Matt

And you listen to Bluegrass, y'all on the podcast for anyone and everyone who loves Bluegrass. My guest on the ground to jump along this week is Oli Channel, who is director of programming for Fresh Grass. And some of the many conversations I've had on the podcast have touched on Fresh Grass Commissions, and it's just something I've been fascinated by. So I'm delighted it is here because I would love to learn a bit more about it. Oli, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. It's really cool to have you. Sure. I I'd it'd be a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01

You know, Fresh Grass started off as uh as a little bluegrass festival at MassMoka, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. My office does the curates the performing arts program at MassMoka. And somebody who had a friend who has an association with a museum thought it'd be a good idea to have a bluegrass, uh, a bluegrass festival, asked us if we would consider doing that. We said, sure, that sounds like a lot of fun. And we kind of did it, um, did it on the fly on very short notice in 2011 for the first time. And uh, you know, the first one, um, we like to say there were more artists there than than audience members, but it was a very special event. Um, everybody had an extraordinary time, and it came together really beautifully. Um that that friend of Mass Mocha was uh named Chris Wadsworth, and he particularly had such a you know such a good time that we really started talking about making it an annual thing, uh, which we did. We did another fresh grass the next year, and it grew very, very quickly from there and really kind of organically into um into something more than a bluegrass festival in terms of the the way we program it and the kind of music and other things that are incorporated into the festival. Um and from there it became more than a festival. Chris started something called the Fresh Grass Foundation, which has a mission, um, which the festival is kind of the you know the flagship program of the foundation, but the foundation does a bunch of other things and supports artists in a lot of different ways. Um and the commissioning program started through the festival of us thinking it would be a lot of fun and interesting to ask artists to make new work that we would premiere at the festival. And we did that as of I either the second or third festival, I want to say. Um and I can talk more about what that what that includes, but but that became something that helped to shape the mission of the foundation then. We realized that you know we have this platform of a festival that was growing very quickly, exponentially every year. Um, that it was a you know, that it was an opportunity to give artists, to support artists in multiple ways, not just to give them performance opportunities to reach an audience, um, but we could, you know, we could support artists in actually making new work and then recording and releasing new work. And so that's that's kind of how the commissioning program started. Again, it was really sort of very organic. We thought, oh, wouldn't it be fun to ask somebody to make something new and premiere it? And you know, now, whatever it is, 14 years later, now 13 years later, um, we've commissioned, I don't even know the number off the top of my head, but scores of artists to make to make things that have been some, a lot of which have has been released, a lot of which you know had a premiere at the festival and was never seen again. Um, some things that were, you know, that were we've brought back or have had an opportunity to present in other places, but we've we've you know we've supported artists in making a lot of new work, and we're very proud of that. And it's in it's integral to the mission of the foundation.

Matt

And it's quite an unusual thing in this context, isn't it? It's um it's a pretty kind of known thing in the classical world, for example. Um, but it's not not particularly something you encounter in the sort of folk acoustic string band world so much.

SPEAKER_01

I think not so much in the string band world. I think that's right, but but certainly in the you know, in the kind of in the broader world of performing arts, it's not just classical musicians who get who get commissioned, though that's what you usually do think of. But you know, I I have and my office has, along with Fresh Grass, worked on a lot of different events, different festivals, and curated different venues. And we commissioned through different institutions a lot of artists who are outside the classical world. It it does happen. Um it doesn't happen tend to happen a lot kind of in the commercial music space, um, but often in the nonprofit world and festivals that have a mission or or institutions that that have a mission behind them beyond you know getting people in the door and selling beer to them as they listen to you know to music, which which is wonderful also and has its place. But um sometimes when you you know when you're working with an institution or a festival that uh that's really trying to have a specific perspective, commissioning artists to do something interesting fits in really well with that mission. Um and that leads to exciting things happening on stage and great things for audiences, I think.

Matt

Well, and you talked about the mission of the Fresh Grass Foundation. What what is that mission? So what underpins all of this?

