he's
been through with the music business side of it, the ups and
downs of that, and I think he's had some incredible, an
incredible career on the upside of a bigger mainstream music as
well. He still loves all this stuff.
And so I think now that he, he did so well at Bonnaroo and, and
with all of his other projects, this is the thing, this is the
labor of love. That is really the thing that he
started out doing in the very beginning that he's just coming
back to because this is the thing I think that he cares the
most about. Right?
Yeah. And so he's the guy who's made
Knoxville a safe place for guys like me and Mary Alverson, you
know? Absolutely.
I mean, I think of 1 personal encounter standing in line.
This is maybe two or three years ago.
You know, you you sometimes chat up to people who are standing in
line with you. And this is a white haired,
bearded gentleman with a hat. And he said, yeah, I I live, you
know, up in the mountains, you know, here in eastern Tennessee.
And I haven't missed one of these.
And, you know, this is a guy who was not into a whole lot of
music, you know, prior to this festival and and he was excited.
He's like last night, I Speaking of Mary, he said last night I
saw this guitarist named Mary Halverson.
Wow. She just about blew me away, you
know, and this guy is, you know, he is just part of the local
community, you know, And I mean, I can guarantee you he would not
be hearing Mary Halverson or anything like it if not for big
ears and. No.
And it's kind of like wacky music as a spectator sport.
You know, people come, anybody could enjoy this because it's
just going to be so different from thing to thing.
You're going to just. You might not, you might hate
something, but that's what you're there for too.
Let's talk about that as a force in the world, because this idea
that I'm really intrigued by the idea that there's a sort of
value system at Big Ears where it is a selling point.
If it's something you haven't heard of, right?
It's kind of like, well, it's here, so it's probably pretty
great. And so, so then within that,
it's like, well, you know, OK, I'm going to go see Patti Smith
because, you know, she's Patti Smith.
And we know, we know that's important.
But I'm also what? What's this over here, right?
Right, what can I catch on the on the?
Side in this moment when the streaming ecology is, you know,
pushing more and more towards just giving you what it knows
you like you know and and genuine discovery is actually
being. Well, I mean this is.
Fired out of the system. You know, like, let's talk about
why this is so. I mean, it feels sort of
revolutionary in a certain way in this current moment.
Yes and no. Or you could say that he's doing
what the computer is what the what the algorithm is doing on
our phones for us. Like if, if you just keep
listening to complex out instrumental music, it'll start
finding it for you. I mean, he, he's just doing it
the analog way, you know, But I, I used to have this thing like
the Flecktones when we first came out, people's minds would
be blown. We would play because they just
had no expectation of what. And we'd come out and I said, I
heard these guys were going to be good.
And then they'd come out and they'd just, there was no way
for them to be prepared for what we were going to do.
Not saying it was all that great.
I'm just saying it was so different from everything else.
And then, then we would come back a year later and I'd be
like, well, they already had their minds kind of blown the
first time. How are we going to do it again?
And I, I, my attitude is we always have to come back and
play a different show than we played last year in the same
room. You can't like we didn't create
this music so we could now just play that music for the next 20
years. And it was the whole idea was
that it's, it's, you'll always hear something you didn't expect
or something new or something that changed your, your view of
the whole thing. And I would even, you know, if
we weren't actually doing enough new stuff, I would just, I kept
all the set lists to make sure that we didn't come back and
play the, you know, if we played back in Knoxville two years
later, I looked at what we played two years ago because we
have a big book with the Flecktones.
But so I could make sure we played a set that wasn't what we
did last time. So every time people came, they
would have the opportunity to have discovery.
And, and because it seemed to me if the whole idea of what was
great about the band was discovery and then you keep
coming back and they play the play, the hits that you
discovered, it's not discovery anymore.
So I, that's one of the thing for my career is I just keep on
trying to find things that are discovery for me.
