Bluegrass Star Billy Strings

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This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Today's guest is Bluegrass singer, songwriter, and guitarist Billy Strings. He spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Brigger.
Here's Sam.

If you ever find yourself at an arena concert where tens of thousands of fans of all ages are stomping about to the Billman Row tune Roanoke or the classic bluegrass song Old Slewfoot, chances are you're at a Billy Strings show.

A singer, songwriter, and guitarist, Billy Strings is one of the younger generation of musicians carrying the torch for traditional acoustic bluegrass, even while his music incorporates excursions into exploratory improvisational jams and the occasional heavy metal guitar riff.

And he's been celebrated by both audiences and the music industry.

He's won two Grammys, and Highway Prayers, released in 2024, is the first bluegrass album in over 20 years to reach number one on Billboard's all-genre top 100 albums sales chart.

That album showcases his songwriting and his terrific band. Since then, he's released a live album with another Ace Bluegrass guitarist, Brian Sutton, called Live at the Legion.

The duo performed in a more intimate setting than the arena strings usually plays in these days, the American Legion Post 82 in East Nashville, playing a lot of music associated with Doc Watson.

Let's hear the lead-off track from Live at the Legion, Nashville Blues, originally by the Delmore Brothers.

I've got the blues,

those Nashville blues,

I've got the blues, those Nashville blues

Ain't got no hat,

ain't got no shoes These people here,

they treat me fine, these people here

They treat me fine

Well, they feed me beer

And they feed me wine

And I've got the blue

Those Nashville blues

I've got the blues Those Nashville blues

I ain't got no hat, I ain't got no shoes.

That's Billy Strings and Brian Sutton on the new album live at the Legion. Billy Strings, welcome to Fresh Air.

Hey, thank you so much. Good to be here.
So how did the idea for this show and album come about?

Well, we did a live record, I don't know how long ago it was now, but we did one of our shows, you know, of our big jam grass stuff in the arenas, and it's just a different kind of energy, big psychedelic jams and big screaming audiences.

And a lot of my favorite live recordings are tiny little small crowds where you can you can hear somebody knock over a beer bottle or you know, you can hear the crowd what they're saying.

Like Towns Van Zandt live at the Old Quarter is a big one for me. So, yeah, we just kind of pulled up into the Legion Hall, and they were really cool to let us do that.

And we had a small crowd there, and we played

a bunch of music that we love, and we got a good recording of it.

And Brian Sutton is

one of my good friends for quite a few years now, and

mentors and heroes. And he is

one of the greatest guitar players ever. Yeah,

he's like a generation older than you, but I think he's perhaps like the go-to bluegrass session guitar player in Nashville these days.

So there's a long tradition of bluegrass guitar duos. There's, of course, Doc Watson and his son Merle.
There's Norman Blake and Tony Rice, Tony Rice and his brother Wyatt.

It seems like kind of like a no-brainer, just two people playing guitar together, but it's actually like a little tricky.

Your instruments are right in the same range, obviously. You're playing a lot of open strings.
There's a lot of fast notes.

It can get a little muddy. Like, what do you do so you're making sure you're not stepping on the other person?

You just try to listen. You know, if he's down low, I'll go high.

There's things like that you can do.

A lot of these tunes, too. A beautiful thing about Doc and Merle.

and T. Michael Coleman, with those three instruments, they could make a big fat chord, you know.

Like when they ended a song and they played a chord, it was just this huge chord because it's almost like hitting a piano in a couple different spots. You get these guitars to open up and sound big.

A lot of this material comes from Doc Watson. Like some of these songs are songs that are part of his repertoire.
And you said that most everything you do comes from Doc Watson.

Can you talk about his influence on you?

Yeah,

he's like the ground upon which I stand. You know, I

my dad played his music all around the house growing up and by the time I could play guitar, you know, five, six years old, I was learning those tunes too.

I might have been able to play some of them before I knew how to tie my shoes or something.

You know, it was like I was learning how to speak and talk and walk and I was learning all these Doc Watson tunes at the same time and it was just like a religion in my house, you know.

