Grammy-Award winning mandolinist inspires Meramec community
By: Bri Heaney, News Editor
Under lavender lights, surrounded by a full orchestra and choir, with a mandolin in his hand, Sam Bush stands front and center in the Meramec Theatre on Oct 8. There is a full audience: a young family with their six-year old daughter, a Washington University student studying jazz, a couple in their 60’s from Arkansas are just some of the attendees sitting in the third row.
The orchestrator is tall with black hair floating around him as he moves to the beat he is directing, all eyes on both the student and professional band focused on him. Sam Bush is in front of him, closing his eyes in concentration singing the lyrics to his song “Circles Around Me”, “hand on my shoulder, just a little bit older.”
Sam Bush is seemingly as provoked by the mandolin as much as it is provoked by him.
Prior to his visit to Meramec Theatre, before he contributed to the reinvention of bluegrass, before his invitation to move out to Louisville, Kentucky to play five nights a week, a young Sam Bush sat under a shade tree with a rifle in his hand and a radio to his side.
“All my life [it’s the] Cardinals. Growing up in Bowling Green, I could get KMOX on my transistor radio,” said Bush.
Since the era of Jack Buck broadcasting the games of Stan Musial and Bob Gibson, Bush has been a fan of the Cardinals and watcher of baseball. As a kid, Bush said he loved to play baseball.
“We lived in the country and so my parents would have to take us everywhere. Really I was trying to play baseball and play music. My dad just finally said ‘we ain’t got time for you to play both,” said Bush. “‘You need to pick baseball or music. And he said “I know which one you should pick, but you make the choice.”
Bush chose music.
“My dad said, ‘right choice,’” said Bush, as he and the crowd laughed.
Bush was ultimately crowned the acclaimed Kind of Telluride Music Festival. He is credited with being the founder of New Grass and is responsible for the incorporation of different styles and textures into the previously regimented genre of conventional bluegrass. Jazz, Reggae, Rock and Blues have been integrated and fused together through Bush’s musical endeavors. Since the release of his first album in 1977, “Together Again For The First Time” he has released a total of ten albums. Bush says to never be afraid to try new things and to always do things for the purpose of bettering yourself.
“Gary [Gackstatter] approached me and said ‘I’d like to write some charts for the music you play.’ And that’s always an interesting concept, cause us as nonclassical musicians, I don’t think we can imagine what it’s going to sound like; I couldn’t imagine what it was going to sound like,” said Bush.
It’s these opportunities to do something different, that Bush said are the reasons that a good musician continues to play.
“Don’t forget about why you started playing music, and that’s because you love the sound and you can’t help but play. It’s not always a rewarding situation but just remember but you’re doing it, so you can improve as a player and singer. That’s your goal–to improve,” said Bush.
Blue and red lights move from the lighting track to mix as they fall on the shoulders of Sam Bush, soaked in violet light as he plays “Transcendental Meditation Blues.”
The orchestra is moving together, the crowd is taping and swaying, Bush standing curled over his mandolin, singing into the microphone.
“The energy produced, he’s a conduit man, the energy coming off the audience goes into him, then into the musicians, it’s this vortex going,” said Gary Gackstatter, professor of music at STLCC-Meramec, “He’s a quiet presence, just this happy go lucky guy, don’t let it fool you, there is some big energy, very big energy.”