And I'm curating with my career the way Ashley is curating,
although he's probably less critical and less particular
about the things that I I bring into my world because they're,
some of it is things I'm able to do or not, and some of it is
just what I like. If I'm going to spend a year
doing something quite a lot, it's got to be something I'm
very attracted to. But it's a similar point of
view, so I recognize him. There's also a particular, I
don't want to call it a sub genre and you know, or a
movement. I'm not sure what to what to
call it, but you'll recognize what I'm talking about because
you know, you meant, you talked a bit about coming out in the
80s. I mean, to a certain extent
you've been doing the same, like versions of the same thing in
terms of your compass, you know? That's my dirty little secret.
Everybody says you're so creative doing.
I'm just doing the same exact thing.
I just keep surrounding myself with different people and
finding different ways to do what I've always done well so.
So to that point, I think you've had a huge influence in this
respect, but the scene has kind of changed around you in that
there's now, you know, generations of people who came
up in American acoustic music, let's call it, you know, people
call it roots music or whatever. And, but but they're really
interested in working with the classical language and jazz
improvisation and what have you. So, you know, now you're out
here and then here comes Chris Seeley and you know, here comes
like this whole scene of of people who are really like
starting in this one rooted place and then, you know, really
credibly and compellingly moving all around.
So and Big Ears has beautifully sort of kept up with that.
So can you speak to that development and what it means to
you and what your perspective on it is?
Yeah, I can. That's probably the best thing I
could speak on that I would be the most qualified to speak on
because that's my that's my world.
That's the people. So people have a tendency to
when when someone new comes along and changes it up, go, oh,
they're the new, you know, they're seeing it a whole new
way. But everything happens in a
continuum. So like Earl Scruggs came on the
scene and he changed banjo playing from the way it was done
before he added the third finger.
And yeah, there were other guys messing with it, but nobody did
it like him. And he made something that was
so compelling that he created followers that that learned it
and built on that and this whole thing.
So when people say, oh, you're one of the forefathers, I go,
well, what about the guys that came before me like David
Grisman and Tony Triska and Tony Rice?
We overlap. But he's Sam Bush, who I played
with in the band. He he had 14 years in before I
even showed up. So I think there's been a
natural movement in this direction since way before I
came on the scene. Bill Keith, another incredible
banja player like Tony Triska is who who was changing at playing
jazz ideas and bringing them into the bluegrass language.
So I think it's a continuum. And there have always been those
people. And thank goodness there are
also people who reject that and they go, I want to play
bluegrass like it was done. You know, I'm going to play it
in my own way. But I want to, I want to, I want
to be more like, you know, Earl Scruggs.
Then I want to be like Tony Triska or Baylor or Chris
Thiele. That's not really what I love
about this music. So I mean, so I think the music
is very rich when you have people that do lots of different
things with it. And in fact, I think jazz had a
had a kind of a tough period where like if one person becomes
the guy, the music's a little in trouble.
And because everybody gives that person so much clout and and
what they say becomes so important that you aren't
hearing the other voices anymore.
I feel like that happened with Wynton Marsalis.
Like he be and nothing. No problem with him.
He's a strong guy with a really strong perspective and great
opinions that that he's come up with and built over years.
And I think there the problem is no, the people with the other
opinions that were different from his didn't get the same
time. And so his sort of took over as
the ones that should shape where jazz goes.
But there was a lot of other people with a lot of different
points of view and they didn't get, they didn't have the
strength commercially or career wise to stand up and be
considered his equal. Like if you go back to earlier
days in jazz, like we've got Charlie Parker, but you've got
Miles Davis, but you got, you know, Cannonball and then you've
you've got Coltrane. And then you've got, you know,
there's, you've got Eric Dolphy, you've got Ellington is still
out there, Charlie Mingus, all these people with very different
views of how jazz can be. And they're all living in the
same world, existing, and they're all, that's when music
is strong, you know what I mean? So for me, the the strength of
bluegrass is when we have lots and lots of really strong points
of view that are different. The Chris Thiele effect can be
like that where gosh, he plays so great.
Like maybe he's the greatest mandolin player who's ever
lived, quite possibly, but he doesn't do what Sam Bush does.
