At RockyGrass 2025, Steven Mougin of the Sam Bush Band sat down with KGNU to reflect on the band’s deep dive into bluegrass and Newgrass classics, including rarely performed songs revived for the festival. Beyond his work as guitarist, Mougin discussed running Dark Shadow Recording with his wife, a boutique label known for high-quality projects with artists like Becky Buller, Henhouse Prowlers, and Rick Faris. He shared the label’s philosophy of focusing on a small roster to nurture long-term careers, highlighting creative projects like Rick Faris’ striking Huey Lewis cover. Mougin also spoke about the joy of performing with Sam Bush, whose boundless energy and foundation in traditional bluegrass continue to inspire both the band and its audiences.
Steven Mougin: Right now I’m going to turn it over to Neil Smart, who has Steven from the Sam Bush Band here to talk a little bit with you. Steven Mougin, welcome back to KGNU.
Neil Smart: Thanks so much for having me.
Steven Mougin: Absolutely. It’s always fun to put together a cool bluegrass show for the RockyGrass crowd. It’s the one time a year we really get to dig into the back catalog of bluegrass and even the old Newgrass stuff. We brought out Glory, which Sam hasn’t sung in a very, very long time. He said the last time he sang that was with Courtney and Curtis. That was moving.
Neil Smart: That was a moving performance of that one. But Steven, you do other things besides play guitar in the Sam Band. You are the president of Dark Shadow Recordings.
Steven Mougin: That’s right. Yeah, I do all the producing and engineering at Dark Shadow. We’re a small company—it’s my wife and me—and we’ve got a great roster of artists. Becky Buller, who played here this weekend; Henhouse Prowlers, who played here last year; Rick Faris, and we’ve got some other projects cooking. It’s really a fun experiment for us, and I enjoy helping folks get their music out.
Steven Mougin: The engineering side of things has brought you some recognition recently, and I want to congratulate you on that.
Neil Smart: Thank you. I was lucky enough to win the Sound Engineer of the Year Award in 2020, and I’m nominated again this year, which is a real honor. There are a lot of great engineers out there. I’m obsessed with getting things as good as they can be, and it’s very kind that folks notice.
Steven Mougin: Well, it shows on all the Dark Shadow recordings—from Becky’s groundbreaking Jubilee to the Henhouse Prowlers. They’re a whole lot of fun and moving in their own way. You’ve got a great roster there.
Neil Smart: We believe in working with great people and great musicians, and the rest kind of falls into place.
Steven Mougin: Well, Becky’s one of my favorite people in the business. She’s just a light.
Neil Smart: Absolutely.
Steven Mougin: And she did us a solid about a week ago by coming and playing a benefit for KGNU at the Gold Hill Inn. We sure appreciate that.
Neil Smart: I heard all about that.
Steven Mougin: It was a whole lot of fun with her, Ned, and Rebecca Frazier coming together for a really good cause.
Neil Smart: Yes, absolutely.
Steven Mougin: It’s an interesting time for our music and for broadcasting, as we were talking off-mic a little bit. Companies like Dark Shadow opt for quality as opposed to quantity in recording. There’s so much music released every year in all sorts of genres, and then there’s a much smaller subset where the recording, the material, and the musicianship are of the utmost quality. Dark Shadow really does a great job with that.
Neil Smart: Thanks so much. We really focus on staying small—which might sound strange—but we don’t want to just be a music factory. We love the artists we work with and want to see them succeed in any way we can help. So we strategically focus on just a few recordings each year and try to make them the best we possibly can.
Steven Mougin: Sort of nurturing things from conception through to release.
Neil Smart: Exactly. Our first release with Becky was in 2014, and we’re about to release our sixth project together. We’ve got four projects with Rick Faris already—we just dropped a new one a couple weeks ago—and two with the Prowlers. We’re all about working with people long-term and helping move their careers forward, not just running a music factory. That’s just how we want to do it.
Steven Mougin: Well, I wore the grooves off Rick’s last one. That was a mighty fine record. That Huey Lewis cover kind of threw me off, though.
Neil Smart: Totally! That one was really interesting. I always ask artists if there’s a cover tune they’d be interested in for their project, just to get them thinking differently and exploring their favorite songs. A lot of our records don’t have covers, but Rick kept sending me guitar-vocal takes—about 15 songs. I narrowed it down to one or two we might use, and then he texted me: “Wait a minute, I found it.” He sent me his guitar-vocal of The Power of Love.
The crazy part is that the chord structure of Huey Lewis’s Power of Love sounds exactly like the way Rick Faris writes music—one to the flat three, these chord tendencies he naturally uses. It ended up sounding like a Rick Faris tune, but it’s Huey Lewis. Totally organic.
Steven Mougin: The first time I heard it, I thought, “Wait, am I hearing what I think I’m hearing?” I had to listen again. That’s exactly what makes a great cover—it’s familiar, but brand-new.
Neil Smart: I like covers that honor the past but also bring in the artist’s fresh identity.
Steven Mougin: That brings us back to the deep catalog of Sam last night and breathing new life into those songs. It’s the same feeling.
Neil Smart: Totally. With Sam, his influences were the Dillards, Jim and Jesse, the Osborne Brothers, J.D. Crowe, and all that. We bring a lot of that flavor into what we do when we play bluegrass, but we also branch into reggae, rock, soul—who knows what some of it might be called. Still, it’s really fun to play some traditional bluegrass with Sam because he’s got such a strong foundation in that music.
Steven Mougin: And he doesn’t miss a beat. It’s like he’s been playing those songs every day for the last ten years—nothing’s missing.
Neil Smart: Absolutely. This is year 19 for me with that band, and it’s always a thrill. He brings so much joy to the stage. Whatever you feel in the audience, we feel it even more on stage. It’s really cool.
Steven Mougin: There are few in the world with that kind of energy. Well, Steven Mougin, thank you so much again for stopping by KGNU backstage at RockyGrass 2025. Folks, there’s a lot more than just the Sam Bush Band—there’s Dark Shadow Recording, too. Keep your eyes open for their releases because they are always top-notch.
Neil Smart: Thank you—and thanks for keeping great music on community radio.
