Tag: Bill Monroe

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley

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Artist: Rob Ickes & Trey Hensley
Song: “Friend of the Devil” (Originally by Grateful Dead)
Album: The Country Blues

Where did you guys first find this song? From the Grateful Dead or from a secondary source?

Trey Hensley: I picked it up from the Dead. The first — maybe the second — record that I bought by the Dead was American Beauty. It felt pretty natural, the original is somewhat bluegrassy. It has [David] Grisman on it, so it felt like it would be a cool tune to cover. I took it to Rob one of the times we were rehearsing and it just fell in — it was perfect.

What else about the song made you feel like it would fit solidly within bluegrass, not just on the fringes?

TH: I liked the subject matter; it’s just a well-written song. It already had the melody of a bluegrass tune, and I know that the Dead got a lot of people into bluegrass, from Jerry [Garcia’s] banjo playing and Old and in the Way. That slightly outlaw-ish subject matter just fell right in with what I think of when I think of traditional bluegrass tunes.

What was the process for you guys putting together this song?

Rob Ickes: I felt kind of ignorant because it’s such a huge song and everybody knows it, but I had never heard it before! I love that. I think my ignorance helped my enthusiasm for the song. I had never heard it before, but when Trey brought the song, I just loved it. I loved the subject matter, also, and it sounded like a cool bluegrass thing. We came up with that little hook on the top of the song — it kind of reminds me of “Blackberry Blossom,” the way the chords go. We came up with that melodic figure, that’s like a fiddle tune, with a bluegrass feel to pull it more toward ‘grass than the original version. Also, I heard that the Dead never performed the song at that tempo (on the record) again. They would perform it pretty slow.

I think because it’s a Dead song, it lends itself to a sort of space jam in the middle of the tune. When we play it live, we really pick it out. It’s a showcase for both of us, but especially Trey on the guitar. He really takes it to the moon and back. We just did a bunch of shows with Tommy Emmanuel and David Grisman, and we closed with that song every night and would send it out to David, because he played on the original, of course. People went nuts over that instrumental section.

Is the jam section your favorite part of playing it live? What else do you love about performing it out?

RI: For me, it’s just hearing what Trey does with it every night. [Laughs] It’s always totally different. He’s just a great improviser. It’s fun to hear all the different stuff that comes out of him every night.

TH: I would say the improvisation part. It puts me in that Dead state of mind. You want to come up with something different. Being into bluegrass and jazz and all kinds of different stuff, improvising is my favorite part of music, in general. Especially on that one. There are no rules. It has a shape, but within that there are no rules. It’s pretty much a free-for-all. And I like that it can be as loose as we want it to be. It feels great and it’s always fun.

Ever since the beginning of bluegrass as a genre, there’s always been this tradition of covering songs from outside of bluegrass. Why do you think that’s something that still continues to this day?

TH: That first Bill [Monroe] record has so much on it that, by today’s standards, would not be considered bluegrass — like organ and other stuff that’s kind of outside the driving thing that bluegrass has become. I think that’s the beauty of bluegrass: It can work within whatever you want it to be.

RI: You know, Earl Scruggs was listening to Benny Goodman, and he was really into this clarinet player named Pete Fountain. Bill Monroe was listening to Jimmie Rodgers. Arnold Schultz, a great blues guitarist from Kentucky was, of course, a big influence on Bill. That’s what I like about what Trey and I are doing. It’s kind of rooted in bluegrass, it has that energy, but we’re exploring other music forms. When we play live, we’re usually playing acoustics, but we have some pedals. We’re playing through pickups. I’ll use a phase-shifter at certain points on that song and Trey will use a wah pedal, kind of tipping his hat to Jerry Garcia — even musically, he’ll quote some Jerry Garcia licks in his solo. We’re using this bluegrass background, but we don’t live in that shell. I’m a big fan of John Scofield and some other electric guitarists, and those guys have a lot of effects pedals that they use in a very musical way. It’s not just some BS. It’s fun to explore that with these acoustic instruments. It allows us to try new things sonically that are very exciting. We love mixing it up.

I grew up listening to Tony Rice. I always think of that late ‘70s/early ‘80s period when he was in the studio so much, doing the David Grisman stuff. And his solo albums were very jazz- and improvisation-oriented. At the same time, he was doing the Bluegrass Album Band. It was all killer. Really, really top-notch. I’ve always been inspired by musicians like that, who always continue to seek inspiration. You have to go out and look at new things to get inspiration. You can’t just look at the same four walls every day.

You know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

[Both laugh]

TH: I’ve heard that for years now! [Laughs] I like to take it with a badge of honor. I love bluegrass, but I love to expand on bluegrass. I think anything that I’m ever going to do is going to have that core of bluegrass. It’s never going to go away, because I love it so much. But if everybody wants to be like Bill, they’d expand upon the music.

RI: The sentiment you’re talking about … who knows? But I think it’s usually more of a fan thing. Those people like the tradition that bluegrass encapsulates. There are definitely some musicians that feel that way, too. I’ve always listened to musicians who are exploring and trying new things. That’s what Bill and Earl were doing. It’s ironic, because I think what people love about bluegrass is that exploring. So, to want to shut it down is kind of contradictory to what made it great in the first place. I also get that people like it because it represents something, whether it’s the “good ol’ days” or whatever. And I get that, when people started adding drums to country, it drove a lot of people away from country music. The same happens with bluegrass fans today. I guess I just listen to music that makes me feel something and I don’t really care about the instrumentation. I’m listening for what people are putting into it.

Defying Expectations: A Conversation with Peter Rowan

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Peter Rowan is a serious wellspring of knowledge about 20th-century music. It’s a wild ride to interview him about a new project — in this case, his recent Hawaiian-inpsired album, My Aloha. In a half-hour conversation, we touched on the early Grand Ole Opry, varieties of New Orleans blues, Hawaiian mandolin playing, and plenty more. His obvious breadth of knowledge squares with a freewheeling half-century career: He’s studied with masters like Bill Monroe and Carter Stanley and collaborated with brilliant contemporaries like Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, and Clarence White, not to mention his forays into country, reggae, Tex-Mex, Irish, and now Hawaiian music. By now, his surprises shouldn’t surprise us.

We usually expect our bluegrass musicians to stick to bluegrass music, just like we expect B.B. King to play the blues. Try to imagine Ronnie McCoury or Tony Rice making a record with a Tibetan throat singer. But somehow Peter Rowan — a true bluegrass guru, if there is one — has managed to consistently defy this expectation. He’s made an identity out of idiosyncrasy.

And unlike some legacy artists who “collaborate” with peers solely for the sake of novel juxtaposition, when Rowan makes Irish music with Tríona Ní Dhomhnaill or Tex-Mex with Flaco Jiménez, he doesn’t just collaborate; he immerses himself. He absorbs. Bill Monroe told a young Peter Rowan, “If you can learn my music, you can play any kind of music.” Coming from Monroe, that sentiment could’ve been taken as territorial ego, as bandleader bluster. But Rowan took Monroe’s words to heart. He’s turned a foundation in bluegrass into a life-long dedication to diving deep into new musical languages. 

It’s tempting to conclude any survey of Rowan’s career by contrasting Monroe and Rowan as the founder vs the experimenter, the father vs the prodigal son. This sounds satisfying but largely misses the point, because the Father of Bluegrass didn’t respect genre boundaries, either. Combining influences from far-flung musical worlds was exactly Monroe’s bailiwick. Seventy years in the rearview mirror, however, his string band innovations are often taken for granted. It’s easy to forget that Bill Monroe, himself, stole mandolin licks from Hawaiians, studied blues with Black guitarists, reimagined fiddle songs from the old folks back home, and generally told the status quo where to shove it. So, if Peter Rowan’s new Hawaiian record makes you scratch your head, remember he’s just carrying on the family tradition.

I’ve been listening to your My Aloha record. It’s beautiful and spare and cohesive. It’s great. Even though I knew you did all kinds of projects and recorded a lot, this one surprised me. How did it come about? How did you decide to do a tribute to Hawaiian music?

That song “Uncle Jimmy” kind of explains it. When I was four years old, he came back from Hawaii, from New Caledonia in the South Pacific, where he’d been working with the Navy. He had a ukulele and grass skirts and coconut bras. He handed them out in our living room. There’s a photograph … I wish I had included it … with all of us decked out — him with his sailor cap on and he’s doing that vaudevillian knee-whacking thing they did back then, that visual comedy thing where you cross your hands in front of your knees and it looks like your knees are passing through each other. So that was Uncle Jimmy. He always said “hubba hubba ding ding,” and I never knew what that meant. When I was over in Hawaii meeting the two Hawaiian players on the record — you know, you talk in story over there — and as I explained Uncle Jimmy, they said, “You’ve got to do this! You’ve got to finish this song. This is really part of the story.”

So you decided to record in Hawaii. What was that like?

I sort of fell into their whole approach, is what happened. I’ve always gone to Hawaii over the years, and it’s so musical. And the land itself seems to have some sort of enchanted healings that themselves turn into music — what they call Mana. I’ve been playing the last few records of bluegrass and one twang record out of Texas. I was just thinking, why am I so attracted to this sound? Really it’s because I heard it first. I heard a ukulele before I heard anything else. Uncle Jimmy was playing ukulele, and I learned from him. I learned “Five Foot Two, Eyes Of Blue,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and all these tunes. And Uncle Jimmy, he didn’t have a completely happy life. He didn’t pass on as a fulfilled person. But he had that willingness to go out on a limb. He even did some shows with me and my brothers.

So he was an influence on you during a really formative period.

Well, that’s the first instrument I learned, the ukulele. It had never dawned on me that it was going to open any doors. A few years ago a friend of mine made a baritone uke, a nice one, so I started playing it and songs started coming. When I would go over there [to Hawaii], you know, I’d hit the water and swim and then come back to the instruments and play. You’re in a zone. It’s a different zone. And the songs started coming. It’s more of a watery thing, a little bit sunbaked. That’s really why I did the project, because I was writing the songs.

They definitely channel that Hawaiian vibe, or what I think of as that mid 20th century Hawaiian sound. It sounds like it’s a tribute to a period of time, too, that era in the 40s when Uncle Jimmy was going over there.

They’re also more ragtimey chord changes like my parents would’ve listened to. Also there’s a strong connection to Jimmy Rodgers. I loved those chord changes from the 30s, those Jimmy Rodgers elements. I did a record with Jerry Douglas called Yonder, and we touched a little bit on this real old time sounding guitar and dobro songs. This reawakened that approach.

When Hawaiian people hear my interpretation of Hawaiian music, they sing along. They’re very humbled. It’s just like in bluegrass and old time music. There is a lineage of players, and I became fascinated with the history of the whole thing. It kind of cleared my palate to make this next project for Rebel Records, which is sort of my story as it relates to the Stanley Brothers. It helped. Singing Hawaiian music is so different. Singing falsetto is a tradition in bluegrass, too. In bluegrass you have to find that vocal break point with a harder, sharper edge. Hawaii gives you a soft break point. It also gives you more range — you can sing lower and then go into a higher range of falsetto singing. Bluegrass, you know, is very tight. You’ve got to jump through the hoop. It’s like that rabbit in a log with the hound dog after you — bluegrass chases you. You’ve got to make your breaks and vocal turns really fast. Hawaii just gives you a lot more time to make those vocal breaks. So different from bluegrass. It was like, “woah, where am I here?” [Laughs]

So it it was unfamiliar but in a comfortable way. A new project, a cleansing of the palate.

