The Black Opry Revue Inspires at the Station Inn

It’s hard to believe there was a time when there wasn’t a bluegrass community in Nashville, but it exists because the group of pickers who opened the Station Inn in 1974 was determined to build one. One year after the death of J.T. Gray, who ran the venue for four decades, it remains a bluegrass institution. During AmericanaFest on Thursday, the squat building in the Gulch hosted musicians working hard to cultivate their chosen family.

Just after 7 p.m., a light crowd greeted Bruce Molsky, a multi-instrumentalist and Berklee College of Music professor, who joked that you were still able to smoke inside the venue the last time he was there — and he stopped smoking 35 years ago. He took up his fiddle and reeled off hypnotic versions of “Ida Red” and “Bonaparte’s Retreat” as casually as if you’d asked him about the weather. One of his protégés, stellar fiddler Brittany Haas, was in the crowd, and she joined him for a hard-charging duet.

Earlier in the day, New York-born and New Orleans-residing Leyla McCalla joined WNXP’s Jewly Hight and other musicians for a panel discussion on Black roots artists and world-building in their music. McCalla’s newest project Breaking the Thermometer — which is both a stage production and an album — takes a deep dive into the Haitian heritage she treasures. It focuses on the story of Radio Haiti-Inter, a station whose journalists broadcast in Haitian Creole and fought back against the corrupt and autocratic regimes of Francois Duvalier and Jean-Claude Duvalier. The hour of music McCalla and her bandmates presented Thursday at Station Inn was kinetic and funky, and sung almost entirely in Haitian Creole. Though most of us in attendance probably couldn’t speak a word of the language, the emotional impact carried through and was almost overwhelming.

The crowd swelled to near capacity when it was time for The Black Opry Revue, the touring road show Black Opry’s Holly G established in 2021 to foster community for Black and brown roots and country artists. For this occasion, a backing band of trans and nonbinary players had been assembled, with songsmith Jessye DeSilva on keys, Owen Hohenberger on bass and Claire Steele (whose freelance photography work you’ve seen in the Scene on many occasions) on drums.

Leading off the slate of three Black Opry artists was Virginia-born Jett Holden. His rich, country-schooled narrative tunes like “Taxidermy” and “Necromancer” do the opposite of what the commercial country world seems to expect — in that they investigate emotions and circumstances you might not be comfortable talking about — and they’re all the better for it. He was followed by San Antonio’s Nicky Diamonds, whose songs like “Lonesome Rose” draw ingeniously on old-school honky-tonk country, rock ’n’ roll, and pop of the ’60s and ’70s, delivered in his velvety high-register croon. North Carolina’s Nikki Morgan rounded out the set; her catalog is diverse, but time was growing short, so she focused on electrified country-blues barn burners like “I’m Going Home.” 

It was a shame that we didn’t get to hear more from all three players. When she spoke with Scene contributor Brittney McKenna, Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom said she would like to see The Black Opry Revue become a rite of passage for acts on the rise in Nashville. Folks in positions of power ought to listen to her, for many reasons — including the depth and range of the artists onstage Thursday, as well as the crowd’s enthusiasm.

Someone had to follow that; singer-songwriter and old-time showman Willie Watson, a co-founder of Old Crow Medicine Show who struck out on his own circa 2011, was well-prepared for the task. With his recently revamped band — multi-instrumentalist Sam Schmidt, fellow former Old Crow member Ben Gould on bass and superb fiddler Rosie Newton — he stormed through a selection of jug band and prewar blues classics, original songs and some sorta-originals. He explained that he lifted the story in a recent song called “Slim and the Devil” from Sterling A. Brown’s poem “Slim Greer in Hell.” All the players were strong, but Newton deserves a special shout-out for her lively solos and honey-toned accompaniment.

The last set of the night was from high-energy ’grassers Po’ Ramblin’ Boys, who happened to open for Old Crow at Brooklyn Bowl’s 2021 grand opening. They brought up a special guest: Mr. Americana himself, singer-songwriter-guitarist Jim Lauderdale. He sang lead on “Lost in the Lonesome Pines” and his Robert Hunter co-write “Deep Well of Sadness,” both of which he recorded two decades ago with late bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley. Though he just released his 35th album, a country LP called Game Changer, Lauderdale mentioned that he had tracked a few songs with the Po’ Ramblin Boys while they were in town. Evidence continues to mount that shuffling off this mortal coil is the only thing that will slow him down.

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