Carter & Cleveland
There’s more to harmony than simply playing the right notes. Some musicians have that special something, hard to name but impossible to overlook. Jason Carter and Michael Cleveland’s latest project Carter and Cleveland—their first collaboration of its kind—is Exhibit A.
The friendship between the two fiddlers began back in their teens. When Cleveland was about thirteen, he was part of The Young Acoustic All-Stars, a group of young musicians put together by Pete Wernick to play at the IBMA Awards show, held in Owensboro, Kentucky, that year. He met Carter when he and the young musicians were invited to open for the Del McCoury Band at a show in Benton, Kentucky. “After I saw Del play that night,” Cleveland says, “I became an immediate Del McCoury fan and, to this day, I will go see his band any time. It doesn’t matter how many times I see Del McCoury; it’s almost like the first time.” Earlier, he said, a friend had given Cleveland a tape of the Goins Brothers playing live and told him, “Man, you’ve got to hear this guy playing the fiddle; he’s into Benny Martin and all the good fiddle players.” That fiddler was Jason Carter, who played with the Goins Brothers for about six months before joining the Del McCoury Band.
When they met that day in Kentucky, Cleveland says, he was impressed with Carter’s playing: “He was one of the fiddle players I wanted to sound like someday, so we kept in touch.” Beginning around 2010, Cleveland and his band Flamekeeper often ran into Carter at festivals playing with Del’s band or the Traveling McCourys. Jason would invite him to play with the band, he said. “We would get up on stage and play these tunes with no time to rehearse beforehand. We just got up there and did it, and it worked.”
Early listeners to the tracks on this new project refer to Carter and Cleveland’s “brother fiddle synergy” or “perfect synchronicity.” Discussing their unique dynamics, the pair noted that sometimes when two fiddle players or even two singers get together who haven’t played together, it doesn’t work or, Cleveland said, “It’s just good enough. If you’re in the middle of a big jam and somebody calls for twin fiddles, but you don’t know how each other plays, it’s probably going to be close. But Jason and I listen to the same music, and our approach to fiddle playing was close enough to the same that we could get up and play, and it just worked. I remember saying one time, ‘Can you imagine what this would be like if we actually have a chance to rehearse?’”
Carter added, “We kind of surprised ourselves, didn’t we? Del McCoury had faith in us when he had us come on his show with no rehearsal. He had more faith in us than what we did.” Their stage interaction developed into a genuine friendship. The two kept in touch, talking on the phone about albums they liked. The idea for this album developed as they realized no one had released a twin fiddle album in a while, not since the ones they liked—pairings by Buddy Spicher, Benny Martin, Kenny Baker, Bobby Hicks, and Blaine Sprouse.
They kept saying they would record their own one of these days, but both had different projects going. Carter, in addition to his more than thirty years with Del McCoury band, released his solo album Lowdown Hoedown in 2022. Cleveland was playing and recording with his own band Flamekeeper and had released his Grammy-winning album Loving’ of the Game in 2023. Before the pandemic, they played a couple of sessions and finished one, and a couple during Covid, but they finally got serious about the album project at the beginning of 2024.
For Jason Carter, 2024 was a big year for changes and collaborations. “The first big change that happened,” he said, “was I fell in love and got married.” On October 15, he married award-winning fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes (of Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway.) Their ceremony was held at the Grand Ole Opry. “It was a really amazing day,” Carter said. “She was there, and I had my best man Mike with me, too,” Carter said. They are reportedly only the second couple to marry at the Opry House and, as Cleveland noted, “The first to actually get married and then play the Opry that night.” Best man Cleveland played the mandolin that night, commenting, “They had the fiddle covered.”
The most recent change in Carter’s life was the announcement that after more than thirty years, he was leaving the Del McCoury band to pursue solo projects full-time. Carter noted that after putting out his first record, he had been playing some solo shows and found himself enjoying playing his own music and fronting the show. He also anticipates more opportunities to tour for his own projects, including the collaboration with Cleveland, and he sees another solo album in the future.
Carter said he thought, “Boy, if there’s ever been a time, this is it. I have management and a booking agent. I’ve put my team together. Everything’s in place for this to happen.” He added, “It was a hard decision for me to make. but I thought it was time.” He left the band with their blessing, he says. “I was with the McCourys for about 33 years. That’s been all I’ve known, my only job since I was 19. Those guys have been my family for all this time, and they still feel the same way about me. I’m their biggest fan and, honestly, can’t wait to go watch a show because I love the band so much. We’re definitely still on good terms.” It’s no surprise, then, that Del McCoury and the band joined Jason and Michael on the album, singing lead on “Dreams,” which he wrote. Cleveland sang background harmony on the song as well.
Further evidence of the value of music community relationships that developed over Cleveland and Carter’s combined careers is the extensive list of bluegrass instrumentalists that joined the pair on the album. Instead of handpicking a studio band, they selected songs and then recruited the players suited for the track. For example, the mandolin players on the project include Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, Sierra Hull, Harry Clark, Dominick Leslie, and Casey Campbell.
