Tony Trischka, one of the most influential figures in roots music, is celebrating his 75th birthday at City Winery in NYC on Jan. 19. He has also announced the release of his new album Earl Jam: A Tribute To Earl Scruggs, out this spring.
Tony Trischka was born in Syracuse in 1949. Raised in a home full of music, he fell in love with the banjo through the Kingston Trio’s 1959 recording of “M.T.A.” In the early ’70s, he moved to New York City, releasing his landmark solo debut Bluegrass Light, mixing bluegrass, country, psychedelic pop, free jazz, and more. Many other milestone albums followed, including 1983’s A Robot Plane Flies Over Arkansas, and 1993’s World Turning, a global history of the banjo that ignited Marc Fields’ comprehensive 2011 documentary, Give Me the Banjo. As a banjoist he set new standards for genre-bending virtuosity, inspiring legions of younger players, among them Béla Fleck.
Trischka’s GRAMMY-nominated album Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular, released in 2007, and Great Big World, from 2014, features a mix of veterans and up-and-comers. In addition to his GRAMMY nominations, he’s earned numerous honors, including the International Bluegrass Music Award for Banjo Player of the Year, as well as being named a United States Artists Friends Fellow.
One day during the COVID lockdown, he was checking his mail and was astonished to find a thumb drive full of rare recordings of his late friend Earl Scruggs jamming with John Hartford, mostly taken from private gatherings at Earl’s house during the 80s and 90s. Trischka began pouring over the more than 200 songs, transcribing the all-new solos, tones, and tricks from the man he’d been studying for over half a century, featuring a number of these pieces at Joe’s Pub. After that show, he decided there should be an album created of this unique material. “Whether or not you’re a banjo player, if you play bluegrass, you’re influenced by Earl. So it was easy to get world-class players on board,” says Trischka.
Names like Stuart Duncan, Ronnie McCoury, and Darol Anger are featured in the album notes, next to those of Molly Tuttle, Brittany Haas, Dominick Leslie, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes. Trischka just shared “Brown’s Ferry Blues,” the opening track of Earl Jam, and the only tune on the album to feature another banjo player: Bela Fleck. This song, produced by Fleck at Parlor Studios in Nashville, not only gets two banjo breaks, but the steady bass thump of Mark Schatz, Sam Bush’s legendary mandolin chop, show-stopper Michael Cleveland on fiddle, and Billy Strings, on lead vocals and guitar.
This song was written by Alton and Rabon Delmore and recorded by them in 1933. I heard Earl play it backstage at a show in Missouri in 2010. He had his banjo tuned to double C— that’s g, C, D, C, D—and as far as I know, he’d never used this tuning on a studio or live recording. In the various jams with John Hartford that inspired this album, however, he always played it in standard G tuning, which is the setting you’ll hear here.
Tony Trischka.
Trischka’s 75th birthday will be celebrated in the company of an all-star list of friends, including Michael Cleveland, Michael Daves, Jared Engel, Jacob Jolliff, Kenny Kosek, Steve Martin, Bruce Molsky, Joyce Carol Oates, Noam Pikelny, Sean Trischka, Abigail Washburn, Danny Weiss, and more at City Winery in New York City. While the show is sold out, a link to sign up for the waiting list and more information can be found here.
For more information about Tony Trischka, visit here.
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