The Sam Bush Band
                  New Year's Eve--The Boulder Theater
                           by Owen Perkins

This article originally appeared in Boulder Weekly (www.boulderweekly.com)
in the issue of Dec 23 97, and is included here by permission of the author.

d:\discog\bush.txt

     Luckily, the new calendars are going on sale soon.  I'd already
penciled in the year 2008 for the projected release of Sam Bush's next CD.
He's been averaging a solo release every twelve or thirteen years, finding
studio time when he can in between making musical history with some of the
most influential bands of the last twenty-five years, including the Nash
Ramblers, Strength in Numbers, and the legendary, groundbreaking band that
redefined the world of bluegrass, New Grass Revival.  At press time,
however, Bush is spending his last long day in the recording studio,
laying down the final tracks on his second album in two years.  He's
bursting with enthusiasm about the work, and he's sure to bring that
energy to the stage of the Boulder Theater on New Year's Eve before
returning to Nashville for a few days of final mixing on the album.

     The New Year's Eve show will come very close to marking the 25th
anniversary of Bush's first trip to Colorado.  In the winter of 1972, New
Grass Revival came out for a short Colorado tour, discovering the audience
that continues to embrace them a generation later. "We played two weeks at
The Inn at Thunderhead in Steamboat," Bush recalled. "We played the Oxford
Hotel in Pueblo.  The Hungry Farmer in Colorado Springs.  And I think
there was a new Holiday Inn opening that we played in Aurora.  It was 25
below every day. We weren't too keen on it at first, but once we went to
Telluride in the summertime, we found out there were a whole bunch of
knuckleheads just like us."

     One of those knuckleheads was the late Boulder promoter and founder of
the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Fred Shellman, who is honored on the new
album with an instrumental jam called "Mr. Freddy." Bush wrote the tune
with long-time bandmate John Cowan, and considered using a live
performance of the tune from last summer's festival in Telluride on the
CD.  The cut features the energetic improvisational jamming style that
first attracted Shellman to New Grass Revival. "Anytime you have a tune
that you're free to improvise as we are in the middle of this one, it's
interesting, because with that freedom comes a lot or responsibility.  We
made just enough bobbles that we wanted to go refine it in the studio."

     It's never been easy to capture that live spirit on a studio album,
but last year's Glamour & Grits perfectly contained the mixture of new
grass, reggae-billy, gospel, traditional, acid-grass flavoring that has
always characterized Bush's performances. Speaking from his home in
Nashville on a too-early morning after a good, long day in the studio,
Bush promises that the new album will be a further extension of the sound
his band made on Glamour & Grits. "It's a tough little record," he tells
me, "just like the last one. This one may show a little more of another
side, in that it's going to start out a little sparse."  Don't fret that
Bush is mellowing out though. "Even a slow laid back tune has to have a
certain amount of energy to make the timing pop on it," he assures me.

     "The working title is Howlin' at the Moon, from a tune co-written by
Jim Ratz," a Colorado musician and songwriter who Bush worked with on the
Wild Jimbos project.  "There's a lot of positive energy, positive lyrics."
The album features the mainstays of the Sam Bush Band, including John
Cowan on bass and vocals, Larry Atamanuik on drums and percussion, and Jon
Randall and Darrell Scott sharing the guitar duties.  JD Crowe joins the
band for a couple numbers, "and of course when you get JD, you get one of
the greatest bluegrass banjo players that may have every played," says
Bush.   New Grass alum Bela Fleck joins the band for a couple cuts,
including a "real slow and spooky" composition Bush and Fleck penned
together in their Strength in Numbers days called "Harbor Ducks." Jerry
Douglas came into the studio this week to play some "good lap steel with
the fuzzy-style steel,"  and Bush was still high on adrenalin from a great
day with Emmylou Harris joining Nash Rambler alums Atamnuik, Randall, and
Bush on a song called "Song for Roy," that Bush describes as "a heartfelt
tribute to our friend," honoring their Rambler bandmate Roy Husky, who
died on September 6.

