Tickets for Sam Bush Concert:
Tickets for Sam Bush are ($50/$35/$20) and are available at scmcgr.org or by calling 616-459-2224. St. Cecilia Music Center is located at 24 Ransom Ave NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503.
Sam Bush /Sam Bush
St. Cecilia Music Center (SCMC) is proud to bring back Sam Bush and his band to Grand Rapids to perform on March 10, 2023. Sam Bush, well-known Mandolin artist and New Grass/Blue Grass legend has performed with many folk artists including Emmy Lou Harris, Leon Russell, Lyle Lovett, and Bela Fleck.
He’s released eight albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist. Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, “King of Telluride.” This past November 2022 Sam Bush paid tribute to his longtime friend and collaborator John Hartford on Radio John: Songs of John Hartford. Bush’s first album since 2016, Radio John is his heartfelt tribute to his hero and mentor, digging deep into the American roots music eccentric’s vast catalog to pull out personal favorite songs, including some he played with Hartford himself in the 1970s. On the album, Bush plays every instrument—acoustic guitar, mandolin, banjo, electric bass, fiddle—on every cut except the big, full band finale “Radio John,” the collection’s one original song and a tribute to Hartford that Bush wrote with John Pennell.
Executive & Artistic Director of SCMC Cathy Holbrook says, “We loved Sam Bush and his wonderful band. They brought such great energy to the show when they appeared at St. Cecilia Music Center in Fall 2021. We are so excited to bring him back on March 10th!”
Tickets for Sam Bush are ($50/$35/$20) and are available at scmcgr.org or by calling 616-459-2224. St. Cecilia Music Center is located at 24 Ransom Ave NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49503.
Sam Bush’s Bio
There is only one Sam Bush. Only one son of Kentucky finding a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Only one progressive hippie allying with like-minded conspirators, rolling out the New Grass revolution, and then leaving the genre’s torch-bearing band behind as it reached its commercial peak.
On a Bowling Green, Kentucky cattle farm in the post-war 1950s, Bush grew up an only son, and with four sisters. His love of music came immediately, encouraged by his parents’ record collection and, particularly, by his father Charlie, a fiddler, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a staff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry, but a clear day’s signal from Nashville brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Skaggs playing mandolin with Flatt and Scruggs, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11, he purchased his first mandolin.
As a teen fiddler Bush was a three-time national champion in the junior division of the National Old-time Fiddler’s Contest. He recorded an instrumental album, Poor Richard’s Almanac as a high school senior and in the spring of 1970 attended the Fiddlers Convention in Union Grove, NC. There he heard the New Deal String Band, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bluegrass.
He admired the grace of Flatt & Scruggs, loved Bill Monroe- even saw him perform at the Ryman- but he’d discovered electrified alternatives to tradition in the Osborne Brothers and manifest destiny in The Dillards.
“I started working at the Holiday Inn as a busboy,” Bush recalls. “Ebo Walker and Lonnie Peerce came in one night asking if I wanted to come to Louisville and play five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a big, ol’ ‘Hell yes, let’s go.’”
Bush played guitar in the group, then began playing mandolin after recruiting guitarist Tony Rice to the fold. Following a fallout with Peerce in 1971, Bush and his Alliance mates- Walker, Courtney Johnson, and Curtis Burch- formed the New Grass Revival, issuing the band’s debut, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon after, replaced temporarily by Butch Robins, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan.
“There were already people that had deviated from Bill Monroe’s style of bluegrass,” Bush explains. “If anything, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been started. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and rock-&-roll songs.”
Quickly becoming a favorite of rock audiences, they garnered the attention of Leon Russell, one of the era’s most popular artists. Russell hired New Grass as his supporting act on a massive tour in 1973 that put the band nightly in front of tens of thousands.
Bush was the newgrass commando, incorporating a variety of genres into the repertoire. He discovered a sibling similarity with the reggae rhythms of Marley and The Wailers, and, accordingly, developed an ear-turning original style of mandolin playing. The group issued five albums in their first seven years, and in 1979 became Russell’s backing band. By 1981, Johnson and Burch left the group, replaced by banjoist Bela Fleck and guitarist Pat Flynn.
A three-record contract with Capitol Records and a conscious turn to the country market took the Revival to new commercial heights. Bush survived a life-threatening bout with cancer and returned to the group that’d become more popular than ever. They released chart-climbing singles, made videos, earned Grammy nominations, and, at their zenith, called it quits.
“We were on the verge of getting bigger,” recalls Bush. “Or maybe we’d gone as far as we could. I’d spent 18 years in a four-piece partnership. I needed a break. But I appreciated the 18 years we had.”
Bush worked the next five years with Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramblers, then a stint with Lyle Lovett. He took home three-straight IBMA Mandolin Player of the Year awards, 1990-92, (and a fourth in 2007). In 1995 he reunited with Fleck, now a burgeoning superstar, and toured with the Flecktones, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. Then, finally, after a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival and collaborating with other bands, Sam Bush went solo.
He’s released seven albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009, the Americana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for Instrumentalist. Punch Brothers, Steep Canyon Rangers, and Greensky Bluegrass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many musicians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the festival circuit, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s famed bluegrass fest earning him the title, “King of Telluride.”
“With this band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 50 years of playing newgrass, with the elements of jazz improvisation and rock-&-roll, jamming, playing with New Grass Revival, Leon, and Emmylou; it’s a culmination of all of that,” says Bush. “I can unapologetically stand onstage and feel I’m representing those songs well.”
ACOUSTIC CAFÉ FOLK SERIES TICKETS
**Ticket prices: Single tickets have a $3.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.
Josh Ritter
Thursday, March 2, 2023
A section $65
B section $50
C section $35
Sam Bush
Friday, March 10, 2023
A Section $50
B section $35
C section $20
Joshua Davis
Thursday, April 27, 2023
A Section $30
B Section $20
C Section $10
Leo Kottke
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
A Section $55
B Section $40
C Section $25
JAZZ SERIES SINGLE TICKETS
**Ticket prices: Single tickets have a $3.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.
Emmet Cohen Trio
Thursday, March 9, 2023
A section $55
B section $40
C section $25
CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER SERIES SINGLE TICKETS
**Ticket prices: Single tickets have a $3.00 per ticket fee. All concerts start at 7:30pm.
Delight and Drama
Thursday, March 23, 2023
A section $50
B section $35
C section $20
St. Cecilia Music Center’s mission is to promote the study, appreciation and
performance of music in order to enrich the lives of West Michigan residents.
The Center fulfills this mission by
presenting visiting world-class artists in concert,
providing music education for all ages through our School of Music and
preserving a historic building for musical activities and community events
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