By John Lehndorff

“Hot Rize is the great modern bluegrass band. They’re the connective tissue that links the great founders of bluegrass with the modern tradition.”
—Steve Martin, Actor/Comedian/Banjo player

Bryan Sutton, the guitarist many regard as the most gifted flatpicker in a generation, believes in practice, not destiny, but he also keeps a snapshot at home taken in 1989 that seemed to foretell his bluegrass future. “When I was fifteen, I went to my first festival—J.D. Crowe’s in Denton, N.C.—and I got to see Jim & Jesse in their cool suits,” Sutton said backstage at June’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival. “Hearing Hot Rize play live had a huge impact on me. All I wanted to do was sound like Hot Rize.”

The budding musician was already a fan, he said, because his dad would put one tape in the cassette player of the family Fiat and leave it for months. “He had Traditional Ties in there awhile, and I really got to know those songs,” he said. He won a mandolin in a raffle his mom entered at the Denton festival. “I used it as an excuse to talk to Tim O’Brien about music. I have this photo with Tim holding my mandolin,” Sutton said.

Onstage at Telluride, 32 years after the band debuted there, Hot Rize bassist Nick Forster asked the audience, “How many of you have seen us play before?” Standing there in his dark suit next to Pete Wernick and Tim O’Brien, a grinning Bryan Sutton was the only person onstage who raised his hand.

Later, it was clear that Sutton bears a striking resemblance to Swaid (pronounced soowade), the new bass player for Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers, Hot Rize’s badly dressed, alterego honky-tonk band.

Beyond an early stint in Ricky Skaggs’ Kentucky Thunder, Sutton has never chosen to be a permanent member of any band except Hot Rize. An indemand Nashville studio ace, he joined in 2002 when Hot Rize became a touring unit again a few years after the death of guitarist Charles Sawtelle. Until recently, it has only involved a handful of reunion gigs each year.

That’s why Sutton—and many fans—are excited that Hot Rize has booked its most extensive touring since Sutton came aboard. Summer stops at the Station Inn and Bonnaroo in Tennessee and a trip to the studio for the first time this century will be followed by an autumn crosscountry tour. A new Hot Rize album is also a possibility.

Hot Rize had been one of the biggest acts in bluegrass in the 1980s, recording nine albums and charting hits such as “Colleen Malone” and “Just Like You.” They performed on national TV and radio and at venues and festivals in 47 states and across ten countries. Like Jerry Lewis, the Trailblazers became unnaturally popular in France.

After a Grammy nomination for 1990’s Take it Home, which also nabbed a four-star review in Rolling Stone, they were awarded the IBMA’s inaugural Entertainer Of The Year award. At its height, Hot Rize bowed off the bluegrass stage as a fulltime act. “Tim had been talking about going out on his own for awhile,” Wernick said. “We’d been on the road for 12 years. My son was going into elementary school, and I wanted to be around.”

In the years to come, no matter the truly remarkable heights each achieved on their own, they also never stopped being Hot Rize. The fans maintained a strong affection for the band and the songs and wanted to see them perform.

The long road leading to the band’s current revival began in Denver in 1978. Pete Wernick, late of the New York progressive bluegrass band Country Cooking (with Tony Trischka), had recorded his first solo album: Dr. Banjo Steps Out. Tim O’Brien, alumnus of the Ophelia Swing band, also put out his debut, Guess Who’s in Town? They formed a band just to play that music and asked Charles Sawtelle from the band Monroe Doctrine to play bass. Flashy guitarist Mike Scap completed the quartet.

Hot Rize was named, with permission, after the secret ingredient in Martha White’s self-rising flour, a long-time sponsor of Flatt & Scruggs. “The name came before the band,” Pete Wernick said. “I thought ‘Hot Rize’ would be a great band name.” It turned out to be better than some of the other names that popped up including “Dracula Spectacular” and “Velvet Elvis.”

Soon after they began, it became apparent that Scap didn’t like traveling in cars or planes. They looked to a mutual friend, Nick Forster, who worked with Sawtelle repairing guitars at the Denver Folklore Center.

“People would call and ask if we knew a bluegrass band for a wedding,” Forster said, “and we’d always say say, ‘Sure.’ Depending on the players, it was either the Rambling Drifters or the Drifting Ramblers. I was handy, because I could call square dancing and play different styles of music.”

Forster remembers the day exactly. “It was May 1, 1978. There wasn’t a formal Hot Rize audition. They said, ‘Charles is switching to guitar. We need a bass player.’ I told them I didn’t play the bass. ‘That’s okay,’ they said. I told them I didn’t have a bass. ‘That’s okay, we have one.’”

The next day the band left to do a week at a lounge in a Ramada Inn. “On that trip, we began to create the camaraderie of the band,” Forster said. “The next week, we played on A Prairie Home Companion before it was a national show and at a bluegrass festival. In the first year, our goal was to make $100 a week each, and we did that. I never went back to my day job.”

There was only one conundrum, Wernick said. “There were never any plans to play beyond whatever the farthest-out gig we had booked. That’s the way it was for years. I was always adding more shows down the line to add momentum.” Forster and O’Brien say that Wernick deserves the credit for keeping Hot Rize together over the years.

Each bandmember had responsibilities. Wernick was in charge of booking and publicity. Sawtelle and Forster did the long-haul driving and worked on the vehicles. (O’Brien and Wernick were apparently not allowed behind the wheel.) O’Brien did press and wrote new songs, and Sawtelle focused on sound quality.

“We’d get to a place that was supposed to have its own sound system,” Forster said. “Usually, it was lousy and Charles would say, ‘We’re going to bring in the PA.’ I’m like 22 and a little bit lazy and I’m thinking, this is just a bar gig. Charles said we had to be a ‘professional unit’ for every show. He was right.”

Sawtelle’s strong beliefs about how a real band should operate have become a set of bluegrass band aphorisms. “Charles said we should travel together.” Forster said. “Until we got the bus, we drove a 1969 Cadillac Sedan de Ville with under 100,000 miles. It was a large, handsome boat with big leather seats and a quiet, smooth ride—even with a trailer.”

On the long road trips, they listened to the masters—Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs, Jimmy Martin, and Bill Monroe and critiqued the board mix Sawtelle recorded at the previous night’s gig.

“Charles would say, ‘You should always look good,’” Forster recalls. “We noticed that when we put on suits, it rang a Flatt & Scruggs chord with people and helped them accept us.” So the band scoured thrift stores for cheap suits and flashy silk ties from the ’50s, and the look became a trademark in a jeans and Tshirt era. Sawtelle would even touch up the black paint on the equipment boxes.

Forster was “emcee by default,” he said, because he was the one guy who didn’t have to tune much. “He’s always been a great emcee,” O’Brien said. “He’s photogenic with a smile that hypnotizes people and brings them in.”

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