About the Show
Music City Roots
A weekly concert and live radio show presented from The Loveless Cafe Barn in Nashville, TN.
This week on Music City Roots, we feature another incredible lineup from The Factory in Nashville, including Bryan Sutton, Rory Hoffman, Steve Wariner, and Megan McCormick.
About the artists:
“The goal,” Bryan Sutton says, “was to try to make a record that only I could make.” Indeed, even a cursory listen is enough to establish that Into My Own, his fourth album for Sugar Hill Records, fulfills that goal—and does so in a way that reflects not only the instrumental virtuosity that his admirers have come to expect, but also the spirit and sensibilities of a musician intent on challenging himself to continuously grow in every way.
For those who think of him as just one of the best acoustic guitarists around, Into My Own will come as an unexpected revelation, while for those who’ve been following his evolution at least since 2009’s Almost Live, it deserves welcome as the culmination of a remarkable musical growth spurt—rich, varied, and, just as he says, a record that only he could make.
For what Into My Own does for the first time is present Bryan Sutton, not so much on his own (though there’s a bit of that too), but as an artist who’s worked his way into a musical place that’s all his own, and not just as a phenomenal guitarist, but as a singer and songwriter.
Featured alongside Bryan Sutton are some of the best pickers in the genre, also true friends and collaborators; Bill Frisell joins in for “Frissell’s Rag” while Noam Pikelny, Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Stuart Duncan and more stop in to play a few. Sutton takes center stage on “Run Away” and “Been All Around This World,” demonstrating even further how each track bursts with its own energy.
In addition to past and present touring with musicians such as Chris Thile, Earl Scruggs, Hot Rize, Ricky Skaggs and others, Bryan Sutton is one of Nashville’s most in-demand session players and producers, recently taking the helm on Della Mae’s Grammy nominated This World Oft Can Be. Sutton earned a Grammy for Best Country Instrumental category for his duet on “Whiskey Before Breakfast” with Doc Watson in 2007. He has received two Grammys in the past for his participation in Ricky Skaggs’s Kentucky Thunder and is has been recognized as the International Bluegrass Music Association’s Guitar Player of the Year six times over.
“That’s one of the lessons of bluegrass,” he concludes. “Nobody gets here by accident. You’ve got to prove yourself, and you’ve got to continue to prove yourself. I’ve absorbed that, and I want to be that way.” If there’s any doubt, Into My Own should resolve it once and for all.
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Rory Hoffman is a Nashville based guitarist, keyboardist and multi-instrumentalist. Raised on a small ranch in North Dakota, Rory grew up recording and touring with the family Gospel band. He started teaching himself to play guitar and piano at age 3. By age 5 he was the drummer in the family band. He currently plays over a dozen stringed, keyboard and wind instruments.
Rory’s personal musical career was jumpstarted in 1999 upon winning Grand Champion Instrumentalist at the Christian Artist Seminar in the Rockies. In 2001 he traveled to Nashville for the first time to record his Gospel instrumental CD, Blind Faith. He then helped form Depot Music Productions, based in Mobridge South Dakota. There he self-produced his second album fishin’, this time choosing country music as his theme. While with Depot Music, Rory produced several other studio projects for local and regional artists. in 2004 and 2005 he received Instrumentalist of the Year from the ICMA based in Nashville.
Rory moved to Nashville in the spring of 2008. He currently works as a freelance session and touring musician. October 2011, 8 years after his fishin project, Rory released his newest CD Swing Expedition. On this project, he demonstrates his abilities and inventiveness on almost every instrument he plays. Tunes range from a gypsy jazz arrangement of a Star Wars Theme, a bossa nova rendition of a classic country song, to an all-harmonica treatment of a Cole Porter standard. In addition to his own releases, Rory also records and performs regularly with Texas western swing hall of fame member Carolyn Martin, Paul Kramer and Swing Street, and Nashville’s premier gypsy jazz trio, the Gypsy Hombres.
Rory is honored to be chosen as a 2012 inductee to the South Dakota Country Music Hall of Fame.