Yeah, and I like that because that’s where songs really come from. You bust out of one thing — you might not even know why you did — and you’re in a new frame of mind and you see things differently. Maybe you get a song. Also Hawaii is a mother. More cultures have come there and been absorbed into Hawaiian culture than almost anywhere. Especially Asian cultures, so there’s a strong Asian element. I just really wanted to go there.

Well, Hawaii as a place where lots of cultures have mixed together, that reminds me of bluegrass, too — bluegrass as this thing that Bill Monroe created out of all these different traditions. So you’ve got a lot of experience exploring a type of music like that.

Very true. I think I mention something about that in the liner notes. There is one inescapable fact, which is that “Kentucky Waltz” is a direct rip off of a 1915 Hawaiian song. And the mandolin playing on that song by Johnny Almeida is exactly how Bill Monroe would play the song 30 years later.

I never knew that. Wow. So what does that say about Monroe?

What is says is a great thing. Not only was Bill keeping his cards close to his chest, which was how you’d survive in those days — it’s what you could come up with that was unique, what you could incorporate into your own song. Bill would say, “I would never steal another man’s note, but I might write one song off another,” meaning ‘I would take his melody, but I wouldn’t steal his note!’

What did he think the difference was? Writing a song off another song but not stealing?

Well, that’s a just Bill Monroe’s deception talking. [Laughs] He would steal anything he could! That was the name of the game in those days. He sang Muleskinner Blues on the Opry and got six encores, then the next week Roy Acuff releases “Muleskinner Blues” with him singing it. That galled Bill. That was like, “ooh!” But that’s how it was in those days. You just don’t let on. You’ve got to keep the surprise to your advantage. He was really competitive.

He was also really territorial about the music he created, right? Didn’t it seem like he wanted it to be carried forward in a specific way?

You mean, the way he called it “my music?” Well, yeah. But he saw me coming along and he said, “If you can learn my music, you can play any kind of music.” I thought that was saying how bluegrass gave you the foundation, which it does, but he was also talking to me as a person. I wasn’t thinking of it as a personal advice at the time, but I think he saw in me — I think he didn’t quite know what to make of me. I mean, I knew too much. I didn’t just go hide from him and then show up on stage. I sought him out. I asked questions. I came from college where they teach you how to ask questions. Plus in those days, in the 60s, it was a time of inquiry. Why are we at war? What is going on in the world? Are they really going to drop the hydrogen bomb while we’re out here on the road playing bluegrass? You just wondered, what is going on? It re-stimulated Bill in his own way. He had a renaissance at that time with these 20-year-olds in his band. He was 53 at the time. That’s when I had a lot of contact with the Stanley Brothers, who were almost from a foreign country themselves, you know, that area in Virginia.

Deep Southwest Virginia, right.

Oh my gosh, yeah. And I just cut this song about Bill taking me to see Carter Stanley. You never know why at the time, you know, but we were all still dressed up for doing our show in Knoxville. We drove up and met Carter. He was dressed in a sport coat, too, because he was going to meet Bill. That’s how it was. You never dressed down in those days. You stepped right up there and put your good shirt on, you know.

It was a sign of respect, right. I mean especially for Monroe’s generation.

Exactly. Bill hated to see anyone sloppily dressed. When I asked him what his thing was with the clothes, he told me that the people he played with when he started out were farmers who might only have one shirt, one clean shirt. So you show your respect for them by dressing up for them, and that meant something. I’ll tell you something funny. John Prine tells a story — his parents told him when the Monroe Brothers came through Paradise, Kentucky, they thought the Mafia had arrived. All these guys in their hats and suits and cases. They were like, who are these guys, moonshine emperors? Are we having a showdown? [Laughs]

So you sat with Bill Monroe and Carter Stanley while they visited. What did they talk about? What was their relationship like?

I think their relationship was very decent. In Ralph’s book he said that Carter and Bill were very close. They were close in age, you know. Close to the same age, although Carter would’ve been a little younger. I had seen the Stanley Brothers play a lot and we had been on shows together. But for me to drive Bill…it was a special break from tour, you know, before we played Knoxville that night — we had to get a car after leaving the bus in Knoxville. We drove up there I think for two reasons. I think Carter felt his mortality. Within a year he would be dead. And when I met him I was a little bit shocked. He was weak and sick and, you know, he looked jaundiced. His eyes — in my diary at the time I wrote, “I’ve looked into Carter Stanley’s tombstone eyes.” He looked bad. I think he had been diagnosed with a liver problem and he wanted to see Bill. It was an exchange where Bill tipped his hat to Carter and said that he was one of the best singers he had ever worked with. You know, Carter wrote songs and Bill wrote songs and then they both recorded their versions of the same songs. So I started thinking a lot about Carter and over the years, you know — in Old And In The Way we did “Pig In A Pen,” “White Dove,” we did “Going To The Races.” The Stanley Brothers have been the backbone of a lot of what I’ve played. It was easy to play and fun to play, but it wasn’t until I went to make these recordings recently in Nashville that I realized how Carter is a deceptive singer. To go to the five chord and sing the third, that’s not easy. To put a blue note on the third of the five, it’s like, wow, wait a second. That’s what gives this whole thing its sound!

Right. Not very intuitive. But a cool, bluesy choice, very Stanley Brothers.

It is. And it’s very strange, I could only get those notes from coming on top of them. I couldn’t come up to them. Because with Bill, you know, the music was based on a sort of fanfare [sings a mandolin intro melody], a lot of upward moving lines. Then the downward lines are the bluesy lines [sings descending blues melody]. So that’s a challenge there, to combine those two feelings. Often the verse begins with a rising line and then the end of the line descends, that kind of dying fall, that bluesy fall.

Of course Monroe had learned a lot from the blues and taken a lot from the blues, but the Stanley Brothers, too. It’s like bluegrass is a branch on the blues tree. Do you think of yourself as carrying on that tradition?

Well, yeah. And remember this, about the Stanley Brothers — the last years of their recordings were done up at King records up in Cincinnati. King Records. They had two other groups: Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, who actually did some finger poppin’ on the Stanley Brothers’ “Finger Poppin’ Time,” which was their tune. And the other guy on the label, the only label that would sign this guy, his name was James Brown. So, I mean, look where they were coming from in their musical input.

From Southwest Virginia to King Records, that’s kind of a cultural leap, too.

Well, that was on their route, their circuit, you know. Go up to the Midwest and play for all those coal miners. In Ohio there were bars everywhere. Then what started to happen was in the 60s they started to play college campuses. That changed everything. That generation became a whole enlightened generation of bluegrass followers. They now had an audience. It wasn’t just 30 coal miners in a little funky bar hidden away in rural Ohio. It wasn’t a schoolhouse. Honestly, I played the end of that era — some of those gigs were still in play, is what I’m trying to say.

You were getting into bluegrass, when was it, the early 60s?

Yeah, that was right in the boom. And strangely enough, looking back at it, within five years we had Old And In The Way going on the West Coast. In those times, being young, you’d be going from one project to another — on Elektra records with me and [David] Grisman doing Earth Opera, out in LA doing Muleskinner for Warner Brothers. It was fast moving, and there weren’t many of us! I mean, there weren’t 150 bluegrass players on the planet. There were twenty-five. So, you know, you could have something different to offer for a musical project. But what I didn’t really understand was how to bring out the bluegrass. We did a little bit of that in Sea Train. We did Orange Blossom Special and Sally Goodin because they were crowd pleasers. But every time I tried to sing a bluegrass song it was shot down. These guys, they were from New York. They knew Blues, but maybe I couldn’t be convincing enough to do anything as lonesome as what came out of bluegrass. We got into that on Muleskinner after that period with Sea Train. Then with Old And In The Way we just went for it! With Jerry Garcia on our side, thank you very much. You know, ‘Call up Vassar Clements and let’s go!’ Jerry just wanted to play the grass. I think his version of White Dove is the most stirring.

Really? Interesting to think of Jerry’s version of bluegrass as getting to the heart of it, compared to The Stanleys. I guess you’re the only one who played with both of them…

Well, you know, when I sang White Dove with Ralph it was like, oh, surprise, we don’t do White Dove slow in this band — they would swing it. The mountain people, if they’re going to dwell on stuff, it’s going to be right to the cradle and grave. But when it gets down to the uplift of bluegrass, they weren’t trying to do it as art. They did it as a lifeforce support system. So there’s all these uptempo melodies, and even a waltz would be kind of bouncy. Bill, you know, had been to New Orleans. He had heard New Orleans music. Arnold Shultz, his black blues guitar partner, was from New Orleans.

Did you ever talk to Bill about Arnold Shultz?

I did, yeah. I talked to him about New Orleans, too. He said the first time he had his own band they went down to New Orleans and stayed for two months. So I said, “What kind of music did you hear there?” And he said, “A man could hear any kind of music at that time.” That would’ve been the 40s.

Would that have been with Charlie [Monroe], or with the early Bluegrass Boys?

Well, maybe ’48. That’s what I had in my diary, that it was with Flatt and Scruggs. That was sort of where he took them to train them. I don’t know, but that’s what he told me, so that’s what I wrote down. What he said was, in those days you had the sock time — think “True Life Blues” — you had jump time, and of course you had ragtime. And, he said, and then you have the slow drag. [Laughs] It’s a slow 4/4. So what Bill did was sped it up, kept the sock time in there, and if you want to think of the slow drag translated into Bill’s particular take, think of “Blue Moon Of Kentucky,” the original recording. Or “In The Pines.” These were musical genres within the blues of New Orleans.

Did you write down a lot of what Monroe told you?

I would keep a diary the whole time and listen to him talk. You know, we’d be riding along in the bus, a little disjointed, bouncing around, and he’s playing on the mandolin. He’d say, “That there comes from American Indian peoples.” Then he’d play something else and say, “Now that comes from New Orleans.” I was like, New Orleans? And he said, “Yes, sir.”

Photo credit: Amanda Rowan

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Darin & Brooke Aldridge

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Artist: Darin & Brooke Aldridge
Song: “ Someday Soon” (originally by Ian & Sylvia)
Album: Faster and Farther

When did you first hear “Someday Soon?”

Darin Aldridge: It’s one of the tunes that Brooke and I have been doing in the living room around our house, as we just sit around playing, coming up with tunes. [Laughs] Suzy Bogguss was probably the first for both of us. We were in Sarasota, Florida, about a year-and-a-half or two years ago with John Cowan — we’ve been on tour a lot with him lately. And the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, some of those guys were down there. We were just soundchecking, and Brooke started singing the song as a vocal check. And they all asked if we would do that song that night. We started doing it from there.

What was your process for arranging it and putting it together?

We kept it in the same key for her. It sang really well. The chords are so beautiful in it the way Ian Tyson wrote them, so we thought, “Why change anything that’s not really broken?” She does hold out a part of it toward the end. It’s such a good note for her. And that’s different from any other versions of the song. We arranged it with the band we would be performing live with, so it would have the fiddle and guitar break. Dobro was in our band, at the time, so that’s how we had that in there.

It’s been a tradition since the beginning of bluegrass for artists to take songs from outside of the genre and turn them into bluegrass songs. Why do you think that is?