His music is just

it's the best. I mean, that's what I was listening to on the way over here, the Sonic Journals,

the Owsley thing that he recorded.

It's just these beautiful recordings. And, gosh, it was so good.
Everything they were playing was just churning.

I can hear some of his guitar playing and you're playing, but what about his singing? Was that also influential? Like, he didn't have a big range, but he was expressive, and he is singing.

I always think of it as very crisp.

I mean, I think his range was really kind of something to behold when you think about it. He had this great low baritone, and he could also yodel and get up into that really high falsetto.

But with Doc, it was always just spoken. It was always

the information of the song came through and the conversation of it. You know, people like him, people like Willie Nelson, people like Dolly Parton,

these

really great storytellers, when they're singing,

you know, if if you see Dolly Parton on TV singing and you press mute, it just looks like she's talking to you because she is. She's telling the story, you know, that's one big thing that

one of my vocal coaches that I've been working with, one of the big things that I took from some of those lessons was just Give me the information.

You know, I get on stage and I sing and I'm so worried about the pitch.

Am I singing good? Is the tone good? Am I singing right? How's my timing? This and that.

It's like taking the kids to the park and you're scared to let them go down the slide because you don't want them to get hurt. It's like, geez, let them play.
You know? And so

if you focus on the story and telling the words, you know, it's just like, I know where the pitch is. I just need to tell the story.
So you're doing that more?

Trying to.

It's easier said than done, all this stuff. You know, all the music.
kind of Zen, kind of mindful stuff that I've been getting into. It's kind of the

inner game stuff.

You know, I mean

I'm high strong. I'm I got a lot of anxiety and stress and um I'm moving around a lot.

I've been really busy the last several years and I've I got a lot of my own personal stuff that just haunts me on a daily basis and I try to

I try to do everything I can to just be cool and get my nervous system to chill, but it just seems like I I don't know what I can do to to calm it. You know.

I do the best I can and I'm doing okay, but it's it's a daily kind of struggle to to just stay on the ground.

Does playing guitar help or is playing guitar all caught up in all of that stuff because that's what you do for a living?

It depends on what kind of playing guitar. You know, if I'm on stage,

that's where the joy is. You know, that's where the

where the fun is. If I'm I kind of ride myself pretty hard about practice off stage.

Well, let's talk about that. You know, I noticed on social media like a year ago or so,

you were popping up

endorsing this online guitar program and talking about how you felt like you'd reached a plateau and you wanted to get better and get out of that. So, what was going on?

The more I play shows, the more shows I play in a row, the more you can drive yourself back into these old default kind of almost like a rut of

playing licks you always play or playing,

you know, you almost get sick of hearing yourself play the same thing and you're just going, oh, this is, you know, I'm not impressed. I'm not impressed with myself.

Yeah, I think it's, I don't know, there's something really honest about you talking about that because here you are, you're playing for tens of thousands of people.

Like you're an incredible guitar player, and yet you still want to improve and you care about your craft and you're willing to talk about it.

Like, I imagine there's people who are famous guitar players too who take lessons but they probably wouldn't talk about it

I don't know I mean

what do you want me to say I've kind of I've kind of always thought I sort of sucked you know because I'm me I'm gonna be my own worst critic always

but I'm just

yeah of course I'm gonna

talk about it. I mean, it's kind of interesting.
It's like I never really took lessons.

I just learned how to play from hanging out with my dad and listening to him play with my old Brad Lasko, my uncle Brad, and

I kind of just was seeped in this Monroe and Stanley brothers and Flatten Scruggs and Larry Sparks and Jimmy Martin and Osborne brothers and and you know of course mainly Doc Watson.

And I was kind of just soaked in that and marinated in that since I was a little kid.

And that's how I just heard everything. It's kind of how I hear music, but I never I never took any lesson.
I I still don't know what

a harmonic minor is I don't know what the word like diatonic means I don't you know I have no freaking idea I have a very limited understanding of these music words that people use so then I get into these sessions right because I'm haila fleck says hey come play on my record and I'm sitting in a room with Bayla Fleck and Edgar Meyer and Chris Thielie and they're saying oh yeah it's just you know this is in they're counting with all these numbers and letters and hieroglyphs and all sorts of stuff.

