For more than a decade and a half, Burlington, Vermont-based guitarist and songwriter Bob Wagner has been a secret-weapon sideman, lending his licks and leads to some of the tightest live acts in the Northeast.
While the move has been a long time coming, it was something Wagner felt no need to rush. While deeply at home during international tours with Josh Panda, or his foundational stint with Kat Wright and her enchanting retro soul unit, Wagner was often approached by fans curious as to where to find his own work.
“A pretty regular thing that happens at shows is I end up doing a song or two on lead during the night,” Wagner says. “After the gigs, people were always coming up to me asking where they could see my band.”
For years, the answer remained the same. Wagner had considered launching his own project prior to joining Wright’s band — but once he settled into that musical family, his path shifted.
“I fell in love with this amazing project where I get to help write music and shape the sound of the band,” he says. “It was a place where I could be really creative — and even do my own thing — in a collaborative way.”
Eventually, though, songs accumulated, and he felt it was time to step out on his own.
“It just became time to record these songs, on my own and on my own terms — to grow as a musician and learn by doing,” he says.
“The opportunity to record there was a no-brainer,” Wagner says. “It was a dream come true to work in that studio.”
The album’s sound reflects the influences of heroes and inspiration such as Kat Wright, The Wood Brothers, Sturgill Simpson, and others, while remaining rooted in Wagner’s rich storytelling.
The sessions were blessed with a little Nashville magic when Simpson’s telecaster-playing fireball, Laur Joamets, dropped by to add guitar to three of the album’s tracks.
“The engineer was like, ‘I could text him for you,’” Wagner recalls. “And like an hour or two later, he’s walking his gear through the door.”
On the lead-off track, “Sad & Lonesome,” Wagner croons like a broken-hearted cowboy while the band whips into a psychedelicized funk — accentuated by a swaggering solo from Joamets — that’s more Memphis than Bakersfield.
Joamets adds glistening pedal steel to the contemporary murder ballad “Richest Man on Earth,” a song Wagner dreamed up on the drive home after buying a 100-year-old Oscar Schmidt rubber bridge guitar.
“I’d been thinking of how I’d been wanting to write a murder ballad, and the guitar looked like the kind of guitar you write a murder ballad on,” Wagner laughs. “I wrote it on the drive home, and when I got there, all I needed to do was press record.”
Another standout, “Good Night & Good Luck” — inspired in part by protests in Portland, Oregon, during Donald Trump’s first presidential term — provides a meditation on an injured America, performed by a band firing hot, heaving with the fury of the fed up.
The album’s title track carries perhaps the longest history. Wagner first wrote “I’ve Been Down” more than two decades ago. At the time, it documented a dark period in his life, though as the years have passed by in a blur of performances, the song has taken on new meaning, morphing into an uplifting spiritual. Recorded live in a single take with no overdubs, the track features Oliver Wood on vocals and Jano Rix on piano.
“I’ll never forget getting to sit in a room and sing that song out with those guys,” Wagner says.
Beyond the album, Wagner remains deeply embedded in Vermont’s musical community. He serves as bandleader for the Hug Your Farmer concert series — a project that raises funds for agricultural initiatives across Vermont.
And he will soon hit the road as one of two guitarists in the latest touring band of Phish’s Mike Gordon.
“Mike is just such an inspiration,” Bob says. “If a creative person won the lottery tomorrow and asked how they’d want to live their life as an artist — he’s doing it.”
With I’ve Been Down, Wagner may be stepping forward under his own name for the first time — but the record carries the weight of experience, friendship, and musical spirit built from years of sharing the stage.