SPEAKER_01

That that that mission is, and I'm not gonna quote it perfectly, you know, from the website here, but but essentially the mission of the Fresh Grass Foundation is to, you know, is to support artists who are kind of working in the grassroots space. Um so you know, roots traditions, it started as bluegrass, but roots traditions from all over the world, really now, folk traditions from all over the world, to support artists with opportunities to perform, to make new work, to release new work. Um, and that goes now, it's expanding beyond just music. Uh, but that's really the core of the mission. It's to give artists opportunities that help them further their careers, um, and opportunities that they maybe won't have uh have in other places. Um and the commissioning program is a great example of that. You know, the the point of the commissions really is to invite somebody to do something that they to make something new that they don't necessarily need to think about the commercial pressures of being an artist, right? So you had mentioned to me before as we were chatting, Sarah Jarose, which was an early commission of ours, um, you know, Sarah's commission, which I I think you said you you you uh you interviewed her on the podcast recently, her commission didn't end up, you know, we we commissioned her to write and and and perform this piece, which ended up being the Blue Heron Suite, which is a really wonderful piece of music. Um and we also supported her in releasing that work. But it happened that Sarah was between labels when she when she wrote the work. They were shopping around for a new label, her manager and she were, and where they ended up, which I think was Rounder Records. Um this wasn't the right thing for them to have as her first record on Rounder, because just in terms of where her career was and what they wanted, where they wanted her to be going and who they were trying to reach, this was though they loved the piece, this wasn't the thing they wanted to do first at Rounder. They ended up releasing it a couple of album cycles later, uh, and it ended up being nominated for a Grammy, and it's a wonderful record that that a lot of people are really compelled by, and I think that she really enjoyed. Um, and that was like a beautiful kind of realization of the whole idea of the commissions, which is to to let some free somebody up from the commercial pressures, uh, to do something creative that's just entirely based on what they might be compelled to make at that at that particular time. And that's really the idea of the commissions and and that dovetails really really beautifully, I think, with the with the mission of the foundation as a whole.

Matt

Yeah, and uh the brief that you give people, and uh which has presumably changed a bit over the years, like if if people are invited to make something that is free of the constraints of thinking about the end sort of marketing side of things, and what what kind of what limitations do you give them to start? What is the brief they get given? Sure.

SPEAKER_01

Um it's uh you know it depends because we have a few different kinds of commissions that we do. The the the one that I just talked about with Sarah um is called the Composition Commission, and that's kind of a flagship commission. That's essentially we're asking somebody to write about an album's worth of music. Uh we use we started off with with some with some strict parameters or stricter parameters, I would say, um, where we wanted them to use certain kinds of traditional instrumentation and make it a string, really a string band thing in particular. And that quickly, we quickly abandoned that because we found that when you talk to an artist and you say, We're in we'd love to let you do this, we we'd love to invite you to do this, and here's why we want to invite you, um, you know, and I and I've had this experience uh you know um for a long time with artists, what what becomes most interesting to the artist and what and what inevitably ends in you know ends in in uh or results in the most kind of interesting thing being created is to is to give you know is to is to give some very loose parameters for what you want and and you know and let the artist know that you want them to drive the creative process and that you don't really want to have too much of a hand in it. So while we started with with some some parameters, we you know our first composition commission was Bill Frizzell, actually. Um and Bill Frizzell, who's primarily known as a jazz guitarist, but he's kind of a musical polymath, and he's you know, he's what's really interesting about Bill is that he is that he explores a lot of different a lot of different sort of musical traditions um with through a very specific you know uh technique and and aesthetic. He's extraordinary and and and really an amazing guitarist. And what he did, we said, we want you to write a you know 30 to 40 minute piece of music that is has these parameters and the string band and these things. And he ended up uh doing something that was a 90-minute long show uh that he called Harmony, that was kind of this this incredible survey of American folk, the American folk canon, um, with a lot of traditional songs that he reinterpreted and the whole thing hung together in a really interesting way. And he we he did a we did a show that we presented actually separate from the festival uh at a theater in San Francisco. Um and he and he did this incredible show and then he made a record out of it and then ended up touring that project all over the place. And so he turned the whole thing inside out immediately, and we realized, okay, let's let's not be too specific in what we ask. Let's you know, let's let's really focus on this idea of giving an artist an opportunity to do something that they want to do. So that the composition commission, the ask is write an album's worth of music that hangs together with some kind of cohesive concept. So whether that's a song cycle or a suite of music of some kind, it's entirely up to the artist really to do that. Sarah's Blue Heron Suite was a you know was a collection of songs about her, about growing up in in Texas and trips she took with her family. So she really latched onto that idea and came up with a concept. Um and you know, Cronos Quartet, who we commissioned in this with one of those commissions, did a project on Pete Seeger, who was turning 100, and they had been thinking about doing something with Pete, a multi-artist um, you know, uh compilation of interpretations of Pete Seeger's music and legacy. Uh and so that ended up being the commission they did, which was released on Smithsonian Folkways, a great label in the States. Um, and that was again a totally different thing. It had multiple guest collaborators, and it was in a totally different format from these other things we're talking about. Um we have other commissions, we we do something called the Fresh Scores, where we invite an artist to write a new score to an old film, uh, and we present those live, live music to film at the festival. Those are super fun. And for the first time this year, actually, uh at Fresh Grass in Mass Mocha, we have a festival in two places. Um and at the Mass Mocha Festival, we actually commissioned filmmakers to make new work, to make new short films, and to bring in a musician to write a new score as part of that film. Um so that's the first time we'd actually commission film itself. Um and then we have a program called the Fresh Grass Concertos, where we ask a string band artist to reimagine the concerto or to do something within loosely within the classical concerto form. Um and that's resulted in some really, really interesting things. You had mentioned uh Jerry Douglas and Sierra Hull talking to them recently. Um they were a couple of artists who had done uh fresh grass concerto. So each one is a little bit different, but I think a through line in terms of what we ask artists to do is that we, you know, we ask, we give them very few parameters. We say you're gonna it's we're gonna present it at the festival, and here's what that's gonna look like, here's the setting, here's how that's gonna happen, and here's you know, here are the terms we can offer, and and we look forward to seeing what what you come up with. And and we have we've you know we've gotten a lot of really interesting results from that approach.

