Tag: Bill Monroe

Zoe & Cloyd Made a Traditional Album – But Not the Way You Think

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

If you were to try to typify bluegrass as being about any one singular thing, that one thing might be family. Not just biological family, but musical family, chosen family, and the way the music survives generation to generation, passed down as a folkway and aural tradition. Often, though not always, this music is a family tradition, passed along family trees like an heirloom or like more typical family businesses.

John Cloyd Miller and Natalya Zoe Weinstein, bluegrass duo and band leaders of Zoe & Cloyd, have made a brand new album that, on the surface, might just seem like a standard bluegrass album paying homage to the folks who came before them, their forefathers. But Songs of Our Grandfathers is so much more complicated and nuanced, wrinkling a format that’s as old as these genres themselves: the tribute album. 

On the new record, released in May on Organic Records, John and Natalya pull songs from the catalogs of their musician grandfathers. Miller’s grandpa, Jim Shumate, was a renowned Western North Carolina fiddler who played a stint in Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys and can be accurately credited with helping get Earl Scruggs the banjo gig that made him famous. Natalya’s grandfather, David Weinstein, was a working klezmer musician who fled unrest in Russia, moving to the U.S. 

The artful way this pair of musicians and life partners combine the styles of their families, of their youths, and of their present lives together, as touring, professional musicians, feels expansive, rich, and bold, like newgrass that’s never been newgrassed before. But, there’s a timelessness here, a patina, that speaks to the greater tradition this record can lay claim to perpetuating. (Thank goodness.) 

Songs of Our Grandfathers isn’t just nostalgia, heritage, lineage, legacy- and canon-building. It’s not just carrying on tradition for tradition’s sake. It’s effortlessly and wholly bluegrass because it innovates, it complicates, and it challenges its listeners to think outside of preconceived notions of what bluegrass, string band, and old-time music are. Because that’s exactly what bluegrass’s grandfathers, grandmothers, and grandparents were doing as they invented this music. 

We began our phone chat about the new album discussing each of their grandparents and their musical idiosyncrasies.

Can we start by talking about Jim Shumate? His presence is throughout the record and he’s influenced you both, can you tell us a bit about him and his music making? 

John Cloyd Miller: He was born in 1921 in Wilkes County, North Carolina, on a mountain called Chestnut Mountain. He started playing fiddle as a young boy, as a teenager. His older brother Mac, who was 10 years older – the same age as Bill Monroe – got him his first fiddle, which is a fiddle he kept his entire life and we actually have, now. It’s an old Sears & Roebuck Strad copy, but he played some tone into it! His Uncle Erby played fiddle so he heard him a lot growing up and then he got into Arthur Smith and all that kind of stuff. He moved to Hickory when he got older, when he was a young man, and was playing on the radio down there when Bill Monroe heard him and asked him to be in the Blue Grass Boys. That was the time that Stringbean was in the band and Sally Ann Forrester, too.

When Stringbean decided to leave the band and go off with Lew Childre, Bill needed a banjo player and it’s now a pretty well known story that Jim knew a banjo player – he knew Earl Scruggs – and really pushed, begged him really, to audition for Bill. Earl was pretty reluctant to do it, but he did, and the rest is history. Later on, when Flatt & Scruggs broke off [from the Blue Grass Boys], Jim was their first fiddler, as you know. He recorded on their Mercury sessions. But he didn’t like touring, he wasn’t a touring kinda guy at all. He had four kids at home – three at the time, when he was younger, and one later. 

Natalya Zoe Weinstein: He liked Mama’s cookin’. 

