Resident Bush

Mandolin star makes Colorado second musical home

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Sam Bush

They call him the “King of Telluride” because the Kentucky-born, Nashville-based musician has performed every June for 45 years at the town’s legendary bluegrass festival. You could also call Sam Bush the King of Colorado. 

The poster for the Sam Bush Band’s current tour shows a cartoon musician riding a moose through a piney, snowy forest with a mandolin on his knee. It also announces stops in Colorado Springs, Denver, Steamboat Springs, Grand Junction, Beaver Creek, Fort Collins, plus a March 1 Boulder Theater show. Not many bands can do that.

Sam Bush has found a second home in the state where he first discovered listeners who were into his band, the New Grass Revival. 

“Our first impression was in 1972,” he says. “It was like 20-below when we played in Pueblo, Colorado Springs and we’d stay at these really old hotels. When we toured with John Hartford we played the Hungry Farmer in Boulder.” 

Listeners in Boulder County really got “it.”   

“Right off the bat we started meeting people with a different attitude toward music. The audiences here were wide open and ready to listen, and they didn’t want to hear the same old tunes. It’s a very different attitude than in the South at that time” Bush says. 

That tale is retold in the 2019 documentary Revival: The Sam Bush Story, which includes commentary from Alison Krauss, Emmylou Harris, David Grisman and Del McCoury. It’s about how a bluegrass-loving musician (and many other long-haired pickers) scared the hell out of the establishment with their fusion of twang with jazz, rock and reggae. Bill Monroe and his ilk objected, having forgotten that they were once the rebels. 

Flash-forward 40 years and Bush is regarded as one of the top two or three mandolinists on the planet. He is revered by next-gen jamgrass bands including the Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers and Greensky Bluegrass, along with the homegrown Leftover Salmon and Yonder Mountain String Band. The music has come to be called “newgrass” and Bush acknowledges he helped father the genre. 

Since the 1970s, Bush has played everywhere in Colorado that you can play, first with two lineups of New Grass Revival, in Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers and, starting in 1995, the Sam Bush Band playing his hybrid bluegrass Americana with drums. 

“We now have friends we visit all over the state, even Ridgway,” says Bush, who has won multiple Grammy Awards.

“We had driven through Ridgway (near Telluride) many times but a friend called me. He said, ‘I’m in Ridgway and I saw a Grammy with your name on it.’ That’s how I found out the statues were made there. It was for Oh Brother Where Art Thou,” Bush says. 

Known as the Energizer Bunny of road-hardened performers, fans were concerned when emergency stomach surgery forced Bush to cancel spring shows in 2019. However, there was one gig he had to make. 

“I wanted to play my 45th Telluride (Bluegrass Festival) in a row. That was the first show back. Talk about coming to a place where singers wilt onstage from the lack of oxygen! I went into training, walked a lot and worked with a vocal coach on breathing,” Bush says. He stepped into the spotlight in June to thunderous applause.

“That was a truly emotional experience. It was good to be back,” he says. 

In 2019 he also received an honorary doctorate from Western Kentucky University. 

“I’m now Dr. Bush almost 50 years after almost attending the university. I was ready to enter with a string instrument scholarship when this band, the Bluegrass Alliance, called and offered a gig playing five nights a week,” he says. Decades of picking followed. 

Bush says he doesn’t feel particularly “venerable” at this point in his career.  

“I’m happy I’m still employed. I’m really happy my hands still work. 

“I tend to think about the mandolin players. Some of them say I’ve been an influence, but I feel like they are contemporaries,” says Bush who famously jams with everyone at festivals. 

“My wife, Lynn, said, ‘Sam, If you don’t get out and play with the young bands, you’ll lose touch with what’s going on.’ She was right,” he adds. 

In fact, Bush found the newest member of his band — young banjo whiz Wes Corbett — while at a recording session for Nefresh Mountain, a band that melds Jewish klezmer music with bluegrass. 

If you miss Bush this time around, don’t worry. He’ll be back for Telluride in June, Rockygrass in July and beyond.    

ON THE BILL: Sam Bush Band — with Bowregard. March 1, Boulder Theater. bouldertheater.com
Also: Colorado Springs (Feb. 28), Englewood (Feb. 29), Steamboat Springs (March 3), Grand Junction (March 4), Beaver Creek (March 9) and Fort Collins (March 10).

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