Photo by Tim Dwenger
One of the big stories on the Colorado Bluegrass scene over the last year has been Big Richard. The fabulously talented women who make up this four piece band have been making waves in a largely male dominated scene and it’s been awesome to watch. They came together for a one-off show at the McAwesome Festival in Castle Rock and there’s been no looking back since. We were fortunate enough to catch their first gig at the Dillon Amphitheater and were thrilled to catch up with Cello player Joy Adams for a chat as they prepped for not only their second appearance at WinterWonderGrass but also a trip to the studio to record their debut album. Watch out for Big Richard, these women are going to move mountains!
Joy Adams: I’m so stoked to be back at WinterWondergrass, dude. It’s such a great festival. I love that event. It’s just Scotty’s done something really special up there.
Listen Here Denver!: So when you played last year, were you guys in one of the tents?
Joy Adams: Yeah, we were in one of the tents, and we also played up at the lodge for a late night set, which was rowdy and cold and really fun.
Listen Here Denver!: Oh, that’s right.
Joy Adams: But yeah, we were on the tent. We never made it to the main stage last year, WinterWondergrass was basically the first bigger festival that booked us. I think Bonnie reached out to Scotty and said, ‘we’ve got this new project, you know, all of us from other groups, but here we are together. Would you check it out and would you consider giving us a set?’ And he did, kind of on a leap of faith, I think. I don’t think he heard us at all. The band has been around for a year and a half now, so still pretty new. And it was such a big dose of confidence for us, for Scotty to believe in us and bring us on board for that festival. We played our set in the tent and side stage and Annabel Lukins, who’s a lovely friend of ours now, but she’s really well connected with Cloud Nine, so she heard us and kind of immediately got the ball rolling and got us booked at Strings and Sol. When we were able to announce Strings and Sol, suddenly people were taking another look at us. So, as the dominoes fall, WinterWondergrass was a big one for us last year that helped us so much.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s awesome. Yeah. And I know you all are doing a late night set again. Is it back up at the lodge?
Joy Adams: Yeah, it’s back up at the lodge, which we’re stoked about. It’s a really good party up there. You kind of freeze your butt off in the gondola to get there.
Listen Here Denver!: Yeah, but that’s half the fun of it.
Joy Adams: Yeah, totally. And then party on down. We’re doing that and we’re doing another set that’s like the welcome on Thursday.
Listen Here Denver!: Oh, that’s right.
Joy Adams: It’s a Dinner that’s been sold out for a little bit now. And then we have a main stage set on Sunday.
Listen Here Denver!: Awesome. Fantastic. Well, I’m definitely looking forward to that. I got to see you all in Dillon last summer. That was my first experience checking out you all. And it was wild to watch the crowd. It was kind of reserved at the beginning. Everybody was sitting up top and by the end the whole pit was full and everybody was cheering for an encore.
Joy Adams: It’s been a while to watch from stage. I can’t really wrap my head around it. We just came off a tour. We toured New Mexico and Colorado, and we’re going to towns where I don’t know anybody and somehow the shows are selling out out. With the exception of one night, the whole tour was sold out.
Listen Here Denver!: Congratulations. That’s awesome.
Joy Adams: It’s just wild for us meeting people who had either been to one of our shows or just found us online because someone shared something and they’ve been amped about that show for months and we had no idea. It’s just crazy.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s great. I read in another interview, and I think you said it, that this wave you’ve been riding has been kind of overwhelming at times.
Joy Adams: Yeah, totally.
Listen Here Denver!: But you’ve been involved with some really high profile projects over the years.
Joy Adams: Yeah. None of us are strangers to a big stage and a large crowd. We’ve all toured extensively. I had a little run with Nathaniel Rateliff before the Pandemic and got to play on the Steven Colbert Show, played six nights at Red Rocks. I’ve been around the block there, but nothing has felt like this kind of energy. The fans are amazing. They’re so sweet. They’re so helpful. They just want to be on board the ship and help us out. We found this crazy little sisterhood band that we’re stoked about. We all kind of we knew each other from the scene, but now we’re really close and they really do feel like sisters to me. To see the fans kind of come up around it and see the community, especially women, coming up around this band is honestly life changing.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s awesome to hear. And I mean, I know that was sort of the point, right?