I think that as people in different genres and different eras — say the ‘60s til now — people just play music that they enjoy, writing they enjoy. I got to be a part of the Country Gentlemen in the last decade or so that Charlie Waller was alive. They were probably known as the first bluegrass artists to really be reaching out in the ‘60s, doing a lot of folk tunes, a lot of rock songs, like things from the movie Exodus and so forth. That trickled down through the decades. If it’s just a good song, it’s hard to keep down, and I think that’s what keeps a lot of the music fresh. Even Monroe ventured into some of the bluesy music, so did Flatt & Scruggs, to keep along with the times. Different artists just picked things that they enjoyed or spoke to them.

What’s your favorite thing about performing this song?

Probably the crowd response. It speaks to a lot of new folks listening to it the first time, then you get the older generation that have heard it from the hit by Judy Collins in the ‘60s, or from Suzy Bogguss’s hit — people who are 40 or 50 years old remember that from the ‘90s. It’s a good crowd favorite. We got to perform it on the Grand Ole Opry this year, when we debuted, and it got a great response. It’s just been a wonderful song. It’s up for IBMA Song of the Year. It’s been number one for us on the Bluegrass Today chart, Roots Music Report, and, I think, Bluegrass Unlimited.

You know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

[Laughs] ‘Cause it don’t have a banjo in it! I see it from both sides. Considering bluegrass the way Monroe and them played it in 1946 with that instrumentation — that’s ground zero for bluegrass. This song doesn’t have banjo in it, but it’s got soul, it’s got instrumentation of bluegrass, and of course wonderful singing. It’s hard to keep that down. It can crossover to whatever. It’s not too far from Suzy’s version of it or mainstream country and it’s hit a lot of country radio.

That’s a hard question, you know? If it’s bluegrass or it’s not. I think it’s people’s opinion about what they enjoy and that opinion is growing wider and wider, which makes the music grow. Why not let them fight over what they think is and isn’t bluegrass? That’s why they make CDs and downloads, so you can choose yourself, I guess? [Laughs]

The Ebony Hillbillies: Becoming a Part of the Music

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For most listeners of bluegrass, the history of the music begins (and often ends) in December of 1945, when Bill Monroe brought his Blue Grass Boys — Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt, included — on stage at the Grand Ole Opry. Bluegrass was created by the men on that historic stage, straight from their brains through their fingertips. Right?

For roots musicians whose identities don’t fit the proverbial mold, this telling of history is not nearly so convenient. Henrique Prince and Gloria Thomas Gassaway, of the New York-based Black string band the Ebony Hillbillies, tell a much different story. When the Hillbillies headline our Shout & Shine showcase at the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass conference, there will almost undoubtedly be attendees questioning the band’s place beneath the umbrella of “bluegrass.” But omitting or excluding any pieces of the music — and its history — deprives us all of some of its best parts … like the music, tradition, and dances of the Ebony Hillbillies.

How did roots music and string band music come into your lives?

Gloria Thomas Gassaway: I grew up with parents from the South who played this music and knew the history and roots of it. My dad played banjo and he knew all this music; he knew where it came from and how it evolved. I did move into other music genres, but I always had those roots from South Carolina.

Henrique Prince: My parents were Caribbean. My father’s parents were a bunch of musicians. They had bands and they played old folk music from their culture. I wanted to learn how to play violin pretty young, but nobody could afford lessons and nobody knew what to do. I was really precocious about it. Little folk tunes were what I could do and play. I started to learn everything I could about that music. That’s how I sort of learned to play — learning those old folk melodies. I learned a lot of the history. I tried to find out everything I could. There’s a whole connection to Caribbean music, as well, in the mainstream of American folk music.

Why do you think a bluegrass fan or roots music fan might look at the Ebony Hillbillies and think that you’re a novelty or that you don’t have equal claim to string band music as a traditional, Appalachian bluegrass band does?

HP: It’s because people have been fed a convenient story that makes it seem like it’s all about themselves. The history is told so people won’t have a lot of strange feelings about the past. The truth is that the banjo is an instrument that is generations removed from the original instruments that came out of Africa. The most likely history of the word “fiddle” is an erosion of a Latin word for “string,” which came about because the Romans got bowed stringed instruments out of Ethiopia 2,000 years ago. All of this stuff, this music, has been in the Black community, in the Moor and Arab community, since the 11th century. This stuff goes back, back, back, back beyond Appalachia. But it’s never been convenient here in America, for various reasons, to explain all of that.

The interesting thing for us, when we play for our own audiences, Black people are delighted that there’s a Black band that plays this because, some of this music, they’ve actually liked, but they’ve never been able to be involved in these kind of things. We’ve done these big dances, big hoedowns in Harlem where our arms want to fall off playing a reel long enough that all of the dancers can go through the arches and do all the steps, because there are so many people involved. They’re having so much fun.

If you want to teach the story so it only involves one group of people, then you’re going to leave out most of the history. If you tell more or less the truth, then the story might become more complicated or have more parts — some of which may even be uncomfortable — but it will be a much more interesting story.

GTG: And it is much more interesting. I come from a long line of musicians in my family out of South Carolina. I’ve been able to go back through the history of my dad’s family — my family is native — to trace the interaction of (my ancestors) playing this music all the way back to the 1800s. They taught people how to play the instruments and this music.

It seems like the Ebony Hillbillies found each other pretty serendipitously. How did you all come together to form the band?

HP: That would take a couple of beers! [Laughs] It all started with an idea of specializing in dance music, because I really liked the idea of the violin as a dance instrument. I thought it’s the greatest dance instrument in the world, outside of the drum. I tried to learn all different kinds of dance music to play and then began doing it as a duo with different bass players. Then, when I finally found a banjo player, it was the real deal. Banjos and bowed stringed instruments go way back. This is African. This goes back to some place in the 12th century. People would hear the music, I’d explain to them the history, and musicians would respond by coming on board. Then, suddenly, we were a band. That’s basically — to make a long story short — how it happened.

What does it mean to you to be coming back to IBMA’s World of Bluegrass conference and festival this year with the whole band, representing Black string band music at Shout & Shine: A Celebration of Diversity in Bluegrass?

HP: That’s a wonderful thing, a very wonderful thing. Sometimes you’d wish that musicians’ welcome would be more like a welcome back because, in a sense, we’re bringing back something that really hasn’t been associated on this level since the 1920s, very early on in the music, even before the recording industry started. We just hope to bring what we do, which is hopefully a joyful sound, and relate it to what other people do so they can understand it. We play the same instruments and even play some of the same songs. We play for audiences that usually never get a chance to enjoy this music with people they can connect with emotionally or culturally. So it’s interesting to be with people of different cultures because, again, the connection will be the music. We all know this music. It will be a lot of fun.

GTG: And, a lots of times, people don’t realize that they can actually get up and really dance to this music!

HP: That’s true. In so many experiences we’ve had playing nationally and outside of New York, one of the things we’ve noticed is that a lot of bluegrass audiences tend to be sit-down audiences. I don’t know how much that’s changed in the time since we started doing this. We’ve been in situations where people who never get up got up for our band and danced. Which is okay with us, because we just love to get people dancing!

Why is it that you actively, overtly work to spread dance with your music?

HP: This is one of the celebrations of diversity that you’re going to have (at Shout & Shine.) Black music has very much to do with dance.

GTG: They go hand-in-hand.

HP: It’s like a form of communication. It’s a cultural form of language. It’s always been part and parcel of the music. Movement and physical participation with the music means you dance. Slaves, displaced Africans here in America, working for this economy, they developed this music in order to give them relief from the incredible hard work and the psychologically demeaning situation they found themselves in. The only things they had were making their banjos, making their fiddles, stomping their feet, and clapping their hands. The power of music was transporting them, making them dance, giving them joy, taking them away. That’s one of the things that’s appealing about this music. It is chock-full of joy, this ancient joy from people that was put in there because it had to be. When someone played the banjo, you just had to move your feet.

That’s the way we play the music. We play the same tunes as anybody else. Ours aren’t any better than anyone else, but we have a certain attitude that makes it affect that part of you that makes you move. You could just sit down and listen, but this music has always been designed to make you react, become a part of it, and enjoy yourself. Part of the way to express and enjoy yourself is to dance and clap your hands.

If you read that poem “The Party,” where [Paul Laurence Dunbar] talks about going to a slaves’ party and, when a fiddler comes in and starts to play, nobody can stand still anymore. That’s talking about a Black fiddler. Dance is the required and sought-for reaction. [Laughs] When that’s missing, something bigger is missing. A downside of reorganizing the history is that you end up leaving some parts out that are really good for you.

I think about the “transportive” quality of this music a lot, and I try to unpack this with people in roots music communities because, to me, being gay, it makes sense that this music — which was designed and created to take people away from the hardship of their lives — would have something to offer all marginalized people, from women to LGBTQ+ individuals to people of color to immigrants and on and on. Do you feel this potential as well?

HP: You definitely hit on something there. The mainstream culture, the narrative that’s spoken, “This is what the history is. It is what we say it is,” is the dominant culture that’s interested in being one certain way. That way excludes people who don’t fit, people who are expected by the mainstream to have certain behaviors. We don’t know which musicians were gay 200 years ago. You don’t know who people were or what they were thinking. Just because you suppress something doesn’t mean it goes away. All the evidence proves it doesn’t. You might have some hero in the past and, if you got in a time machine and found out, you would be shocked. [Laughs] These are ideas that are not only outdated, they are just wrong. You can’t leave out people — we need all hands on deck — because you don’t particularly, supposedly approve of their behavior or something about them. These people are very, very valuable people and have valuable ideas.

We’re trying. It seems like the whole community is trying. We’ve raise a real pimple recently in this whole society that’s about to bust. But it’s always been here. It’s been sitting by, unaddressed, getting bigger and bigger and uglier and uglier for years. Everybody feels like they have to tiptoe around the truth with people, or they threaten death, destruction, and mayhem if you dare say certain things. It’s always been that way, but finally, in the end, the only thing that could save us — the only thing that could organize us enough to save our own lives, our own houses, our own anything — is the truth.

GTG: It’s sad that, in this day and age, people cannot understand that all people are different and just let them be who they are. It’s sad. It sickens me. It sickens me in race, in people’s gender, and who they choose to be and love in their lives. I’m not a young chicky, but years before it became fashionable, someone came to me and asked me if I’d sign a petition for LGBT rights. I was in an upscale area of Queens, New York, and I looked at him and said, “Is water wet? Is James Brown funky? Is King Kong a great big monkey?” [Laughs] I said, “Can I sign more than once?” I was sick and tired because I know how it is to be treated a certain way. I said, “Give me another sheet of paper cause I’m going to take it around and get it signed.”

You guys will be at IBMA for the Shout & Shine showcase, but you’re also playing Bluegrass in the Schools throughout the week, and you’re playing a couple of sets at the Wide Open StreetFest, so what are your hopes for your time in Raleigh?

HP: We hope people will just love it so much they’ll be dancing around and that people like it so much that they won’t want it to stop and the cops will have to come and clear the place. [Laughs] It’s going to be a big ol’ wang-dang-doodle of a time.

GTG: Oh yeah, we’re gonna have a ball. We just hope people enjoy the party.