Matt

Well, that's a really interesting point about sort of giving people a space to do something they might not get an option to do, and then putting a lot of parameters on it. It's like it's sort of asking two different things at the same time, isn't it? And it's fascinating talking to people. Um like it's just I've talked to lots of people who've this is you know one of the reasons I wanted to have this conversation is I've had so many other conversations about music that I find fascinating that it's all come out of the fresh grass commissioning process in some form. And everybody talks about it slightly differently, whether it's Sarah Juross and Becky Buller both writing a kind of you know, an album's worth of song cycle, essentially. And they're very different records and they approach them very differently. And then you talk to Jerry Douglas, Sierra Hull, Jacob Jolliffe, each of them like the word concerto has a kind of weight to it that can you can entirely follow that line down through history and take that route or just go, okay, so like maybe an overview of this, and they've all they've all thought about it in a very different way, and I find that fascinating, the way it's open to interpretation. And and I think that's the one of the interesting things you were saying, that it's a kind of commission to write a piece of music and present it at one of the festivals. And then beyond that, like so Blue Herring Suite was one of the earliest commissions, but didn't actually see the light of day till much later. And and I think that's really interesting because Sierra's recorded her concerto, but that's not out yet. Jerry's has just been released on his latest record, and so there's something really nice about just going, here's some space to create a thing. Do what you will with it. Yeah. And I'd I'm curious to know how you choose those people because there's a really there's a strong thread in all of that of string band people that people listening to this podcast will know, but there's also a very, very wide kind of net you cast these days.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, you know, I I I wish that I that I could say that we have a really structured and rigorous process for how we go about choosing these artists, but but honestly, it it has to do with, you know, we're we're we're constantly, you know, I so I'm I'm the director of programming for the for the festival and the producer of the festival. Um and I but I have a the I work with the team, it's a it's a group effort, and and in fact, Chris Wadsworth, who's the founder of the foundation, is uh is you know is does a lot. He's very involved in the program, and we meet regularly about who we want to invite to the festival. And the and the commissioning process happens in a similar way. You know, we we we've worked with and presented so many artists, or there's so many artists who we'd like to present. When we think of the commissions, we we really think of, you know, you're thinking about it in a similar track. Who's who's the artist who's doing something right now that is compelling, that we think is important, and that we think is going to do something interesting with this invitation? And that's that's as far as it goes, really. You know, we think we've we really are, you know, we're choosing our favorite artists to work with and hoping that they'll say yes to this to this invitation because because we think that what they do is is you know is is worth is worth supporting, is worth uh putting in front of our audience. Um so it's really it's really kind of as simple. We we go about it in in much the same way as we go about deciding who we want to invite to perform at the festival separate from the commissioning process. Um yeah, it's uh I mean it's a you know we we do we do think about that quite a bit, like how are we gonna go about it this year? And and part of it has to do with we want to, you know, we do want to present opportunities to different kinds of artists, even if they're all in the in the roots world in one way or another, right? So, you know, when we think and we think about the programming that way too, we don't necessarily, if we're gonna present three artists in a concerto's program, we don't necessarily want that to be uh, you know, three white men. We do think about the diversity of the thing. We think about who's who's who's making interesting music and and who's getting the opportunities to you know to reach audiences and and you know, and we we like to um you know we we like to think about it broadly in that way and trying to be inclusive about it and making sure that we're you know that we're being thoughtful about who we give these opportunities to. So it's it's a but it's a very organic process how we go about identifying the artists. And you know, and then there'll be artists who we've asked to do a commission uh for many years in a row and it hasn't worked out for one reason or another, and then they end up doing it. Um, you know, there's artists who we've pursued for this for a while and it hasn't happened yet. We had Bella Fleck, who we've had at the festival many times, um, you know, who I think we probably first asked about a commission in 2017 or 18, and who finally did one with us in uh just just this past September at Mass Mocha. So, you know, sometimes it's a matter of, oh, this is a year of propella, and then what do we need to do to to fill out that you know that program in a way that that's gonna feel like a like a like a nice program for the audience?

