In the space of a year, bluegrass band East Nash Grass has gone from winning the International Bluegrass Music Association (IBMA)’s new artist of the year honor, to being nominated for the organization’s top accolade, entertainer of the year. The outfit is also nominated for instrumental group of the year, while fiddle player Maddie Denton is nominated for fiddle player of the year.
“To see our name listed alongside some of our heroes who have contributed so much to further bluegrass music is an incredible honor. It’s an exciting time for bluegrass music and we are thrilled to be part of it!” Denton, a third-generation fiddle player, tells Billboard. “We appreciate everyone that’s come to a show of ours, watched online, spread the word, bought merch and supported us. We are feeling the love and are so grateful for it.”
Denton, alongside her East Nash Grass bandmates Harry Clark (mandolin), Cory Walker (banjo), James Kee (guitar) and Jeff Partin (bass/dobro), unfolds the group’s the latest chapter in their creative journey with their third album, All God’s Children, out today (Aug. 22) on Mountain Fever Records.
The new project features five fresh originals, a pair of cover songs and even a song that offers a new spin on a Liberian chant.
“Our album seems to have a theme of, not necessarily spirituality, but it feels like there’s kind of a connectedness and world music influences,” Denton says, noting recent international traveling the band has done, including trips to Switzerland, France and Ireland. “We had a kind of old-timey sound, and I think we had lots of traditional old-time music that we turned into bluegrass-style stuff. With this new record, we wanted to do something different than what we had done previously.”
“Bend in the Road” was written by Clark and Walker. “We had been toying for it for probably over a year,” Clark says. “We’d written one or two verses, but it was basically a bunch of trial and error, just seeing what sticks. I guess we were listening to a bunch of Uncle Dave records one night and this song was just ideas we’d written down.”
The album’s closing song, “Jump Through the Window,” is a new spin on a Liberian chant. Denton worked on the song with close friend, musician and the band’s tour manager Brenna MacMillan.
“Brenna has some adopted siblings from Liberia, and they knew this chant,” Denton says. “She called it ‘Jump Through the Window’ and played it for me one day. She’s like, ‘I want to make it kind of a bluegrass thing,’ so we worked on it together. We brought it to East Nash Grass and we had already recorded some songs for the album and the title track. To put ‘Jump Through the Window’ on there, it felt like it was the rug that tied the room together.”
The album also tucks in a cover of the Jimmy Driftwood song “Git Along Little Yearlings.”
“All of us are always listening to different music, searching out what could be links to bluegrass. Growing up in central Arkansas, Jimmy Driftwood has a special connection to me because he was from Arkansas, and he was really influential in getting a folk roots program started at the Ozark Folk Center. I remember finding one of his albums on the road, sending a song to Corey, and then the whole band listened and James said it sounded like something we should do for the album. He was right, it turned out to be a really good fit and just kind of fills a gap in our sound.”
Beyond the high-caliber musicianship on their recordings, that coveted entertainer of the year nomination also comes due to East Nash Grass’s energetic, unfiltered performances, which are equally likely to find them laying down blistering instrumentals as engaging with off-the-wall banter with the audience.
The group’s members have played with numerous other bluegrass music luminaries. Kee has played with NewTown and the Hamilton Country Ramblers, while Walker has worked with artists including Tim O’Brien, Sierra Hull and Ricky Skaggs. Denton, a third-generation fiddle player, has worked with the Dan Tyminski Band, Sierra Ferrell, Billy Strings and more, while Clark has toured with Volume Five and Tyminski and Partin has played with Rhonda Vincent and the Rage.
Around 2016, Walker came up with the band name East Nash Grass, after noticing a surge of bluegrass music around the East Nashville area. Soon after, Walker and Clark met a bartender working at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge who wanted to put on a weekly bluegrass show.
“One of the things we realized, was Monday night ended up being a really good night to meeting other musicians,” Kee says. “Nashville turns into a completely different town on the weekends, and on Mondays, the musicians are coming in off the road and want to get out and hang and see everyone. We started doing a few different special events where we would have guests. We started doing that around 2018, maybe a year into our residency. For a residency, you have to be relentless at it. We were there every Monday in some iteration for all those years.”
Through years of performances at Dee’s, and a few lineup shifts, the band refined its sound. They released their debut self-titled album in 2021. Their sophomore album, 2023’s Last Chance to Win, rose to No. 4 on Billboard’s Bluegrass Albums chart. Following the release of All God’s Children, they will co-headline a tour with AJ Lee & Blue Summit this fall.
“Some of the, what you might call ‘irreverence’ we have sometimes onstage, was from playing in the bar and atmospheres were we’re trying to see if anyone is listening at all,” Walker says. “We’ll see what we can sing and what we can get away with. And the weekly residency gave us a chance to workshop stuff—interacting with folks. That’s kind of where that was born. And every stage has a bit of similarity no matter where you are. I particularly love observational humor and I think it’s fun to play with and poke fun at the formality of playing sometimes. There were some moments where the owners of Dee’s came to us and were like, ‘Hey, maybe you can dial it back a little bit, maybe not do this.’ But again, that’s part of trying things. You got to just throw s—t at the wall and see what sticks.”
The group’s success comes with the post-“bro country” rise of more roots-based artists such as Billy Strings, Molly Tuttle and Tyler Childers — a surge that has also been beneficial for artists like East Nash Grass.
“From about 2012 to 2020, Nashville used the same chord progression on like every country song,” Walker says. “Everybody is tired of that s—t, and that same [chord] progression. That’s why real artists, real country singers, real roots singers are having success, because I think the music business got lazy. They just knew that progression was a selling progression. Now the stuff that has really taken off as far as live shows are people like Billy Strings and Tyler Childers. That’s causing the rising tide to lift all ships.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com ’
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