Live At The Legion

Bryan Sutton remembers well the times when he was the new young gun guitarist in the bluegrass world. As a young man, he had his eye on moving to Nashville and being a studio musician, and that happened in the mid-1990s. Then, he soon found himself performing and recording with some of the most amazing musicians in the bluegrass world, including Earl Scruggs, Jerry Douglas, Ricky Skaggs, Bela Fleck, Mark O’Connor, and more. 

Sutton also experienced what it was like to perform with some pressure on him, as when he filled the guitar chair in the now-Hall of Fame group Hot Rize, following in the footsteps of the band’s beloved original guitarist Charles Sawtelle. I also remember watching Bryan take part in the Vassar Clements 75th Birthday Jam at MerleFest in 2003, where he was onstage as the second guitarist standing beside the great Tony Rice, with some wondering if there was a need for a second six-string with Rice already in the mix. 

Not long after that MerleFest gig, however, Sutton did a very cool thing by creating a guitar duet album where he played with and honored great older artists like Rice and Douglas as well as Doc Watson, David Grier, Dan Crary, Russ Barenburg, Norman Blake, Ricky Skaggs, Jack Lawrence, George Shuffler, and his father, Jerry Sutton.

Sutton was given his first IBMA Guitar of the Year award in 2000, and by 2015, he had amazingly won nine of them. It was in his 2015 acceptance speech, however, when he asked folks to go out and listen to the new young gun guitarists of that time, mentioning from the stage Seth Taylor, Chris Eldredge, Jake Workman, Trey Hensley, Chris Luquette, Courtney Hartman, Rebecca Frazier, Jordan Tice, Grant Gordy, Zeb Snyder, Jon Stickley, Molly Tuttle, Presley Barker, and Billy Strings. In 2019, I interviewed Jerry Douglas for an article centered on my second of three interviews with Strings, and that is when Douglas told me that it was Sutton who first told him, “Here’s the future of bluegrass, Billy Strings.”

There were still a few skeptics when it came to wondering how deep Strings’ talent was on the guitar, but that all ended when he did a duet show with Sutton at the Station Inn in January of 2020. Four years later, the two would play together again, and the end result is this fine new album, Live At The Legion. 

This impressive recording finds two great pickers having fun with Doc Watson, Norman Blake, and Tony Rice-connected gems like “Salt Creek,” “Big Sandy River,” “Groundhog,” and “Way Downtown,” as well as treats like “Mary Of The Wild Moor” and “Give The Fiddler A Dram.” 

In many ways, I believe this album will grow in importance as the decades pass, similar to the old jazz albums of 50 to 100 years ago that paired together the best musicians of that era. Yet, at the same time, Rice, Watson, and others are remembered openly on this recording in front of new fans of all stripes as well. 

More information can be found at bryansutton.com and billystrings.com.