Joy Adams: Yeah, totally. It started out as this middle finger of a project. We were only supposed to play one show and none of us were taking it seriously because it was another festival who had booked all men and realized they needed some women on the line up. So, they called us – and I want to say that’s not just them, they’re dear friends of ours (the people who run McAwesome fest in Castle Rock) but it’s a really common thing – and so they’re like, oh, could you just put a super group together of all ladies and call it the McAwesome Women of Bluegrass or something? We’re like, no, we’ll be the Spirit Dicks of the Rocky Mountains and we took Sharpies and made this, like, horrific merch that had a penis playing the banjo with really hairy balls. Everything was ludicrous, and we just thought it was so funny. It was just supposed to be that one show, and we had so much fun and the response was a mixed bag. Some people loved us. Some people hated us. We got hate mail. I think that was the thing that actually made us form the band, was the hate mail. It’s been a year and a half and the thing that’s been so cool is we keep having these older women come up to us at shows, like in their sixty’s, seventy’s and say they’ve been waiting their whole life for a band to do what we’re doing. Wow, that feels so powerful. So cool.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s awesome. So we’re kind of talking about this challenge of the patriarchy, right? And we all know the Bluegrass world has been largely dominated by men, and white men for that matter. And you’ve played on the same stage as some of the longtime pillars of the scene. I’m curious what the reaction has been or if you’ve had any reaction from them.
Joy Adams: Also a mixed bag, and in a surprising way. I mean, one person who’s been so great is Sam Bush. We got to open for Sam Bush about a year ago exactly now and he loves our band, and all of us love Sam Bush. He is like a god to us, so that’s been really overwhelming to have his support. When we’ve played at festivals with him since then, he always pulls our band up for his big “Sam Jam” at the end of the festival. He’s just been so supportive. In fact, when we played Telluride last year, we were sound checking – and that’s a crazy sound check. You have 30 minutes to get your gear in order, and you’re standing in front of 10,000 people doing it – and we were all just kind of a nervous wreck and Sam suddenly jumped on stage and came to each of us and said, “kick them right in the ass, ladies. Kick them right in the ass.” He gave us each a hug, and it was just so sweet. It was exactly what we needed. So there’s been that, and then there’s been some other people, other big figure heads who have ignored us completely. But you know what? That’s part of the territory. I remember one of my teachers saying that if you don’t have some haters, you’re not doing it. Right.
Listen Here Denver!: Exactly right. You need to stir it up on both sides.
Joy Adams: The industry has been male dominated. It has been white dominated, for sure, but there have always been women involved. There have always been people of color involved so we’re trying to bring those stories up as well and just not tip the hat to those folks who went before us.
Listen Here Denver!: Right. So obviously the name has attracted some serious attention, and I’m curious if you’ve run into any obstacles with that. Have any promoters or venue owners boxed at all?
Joy Adams: Oh, for sure. I can’t remember the festival. There’s a festival, a big Bluegrass festival in the south, and one of those promoters is like, “well, you guys will never play here.” And we were like, “that’s fine, because you don’t want us and we don’t really want to be there.” So that’s all right.
But we have these fans who bring these giant inflatable penises to our shows – which I think is just so funny. We did not really have any part of that. They just started showing up, and they’ve been showing up since then. That all started at Telluride, and we’ve had a few venues who have asked us – they’ve written it into the contract – to not bring inflatable penises. Every time we’re like, “oh, man, it’s not us. We’re not doing that. You can search the fans backpacks, do whatever you want, but we have no part of that.”
Listen Here Denver!: I think it’s hilarious. You know, when String Cheese Incident was getting big in the early 2000s, they started putting out whether you could bring a Hula Hoop into the show. I think it’s kind of the same deal. It’s like “are giant inflatable penises allowed at this venue?”
Joy Adams: The reason they usually bring up is that they fly through the air and hit people and they wind up on stage, and they’re big, so they kind of get in the way. I get that, but I think it’s hilarious. The guy who shows up to our shows in a beaver costume, oh, my goodness. Funniest shit. It’s just so funny.
Listen Here Denver!: That is awesome. So on the flip side, what are some of some of your favorite comments you’ve gotten about the name? You know, personally, I love the fact that the Facebook fan page is “Big Richard Heads.” I know there is some laugh out loud funny stuff that gets posted on that page.
Joy Adams: And we didn’t make that. One of the fans made that, and she has just taken it and run with it. We have a fan named Katie Bainbridge, and she makes stickers for all of her individual shows. And yeah, she’s great. Oh, man. My favorite comments about the name, we had someone at the very beginning who was like, “where is your decency? Couldn’t you guys be the Mother Earth Band or something a little more classy and lady like?” We’re like, “oh, darling, you’re talking to the wrong people.”
Listen Here Denver!: Yeah, they are clearly missing the point.
Joy Adams: Yeah, we do have a lot of people ask us if we know what Big Richard means, as though we are the innocent ones that didn’t realize what we were doing.
Listen Here Denver!: Wow.
Joy Adams: I think that’s really funny.
Listen Here Denver!: Yeah, that’s hilarious. So obviously this project has some serious legs, but you all have really impressive resumes. Has this become a main focus for you all yet?
Joy Adams: I think so. It kind of turned the corner recently. We got new management and they’ve kind of pushed us into focusing on this. It’s a tricky thing because we do all have other projects that also have energy and keeping those other projects going is a way to keep ourselves diverse and keep ourselves fresh and motivated.
Listen Here Denver!: Exactly. You need those other creative outlets. So speaking of that, what’s the story with original music? I’ve seen some buzz about an album coming.
