Billy Strings – Monty Smith

Time to point out some tunes that I’ve had in heavy rotation lately.

First, Billy Strings’s new record, Highway Prayers, is nothing short of amazing. Clocking in at 74 minutes and twenty tracks, it has a little something for everyone: bluegrass, newgrass, jamgrass, a talking blues song, and a dash of folk-pop thrown in for good measure. It’s the first album in quite a while that was so good the first time I heard it that I felt the need to text a few friends and tell them to listen to it.

Back in the May 2024 edition of my now-defunct Music Of The Month posts, I called attention to the most recent album from Finom, Not God. Well, at the beginning of July we got High Roller, a solo release from one-half of the Finom duo, Sima Cunningham. Wow, what an album! The more I listen, the more I love it. If I were desperately trying to find fault, I could quibble over the fact that, to me, the back half seems like a bit of a different record from the front half. A few tweaks in track order would have fixed that. But that’s a trivial observation about an excellent album. Sima’s got it going on.

Finally, a couple months ago I was scrolling my Mastodon feed (which I rarely do) and the album Parker’s Mood randomly popped up. I’d never heard of it, but it’s a 1995 Verve recording from Christian McBride, Roy Hargove, and Stephen Scott. Obviously these are stellar musicians with spectacular chops, but unlike so many jazz records, this one stays melodic throughout. (As I’ve said many times before, however amazing it is to see a great player improvising over chord changes in a live setting, I can’t think of anything more boring to hear on a record.) Also, I’m a sucker for a strong acoustic bass line, and McBride absolutely shines on this album. Give it a try.

Get some music in your ears, everybody!

Sam Bush Radio John: Songs of John Hartford

There are several releases I want to mention this month. For some pure pop-y folk goodness, I recommend you spin up Palomino, the latest record from First Aid Kit. This is a duo that often flies under my radar for whatever reason, but I enjoy them every time I hear them. And a couple wildly different November recommendations for my fellow guitar nerds: You can’t ever go wrong with Bill Frisell, and his newest, Four, is no exception. Great from start to finish. And for some straight-ahead bluegrass with a giant heap of flatpicking virtuosity thrown in, get your ears on Billy Strings’ new one, Me/And/Dad.

My November pick of the month is Sam Bush’s tribute to his mentor and friend, Radio John: Songs Of John Hartford. Bush is widely known as “The Father Of Newgrass,” and certainly he’s the person most singularly identified with the genre. But he has been quoted as saying “Without [Hartford’s landmark album] Aereo-Plain, there would be no newgrass music.” Indeed, it would be nearly impossible to quantify John Hartford’s extraordinary contribution to newgrass, and folk music more broadly. For this record, Bush has reached back through Hartford’s extensive catalog and selected songs that are of personal importance, and then added a tribute song of his own (co-written with John Pennel), celebrating Hartford’s colorful life as a steamboat captain, musician, songwriter, and performer. This collection is truly a labor of love, as evidenced by the fact that Bush himself plays all the instruments on the record, except on the one original tune, which features the current lineup of the Sam Bush Band.

Get some music in your ears, everybody!

Tag: Billy Strings

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