There is something there in the notes and words of the Farewell Drifters music; there is something genuine that feels unfettered by the hype of fame and the fantasy trappings of the music industry. There is something there, unspoken, that invokes a sense of bearing witness to an unforgettable moment. Not to say that any of those afore mentioned musicians are guilty of the excesses of the industry, I just don’t get to say, ‘I knew them when…”.

The musicians that are today the Farewell Drifters –  Josh and Clayton Britt, Zach Bevill, Dean Marold, and Christian Sedelmyer – have developed a sound and style that clearly puts them in the forefront of the musical movement called New Grass. Once again South Central Kentucky has grown two of these innovating musicians, Josh and Clayton Britt.

Expecting to meet and talk to all five young men when I entered the 5 Spot in Nashville, there was only a shy looking youngster who would have looked more at home combing through issues at a comic store. I asked, extending my hand, “Josh?” and was greeted with a huge smile and the return of my handshake. A few minutes later I asked after the rest of the Farewell Drifters and was looking about the club. “Have you been elected spokesmen?” I ventured. . He responded with a light laugh and said, “I wasn’t elected. This is my thing. I handle all the stuff like this.” Here was my first confirmation that the Farewell Drifters don’t really follow the same path as most bands. Usually the ‘front man’ is also the ‘mouth piece’. 

Josh Britt and his ‘little’ brother Clayton are the heart of the Farewell Drifters. Standing side by side on stage later that night, I thought of the phrase, ‘twins of different mothers’, and yet they are obviously bonded by brotherhood and their love of music. In, like a heart, they function in a rhythm that pulls in and pushes out again and again. Josh Britt on stage is chatty to the audience, constantly looking about, moving about in response to the song being played and all that is almost always accompanied by a huge smile. Watching Clayton Britt on stage is like seeing a young George Harrison from say 1964. Clayton is intense and focused and seemingly unaware of the audience beyond the edges of the stage. Again like a trail marker for me to find my way, was Zach Bevill saying in the opening minutes of their performance at the 5 Spot, “Hey could you adjust the lead guitar. Clayton is playing the notes.” He didn’t say, “I can’t hear the lead guitar.” He said, “Clayton is playing the notes.” That simple statement said volumes about the relationship these young men have with each other and the respect they give each other.

Maybe it is ‘the small town values’— mentioned time and time again in their press notes—that Josh and Clayton bring to the band, having been raised in small town Franklin, Kentucky. I’ll choose the influences of musical and cultural diversity they’ve experienced from their supportive family. These things seemed to have given them an unshakeable foundation. I asked Josh why he chose Western Kentucky University instead of some other school and what he said made me snort in laughter, “Bowling Green was the big town to me then.” I queried back, “Not the really big one 60 miles south?” He kind of scrunched his brow, “No I don’t remember really thinking of Nashville then.” I asked what his major was while he was at WKU. Was he a music major or literature or what? Once again he laughed lightly and spoke of his family. “I come from a musical family. Four generations of traveling musicians. They played mostly gospel and folk. My Dad played rock. His band opened for the Kentucky Headhunters. But I wasn’t really into it all as a kid. I was the weird one wanting to read all the time and wanting something other than to be musician. I switched around a lot. No I wasn’t music major.” “You were the rebel then?” “Yeah…” and I had to laugh at the thought that this soft spoken young man was a rebel.

I told him I had seen the story on YouTube about the loud guitar player in the dorm—Poland Hall for the curious—and we talked about Josh handing out instruments to the other guys on the floor and the jam sessions that lead he and Clayton to wanting something more, something more serious. Not quite done with their education, he and Clayton moved to an apartment off Fairview Avenue in Bowling Green, KY. I asked when they started playing out. “We never really did.” Josh put forth with a little quirk in his voice. “We picked up all these couches that people had thrown out and lined our apartment walls with them. We would put on these shows in our apartment. There would be thirty or forty people crammed in there. It was a small apartment. Just a one bedroom. We slept on the couches. We found this construction site that had discarded all these cinder blocks and we brought them back to the apartment and made stadium like seating with them.” Affirming that has not been a normal path that the Britt Brothers wandered along.

Curious to know if Josh and Clayton had been influenced by the music of New Grass Revival while growing up in Franklin and while at WKU, I put the question to him that simply. When he didn’t answer right away I knew. “Didn’t have a clue did you?” “No! Zach is who turned me on to them.” Josh’s honesty about everything including all that Zach Bevill has taught him and Clayton both is part of the innocence that adds to the Farewell Drifters. Josh never passes up the chance to tell the story of finding Zach walking around Nashville with a guitar. All he and Clayton had been after that day was a guitar player, and like a similar story I’ve heard, not only did they find a guitarist, they found an incredible vocalist and songwriter. The heart of the Farewell Drifters found their soul.

Zach Bevill’s voice haunted my thoughts for weeks. I kept thinking who does he sound like and I could never quite put my finger on it. I read through press snippets constantly comparing him to Chris Thile. Yeah, I thought but there is something else and then totally dismissed the comparison. I’ve heard Chris Thile sing acappella in Murray State’s Conservatory and I have the greatest admiration for him, but Zach Bevill has a component to his voice that Thile’s is lacking. Spending countless hours of listening to countless male vocalists later, I heard what it was – it’s in the wanting and wanting keeps us moving forward. If you braided the whimsical cynical tones of Pat Monahan with the youthful intrigue of Jamie Cullum and the spiritual consciousness of Bebo Norman you would have the substance that is the difference between Zach Bevill’s voice and Chris Thile’s voice. It can be heard in the voice Bevill sings with and that of a maturing songwriter.

