Stephen Mougin
by Rebecca Frazier
On Saturday nights at music festivals across the nation, there’s a man in a fedora hat holding a dreadnought guitar. He’s got a commanding rhythmic style and improvises through solos and jams with clean, rapid-fire precision. That man on stage with the Sam Bush Band is Stephen Mougin, and he actually wears many hats. He’s not only a recognized and celebrated bluegrass guitarist—he’s a talented and skilled mandolin player. He’s also a powerhouse singer and vocal educator, with a degree in vocal pedagogy. He’s a prolific songwriter and record producer. And as a record label head, he owns Dark Shadow Recording with wife Jana Mougin.
Mougin’s musical path began at an early age in New England, where he grew up in western Massachusetts. He remembers, “When I was 6 years old, my dad decided he was going to get a guitar and learn to play. He discovered that some of his work pals had a local gathering where they’d get together and jam. By the time I was 8, I was picking with them and doing shows.”
As a teenager, Mougin was already touring in an established bluegrass band. “When I was 15, I joined a band which ended up being two of the guys that taught me how to play,” he recalls. “The guitar player who taught me, and the banjo player who taught the guitar player when he was a kid. So it was three generations of music with that group, Thunder Mountain Bluegrass, and I was with them for 10 years until I moved down to Nashville. We played regionally throughout New England.”
The steady stream of performing, jamming, and hearing legendary bluegrass artists in the Northeastern festival scene provided a strong foundation for Mougin’s multi-faceted bluegrass career. “From the time I was about 7 or 8, every summer was filled with bluegrass festivals up through New England, and I got to see a lot of the greats in the music: Bill Monroe, Osborne Brothers Jim & Jesse, Bill Harrell, Bluegrass Cardinals, all these classic groups,” Mougin says.
Despite his bluegrass expertise, Mougin decided to go in another direction as he matured into adulthood. “I was interested in music of all sorts, and I wasn’t convinced that playing bluegrass was going to be a potential for actual earning,” he explains. “So I decided to go to college for vocal music education and studied for four years—classical music and vocal jazz. I got a job straight out of college teaching at a school in Massachusetts.”
Mougin eventually migrated to Nashville in 2002 and began playing in various bluegrass outfits. “It was tough when after the first year and a half, I was sort of broke and homeless for a while; I remember two times in my life when I poured the last nine dollars of money I had into my gas tank to get to the next gig. It happened twice,” he shares. “So yeah, it was a hard road for a while; but there were some really cool things that happened along the way. I remember one summer I was in seven different bands, none of them full time, and I was still sitting home every other weekend. But it was a really good learning experience, and I don’t think I have dug in and learned the quantity of material before or since. And I got really good at learning tunes quickly. Not just learning tunes, but learning arrangements quickly. And I spent a lot of time in the car driving here there and everywhere and just immersed myself in the music I was going to be playing.”
The rich bluegrass background, the musical education, and the intensive learning and ear-training involved with his Nashville performance gigs coalesced when he was selected in 2006 for the bluegrass A-list position as guitarist in the band of bluegrass icon, Sam Bush. His skill-building and hard work was paying off, and he and his wife Jana Mougin—a talented bluegrass musician in her own right—began building the foundations for their recording studio and record label, Dark Shadow Recording. Mougin racked up a steady catalog of production and songwriting credits, and has continued steadily touring and teaching vocal and instrumental workshops across the nation.
Mougin’s guitar style is built upon his vocal artistry, and he strives to come up with new ways to express his guitar finesse in a unique improvisational style. “I’ve oscillated between trying to do the jazz thing where you’re singing the solo while you’re playing it. And I find I never do it on mic, but there are times when I’m kind of singing it to myself, because for me, it kind of connects through the voice. I’m more aware of musicality as a singer than I am as a player. I just feel more connected to it that way,” he observes.
“In the Sam Bush Band, we have regular solos that go over a particular chord change that is a section of the song, like the chorus or verse—bluegrass style. And then we have long extended jams that might be over a static chord progression, whether it’s moving or whether it’s over one chord that goes for as long as you have ideas or want to play. Those were really challenging for me, and continue to be…because you sort of continue to play and it’s easy to run out of ideas and then feel like you’re playing all your dumb licks,” he laughs. “One of the things that I consciously try to warm up on any given day, is to spend enough time noodling with some kind of soundtrack until I’ve played through all of my dumb licks and try to get them out of my system, and then try to create something new. What I want to be happening is to make little motifs. And I don’t know if I’m ever particularly successful with it, but that’s always my drive.”
Mougin emphasizes listening as his single piece of advice for developing musicians. “I can’t express enough how important listening has been for me. And focused listening,” he advises. “I had a professor once who said, ‘If you steal from one person it’s plagiarism; if you steal from everybody it’s research.’ So, I try to take that to heart as I’m listening. I’m just picking and choosing from things I really dig, and also learning things that I don’t like. I think that’s just as valuable in the listening experience.”
But how does Mougin make it look so natural and easy to play bluegrass guitar with such power and skill? “I’ve noticed, the older I get, it feels like I’m a beginner every single day I start. And it’s really frustrating when my hands just don’t work. You know, it’s like I’ve never touched a guitar before, it feels like the pick’s a two by four,” he laughs. Mougin prioritizes practicing guitar and warming up in the days leading up to his tour dates, which can be tricky during his busy periods in the recording studio. “Yeah, I really struggle with that, because there’s not enough practice in the world that gets you ready for playing on stage with Sam Bush Band. But I do have to play midweek for sure, to keep it up, and I struggle with that sometimes in the studio. You know, if I’m doing ten hours a day behind the [studio] console, the last thing in the world I want to do is pick up a guitar. And so that is a struggle for me and something I’ve had to work on, and have not been really great at. It’s easy to let life get in the way of all of that, and I try to keep an eye on when it’s coming. So several days before I go out, I’m really getting back into things. But I’m losing a lot of ground on that, unfortunately, and it’s one of my personal frustrations.”
Mougin’s honest approach and musical self-awareness are qualities that seem to push him further each day on his journey, as he’s never complacent about his success. “One of the things that I feel like I’m not super strong with is taking a really established melody and improvising in a way that still sounds like the melody, but you’re still doing something new with it. I feel like I am either straight-on going to rail the melody, or I’m going to be off in Egypt somewhere,” he muses. “So it’s one of the things I’m working on as a player, to try to connect those two in a more meaningful way.”
Originally published in Americana Rhythm Music Magazine
