Article Contributed by Mountain Home Music Company
Published on February 6, 2026
Listen to it now and in Dolby Atmos spatial audio
After the full-band, multimedia extravaganza of his collaboration with Billy Strings, “The Devil Went Down to Deep Gap,” Bryan Sutton is back to the pared down guitar duets that characterize the legendary guitarist’s From Roots to Branches series — this time with an entry that highlights the “branches” part of the concept. Written as a square dance tune back in the 1950s, “Crazy Creek” finds Sutton teamed up with a player more admired by fellow musicians and flatpicking connoisseurs than known to the world at large, Jake Stargel.
“Ever since Jake Stargel came on the scene, I’ve been fascinated and inspired,” enthuses Sutton. “I think his playing is continually creative and powerful. He was the one that actually suggested ‘Crazy Creek.’”
Recipient of an International Bluegrass Music Association Momentum Instrumentalist of the Year trophy in 2014, then 23-year-old Stargel was hailed in print as “the next Bryan Sutton,” and had already logged time on the road with the Lovell Sisters (now Larkin Poe); Americana favorites, The Greencards; Mountain Heart, and mandolin phenom Sierra Hull. Since then, he’s focused on studio work — mostly as a guitarist, sometimes as producer — that’s included projects as varied as Rhonda Vincent’s Christmas Time; Bruce Hornsby-band fiddler John Mailander’s atmospheric Forecast; acclaimed fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes’ Fiddler’s Pastime and jamgrass favorites The Wooks’ Flyin’ High, while serving as guitarist-about-town for an equal wide variety of Nashville shows.
Written by fiddler Tommy Jackson, whose tenure as the premier Nashville session fiddle player extended from the 1950s into the 1970s, “Crazy Creek” was popularized in bluegrass by, among others, Hall of Fame banjo player Bill Keith (whose 1976 recording featured a blistering flatpicking solo by Tony Rice). As expected, the musical sparks start flying almost immediately when Sutton and Stargel launch into the tune, swapping entire passes through the form before starting more frequently traded lines — and, in both cases, serving up a dazzling array of spiky melodic turns, rhythmic displacements and chordal elaborations that challenge the listener to follow along even as they delight the ear.
“Part of my goal with this duets project,” observes Sutton, “was to just try to capture musical conversations with my friends, and we definitely do that here with ‘Crazy Creek’!”
“Crazy Creek” is streaming in Dolby Atmos spatial audio on Apple Music, Amazon Music and TIDAL. Listen to it HERE (https://clg.lnk.to/bs.js-CrazyCreek).