Matt

So yeah, and is the is the sort of the offer on your part like a standard here's here's what we offer for a commission, or do you very much tailor it to what somebody might need to produce? Because there's some things that are, you know, Blue Heron Suite, for example, was a work for Trio, and then you look at Ephrao Donovan's All My Friends, which ended up being something much bigger than that. Um and there's there's very different scopes within that, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that there there is. And I you know, I would say we have we have our kind of standard terms for the different kinds of commissions that we you know that we start with. And then if the conversation, um if the project requires more than that, or you know uh the conversation can evolve and that and that can change, right? So there's some artists, um, there are and there's some artists who uh sometimes we're giving an opportunity to an artist who is, you know, who is much more emerging and it might be very meaningful to have a certain kind of offer. Um and then there's some there's some artists who are, you know, like Abella, not to say that this was a you know uh a very different feat, but some artists you say, oh, if I'm gonna if I'm going to carve out time to create this much music, I've been commissioned before. This is kind of what it takes for me to do that, and they might have their own, you know, their own ask that comes into play. Sometimes with something like Chrono's Quartet, that became a much bigger project with a release that was built in from the beginning. Uh, and if there were multiple, there were multiple composers involved, there were uh who were writing, rewriting some of the stuff, um, and there were there were multiple guest artists, and it became a much bigger project, and our contribution ended up being more significant than on some of the other ones simply because we really, you know, we were so compelled by the project and we wanted to support it. Um and it was uh it was just the nature of it was that it was a much larger project, and so it ended up being a you know, uh uh the support sometimes ends up being different because of that. Eva's piece, we ended up commissioning a portion of her record um because it was, and it and what ended up on stage at Mass Mocha, there were 38 or 39 musicians on stage at Mass Mocha because she brought in a you know a youth choir to to be part of it, and there was a big band, and there was the Westerlies, which is this wonderful, you know, wonderful horn band that was part of it. Um so there there was the scope of it was was really big, and what we actually commissioned was a portion of the record for what we were able to contribute to that project. So it varies really from one project to another. We have a starting, a jumping off point, but then that kind of like the the parameters that we initially hoped to put on it sometimes goes out the window quickly.