3×3: Blank Range on Frank Sinatra, Palo Santo, and Non-Superfluous Suburbs

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Artist: Grant Gustafson (of Blank Range)
Hometown: Nashville, TN
Latest Album: Marooned with the Treasure
Personal Nicknames: We call Jon Childers a myriad of names e.g. Childabeest, Childeezy, Deezy … working on new permutations.

 

#NameThatRanger #tbt

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Who is the most surprising artist in current rotation in your iTunes/Spotify?

Frank Sinatra hasn’t been in my rotation ever before. I think it seemed like a cliché or something, but a friend played the album The World We Knew for me the other day and the first few songs really caught my attention. Amazing arrangements and really striking, dramatic songs. A good reminder that, a lot of the time, people are iconic for a reason.

If you were a candle, what scent would you be?

I wouldn’t be a candle. I would be white sage wrapped around a stick of palo santo. A therapeutic scent that we’ve made into our signature in the van.

What literary character or story do you most relate to?

The good pig in Animal Farm.

What’s your favorite word?

I had a friend immediately respond with “rhythm” once, when asked this question. I guess I’ve never decided for myself so, here goes, matemáticas is beautiful, but that is lost in English. Maybe “superfluous” is my favorite word.

What’s your best physical attribute?

I’m told I have expressive eyebrows, but I’d like to think it’s my flexible ankles.

Which is your favorite Revival — Creedence Clearwater, Dustbowl, Elephant, Jamestown, New Grass, Tent, or -ists?

CCR is the best feeling.

Banjo, mando, or dobro?

I was at one point mesmerized by Bill Monroe, but I think it was the high harmony on those old recordings that was so disarming — mandolin.

Are you more a thinking or feeling type?

I think I’m a romantic who is perpetually trying to exercise rational thinking.

Urban or rural?

Suburbs, best of both worlds. Like Sinatra, iconic for a reason.

Photo credit: Don VanCleave

MIXTAPE: Casey Campbell’s Mandolin Masters

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With his latest release being Mandolin Duets, Vol. 1, who better than Casey Campbell to put together a Mixtape of mandolin masters for us? No one. That’s who. He has studied them all — and played with many — so take his carefully selected collection to heart (and ear).

Bill Monroe & Doc Watson — “Watson’s Blues”

Where else to begin but with the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. There are hundreds of recordings to choose from, but I’ve always been a big fan of this duo album of Bill and Doc Watson entitled Live Recordings 1963-1980: Off the Record Volume 2. It features some great duet singing from Bill and Doc, as well as a bevy of short, sweet, and to-the-point instrumentals. I am partial to “Watson’s Blues” not only because this particular recording features the writer (Bill) and the inspiration for the tune (Doc), but also because it is a bluesy little number (and I like my bluegrass to be bluesy).

Ronnie McCoury — “McCoury Blues”

Ahhh … it was the mid-2000s. MySpace was all the rage, and we had yet to discover fidget spinners, stick basses, and Netflix. You know, the good ol’ days. I came across “McCoury Blues” while scouring through Rhapsody (the Spotify before Spotify existed), and, in my opinion, it is a 21st-century take on “Watson’s Blues” with Ronnie’s smooth tremolo and Del McCoury’s powerhouse guitar runs. More importantly, this song led me to the Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza album. This project, spearheaded by Ronnie and David Grisman, is a mandolin goldmine including Ronnie, David, Sam Bush, Ricky Skaggs, Buck White, Frank Wakefield, Bobby Osborne, Jesse McReynolds, and Del McCoury on rhythm guitar. Of course, growing up in the bluegrass world, I had heard all of these players before, but this album was my introduction to the concept of musical style and the intricate differences between musicians. Throughout my mandolin obsession, I have continually returned to this album to draw inspiration (read: steal licks). If there is one album I would recommend to any mandolin fan, it would be Bluegrass Mandolin Extravaganza.

Mike Compton & David Long — “Tanyards”

If you haven’t picked up on the pattern yet, I’m a big fan of duet recordings. A large part of that came from this album by mandolin masters Mike Compton and David Long. My mother picked me up from middle school in her silver PT Cruiser — yes, we were that cool — with a copy of this album in the passenger seat. We listened to it on the way home, then I listened to it again, and again, and again. Mike and David have such fluid playing styles, and you would be hard-pressed to find other players that could replicate the chemistry on this album. This track does a great job of showcasing each player and also letting the two intertwine as they swap licks. It is one of my favorite albums of all time.

Ricky Skaggs & Kentucky Thunder — “Crossing the Briney”

Adding a little Irish flair to the list, here is a song that starts out bare and ends with a full-on orchestra with all of the bells and whistles (literally). This song is featured on Ricky Skaggs’s Instrumentals albums and, in my opinion, is the standout hit. I mean, where else can you hear instrumentation like this, AND a kickass Andy Leftwich fiddle solo in the middle? This song also opened my mind to how to take what is essentially a pretty standard Irish fiddle tune and raise it to a new level. Admittedly, Ricky doesn’t really get to stretch out on this tune, so it’s not the best representation of his great mandolin playing. But don’t worry: He is one of the best players mixing modern and traditional styles together, and there are plenty of great examples on this album.

The Whites (Buck White) — “Old Man Baker”

Buck White is a national treasure. Not only is he one of the sweetest humans I’ve ever had the honor of spending time with, but he is also one of the swingin’-est mandolin players you will come across. Whether he is kicking up his heels as a special guest with the Grand Ole Opry Square Dancers or playing mandolin on one of his many iconic albums with the Whites, there is no doubt he has a huge smile on his face and joy in his heart. This tune, written for fiddler Kenny Baker, is one that I often play when I am warming up on the mandolin. It’s a tough tune, for sure, with plenty of pinky work and string-jumping, but it is undoubtedly the most fun song on this list to play. Buck’s playing is just like his personality: bouncy, memorable, and always tasteful. If you are at all interested in hearing some Texas Swing mandolin playing, check out more of his catalog.

Strength in Numbers (Sam Bush) — “Texas Red”

Picking one song from the Strength in Numbers album is like picking a favorite child. People in the music business like to throw around the word “supergroup” for every other band, in hopes that it will create some kind of buzz or increase sales. Strength is one of the few occasions where the term accurately applies: Sam Bush, Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Connor, and Edgar Meyer. Between the late ’70s and mid-’80s, each of these trail-blazing musicians had helped to established a new frontier of acoustic music. Here they are, together in their prime, with one of acoustic music’s most influential instrumental albums of all time. PS: This album is Sam Bush Rhythm 101. Class dismissed.

David Grisman & Doc Watson — “Kentucky Waltz”

When I am teaching lessons or at a camp, it is without a doubt that I’ll get asked about mandolin tremolo. What is it? How do I do it? How do I make it better? All of these questions (and more) can be answered with Doc & Dawg’s version of the “Kentucky Waltz.” It is one of the most beautiful, simplest recordings of a mandolin and guitar I have come across. For the uninitiated, David Grisman is an icon in the mandolin and acoustic music worlds, heavily influencing today’s top mandolin players like Sam Bush, Ronnie McCoury, and Ricky Skaggs. With dozens of must-have albums spanning throughout his 50-year career, David led the way to the frontier of “new acoustic music” during the ’70s and ’80s. Even today, at 72, he is still going strong. touring with the David Grisman Bluegrass Experience, the David Grisman Sextet, and as a duo with Del McCoury. Despite all of his ground-breaking compositions and albums, when it comes to keeping it simple and making the most of a melody, David is still the king.

Radim Zenkl — “Memory of Jaroslav Jezek”

I couldn’t consider this list finished without introducing you to something a little outside the box. For his Galactic Mandolin album, Czech Republic mandolinist Radim Zenkl (pronounced Ra-deem Zeen-kl) experimented with different mandolin tunings for each song. Because a mandolin has four sets of strings (eight total), it is normally tuned GG-DD-AA-EE. This particular tune has the mandolin tuned in minor thirds. When I first heard this tune, I felt like it was a crazy of mixture of big band jazz and harp music, or something I might’ve heard on the original Nintendo version of The Legend of Zelda. I’m kind of mesmerized by its weirdness.

Andy Statman — “Pale Ale Hop”

While we are spending some time outside the box, now would be a good time to introduce you to Andy Statman. If there is a musical genre out there, Andy has covered it: bluegrass, jazz, Irish, klezmer, rock ‘n’ roll, etc. “Pale Ale Hop” showcases his rockin’ mandolin playing, transforming into something you might hear at a surf-rock dance party in the ’50s. My favorite thing about Andy is that, for all of his experimental compositions, he is a true student of all music and can play the most traditional bluegrass style you could imagine, then turn around and play a John Coltrane solo. If you’re interested in more of Andy’s left-of-center music, check out his earlier LPs, like Flatbush Waltz or Nashville Morning, New York Nights.

Jethro Burns & Tiny Moore — “Flickin’ My Pick”

Here is a classic album with two of the best jazz and swing mandolin players of the past century. Jethro Burns is known primarily as one half of Homer & Jethro, one of the great country comedy duos of the 1930s-60s. Despite all of his joking around, Jethro was a serious musician, playing anything from classical to bluegrass. On this particular song, he is playing the acoustic mandolin and taking the second solo. The other player you’ll hear is Tiny Moore, a pioneer of the electric mandolin. Tiny played with Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys and Merle Haggard’s band, the Strangers. Together, these two legends recorded Back to Back, which would become one of the definitive albums for jazz mandolin enthusiasts.

Norman Blake — “Valley Head”

Getting back to the roots of old-timey mandolin music, here is a tune written and played by Norman Blake. Although he is known mostly as one of the great bluegrass guitarists, both Norman and his wife Nancy are great mandolin players and have recorded quite a bit of mandolin music over the years. Similar to the “Kentucky Waltz” earlier on this list, the thing I love about Norman’s playing and this track, in particular, is the simplicity. Sure, this tune might have a lot of notes, but Norman sticks to the melody the entire way through, letting the song speak for itself. For those interested in more of Norman and Nancy’s mandolin playing, check out Natasha’s Waltz, an album that features a slew of great mandolin tunes.

Chris Thile — “Watch ‘At Breakdown”

Sometimes you’ve got to give the kids what they want … and they want Chris Thile. Between his work with Nickel Creek, Mike Marshall, the Punch Brothers, Michael Daves, the Goat Rodeo Sessions, Edgar Meyer, Jon Brion, Béla Fleck, and Brad Mehldau, among others, Chris has traversed just about every inch of the musical landscape. As if that weren’t enough, he is now the host of A Prairie Home Companion, collaborating with a new lineup of musical guests every week, including Jack White, Jason Isbell, Lake Street Dive, and more. With such a long and diverse resumé, he has become one of the most popular and influential mandolin players in the realm of Bill Monroe, David Grisman, and Sam Bush. “Watch ‘At Breakdown” is the starting track on Chris’s How to Grow a Band album, and shows off his bluegrass chops, while hinting that there are no bounds to his abilities.

Singing Like He Feels: A Conversation with Bobby Osborne

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I’d be willing to bet that, if you spent a day in New York City asking strangers to name a bluegrass song, seven out of 10 would look at you funny and walk away. The other three would say “Rocky Top.” It may be a mystery how any song permeates the popular consciousness to that depth, but my theory is that “Rocky Top” had one very unmysterious special ingredient: Bobby Osborne’s voice.