So all the kids that follows Chris Thiele, they all play with
a, a technique with a lower action and they have technical
wizardry all up and down the neck.
But Sam doesn't have, but they don't learn how to chop the way
Sam does. They don't know learn how to
create a sound with their instrument.
They don't learn the simpler points of melody and Bill
Monroe's effect on the music and and that stuff can be lost.
And so with me, I'm similar to that too.
The guys that came before me were probably more rooted, had
more of the original drive of bluegrass and I was the hybrid
guy. And as I get older now, you
know, you near the Cliff before you fall off into gone and you
start going, you know, there's really something to that.
Those those older sounds, those older guys, they're not less
important. Like Lester Young is not less
important than Charlie Parker just because Charlie Parker
could play faster. I mean, Charlie Parker's my
favorite, but you know what I'm saying?
So it's interesting. You can see a lot of that at at
some of these kinds of festivals where they're celebrating a
diversity of musical points of view.
Yeah, no, that's beautifully said.
And you know, this, I guess this year's big years, it feels like
last year already. You know, I, I had my first
encounter with Molly Tuttle and, and also Yasmine Williams, you
know, and, and so lots of examples of kind of new
perspectives on the sound. But every once in a while,
they'll decide to lock into a really traditional mode, you
know, And then Big Ears also has presented people who are
sticking to those those guns a little more strictly so.
Yeah. Well, I think there's something
that in they started calling it in bluegrass, the ancient tones,
which that's a. Good term.
It was good because there's a certain way when you play some
of that music where it just resonates the instruments in the
room and you feel everybody feels it.
It's like, wow, this feels like it's ain't in this ancient.
But you also hear that in certain kinds of jazz and even
certain kinds of classical music and, and you start to see what
are the qualities that all of these musics have in common.
And of course, they're always the virtuoso guys.
And then there's the people with the the depth that aren't trying
to do that at all. The people that are exploring,
you know, abstract concepts that aren't worried about technique
at all, but they're, they're in a whole different, you know,
when they have a whole different point of view, it's really cool.
OK. You've got the line up, up.
Yeah. And the question is, you know,
if you could pick two or three things that you would love to
see. I don't know if you'll get to,
but you know, just out of anything here, what looks super
exciting to you? I'm going to be stuck in the A's
and I'm never going to get to the B's.
But well, I do think I would definitely go check out, if
you're talking about the ancient tones, Allison Degroote and
Tatiana Hargraves. I've known Tatiana since she was
a little girl. She's always had a sounded like
an old soul to me. She's a deep, deep, deep
musician and Allison is fantastic banjo player, but it's
just going to be banjo and fiddle, but it's going to be
it's going to be heavy. It's going to be a beautiful and
have some of that ancient tones that we're talking about.
A great endorsement. Well, man, I would love to watch
that show. I'm going to.
I don't know if I'll be there. If I can, I certainly will.
I wanted to. I mean, I love both of them.
Rouge Aftab. I really wish I could hear her.
She was supposed to play before Zakir and Edgar and I in Chicago
at Centennial Park last summer, and then she got sick or
something happened and she didn't didn't play.
So I was dying to hear her. But I I've been checking her
out. Bill Frizzell is, I think I've
seen kind of pretty much that band before.
Maybe it's a little different. Sure, it'll be great.
Cassandra Jenkins I'd really like to hear her.
I'm I I knew her Bennett when I didn't even know she was a
singer. She was a friend of a friend of
mine, and I was I was liked her as a person.
And then all of a sudden now she's like, she got, you know,
best album of the year from New York Times.
It's like, what? What is that?
Cassie Jenkins Yes, it is. So I'm really thrilled for her.
And I'd like to see what she's doing on a personal level.
Oh, Herbie Nichols sung. That's crazy.
Not Faye Big. I don't know the the singer, but
I know Herbie. Nichols music.
This is Faye Victor. Yeah, she's a, she's a really
wonderful jazz singer and songwriter.
