Tony Trischka playing Earl Scruggs with today’s leading bluegrass and old-time stars makes Earl Jam a treat! Guests include Sam Bush, Vince Gill, Del McCoury, Billy Strings, and Molly Tuttle.
One afternoon during the height of COVID, Tony Trischka opened a small package with a thumb drive. It contained some extremely rare recordings of Earl Scruggs and John Hartford jamming, mostly taken from private gatherings at Scruggs' house during the 1980s and '90s – over 200 songs and tunes - and his mind was blown! He’d been studying Scruggs for over 60 years, but now he heard exciting new information in these solos, chock full of twists, turns and exciting revelations. Trishka immediately began transcribing and learning his favorites. Inspired, he featured a number of these pieces as part of an overview of Scruggs' career, premiering the concept at the venerable Joe's Pub in New York City.
When Down The Road’s Ken Irwin heard a recording of the show, he and Tony agreed there should be an album of this unique material. Months later, we have that album recorded with guest vocalists Sam Bush, Dudley Connell, Michael Daves, Sierra Ferrell, the Gibson Brothers, Vince Gill, Del McCoury, Bruce Molsky, Billy Strings, and Molly Tuttle.
Though the back-up Tony plays on Earl Jam is his own, inspired by Scruggs, every solo is note-for-note Earl’s, from those jams. Tony felt that these tapes might never see the light of day, so he recorded this album in hopes that a host of others could experience the same excitement he felt on hearing Earl’s “new” music. Ultimately, Tony’s recreations of Scruggs’s solos reflect the same kind of intensive woodshedding that Glenn Gould did with Bach’s published scores.