2023 Americana Lifetime Achievement Awards
My program notes on the Avett Brothers, George Fontaine Sr, Bettye Lavette, Patty Griffin, and Nickel Creek
Over the past ten years or so I’ve had the honor of writing program notes describing the story and impact of the Americana Lifetime Achievement Award winners for the program handed out at the Ryman Auditorium. These tend to be my favorite parts of the annual show, conjuring memories of moments like Johnny Cash’s final public performance, Elvis Costello in duet with Allen Toussaint, and the mighty William Bell. This year’s class included a couple of mid-career acts in the Avett Brothers and Nickel Creek. Patty Griffin was an inevitable choice, given her starring stature at the dawn of the 1990s Americana movement. Bettye LaVette has been fun to watch as her star finally was allowed to ascend in the sixth and seventh decades of her life. George Fontaine Sr. is a fascinating guy and a true patron of the musical arts. Congratulations to all.
The Avett Brothers - Trailblazer Award
Only a prophet could have predicted the artistic trajectory of the Avett Brothers after seeing them perform in their instrument-pounding early days, as when a No Depression writer saw them debuting at Merlefest in 2004 and called them “a trio of rompin’ stompin’ roots Ramones.” Brothers Seth and Scott also had a thoughtful side and sense of purpose, and in a few years, their rousing folk-rock hybrid had built a fierce fanbase on the strength of their moving songs and carefully crafted vocal harmonies. They became four-time Americana Award winners, multiple Grammy nominees and North Carolina roots music icons.
Seth and Scott were raised in Concord, near Charlotte. Their dad Jim Avett, a construction welder, was also an accomplished songwriter who modeled folk music and storytelling at home. Seth met Doc Watson as a teenager and both brothers felt drawn to their state’s roots music stories and heroes, even as they worked out youthful energy in different rock bands. When they merged their projects, their acoustic sets went over best, pointing to a future. Joined by bass player Bob Crawford, they worked small clubs and set their sights on landing that pivotal Merlefest weekend when they played seven sets. Budding record label owner and manager Dolph Ramseur took the band on and released their first albums, including the breakout Mignonette when the Avetts’ harmonies flowered. 2007’s Emotionalism catapulted them farther, winning the interest of super-producer Rick Rubin for their next project, I And Love And You, released on Columbia Records.
Fleshed out with cellist Joe Kwon, sister Bonnie on keys, and a drummer, the Avetts scaled their sound up as they headlined Coachella, Bonnaroo, and New Orleans JazzFest. Their songs about family, love, and belonging reached broad audiences at a gut and heart level. Yet their uncanny blend of passion and refinement wasn’t an obvious or easy trajectory. A quote from Seth in David Menconi’s book about North Carolina music says a lot about how the brothers complemented one another. “It took me years to consider myself a showman, and it took years for Scott to consider himself a musician…A lot of practice is what it took.”
George Fontaine, Sr. - Jack Emerson Lifetime Achievement Executive
While it isn’t exclusively a roots music label, no record company has released music by more stalwarts of and innovators in Americana over the past 25 years than New West Records. The company, based at various times in Athens, GA, Austin, TX, Los Angeles, and Nashville, has earned the trust of era-shaping artists such as Rodney Crowell, Kris Kristofferson, Delbert McClinton, Steve Earle, John Hiatt, Buddy and Julie Miller, and Billy Joe Shaver. Through nearly 500 releases, the label has also introduced vibrant newcomers like Lilly Hiatt, Jaime Wyatt and Nikki Lane, while sustaining important careers like that of Randall Bramblett. The person most responsible for this proliferation of art and good taste is this year’s Jack Emerson Award winner, co-founder and owner George Fontaine, Sr.
Fontaine still has the AM transistor radio that helped him fall in love with music growing up in Chattanooga, TN. He remembers shows by James Brown and The Allman Brothers among the pivotal experiences that turned his life toward supporting the art. He booked shows while attending the University of Georgia and assembled a group to restore the Georgia Theater in Athens, now a landmark venue. Working in Houston for his family’s business, he created a concert series and put a toe in the record business. Then he met Cameron Strang, a young Canadian who’d created New West Records working solo out of Minneapolis. They merged operations into the label that we know today.
New West entered the marketplace on the eve of the biggest transformation in the history of music distribution, and Fontaine’s good fortune and family resources allowed him to sustain the label through trials and transitions. Answering the challenge when label president Strang was recruited away to run Warner Bros. Records, Fontaine brought trusted publishing executive John Allen aboard to run New West in 2014, ushering in a highly productive decade and consolidating the label’s headquarters in Nashville. Meanwhile, Fontaine further established himself as a patron of the arts, rescuing and rebuilding his beloved Cactus Music record store in Houston and founding the music business program at UGA, among other acts of generosity.
Fontaine has lifted careers and created opportunities for artists in rock and roll, pop, soul, and certainly the overarching field of Americana, explaining that he’s had a lifelong affinity for the “underdog” artists who had something to say but needed a taller platform to say it. Indie music wouldn’t be the same without him.
Patty Griffin - Songwriter
In the 1990s, when the Americana chart was new and rich with established women like Emmylou Harris and Lucinda Williams, Patty Griffin stood out as a striking new voice for the future of the format. Over the coming years, the Austin-based songwriter realized that promise, growing in stature on the strength of her rapturous voice and her incisive, personal songwriting. She was named Americana Artist of the Year in 2007 and won two Grammy Awards, while inspiring many other artists to interpret her work.
