Sam Bush

By Larry Nager

Sam Bush stands center stage at Nashville’s most elegant concert hall, the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, leading the biggest band of his life. He’s playing “The Old North Woods,” his Monroe-styled minor waltz, and as the Nashville Symphony Orchestra joins in, Bush throws back his head, his face exploding into a mile-wide grin. That expression is familiar to anyone who’s seen the master mandolinist/fiddler perform over the past four decades, the sign that Bush has found the “joyful noise” he’s been seeking since 1963, when an 11-year-old kid in Bowling Green, Ky., started picking mandolin.

The occasion is “Americana At The Symphony,” a concert combining the NSO with the all-star band of Jerry Douglas, Alison Brown, Byron House, Buddy Miller, and Abigail Washburn. A few days later, Bush will receive the instrumentalist Lifetime Achievement Award at the Americana Music Awards, followed on with a nomination and additional appearance at the IBMA Awards.

They say today’s statesmen are yesterday’s revolutionaries, and that’s true of Sam Bush. At 57, he’s best-known for heading New Grass Revival (NGR), the group that led the counter-culture insurgence in bluegrass in the early ’70s, when the music’s traditionalist/progressive split was slightly more volatile than a healthcare town hall meeting.

Raised on traditional bluegrass and fiddle music before progressive rock and jazz twisted his head in different directions, Sam Bush has made peace with both poles of his musical personality. They coexist on his new album, “Circles Around Me,” a musical autobiography. The title song refers to the familiar idea of life going full circle, but as usual, Bush avoids clichés. “We can both think of ten albums that have been called ‘Full Circle,’ so ‘Circles Around Me’ seemed to be an appropriate title,” Bush says in the conference room of Sugar Hill Records. He explains that the song, co-written with Jeff Black, poses the questions: “How did we ever get this far? How come we’re so lucky to be up and breathing and playing and loving life? We’ve lost friends and relatives over the years and how did we ever get this far?”

Bush, a two-time cancer survivor (cancer-free since 1987) wrote the song when his father, Charlie, was dying of the disease. His death in 2008 got Bush thinking of the passing of time and generations. Partly as a result, “Circles Around Me” is Bush’s most “bluegrass” solo album. The 15-song set includes “Roll On Buddy” and “Midnight On The Stormy Deep,” both featuring Del McCoury and learned from Bill Monroe recordings. There’s a Red Allen cover (“Out On The Ocean,” written by Bluegrass Unlimited editor Pete Kuykendall) and the Country Gentlemen’s “You Left Me Alone.”

Bush says the time was right. “Maybe it’s after all these years of trying to make sure you always make your own mark, that the bottom line is you finally get old enough to feel comfortable and just play some bluegrass that I love.”

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