When banjo extraordinaire tony trischka opened his mail one afternoon during the height of the covid lockdown, he certainly wasn’t expecting to get a visit from his old pal, the late great earl scruggs. Of course, it wasn’t earl at the door, but a mysterious thumb drive full of rare recordings of scruggs jamming with john hartford, mostly taken from private gatherings at earl’s house during the 80s and 90s. Naturally, trischka began pouring over the more than 200 songs, transcribing the all-new solos, tones, and tricks from the man he’d been studying for over half a century. Inspired, he featured a number of these pieces as part of an overview of earl’s 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 trischka agreed there should be an album of this unique material.

Naturally, trischka couldn’t wait to get his friends and colleagues together to flesh out this new material in the studio, and it wasn’t long before earl jam: a tribute to earl scruggs—a brand-new album to be released june 7 via down the road—came to be. “whether or not you’re a banjo player, if you play bluegrass, you’re influenced by earl. So it was easy to get world-class players on board,” says trischka. Names like stuart duncan, ronnie mccoury, and darol anger fill the album liner notes next to those of billy strings, molly tuttle, brittany haas, dominick leslie, and bronwyn keith-hynes, creating a cross-generational, genre-spanning band of, let’s face it, a heaping of the best pickers alive today.