And so this is, you know, sort of her lyrical adaptation of
some Herbie Nichols tunes. Well, it's just going to show
you how many people I don't know here like this is the cool thing
is there's just artist after artist that I don't know.
But I know that I could just walk from place to place and get
my mind blown because I know Ashley's not going to have any
slackers here. Rufus Wainwright, I, you know, I
don't know what he's doing, but it's going to be great.
It's going to be great. He's all, I think he's one of my
favorite singers, honestly. I think he's just one of the
most wonderful vocalists ever. Oh, I would check out the Edgar
Meyer's new trio. Of course, he's a friend of
mine, but he's got this string trio that's playing some music
that Edgar wrote a lot of it in the 80s, these these string
trios that he wrote, but he never really got to do them with
the way he wanted. And he's put together a group.
Tessa Lark is a unbelievable fiddle player.
Joshua Roman is an incredible cellist.
And I heard them play this music not too long ago and it was
fabulous. It was just very, very unusual.
Oh, this is great. Yeah.
I don't know Tessa. So that's.
Oh. She's, yeah, I mean, she's a
classical player. She's just, she's just playing
Edgar's notes. But it's like she's turned into
him. I guess the the last question I
have for you is about this trio with Edmar and Antonio.
You know, so NPR and Jazz native in America captured the the duo
that you did with Edmar in the church, which was, you know,
fantastic. Antonio brings a brings a whole
different dimension. Have you have you done a lot
with the trio so far? Or yeah.
So what we did was we got together, rehearsed for a couple
of days, and then we did six nights at the Blue Note in New
York City. Oh, nice.
And then we went into the studio and recorded the record in 2 1/2
days. So that gave us an opportunity
to, like, really create some new material base built for this
group. When I played with Edmar, it was
really wonderful, but but my only bud is I didn't quite know
how to write for him, how to think for him, because although
he has incredible harmonic possibilities, if you don't know
how his levers work, you don't know how to write for them.
So I could write something that seemed quite simple to me.
And he said, oh, no, no, no, man, I, I, that's not going to
work live. And I'm really OK.
It's just a, you know, just this one chord is the only thing.
It's not, you know, but no, it doesn't work.
So, so we got together and I would have a tune somewhat
written, but I would have options and I would show him and
he'd say, well, if it works way better if we use this and it'll
fit my instrument better. And gradually sort of started to
figure out intuitively. And then he wrote some great
stuff and then Antonio wrote some great stuff.
But it's this stuff is very edgy.
Like what what happened when we got together is it's a place
that's safe to play hot and like go for it.
It's a lot of Latin rhythmic forward energy, which it's very
interesting that with with such tight powerful rhythm, I can
really play like a banjo, like a bluegrass banjo player sometimes
and have it not sound stupid. Where if I was playing with a
more conventional jazz trio that we didn't have the Latin
component, I wouldn't be able to do that.
I would be playing more in a guitaristic kind of style.
But with with these guys, I can roll, I can do my right hand
stuff that I do in Newgrass Revival Even so.
So it's it's very comfortable for me.
It's very comfortable for everybody.
It's Titus as crap cuz Antonio. That, yeah.
Yeah, but when we got going, it was like boop.
Oh. Yeah.
Can't can't get off. He's he's so.
Can't get off. He's so quick and he's such an
incredible deep listener, so responsive.
And then Edmar is like a rhythm section.
You know he's a. Big job.
Yeah. But on the record, if you didn't
know, you'd think there was a bass most of the time, and you'd
say, why did the bass go away? Well, because he's playing harp
and he and when it comes back it's very satisfying.
But I think we we created a really great lock and, and
refined it afterwards. So I'm very, very proud of of
the project. Big Ears Conversations about
Music is production of Big Ears Festival.
This week's episode was hosted by Nate Chanel.
The show is produced by Meet Matt Merrowitz.
Trevor Smith is our editor. Ashley Capps is the executive
and artistic director of Big Ears Festival.
For more information, visit bigearsfestival.org.