Matt

And there's something really interesting about that, just the idea of like it's going back to that space to just create. Something they might not otherwise, like presumably when you give people that space. You know, I was I was watching the short film on the website in the day with Mr. Sun doing their sort of reimagining of Duke Ellington reimagining, it's like you know, like um Number County plays, Kenny Baker plays Bill Monroe sort of thing, but each of those stages is much more detached from the original. Um, and just hearing them talk about the process of like this is a marvelous idea, and then working out what it took to actually bring that idea to life. Um, you know, it sounds like an incredible journey, and some of those, I guess some of those ideas must develop exponentially once they've got off the ground.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure, for sure. They do. And that project was incredible. We, you know, we we brought that the we premiered that at Mass Mocha uh at the Mass Mocha Festival in 23, um, and then brought it to Bentonville, Arkansas, where we do the festival in May in 24. Um, but they had and they had written and and recorded the record before they even got to Mass Mocha, uh, which we also, you know, which we also supported. Um but yeah, it's it does, it evolves. You know, these projects often evolve when you s when you start with that premise of we want to invite you to do something that you want to do. What is that going to look like? You know, it's a sometimes there'll be an idea, a germ of an idea that then goes in all kinds of directions that that we didn't expect, that the artists didn't expect. And that's you know, that's kind of integral, I think, to the to the to the to the whole project of commissioning artists. You're you know, you really um you really want to, I mean, going back to this idea of giving people opportunities that they they might not be able to pursue otherwise is is really at the heart of it. And I think you know, if you step back a little bit from there, the you know, the point of that is is to really value these artists' contributions in a way that the market maybe isn't valuing, right? Um, and that I think that's that's now you know, you're I'm gonna go off on a big tangent if you if you want to pursue this, but I think there's a you know, I think there is um there's a tension for artists uh in being, you know, in needing to make a living and wanting to make the work that they want to make. And there is a, you know, we I think that we we misvalue artists' contributions or we value them sort of incorrectly a lot of the time. Um because artists have a lot to contribute beyond how many records they sell and how many tickets they sell. Uh, you know, they they they they do things, they they create things that enrich our lives in different ways, that help us explain our lives to ourselves in different ways that nobody else does. And we don't value that part of it necessarily, you know. Um, so I think when you think about something like this commissioning program that we have, part of the intent, even if we didn't really think about it that way when we started out, but part of the intent is to is to value these artists' contributions differently, um, in a way that I think that the you know the kind of commercial space doesn't necessarily do.

Matt

Yeah, and I don't feel like that is a tangent. It sort of feels very sort of fundamental to my interest in this as a project and wanting to talk to you about it, because it is a, you know, like I think there's a very, and maybe this is a maybe I've gone off on my own tangent, but there's a there's a really interesting conversation about sort of what the point of record labels is these days and how musicians interface with the world and you know, in an area where people aren't really buying physical product, what what the like quote unquote in air quotes that you can't see in the podcast, but music business, record business, whatever it is. And and I think that's I think that's really interesting because you know you the history of popular music is you know, there were beautiful like Miles Davis's kind of blue that were recorded very quickly in you know, short space time in a studio, and then Fleetwood Mac went into the studio for months to argue and create rumours, and those are two of the kind of you know wonderful pillars of pop music, and they're both great. But the the world's moved on, hasn't it? And yeah, different kinds of art require different kinds of resource and different kinds of audience exist for them now, and so I think I think it's where something like this sits in that space of helping kind of midwife art is really interesting.

SPEAKER_01

That's a lovely way to put it, I think. You know, um I I think that's very true, you know. It's it when you when you if you start to understand how artists support themselves now versus how recording artists, music artists, um, it has changed dramatically, dramatically, right? You can't make a living releasing music anymore. It just doesn't, it happens for such a small, small, tiny, tiny subset of artists who have commercial success where they're actually selling their music, their recorded music in whatever platform they're selling. You know, artists, you used to be people used to get record deals, multiple, multi-record deals, and they weren't necessarily superstars, and they were able to, you know, support themselves on that. Uh and you would tour in order to support your record sales. Um you know, I'm I'm simplifying it, and I'm not the most articulate kind of uh uh um analyst of this kind of thing particularly, but but but it is really it's a fact that the way artists uh support themselves as artists has changed a lot, and and what you're talking about is is right at the heart of that, I think. Um so yeah, and I and and it's it's hard to tease out and to understand and and but but giving artists opportunities to make work that they can then record, um you know, are fewer there there's there's more of a need for that, I would say, in order for people to continue to create and continue to be able to make things that that do kind of that do enrich our lives in those ways I was talking about, you know.