[both laugh]

Jim Shumate, L (John Cloyd Miller’s grandfather); David Weinstein, R (Natalya Zoe Weinstein’s grandfather)

JCM: He did! He liked his own bed and grandma’s cooking, for sure. He liked to go up on the mountain. He worked in the furniture industry pretty much his whole life, but he also had his hand in the music. He ran a place called “Cat Square,” kind of a small town sort of Hickory Opry, a music show. He was always playing. I have photos of him through the late ‘40s and through the ‘50s with all sorts of people, Don Reno – all those guys. He made records and he had his own band called Sons of the Carolinas, which had George Shuffler in it and some other guys. He was always playing. He played with Dwight Barker and the Melody Boys; he did some sides with Don Walker, who he played with before he met Bill Monroe. He was always making music. 

After Flatt & Scruggs it was largely regionally, because he wasn’t out touring, but he said people would always come by. Any time guys like Lester and them were in town they would always drive the bus and park it right in the yard. He was always in the music, but his influence was not felt as widely later on, I think because he wasn’t out [touring]. He did come back to recording in the ‘90s and made five cassettes for Heritage Records and those got disseminated kind of regionally. Michael Cleveland cut one of the songs that was on one of those tapes a year or so ago. People know his music, but we enjoy getting his legacy out there a bit more. He’s got such a unique style and certainly was influential. 

He was a great songwriter, too! He was my main musical influence. I heard him play a ton growing up. He was so bluesy and slidey, he was a real master of syncopation, which is something that got ingrained in me. People always forget about his songwriting, but the way I grew up, I always thought that being a musician meant that you sing stuff, you write songs. You pick, too, but you do all of it. It was just part of being musical and I think that came from him as well. 

It makes me think of, well, I talk a lot about how the most “bluegrass” someone can be is being innovative and being themselves, whether that comes across as “traditional bluegrass,” genre-wise or not. 

JCM: That’s really insightful and it’s so true, when you look at those early players – everybody always looks at the first generation and, that’s good, that can be very grounding, but those guys were all unique! They were all unique artists, they had their own styles – sure, they were listening to one another, but Lester Flatt doesn’t sound like Bill Monroe who doesn’t sound like Carter Stanley. They don’t sound like each other!

Natalya, I wanted to ask you about your grandfather, too. If you could tell us a bit about the musical influences that represent him on this record, as well. 

NZW: He passed away when I was fairly young, my dad had me when he was fifty-one, so my grandfather was quite older than me – I think I was eleven when he passed away. [My father and he] had an interesting relationship; he wasn’t always a well-liked man. He escaped a lot of violence and poverty in Russia, so he wasn’t a very kind man and my dad didn’t have a very close relationship with him. I don’t have any audio recordings of his music, I have a couple of audio interviews that my dad and uncle did with him, but I don’t have any recordings of his music. 

My dad was moving a few years back and found all these old music notebooks from my grandfather. He asked me, “Do you want these old, handwritten, junky notebooks?” And I was like, “Yes!! Please give those to me!” [Laughs] That was the source, for me, for my grandfather’s music. I didn’t have one-on-one experiences with him, I didn’t have recordings of him, so these notebooks are really the only link to his music that I have. We have about five or six notebooks that have songs in them – they’re pretty hard to decipher, they’re forty or fifty years old. They have all different kinds of material in them, from klezmer to mambos and tangos even to “Tennessee Waltz,” which shows up in one of them as a jazz standard. He also played some classical music, he didn’t do just one singular thing. Klezmer players were like the wedding band musician of their time, where they had to play a bunch of different styles based on who their audience was. 

JCM: We definitely got a little bit of a sense of who he was from these audio interviews that her uncle and dad had made with him. We got to hear his voice, you know he didn’t speak English very well so it’s mostly in Russian and Yiddish. You get a sense of some of the stuff he saw, in these interviews. You can tell it hardened him. 

NZW: He had a tough life for sure, he struggled a lot and music was really the only thing [he did]. He wasn’t really educated. He talked about how when he came here [to the U.S.] he tried to be a plumber and he tried to be an electrician, but he kept making mistakes. He said, “I couldn’t do anything except play music.” He felt almost like he was stuck with it. He loved it and he was passionate about it, but I got the sense that it was his only option. 

