BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Find Local//findlocal.community//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Phoenix BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0700 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:MST DTSTART:19700101T000000 END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT UID:9b610d4f-8d72-4a3e-a1c2-24b46e201eac@findlocal.community DTSTAMP:20261012T010839Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Phoenix:20270225T193000 DTEND;TZID=America/Phoenix:20270225T213000 SUMMARY:Sam Bush DESCRIPTION:There was only one prize-winning teenager with gumption enoug h to say\, “thanks\, but no thanks” to Roy Acuff. Only one son of Kentuc ky both finding a light of inspiration from Bill Monroe and his Blue Gra ss Boys and catching a fire from Bob Marley and The Wailers. Only one pr ogressive 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. There is only one consensus pi ck of peers and predecessors\, of the traditionalists\, the rebels\, and the next gen devotees. Music’s ultimate inside outsider. Or is it outsi de insider? There is only one Sam Bush. On a Bowling Green\, Kentucky ca ttle farm in the post-war 1950s\, Bush grew up an only son\, and with fo ur sisters. His love of music came immediately\, encouraged by his paren ts’ record collection and\, particularly\, by his father Charlie\, a fid dler\, who organized local jams. Charlie envisioned his son someday a st aff fiddler at the Grand Ole Opry\, but a clear day’s signal from Nashvi lle brought to Bush’s television screen a tow-headed boy named Ricky Ska ggs playing mandolin with Flatt & Scruggs\, and an epiphany for Bush. At 11\, he purchased his first mandolin. As a teen fiddler\, Bush was a th ree-time national champion in the junior division of the National Oldtim e 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 St ring Band\, taking notice of their rock-inspired brand of progressive bl uegrass. Acuff offered him a spot in his band. Bush politely turned down the country titan. It was not the music he wanted to play. He admired t he grace of Flatt & Scruggs\, loved Bill Monroe – even saw him perform a t 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 Louisvill e and play five nights a week with the Bluegrass Alliance. That was a bi g\, ol’ ‘Hell yes\, let’s go.’” Bush played guitar in the group\, then b egan 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 Revi val\, issuing the band’s debut\, New Grass Revival. Walker left soon aft er\, replaced temporarily by Butch Robins\, with the quartet solidifying around the arrival of bassist John Cowan. “There were already people wh o had deviated from Bill Monroe’s style of bluegrass\,” Bush explains. “ If anything\, we were reviving a newgrass style that had already been st arted. Our kind of music tended to come from the idea of long jams and r ock-&-roll songs.” Shunned by some traditionalists\, New Grass Revival p layed bluegrass fests slotted in late-night sets for the “long-hairs and hippies.” 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. At tour’s end\, it was back to headlining six nights a week at an Indiana pizza joint. But\, they were resilient\, grinding it out on the road. And in 1975 the Revival first played Telluride\, Colorado\, forming a connection with t he region and its fans that has prospered for 45 years. Bush was the new grass 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 sty le of mandolin playing. The group issued five albums in their first seve n years\, and in 1979 became Russell’s backing band. By 1981\, Johnson a nd 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. B ush survived a life-threatening bout with cancer\, and returned to the g roup that’d become more popular than ever. They released chart-climbing singles\, made videos\, earned Grammy nominations\, and\, at their zenit h\, 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 fo ur-piece partnership. I needed a break. But\, I appreciated the 18 years we had.” Bush worked the next five years with Emmylou Harris’ Nash Ramb lers\, then a stint with Lyle Lovett. He took home three-straight IBMA M andolin Player of the Year awards\, 1990-92 (and a fourth in 2007). In 1 995 he reunited with Fleck\, now a burgeoning superstar\, and toured wit h the Flecktones\, reigniting his penchant for improvisation. Then\, fin ally\, after a quarter-century of making music with New Grass Revival an d collaborating with other bands\, Sam Bush went solo. He’s released sev en albums and a live DVD over the past two decades. In 2009\, the Americ ana Music Association awarded Bush the Lifetime Achievement Award for In strumentalist. Punch Brothers\, Steep Canyon Rangers\, and Greensky Blue grass are just a few present-day bluegrass vanguards among so many music ians he’s influenced. His performances are annual highlights of the fest ival circuit\, with Bush’s joyous perennial appearances at the town’s fa med bluegrass fest earning him the title\, “King of Telluride.” “With th is band I have now I am free to try anything. Looking back at the last 5 0 years of playing newgrass\, with the elements of jazz improvisation an d rock&roll\, jamming\, playing with New Grass Revival\, Leon\, and Emmy lou\; it’s a culmination of all of that\,” says Bush. “I can unapologeti cally stand onstage and feel I’m representing those songs well.”\n\nTick ets: https://foxtucson.com/event/sam-bush/tickets\n\nhttps://findlocal.c ommunity/event/9b610d4f-8d72-4a3e-a1c2-24b46e201eac LOCATION:Fox Theatre - Tucson AZ\, 17 W Congress\, Tucson\, AZ 85701 URL:https://findlocal.community/event/9b610d4f-8d72-4a3e-a1c2-24b46e201ea c STATUS:CONFIRMED SEQUENCE:0 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR