#max wareham

Song Review: Max Wareham - “The Black & Gold”

The best way to immortalize one’s favorite sports team in song without resorting to cornball cliché is to take the instrumental route, as Max Wareham did on his paean to the Boston Bruins.

“The Black & Gold” finds the banjoist trading riffs with mandolinist Chris Henry, fiddler Laura Orshaw and Punch Brothers guitarist Chris Eldridge while bassist Mike Bub and drummer Larry Atamanuik keep the song moving at a rapid, slap-shot-appropriate pace.

The track comes from Wareham’s Peter Rowan-produced debut, DAGGOMIT!, arriving Feb. 21.

And while ice hockey and bluegrass might seem an incongruous pairing, Wareham hears things differently.

“For the perfect balance of grace and power, drive and agility, bluegrass and hockey are two peas in a pod,” he said in a statement.

Based on “The Black & Gold,” he may be correct.

Grade card: Max Wareham - “The Black & Gold” - A

Song Review: Max Wareham - “Closer to You”

Max Wareham takes the wide-eyed, ethereal route on “Closer to You.”

On the third advance single from If the Cosmos Were Whiskey … , the banjo picker and ostensive bluegrass player is a blissed-out space cadet singing high in his rage alongside the wispy Lily Sexton over a droning soundtrack of double bass, acoustic guitar, banjo and percussion.

Every day that goes by like an eagle in the sky/only brings me closer to you, Wareham and Sexton sings on the chorus which appears after shimmering, waterlogged six- and five-string solos.

The six-minute mediation follows “I’m Just Along for the Ride” and “If I Had My Way” ahead of the June 19 arrival of Whiskey … .Taken together, they suggest an adventurous, stylistically diverse offering from the youthful Peter Rowan collaborator.

Grade card: Max Wareham - “Closer to You” - A-

Song Review: Max Wareham - “If I Had My Way”

The subject of Max Wareham’s “If I Had My Way” keeps showing up at the narrator’s place for some unnamed, but understood, reason. Until he doesn’t.

Let’s not pretend we don’t know that you’re leavin’/once you’ve taken everything that you want, Wareham sings on the final pass of the chorus that previously began with: Let’s not pretend we don’t know what you’re here for.

This is “If I Had My Way” in a nutshell. It’s the followup to “I’m Just Along for the Ride” and the song that unveils the title and release date, June 19, of Wareham’s If the Cosmos Were Whiskey …

A languid ballad that lopes forward on Wareham’s banjo and loose, looped percussion, “My Way” is deceptively complex in both songwriting and composition and takes a few spins to fully reveal its depth. Jack Holland’s acoustic-guitar solo and Lily Sexton’s beguiling harmonies keep the listener entertained in the meantime, encouraging the repeated exposure needed to understand the track’s fullness.

Grace card: Max Wareham - “If I Had My Way” - A

Song Review: Max Wareham - “I’m Just Along for the Ride”

If space travel had existed in Jimmie Rodgers’ time, Rodgers might’ve written “I’m Just Along for the Ride.”

But Rodgers stayed on the railroad, leaving it to banjo picker Max Wareham to imagine the singing brakeman floating in the universe as bluegrass is beamed up from Earth.

If the cosmos were whiskey and I was a duck/I’d put on a spacesuit and work my way up/I’m a mallard on a rocket with the world in my cup/I’m just along for the ride, Wareham sings over an up-tempo, carnival arrangement that features calliope and drums alongside banjo, guitar and double bass.

The song previews Wareham’s as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2025’s DAGGOMIT! There is no release date, but “I’m Just Along for the Ride” foreshadows fun.

Grade card: Max Wareham - “I’m Just Along for the Ride” - B+

Max Wareham & the National Bluegrass Team at Natalie’s Grandview, Columbus, Ohio, Aug. 20, 2025

Bluegrass is a team sport for Max Wareham.

The Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band banjo picker is on the road with his own National Bluegrass Team to support his Rowan-produced solo debut, DAGGOMIT! And on Aug. 20 on Charlie’s Stage in front of some 30 hard-listening music lovers inside Natalie’s Grandview, Wareham and company plopped old-timey music squarely in the present day.

With no amplifiers and an old-school mic at center stage to capture lead vocals and instrumental solos, Wareham, mandolinist and baritone singer Jean Baptiste Cardineau and guitarist and tenor Jack Holland made room for one another in moving about the small listening-room stage as bassist Wes Shuck held things down in back. And when the front line engaged in three-part harmonies on such numbers as the gospel-infused “The Wicked Path of Sin” and the hopeful joy of “Never Grow Old,” which ended the 65-minute performance, the show seemed a band performance as much as a solo gig.

The gregarious Cardineau underscored this feeling with his effusive stage presence, his prodigious riffing and featured spotlights on his own “Booze is the Glue that Keeps Us Together” - If we could be wasted all the time, we’d be in love forever, is the kicker in this deceptively sad song - and the standard “Orange Blossom Special,” which burned the tracks as the temporary frontman kept his promise to “put a hurtin’ on this tiny little mandolin.”

With Wareham in charge, as he was for the majority of the set, the focus was on DAGGOMIT! And though the songs differed in concert owing to varied instrumentation from a new group of players, their vitality and spark remained intact as the quartet glided like stones skipping on a pond from the tender lovesickness of “Highway to Your Heart;” to the wordless intensity of “The Black & Gold,” a paean to the Boston Bruins borne of the COVID-19 pandemic; to the front-porch determination of the Wareham-Rowan co-write “Lonesome Blues, I’m Coming Home.”

The bandleader’s generosity and graciousness toward his bandmates notwithstanding - a trait almost certainly picked up from the collaborative-minded Rowan - this stop in Columbus, Ohio, was Wareham’s show. And with his comrades at his back, the one-time sideman stepped from the shadows to preview what should be a long solo career.

His first central Ohio appearance is therefore unlikely to be his last central Ohio appearance.

Guitarist Adam Schlenker, who’s also played with Rowan, and mandolinist Hayes Griffin opened with a duo set featuring harmonious vocals and lightning-fast licks on such covers as “Sittin’ on Top of the World,” “Kentucky Mandolin” and “The Last Thing on My Mind.”

Grade card: Max Wareham & the National Bluegrass Team at Natalie’s Grandview - 8/20/25 - B+

Album Review: Max Wareham - DAGGOMIT!

He’s long worked for Peter Rowan. Now, Rowan’s working for Max Wareham and with his boss in the producer’s chair, banjoist Wareham makes a smooth transition from sideman to bandleader on his solo debut, DAGGOMIT!

Dominated by instrumentals, the LP is covered in Rowan’s fingerprints, both in the swing and jazz music threads woven into its bluegrass tapestry and in Rowan’s vocal turns on the original “Gone, Baby Gone” and on Charles E. Moody’s 1930s gospel, “Drifting too Far from the Shore.”

Though it’s as much a collaborative album as a solo work, DAGGOMIT! is nevertheless an auspicious coming-out party, adroitly showcasing Wareham’s prowess on banjo; his potential to carve out a niche for himself as a practitioner of instrumental bluegrass music; and the confidence he’s drawn from not only Rowan but a core group of support players and singers.

The band features guitarists Chris Eldridge and David Grier, mandolinist Chris Henry, bassist Mike Bub, snare drummer Larry Atamanuik and fiddler Laura Orshaw, who sings “That’s Just Part of It.” Within and over them, Wareham shines on his chosen instrument, whether giving wordless praise in a new arrangement of “Walking in Jerusalem,” paying sonic tribute to the Boston Bruins on the fast-paced instrumental “The Black & Gold” or making “Heartaches” sound positively giddy.

The only question is whether Wareham would’ve make such a quality album without all the help. But, daggomit, DAGGOMIT! is without question a quality album.

Grade card: Max Wareham - DAGGOMIT! - B