And I'm just like, man, I don't even know what any of this means. I just know the song goes, ducka, duck,

duck, duck, duck a bow. Duck a dunk bow dunka doom.

That's how the song goes to me. I couldn't tell you it in a math equation.
Well, Billy, if you wouldn't mind

doing another song for us that's one of your favorites. I could do a...

I told you on the way over here, I was listening to that Bears Sonic Journals, Doc and Merle, T Michael

And man they were sounding good and that they were doing this number here. It's called the Browns Fairy Blues

Hard luck pop coming on a lane. Mama give him back his walking cane.
Lord Lord, I got them Browns Fairy Blues.

Well, he throwed it away and he went to town to see a little woman, and now he's down. Lord, Lord, I got them brown spairy blues.

Hard but pop, you get too tight. If you don't think drinking, give me highest current.
Lord, Lord, I got them browns fairy blues.

Drink Drink a black and tackle kind, he can walk a block and tackle a lion, Lord Lord, I got them browns fairy blue.

Well, I walked up to my girl, the old man, and asked him for my true love's hand. Lord Lord, I got them browns fairy blue.

Said, you love that little caloo, said a hurt hand and got his foot. Lord, Lord, I got them brown fairy blues.

Hard luck pops, set him in the rain. The world was corn, you couldn't buy grain.
Lord Lord, I got them browns fairy blues.

Walk around and suck him in close. Smell of his feet, wherever he goes.
Lord, Lord, I got them dry.

So, Billy, last year you came out with your album Highway Prayers. I wanted to play the second song from the album In the Clear.

This song is in the long tradition of happy sounding up tempo bluegrass songs with really depressing lyrics. Can you talk about writing it?

Yeah, I mean,

I don't know. I think this one was one that I wrote with my buddy Aaron Allen.

He's a frequent collaborator. Me and him and John Weisberger get together a lot of times, and we've written quite a few songs together now.

But as soon as I started reading some of the words, I knew I could hear it in my head that it happens like that a lot of times. You know, if even if I write something down,

I'm thinking of the music as I'm writing it, you know, and it's

like I write with the melody, you know.

This is the second song from the album In the Clear, so why don't we hear this?

Well, here I am pulled over now, just crying on the shoulder down the road that I've been driving on for days. So I aim my moral compass, but it's spinning like a wheel.

You could take that many different ways.

I've had days as black as night, time and nights that lasted years. I've spent a thousand hours on my knees.

Broke down and started praying, but I was bleeding with the wind. Just to never feel the difference in the breeze.

They say heaven knows the road is slow.

Lord, how the hell would heaven know?

Just where am I supposed to go from here?

How much longer now before I'm in the clear?

That's the song in the clear from our guest Billy Strings 2024 album Highway Prayers. And this is with a band that you've been with for a while now.

It's Billy Failing on banjo, Jared Walker on mandolin, Royal Massat on bass, and a newer member, Alex Hargraves on fiddle.

Well, Billy, some of your songs deal with some pretty heavy subjects that you've dealt with in your life, including losing friends to suicide,

family and friends who are dealing with addiction,

feeling neglect when you were a kid. When you write songs about that stuff,

is it helping you process those experiences? Is it easy to sing about that stuff once you've written the songs?

Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it is definitely a.

That's how I felt when I sang on stage the night my mom died. It was cathartic

It's cathartic

I've had songs that I've written

You know

about something totally different

That I didn't realize I wrote for myself until month later. I didn't I r I write these words thinking that I'm

giving the some information to the some people that might could hear it. Really, I'm the one that needs to hear it.
And I wrote that for myself so that I could heal. And now I go sing it on stage, and

there's also been songs,

Stratosphere Blues, and I Believe in You. You know, the other night I was singing that on stage, and

you know, like I said, I wrote that before my mom had died, and now singing it after is just different.

It's like I knew something or something, you know.

I'm sorry about your mom passing away. She died this last June.