Matt

Yeah, and you play a role in that, as you would you sort of talked about before with with some of these projects. So there's the um the studio the you guys own, which I believe the Mr. Sun record was recorded there, and Becky Buller's record was recorded just after it, I think.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, partly. Stud Studio 9, which is which is right next to Mass Mocha in North Adams, Massachusetts, uh was built a few, well you know, was finished a few years ago, and we've we've recorded a lot of artists in there, including some of these commissions. I think that Becky's was in there. I think that uh Mr. Sun did some of theirs somewhere else and some of it there. Um it's it's you know it's a it's a it's a piece of this. It's kind of an asset that we're able to deploy in support of artists in this program, right? Um it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes people have their own place they want to do it, or some other place they want to do it, or for whatever reason, it's not the it's not the right place. But it's a it's a great kind of um it's a great piece of the puzzle to be able to offer to artists to say, we're gonna, you know, we'd like to we'd like to pay you to write this work and come and perform it, and we can give you time in a studio to record it if that's useful to help get it out. Um yeah, the studio is a is a great thing to have in that regard.

Matt

Well, and it does sound like but you know, it's sort of flipping it back around to that thing of giving people a spell, particularly with the concertos, maybe not so much with the composition commissions where you're creating a record-length bit of work that is presumably going to be a record at some point. But the concertos, which can be often, you know, 15 minutes of music, don't necessarily have a natural home. And so people, you know, will work out when to record those and when to put them in. Jerry's came out as part of a wider record, Jacob's certainly came out as part of a wider record. Um, and Sierra's, I don't think she's got a new record coming that I think it won't be on, but I think she's planning to put it out at some point, and so it's fascinating to see how those things then kind of re kind of settle within the output of the artist because it's a it's a sh it would be a shame for those things to exist. Well, I don't know, maybe there's beauty in these things existing for an afternoon at a festival once, but there's there's a also a joy in being able to hear it when you weren't there.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, well, you it you like to think that there is because not everything that we commission has you know does end up getting released or does end up even getting performed more than once and for a whole variety of reasons. Certainly the Fresh Scores program has been totally fascinating, and and because we do we've been doing that one the longest, and we usually we typically commission three or four artists uh um per festival. Uh, we've done a whole bunch of them at this point. Um, and those are, you know, some people have have recorded that music, but it's really about the music and the film together and the live performance of that, which is a really specific thing. That's not something that people get to see often. It's a really fun and interesting, you know, experience for an aut for the audience to see a film and have the music being performed live. It's this hybrid kind of uh presentation that isn't very, you know, that isn't typical. Uh certainly that exists and people do that, but it's not something that you get to see every day, and certainly not in a festival setting. Um those things, it's harder to find a life for those afterwards. We've provided opportunities sometimes ourselves for those artists to perform those again, um, but often not. And and and sometimes they've gone on and performed them in other places too. Uh, but but those are things that often it's really ephemeral, right? You get you you ask them to do it, it happens once, and that's kind of it. Um and you know, partly that's that's okay too. That's okay too, and there's value in that, uh, I think. Um, though it's always the case that we'd love for these things to have a life beyond that first premiere performance.

Matt

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I've been to see like old Laurel and Hardy films with a sort of live jazz band performing arrangements of the original sort of piano music for them or whatever. Yeah. Um, and it is fascinating because you can't film those. There's no point. Like the whole point of being there is you're watching a screen and an orchestra at the same time, but you're choosing what you watch. And um and is it so with the with those, have they all been kind of early 20th century films that didn't have music?