There’s a similar energy from both grandfathers around being musicians, but not just in a traditional touring, “road dog,” sort of lifestyle. 

NZW: You’re right, and they were both kind of skeptical of the past. 

JCM: They both came from very humble beginnings. My grandfather didn’t have any education, either. Natalya’s grandfather, apparently, escaped the Bolshevik revolution on a hay wagon. He was a teenager and they were trying to conscript him into the army to fight – it’s crazy stuff! 

Bluegrass is always considering lineage and tradition and how those things are passed along. One of the things that I think is really interesting about it is there aren’t a lot of marginalized identities represented in the historical record of bluegrass, but there are Jewish identities represented. There’s not a whole lot of representation as you go back through the years, but it’s there. How do you connect the music you’re making, that’s infused with Jewish influences and has that cultural identity, to past Jewish music makers in bluegrass and string bands? You’re clearly thinking about lineage and family with this record, and that’s so bluegrass, but through a different lens with your Jewish identity and the other cultural music styles on the album, too. 

NZW: David Grisman was one of my biggest musical influences early on, he was a big bridge, for me, between my dad – who plays jazz – and the bluegrass connection as well as the Jewish connection. We talk about how this album was inspired by Songs of Our Fathers, the 1995 album by David Grisman and Andy Statman. Andy Statman, who played on the record, is another one – one of the first shows that John and I went to see when we met in Asheville in 2005 or 2006 was to see Andy Statman at the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, which is this tiny little listening room. It was an incredible show, I remember just being blown away. I remember thinking, “Wow! What a cool fusion.”

JCM: That was the first time we heard that fusion with klezmer music. He was also playing clarinet, he was playing mandolin. He is the bridge between these kinds of music. David doesn’t do as much klezmer, but those two guys together for sure. 

NZW: John and I both came into bluegrass through the Grisman/Garcia connection then I kind of worked my way back from there. Someone gave me a burned CD of Bill Monroe and I was like, “Oh my God, what is this!?” [Laughs]

JCM: So many people have stories like that. That Old & In The Way album was such an influential record, it was like the number one selling bluegrass record for a long time. 

NZW: Yeah, the way I got into bluegrass, I was out in Tacoma, Washington, for an anthropology conference in college and somebody at my hotel was like, “I’ve got an extra ticket for Wintergrass, which is happening right next door.” I said, “Okay, cool!” So we go and I saw Old & In The Gray there [Peter Rowan, Vassar Clements, Grisman], it was an incredible experience. I didn’t really know what I was seeing at the time, because I was so new to bluegrass, but that was my “Ah ha!” moment. Someone handed me a fiddle and I dunno, I played “Angeline the Baker” and that was it! [Laughs]

JCM: When I first heard Grisman play mandolin, his tone and everything, that was like sinking a hook into me. That’s why I even wanted to play mandolin. I wanted to work on getting tone like that! He was a huge influence on so many of us.

Going back home one time, when I had been living out West or whatever, I was listening to Old & In the Way or something and I asked, “Grandpa, do you know this stuff, like ‘Pig in a Pen,’ and all this?” And he was like, “Oh yeah! I know everything on this record!” And he would play them, and that was so cool to me. I hadn’t quite made the connection before. He asked me, “Who’s playing fiddle on that record?” And I said, “Vassar Clements!” He says, “Oh yeah, that’s a good friend of mine!” I was like, “WHAT!?” 

[both laugh]

JCM: I was just this stupid, deadhead college kid – I mean, I’m still a deadhead – but it really clicked. This is a bridge between grandpa’s world, which had always seemed like something in the past, to my world as a young, coming-of-age musician, realizing, “Oh, it’s all the same stuff!” 

