Sam Bush

Since the mid-1960s Sam Bush has stood at the forefront of progressive bluegrass, widening the expressive range of both mandolin and fiddle through fluid merges of bluegrass, rock, jazz, and reggae. As founder and guiding force of the New Grass Revival, he steered the transformation of contemporary hill-country music, while his work with the bluegrass supergroup Strength in Numbers carried those traditions into fresh territory. For five years as a member of the Nash Ramblers he supplied varied instrumental colors to Emmylou Harris’s repertoire. Independently he has kept probing an eclectic palette, reaching the top of the U.S. bluegrass, folk, and country charts with King of My World (2004), Storyman (2016), and Radio John: Songs of John Hartford (2022).

Country and bluegrass reached him early through his father’s record collection and Flatt & Scruggs’ television program. At eleven he acquired his first mandolin; the following year his curiosity deepened after attending the Roanoke Bluegrass Festival in 1965. Already a prodigy on fiddle, he captured first place at the national contest in Weister, Idaho three consecutive times. With childhood companions Wayne Stewart and Alan Munde, later of Country Gazette, he formed a group and cut his debut album, Poor Richard’s Almanac, in 1969—the same year he first performed on the Grand Ole Opry.

At the 1970 Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, North Carolina, Bush encountered the forward-looking New Deal String Band and was struck by their rock-inflected treatment of bluegrass. He launched the New Grass Revival two years later. Across the next seventeen years the band reshaped hill-country music by folding gospel, reggae, rock, and modern jazz into its traditional foundation. Bush remained the only original member through repeated lineup shifts; bassist and vocalist John Cowan arrived in 1973, followed in the early eighties by banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and acoustic guitarist Pat Flynn. In 1980 the ensemble toured with Leon Russell, opening shows and supporting him on stage; a concert recorded at Perkins Palace in Pasadena, California, appeared as Leon Russell & the New Grass Revival: The Live Album in 1981.

From 1980 onward Bush and Cowan occasionally sat in with Nashville’s Dockbusters Blues Band. Four years later Bush issued his first solo record, Late as Usual. In 1989 he joined Fleck, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas, and Edgar Meyer to form the all-star bluegrass unit Strength in Numbers, debuting at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado. When Fleck and Cowan departed the New Grass Revival that same year, Bush dissolved the group and joined Emmylou Harris’s Nash Ramblers, touring and recording with them for five years. In 1995 he worked as a sideman with Lyle Lovett and with Béla Fleck’s Flecktones. Shortly before cutting his second solo album, Glamour & Grits, in 1996, he assembled his own band that included Cowan and former Nash Ramblers Jon Randall and Larry Atamanuick. The follow-up, Howlin’ at the Moon, arrived in 1998 with many of the same musicians plus guests Harris, Fleck, and J.D. Crowe. During the winter of 1997 the New Grass Revival reunited to back Garth Brooks on The Conan O’Brien Show. On March 28, 1998, Bush’s hometown of Bowling Green, Kentucky, proclaimed “Sam Bush Day.”

As the new century began, Bush remained a sought-after session musician while issuing further solo projects. Ice Caps: Peaks of Telluride came out on Sugar Hill in 2000; a collaboration with David Grisman, Hold On, We’re Strummin’, followed on Acoustic Disc in 2003. Two additional Sugar Hill releases appeared: King of My World in 2004 and Laps in Seven in 2006. His first live DVD, On the Road, was issued in 2007. The 2009 album Circles Around Me, despite its wry title, featured several instrumentals that highlighted his unmatched mandolin technique; that year the Americana Music Association presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2010 the Kentucky legislature passed a resolution designating Bowling Green the “Birthplace of Newgrass” and naming Bush himself “Father of Newgrass.” He hosted the 22nd annual International Bluegrass Music Association Awards in 2011 and maintained an active schedule of local and festival performances. In 2014 he and Kathryn Caine released A Very Love and Mercy Christmas, a set of hymns performed during Sunday services at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. A documentary film, Revival: The Sam Bush Story, co-directed by Kris Wheeler and Wayne Franklin, premiered on the festival circuit the following year. Sugar Hill issued Storyman in the summer of 2016, an album of eleven new original songs featuring guest vocals from Harris, Alison Krauss, and Deborah Holland. In 2020 Bush was inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame together with his New Grass Revival bandmates. Two years later he released Radio John: Songs of John Hartford, his debut recording for Smithsonian Folkways.