As for the voice of Josh Britt, I would say with a smile and a joyful little dance that he is medley of Amos Lee, Jackson Browne, Conor Oberst, and undeniably Sam Bush. If Sam Bush doesn’t see himself in this silver vessel of energy, then that child hasn’t been born yet.

Talking about how the band picked up Dean Marold as their stand up bass player, Josh never expands into what ‘their standards’ or ‘expectations’ were, he just talked about how they all felt like Dean was the right choice and not just for his musical skills but for also who he was. They felt like he would fit them. After losing their fiddle player, Christian Sedelmyer was suggested as a replacement. Christian played some shows with them, and the story is told pretty much the same. And like having a solid rhythm section is the key to a great rock band, Christian and Dean are the bones and sinew of the Farewell Drifters. Their skill allows for the fluid grace that is the sound of the Farewell Drifters.

If forced to use just one word to describe the relationship between these five musicians it is without question the word harmony. There is a balance between them on and off stage. They are grounded and even wholesome. They showed up to play the 5 Spot in Nashville, which is now one the hippest places to play in Nashville, wearing jeans, t-shirts, loafers, un-tucked western shirts, and out of style square ties. Attire that would be best described as country grudge. Their story of how it all came to be seems to be a combination of Big Head Todd and the Monsters, New Grass Revival, the Beach Boys and the Fray.

Talking to Josh about songwriting, I asked who the melody man was and who the lyrics man was. He said they neither one of them was more one thing than the other. So I asked which one of you seems more topical and which of you is the reflective one. He laughed and acted bashful, and so I offered up an example off their first record Sweet Summer Breeze. “My favorite off there is ‘Expecting Rain’. There are some serious layers to those lyrics. Who wrote those?” “Thanks. That’s mine. I think Dylan is my biggest influence. Maybe along with everything I’ve read. Zach and I have listened to a lot of Paul Simon and the Beach Boys.” And I thought the best ear in the business according to Bob Dylan was Brian Wilson. “I hear the Byrds in there too.” I added. “Yeah all those guys are great. So yeah I guess my dad influences me too, because he’s into that music.”

The sound check for the opening band grew loud and we retreated outside and one by one I met and chatted with the rest of the band. I watched and observed their interaction with each other, silently delighted. I asked about their new record soon to be released June 8th called Yellow Tag Mondays. I should have known the direction of the answer but still when Josh said it came from a thrift store they all know, I still giggled. I thought about Curtis Burch talking about how they(New Grass Revival) all had one time lived hand to mouth and how I had to explain to someone what ‘curbside shopping’ meant. Josh said, “I know it’s crazy. We looked around our houses and nearly everything is from this one thrift store and they have what they call ‘Yellow Tag’ Mondays. We just felt like it fit.”

A little time later the Farewell Drifters took the stage. Looking about the audience seemed a little restless and very talkative. As each band member tuned and tweaked their instrument and played a little jig, I heard someone yell out, “Play some rock”. Yet when they opened with “Windy City Rails” that heckler was among the first to fall silent. Most of what they played Thursday night was off their new record with a few from the first record.  Both CDs are engineered and coproduced by Ben Surratt, husband of another featured artist at the upcoming International Newgrass Festival, Missy Raines.

When I had asked Josh about a single off Yellow Tag Mondays he said that’s not really what their music is about—targeting just one audience. They wanted to play to every audience. But after hearing “Heart of a Slave” that song would be the one I would chose for rotation. It has all the attributes it needs; a great melody with a good hook which is matched by the lyrics. It has energy and depth and can be interpreted multiple directions. Another song, ‘The River Song’, is the best example that I’ve heard so far that showcases the songwriting talents of both Zach and Josh. The melody is the movement of a fickle river and the words are the story of a personal journey. The two are woven together to form a wonderful piece of music.

Other things were talked about like the fantastical chances of not one priceless instrument being given to them but two and within weeks of each other. Stories about Christian’s manic drive to play all the time. The tales of the repeated method of bringing the audience to them when Josh had moved into Zach’s dorm room at Belmont University, and they had done nearly the same thing that Josh and Clayton had done in Bowling Green. Comments about their mutual friend and fellow musician, Travis Burch (not related to Curtis). Jokes about secondary jobs, where their homes are, and other daily events. They sipped coffee or maybe it was tea. They all seemed humble, down to earth young men that have an invisible bond to one and other.

On stage the Farewell Drifters become something singular. They express and emit a joy that cannot be missed. I stood there watching wandering if this is what it felt like in the 1970’s to hear New Grass Revival play something extraordinarily genuine and real and so heart felt by these artists that you had to listen.

Days later when they played at Great Escape Records for Record Store Day, I took my skeptical 12 year old, made her tote her ‘beater’ classical guitar and bought a new Scripto for Clayton Britt to sign his name on her guitar. I scribbled notes to myself and she tried to read at first, then as I thought, Clayton’s playing caught her attention. Understanding far more the skill needed than I, she watched his fingers move and make the music. Stepping back and leaning against me she soon enough noticed the other four. I grinned knowing that she would be influenced by them as they have unknowingly been influenced by the New Grass Revival and have become part of the very movement that bares their predecessor’s name. The Farewell Drifters are among the leaders for the next generation in this unfolding epic we call American Music. 

The Farewell Drifters will be playing Arts on Main in Scottsville on August 14th and of course the International NewGrass Festival on August 20th. They have many other dates this summer in KY and TN.

You can learn more about the Farewell Drifters from their website thefarewelldrifters.com or their pages on Facebook and MySpace.

About the author: Franne J. has lived in 5 major cities and 7 states, but has always loved this area and considered Bowling Green home. She’s been a part of and writing about the local art and music scene, off and on, since the mid-90’s. She recently met the love of her life, a ship’s captain, who has encouraged her to write again. Find her on Facebook.