Photo by Jeff Fasano
Seminal bluegrass mandolinist Sam Bush is set to pay tribute to his collaborator, longtime friend and mentor John Hartford for his first release since 2016, Radio John: Songs of John Hartford, which is set to release on Nov. 11 via Smithsonian Folkways. The International Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame member’s heartfelt tribute album will pull cuts from Hartford’s towering catalog tapping into personal favorites and some tracks he played with Hartford in the 1970s.
For the album, Bush takes on every instrument – acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, electric bass, fiddle – on every song, sans the full band finale, “Radio John,” which is the project’s only original single which Bush penned with John Pennell. To do right by Hartford’s music, Bush teamed up with Donnie Sundal, co-owner of Neptone Recording Studio in Destin, Fla., and began laying down tracks once that occurred, he realized the project could be a true solo endeavor for his love affair with John Hartford’s music which began in 1967. When the pandemic hit, Sundal gave the recordings a final polish with sound engineer Rick Wheeler.
The selections on the new offering see Bush focusing not only on Hartford as a curator and impresario of fiddle tunes but also on his skill as a singer/songwriter who came up in Nashville, Tenn., with American icons like Kris Kristofferson and Tom T. Hall, who shook up Music Row and helped empower usher the incoming tides of the counterculture into the music scene.
Today, we premiere Bush’s cover of Hartford’s 1967 song of heartbreak, “A Simple Thing as Love,” through a live video of Bush covering the song. The descriptive musings of Hartford on Bush’s cover shine brightly as the “electric light bulb sunrise” Hartford wrote of all those years ago, illuminating Bush’s deep familiarity and love for the song.
“This was written back in the period where I consider John as important in the world of songwriting as Kris Kristofferson and Mickey Newbury,” Bush shared with Relix. “I believe he had that much respect around Nashville, too. It’s a love song that is so well said and to the point. It boils down to a simple phrase: ‘Confused about a simple thing as love.’ It couldn’t be said better.”
From the selection of songs, one can infer that while Radio John is a testament to the impact Hartford had on American traditional music as a songwriter and an instrumentalist, it also is a letter of thanks to someone who fostered the careers of musicians like Bush and countless others reinvigorating roots music in the last half of the 20th century.
Bush continued to tell Relix, “This is a collection of nine songs by John Hartford that run from his early songwriting career in Nashville through his later periods of instrumental music—from some of the most serious songs he ever wrote to one of his more goofy ones. I just tried to show the incredible variety in his musicianship that I learned over the years. Nine out of the 10 songs were written by John, and then number 10, ‘Radio John,’ is a tribute to John by John Pennell and I. Really the whole project is my love letter to John Hartford’s music.
Listen to Sam Bush’s “A Simple Thing As Love” below.