Multi-instrumentalist plays Big Sky and Missoula
Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush plays two shows in Montana this month. He doesn’t seem old enough to be a musical legend. And he’s not. But he is.
Alternately known as the King of Telluride and the King of Newgrass, Bush received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Americana Music Association, and has been honored by the International Bluegrass Music Association and the Country Music Association. He recently received a Kentucky Governor’s Award in the Arts.
“It’s overwhelming and humbling,” Bush says of his lifetime achievement award from the AMA. “It goes along with the title cut of my album, Circles Around Me, which basically says, how in the hell did we get this far?”
But honors are not what drive him. “I didn’t get into music to win awards,” he says. “I’m just now starting to get somewhere. I love to play, and the older I get the more I love it. And I love new things.”
Bush has helped to expand the horizons of bluegrass music, fusing it with jazz, rock, blues, funk and other styles. He’s the co-founder of the genre-bending New Grass Revival and an in-demand musician who has played with everyone from Emmylou Harris and Bela Fleck to Charlie Haden, Lyle Lovett and Garth Brooks.
And though Bush is best known for jaw-dropping skills on the mandolin, he is also a three-time national junior fiddle champion and Grammy Award-winning vocalist. He’s also inspired a new generation of mandolin players, who consider him a musical role model, much in the way he idolized Bill Monroe and Jethro Burns.
“I’m secure with what I can do and I know what I can’t do,” he says. “You just have to stand there and applaud the great young talent.”
At 63, Bush was the subject of an independent documentary titled, “Revival: The Sam Bush Story,” which debuted last spring during the Nashville Film Festival. “No chronicling of contemporary bluegrass could be complete without the story of Sam Bush,” writes John Lawless in Bluegrass Today. “He’s been an icon and a leading light among the many stellar figures in modern bluegrass and acoustic music.”
Catch Bush this month:
Big Sky: Feb. 6 during Big Sky Big Grass (800-548-4486 or www.bigskybiggrass.com)
Missoula: Feb. 29, The Wilma (877-987-6487 or thewilma.com)