In a genre synonymous with “high, lonesome” tenor singing (See Monroe, Bill; Stanley, Ralph; Flatt, Lester; and McCoury, Del) the fact that Bobby Osborne’s high notes can turn heads and drop jaws is, itself, impressive. Even better, his bio skims like a Marvel comic origin story for the ultimate bluegrass musician. Born in rural Kentucky, he grew up helping his dad stock his granddad’s general store and absorbing the songs on the Grand Ole Opry, eventually dropping out of high school to form a band with his brother, Sonny. Within a few years, he had played in bands with the Stanley Brothers and Jimmy Martin, and on bills with Flatt & Scruggs and Bill Monroe. At age 16, his voice changed: It got higher.

By 1964, the Osborne Brothers were members of the Grand Ole Opry, shorthand for country music royalty. Their calling cards were Sonny’s banjo playing, Bobby’s mandolin playing, and a slight adjustment to Bill Monroe’s formula for bluegrass trio harmony: Instead of jumping up to the tenor harmony for choruses and giving someone else in the band the melody, as Monroe did, Bobby sang the melody on top in tenor range. Monroe’s high tenor gave his bands’ harmonies a magnetic intensity and rawness — but the melody had to be traded to another singer. Bobby’s version allowed the audience to follow him on melody, from verse to chorus, right up to the stratosphere. His high tenor gave choruses a sense of lift-off.

No one can be better than Bill Monroe at bluegrass harmony. He invented the sound. It’s more like Michael Jordan and LeBron James: a new generation with a fresh, slightly higher-octane version of the formula.

Take “Rocky Top,” for example. (Please, take it.) There may be better examples, but I think it’s instructive to confront the cliché case in point. Despite its borderline parody lyrics and the kitschy associations it’s gathered in the intervening decades, it’s still a great example of the recipe that made the Osborne Brothers — and bluegrass, as a whole — exciting.

On first listen, “Rocky Top” sounds like the record player is on the wrong speed. Blazing fast banjo, a mandolin break that almost goes off the rails, and a voice — very high, so high you have to squint your eyes and turn your head to take it all in, but also effortlessly high, beautifully high, somehow competing with the banjo for the status of most impressively piercing element of the song — a voice that makes your brain search the animal kingdom for comparisions, because those notes shouldn’t be possible for a human, certainly not a human male.

Here, it’s important to stop and consider the historical trajectory of bluegrass: When “Rocky Top” hit the country charts in the late ’60s, what we now call “bluegrass” music was still really young. Hardly 25 years had passed since 1945, when Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe on the Opry and kids around the South gathered around their radios to hear the Blue Grass Boys. Their sound was new and wild and intense, and it made perfect sense in those heady post-WW II days of new technology and American optimism. Scruggs’ banjo was a musical hot rod, fast and loud and metallic. Bluegrass had a moment of pop culture enthusiasm. Then rock ‘n’ roll stole its thunder. Louder, brasher, groovier — the same recipe, to be sure, but a better vehicle for the energy and anxieties of the era. (Still, listen to Chuck Berry’s guitar intro to “Jonny B. Goode” or Elvis’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.” Would any of it have been possible without Monroe?)

The 1950s were the lean years for bluegrass. In the shadow of rock and electric country music, acoustic bands inspired by Bill Monroe chugged along, barely making ends meet. Then, thankfully, a new musical movement swept cities and college campuses across America. The Folk Revival considered bluegrass, if not exactly old, at least a sort of stepbrother to the blues and ballads and fiddle music that was unassailably, organically American. It passed the authenticity test. In other words, 1945’s hot rod of high-flying testosterone had become, by the 1970s, traditional and worth preserving. Bluegrass, thereby, gained a capital B and became its own community, its own brand. It wasn’t just a branch on the country tree anymore; it had become its own genre with its own heroes and hierarchies and rules. Point being: By the time the Osborne Brothers got famous — not just Opry famous, but “Rocky Top” famous — bluegrass had done a lot of growing up and settling down. So, when they added drums and pedal steel and string sections to their recordings, there were plenty of folks ready to offer a cold shoulder or a brisk “tsk tsk.”

To their eternal credit, Bobby and Sonny just kept doing their thing, as they had been doing all along, like when they performed a new Elvis song on a country program in West Virginia … in 1951. To them, music was music, whether bluegrass, rock, or country. Bobby heeded the example of older musicians (see Monroe, Bill) who made recordings they wanted to make and sang what suited their voice, no matter whether their peers sounded different.

Which brings me back to “Rocky Top.” Just as it’s a shame for any musician’s multi-faceted, decades-long career to be reduced to one song, it’s a shame for the praise of a remarkable singer to be reduced to genre-specific superlatives. Bobby Osborne isn’t just a great bluegrass singer. He’s a singer — like Roy Orbison or Freddy Mercury or Robert Plant — who can, at his best, make you stop what you’re doing, turn up the radio, and wonder how the hell someone can make that sound.

Would you tell me a little bit about Alison Brown and how she put the record together?

I’ve known of her a long time as a banjo player. The first time I ever seen her was out in Telluride, Colorado. How I got acquainted with her was through Pete Rowan — I’m sure you’re familiar with him. He approached me out there in Colorado and asked me to do a song with him on a CD [The Old School, produced by Brown]. I said that would be fine. I went down there and did that, got acquainted with her for the first time. I know she was familiar with my singing for a long time before I ever met her. Time went on and I got to wondering if she would want to do a CD on me. So I just wrote to her and asked her and she said, “Yeah, I’d be interested.” Everything just sort of worked out from there.

How did you choose what songs to record? It’s an eclectic batch, from Elvis to the Bee Gees …

Well, I hadn’t recorded for a while. First of all, she said, “You start picking out some songs you’d like to sing.” I really didn’t know what to put down. So I just put down some country songs of Merle Haggard and George Jones and Don Gibson. Then I went down to that meeting, and she started pulling out brand new songs I hadn’t ever heard before. And I liked every one of them! That was the thing about it. She figured out, with the way that I sing, that those songs would suit me. Being a producer, I guess, that’s the sort of thing you learn how to do when you’re going to produce a CD on somebody. I just liked every one of them. “Kentucky Morning” and “Eight More Miles,” practically every one of them.

There are a lot of great young players on the record. Sierra Hull and Trey Hensley. Were you introduced to them for the first time? There are also some folks who’ve been around a long time like Rob Ickes and Stuart Duncan.

Well, I knew Rob. I’d never met Trey Hensley. Or I might’ve met him and forgot about him. Most of them I knew just from knowing them, not by being around them. Buddy Spicher, I knew him as well as I knew anybody, because he’d been on a lot of sessions I’d been on. Sierra [Hull], I met her once on the Opry. She’s turned out to be such a great player and singer.

Another young player taking the mandolin into great territory.

She plays what I think of as today’s style of mandolin playing. She plays it and she plays it good. My style of mandolin playing, it isn’t over the hill or anything, but it’s not like they play today. So Alison got her to play the mandolin. She was on “Kentucky Morning” and “Got to Get a Message” and we did some harmony on “Country Boy.” Then she got Del McCoury and his two boys, Ronnie and Rob. I played some harmony with Ronnie on “Goodbye Wheeling.” Then Sam Bush came in and played mandolin on “Eight More Miles.” So Alison had mandolin players and guitar players … and when we were getting songs together, I remembered way back in 1951 when my brother and I were playing up in Wheeling, West Virginia, on that jamboree, Elvis came out with “Don’t Be Cruel.” At that time, we hadn’t thought about bluegrass being different from anything else. We were just singing any kind of song. So we started singing “Don’t Be Cruel.”

You mean even back in the ’50s you were singing bluegrass versions of Elvis?

That’s right. Then right out of the clear blue sky, I told Alison, I said, “You may not believe this, but my brother and me were singing ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ back when it first came out.” She wrote me right back and said, “That’s the one I want you to do!” That suited me because I’ve always liked that one. She said, “I’ve got an idea on that.” She said, “All I’m going to use on that one is bass, mandolin, and guitar.” I thought, “What can you get out of just three instruments on a song like ‘Don’t Be Cruel?'” But that’s what she used. Sam Bush played mandolin on that, Jim Hurst played guitar, and Todd Phillips played the bass. I don’t know how she knew to do that, but she knew more about sound than I did to think of that. And she got the same sound, with a little echo in it, that they used back then with Elvis Presley.

I’ve heard Sam Bush say that in the late ’60s and early ’70s, you were his hero and that the Osborne Brothers were the kings of progressive bluegrass. There’s that great video of the Camp Springs festival in 1971 when the Osborne Brothers played alongside young Sam Bush and Tony Rice in the Bluegrass Alliance. What did you think of those young kids playing bluegrass? Did you have a sense they’d be important musicians?

Of course, back then in the ’70s — it’s a different bluegrass we have today than we had then, for sure — Sam Bush and Bluegrass Alliance had kind of a rock beat with bluegrass. But since they were programmed as bluegrass, well, Carlton would have just about anybody on that festival. They were different from anybody else. Sam played just about the same style he plays now, I guess. I met him then, but I never did get acquainted with him until the years went by, worked on a lot of shows with him, talked to him at the Opry. He’s a guy who can play like Bill Monroe or he can play like me or like Jethro Burns. Whatever type of mandolin is called for, whatever anybody wants, he can play it.

Before Sam Bush, you were one of the first mandolin players to expand the style outside of what Bill Monroe was doing. You mentioned playing Elvis songs in the early ’50s. How did you go about becoming an original player and forming your own sound?

Back when I first started trying to learn how to play, the guitar was the main thing I learned first. I always liked fiddle tunes for some reason — “Sally Goodin” and “Fire on the Mountain,” things like that. I wanted to be a fiddle player to start with, but never could do it. I’ve got about six of them here at the house. I’ve got one good fiddle — one that Kenny Baker gave me, that black fiddle he played all the time — I’ve got it. I pull it out all the time. I take it on the road and play it sometimes. But the fiddle players today, they make me look sick. I got tired of looking sick and quit playing one. [Laughs] Anyway, since I always liked fiddle tunes and the mandolin is tuned like a fiddle — and I was good with a flat pick from guitar — I got completely wrapped up playing the fiddle tunes with the mandolin. I got to following Howdy Forrester, playing hornpipes and things. I finally got into learning some of those on the mandolin, so when it came to taking breaks on songs, I kind of transferred that over.

And your guitar playing influenced your mandolin, too?

You remember a guy named Hank Garland who played the guitar? I patterned my guitar playing on his, because he was such a good player back in those days. Boy, he could play those fiddle tunes on electric guitar. I learned to do that, then I transferred that over to the mandolin. It made me different from other players. Back in those days, there was only Jethro Burns and Bill Monroe. There wasn’t anybody else to try and learn from on the mandolin. So I learned those fiddle tunes and it helped me with the mandolin. The breaks I’ve took on songs throughout the years I’ve played like a guy would take on a fiddle. And I learned a long time ago that there was only one Bill Monroe.

I read that you shared a dressing room on the Opry with Bill Monroe for a long time. What was that like?

I enjoyed it. Bill was hard to get to know. But once he got to know you — and he was another guy who figured out if he liked you or not, and if he didn’t, well, he didn’t hang around with you at all. But I got to be good friends with Bill. Been on stage with him many times. I’d have to sing the lead, of course, because he had to sing tenor. And you had to do his songs. He wouldn’t do nobody else’s songs but his. I got along with him real good. The last 15 years he lived, I shared the same dressing room with him, got to know him real good. People like him, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Snow — all of them. I really feel so thankful, the way I see it nowadays, that I was able to live in the premier day of country music and bluegrass. Bluegrass has changed so much today. But of course everything has to change. If the world didn’t change, there wouldn’t be no world after a while. But I’ve just sort of stuck to my style. I appreciate what Sierra Hull plays and the other new players do. I appreciate what they’re doing because that’s what they were brought up to do. I was brought up to do traditional.

