<\/p>\n
There was only one prize-winning teenager with gumption enough to say, \u201cthanks, but
\n no thanks\u201d to Roy Acuff. Only one son of Kentucky both finding a light of inspiration
\n from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The
\n Wailers. Only one progressive hippie allying with like-minded conspirators, rolling
\n out the New Grass revolution, and then leaving the genre\u2019s torch-bearing band behind
\n as it reached its commercial peak.<\/p>\n
There is only one consensus pick of peers and predecessors, of the traditionalists,
\n the rebels, and the next gen devotees. Music\u2019s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it
\n outside insider? There is only one Sam Bush.<\/p>\n
On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only
\n son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his
\n parents\u2019 record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who
\n organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand
\n Ole Opry, but a clear day\u2019s signal from Nashville brought to Bush\u2019s television screen
\n a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt & Scruggs, and an
\n epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.<\/p>\n
As a teen fiddler, Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division
\n of the National Oldtime Fiddler\u2019s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor
\n Richard\u2019s Almanac, as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the
\n Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking
\n notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.<\/p>\n
Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan.
\n It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved
\n Bill Monroe – even saw him perform at the Ryman – but he\u2019d discovered electrified
\n alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.<\/p>\n
\u201cI started working at the Holiday Inn as a busboy,\u201d Bush recalls. \u201cEbo Walker and
\n Lonnie Peerce came in one night asking if I wanted to come to Louisville and play
\n five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a big, ol\u2019 \u2018Hell yes, let\u2019s
\n go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush played guitar in the group, then began playing mandolin after recruiting guitarist
\n Tony Rice to the fold. Following a fallout with Peerce in 1971, Bush and his Alliance
\n mates – Walker, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch – formed the New Grass Revival,
\n issuing the band\u2019s debut, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon after, replaced temporarily
\n by Butch Robins, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were already people who had deviated from Bill Monroe\u2019s style of bluegrass,\u201d
\n Bush explains. \u201cIf anything, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been
\n started. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and rock-&-roll
\n songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shunned by some traditionalists, New Grass Revival played bluegrass fests slotted
\n in late-night sets for the \u201clong-hairs and hippies.\u201d Quickly becoming a favorite of
\n rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era\u2019s most
\n popular artists. Russell hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour in
\n 1973 that put the band nightly in front of tens of thousands.<\/p>\n
At tour\u2019s end, it was back to headlining six nights a week at an Indiana pizza joint.
\n But, they were resilient, grinding it out on the road. And in 1975 the Revival first
\n played Telluride, Colorado, forming a connection with the region and its fans that
\n has prospered for 45 years.<\/p>\n
Bush was the newgrass commando, incorporating a variety of genres into the repertoire.
\n He discovered a sibling similarity with the reggae rhythms of Marley and The Wailers,
\n and, accordingly, developed an ear-turning original style of mandolin playing. The
\n group issued five albums in their first seven years, and in 1979 became Russell\u2019s
\n backing band. By 1981, Johnson and Burch left the group, replaced by banjoist Bela
\n Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn.<\/p>\n
A three-record contract with Capitol Records and a conscious turn to the country market
\n took the Revival to new commercial heights. Bush survived a life-threatening bout
\n with cancer, and returned to the group that\u2019d become more popular than ever. They
\n released chart-climbing singles, made videos, earned Grammy nominations, and, at their
\n zenith, called it quits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were on the verge of getting bigger,\u201d recalls Bush. \u201cOr maybe we\u2019d gone as far
\n as we could. I\u2019d spent 18 years in a four-piece partnership. I needed a break. But,
\n I appreciated the 18 years we had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush worked the next five years with Emmylou Harris\u2019 Nash Ramblers, then a stint with
\n Lyle Lovett. He took home three-straight IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards,
\n 1990-92 (and a fourth in 2007). In 1995 he reunited with Fleck, now a burgeoning superstar,
\n and toured with the Flecktones, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. Then, finally,
\n after a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival and collaborating with
\n other bands, Sam Bush went solo.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s released seven albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the
\n Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist.
\n Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day
\n bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he\u2019s influenced. His performances are
\n annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush\u2019s joyous perennial appearances
\n at the town\u2019s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, \u201cKing of Telluride.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWith this band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 50
\n years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock&roll,
\n jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it\u2019s a culmination of
\n all of that,\u201d says Bush. \u201cI can unapologetically stand onstage and feel I\u2019m representing
\n those songs well.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n