Andy Leftwich
Photo courtesy of Crossroads Label Group
During the latter part of 2023, four-time Grammy-winning fiddler Andy Leftwich spent several of his nights at churches alongside his wife, Rachel, a talented vocalist and niece of his former boss, Ricky Skaggs. The couple and Leftwich’s award-winning band conveyed the spirit of Christmas with their annual show, “’Tis the Season with Andy Leftwich and Friends.”
The end of 2023 also saw Leftwich’s superb bowing skills on a new single with banjoist Daniel Grindstaff called “Finnland” from Grindstaff’s forthcoming Bonfire Music Group release, Heroes and Friends. Named after his oldest son, Finn, the old-time banjo/fiddle duet kicks off with Leftwich’s flying fiddle fingers in the upbeat tempo number. That’s one more creative notch in a long list of impressive studio credentials for the longtime side musician for Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder. His resume includes laying down tracks in a variety of genres for Taylor Swift, Miranda Lambert, Alan Jackson, Dailey & Vincent, Bela Fleck, Rhonda Vincent, Bruce Hornsby and The Chieftains.
“Being a studio player is one of the greatest joys of my career,” Andy says. “I’ve always wanted to be that guy that everyone calls, but the one thing I’ve learned is that no matter how good you are or how much experience you may have, you’re just not going to please everyone. There are some producers that call you every time, and others that just don’t call at all. You can’t take anything personally and you have to have a willing spirit to try anything.”
Andy loves the challenge of interpreting the song and coming up with a part on the fly. “I usually have a pretty good idea of what I will play as I hear and learn the song for the first time, but when the record button is hit, you never know what will happen,” Andy says. “Sometimes my mistakes have been my favorite things I ever played. It’s always a joy when you see the artist or producer digging what you do. That, to me, is worth it all.”
Satisfying himself, though, is another matter. “I’m most certainly a perfectionist in the studio,” Andy says. “Another challenge for me is to find the balance of wanting to get it as perfect as I can but also keep things moving so you’re not eating up a lot of time on the clock. It all depends on the song but most of the time, I feel that after about the second or third try, I don’t think I’ll get it any better.”
Before Andy ever thought about recording, he was honing his chops performing in a myriad of fiddling contests. A large portion of his latest album, The American Fiddler, captures those young days when Leftwich was coming into his own as a player.
“As the songs started taking shape for this project, I realized that this is nothing more than a result of my up-bringing in Middle Tennessee where I was introduced to so many different styles of fiddling around the contest circuit and the bluegrass festivals I grew up going to,” Andy recalls. “I was always fascinated by the evolution of what we know as American fiddle music passed down from Scottish, Irish and folk heritages. It’s like a certain language, but spoken with different dialects. Bluegrass music has always owed a great deal of gratitude to those old reels, hornpipes and jigs that helped shape the phrases and licks we hear in fiddle music today. My hope is that this entire project would represent how I grew up learning those different styles and how they may have shaped the player that I am today.”
Three of the main fiddlers that helped mold Andy were Mark O’Connor, Stuart Duncan and Bobby Hicks. At age nine, on the very week that Andy learned “Orange Blossom Special” during his music lesson, his dad bought Mark O’Connor’s New Nashville Cats album and played Mark’s version of OBS.
“I was totally hooked!” Leftwich gushed. “Mark became my first influence, and I bought every record he ever put out up to that point. His ability struck a chord with me, and I always have loved his playing.”
A few years later he met Stuart Duncan and shifted his focus from contest fiddling to playing behind a vocalist in a band setting. “Stuart is a magician behind a vocal, and I always try to emulate his approach to fiddling anytime I can,” Leftwich says. “His tone and heart that he plays with are second to none.”
Then, when he joined Ricky Skaggs’s band at 19, he was schooled by Bobby Hicks for two years before Bobby retired from the band. “Bobby wrote the book on bluegrass fiddling and I cherish my times picking his brain backstage and learning from him each night,” Andy remembers.
As he grew in his musicianship, Leftwich turned to Duncan again to understand the fiddle finesse needed for backing vocalists. “It was a pretty good transition learning curve for me. Growing up in the contest circuit where you’re used to playing everything in three minutes to try to impress the judges to learning how little can you play and get by with behind a vocalist. It was quite a challenge just learning where you need to play and where not to play. I asked Stuart Duncan one time. I said, ‘It just seems like every time you play a lick or play something it’s always heard.’ I had done some recording up to that point, and it just seemed like my fiddle was always buried in the mix. He simply said it’s just years of experience of picking your spots and knowing where to play and where not to play. Rather than try to play all over the song you just have to be careful about where you can play, and I heeded his advice and tried to concentrate on not playing all over the place and leaving room for the vocalist. I’ve actually gotten to where I listen a lot to the lyrics and whatever the song is singing about or talking about. If it’s a happy lyric, I’m gonna try to play a happy lick or something. If it’s a sad or mournful subject, then I’ll try to play something low and dark. The fiddle itself is a very vocal instrument. It can really compete with the vocal a lot of times. So you want to try to stay out of the way as much as possible.”
Graduating to Greatness
Right out of high school, Leftwich graduated to a great gig, becoming a side musician for Kentucky Thunder, the band for International Bluegrass Music Hall of Famer Ricky Skaggs. Andy recorded and traveled extensively with the band, but after sixteen years Leftwich felt he was being called in another direction.
“It was definitely the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” Andy says. “I fought it because Ricky is a great boss, he’s obviously the greatest musician on the planet, and it’s a great gig. But at the end of the day when you start feeling this call to be on your own and do your own thing, it’s hard to combat that. I started to pray and ask the Lord that He would make a way for me to transition.”