You played with almost all of the early bluegrass players. You played with the Stanley Brothers for a while when you were young, right?

That’s right. Just before I went into the Marine Corps, for about three months, I got to play with Carter and Ralph. I loved that time. I planned on going back with them when I got out of the Marine Corps, but by that time, Sonny had learned how to play the banjo. I thought to myself, “You know, maybe we ought to start all over again.”

And that’s when you started playing with Jimmy Martin, right?

Yeah, that’s right.

I’ve heard — I mean, he was a pretty difficult guy to work with, wasn’t he?

He was a real character. As long as things were going his way, he was okay; but when it wasn’t, he wasn’t. There’s got be a bend in the river somewhere, you know? [Laughs] But Bill was kind of like that, too. But he did it — of course, Bill never did use alcohol or drugs or anything like that. He was a different type of a person. Just about all of those people — Hank Snow, too. But Hank was from another country — Canada. I mean I never did hold that against him or anything. But he was a little bit peculiar. He’d learned his way of doing things, but he was a good guy.

Who else from the Opry did you learn from?

Well, Ernest Tubb was the first guy I ever tried to sing like. And I got to know him real well. I saw Uncle Dave Macon on stage once, but I never got to know him. Uncle Dave played the clawhammer banjo. He was a show within himself. He never got on the Opry until he was about 60 years old. The Opry started in ’25, and Uncle Dave lived in those days there, when the Opry started. He wouldn’t never have no kind of band with him. And he carried about five different banjos with him at all time. He’d throw them up in the air and catch them. He was a good showman. A great showman.

So did you grow up listening to the Opry?

Yeah, that was one of the first things I ever remember hearing on the radio growing up.

So that must have been an incredible feeling, when you became a member of the Opry. What was that like?

That’s hard to explain. I dreamed about it before I even saw a guitar or anything. I dreamed about what kind of people that those guys were, back in those days — the food they ate, how they lived. I thought about all of that, all about them.

They were really the rock stars of the day back then.

Sure was. And where I come from, back in Kentucky — you know, that song “Kentucky Morning,” that’s one of the main reasons why I did that song because it tells a true story of how I grew up. I think about my dad and mom, how the times have changed. Where we lived, there was no electricity, no inside bathrooms, no running water. We had a well back then for fresh water. Nothing to wash clothes. My mom would take the clothes to the creek and pat the dirt out of them with a rock. That was the thing that really got me in the lyrics to that “Kentucky Morning.” It just brought back so much of the early days of my life. My dad and my mom, they saw times that I didn’t ever see. My dad finally wised up and moved away from Kentucky, when I was about 10 years old.

You moved to Ohio, is that right?

That’s right. He went to Dayton, Ohio. First time I saw a loaf of bread or an ice box you put ice in — see, there weren’t no refrigerators back then and very little electricity used. So we had a big old icebox. You could get a 25-pound block of ice or 50-pound or 100, depending on the size of your icebox. That was the first time I ever saw anybody put food in there to keep it cold.

So what did your father do for work?

In the Kentucky days, he taught school. He was a school teacher. And he taught school in the building I’m in right now teaching the mandolin.

Wow. Full circle.

He sure did. We lived four miles out in the country, in a place called Thousand Sticks, Kentucky. My granddad had a little store. Very few people lived in that area back there. Only way you could get anywhere was walk or ride a mule. And when the creeks were up — the roads back then went right through the creeks — if it rained, why, it was so muddy you couldn’t get over. A lot of times you just couldn’t go nowhere …

So my dad helped my granddad at his store quite a bit. It was four miles from Thousand Sticks to Hyden, Kentucky, and about once a month, he would take a wagon and mule and go across that mountain to get dry goods from a dealer in Hyden. I would go with him. I was about seven or eight years old then. But finally he got tired of that. He heard there was work in Ohio, so he borrowed 50 bucks off of his sister and went to Dayton, Ohio. First place he came to was a place called Nashville Cash Register. They gave him a job. So he came and got the family and we moved away from Thousand Sticks and never lived there again. When we went to Dayton, the big city, everything was so different then. We learned how to live in the big city. But I never did forget where I came from. I still like the country.

That must’ve taken some guts for your dad to start over and move somewhere totally different. How did you feel about it as a 10-year-old?

It hurt me in my schooling. I started going to school — they did have a school over there in Thousand Sticks. I will tell you this, too: Back during the second World War, there was work in Radford, Virginia, in a powder plant where they made powder for the weapons we were using in the war. So my dad went there and worked in that powder plant and took the family. But every time we moved, they’d put me back a grade. I was supposed to be in the fourth grade when we moved to Virginia, but they put me in the third grade. He worked there seven or eight months, and when we came back I should’ve been in the fifth grade, and had to go back in the fourth grade again there. Then when we went to Dayton, Ohio, I was supposed to be up in the sixth grade, but they sent me back in the fifth grade. So I had a tough time trying to get any education moving around like that.

Were you playing music during that time?

I was trying to play the guitar, yeah. It was about fifth or sixth grade when I got my hand on a guitar. By the time I got to the 10th grade, most people I should’ve been in class with had already graduated. So I finished my sophomore year and, by that time, I was into this music. I made up my mind right there, wasn’t no more school for me. I wasn’t going to waste my time. I wanted to put all my time into this right here, and I guess I just got lucky. So I never got any kind of education to do anything up to the 10th grade, the way I bounced around. But I will say this: I learned a lot by traveling. I’ve been in all 50 states playing bluegrass music. I’ve been in foreign countries. I’ve been in Japan two or three times, Germany, and Sweden. You get an education when you travel, if you travel enough. You learn all about different types of people, how they talk. Even starting in Kentucky, when you get to Dayton, Ohio, they have another lingo — then the Carolinas and Georgia, too. So I got a pretty good education traveling.

That might be even better than a textbook education.

I guess moving around, you learn more about the world than you would sitting still.

How did you develop your own singing style? Who did you learn from?

If you wanted to sing bluegrass, if you didn’t have a voice like Bill Monroe or Lester Flatt, you just couldn’t sing bluegrass. I lived by the Grand Ole Opry — I listened to it all the time in those days — and I noticed that one guy sounded different from the other guy. Ernest Tubb or Eddie Arnold, how different they sounded. I got tied into Ernest Tubb. I liked his songs and his singing. When I first started singing, my voice was kind of low. I could sing Ernest Tubb songs in the same key. And I had never heard anything in the world about bluegrass. The only thing I knew about bluegrass was that they called Kentucky bluegrass country. So, in listening to Ernest Tubb, I got to know all his songs.

Anyway, one day I was singing and I noticed my voice couldn’t go that low. About 16 years old, my voice just went up. And I thought, “Man, what’s happened here?” I could sing the songs, but had to put them in a higher pitch. So that put me right out of singing Ernest Tubb songs like him. Then one day I was listening to the Opry and I heard something that jumped out at me. Boy, I thought I had it on the wrong station. I heard something come through that radio and I asked my dad, “What is that?” He said, “That’s the banjo.” I had never heard of a banjo. And I couldn’t figure out how they were doing that. I kept listening every Saturday night, over and over, and didn’t hear that sound again. Finally, one night, I heard it, playing that same song, same melody as the one I had heard some weeks before that. And the announcer said, “That was Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys with Earl Scruggs playing the banjo.” That was the first sign of the word “bluegrass” connected with music I had ever heard. Then I got to singing Bill Monroe songs and I figured out I could sing them in the same key he did.

So my voice changed and went high like that. By the time I got out of the Marine Corps — I had already been playing with the Lonesome Pine Fiddlers in Bluefield, West Virginia, and Carter and Ralph Stanley before the military — so when I came back, I started with my brother singing Bill Monroe songs again. Flatt and Scruggs came along, and I got started singing their songs, too. But I never stopped singing country songs, either. I still sing Ernest Tubb songs today. On this new CD, I did Eddie Arnold’s “Make the World Go Away,” so I still sing country songs; I just sing them the way I feel like singing them and in my key. I guess that put me in a bluegrass class and a country class. My voice, once it got to where it was going, when I was 18 or 19 years old, it just stayed high pitch and hasn’t changed yet.

You were talking about how, even in your early days, you were playing Elvis songs and learning from electric guitar players like Hank Snow. One thing I appreciate about your music is how you always tried new sounds in the studio and new types of songs. You added drums to bluegrass early on. What did people think when you were experimenting and not trying to be traditional?

I never did try and sound like anyone else. I tried to sound like Bill Monroe at one time, and Ernest Tubb, but I found I couldn’t do that. I had a fiddle player come up to me one time and say, “Son, if I had a voice like you, I wouldn’t sing a Bill Monroe tune or Flatt and Scruggs, either one. Just sing like you feel.”

Who was it that told you that?

His name was Benny Sims. He was a fiddle player with Flatt and Scruggs, at that time. If you’re familiar with their Mercury cuts, that’s him. Yeah, we played a show with Lester and Earl, and he heard me sing. Back then, if we did a show with Bill Monroe, well, we’d sing Lester and Earl’s songs. We wouldn’t do Bill in front of him, cause that would make him mad. And if we sang with Lester and Earl, we’d sing Bill’s songs. But we worked a couple shows with Flatt and Scruggs, and of course we sang all Bill’s songs. Well, Benny heard me sing and he called me over by myself and said, “I’d like to tell you something.” He told me, he said, “If I had a voice like yours, I’d never be caught singing a Bill Monroe song or a Flatt and Scruggs song. I’d be you.” He said, “Just sing like you feel.” So I got to singing Jimmie Dickens and relying more on Ernest Tubb songs, Eddie Arnold. That’s what got me going — country songs. I’d always liked country songs. I never programmed myself to be all bluegrass or all country or all rock, or whatever. I just never did program myself any one thing, cause I could sing anything. If I wanted to sing it, I’d find the way I’d want to do it, and I’d do it.

Photo credit: Stacie Huckeba

That Ain’t Bluegrass: The Del McCoury Band

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Artist: The Del McCoury Band
Song: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” (originally by Richard Thompson)
Album: Del and the Boys

Where did you first hear “1952 Vincent Black Lightning?”

You know, I never heard it before on the radio, but a friend of ours heard this song on the radio in New York City or somewhere. He called Ronnie and said, “You guys ought to think about recording that song.” Like I said, I had never heard it before. Ronnie played it to me and it’s a great story. That’s what attracted me to the song. It was Richard Thompson — the guy from England — he was just playing acoustic guitar on that and he plays with his fingers instead of a pick. He had his own way of doing it, which is unique, too. But really what attracted me to it was the story. I really liked that story and I thought, “Well, you know what? We’ll see what key we can get it in.” I think he did it in Bb, but C kind of suited me better. And I thought, too, it would be good with banjo to tune it down in C and play it. We ran through it, and I didn’t get the melody exactly like he did it, I don’t think, in some spots. Either that or, since I recorded, it I’ve changed it a little. [Laughs] You kinda do that after recording a song: You’ll change little things now and then. But that’s actually the beginning of it right there.