To an uninitiated listener, they might hear your record and they might hear the influences that aren’t “traditional bluegrass” as modern cross-pollinations, as something that’s coming from you both and your generation and your own creativity. But, I really wanted to unpack the lineage of the music, because I can sense even in the playing on this album that colors “outside the lines,” it’s clearly part of this bigger tradition in bluegrass of being a bridge between these kinds of disparate parts. Even this “nontraditional” album you’ve made is based on so much tradition – familial tradition, cultural tradition, musical tradition. 

NZW: I think we wanted to honor those traditions and where these songs came from, but we also wanted to put our own spin on it. We hope our grandfathers would have liked that! 

JCM: [Jim Shumate] was very much a traditional musician, but he was always innovative at the same time. Some of the things he did in the ‘50s were very jazzy, with electric guitars playing with him. And he always loved Natalya’s playing. You know, Natalya came from a classical background and anytime she would play something classical for him– 

NZW: Or a waltz. 

JCM: He just loved to hear her play. They didn’t sound like each other, they had very different styles, but he was always very open and he loved everything. 

NZW: I think he would like [the album]. John’s mom texted us yesterday as she was listening to it and said, “I think grandpa would’ve enjoyed that!” So hopefully our grandparents aren’t rolling over in their graves. 

[Both laugh]

Photo Credit: Sarah Johnston

BGS 5+5: Jon Stickley

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Jon Stickley
Hometown: Durham, North Carolina
Latest album: Jon Stickley Trio, Meantime’s Up
Personal Nicknames: Stick, Sticky, Stickers, Sticky-Poo, J. P. Poo, Stickles, Stickles McGee, JP Stickles, Stickman

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

David Grisman, who at the time was already a monster Bill Monroe-style bluegrass mandolin player, took a huge step forward and created Dawg music, an amalgamation of many different styles with a reverence for the bluegrass music that was at the root of his sound. I take the same approach with the Trio. Every composition is an exploration of some new idea that we are experimenting with, but we do it all through the lens of, and according to the standards of, the traditional bluegrass music of Bill Monroe.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

I guess I knew I was going to be a musician as long as I can remember! An early memory is being in children’s choir in church. I distinctly remember my friends not wanting to be there, and thinking it was odd because I was just having a blast following the notes along the page. Later in life, I was in an entomology class in college thinking about what to do with my upcoming summer. I had two opportunities: a summer missionary program, or joining the band Broke Mountain in Durango, Colorado. I joined the band, and now here I am!

What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?

I’ve always had to sit down and work on songs. They don’t often come to me out of thin air. Over the course of writing and recording our new album, my two sons were born, so time to sit and work on music suddenly became virtually nonexistent! We had a session around the corner and I needed one more tune. I decided to get my old Martin D-18 out and see if it brought me some inspiration. I started noodling around on a little metal lick just getting some frustration out when it started turning into something. I called the song “Triumph in Between” because I actually couldn’t believe I was able to put something together in time with so much LIFE going on.

What has been the best advice you’ve received in your career so far?

I got a lot of good advice and just overall inspiration from working with Dave King, the drummer for The Bad Plus who produced a couple of albums for us. He said, “Be the most YOU that you can be. No one else can do that. It will make you stand out, and ultimately get the gig! It is a superpower.” Every time I remember to follow that advice, I stop stressing about comparing myself to others.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

Haha, the first thing that came to mind was cheeseburgers with Jerry Garcia. He was such a deep guitarist and I always love listening to interviews where he talks about his approach and practice routine and whatnot. He was just such a dedicated student of the guitar. Pretty sure we both share a fondness for cheeseburgers!

Photo Credit: Tom Farr

As the Newest Supergroup in Bluegrass, Mighty Poplar Goes Back to the Classics

Posted on by Editor

At your average live music event on the folk and bluegrass circuit, the stage isn’t the only place where great performances are happening. There’s the campfire and parking lot picking scene at the big outdoor festivals, of course. But a lot of it goes on out of sight backstage, too, when musicians who don’t often see each other come together to play with and for each other. A close approximation to listening in on that is Mighty Poplar (Free Dirt Records), the self-titled first album by the group of the same name.

The bluegrass world’s newest supergroup, Mighty Poplar is a five-piece band centered around three virtuoso players from the Punch Brothers orbit — banjo player Noam Pikelny, guitarist Chris “Critter” Eldridge and original Punch Brothers bassist Greg Garrison, currently in the band Leftover Salmon. Out front as primary vocalist is Watchhouse mandolinist Andrew Marlin, with well-traveled fiddler Alex Hargreaves (currently knocking ’em dead in Billy Strings’ touring band) filling out the lineup. Over the years, various subsets of this quintet would cross paths out on the road and jam, generally falling back on the old numbers everyone knew as a common language. That’s how Mighty Poplar began to coalesce.

“There’s a pretty complex web of relationships between all five of us that began with a lot of hanging out,” says Pikelny. “There’s this beautiful thing about bluegrass, the amazing music and all the shared songs. There’s a great social component that can exist with the music if you let it, and it became a reason to get together and have fun.”

While none of Mighty Poplar’s members come from acts you’d really call “bluegrass,” you could say they’re all at least bluegrass-adjacent. And none of them have ever come down as top-dead-center old-school bluegrass as on Mighty Poplar. The album’s 10-song tracklist draws material from A.P. Carter, Bob Dylan, John Hartford and Leonard Cohen, with songs made famous by the likes of Hazel & Alice, Uncle Dave Macon and Bill Monroe fiddler Kenny Baker.

Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass, also figures into the proceedings in terms of inspiration for the ensemble’s name. Proposing Mighty Poplar as a moniker was Marlin, someone who definitely knows his way around names involving wordplay (witness the original name of Watchhouse: Mandolin Orange).

“I was listening to a Bill Monroe and Doc Watson live recording where they were about to kick off ‘What Would You Give in Exchange for Your Soul?’” Marlin recalls. “Bill said he and Charlie recorded it in ’19-and-36’ in Charlotte and it had been ‘mighty poplar down through the Carolinas.’ We had a huge text thread already going about band names, where my phone was always going BING at 2:30 a.m. So many names we considered, but everybody thought Mighty Poplar was a good awning to stand under.”

While Mighty Poplar is only now coming out in the spring of 2023, the album has actually been in the can for a couple of years. It might never have happened without the Coronavirus pandemic shutdown of 2020-21, which took everyone’s regular bands off the road for an extended period of time.

In isolation, everyone felt drawn toward bluegrass as the musical equivalent of comfort food. So they took this on as a pandemic project, convening with engineer Sean Sullivan at Nashville’s Tractor Shed for a brisk three-day session in October of 2020.

“There was a sense that we were getting away with murder, traveling across the country and podding up while everything was closed up,” says Pikelny. “There were logistical hurdles and we had three days, so we had one shot to get it all at once. So we worked out as much as we could ahead of time, even the sequence. The concept, if there was one, was that this was the closest thing to a real-deal, traditional, classic bluegrass project any of us have done in a long time, maybe ever.”

As lead vocalist on six of the album’s 10 songs, Marlin is the primary out-front voice of Mighty Poplar. But he felt like he had to step up his game on the instrumental side, to keep up with his bandmates.

“It was intimidating, but not because those guys are intimidating,” Marlin says. “As a musician, I’ve had to figure out how to feel like I can express myself in front of people I look up to. But that’s on me for projecting my own shit onto them, because they don’t wear that. So ‘Grey Eagle,’ an instrumental fiddle tune Alex brought forth, I was kind of sweating that one in the studio. That kicked off at 150 beats per minute and everybody else is just looking around, casually exploring the nooks and crannies of the tempo while I’m popping a vein and kind of being drug behind the horse. But I managed to keep it together. Ultimately all those guys still love a great song as much as anyone. There’s something about simple songs that leave it up to the player to bring whatever they want. I love it when the song’s not telling you how to play it, and I feel lucky that they were down to explore that approach.”