Would you mind singing a verse of that?

I could try.

Let's see.

Couldn't help but wonder why you threw yourself away.

Come on out from under and just take it day by day.

It's true

I believe in you

Took a walk to wander and I wandered on a thought

It's kind of hard to get through all the things we ain't been taught

It's true

But I believe in you.

After all the years of medication,

feels good to get your life on track.

Long as you live, I'm sorry to tell you.

You never get that monkey off your back.

Yeah, something like that, anyways, you know.

Yeah, that's a beautiful song. Thank you for playing that.

No problem, man.

If you're just joining us, our guest today is Billy Strings. His two most recent albums are live at the Legion with guitar player Brian Sutton and from 2024, Highway Prayers.

I'm Sam Brigger, and this is Fresh Air.

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Well, Billy, when your mom died this last June, I think you heard in the morning, and you had a gig that night. You decided to play it.

You got on stage and you made a, you know, obviously an emotional announcement about it. And you said that your mom would have wanted you to go on.
She wouldn't have wanted you to cancel the show.

Why is that?

The only reason she died is so she could, you know, space travel and be there. She was at all the shows, you know, she was always in the mix, right up front.

She'd show up in New Orleans or Seattle or somewhere, and I wouldn't even know she was coming. She freaking hitchhiked there, you know.
I was like, what? She walks in my green room. What the hell?

You didn't even tell me you were coming, you know.

she was just a wild one and she was really living her best life in this last little bit she had become quite involved with a lot of my friends and fans you know that go to every show and and and go out in in in the lot and stuff and she became really close to a lot of these people

and I was um always had mixed feelings about that. Um

what do you mean?

Well, I wanted her to go have fun and and be doing, you know, whatever she wanted to be doing, but

I worried about her running into the wrong people. Or, you know, she's been an addict my whole life and

had short stints where she was doing pretty good, you know. And I loved to see her out there hanging with all the fans, but at the same time, I was leery of them.

You know, I would go over to visit my parents' house and there would be, like, the fans there that I see in the front row of my concerts all the time.

People you you knew or did it or just knew as fans?

Mostly I just recognize them from the crowd, you know, and then I get to know them because they're hanging out with my parents or something. But

you know, and who what am I supposed to say? Like,

don't do that. I don't know, they're grown people, but I don't know.
She was getting older, and I kind of just had this vision of her in my head that I wanted, which is stupid. It's

not realistic to try to come up with somebody else's life in your brain. But, like, I just wanted her to have a garden.
And my dad, 70 years old, she was 64.

I was like, man, you guys should be settling down, you know, don't you think? Instead of rearing and tearing and going and eating all these shrooms and going to all these concerts.

And then she did get wrapped up in the wrong stuff, and that's why she's not here anymore.

I'm sorry, this might be too personal, but did she overdose? Is that...

Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's...

It's it's messed with me my whole life and now it's going to mess with me for the rest of it. You know, I have complex post-traumatic post-traumatic stress, and I have anxiety and depression.

I have for years tried to deal with this stuff just that happened to me when I was a kid.

You know, it wasn't just being neglected, and there not being food in the house, and you know, my parents being strung out, and

I miss them even though they're sitting right in front of me.

While they were partying and

stuff like that, I was around the corner being molested, you know, before I was 10 years old and all that stuff, you know, and I've had to deal with that, you know, and it's a really hard thing because they're such beautiful people and they taught me so much about music.

But yeah, their addiction has been really hard on me for my whole life and it still is and

really triggering to lose her in this manner, you know.

Well, I'm sorry. I hope talking about it is not triggering any hard feelings for you right now.
I got to talk about it because it's like

my whole life I've I've had to keep a secret in order to try to not make them look bad you know like even when I was in high school I I spoke to a counselor one time I mean I was I was in 10th grade but I was couch surfing I didn't live with them you know I moved out when I was like 13 because the house was no longer a home they were strung out and it's a wonder I was even going to school And one time I got pulled into a counselor instead of the principal's office, you know, and

they said, what's going on, you know? And I finally just, they told me anything I say is between them and it won't leave the room. And I said, yeah, my parents are on meth and I don't even live there.