There’s this tradition in bluegrass music of covering songs from outside of bluegrass — it’s kind of been done even since Bill Monroe and Flatt & Scruggs.

Yeah, that’s right.

Why do you think that bluegrass artists like to cover these kind of pop or folk songs?

I’ll tell you what, with me, there’s something in that song that touches me or attracts me to it. It don’t matter where the song comes from, really. I think that’s what it is with most people that record songs from outside the bluegrass realm, I guess you could say. It’s either the story or a different melody that will hit your ear that you like — it’s really a complicated thing, I think. I know, with me, that’s mainly what it is. I either like the story in the song or the melody that’s a little different somehow.

A lot of people ask me, when I do interviews for people that write magazines or have a radio show or whatever, they’ll say, “When you go to record, what kind of songs are you looking for?” And I say, “Well, I never know what I’m looking for.” [Laughs] ‘Til I hear it, you know? I don’t have a certain thing in mind, when I go to record. People send me songs all the time now and they might send a whole CD of maybe 12, 14 songs. Sometimes you might find one in that bunch. And you never know what’s going to attract you, you know? It’s a funny thing.

What do you think makes this song a good bluegrass song?

I don’t even think about that — about it fitting. [Laughs] If I like the tune or the story, I just don’t think about it. I just think, “I could do that song!” I don’t think about where it came from. I know that once I sing it. I may have suggestions of how to do the instrumental parts, but for the most part, I don’t. I just let those guys come up with what they can with the melody. I figure I like for them to be creative, too, and do what they can with the song. I really don’t think about it that way. I just think, “I’d love to sing that.” [Laughs] See what I can do with it, whatever it is.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

That’s true, yeah! [Laughs] It ain’t bluegrass! I tell ya, Justin, I’ve thought about this a lot: All music is related. Somehow there’s a connection in all music. Pop, rock, rock ‘n’ roll, and whatever! In bluegrass, country, or hillbilly, they’re all connected in some way. People think — I used to think myself — for one thing, “Bill Monroe, he come up with this bluegrass music and he didn’t listen to anybody else.” But he listened to a lot of people! He listened to jazz down there in New Orleans and he used to go down there. He’d spend time down there when he was young, because he liked that music. I didn’t find this out, even when I worked for him I did not know that, but I found this out later. For instance, he grew up listening to Jimmie Rodgers. All those yodel things, he got from Jimmie. That was completely different, that was even different than country. I don’t know what you would class that kind of music as. Later in years, once he come to Nashville, he would cover a lot of songs that the country people were doing in those days.

I like that your perspective on it is, if you like it, if there’s something about the song that you like, that’s all it takes.

Because if you record that song, you may have to sing that song for 10 years or longer! [Laughs] So you better like what you’re doing! I’ll tell ya, Justin, through the years I have recorded songs that I really didn’t like. The producer would bring them. I needed songs, but usually, when that happens, I don’t sing them in public. [Laughs] I found out another thing, too: Sometimes you gotta think about a song that you put on a record that you don’t like, because there’s going to be somebody that they’ll buy the whole record for that one song that you did that you don’t like. I’ve witnessed that, too. Sometimes there will be a lot of people that like that one song you don’t like, so you might have to learn it and sing it!

The Unbroken Circle: An Interview with Tim O’Brien

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Let’s say your banjo-obsessed buddy asks you to join him at the local Tuesday night bluegrass jam. Bluegrass. Sure, you’re aware of the term. You loved that George Clooney movie. You’ve got a couple verses of “Wagon Wheel” up your sleeve for wedding receptions. Plus, you’ve been wondering how Garrison Keillor suddenly got so good at the mandolin. Why not dive a little deeper?

As a newcomer to the strange pastime of standing in a circle with fiddles, banjos, and mandolins, you will be perfectly positioned to ask a really good question: “Where did all of these songs come from?” Your banjo friend might try to satisfy you by calling the songs “traditional,” but that’s just evading the question. Sure, some common tunes arrived in America on boats from Europe, and some of them were “collected” by folklorists like John and Alan Lomax who combed through rural America in the early 20th century, but the bigger-picture truth is that the bluegrass canon has been alive and evolving throughout its history. Even before bluegrass’s inception in the 1940s, the story of folk music in the 20th century is one of surprising re-discovery, unorthodox re-interpretation, and, yes, the addition of songs that happen to be brand new. Right up there alongside the other great writers and re-interpreters — A.P. Carter, Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, and many others — there’s a whipper-snapper (by “traditional” music standards) named Tim O’Brien.

Tim’s band, Hot Rize, emerged in the late ’70s as part of a neo-traditional reaction to New Grass Revival and David Grisman’s no-holds-barred hippie bluegrass boom of the early ’70s. There was a back-to-basics element to Hot Rize’s chemistry — led by O’Brien’s distinctive tenor and mandolin playing — but bassist Nick Forster played an electric bass, banjo player Pete Wernick occasionally played through a trippy phase-shifter effect, and they all wore obnoxiously ugly ties with their formal wear. (Traditional Ties was one tongue-in-cheek album title.) In other words, in a world of stiff suits and tall Stetsons, they injected a playfulness that both revitalized the tradition and reminded it not to take itself too seriously. In that way, they weren’t a reaction to New Grass Revival so much as their fraternal twin. Both bands effectively proved the point: Long-haired kids can play their own kind of bluegrass.

Tim’s original songs “Nellie Cane” and “Ninety Nine Years” share the rare double distinction of being staples of many local jams and also popular covers in the repertoires of Phish and the Punch Brothers, respectively. He’s also re-energized old songs like “Blue Night,” “Pretty Fair Maid,” and “Look Down that Lonesome Road,” bringing them and many others into popular bluegrass rotation.

Before all that, O’Brien was just a kid from West Virginia listening to the Beatles on the radio and playing wedding gigs with his talented sister, Mollie O’Brien. This month, he released a record, Where the River Meets the Road, that returns him to his West Virginia roots. True to form, he uses the opportunity to try his hand at old gems like “Little Annie” and to bring to life surprising re-interpretations of other West Virginians’ songs, like Bill Withers’ “Grandma’s Hands.” We talked about the new record as well as his many decades spent nudging the folk tradition forward. 

The band on Where the River Meets the Road is killer. They really move together like a tight band, rather than just background studio musicians. Some of them are familiar folks from the bluegrass world like Stuart Duncan and Noam Pikelny. How’d you end up incorporating Chris Stapleton?

I’ve known Chris for a good while. When he first moved to Nashville, Bryan Sutton was hired to produce demos of his. I went and played and sang on his demos, and I was really impressed. We wrote together a little bit, messed around. We stayed in touch. He sang on a record I made called Chicken and Egg. I was really pleased he was able to sing on this one.

That’s a great duet. Your voices are totally different, but the harmony is kind of striking. It really works.

He came in there and nailed that thing. I have to say, that track was good before he sang. You know how it can get in the studio. It’s pretty mellow listening to the same track over and over. Then he came in, started singing, and we all shot up straight in our chairs. Our spines straightened and our hair stood up on the back of our necks. I said, “Yeah, more of that!” It was really wonderful.

I saw on your schedule that you’re headed to Wheeling, West Virginia, tonight.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m playing my hometown tonight. It’s really exciting and terrifying at the same time. I haven’t played there in so long, and I think most of the people who bought tickets in advance are friends of mine, so you’re kind of on display. But I’m excited about seeing the old hometown.

Have you spent much time there since you left home many years ago?

No. You know, my dad died in 2011, and my mom had died before. I have a few cousins there, but I’m not close to them. I’ve only just sort of passed through a couple of times. I played with the Wheeling Symphony a couple of years ago and that was fun. My sister and her husband and my partner Jan and I sang.

Wheeling has a symphony?

Wheeling was the biggest city in the state for a long time. It was the only symphony in the state before they ever had one in Charleston. Yeah, Wheeling was a rich town with a steel mill at one point. People dressed in finery, you know. It’s a faded town now, but it has surprising culture. [Laughs]

And it had a great radio station that you grew up listening to, right? WVA?

WVA was a great resource. I was into pop music and stuff at the time, but WVA was a place you could actually see live performers on a Saturday night. I enjoyed listening to the radio, as well, but I liked going down to the Saturday night show and seeing the pros play their guitars.

But you were just a kid mostly listening to pop radio and Beatles records. So, in other words, you weren’t from a traditional music family on an inevitable path toward a folk career?

No. Not at all. My parents loved music, but it was just on the sidelines. They liked the music of their era — Glen Miller and Benny Goodman and stuff like that. When my sister and I got into music, they encouraged us. They tried to steer us toward a well-rounded experience growing up, so we could choose what we wanted to do.

Did you and Mollie sing together and learn from each other growing up?

Well, she was playing the piano and I started playing guitar. By the time she was in high school, she was studying voice there, so, yeah, we would get some little gigs — school plays, different things. We would play at weddings, sing a few Peter, Paul, & Mary songs, Beatles songs, or whatever.

Then you left college to move west and pursue music. Did your parents think you were crazy?

Well, I was the youngest of five. Being the youngest, my parents cut me a lot of slack, I’d say. They had been through it with the rest of them. Also, you know, I was determined. They wanted me to stay in college, but I just wasn’t going to respond. So they said okay. I think they were holding their breath for about three years. Then I put out a record on a little label — I think it was ’77 or ’78 — and that’s when they finally said, “Oh, maybe this will lead to something.” They developed a more open mind. Then my parents became big fans of whatever I was doing and supported it. So it was a gradual thing, kind of a wait and see. They lightly steered me, but they knew they couldn’t do the final job, you know? I’m lucky I had that background with them.

So after growing up in West Virginia, you moved out west to Colorado to get your career started. Why did you feel like you had to leave the south to play bluegrass music?

My dad said, “You just want to go as far away as you can, don’t you?” I said, “Well, sort of.” [Laughs] Really, I was going out there because I loved the weather and the scenery, the lifestyle out west. I thought in a ski area, maybe I could play music and ski — both things I was excited about. So I went to Jackson Hole. Some other friends that had worked at summer camp with me were going to spend a winter there, so I went out and joined them and scuffled around for the winter. I ended up looking for a more active music scene and I ended up in Boulder. I guess I could’ve moved to a college town in West Virginia, but I wanted to see the rest of the country.

It’s funny — when I sing the song, “High Flying Bird,” from this record, I realize it’s symbolic of what I wanted to do when I was young. I wanted to get the heck out of there. I didn’t want to be rooted and tied down in West Virginia. I wanted to see the rest of the country, the rest of the world. And I didn’t realize that song was from West Virginia until now. You get away and you find perspective on where you left. You can see it from a longer view. The music provided a connection to West Virginia, as well as my family, so I kept going back. I realized it was a valuable base to have started from, and I continue to value that.

What is it that’s made you interested in reconnecting with your West Virginia heritage? Why now?

I feel like I’ve been given a gift of this music and this background. I got involved with the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame when they wanted to start that about 12 years ago. Meeting all these people as they come through to be inducted was really wonderful. You learn that a lot of people you knew about and music that you’d heard came from West Virginia.

Until I heard your record, I had no idea Bill Withers was from West Virginia.

