Sam Bush

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Saturday, July 7 • Doors 7pm • Show 8pm • $22 Advance • $25 Day of Show • All Ages • Buy Tickets

Grammy Award winning multi-instrumentalist Sam Bush doesn’t seem old enough to be a musical legend. And he’s not. But he is. Alternately known as the King of Telluride and the King of Newgrass, Bush has been honored by the Americana Music Association and the International Bluegrass Music Association.

But honors are not what drive him. “I didn’t get into music to win awards,” he says. “I’m just now starting to get somewhere. I love to play and the older I get the more I love it. And I love new things.”

And though Bush is best known for jaw-dropping skills on the mandolin, he is also a three time national junior fiddle champion and Grammy award winning vocalist. ”In the acoustic world, I’ve been pretty lucky to play with almost every one of my heroes. I’ve gotten to play with Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs, I’ve been to the mountain,” says Bush with a smile.

But his greatest contribution may be his impact on the future. “I’m secure with what I can do and I know what I can’t do,” he says. “You just have to stand there and applaud the great young talent. “Chris Thile, Wayne Benson, Shawn Lane, Matt Flinner, Ronnie McCoury, Mike Marshall—they play in ways that I can’t play,” he says of today’s younger generation of mandolin players. “I’m hoping to be around for is the next generation that comes along after that group. That’s going to be something. The music keeps evolving.

Circles Around Me, Bush’s seventh solo album and sixth with Sugar Hill, is an aurally inspiring mix of bluegrass favorites and complementary new songs. “I don’t know why, but it felt right at this moment in my life to go back and revisit some things that I’ve loved all my life, which is bluegrass and, unapologetically, newgrass,” says Bush. “After all these years of experimenting —and there’s experimentation on this record too —I’ve come full circle.”

It’s not surprising that Bush still has goals. “I want to grow as a songwriter, as a song collaborator,” he says. “There are still a lot of things I haven’t discovered about playing mandolin. I want to be able to be secure in the styles that I know how to play well, but I also want to explore other styles that I haven’t learned yet. “I want to improve as a singer,” he adds. “I have to work harder on singing than I do on playing.” “As long as I’m alive I hope I have the ability to play,” says Bush, a two time cancer treatment survivor. When the ability to play is taken away, it’s humbling. It teaches you a lesson: don’t take it for granted.” Here’s to the next 30 years.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under Past Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.