And my house got raided right after that. You know, that same day, five state cops came up, raided the house.
I almost sent my mom to prison because I opened my mouth.

And from then on, I never said to anybody about anything.

I've just,

it hurts me, but. What hurts me is I've always just been worried about them, you know, and I've always wanted them to be good.
And

when I say be good, I mean to be well and happy and to have some sunshine in their life. You know, a few years ago I was able to buy them a home, my parents, and

stuff was good for a while. But

it just, yeah, it really breaks my heart that it went back to this and now she's gone. And

so I think my duty here is to continue doing what I'm doing for one thing.

Use all that beautiful energy that I get from her, that crazy wild streak. I got to use that and honor her in that way.
And I feel a great

kind of duty as far as just writing down these words, making these songs for people to heal from.

And also, who knows, maybe someday I'll actually be able to help kids that are in the situation that I was in.

Maybe I'll be able to help their parents, you know, like open a rehab or something or something like that to just to help combat this because it's

it's really hard you know um

yeah

are you taking some time for yourself it right now like are you are you able to take some time off the road and you have a a young family now that's also that's at home yeah they're with me on the road oh they're they go with you on the road heck yeah man so So yeah, I got the whole the whole gang and we're out there traveling and it's it's really cool.

it's awesome. And so, yeah, I've just been leaning into that, leaning on my family, you know, my band.

Let's hear one of your songs from Highway Prayers, which is all about being on the road, leaning on a traveling song.

And this starts out with some great bluegrass harmonies and also some really terrific fiddles playing together. So, let's hear that.

Where the air is clean

and the road is straight,

all the choices have been made.

I'll keep rolling right along,

leaning on

a traveling song.

Seeing things that just ain't there.

Five miles away from anywhere.

Highway eighty, way out west.

Can't afford to get no rest.

Both the landing up on high.

Rips the darkness from the sky. Behind the wheel where I belong.

Leaning on a traveling song.

That's leaning on a traveling song from Billy Strings, our guest today from his album, Highway Prayers. If you're just joining us, our guest is musician Billy Strings.

We'll be back after a short break. This is Fresh Air.

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Earlier we talked about Doc Watson, and I wanted to ask if you'd play a tune that maybe was one of the earlier songs that you learned as a kid.

Yeah,

when I was a kid, I mostly just played rhythm, so I'll give an example of that. My dad, he would play this,

you know, that's the fiddle tune Beaumont rag.

Yeah, and so I would play.

You know, and so that's how I started, and that's kind of what I did for the first few years of playing.

I was my dad's rhythm player, and that gave me a chance to just listen to how the songs worked, to just kind of stay there in the bass kind of notes and

listen to the melodies and listen to the harmonies, how the vocals work together. And that kind of bluegrass harmony just seeped in my ears, I guess.
And

later on I got an electric guitar, a little mini squire strat and a pig nose amp for Christmas one year. I think I was probably nine or ten or so.

And that was my first time really trying to play solos and stuff like that. But it was more, I was getting into Hendrix and I was playing more

you know

guitar center stuff when I got into middle school I wanted to play with people that were my age you know I'd always played with my dad and his friends and some of them were much older and I just wanted to play music with people that were into the same stuff as I was like skateboarding and video games whatever you know

and so the only thing that was really going on in my middle school at the time was heavy metal and I went to a couple shows and I just, I hated it at first. It was like, this is not music.

You know, I don't know what this is, but it ain't music. But

I fell into that friend group. And then, next thing you know, I started, I acquired a taste for this music.
And then I fell in love with it.

But after my bands kept breaking up and falling apart, I kind of got back into Doc Watson at this time. And just bluegrass in general.

This would have been around the time that stuff was really rough around the house. I remember specifically stealing my mom's old Chevelle one day.

How old were you?

14, 15. You know, because I'd go over to my parents' house and hang out with them and stay there and party.
And it's not like I just totally left and disowned them. I just...