Yeah, and that’s the thing. Part of the aim of the Hall of Fame is to connect those dots. We’re doing it for the public, but as it turns out, the members of the board and the members of the Hall of Fame are learning about the rest of the scene and connecting dots themselves. I think why I did this project now is, well, I needed to put a record together! [Laughs] I originally wanted to do a record of all original material, but I didn’t think I could pull that off for another year. I’d been thinking about a West Virginia record for a while, and I didn’t realize how much work I’d already done organizing it, making lists of songs, brainstorming on it. I’d already done a lot of that. So it came together really fast. It felt right.

One big part of your story is that you’ve made so many different types of music, so many types of records over the past nearly four decades. Do you have to keep exposing yourself to new songs and new sounds to keep your ideas fresh? How do you do that?

You just keep looking. You go to the record store. Nowadays, I get online — YouTube or Spotify. Then back to my own old record collection. My huge CD wall. Every year, I clean a lot of stuff out of it, give it away, put it in the free box at the Station Inn or something. Then there’s a lot of stuff that always stays there — the first generation of bluegrass masters, or the Lomax field recordings, or classic songwriters like Randy Newman or whatever. Then my friends around me are always writing new stuff, and I’m trying to keep up with their stuff. It’s a constant search, and I always feel the need to refresh the palate. But it’s funny — even by going back to the same stuff you’d passed over, you’ll hear new things and learn. So I’m always combing. Part of the week’s work is to comb for new music.

I like that — it’s part of the week’s job. It’s what you do when you wake up. Reminds me of the first time I saw you solo, at Grey Fox in 2012, when you did a solo guitar tribute to Doc Watson. I’m a North Carolinian and I know Doc’s stuff pretty well, but you put a new stamp on those tunes. It was like rediscovering Doc. So, for me, it was a sort of revelation, but I heard a guy next to me say, “Wish he’d brought his mandolin …” I can imagine for you that must be frustrating. Do you have to put effort into not being pigeonholed?

Yeah, you do get pigeonholed in bluegrass. I think back when I was starting, if you did bluegrass, you couldn’t do anything else. People wrote you off. When Pete Wernick called me [in 1978] and said, “Hey, why don’t we get a band together?” — our solo records were both coming out around the same time in ’78 — I said, “Yeah, that would be great.” I told him I wanted to play some traditional bluegrass, for sure, but I also wanted to do some country music and different things. I asked him if he played dobro so we could get away from the traditional thing.

Nowadays, the rock ‘n’ roll and country players, even the jazz players, are respectful of bluegrass. They understand it’s a training ground, that there’s a certain amount of woodshedding you have to do to even try to play bluegrass. So, yeah, I didn’t want to be pigeonholed. But I am pigeonholed. I’m always referred to as a bluegrass artist — and I’m glad to have a handle to carry it around on. Bluegrass music is Bill Monroe’s music, but then the bluegrass audience is a separate thing. There’s the genre as defined by the history, the classic examples. Then there’s the genre as defined by the audience — though it may only be a small part of what that audience listens to. So, in a way, I’m lucky to have been labeled a bluegrass artist while still sneaking in this other stuff. If I play something on acoustic instruments, they tend to accept it. Bluegrass fans are a very tenacious, very loyal bunch. They keep giving you another chance.

Can’t they be a pretty judgmental bunch, too?

I’m sure there’s judgmental stuff going on, but I don’t really look for that or worry too much about that. I just go my way and hope things will work out. And they have. I tried to get on a major label — I sort of glanced at the big time there. It didn’t take. I thought maybe I’d get the big publicity for a while and then I’d be on my way. Instead, I dug into the trenches of the folk and bluegrass worlds and developed an audience slowly but surely. You’re a product of what you do, so if my output has been eclectic, the audience that has remained has been willing to accept that. There’s enough of them out there to make a career.

Back in the Hot Rize days, and also what you do now, your music was right on that line between the traditional and the progressive — or neo-traditionalist, as people called Hot Rize. Did you ever feel any tension between those two camps? Or was the general attitude different in Colorado?

With Hot Rize, it was interesting. West of the Mississippi, we represented a traditional bluegrass band, but east of the Mississippi, we were these wild card guys. Our hair was too big and our ties were wrong and we had an electric bass.

But you guys had a sense of humor about it, too.

Yeah, we did. I mean, you’ve probably been at a bluegrass jam where people play a tune and, when it’s done someone, will say, “Well, that’s not bluegrass,” and everyone will laugh. Bluegrassers are always referring to their relationship with Bill Monroe’s music. They’re always measuring that. It’s part of our thing.

Sort of a self-conscious conversation we’re always having.

Yeah. And there is a tension. I’ll say this: There are a couple of places where we couldn’t get booked because Pete [Wernick] is Jewish. But, like I said, we took it where we could. Luckily, we came along at a time when people like New Grass Revival and David Grisman had broken a lot of ground. There was a hippie element that supported an alternative to the music. We were on a wave that was returning back to a traditional sound — the Johnson Mountain Boys, Nashville Bluegrass Band, Doyle Lawson & Quicksilver were starting out at about the same time. They were hip and innovative in the way they were presenting traditional music, but they weren’t breaking the walls down like New Grass Revival did. This was viewed by a lot of people as a refreshing return to form. We enjoyed that. You know, we tried to play the kind of no-boundaries music when we started, and it just didn’t work out. Charles [Sawtelle] was playing bass at first, and we had a different guitarist. When Charles started playing guitar, he was much better at the traditional stuff. And we felt better playing it. You’ve just got to find your feet in whatever situation you’re in. That seemed to be the way to go, so we kept going there.

Since then there have been many ups and downs in terms of bluegrass’s broader popularity, the general awareness among the public. Is there anything that surprises you now about what the scene is like or feels particularly different about the 2017 bluegrass world?

The biggest draws in bluegrass now are the jam bands. Again, if you defined it in terms of Bill Monroe’s music, they’re not bluegrass. But they’re playing banjo and bluegrass and they’ve got a lot of attention. There’s a crowd that will get interested in that and look behind it for their influences. They might get into Widespread Panic or the Grateful Dead — or they might go to Doc Watson and the people that he learned from. The thing about bluegrass — even with the ebbs and flows of it — it’s always been growing. With O Brother, Where Art Thou, or with Alison Krauss crossing over into country, or with String Cheese Incident becoming a big draw — there might be a surge related to those things. But mostly the genre grows slowly like a tree. It’s healthy. The roots are growing, as well as the branches.

From those days starting out with Hot Rize in ’78, it just seems to keep growing. That’s the overall trend. Young kids are going back to the old stuff and remaking it. Even if you do something that’s been done before, your version of it will appeal to someone in a new way. It’s heartwarming to see it. Evolution is part of the definition of tradition. Each musician is a link in the chain and, whether you like it or not, you’re part of a tradition. You’re not going to do it exactly like the old folks did it, and you’re not going to do something completely original. You might as well get used to it.

In the same vein, you’re circling back to Wheeling tonight.

Yeah, it’s really exciting. I’m playing a little restaurant bar! [Laughs] Almost everyone there will be my friend, so that’s a little intimidating. But it’ll be fun. I just want to go out and walk the streets a little bit.

That Ain’t Bluegrass: Dale Ann Bradley

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Dale Ann Bradley
Song: “Summer Breeze” (originally by Seals & Croft)
Album: Somewhere South of Crazy

Where did you first hear “Summer Breeze?”

Well, I probably heard it on the local radio station. And I can’t remember exactly what year it came out, but I know that I was small. Loved it then — of course I loved everything Seals & Croft done — but that song, for years and years, was just one of those you heard every time you went into a grocery store. You know, wherever you went, you’d hear that playing on the system there, as you still do today. I heard it probably, I guess, when it first came out. Just on the radio, though — static-y AM — ’cause I had trouble getting any kind of recorded music and that one might not have been available anywhere near me! [Laughs]

What do you think makes “Summer Breeze” a good bluegrass song?

Well, to me — now I don’t know what everybody else will feel about the song — but the song sounds Celtic to me, which would be the roots of this music in one way or another. It has so many roots — blues and what-have-you, jazz — and it’s made up of so many styles. Once I started listening as I got older, like I said, I first heard it when I was a little kid, when I got to listening to different banjo players and I got really into the Country Gentlemen, Seldom Scene, New Grass Revival, and started hearing different styles of banjo playing — then, of course, I knew Alison Brown would just deliver like she always does.

So the lyrics and the melody both, it was just haunting, it was minor. Everything about it, to me, was just like our traditional songs, it just had different instrumentation, but rhythmically and everything else. “Leave the curtains hanging in the window” — of course, we’d say “winder” — “in the evening on a Friday night. Little light shining through the window lets me know everything’s alright.” Well that’s, Lord, Bill Monroe and everybody’s written songs like that for years!

When it come time to do Somewhere South of Crazy, which that song is from, I never had done a cover tune before just to have one on an album. The fact that Alison Brown was going to play banjo on it had a whole lot to do with that, because I knew, like I said, that she would deliver what I heard in my head. Having Steve Gulley and Kim Fox doing harmony had a lot to do with it, too, because they’re like me — they like all styles of music. It’s not a traditional [harmony] stack, even though I hear all the tradition in it. It would take maybe people that were familiar with other styles of music for that harmony to be natural and comfortable for them. Not that anybody else couldn’t do it, but I was excited about those two.

Bluegrass artists have reworked popular songs and turned them into bluegrass songs since the beginning. Why do you think they do that?

I think it’s because it’s all entwined. You take those songs, you’re talking first generation, Lester and Earl even, people who had done “That’s Alright Mama,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” or “Johnny B. Goode” — I guess Jim and Jesse was famous for that. It was a blues thing — it’s the blues in all of that that connected it. And even the lyrics. Even though those lyrics came from wherever, Mississippi or wherever, it still rang true to the whole South — and the whole place where bluegrass started. Of course, it’s evolved and every demographic has latched onto it and it’s become everybody’s music. I think that’s why. The blues sound. It’s fun to play.

That’s actually my next question: What is your favorite thing about having this song in your set and performing this song?

If we’re talking about “Summer Breeze,” in particular, it brings back for so many people my age and older — because that song has been around a long, long time — it spans generations of listeners. It’s still familiar today. So I love to see that in their eyes like, “Oh, yeah, I love that song!” And I want to showcase what bluegrass musicians can do. And how it’s all so similar. It’s music. Some things may work better than others, but you know, I’ve found that mostly it will work.

Now, you know that ain’t bluegrass, right?

[Laughs] “It ain’t bluegrass” … Well, I’ve heard that for so many years! Now, I’ll tell you: I am hearing a different theory to that now, just from basically people my age and a little bit younger. You hear so many of the ones that were so dyed-in-the-wool — and God bless ‘em, and I’m dyed-in-the-wool, too — I just figured that it can expand.

Bluegrass artists, you can put them anywhere, any setting, and they’re gonna be able to execute anything. It is true. If people would just listen, they will see so many similarities. “Summer Breeze” is more than three chords, but listen to Bill Monroe’s “My Last Days on Earth” and compare that melody to “Summer Breeze.” Or any of that! The Stanley [Brothers] stuff, even though it’s more Appalachian, there’s still similarities. All people have to do is not purposefully block their thinking. And if you’re listening to it and it’s something you don’t like it, turn it off! [Laughs] People have to go a long way to say, “Well, I got up and left when this one got up, and I got up and left when this song was played.” Well, good! Leave and hush about it, ’cause there’s a bunch of people that liked it! [Laughs]