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Bluegrass has a lot of kin down south where it was born. Traditional music styles like folk (both American and Celtic), country, jazz and blues all intermingled and influenced one another. Of course, blues is the one that most people associate Eric Clapton with. But make no mistake: When you hear him gently chugging-along on tunes like "Lay Down Sally" or Robert Johnson's "Crossroads", you know there's more going on there than just blues. Eric even invites hot bluegrass players to play his Crossroads Guitar Festival every year, so the man knows good pickin' when he hears it! Luckily for us, with so much of his work rooted in the American blues tradition, we found that a lot of our favorites lent themselves beautifully to our good old-fashioned bluegrass treatment. Slowhand? Just call us Fasthand!

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Few contemporary artists can be considered a lifelong student of the America song tradition in quite the same way as Bob Dylan. He's truly embraced it all — from country, blues, bluegrass and folk… to gospel, rockabilly, rock… even jazz. But fewer still can count themselves among those who've been asked to record with bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley (Dylan is quoted as saying that their duet on "The Lonesome River" was "the highlight of my career") or had none other than bluegrass champions Flatt & Scruggs record over a dozen of your songs! So it's no surprise that some of the finest works in the Dylan canon, including those contained here, adapt so well to the bluegrass form. Another side of Bob Dylan, indeed. Enjoy!

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As a boy growing up in Canada, Neil Young would tune into American radio stations playing country, rock and roll, doo-wop, rockabilly. While he's explored numerous other musical styles throughout his career, he's always been drawn back to these traditional sounds he first fell in love with. Anyone who's ever heard that cantering mandolin on "Old Man", or listened closely to his unique picking style will recognize that bluegrass has always been just another part of that equation. So kick back and enjoy, as our gang of top Nashville pickers deliver some of Neil's finest songs in the bluegrass tradition.

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The Grass Series is a nifty CD collection that blends different popular artists and musical styles from the past few decades with bluegrass music. Everyone will enjoy this exceptionally produced Grass Series performed with authentic bluegrass instruments by some of Nashville's top musicians. ZeppelinGrass includes 12 Led Zeppelin songs performed in the bluegrass style.

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Selecting our favorite song tracks from the Grass Series for this compilation turned out to be a most difficult task for us. There were simply too many great tracks to choose from. Every song in the series is unique, top notch and delicious. The ingredients for our songs are hand picked and carefully selected from the finest quality organic resources available. We then take those ingredients and, with the greatest of skill and care, we chop, slice, dice, marinade, sauté and mix them in very precise proportions and combinations. They are then served up with a spicy gravy and colorful garnish. Each serving is guaranteed to delight and surprise your musical palate. Whether you like the finest gourmet cuisine or a down and dirty Texas-style BBQ we're darn sure you'll enjoy sinking your chops into these finger-thumping, toe-tapping tunes. We just hope that you enjoy listening to these here songs as much as we enjoyed creating them.
— Sir Howard Ding (President of the Moo Chair Society)

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Gospel and bluegrass as we now know them both came to exist around the same time, in the era of the Great Depression. Their respective roots, of course, date farther back in American history, via centuries old "Negro spirituals" and the early folk music traditions that trickled down from the mountains of Appalachia. Despite the obvious racial divide, an eventual crossover was inevitable, seeing as how the two forms were, quite literally, neighbors. But not just in geographic terms. Both, in essence, were the music of the American south's poor, downtrodden and disaffected. Bluegrass might sound like a party but it cloaked an ongoing obsession with such themes as pathos and death. Gospel, meanwhile, for all its perceived weightiness, had but one main concern: delivering uplift and hope. How fitting, then, to tether a selection of classic gospel staples to the natural ebullience of bluegrass, and let fly! Let us now rejoice. — Mac Randall

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One has to wonder how the Grateful Dead spent an entire career getting pigeonholed as psychedelic hippies when you consider the extraordinary range of musical styles they embraced. On album, as in their legendary live sets, they explored everything from modern jazz to world music, and were never shy about their love for traditional American roots music, either — blues, country, folk and, most certainly, bluegrass — a fact exemplified as much by their choice of covers down the years as by the originals featured here. As early as 1970's American Beauty you can hear mandolin virtuoso David Grisman featuring on the Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter classics "Ripple" and "Friend of the Devil" (both included here). Garcia himself, meanwhile, was as accomplished on banjo and pedal steel as he was the guitar (to wit, his involvement with bluegrass offshoot band, Old And In The Way), and that familiar "picking" style can be heard throughout his lead playing with the Dead. But all this bluegrass influence should not come as a surprise to anyone. Lest we forget, before the acid kicked in this was a group that began life as the banjo-pickin', tub-thumpin' outfit Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. — Mac Randall

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Johnny Cash's musical roots are every bit the roots of modern (post-1940) country music itself. Just as country formed out of various elements of folk, gospel, hillbilly music and old-time bluegrass, so did the Man in Black. From his earliest, rockabilly-tinged single, "Hey Porter" (the song that convinced Sam Phillips to sign Cash to Sun Records) to subsequent classics like "I'm Gonna Sit On My Porch and Pick My Guitar" (also included here) or the oft-covered "Big River", the influence of bluegrass on the man is obvious. It's also telling that, barely a year on from that debut, when afforded the opportunity to add instrumentation to his spare trio for the first time, he immediately opted for pedal steel and fiddle (along with piano and drums). Of course Cash also went on to cover Bill Monroe's bluegrass staple, "Orange Blossom Special", and would have had little trouble relating to the music's dark, often-death-obsessed themes (witness "Streets of Laredo"). But as country music continued to evolve, via honky-tonk, big hats, and even rock/pop, Cash could still be heard opting on occasion for the slightly harder, chugging pace inherent in bluegrass music over more languid country rhythms, old-school to the very end. — Mac Randall

