Andy Statman is joined by Ricky Skaggs & Byron Berline for Bluegrass Tracks

Mandolin ace Andy Statman cut his latest album Bluegrass Tracks with an all-star cast of players steeped in the bluegrass tradition.   

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Andy Statman is talking about the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi — an unexpected turn in a conversation about his new album, Bluegrass Tracks (out September 6 via Shefa Records), a sparkling set firmly planted in the titular musical traditions, much more Kentucky than Kyoto. It’s captured, he says, in his choice of cover art: a picture by photographer Gregory Grice taken a few years ago in Queens, showing a completely rusted-out, graffitied, 1950s-era Jaguar on a bed of rubble beneath trestles carrying a train overhead. That choice seems an odd fit too, until he explains:

“If you know what Wabi-Sabi is, it’s the beauty of the imperfect and of chance,” he says. “What’s happening at the moment. I think it’s a powerful image. It really conveys a multitude of feelings.”

It’s at the heart of the music on the album, he says. But then it’s at the heart of how he has experienced music since he was a boy in, yes, the 1950s in Queens.

“The truth is that when you’re playing tunes, it’s all Wabi-Sabi,” he says. “It’s all just sort of happening in the time, at the moment.”

Such moments abound on the album, an all-star session recorded in Nashville in a four-day burst of creativity right before the pandemic shutdown. Joining Statman were fiddle legend Byron Berline (some of his final recordings before his death in 2021), banjoist and fiddler Ron Stewart, guitarist Bryan Sutton and double bassist Mike Bub, with guest turns from Ricky Skaggs on mandolin and Tim O’Brien on vocals and guitar. Many of the Statman originals that make up more than half the album were written during these days, some in the wee hours right before the group gathered to record, and worked up by the group in the studio, that freshness felt in the largely live takes.

Andy Statman's Nashville cats were Mike Bub (left), Ricky Skaggs, Byron Berline & Byran Sutton. Photo Barbara Statman

Following 2019’s Monroe Bus, with its remarkable flights of fancy inspired by the “Father of Bluegrass” Bill Monroe, Statman here hews closer to the traditions implied by the album title, a constant throughout his wide-ranging career.

“Bluegrass was the first music I really learned how to play and really understand,” he says. “It was going to school for me, basically.”

 Produced by long-time friend Edward Haber (whose Shefa Records label is releasing the album), these tracks shine, with originals from the driving “Sycamore Street” to the radiant “Blessing” to the bluesy stroll “I Wouldn’t Do It.” Complementing these are two Monroe tunes (the exploratory album-opener “Stoney Lonesome,” which features Skaggs, and “Brown County Breakdown”), as well as traditional classics “Bile ‘em Cabbage Down” (featuring O’Brien) and a smoking hot re-interpolation of “Katy Hill.”

Even the old favorites bear the distinctive flairs that have marked Statman’s singular career in bluegrass, as a pioneering explorer of Jewish music (as a clarinetist protégé of early 20th century Klezmer star Dave Tarras) and reaching far beyond into jazz, global, avant-garde and countless hybrid experiments. His dedication, vision and supreme talents have earned him honors including being named an NEA National Heritage Fellow in 2012 and scoring a Grammy nomination, with The New Yorker declaring him “an American visionary,” while Skaggs, speaking on NPR, has called Statman “Bill Monroe and John Coltrane poured into one person.”

In addition to his own wide-ranging catalog of more than 20 albums, his talents have enlivened recordings and performances with scores of artists, including Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, David Bromberg, Béla Fleck, David Grisman and Itzhak Perlman, the latter two with whom he made groundbreaking albums exploring Jewish Klezmer music. Meanwhile, his Andy Statman Trio, which ended a 20-year residency at the Charles Street Synagogue in Greenwich Village with the pandemic, continues to perform regularly.

 Even as he focused here on his beloved bluegrass roots, his lifelong drive to push boundaries and find new forms of expression came into play.

 “I picked musicians who are expansive, but who really are well-rooted in the old styles,” he says.

He met Berline in 1971 in Los Angeles when Statman was in David Bromberg’s band and the fiddler sat in with them. Berline has previously appeared on Statman’s eclectic tour-de-force Old Brooklyn album from 2011, a vivid, loving and personal musical tour of the multicultural neighborhood that is his long-time home, from Klezmer to avant-garde jazz to undefinable hybrids. 

Statman first knew of Stewart as a brilliant fiddler, and, in fact, he joins Berline for twin fiddles on several of the album’s tracks. Learning that Stewart also plays banjo “totally blew my mind,” he says. “He can play anything. He’s just incredibly creative. And Bryan Sutton is a unique player. He can play fluently in so many different styles. Mike Bub is an amazing bass player. I love his sense of time and feel.”

Each of them has vast credits to his name, but Statman’s Nashville sessions were the first time all had played together. You’d never know it from the results.

 “Everything clicked immediately,” Statman says.

 “Where it’s coming from is bluegrass in the mid- and late ‘50s,” he says, “There’s a place where doo-wop and country music all crossed — Patsy Cline but other country artists as well.” It’s reflected in the album’s slow dance “If You Only Knew”.

Personal connections thread through the tunes. “Sycamore Street,” a lovely stroll, is named for the setting of an Orthodox Jewish organization that hosted his daughter-in-law while his son, who died earlier this year, was hospitalized for treatment. Another song, “I Wouldn’t Do It,” gets to his blues roots from even before he was in Bromberg’s band. “I used to play saxophone in a lot of Chicago blues-type bands and mandolin in acoustic blues bands.” Then there’s the classic romp, “Bile ‘Em Cabbage Down,” with O’Brien singing.

 “That’s probably one of the first bluegrass songs I learned. I remember there was a recording of Bill Monroe playing on it, it was a Bluegrass Boys song back then”.

And always, the two primary vines of Statman’s vast artistry, the Jewish roots and the bluegrass passion, are intertwined, sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly. Take “Those Old Early Morning Blues.”

“I wrote it with almost a country blues feeling. But it’s in a time signature that you would find in traditional Jewish instrumentals.”

Mixing those worlds simply comes naturally to him.

 “On ‘Katy Hill’ I found myself improvising on a Jewish scale on my solo,” he says. “But it all works. It’s all sort of effortless. It just sort of happens. I just let it happen. The ideas flow.”  It’s all Wabi-Sabi.

Check out an audio clip of "Charleston Ramble" along with Andy's performances of "Kentucky Mandolin" and the Monroe Brothers' "Roll On Buddy with Michael Daves.