Sam Bush and Dierks Bentley

Baseball, Dogs and Bluegrass

Dierks Bentley interviews bluegrass great Sam Bush about his Laps in Seven CD and their mutual passions.

On a sunny Nashville afternoon, Dierks Bentley played CW reporter and sat down in the upstairs bar of the South Street restaurant with picker extraordinaire and Newgrass Revival founder Sam Bush to discuss Sam's amazing career and the world-class musicians who've made an impact on him. Here are some excerpts from that very entertaining conversation.

DB: How do you define your music? It’s bluegrass, it’s Americana … it’s kinda soul … ? I guess it’s a weird question … trying to define your music. But is it more difficult for you trying to get an audience?

SB: I guess in some ways it’s easier to have an audience if you’re able to categorize. It’s like my buddy in Bowling Green, Kenny Lee, says, “We play in this band, Duck Butter, where you can’t put us in a certain box. We’re the band that time forgot. We never practice, it’s not allowed.” I get to play electric guitar in Duck Butter.
      But really, yeah. For years, I fought calling stuff “newgrass” just cause people were saying “You’re the father of newgrass.” I always thought it was John Duffy with the Country Gentlemen who made the first new bluegrass. But so did the Osborn Brothers and so did Jim and Jessie. Jim and Jessie did a whole Chuck Berry album in the ’60s called Berry Pickin’ Time in the Country.

DB: It’s in the same bin next to Bill Anderson’s “S.S. … Super Sexy.”

SB: Oh, the disco album? [Huge laugh] That’s one of the greatest things I’ve ever heard. You know he’s a good baseball fan, Bill Anderson. He told me once, “I wanted to be an announcer, but I just didn’t have the voice.” [Sam does a great impression of Bill] He’s a huge Braves fan … huge Atlanta fan.

DB: People who think of you … probably think “Baton Rouge” and Newgrass … and people might think Garth Brooks [who recorded the Newgrass Revival tune "Callin' Baton Rouge"].

SB: The word newgrass probably applies, especially now that … I’ve got a banjo player, and if we want to play bluegrass we feel that we can really play bluegrass. And if we want to vary off, we have Byron House on bass … who’s great on the upright. Byron and I are from Bowling Green—his dad and my mother used to work at Sears & Roebuck at the same time. So we’ve known each other since we were kids.
      The door is open for us to be able to play anything we want to try. Which can also be its own confusing factor because there’s only so much you can vary it within a program.

DB: [About the production getting so big it’s hard to change the show] You make one change in the set list, you’ve gotta notify 20 people [he pretends to be talking into a walkie talkie] … “Ok, we’re goin’ to song six on the set list.”

SB: So if you want to call an audible, it’s pretty hard to do.

DB: Seems like it takes an act of Congress to change a set list some nights! [Big laugh]

SB: Back when I was in Newgrass Revival, it was a partnership and there would be a one-hour discussion on the set list every night. So now I every much enjoy the freedom to just take five minutes tops and write it down.
      You know the certain slots which songs are gonna go in. You know the song that needs a song right after it … others are gonna get the proper applause so you can wait and let it breathe. Or, if I do this “Ballad for a Soldier” song, I throw one in right after that … in case there’s any what we call “chair snappers” out in the audience. ‘Cause I’ve noticed that chair snappers don’t just fold the chair, they snap it. They want you to know they are indignant about this crap you’re playing called music.

DB: We had some chair snappers last night [chuckles].

SB: One thing my wife and I had in common when we fell in love was the love of Bob Dylan. The first album that came out after she and I fell in love was Slow Train Coming. That turned off a lot of his old fans. He thought that too. It wasn’t hip to fall in love with American Christianity. It was hip to fall in love with Bhudism or Hinduism like John McGlaughlin. It wasn’t hip—not that I’m religious, I’m not—but of all the things he ever did, that freaked out his old fans more than anything. And I think that’s one of his greatest records—ever.

[Sam talks about breaking two elbows in the same year.]

DB: How’d you break ’em?

SB: I slipped on ice. Jerry Douglas’ oldest daughter Olivia is our God-daughter and she was about four and we went to her birthday party. Sober as a judge, we had black ice in Nashville. I just went down. I was literally standing still and went down. Displaced my elbow. But let me tell you this, if Shaquille O’Neal practiced his free throws as much as I did when I was rehabbing my arm … he could hit some! I’ll never forget the day I hit 8 straight free throws.
      Later that same year, running with Ozzie the wonder dog, I just tripped running with him on Christmas night up in Louisville. I knew the pain. But this one was just a crack.
      So, the bottom line is, things can happen sometime … they’re not the worst thing that could happen to you. But, boy, I was so ravenous to get back and play music … it was insane how much I wanted to play. Maybe I needed that to happen, ‘cause you get tired and you don’t appreciate the gift of playing or singing … and it is a gift.

Check out the Aug. 27 issue of Country Weekly for more from Sam and Dierks.

• August 14, 2007
• Dierks and Sam photo by Joe Hardwick

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