I first met Sharon Gilchrist at the recent SFR Block Party, where I was appropriately shit-faced thanks to the wonder of mojitos and a gaggle of cold brewskies. We chatted after her gig with the Santa Fe All-Stars, but***image2*** considering that I couldn't feel the top layer of flesh that envelops my doughy body and I was slurring like a sailor on shore leave, I figured a more appropriate interview at a later date was in order.
Gilchrist has just returned to Santa Fe from performing at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, the pre-eminent bluegrass gathering in the United States. This is the third time she performed on the main stage at Telluride with bluegrass legends Tony Rice and Peter Rowan. To those outside the vestiges of folk music, these names might be inconsequential, but thousands of devoted bluegrass followers understand that if you play with these two renowned pickers, your place in the musical stratosphere is assured. But in many ways, it's just another day at the office for a devoted musician at the top of her game.
Despite accomplishments in her own right, Gilchrist is well known for her association with the Dixie Chicks. It's a comparatively irrelevant blip on the screen of a far more interesting career. For those not fluent in the world of the Top 40 country charts, the Dixie Chicks began as a bluegrass outfit in Texas whose members decided money, hair bleach and a good publicist were more important than, say, depth or musical substance. To be clear, Gilchrist, at a young age, had a few gigs in Texas with an early incarnation of the Chicks but was never a member of the group. The Southlake, Texas, native majored in mandolin performance at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. Majoring in mandolin performance isn't the result of a random decision.
"I went to music school in Nashville because I basically didn't know any better," Gilchrist chuckles, "I didn't want to go to college at all, and I'd already been playing professionally since I was 9."
OK, so it was a little random, but to be fair, playing professionally translated to playing three nights a week and recording and rehearsing two nights a week. "My parents insisted that I go to college. The only other kids that didn't go to school stayed in our tiny town of 8,000 people and were working at places like the gas station, so I was scared enough to go."
Although traditional bluegrass remains her passion, she spent 10 years in Nashville playing and experimenting with jazz, funk and other styles of music. "When I graduated, I stopped playing bluegrass and concentrated on other styles of mandolin. I've always played upright bass too, so I started getting a lot of work playing for rock bands or singer-songwriters," Gilchrist says. It was around this time that she had her first real taste of touring, with singer-songwriter Josh Rouse. The tour opened her eyes to the realities of life on the road. "It was my first tour out in the commercial world, but I came back from it realizing that I didn't have time to work on my own music." Her years in Nashville were also a time for collaboration and experimentation. As a member of the artist collective DddD, she composed music and worked with painters, filmmakers, sculptors and other visual artists. Her work with the group was the antithesis of the typical Nashville Top 40 music the city is famous for. "We got to perform at some of the more prominent art museums and galleries in Nashville," Gilchrist says. "It was the most free and creative thing I got to do there and musically I was in charge of the whole thing."
With the experience of touring nationally and creating art for the mere sake of creativity, Gilchrist found herself at an impasse. So, like many before her, she chose New Mexico to be the next step in her career. Since 2001, Gilchrist has become one of the most sought-out mandolin players and music instructors in the Santa Fe area. Not long after arriving in Santa Fe, she teamed up with Ben Wright and Josh Martin to form the band Mary and Mars. The trio had a resonant impact on the bluegrass community and released two albums, before disbanding in 2004. When she and other local players Wright, Joe West and Susan Holmes aren't busy with other projects, their band (Santa Fe All-Stars) gets together for gigs all over town. Gilchrist's main project is with Rice and Rowan. With Byrn Davis on the upright bass and Gilchrist on mandolin, the quartet tours across the country and recently released an album on Rounder Records.
Gilchrist and I talk about her projects, the courses she teaches at High Desert Guitars and College of Santa Fe and her upcoming gigs on the East Coast and Midwest. Gilchrist plans to spend more time in Santa Fe this year to focus on her own compositions. And although she considers herself to be an instrumentalist, she notes that her life is currently in transition, and all possibilities are welcome. Above all else, Gilchrist is a steadfast devotee to bluegrass and a representative of a new era of its venerable sound, but, for now, concentrating on new material and playing a little music around the house for the potted plants is the only audience she needs.