Cleveland said, “We wanted to have Casey Campbell on ‘Running Late’ because that fiddle tune was written by his father, the great fiddle player Jimmy Campbell. We both thought it would be cool to have Casey play on that song, and he actually kicks it off.”
Carter said they wanted the variety, and Cleveland added that they liked the players to fit the song. He said, “After a while when we would hear a song, thinking about putting the band together, we could hear certain people all over it. I think the band sound on each song makes it. Not only are all these great musicians, but they all lend their signature sound to that song.” They agreed it was “kind of a no-brainer” to have Sam Bush playing on “Give It Away,” one of the first singles released, and “Middle of Middle Tennessee.” Both the latter and “Fiddler Jones” were written by Darrell Scott, who sang harmony on the John Hartford tune, “With a Vamp in the Middle.”
Explaining the decision not to have Scott on his own song, Carter said of “Fiddler Jones,” I’d heard him sing that one, and I wanted ours to be different than his version.” They also included “Arapahoe,” written by David Grier. Carter first heard the song on one of the weekly livestreams by Grier and Leslie, along with Stuart Duncan, Cory Walker, and Dennis Crouch, during the pandemic. Grier suggested the song would be right for twin fiddles.
Other than Carter and Cleveland, the only constant on the album was Walker of East Nash Grass on banjo for all the tracks but the McCoury’s song, on which Rob McCoury played banjo. Initially, one of the biggest challenges—a blessing in disguise—was having too many songs from which to choose. From the beginning they had decided they wanted it to be a fiddle album, but they wanted singing as well. Cleveland noted that even on his instrumental albums, he has included vocals. When they reached out to songwriters they admired, the response was amazing. Tim O’Brien sent another song in addition to “Give It Away,” which they felt was “just as good.” Terry Herd sent “Outrun the Rain,” which went on to be one of the singles released in advance.
“Most of the time,” Cleveland said, “we’re listening to song after song after song, hoping to find something, but all of a sudden, we had all these great songs.”
In addition to bringing in guest instrumentalists, they invited Vince Gill and Jaelee Roberts to sing on “Outrun the Rain.” Jason said, “It was Mike’s idea to have the high baritone, the two over lead stack on the harmonies on that song. We had Vince, and we were trying to figure out who to get to sing. We both like Jaelee’s singing. She came into the studio and just knocked it out of the park.”
For fans who know of Carter only as a fiddler, the album gave him a chance to showcase his strong lead vocal skills. “I’ve sung all my life,” he said. “When I was younger, I sang and played guitar in a band with my dad. Then when I got with Del, my role was to play fiddle, so I gave that up for the longest time.” He added, “I have to give credit to Mike; he started giving me the confidence because he would hire me to sing on his records from time to time. A couple of different times I got to sing lead on his records. When other people heard that, I got to do a couple of other projects.”
He also said that during the pandemic, as he was hanging out with Bronwyn, they would jam every day. “That’s what we did and still do,” he said. “I had songs I had written down for years—a lot of them—and we would sit and jam, and I would sing them.”
Despite the large cast of performers, the pair insists they still consider this a twin fiddle album. They pointed out that while there is a lot of singing on it, and they wanted it to be that way, in all the songs, whether instrumental or vocals, twin fiddles are represented.
Carter and Cleveland—or as Mike suggested, Cleveland and Carter—debuted songs from the album at Nashville’s historic Station Inn on Thursday, February 20, opening with “Give it Away.” Cleveland addressed the sold-out crowd by saying, “We made a record,” before introducing Carter and the stage band: Cody Looper on the banjo, Chris Henry on mandolin, Frank Rische on guitar, before Jason introduced Michael as “the greatest fiddler in the universe.”
The duo mixed in songs from their earlier projects and from their musical heroes with tracks from the new album. They also played “Arapahoe” written by David Grier, whose son Nash, a tiny fiddler in the audience, identified the key of the song, A minor, when asked. Michael quipped, “They get younger and better—it’s so annoying. They sang another Grier-penned song “Paper Angel” from his second solo album Lowdown Hoedown. Jaelee Roberts joined them in the second set for harmony on “Outrun the Rain.”
The pair’s genuine mutual admiration and joy were apparent and contagious throughout the night. After playing and singing Waylon Jennings’ “Lonesome, Ornery, and Mean,” Carter nodded at Cleveland and commented, “It’s hard to sing when you have your favorite fiddle man beside you burning it up.” Then Cleveland added, “Everybody’s figured out what a great singer Jason Carter is,” suggesting he should win male vocalist and fiddle player of the year.
As they closed the evening playing the rousing “With a Vamp in the Middle,” they left bluegrass fans hoping Carter and Cleveland might be followed by a sequel—Cleveland and Carter perhaps—to fan the twin-fiddle flame.
