Brit Taylor - Kentucky Bluegrassed

Brit Taylor - Kentucky Bluegrassed Release datum: 2 februari Label: Thirty Tigers. Distributie: Mattan Records   After Saving Country Music attended a Brit Taylor showcase during AmericanaFest 2023 at the legendary Basement in Nashville, you knew something was brewing. Instead of coming out with a full tilt electric band to reprise the songs from her recent Sturgill Simpson-produced album Kentucky Blue......

Brit showed up with a hot shot bluegrass band in tow. Being from Kentucky, this wasn’t a complete curve ball. But it wasn’t a lark either. She was telegraphing her next move.

“I always knew that, at some point in my career, I’d make a bluegrass album,” Brit Taylor says. “I grew up in the East Kentucky hills surrounded by incredible pickers and listening to bluegrass with my Papaw Hillard. He had an old 8-track player. Honestly, I was probably listening to bluegrass before I ever heard any other country song. Papaw introduced me to Patty Loveless and Ricky Skaggs, and that’s probably when I found country music.” 

Lo and behold, making a bluegrass record is exactly what Brit Taylor has now done. Called Kentucky Bluegrassed, you can consider it like a companion to 2023’s Kentucky Blue, but with three new original bluegrass songs to go with five bluegrass interpretations of Kentucky Blue tracks. Kentucky Bluegrassed is being released on the one year anniversary of Kentucky Blue, February 2nd.

To help Brit Taylor, she roped in an all-star bluegrass band including Rob Ikes on dobro, Stewart Duncan on fiddle, Golden Highway’s Dominick Leslie on mandolin, multi-instrumentalist Seth Taylor, and Matt Menefee. It was all produced by Brit’s husband and bluegrass musician Adam Chaffins.

“He knows bluegrass better than anybody, and he knows my voice better than anyone else,” says Taylor. “He hears me singing in bars, clubs, theaters, studios, the car, the kitchen and the shower.”

Ahead of the new album, Brit Taylor has released one of the new original bluegrass songs called “Saint Anthony” about the saint of lost objects and lost people. In this case, the song is about an absent and wayward lover. “It reminded me of my grandparents’ courtship and love story – my Pawpaw Hillard was a bit wild in his drinking days and my Mamaw was always hunting him down,” Taylor says.

Kentucky Bluegrassed will be released on Brit’s Cut a Shine label distributed by Thirty Tigers. Physical copies are now available for pre-order.