Bowling Green, KY · bluegrass · newgrass

Sam Bush

1 festival played

The father of newgrass — five decades of mandolin revolution and still the most joyful player on any stage.

Sam Bush, born in 1952 and raised in Kentucky, is a mandolinist and fiddler who helped push bluegrass instrumentation into new territory. In the early 1970s he co-founded New Grass Revival, the band whose name effectively supplied the term for the newgrass movement — bluegrass instruments played with the harmonic and rhythmic freedom of rock, jazz and reggae.

Since that group ended he has led his own band and worked extensively as a sideman and session player. His playing is marked by aggressive rhythm chopping and a strong blues feel, and he remains one of the most recognisable mandolin stylists in American acoustic music.

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