SPEAKER_01

You know, it's it's it's been a really interesting, um, not at all. There are a lot of them, and I think we and if you go on the the foundation website, we have a whole list of them, but I think we've done 32 or 33 of those at this point with different artists. Um like I said, this year was the first time we asked artists to make new films, so there's this year it was all new, new short films were made. Um, what has happened typically is we've you know we've invited artists to to do this, and the easiest thing to do is to pick an old silent and put music to it, right? Because there isn't that you know that there's there isn't any dialogue that you have to work around. Um those films are also typically in the public domain, so there aren't any rights issues to work through, which can be complicated and not not undoable. And we've certainly helped artists get rights to to things that that weren't in the public domain, to, and that's a whole process that um it's a whole other conversation. It's maybe not for today, but uh but so it's the easiest thing, and this isn't to say that it's a bad thing, but it's it's kind of it's the path of least resistance is to is to pick an old silent film and and write a score to it. But we've never said that that's what people have to do. When I have these conversations with artists or their representatives at first, I I say all of this, you know. That's the that's a that's a totally viable path to take, and maybe half or more of the films have been, of the fresh scores have been in that, in that format. But then there have been artists who have said, oh, I, you know, a friend of mine is an avant-garde filmmaker, and I'm gonna, you know, I'm I'd love to do something with their, you know, their short film, which is this weird, whatever, you know, non-narrative something. And so some of them have been totally experimental and bizarre and and and fantastic in that way. Some some people have done excerpts of other films, um, and we've and we've helped people get get the rights to do that. Uh there have been um, you know, there was there was a band called Parsons Field, a wonderful uh roots band from from actually from from Massachusetts originally, I think. They did an excerpt uh of a very famous documentary called Nanok of the North, which is actually a bit of a famous documentary and a kind of controversial documentary in a lot of ways, um, which again is another whole other conversation, but they did like a 23 or 24-minute excerpt of this of this documentary, which I think was originally from the 30s, or I want to say. Um I might have that wrong and have to look it up. And it was extraordinary. And not only did it did they write really beautiful music to this piece uh of the film, but they kind of, I don't want to say they staged it, but the presentation, the way they were on stage, was incorporated into the whole presentation in a slightly different way from just having a band on stage. And it was one of the best ones of these we've ever done, and they enjoyed it so much that they ended up writing a new score to the entire 89-minute film, I think, which then we presented separately and they got to do in a few other places as well. So it's kind of been all over, all over the map in terms of what sorts of films have uh have been given that treatment, have been part of the program.

Matt

And it's such an interesting range of stuff. You know, we talk about the festivals, the commissions, the schools, the studio. There's also No Depression and Folk Alley and the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and all of these things that are there to sort of support and grow and encourage musicians. How did the Steve Martin Prize come about? Because that's something that people are kind of very familiar with now and is sort of in a really interesting platform.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the Steve Martin Prize, you know, we're we were so happy to be to be associated with it. It came about because Steve himself, separate from anything we were doing, you know, started offering that that prize, which was a big award to a banjo player that got chosen by a committee every year. Steve's a banjo player himself. Banjo, banjo players are, you know, banjo players are uh it's it's it's don't don't let your kids you know try to make a living playing the banjo. It's a tough, it's a tough road to hoe. Um but Steve loves a banjo and wanted to support banjo players, so he came up with his prize. Great. Um Alison Brown, who is a wonderful banjo player, one of the great banjo players of her generation, or any generation, frankly, uh, is a friend of the festival, was there at the first festival, and has really been a partner in the festival. She has her own record label called Compass Records, which is a wonderful label. Um and there Compass is a partner on the festival. Allison comes to the festival every year, uh, and and is a big part of the genesis and the and the and the evolution of Fresh Grass. Um Allison played with Steve quite a bit. Um, you know, Steve has actually performed as a banjo player with some different bands. Uh, and at and at some point he started playing a lot with Allison. Um and so there was just kind of there was a you know, there was a natural connection there. And then I think Steve was looking for someone to help administer the prize because it's actually quite a lot of work to form a committee and go through the process of you know selecting in a you know in a in a reasonable and equitable way a winner of a of a pretty significant award every year. So he was looking for some partners to to kind of to help keep the thing going that he had started. And there was, you know, and we were kind of all set up to help with that. So it came about, you know, through some serendipity of of that association uh with Allison being a kind of folk from there. Um and that's a and that's a great thing. We love we love that. We love that we're able to, you know, that's another way, it fits in beautifully to what we're doing, um, to the mission of supporting artists in all kinds of different ways. Um, you know, we it there's there's a realm of of what happens through Fresh Grass, through the foundation that that's kind of that that's part of that includes also at the festivals we have, well, at the Mass Mocha Festival, and we're going to do this in the Mentonville Festival this year for the first time, or next year in 25, I should say. Um, you know, we have uh band and uh and instrument competitions at the festival, which is a very, you know, that's a very uh bluegrass festival thing to do, right? That happens and Telluride does that. A lot of a lot of traditional festivals do that. Uh and we started doing that quite a while ago early on in the festival, um, where we have a band competition, and then we've had a number of different instruments that we put into competition. Uh, and usually at this point we'll do band and three instruments, and sometimes it changes year to year. Um and that's an open submission process that we also seek people out and invite them to submit. Uh, and we'll choose among lots and lots of submissions uh finalists, and they come to the festival, and it's a in you know, in the theater, uh everybody, all the finalists get to perform in front of an audience, in front of the festival audience, and then winners are chosen by judges who are, you know, usually artists who are in the festival, and some of us who are working on programming the festival. Um and uh and those winners get all kinds of prizes, including money and instruments and recording, you know, opportunities to record, opportunities to perform at the next festival. The band winner gets a really kind of prime mainstage slot the next year. Um, a couple of artists before the headliner on Friday night every year. So the banjo prize uh it it it fits into that that sort of same realm of you know giving giving artists opportunities really to further their careers, to be supported in the work they're doing financially, so they can keep doing it, so they can, you know, so they can, you know, so they don't need day jobs, so they can make music for us rather than you know, rather than do other things they might need to do to support themselves.