Song choice was pretty casual, mostly in favor of material from a bit off the beaten path. Even with a Hall of Fame list of songwriters, they focused on less-well-known songs from the repertoire of each — Dylan’s take on the A.P. Carter tune “Blackjack Davy” rather than “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” or Hartford’s Mark Twang riverboat song “Let Him Go On Mama” rather than “Gentle On My Mind.”

“It all happened pretty organically,” says Eldridge. “In the initial text volley about what to do, there were a lot of songs we would’ve been happy to cut. It’s hard to say why we landed on these particular songs other than that they felt right. I would not say there was an overarching concept beyond good songs that felt right.”

While they considered including some originals, ultimately they decided to stick with covers, mostly of older vintage (the most recent song on it is Montana singer/songwriter Martha Scanlan’s “Up on the Divide,” from 2012). In that way, Pikelny looks at Mighty Poplar as a classic folk record.

“In other genres, people might call this a ‘covers album,’” says Pikelny. “But if you record solo Bach compositions, that’s not ‘Bach covers.’ It’s repertoire, reinterpretations of classics to pass down. It was born of a desire, almost a need for all of us, to gather around a bluegrass project. And it was such a joyous process. It felt like coming home for Thanksgiving or Christmas and being around family you’ve not seen in a while, in the home you grew up in with a turkey in the oven. It was that kind of comfort, the warm fuzzy feelings of gatherings like that.”

It went so well, in fact, that they were in no hurry to get around to the detail work of mixing and mastering the record after they finished tracking. Pikelny says they felt almost paranoid about not wanting to touch it, for fear of messing up a good thing.

“We’ve been sitting on this for so long because it felt like such a special session,” Eldridge says. “So effortless and deeply joyful. Magical, even. We didn’t want to let it go because it felt like all we could do was ruin it. But I kept coming back to it, listening now and then and thinking, ‘I really like this. We have to share it, plus it’s a good excuse for us to get together again.’ It’s ironic that we’ve not actually played it live yet, and we’re already kind of getting the next batch together.”

Indeed, Mighty Poplar’s first real touring commences in May. With Hargreaves busy playing arena-sized venues with Strings for the foreseeable future, John Mailander will stand in for him on the first leg of touring. And all the principles are cautiously optimistic that Mighty Poplar’s first album won’t be its last. Pikelny likens their hoped-for trajectory to Tony Rice and J.D. Crowe’s Bluegrass Album Band, which periodically convened to make albums and tours through the 1980s and into the ’90s.

“Bluegrass Album Band was never a full-time group for any of those guys, it was a very sustainable side project whose records served as homecomings,” says Pikelny. “They’d go off to do whatever else and then come back for another edition. It’s a celebration of our love for bluegrass. As long as it stays as effortless as this felt, I think we’ll keep doing it when we can.”

Photo Credit: Brian Carroll

At the Opry, Photographer Mark Seliger Takes Rusty Truck for Another Ride

Posted on by Editor

Mark Seliger has been to the Grand Ole Opry before, as a staff photographer for Rolling Stone, but this time he’s in Nashville to support the release of his country band’s self-titled album, Rusty Truck. To an empty house during soundcheck, he’s leading Rusty Truck through “Find My Way Back Home,” one of the three songs he’ll sing later that night with good friend Sheryl Crow. Meanwhile, an Opry camera crew is following him around — an ironic role reversal, considering that Seliger stands as one of the most recognizable and accomplished photographers of the last few decades, with numerous books to his name.

Within a few weeks time, he’ll shoot the Vanity Fair Oscars Party for the 10th year in a row, but for now, he’s comfortably backstage at the Opry, talking to BGS about his love for country music, the preparation that goes into photo shoots, and the turning point that led him to songwriting and eventually releasing three albums. Seliger recorded his latest project in guitarist-producer Larry Campbell’s home studio in Rhinebeck, New York.