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One of country music’s most versatile performers, Steve Wariner grew up in suburban Indianapolis, interested in the Beatles on the radio as well as Chet Atkins and George Jones, the artists his father listened to most frequently. He started playing music in his dad’s band, and by his high school years, he was playing local clubs. At age 17, he caught the ear of Dottie West, who persuaded him to join her band, and in that position he ended up playing bass on her classic 1973 single “Country Sunshine.” He moved on to work as a sideman for Bob Luman and signed a singles deal with RCA Records in 1976. His career developed slowly, and in the beginning, the low-tuned guitars and wide range of his singles brought frequent comparisons to the early Glen Campbell hits. His first really successful single was “Your Memory,” which peaked in the country Top Ten in early 1981, followed by “By Now” and “All Roads Lead to You,” which topped the country charts in December. RCA released another couple of singles before finally issuing his debut album, Steve Wariner, in the fall of 1982. He returned to the country Top Ten in 1983 with “Midnight Fire,” which became the title track of his second album, and “Lonely Women Make Good Lovers.”
Wariner’s career really took off when he left RCA for MCA in late 1984. His first single for the new label, “What I Didn’t Do,” made the country Top Five in early 1985, setting off a string of 18 consecutive Top Ten hits that included the chart-toppers “Some Fools Never Learn,” “You Can Dream of Me,” “Life’s Highway,” “Small Town Girl,” “The Weekend,” “Lynda,” “Where Did I Go Wrong,” and “I Got Dreams” (the last two Wariner compositions). This run took him into 1990, when he switched to Arista Records. He had considerable initial success on the new label, with his first Arista album, I Am Ready, going platinum (none of his previous albums had even gone gold) and his first three Arista singles making the Top Ten. And he shared a 1991 Grammy Award for Best Country Vocal Collaboration with Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill for “Restless,” a track on Mark O’Connor’s album The New Nashville Cats.
Wariner scored a country Top Ten hit with “If I Didn’t Love You” in the summer of 1993, but his record sales were declining. His 1996 instrumental album No More Mr. Nice Guy, his first release in three years, did not chart, but that year he joined the Grand Ole Opry. In 1997, he sang with Anita Cochran on “What If I Said,” and the single topped the country charts in early 1998, just after Garth Brooks’ recording of Wariner’s composition “Longneck Bottle” had gone to number one. This twin success reinvigorated his career. He signed to Capitol Records, Brooks’ label, and released “Holes in the Floor of Heaven,” which made the country Top Five, winning the Country Music Association’s awards for Song of the Year and Single of the Year. Burnin’ the Roadhouse Down, his debut album for Capitol, reached the country Top Ten, went gold, and crossed over to the Top 50 of the pop charts. He followed it with 1999′s Two Teardrops, which also went gold; the same year, he shared his second Grammy for Best Country Instrumental for the Asleep at the Wheel track “Bob’s Breakdown.” His third Capitol album, Faith in You, was released in May 2000.
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Megan McCormick’s musical family set the stage for a career in music. She grew up listening to the likes of Bonnie Raitt and Steely Dan, but her most essential influences were from her family. “Watching and listening to them was life-changing,” notes McCormick. She started singing and picked up her first guitar at age 9, delving into a variety of styles, from blues to folk to alt-country, until finding her own personal style. She also plays the lap-steel, mandolin and bass and writes all of her own music. McCormick has won two International Bluegrass Music Association Awards for Recorded Event of the Year in 2006 (“Back To The Well”) and again in 2009 (“Proud To Be A Daughter of Bluegrass”) — both for a special Daughters of Bluegrass project. This past year, she also landed her song, “Bullseye”, in the Emmy-Award nominated film, Prayers for Bobby, featuring Sigourney Weaver.
From pensive and intimate ballads to rock n’ roll to indie-pop, she describes her sound today as “unique, well-rounded and genuine.” McCormick adds “My songs reflect a deep look inward as well as the world around me. I find inspiration sometimes in my guitar, on a street corner, or even in a lover. The new album will touch on love, family, addiction and the never-ending search for self-understanding.”
From pensive and intimate ballads to rock n’ roll to indie-pop, she describes her sound today as “unique, well-rounded and genuine.” McCormick adds “My songs reflect a deep look inward as well as the world around me. I find inspiration sometimes in my guitar, on a street corner, or even in a lover. The new album will touch on love, family, addiction and the never-ending search for self-understanding.”