Once I realized stuff wasn't going to change, I mean, I didn't end up really moving back there, but I'd go there for a weekend and hung out there a bunch, but I didn't... It wasn't like my home.

And so,

yeah, I stole my mom's car one day when I was just sitting around getting drunk by myself. And that's how bored I was, and that's how kind of there was nothing to do in this town.

I mean, it was there's 600 people that live here. There's nothing to do.

So, I was just getting drunk during the day, and I stole mom's car, and I went down Hayes Road, this old country road with cornfields on either side.

And man, I put the pedal to the floor, and I just I was going, and that corn was just a blur on either side.

And there was a tape sticking halfway out of the deck, And I pushed it in, and I'm like, I wonder what my mom's listening to, right?

And then

this is what came on.

I was in those heavy metal bands and all this stuff, and I hadn't really been listening to bluegrass very much, but I was kind of heartbroken at the way my life was at the time.

And when I heard

You know, Ranked Stranger came on. That's what my mom had in her tape deck.

And I just started slowing that old car down

until I came to a complete stop and I just pulled over on the side of the road and I started crying. And I was drunk, you know.
But this song hit me right in my heart.

In that moment, I was like, what am I even doing in these heavy metal bands? Bluegrass is where my heart is.

This is the music I should be playing. And at that time, I just started hunting for an acoustic guitar, you know, and my friend Zach had one.
And one of the first tunes I learned how to actually pick,

how to play the lead on and stuff, it was a thing called Nothing To It. It goes like this.

Is that one of those licks that you're now tired of, or you still like it?

No, I love it. I mean,

yeah, it's still the best. I mean, any of that Doc Watson stuff.

You decided at some point that playing guitar was your way out, was kind of like your salvation and a way to get out of the kind of life that your mom and dad were leading.

What point though did you sort of realize like this could I could make a living doing this? I could really get somewhere

relatively that wasn't until I was about 18 years old or so.

I failed all through school.

I graduated from an alternative ed.

The only reason I graduated is because I was selling mushrooms and I was able to pay this kid five bucks per assignment, 25 bucks a week, to help me get the answers to algebra so that I could graduate.

So I graduated a year late from an alternative ed thing, but you know, I had dropped out several times in those years. They filed truancy on me, all this stuff.

I was a complete, I stopped paying attention in sixth grade, you know what I mean? By the time I tried to apply myself, they were talking about trigonometry. I was way late.

Well, but so you must have at some point decided to take this leap of faith. I mean,

and just try to make it. Well, when I graduated high school, I was kind of in this situation where it was like, Okay, I need to get out of Ionia because

nothing's happening here and I'm just gonna end up going down a bad road if I stay here. I'm gonna end up

O D'd or in prison or, you know, it's just uh it did not look good.

The way I felt is in Ionia it was it was black and white, gray.

And and I moved up to Traverse City, Michigan. A friend of mine, Brendan Lauer, bless his beautiful little heart, he had a room and he said, hey, man, you want to come stay up in Traverse City?

We need a roommate. Hell yeah.
So I went up to Traverse City, man, and all of a sudden it was like Technicolor.

It was like beaches and there was like micro-breweries and art galleries and people like singer-songwriters and there was like coffee shops and people were into like art and stuff.

And so I started doing a couple open mic nights up there, just messing around because this is when I was studying studying Doc Watson kind of heavy again.

I got acoustic guitar, and I was just sitting at home posting myself with no shirt on freaking YouTube or whatever, you know,

trying to show off my new tattoo.

But I went and did some open mic nights up there, and

man, I played Black Mountain Rag or something, and I got a standing ovation. And I go, whoa.

Holy crap. It's like these folks either love Doc Watson or they've never heard anything like this before.

Your dad taught you how to play guitar. Have you picked out a guitar for your son yet? Do you plan to teach him the way your dad taught you? Well, he's already got one that he just bangs on the floor.

I gave him this Martin Dreadnought Jr.

used to be my guitar. I just practice on the bus and stuff.
And I took tape and I covered up all the pokey parts where the strings are on top.

And I wrapped him real good so he can't poke himself on that. Yeah.

So when are you going to start teaching him how to play the strings?

