Review: Billy Strings, Lindsay Lou credit Michigan roots while promoting new bluegrass albums

It would surprise almost no one if both Billy Strings and Lindsay Lou land nods for best bluegrass album of the year when Grammy Award nominations get announced in mid-November.

The Michigan-bred stars — in their own inimitable way — have once again turned the eyes and ears of the bluegrass world toward the Great Lakes State with fresh recordings that honor the genre’s storied traditions while also showcasing the next generation of virtuoso musicians.

Even though it’s situated several hundred miles from the origins of the genre in the Appalachian Mountains, Michigan has become a hotbed for bluegrass in recent years – thanks mostly to the superstar ascension of Billy Strings – after long bubbling to the surface thanks to artists such as Greensky Bluegrass, Lindsay Lou & The Flatbellys, Full Cord and others.

The state’s longest-running music festival, the Charlotte Bluegrass Festival that started way back in 1973, has also had a big impact on the development of the genre across the region.

Amid that backdrop, Billy Strings’ poignant homage to his late mother, “So Much For Goodbyes,” and Lindsay Lou’s star-studded tribute to female bluegrass pioneers, “Bluegrass Women,” rank as the latest, essential-listening milestones of the genre.

As Billy puts it, he “wasn’t trying to make some big, spectacular psychedelic journey or some big jamgrass thing” and didn’t intend to “change any boundaries or push anything forward or anything like that.” Instead, the record is an honest reflection of “some big-time life stuff, losing my mom (Debra),” represented in 16 tracks deftly produced by the legendary T-Bone Burnett.

“I think it’s the most mature effort on my part,” he said in a recent interview. “I feel like it was just a more honest and a vulnerable kind of record in every way, not just like emotionally, but sonically.”

What emerged from these January sessions at Nashville’s Sound Emporium is a brilliantly penned, acoustically centered, nostalgic journey back to his home state and the Ionia County environs where he grew up. The trip begins with “I’m One of Those” where Billy tries “to bring back old memories” and wonders if he’ll “wave to all the ghosts that wander back across this road I’m strolling down,” a track that leans heavily on the mournful fiddle playing of Alex Hargreaves.

Billy himself acknowledges that he’s “a Michigan boy through and through,” with

“Mill Town Flood” written about his hometown of Muir, “Bluewater Breakdown” inspired by Highway M-21 and “Live to Tell” reflecting “a cold house” up in northern Michigan. “It’s starting to come out in my writing,” he said of his Michigan roots.

And while he might not have aimed for a “big, spectacular psychedelic journey,” those trademark Billy escapades show up in riveting, dreamy fashion on tracks such as the painfully reflective “Burn the Other End” and jazz-flavored “Lucid Daydream.”

Naturally, Billy’s remarkable guitar work winds its way tastefully through every track, from the tenderness of “Carry Us Home” and “Live to Tell,” to the quintessential bluegrass picking on “Bluewater Breakdown” and one of the album’s standout songs, “Lay Me Down,” an instant classic recalling iconic ditties such as “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow” from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (a soundtrack produced by, yes, T-Bone Burnett).

The collection ends in stirring fashion with the harmony-drenched, bluegrass gospel of “Wrestling an Angel” (“Wrestling an angel is like fighting a friend”) and the gorgeously melancholy instrumental, “Debra’s Waltz.”

The Billy Strings to Lindsay Lou segue

Of course, Billy’s bandmates (Hargreaves, banjoist Billy Failing, bassist Royal Masat and mandolinist Jarrod Walker) complement the mood of each track, with a bevy of impressive guest stars on board, including pedal steel player Paul Franklin, guitarist Bryan Sutton and singers Alison Krauss, Dan Tyminski, Jack White, Del McCoury and longtime pal Lindsay Lou — which makes the perfect segue to her own landmark recording, released just two weeks before “So Much for Goodbyes.”

The motivation for “Bluegrass Women” came out of Lindsay Lou’s concern that “few women or almost no women are visible or counted among the original, the first generation pioneers of this music and the second generation pioneers of this music.”

Consequently, Lindsay Lou – who’s from the Upper Peninsula and spent her formative years as a musician in Michigan – chose groundbreaking standards written by the likes of Ola Belle Reed, Elizabeth Cotton, Hazel Dickens, Ricky Skaggs’ mom and Ralph Stanley’s wife, and then brought in acclaimed female stars of the current bluegrass scene to create a truly unique and stunning historical showcase.

The vocal harmonies and instrumental prowess of Molly Tuttle, Courtney Hartman, Alison Brown, Sierra Hull, Hasee Ciaccio, Sally Van Meter, Laurie Lewis, Aoife O’Donovan, Tatiana Hargreaves, Sarah Jarosz and others enhance Lindsay Lou’s own ethereal vocals on everything from “Like A River” and “High on a Mountain” to “Freight Train” and “Your Lone Journey,” which closes out the 10-track affair produced by Shani Gandhi.

“It just felt like a really, really cool thing to see where women’s place in the music has always been,” Lindsay Lou told Local Spins, “and get to feature a lot of these amazing pickers and women in the scene today to bring all the songs to life.”

The album not only brings these seminal songs to life, but also adds a refreshing new energy to them and resurrects important female-driven contributions to the bluegrass scene so they’re not forgotten.

Lindsay Lou just completed a four-date Michigan tour behind the new album, featuring an all-female, five-piece band which played Traverse City’s Milliken Auditorium, The Acorn in Three Oaks, The Big Room in Grand Rapids and The Ark in Arbor. 

“Home is where the heart is,” Lindsay Lou said of her Michigan upbringing. 

That inviolable, enduring Michigan connection that weaves its magic through “So Much for Goodbyes” and “Bluegrass Women” puts the state at the forefront of the burgeoning bluegrass scene — and helps ensure the lasting power of an important American genre.

— Find more Michigan news and festival/concert listings at LocalSpins.com. Email John Sinkevics at john@localspins.com.