Pumpkin spice is in the air. Dogwood leaves are turning yellow. Citrus-scented walnuts thump walkers underneath. Crisp apples find their way into the stew pot. Classic Scooby-Doo movies are featuring on the post calvin. Signs such as these can only mean one thing: It’s fall, y’all.
If I were to pick a genre to serve as a soundtrack for this time of year it would have to be bluegrass. There’s an electric energy of new beginnings—schools are starting, new friendships are forming, summer’s oppressive heat is backing off. At the same time there’s a nostalgia from recognizing the year is almost over and that some old ways are going to be left behind. For me, bluegrass captures the subtleties of this transition and expresses through instruments and vocals the feeling of the season more accurately than words.
1. AJ Lee & Blue Summit, “When You Change Your Mind”
The mandolin and violin form the initial backdrop, and AJ Lee’s vocals float like smoke through an empty room. There’s some serious melancholy in the air, and the lyrics suggest much of the sorrow is the song writer’s own fault. Around the one minute mark, though, there’s a shift. The guitar joins in, the tempo builds, and the stand-up bass comes in strong to create a much thicker texture and a sense of confidence, reflected in Lee’s more forceful yet controlled vocals. She’s moved on from a sad apology for whatever she had done to a recognition that she needs to be herself; whatever steps she had taken to cause that initial sorrow, there’s a part of her that owns her actions and stands behind them.
It’s that shift that makes this song powerful, and it’s what draws me to the genre of bluegrass as a whole. Bluegrass artists don’t shy away from the ugly stuff of life. They take difficult scenarios and make them their subject matter, interpreting tough times through music and re-interpreting them into something new. There’s a rich transformation that takes place through the music, and the listener is taken on that journey. You’ll find somber lyrics paired with warm, melodic instrumentals in a major key (see Billy String’s rendition of “Poor Ellen Smith” or the folk/bluegrass classic song “You Are My Sunshine”), in essence taking life’s pain and owning it through expression. You can’t have a resurrection without first having death. This song plucks at both.
2. Billy Strings, “While I’m Waiting Here”
You can’t talk about bluegrass these days without talking about Billy Strings. In the last six years he’s exploded across the scene and now regularly headlines festivals. (I still can’t believe the first time I saw him live was in 2015, when I was writing for Chimes at The Intersection in Grand Rapids, playing with Don Julin right before Greensky Bluegrass, another Michigan legend, took the stage. He was a man possessed with the guitar then, and, well, not much has changed, except that now the world knows it.)
Turmoil & Tinfoil is Billy String’s first album without accompanying mandolinist Don Julin, and it marks a turning point in Billy’s career. The album was a hit, the scope much broader than traditional bluegrass and more versatile than what he could produce as a duo with Julin, though their stuff showcased incredible talent. What I love about “While I’m Waiting Here” is the emotion Billy brings to this piece through the lyrics, but more potently through the music itself. The core melody of the song is this step-wise descent in the chord progression, and it gives a music quality of sinking into despair. That descent grates against the uplifting boom-chicka-boom-chicka rhythm of the mandolin (first introduced at the thirty second mark, and then throughout) creating a dissonance of optimism and sorrow. That dissonance is a true hallmark of the genre and runs in a similar vein to the theme of death and resurrection highlighted in the previous song on th our list. The music in this song brilliantly parallels the lyrics, telling the story of a man who is stuck in prison but holding on to a glimmer of hope that he’ll be out one day and his love will be waiting for him. It’s clear that what he hopes for isn’t coming true, and yet it’s hard not to pity the scenario. Who hasn’t hoped for what they know is impossible? Who hasn’t held onto optimism in light of dire circumstances, even when no fairy tale ending is coming?
3. Balsam Range, “What The Years Do”
The band Balsam Range is a personal favorite of mine. They’re a Western North Carolina-based group, and the fact that their songs are born in the mountains where bluegrass has flourished since its genesis just feels right. I want to end this musical analysis with Balsam Range because they bring us back to some of the roots of the genre: soaring tenor vocals; down-home lyrics about hard work and the changin’ of the times; mandolin, bass, banjo, dobro, guitar, violin, all played by masters of the instruments. These elements make traditional bluegrass hard not to love.
Because this band is made up of top-class musicians, it makes a big difference to see them live. In live music, and live bluegrass especially, there’s a lot of freedom in the performance; band members will take a song in different directions as they please, yet bring their explorations back to the theme when the moment is right. So I like this song both as a simple classic of the band’s as well as a good one to bring in some traditional sounds. Try listening to it with an idea of how it could morph during the breaks from the lyrics; imagine how the song could shift with an instrumental solo. As it’s recorded on their album this song is just over three minutes long, but it could easily be ten plus minutes in a live show as band members take the song in a new direction. In live performances, the music is different every time, and the song takes on new meaning while still being grounded to its core identity. But at the end of the day, an artist has to make a recorded version, and this one is just dang good.
Photo Credit: Snap Jackson Photography
Jon Gorter (‘17) graduated from Calvin with degrees in English and environmental studies and holds an MS in natural resources from the University of Michigan. He enjoys fly fishing, mushroom foraging, and waterfall scrambling near his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