     Bush credits the nature of his current band to explain his recent
productivity. "We've just been free to work up songs.  A lot of these
songs we've road tested, some of them we haven't."   Part of that freedom
includes self-producing the band.  Glamour & Grits captured the confidence
and instincts Bush has always shown in concert, and the album is
refreshingly free from any kind of external, commercially-motivated
influences.  Even a powerhouse band like New Grass Revival got "too hot
for me to handle" when Fleck and Pat Flynn joined the band, and Bush
relied on long-time collaborator Garth Fundis to produce the group. "In
the Revival we had an incredible arrangement process.  We would just
arrange these songs, and keep arranging them, rearrange them, unarrange
them," Bush laughs.

     In describing his songwriting process, Bush explains that "as a person
that sort of comes from bluegrass, I don't actually write down the notes
on paper.  You play it and try to remember it."  While touring with Lyle
Lovett during the past year, Bush started carrying a tape recorder around
with him, using it as a little notebook to ensure that he'd remember his
ideas. Bush took the ideas with him and his wife Lynn on their fall trip
to Florida, where after a relaxing walk on the beach, he'd hole up with
his instruments and make song demos for himself.  "In this case I ended up
liking a couple of things. I had some ideas to choose from," he explains,
reining in his enthusiasm and modestly adding that "the suck factor wasn't
too bad."

     Bush has been applying those musical instincts to concert and recordings
for nearly three decades, cutting his first album at the age of 17 in the
explosive musical year of 1969.  The revolutionary approach to bringing a
rock 'n' roll attitude to bluegrass instruments wasn't unique to New Grass
Revival, according to Bush, "we just lasted longer than everyone else."
He cites Country Cooking and The New Deal String Band as other influential
innovators from the early 70's.  "I was a senior in high school on Easter
weekend in 1970, and I went to Union Grove, North Carolina to the fiddle
festival there," Bush recalls.  "I saw these hippie guys jammin' like mad
in this field, and I went up and made friends with them.  The were the
guys in The New Deal String Band.  They were pressing the boundaries big
time."

     By the time he founded New Grass Revival, he was part of the
college-aged generation that was "experiencing the joys of acoustic music
for the first time through people like James Taylor, Crosby, Stills, &
Nash, and Joni Mitchell.  Our newgrass was fitting right in, so we
actually played a lot of colleges back then." While traditionalists may
have been a little intimidated, NGR developed their own following,
introducing their take on bluegrass to new mainstream audiences, and
incorporating the musical creativity of the era into their bluegrass
roots.  "There's a little resistance in the traditional camps even now"
Bush considers.  "But that bridge has long been crossed."

     The end of the era for New Grass Revival came shortly after a pair of
December shows at the Boulder Theater in 1989.  NGR played their last gig
on New Year's Eve a few weeks later, opening for the Grateful Dead.
"Wouldn't it be great if every band in the world, on their last gig, got
to open for the greatest show in America that night?" Bush muses, still
glowing from the memory.  "At first we were a little concerned that it
wouldn't mean anything to the audience, that they wouldn't know who we
were, that it would be too rowdy on a night that meant an awful lot to us,
playing our last show.  But the audience was terrific, very attentive. We
went out and just blasted it for forty-five minutes.  And there's the Dead
standing in the wings listening to us.  After that, we walk off, and we
could pat ourselves on the back, and say we had a great band.  And then we
could hear Bonnie Raitt play.  We walked off stage and Jerry Garcia was
there to greet us.  It was a hell of a way to say good-bye."

     Despite his obvious euphoria for the album project he's in the midst
of, Bush can't wait to get back to Boulder.  "We have so much fun playing
live.  You get enthused and get caught up in the excitement of playing for
people as well as the people giving it back to you." Bush describes
Colorado audiences as "ready for anything," and over the years he's
offered almost everything, including the electric party band he and Cowan
jam with in Nashville, the Duckbutter Blues Band.  "We never let
seriousness get in the way of music, and we never let music get in the way
of a good show."

     "It's gonna be a blast," Bush says of the New Year's bash.  "I don't
know if 2,000 party hats are going to drop from the ceiling....We don't
have it totally planned out yet.  We may have to bring Larry in on a
cherry picker." Don't be surprised if a few local friends show up on stage
to join in the festivities as Bush celebrates a 25-year love affair with
Colorado, issuing an open invitation to all:  "Come up and holler at us.
We'll toast the New Year."