Joy Adams: Yeah, we’re going to go in the studio in April. We have a great producer lined up. I don’t think I can really talk about it quite yet, but we’re going to do a high level studio album. That was the main point of getting our management together, and they’ve really come through on that. We’ve got a ton of new original music. We just did a big writing retreat and so it’s been fascinating to see what happens when we get together and write together. We’re really proud of the sound that we’ve made with our original tunes and also the honesty of the content of them. I don’t think there’s any fluff in the mix. I think all the songs that we’ve written together are hard hitting about topical issues like climate change and women’s rights and things that are near and dear to our hearts. So I’m already really proud of this album that’s coming together.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s awesome. It sounds like it’s a collaborative writing process.
Joy Adams: Yeah. It’s just been so reaffirming for the whole band to have that be such a smooth and exciting process. I was talking to a friend recently about bands that are a democracy versus bands that have a leader. He was saying that democratic bands don’t always work, and I do see that, but I think that we’ve struck some kind of cool balance with this group in that we don’t have a front person. We’re all front people. We all step up to the leadership role and so far that’s worked out pretty smoothly, and I’m just really grateful for it.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s awesome. That’s great. I think one of the things that sort of has caught people’s attention, at least in your initial shows, is some of the surprising covers you throw into the mix. Billie Eilish, Brittany, or Radiohead. How do you go about picking the kind of unexpected ones?
Joy Adams: Oh, man. It usually comes from an individual person in the band who’s just really psyched about a particular song. The Billie Eilish cover, that’s one that I sing lead on. We sing that because my mom sent me this letter. It was like a seven page long letter – as they usually are – and in the very middle, totally out of context, there was one sentence where she was like, “I just hate that Billie Eilish.” I thought that was so funny so I texted the girls immediately. I was like, “we have to do this Billie Eilish song and we’re going to dedicate it to my mom every night.” Then Emma brought “Toxic,” the Britney Spears song, to the table. Bonnie brought “Creep,” and it’s been so fun to make those songs work in our own style. I think playing those has helped us find our own voice, as covers usually do.
Listen Here Denver!: Yeah, I can imagine that. And I was kind of curious how the arrangements of those come together.
Joy Adams: It’s kind of impossible to play something in the same way as it was originally. You kind of have to take a different direction with it. But we used those covers as a way to figure out what our groove was and find our voice beyond Bluegrass – because we did start out calling ourselves a Bluegrass band and I don’t think that that’s really a true statement because it’s a little broader than Bluegrass. There’s a lot of old time Appalachian music, we’ve brought some Celtic stuff to the mix. There’s a little bit of Jazz coming from Emma and some Rock and Roll coming from Bonnie. Yeah, we’re just kind of calling it “Acoustic Lady Rage.” I don’t know. What else do you call it? It’s all over the map, and I love that about it.
Listen Here Denver!: To wrap up here. I’ve got a nine year old daughter who I’ve been working on getting into music. She’s taking piano, she’s got a ukulele. I’m just trying to trying to work up some interest in her. And I’ll tell you, her jaw dropped when you all covered Billie Eilish in Dillon. We take her to all sorts of stuff and it’s like, “oh, this is Mom and Dad’s music.” And then, when you all played Billie, she was blown away.
Joy Adams: I’m so glad to hear that. And Ukulele? I started on Ukulele when I was three. My parents were like, well, she could drop it and it would be fine. And that’s a great instrument. Just get her fingers on frets.
Listen Here Denver!: Exactly. That and the foundation of piano. I never had a foundation on a piano. Never really understood how the whole thing worked. So we’re just trying to lay that groundwork. So I’m curious, what kind of message do you have for girls like her, who may not have run into many of the obstacles of a male dominated industry?
Joy Adams: Well, I think music, especially as a young girl, I think that music is the perfect vehicle for expressing your feelings. So, for young girls, I would say find the music that feels like it speaks for you and then make your own music that speaks for you in a truthful way. That’s the thing that the world needs the most, is for people to be honest and truthful about their feelings through art. You can do that at every single level of music. If you can play three notes on your instrument, you can start putting three notes worth of feeling into it, three notes worth of angst and depression and whatnot. The kids these days have kind of a bleak future ahead of them and they know it. I’m 34. I had a bunch of years where I thought that the future was going to be normal, seamless, great time, and the challenges that the kids today are going to face later, when they’re my age and when they’re your age, into their older years, they’re going to see some interesting times. I think having the emotional vehicle of music under their fingers is the thing that can save their lives.
Listen Here Denver!: That’s really well put, Joy. Thank you.
Joy Adams: Yeah, best of luck to her. I’m glad she’s got an instrument in her hands. Nine is the right age to get that going.
Listen Here Denver!: well, hey, I really appreciate your time and really looking forward to catching hopefully at least one of your sets at WinterWondergrass.
Joy Adams: I’ll be wandering around. I’ll have my skis, I’ll be skiing a lot.
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