In the Smoky Mountains, where I grew up, bluegrass is a way of life. Every Friday night, about a mile from my house, an abandoned old schoolhouse becomes one big jam session, and sometimes, when the weather is nice, it moves outside under the stars with the moonlight casting shadows onto the red Tennessee dirt.
It’s because of those memories that this bluegrass cover of Elton John’s “Rocketman” made immediate sense to me. Spliced together with vintage NASA clips and sung by Iron Horse, a band of pickers from Alabama, the video shows how the genre accommodates more than songs about boiled cabbage and a fiddle player named Pen. In a way, I learned how to love bluegrass while staring into space and learned how to love space while listening to bluegrass. So this rendition of “Rocketman” couldn’t be more perfect.
And hey, if Elton John’s not your speed, Iron Horse also did an album’s worth of Modest Mouse covers that’s pretty dang impressive, too. Surely one of those is up your alley.