Griffin grew up singing in family and local settings in a small town in Maine and didn’t put music in her foreground until years later in Boston after her first marriage ended. Playing the folk circuit, she got signed by A&M Records who made the bold move of releasing her debut as a spare and natural acoustic performance. That 1996 album, Living With Ghosts, was a critics’ favorite, a long-term best-seller, and an introduction to some of her best material, including “Let Him Fly” and “Poor Man’s House.” Griffin’s second project Flaming Red surprised listeners with its fully produced rock and roll textures, but again, with songs like “One Big Love” and “Mary,” her literary grace was widely acknowledged.
With 1000 Kisses in 2002, Griffin achieved an especially potent balance of instrumentation, vocal presence and emotional composing. The leadoff “Rain” remains a melancholy heart stopper, and the grieving song “Long Ride Home” became one of her most covered. The then-Dixie Chicks embraced her work, including the audacious “Truth No. 2” and the magisterial “Top Of The World.” Other artists who’ve covered Griffin’s songs include Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, Solomon Burke, Martina McBride, Miranda Lambert, Melissa Etheridge, and Maura O’Connell.
The artist’s 2007 release Children Running Through was yet another triumph, winning Americana’s Album of the Year and securing her Artist of the Year prize. Griffin battled cancer and returned to the road and the studio with especially introspective and revealing songs on her eponymous tenth studio album in 2019. Her newest is Tape, a collection of home recordings and demos that let us get as close as we’ve ever been to the creative process of this sensitive, passionate artist.
Bettye LaVette - Legacy Award
The bonus Es in Bettye LaVette’s name might as well stand for excellence and endurance. She’s one of the finest soul singers and interpreters of American song to be born in the 20th century, but it took until the 21st for a wide musical community to embrace and celebrate her. She’s had hits and been hit with setbacks, but Bettye LaVette has emerged triumphantly as a singer cherished for her open ears and determination to control her own destiny.
LaVette grew up in Detroit in the 1950s in a house full of music, from gospel greats who knew her family to a home jukebox stocked with blues, jazz, and country music. In 1962, her first single as a teenage newcomer reached the top ten on the R&B chart and got her on a tour with a young Otis Redding. But it would not be as easy as that, with years of close calls and letdowns, including a fully realized album cut in Muscle Shoals that was shelved at the last minute by Atlantic Records. By the 90s, LaVette was perhaps America’s most cherished cult country soul artist, a mixed blessing to be sure.
The new millennium was a different story. LaVette’s lost Atlantic album was discovered and re-issued. The upstart Blues Express label helped her release the new album A Woman Like Me in 2002, which won the W.C. Handy Award as Comeback Blues Album of the Year. Through a long-term deal by artist-focused ANTI- Records, the road opened up to LaVette, leading to more opportunities and accolades. She received a Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation in 2006. She performed “A Change Is Gonna Come” with Jon Bon Jovi at President Barack Obama’s 2009 inaugural. An acclaimed performance at the Kennedy Center of The Who’s “Love, Reign O’er Me” inspired the album Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook in 2010. That and four more of her albums since 2007 were nominated for Grammy Awards in both blues and Americana categories, reaffirming LaVette’s affinity for the whole range of American music. Her latest release LaVette! was produced by Steve Jordan and features guest turns from John Mayer, Jon Batiste, and Steve Winwood.
Nickel Creek - Trailblazer
All bands grow together, but the three members of Nickel Creek literally grew up playing together, so their innovations are grounded in musical and personal history. Over a trio of novel albums and hundreds of exuberant shows between 2000 and 2007, they showed several generations how bluegrass could adapt for the 21st century, challenging orthodoxy and luring thousands of newer, younger fans into the wonders of virtuoso-level acoustic Americana.
Chris Thile met Sean Watkins and his sister Sara as young kids through a network of music teachers and bluegrass-friendly pizza restaurants in San Diego County, CA. They first performed as a band in Carlsbad in 1989 when they were between 10-12 years old. With Chris’s father Scott on bass, the trio developed for a decade, absorbing bluegrass old and new, plus a range of pop and classical influences. When Alison Krauss, a hero, took on production of their first professional album, its release on Sugar Hill Records was a bluegrass crossover blockbuster. It landed multiple videos on CMT, two Grammy nominations, and widespread praise, including TIME magazine’s “innovators of the new millennium” designation.
In the coming years, no band rooted in bluegrass had more name recognition than Nickel Creek, their fame tied to their stunning vocal harmonies, intricate musicianship, and infectious energy. They performed on the Grammy Awards with Dolly Parton and toured with Todd Phillips, John Mayer, and Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, to name a few varied connections. Their albums grew more eclectic, and they wrote nearly all of their own songs while covering artists like Pavement and Bob Dylan. Their second album This Side won the Contemporary Folk Grammy Award in 2002.
The trio traveled a long Farewell (For Now) Tour in 2007 before pursuing solo endeavors, but made good on that tour name by reuniting in 2014 for the album A Dotted Line and again in 2023 for the intricate, imaginative Celebrants. Those inspired recordings and the tours that followed proved that these masterful musicians will always share a chemistry and an inventive fire that’s easily relit.