Matt

Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? That sort of the whole world of roots music is just a bit better at doing that than kind of more commercial quote unquote again types of music than you know, the world of rock. Or like nobody's people aren't in competition with each other. There's a lot of natural support and mentoring goes on anyway. And so it's just a prime place to be able to do some good with something like this, I guess, because it's already baked into the way it works.

SPEAKER_01

That's a great point, I think. You know, and that and that and that springs from the way the music works, right? It's a it's a collaborative form, it's it's uh it's it's full of um, you know, it's it's full of uh spontaneous creative expression, and people join you go to these festivals and people are joining each other on stage and sitting in with each other. Um, you know, so there is that that element in this world of collaboration, of mentorship, as you say, which I think is is you know is hugely important to it. Uh and yeah, these, you know, so these these kinds of these kinds of programs do, you know, it makes sense in this realm in a way that you know it's maybe easier than than it would be in other in other you know, other genres of music. I agree.

Matt

And is there anything sort of new coming up from Fresh Grass for 2025? You talked about introducing the the sort of band and instrumental competition elements um in both festivals this time. Um is there anything particularly exciting coming up you want to share with us?

SPEAKER_01

Well, you know, there there are all kinds of exciting things, uh Matt, but but we're we're you know we're going to announce a lineup for the Bentonville Festival next month. Uh we'll announce a lineup for the Mass Mocha Festival in March. Some of the things that are going to be new and exciting are going to get announced in those in those lineup announcements. And so they're, you know, they're it's it sounds funny to say, but they're kind of embargoed and I can't talk about them. That has to do with who's going to be at the festival. Um freshgrass itself, there's also some really interesting things happening in the kind of the larger found the ecosystem of the foundation. You talk about these different, you know, the different sort of um the different programs we have and the different entities that are part of the freshgrass world, no depression and folk alley and and the Steve Martin Banjo Prize. You know, there's there's some stuff in the works that is going to be announced next year um that will, you know, that will change that ecosystem in interesting ways and expand it. Um but it's not stuff that I'm I'm allowed to talk about yet. You'll have to, you know, you'll have to have to get you back. Yeah, you'll have to have me or have Chris Chris back and you know, have Chris on the show at some point, and he'll, you know, he'll maybe he'll maybe want to talk more about it. But so there's all kinds of exciting stuff. I will say that we're, you know, we are we are planning to bring the um the fresh grass awards to the Bentonville Festival, so that's going to be fun and that'll be exciting. We we do have some interesting some interesting commissions in the works that aren't done yet, so I I wouldn't even if they were you know, I'm I'm not in the place that really talk about the artists, but I think we'll have some exciting commissions coming up with some artists who are doing really interesting things right now. Um and yeah, you know, you just have to you have to stay tuned to to find out more.

Matt

No, I'm excited to hear what comes next. And I just sort of thank you to you and Fresh Grass for the part you've played in some of what is some of my favorite music. And it's, you know, I it's been fascinating piecing together how all those things fit together and then to get to have this conversation. It's just been a treat. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank thank you for having me and for your interest. And you know, you'll have to come and be our guest at at one or another or both of the festivals next year, and that way you get to see some of this stuff, you know, firsthand. Uh, we'd love to have you.

Matt

No, that sounds fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Great. All right, Matt. Well, thanks a lot.