Oh man, like I said, he's

already gone. He's ten months and

he's just banging on it.

But I sing for him all the time. It's always the best.
I remember that first night when we got home, the night of my 32nd birthday, the first time I was able to be at home with my son. And

I held him and I sang. this little song.
I'll sing a bit of it for you.

He went to sleep in my arms when I was singing this to him and

it's probably the best moment of my entire life, besides maybe just the moment he was born.

But there's this little lullaby.

Sleep, pretty baby, sleeping

close them pretty badly.

Listen

while your daddy sings

And I sang that to him and he fell asleep. That was like the best.

Well, Billy Strings, I want to thank you so much for coming on Fresh Air today.

Thank you for having me.

Billy Strings' latest album is called Live at the Legion. He spoke with Fresh Air's Sam Berger.
Special thanks to Brian McGlynn at Audio Productions in Nashville. This is Fresh Air.

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Support for NPR and the following message come from 20th Century Studios with Ella McKay, a new comedy from Academy Award-winning writer-director James L. Brooks.

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The harp has never been commonplace in jazz, but it's not a novelty either. In the 50s, Dorothy Ashby pioneered a space for the instrument, mastering bebop, soul jazz, and other hybrids.

Alice Coltrane, a high school classmate of Ashby's, received a harp as a gift from her husband, the legendary saxophonist John Coltrane, and she used it to create a style often called spiritual jazz.

Brandy Younger follows in their footsteps, using the harp in many styles of jazz and popular music. For instance, she's played on sessions with Common, Lauren Hill, and The Roots.

Younger's own music embraces a broad range of jazz and jazz-adjacent styles.

On her new recording, Gatabout season, she plays Coltrane's instrument and updates the style of the great harpist's early recordings.

That's Brandi Younger's song, Reckoning, the lead track on her new recording. There are a few trends that distinguish jazz in the 2020s as the rise of the harp.

Its shimmering grace is perfect for the textural focus of so many composers, and the instrument's history as a cornerstone of spiritual jazz and as a jazz ambassador in related genres provide the perfect entrance for Brandy Younger on the scene.

She's championed the work of her artistic foremothers, and she's played on sessions with Common, Lauren Hill, and The Roots.

In that regard, she has many allies among young musicians who dote on different styles. Here, she's joined by fellow Rising Stars Shabaka, Makaya McCraven, and Joel Ross on the title track.

Unlike Dorothy Ashby and Alice Coltrane, Younger is not alone among harpists. There are others like Edmar Castaneda, Destiny Mohamed, Isabelle Olivier, to name a few.

Younger's style definitely uses her instrument's full range. She can give it an assertive weight of a guitar or austere reserve of electronic instruments.

The harp's ability to be both chordal and percussive enables her to move freely in a tune, but as a soloist, she can command center stage as she does on breaking point.

But that's about as insistent as Younger Gets. This recording, more so than her others, delves deeply into the spiritual side of jazz.

It's not laid back, but it is elegantly minimal music that invites contemplation.

It's as if she's creating a safe space for reconsideration, which Alice Coltrane's late 60s and early 70s recordings did.

But as she demonstrates on New Pinnacle, rather than retro, it feels very of the moment.

Martin Johnson writes about jazz for the Wall Street Journal and Downbeat. He reviewed Branda Younger's new album, Gatabout Season.

Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guest will be Rob Reiner. We'll talk about directing the new sequel to Spinal Tap, the groundbreaking mockumentary about a heavy metal band.

We'll also talk about Reiner's remarkable life life and career.

He directed when Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men, Stand By Me, and more, and was a star of the sitcom All in the Family. I hope you'll join us.

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Roberto Shorrock, Anne-Marie Boltonato, Lauren Krenzel, Monik Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Bauman, and John Sheehan.

Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Our consulting visual producer is Hope Wilson.
Teresa Madden directed today's show. Our co-host is Tanya Mosley.
I'm Terry Gross.

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To learn more about how Vital Farms farmers care for their hens, visit vitalfarms.com. Support for NPR and the following message come from HomeServe.
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