CMT: Is the body made of metal? Is that to get a more twangy sound out of the instrument?

SB: Yeah. The National Instrument Company made instruments out of metal back in the twenties and thirties. I was fortunate enough to get my hands on one of these things back in the seventies. I was just looking for a different thing that you could do with mandolin knowledge and apply that to different kinds of playing. I play totally different on the slide mandolin than I would playing with my fingers on my good old wooden Gibson F-5.

CMT: You mentioned recording and playing as a sideman on other people’s recordings. It seems like as a solo recording artist you have eight or so albums. There is a deeper history of you playing on other people’s work, though. How’d that come about?

SB: Over the last forty years, I’ve been fortunate. I’ve been called to come play at recording sessions. with other people. Of course, I only make a record every couple of years. But before that I was a part of thirteen albums with the New Grass Revival Band. I was just always in a band until I started my solo trip. Even with that, we had New Grass Revival for eighteen years and made a lot of records. When that band stopped in 1990, I went to work for Emmylou Harris for five years.  We made one record – Live at the Ryman, which won a Grammy in the Country Vocal Group category.

As soon as that ended, I played for a year with Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Out of that we recorded a live album called Live Art. That one won a Grammy as well. Over the years, I have gone on the road as a side man with Lyle Lovett. And that has been a lot of fun. I’ve been on his last four or five records. Really, your musical friendships kind of lend themselves to further collaboration when it works out well.

Of course, me and my band have been recording for the last thirteen years now. So, you get the opportunities to work and I have been fortunate enough to play on a lot of people’s records.

Talking with Sam Bush on the phone was at once a history lesson and a rather easy thing to do. It’s not too surprising that while he remains one of the better known bluegrass players in the world, Bush has been able to retain a sense of self that doesn’t get into rock star territory. Of course, if you get the chance to see him on one of this aforementioned festival stages this coming summer, he might resemble a Keith Richards. Bush has become known as a rather enlivened player, jumping around, making faces at his own solos as he drifts in and out of awareness that people are paying attention to every note that comes out of his almost eight year old instrument. That, though, is what keeps fans coming back every summer.