According to "Nashville Cats," the Del McCoury (by way of the Lovin' Spoonful) classic, "There's thirteen-hundred-and-fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville/And they can pick more notes than the number of ants on a Tennessee ant hill." True enough, but there are few finer in Music City these days than 25-year-old bluegrass guitarist and local boy Graham Curry.
Curry, best known for his stint as the flatpicking whiz for newgrass road warriors Old Salt Union, now splits his time between St. Louis and Nashville, where he has climbed into the top ranks of session players and guest pickers on Music Row.
The Webster-Groves-raised Curry is a hammering-on, pulling-off, cross-picking wonder with seal-smooth movement around the strings, proximal phalanges nonpareil and a mastery of flawlessly clean runs at breakneck velocities.
We chat in a busy cafe next to a guitar store where Curry teaches a few lessons each week, a side hustle that allows him to earn his living as a full-time musician, a destiny that Curry insists he was locked into "straight out of the womb."
Indeed, he has been playing the guitar as long as he can remember: His pop put a full-size acoustic into his hands at age five. Little Graham was a quick study.
"It just felt really natural," Curry says. "I remember thinking to myself, 'Wow, this doesn't seem that hard.'"
With no formal training, the kid found his way around the fretboard through finger-taxing trial and error and by playing along to records by his father's favorite band, the Grateful Dead.
He remembers the song that set him on a different path: Jerry Reed's "East Bound and Down" from the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit. "I remember hearing that banjo," Curry says. "That got me into bluegrass."
From there, Curry couldn't get enough. He was soon taking deep dives into the early recordings of Clarence White and Tony Rice, legendary pickers who turned bluegrass guitar into a lead instrument.
At Webster Groves High School, the guitar temporarily took a back seat to sports, as Curry, a standout pitcher, chased a baseball scholarship. However, a sophomore-year injury to his throwing arm ended his time on the mound. "I feel like me blowing out my arm was meant to happen," he says, emphasizing that in the absence of baseball, the guitar became his main priority.
By the time Curry graduated, he already had the chops to hang with professional pickers, but getting paid for it was another story.
"I knew I wanted to play music for a living, but I didn't know how, so the only thing I knew to do was get better and better," Curry says. "So I just practiced my fucking ass off."
He played constantly — a hundred "Wildwood Flower"s, a thousand "Blackberry Blossom"s, a million G runs.
He also added high-lonesome tenor vocals to his repertoire and, seeking adventure, moved to Denver to soak up the rich Colorado bluegrass scene. After a year of woodshedding and poverty, however, the 18 year old moved back home.
Soon after, Curry was recruited to play mandolin in local folkgrass outfit Grass Fed Mule, giving him his first taste of paying gigs and regional touring. Still, Curry says that the band was not an ideal fit. "They were a progressive, jammy band," he says. "And I wanted to play grass."
Curry means traditional bluegrass — the ancient tones of Bill Monroe, Flatt and Scruggs, the Osborne Brothers, et al. — the music he has wanted to play since he was 16.
Nonetheless, a picker's got to eat. So, in late 2017, when he was called to fill the guitar vacancy in Old Salt Union, he hit the road with them. Across the country, bluegrass and jam communities got to see what the kid could do.
With Curry in tow, Old Salt Union, a five-piece from Belleville, Illinois, played 150 shows a year to big crowds coast to coast. Curry also played on the band's 2019 Alison Brown-produced album Where the Dogs Don't Bite, contributing to the effort his own self-penned song, the hot-stepping, trad-leaning "Heartbroke & Lonesome."
Eventually, the road took its toll. "I gave it 2 1/2 hard years of touring nonstop and got to where I literally couldn't go on the road anymore," Curry says. He left Old Salt Union in January 2020 just before COVID-19 hit.
With no band and with live music on lockdown, Curry unplugged, taking a performing hiatus, which he spent fly fishing on rivers in the Ozarks and out west. "But I was still picking a ton," he says. "My guitar was always with me."
In fact, Curry's playing was so sharp he felt ready to compete at the annual National Flatpicking Championships in Winfield, Kansas. In 2021, he showed up with no set song arrangement, tore off a sizzling, scale-defying blitz of improvisational soloing and walked away with fourth place.
While Winfield and Old Salt Union established Curry as a top-tier bluegrass shredder, he's careful to avoid letting it go to his head. "You're not going to make it in this industry if you have any sort of ego," he insists. "I've been fortunate enough to be around the best in the business in Nashville. Not a single one of those guys has an ego. Any moment you have an ego, just realize that there's 30 other players just as good as you."
Once restrictions eased, Curry, burned out on the jam scene, decided to forge his own path. "I have this certain sound that I have in my head for bluegrass music," he says. "The older I get, I just want to do my thing."
Graham Curry & the Missouri Fury debuted a year ago, featuring a handpicked team of some of the area's finest players: journeyman banjoist Alex Riffle, Berklee-trained mandolinist David Louis Goldenberg, and RiverBend bassist Will Miskall.
So 2023 looks to be a big year for Curry's Fury — festival spots are on the books (including Pickin' on Picknick in July), and the band has a full album on the way this spring. The first single, a terrific cover of Red Allen's "Teardrops in My Eyes," is out now.
While leading his own band at home, Curry plans to continue to hit Nashville twice a month to sit in with high-profile bluegrass bands, some of which have recently auditioned Curry to become a member (though he remains tight-lipped about those details).
Curry says that in many ways he feels as though he is finally where he needs to be — fronting his own band, calling his own shots and looking forward to the road ahead. Wherever that road may take him, two things are certain: Graham Curry will have his guitar with him ... and the boy will be playing grass.
Catch Graham Curry & the Missouri Fury at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 24 at Blue Strawberry (364 North Boyle Avenue, 314-256-1745, bluestrawberrystl.com). Tickets are $25 for table seating and $20 for bar seating.
Coming soon: Riverfront Times Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting St. Louis stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
