Have you ever wondered about the offstage world of a professional musician? Every month in this column, bluegrass now will provide a glimpse into the lives of some of your favorite bluegrass stars. To see captions, just move your cursor over the photos!

If you've ever seen Sam Bush in concert--and it's hard to miss him; he's one of the busiest musicians around these days--you must have noticed his joy. With an instrument in his hands, his friends all around him, and a hot lick at his fingertips, burning up the strings, the guy fairly vibrates with delight.

Joy was the resonant theme of Sam's 1998 album, Howlin' At The Moon. “As the CD came together, my wife Lynn and I were discussing material,” he explains. “We realized that there was a common thread of positive energy among these songs.” The title tune was particularly poignant to Sam. A cancer survivor himself, he'd recently lost several dear friends, including Courtney Johnson and Roy Huskey, Jr., to the disease. “There's a good side of everything. I don't know how you can say it in a more positive way: 'Take a little time for sunshine; take a whole lot of time for love.' Sometimes we need to be reminded of that.”

Today, Sam makes it a point to try to enjoy each moment. “It comes from having survived a major illness 20 years ago. It helped us reprioritize. Every day's a good day.”

Sam grew up on a working farm outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky, and put in his time as a farmer's son. “I worked in tobacco as a kid 'til my father stopped raising it when I was about 15. That was what we did in the summertime. If I was practicing for a big fiddle contest, my dad would let me out of work that made my hands sore, if I would go in and practice. It was great incentive!”

Music was encouraged in the Bush household; his mom, dad, and sisters all played and sang. Sam regularly listened to the Grand Ole Opry on WSM 650, and watched his early musical heroes--Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Osborne Brothers, Jim and Jesse--on Nashville television. “Watching their hands move unlocked a lot of doors I hadn't been able to open just by listening,” he says. “It was almost as if I had Homespun teaching videos before there ever were any.”

Nashville must have seemed like the Promised Land to young Sam all those years ago, and now he's made his home there. He and Lynn have lived in Music City for two decades, in a comfortable home on 2½ acres at the end of a big hill. It's an ideal place for Sam's dear old dog Ozzie, an 11-year-old mutt. “He's named after the greatest shortstop that ever lived--Ozzie Smith of the St. Louis Cardinals. He's Ozzie the Wonder Dog . . . we wonder how he still gets around!”

As Sam chats, Lynn sits nearby, making travel arrangements for the next gig. The Bushes were married in 1984, in a ceremony blessed with great music and close friends. “All the members of the Newgrass Revival were groomsmen! And we're probably one of the few couples that ever had the honor of Mark O'Connor playing the Wedding March for us. He played beautiful things on the fiddle as people were getting seated. It was his present.”

When they're at home, Sam and Lynn spend plenty of time in their den. “A real estate agent would call it our media room! Ozzie's got his bed in here, and we've got a TV that's big enough to enjoy watching ballgames on, and our CDs, our stereo, our record collection...” Currently in rotation: Raw Tomatoes by Little Feat; Anthology by African musician Johnny Clegg; Bill Monroe's Bluegrass Instrumentals; and Remember Shakti by guitarist John MacLaughlin and tabla master Zakir Hussain. “Kind of an eclectic variety of things,” Sam chuckles. “Then there's Birmingham Road, by a guy named Jeff Black. He's a songwriter, and I do his songs and have come to love his writing. This CD is tremendous.”

The big TV is silent at the moment. “Lynn and I are sad right now because baseball season's over. There's nothing to do in the daytime!” Sam laments, laughing. His devotion to baseball began on that farm back in Bowling Green. “On AM radio, we could get 1120 KMOX from St. Louis, with Harry Carray and Jack Buck announcing. Now, this is a real country-boy-soundin' thing, but a great summer day for me would be when I didn't have to work, and I could sit under a shade tree with a jug of ice water, listening to the St. Louis Cardinals, waiting by the garden for the groundhog who had been eating all our corn.” Confessing that he wasn't much of a marksman, Sam says he spent a lot of time under that shade tree!

His passion for baseball, which Lynn shares, has deepened over time. For years, until Sam's touring schedule got too hectic, the Bushes even planned their vacations around the sport, attending training camp in Florida each spring. Over the years, Sam has collected some cool Cardinals souvenirs: ball caps, shirts, bats, autographed balls, and baseball cards of Stan Musial and Ozzie Smith. But his favorite souvenir of his beloved team might be the memory of a recent experience.

“On September 8th, I had the opportunity to play 'Take Me Out To The Ballgame' on top of the Cardinal dugout for the seventh inning stretch, on the mandolin. It was terrifying!” he says. “But the Cardinals fans were really terrific. Of course, I was introduced as a life-long, die-hard Cardinals fan, so that endeared me to the fans! Everybody in the stadium sang along. It was a dream come true.”

Two new albums will keep Sam busy in the New Year: one with his buddy Dave Grisman, and the other with the Sam Bush Band. In the meantime, he and Lynn look forward to a quiet Christmas at home in Nashville. Even old Ozzie will enjoy the holiday. “Somewhere along the line, he started having fun unwrapping presents. He doesn't touch them until we pick them up, but when we start unwrapping, he loves to tear the paper off!”

For people who travel for a living, a holiday at home is a special occasion, Sam says. He and Lynn will get together with their families, and they'll also take time to drive around the city, looking at the lights. “We always get a tree. Friends have given us Christmas ornaments over the years, and that's a really joyful thing: putting the ornaments on the tree, and remembering who gave them to us. That's one of the best things.”

Visit Sam online at www.sambush.com

FROM THE KITCHEN OF SAM BUSH
Steamed Asparagus and Bulgarian Eggs with Feta Cheese

“Who cooks at home? Both of us!” says Sam. “Last night it was me, because Lynn still had paperwork. I cooked steamed asparagus and eggs with feta cheese. When we're home, we tend to eat more vegetables than anything else. It's so hard to get good fresh vegetables on the road!” Sam was first introduced to this unusual dish in Bulgaria, on one of his many journeys as a touring musician. We're presenting the recipe here just as Sam gave it--in his own typically laid-back style of delivery!

“In Bulgaria, they actually line the bowl with crumbled feta cheese, and then they melt it to the sides; then they'd put three or four poached eggs in there, and mix it up. But I make 'em fried. Crumble the cheese and throw it on a plate. Nuke your feta in the nuker there for about 45 seconds. Get your asparagus steamed up with some garlic and lemon on 'em. Fry your eggs over easy, put 'em right on top of that melted cheese, put your asparagus out there, get a nice couple of biscuits, and bingo! Oh, yes, I've Southernized this Bulgarian dish . . . me and Pillsbury.”