 Sam Bush
Posted: June 26, 2006
NASHVILLE, TN (AP) -- Sam Bush's latest album, "Laps In Seven," sums up why the mandolinist and fiddler is idolized by young acoustic music players and why he's a hard sell to the mass market. He's just too creatively restless to fit into a defined marketing niche.Labeled by some as the King of Newgrass, he led the expansion of acoustic music in the '70s by taking bluegrass' core sound and bringing in jazz, R&B, rock and reggae influences. His success at bridging styles inspired modern eclectics like Nickel Creek and Alison Krauss and gained him admirers as disparate as jazz fiddler Jean Luc Ponty and Americana icon Emmylou Harris (both of whom appear on the new album).
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"Laps In Seven" is a typically challenging yet tasteful outing. He rocks out with guitarist Buddy Miller on "The River's Gonna Run," combines Celtic and jazz fusion on "New Country," gets funky on a cover of Jeff Black's "I Wanna Do Right" and tears with high-speed abandon through traditional bluegrass on "Bringing in the Georgia Mail." Along the way, he illustrates that his genius isn't that he refuses to recognize lines between genres and formats; it's that he engagingly reveals how well they can all fit together. |
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