So, at the end of 2016, he took a leap of faith and said goodbye to his beloved boss. “Ricky was totally a prince about it,” Andy says. “He was my number one fan. He just told me he was rooting for me, and was totally behind me. I was really, really humbled by that. I’ll cherish those memories on the road with Ricky as long as I live. I learned so much from him and the other guys in the band. Every night was just as exciting as the one before it.”
Andy’s departure freed him to become more involved in his church and begin a Christian music ministry with his wife. “I don’t consider myself a preacher or anything, but I definitely feel like we all, as believers, have a ministry, and I just felt like I needed to make myself available for that,” Andy says.
He released Instrumental Hymns in 2014 and in late 2021, he and his wife released In Christ Alone. During this period, he continued to stay busy in the studio. Andy had the best of intentions to complete his third solo album The American Fiddler that he began recording in 2011, but he couldn’t give the album the devotion he felt it needed. Finally, in 2022, Andy was ready to let listeners hear it.
Although Andy is best known for his masterful fiddle playing in bluegrass, this album showcases his prowess to compose and arrange fiddle music in multiple genres. “I’ve always loved the art of arranging songs,” he says. “You can take a simple melody but when backed with a creative arrangement, it can become very moving. I typically get bored pretty quick when it’s only solos. There should always be something to keep the the listener’s attention. Whether it’s a lick, or a phrase, or a simple unison part played by several instruments, there are so many things you can do. That’s the joy of creating a great arrangement. There are no rules. Although, a simple melody can be very powerful sometimes too. Béla Fleck has always been a huge inspiration to me when it comes to arranging songs. You never know what’s coming and his melodies are so genius.”
The melodies for Andy’s artistry flow following his morning devotions. “I try to spend most of my mornings in prayer and bible reading, and it really seems to clear my mind and certain melodies will come flowing out,” Andy says. “I always keep my voice recorder on my phone handy because they will slip by if I’m not ready to receive them when they come my way.”
Leftwich brought together an all-star cast of musicians on the album including Byron House and Mark Schatz on bass; Cody Kilby, Brian Sutton and Fionán De Barra, guitar; Rob Ickes, dobro; Sierra Hull, mandolin; Scott Vestal, Matt Menefee and Russ Carson, banjo; and Jeff Taylor, accordion. “This project has been a joy to record simply because of the players that played with me,” Andy says. “Just when I’m unsure about a song I’ve written, I hear those guys play it and then I love it. There is a lot of pressure in the studio, but I work very hard at preparation before we ever go in. If I’m prepared, then it’s simply a joy to record. When I don’t get the prep time I like, it gets pretty stressful.”
Skaggs joined him on the title cut, a song that Andy says exemplifies what the whole project is about. “Ricky and I share the same love for Irish music, and most of the songs he and I write will usually have an Irish feel to them,” Andy says. “This melody came to me late one night in my studio, and it reminded me so much of the wonderful tunes that he has written over the years. We were sitting around the Thanksgiving table last year, and so I played him a demo of the song I had recorded and he absolutely loved it.”
The fiddling ace also dug into the past from his Kentucky Thunder days with a bluegrass standard the band had recorded live during one of their shows. “‘Sally Goodin’’ is one of my favorite cuts on the record,” Leftwich admits. “We had been playing that song each night on the road that summer, and it kept feeling better and better each night. We had one of our favorite shows coming up on the calendar, and so I couldn’t resist asking the boys if they would be up for recording this one live with me that night. I think we captured an exciting take of one of the most famous fiddle tunes of all time. It was recorded in an undisclosed location due to the rights of the venue but let’s just say it’s a very familiar place.”
“Made In France” is probably the most different song on the project. Andy learned it from Rob Ickes who introduced him to the music of Biréli Lagrène, a French jazz guitarist. “We recorded it on our first Three Ring Circle record, and it’s been a favorite of mine ever since. This melody is so genius! I love the way it flows together so beautifully, and it stretched my thinking so much. It’s totally outside the box of bluegrass, but it still has the same approach to free form soloing but with different scales and phrasing. It’s a blast to play.”
Sierra Hull, who Leftwich calls a “once-in-a-generation-type player,” joined him on “Big Mon.” “I was planning on recording that song if we had any time left over at the end of the day, and since I already had Sierra in the studio with me, I just asked her if she would be game to playing with me on it. We came up with a little bit of an arrangement right there on the spot and then went for it! It’s one of the most special moments for me on the entire project.”
Longtime bandmate Cody Kilby and Leftwich go way back musically. “I believe we were nine or ten when we first met. We competed together on the contest circuit as kids, and I was always in awe of his ability. I would have never dreamed that we would travel together for fourteen years playing for Ricky Skaggs. We have come a long way together, and I’m so grateful for the music we have made over the years. Playing music with Cody is just something that has always felt right to me. There are certain musicians that make you feel right at home but push you at the same time, and Cody has always been that for me.”
The leap of faith Leftwich made in his career has proved to be a solid move, and he says his latest CD is the culmination of the last fifteen years of his life and what he has learned from other musicians. “I love the thought of American fiddle music being presented in a way that embodies all those other elements. I’ve never considered myself a traditional bluegrass fiddle player. I grew up playing bluegrass, I love bluegrass and I try to play it right. But I’ve always considered myself as a melting pot of all those different styles. It’s not just one specific fiddle player that I am. I hope all those elements come together and produce some good music that folks will enjoy.”