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Before the so-called "father of bluegrass", Bill Monroe, introduced a sense of discipline and musicianship to the form, this was a music typically played with riotous, passionate — and usually drunken — abandon by the folks who brought it down from the hills. These "hillbillies" (as they were called) would have felt right at home with the guys in Aerosmith, who approached their music with much the same spirit — especially in the early half of their career. And when the bad boys from Boston (or, more accurately, New Hampshire) would emulate the sound and feel of a locomotive chugging along a pace of its own choosing — one, it should be noted, that usually kept-a-rollin' all night long — it reflected a rhythmic affinity with bluegrass, as well. While their rock-meets-R&B foundation, embodied by Joe Perry's dirty guitar licks, owes as much to the blues of Robert Johnson ("Sweet Emotion") as it does the funk of James Brown ("Walk This Way"), it is still roots music — albeit roots music that Aerosmith liked to play turned up to 11. Here, however, we get to consider their compositions with slightly less distortion and perhaps more lucid arrangements — but certainly no less vigor. — Mac Randall

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Remember the first time you heard "Oh Susannah" or "You Are My Sunshine" or "Home on the Range"? If you're like most of us, you probably don't, because those melodies and words have been a part of your life since early childhood. This may also explain why they, and many others like them, are often thought of today as children's songs. Easy to learn, fun to sing along with, they're tailor-made for young audiences, and so they're handed down from one generation to the next, becoming more and more embedded in this country's cultural DNA. In short, they're great American songs. As presented here in one of America's richest musical styles — bluegrass — they seem unlikely to lose their greatness anytime soon. Time to pass them on to your next of kin. — Mac Randall

[SYN-043]
Somewhere along the line that led from driving a truck to cultural iconhood, Elvis Presley acquired the title "King of Rock 'n' Roll." But when he was first cutting records at Memphis' Sun Studios in the mid-1950s, the music he made was called "hillbilly." Even a cursory listen to, say, "Blue Moon of Kentucky" or "I'm Left, You're Right, She's Gone" reveals Elvis' deep country roots. And so it seems pretty likely that the King himself would have gotten a big kick out of these bluegrass-style renderings of some of his greatest hits. He'd have been doubly tickled that legendary vocal group the Jordanaires are here too, reprising the role they played on the original takes of Presley classics like "Teddy Bear" and "Don't Be Cruel." — Mac Randall

[SYN-042]
You'd have to be hard-pressed to call James Taylor a country boy. Yes, he did spend several formative years in North Carolina, but he's a lot better associated with New England locales. Martha's Vineyard, say. Or Milton Academy. Or McLean Hospital. And yet songs like "Fire and Rain," "Carolina in My Mind" and "Sweet Baby James" have a plain-spoken, down-to-earth quality that doesn't correspond to any stuck-up Yankee blueblood caricatures. It's a quality that's also well suited to country music - or, for that matter, country interpretation. Which brings us to what we have here: 12 Taylor classics retooled in fine bluegrass style by a crack team of Nashville pros. A nifty idea, and one that allows bassist Charlie Chadwick, guitarist Jerry Cortez and their colleagues to shower the people with down-home picking. — Mac Randall

[SYN-041]
Granted, the songs of Simon & Garfunkel ain't exactly country. What could be more urban than singing about the New York Times, the Central Park Zoo, and the 59th Street Bridge? All the same, the rural background of Paul Simon's songwriting style is undeniable. In the early '60s, he and Art Garfunkel soaked up the folk balladry of the British Isles. Their arrangements of traditional tunes ("Scarborough Fair," "Peggy-O") clearly show that influence; so do Simon originals like "April Come She Will" and "Leaves that Are Green." Bluegrass emerged from the same Celtic musical wellspring, of course, even though it comes to us by way of Appalachia rather than Queens. This album, brought to you by some of Nashville's top sessioneers, just makes that essential connection a little easier to hear. — Mac Randall

[SYN-040]
Grass and Bob Marley are often mentioned in the same sentence, but the grass being referred to isn't usually of the blue variety. Jah only knows what the bard of Trenchtown would think about a bunch of country pickers turning his ghetto anthems into mountain music. Yet one suspects that he'd get a kick out of it, and that he'd pick up on the traits that reggae and country have in common. At their best, both styles are steeped in spirituality, and both aim to uplift the lonely, the poor and the disenfranchised. "One Love" and "Redemption Song" could pass for classic hymns; "Get Up, Stand Up" and "I Shot the Sheriff" could easily be age-old folk songs. That's just the kind of material that bluegrass musicians love to dig into, and dig in they do. — Mac Randall

[SYN-039]
Traditional folk songs are the root of bluegrass. After all, it's a lot easier to start picking when you're resting on the solid ground of a tried-and-true melody - audiences tend to pay more attention that way. They certainly paid attention in 2000, when the soundtrack album accompanying Joel and Ethan Coen's movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? became an unexpected smash hit, bringing millions of listeners up to speed on the pleasures of both traditional folk songs and bluegrass. The leitmotif of that soundtrack, "Man of Constant Sorrow," can be found on this disc, along with many other standards of the genre like "Wildwood Flower," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Orange Blossom Special," and "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," all played by Nashville session veterans who know a thing or two about roots. — Mac Randall

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