It was at a New Grass Revival show that Fred Shellman decided to start the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. Now in its 36th year members Sam Bush, John Cowan and Bela Fleck have returned to Telluride Bluegrass Festival nearly every year. With Sam, the “King of Telluride”, playing everyone of them.
While alienated from the traditional bluegrass crowd for their innovative approach to the music form they have also been dubbed “the most significant acoustic country band in the USA”.
This is a smoking set from near the end of the bands career. They move effortlessly between nearly every single musical genre here. Listen to them jam on the bluesey “Singing the Blues” from this set over here.
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New Grass Revival – Telluride Bluegrass Festival – Telluride, CO – June 18, 1988
Sam Bush Mandolin, Fiddle
Bela Fleck Banjo
John Cowan Bass
Pat Flynn Guitar
Disc 1 60:34
1. County Clare
2. Baton Rouge
3. A Good Woman’s Love
4. I Can Talk To You
5. One Way Street
6. Lonely Rider
7. Hold To A Dream
8. Band Intros
9. The Story Of Big Foot
10. Get In The Wind
11. Singin’ The Blues
12. Out InTthe Darkness
13. Metric Lips
Disc 2 41:19
1. Let’s Make a Baby King
2. I’m Down
3. Sail To Australia
4. Can’t Stop Now
5. Crowd
Encores:
6. Reach
7. You Don’t Knock
8. Crowd
9. Whitewater
10. Watermelon Man
this is going to be fantastic!
a buddy and i saw ngr at a small club in chicago called orphans around this time, and these guys nearly tore our ears off. the first set was so good that we decided to stay (and pay) for the 2nd set.
pat flynn was outrageously good….and if he distinguished himself while playing with the other guys here, boy, was he ever ON that night.
thanks so much!
great website btw!
Ray, man that’s awesome the show was so good you came back for more!
Each of these guys are so inventive and can jam so hard. I wondered what happened to Pat Flynn after New Grass Revival because he didn’t go on to have a major solo career like the other guys. Looked him up on wikipedia and he has played on over 350 records!
If you want I can track down some of the other NGR shows that are floating around.
Cheers,
Luke
pat flynn was playing his guitar so aggressively (while still serving the song) that the only comparison that came to mind was stevie ray vaughan, the way stevie would pretty much just attack his guitar without a glance to where his fingers were going.
i recall it like it was yesterday, flynn was playing bluegrass, stayed back during ensemble sections, but stepped forward like a doggone rockstar i swear to god, at least that show.
played his part sharply but without flatout showboating and then stepped back, and everyone just went ‘oooh man!’.
i never saw any of ngr’s principals again after that show, though i’m a big fan of each of those guys.
as for more ngr shows, right now i’ve got 3.
yours from here, a 09-28-75 from louisville and ‘live @ sally goodin’s lenoir NC 1988′
and bela shows, sam shows…and i think i’ve got a cowan show as an rar file somewhere still.
probably ‘acquired’ 35-40 bluegrass boots while trawling several threads at, of all places, a phish fan-site.
the motherlode, i tell ya.
i don’t think i should plaster it here because they apparently were doing this against their moderators’ rules…but it’s all still in their archives.
for now.
a few of the links there were dead, but man, the vast majority are up and running and it’s a ridiculous number.
hardcore oldtimey stuff to newer things like yonder mountain. great mixture of everything.
shoot me your e-mail (or do i have it now? nope ‘donotreply’, cool.) i could send the links to you.
then YOU can spend hours going through 16 pages of links like i did.
i’m a huge david grisman fan, right from the quintet 77 album, seen his great bands tons of times here…THERE’s who i’m most interested in finding more shows from.
and honestly, not so much the garcia-affiliated ones tho they’re not bad.
tho crap, i’m already accumulating grisman/rice/o’connor boots at a fast rate, it seems!
one that interests me a lot is ‘strength in numbers’ (b fleck/j douglas/m o’connor/ s bush/ e meyer), obviously from the lineup, an unreal band!
i found a fantastic 1990 show from yosemite/strawberryfest so far…at THAT site.
and i could swear i’ve also by-passed a couple of others…
thanks again!