“You’ve got to go out there and keep on reinventing yourself. You’ve got to keep on being curious, and keep your eyes open, soak up the information and be a part of the life,” he says. “I never really thought that I would make three records, right? I thought I was good with making books. But there’s something about how much better I feel when I’m making music in terms of my photography. And they work really nicely together. They complement each other. And when you go out and sing on top of that, at the Opry, I mean, come on! That’s the coolest.”

 

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BGS: What was that experience like for you to walk out there on the Opry stage?

Seliger: Frightening! Absolutely frightening. But what’s really remarkable is the musicianship. We usually are in rehearsals for days to try to get anything near that. And to just be able to hear the song all of a sudden come together within three notes has been incredible. And the room sounds incredible.

I’m curious, what do you consider to be the golden era of country music?

Oh, that’s easy. I mean, I was pretty unfamiliar with country music when I was growing up. I grew up in Houston. And when I went to college in a small state school in Texas — East Texas State University in Commerce — probably around two months into being there, my RA loaned me his Hornet to drive to Dallas to go visit an old girlfriend. And he had the Stardust 8-track in his car. I knew the songs that were really big at that time, but I didn’t know the album. I played that and it was just like the lonesome, the phrasing, the voice… I just connected with that.

Then I started digging deep into Hank Williams. I started digging into Loretta Lynn, and into Tammy Wynette and George Jones, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and that whole world. It all started to make sense to me. I fell in love with the double entendres and the stories behind the songs and how there are these twists and turns. That’s what really became evident to me — that songwriting to me was the hero. It gave me a chance to take all the visual information that I had gathered in the years as a photographer, kind of pull from it, and use that in order to be able to tell stories.

When you said you were digging into these artists, how did you do that?

I would make mixtapes so I could hear different artists together, which was really interesting to hear collections of singers coming together. And then, one of the turning points for me was I had heard a Gillian Welch recording kind of in the early days. I started to follow Gillian and Dave, and around 2000, I had met somebody that was involved in their team. And I said, “You know, I’m not asking to be hired for money. I want to just work with him if I have an opportunity.” They put it out there and I met them. I ended up doing a long film for them. I also did the photography for Revelator. So, Gillian, Dave and I really connected the dots.

At that time, I was working on our first record, not knowing it was actually going to be a full album. I had asked people that I had worked with in the photography world, not to sing on it, but just to produce it. And so, after I became pretty close to Dave and Gil, I said, “Hey, I’m working on this record. I know it’s kind of crazy. It’s certainly not my field, but it’s my art form.” And I said, “Would you be interested in producing a song or two?” And they were like, “Sure. We’ll just spend a day doing it.” They booked studio musicians and they did an incredible job producing the two songs. One was called “Civil Wars” and the other one was called “Tangle In the Fence.”

How old were you when you started writing songs?

I turned 40. I was a very late bloomer. I was breaking up with Rolling Stone as their chief photographer. And I had a lull. I was also in kind of a good state to be able to write. I was probably a little bit down in the dumps about moving on. I wasn’t sure about the next move in my career and I found a lot of support in writing. The first record, I had the luxury of being able to take my time, but once I started going, I started to write pretty quickly. But, you know, writing takes me a lot of time. I have to actually sit quietly, take a phrase, start to work it through, figure out what I’m doing on the guitar. I have no idea if it’s gonna stay that way or if it’s gonna move in a different direction. Sometimes I write acapella. It’ll just be me on a tape recorder, humming it through. Probably three or four songs I played for Larry were just straight vocals, before we figured out what the what the instrumentation was going to be.

When you started as a songwriter, how did you get feedback? Did you play your songs for people?

I went to open mics. I started to go out in ’97 or ’98. I remember the first time I went out and sang in public, a buddy of mine who was teaching me guitar introduced me to a band that was playing at the Rodeo Bar in New York. And I sang “Big City” by Merle Haggard. And I got OK accolades. (laughs) I was OK with that! Then I would go out and already have half a song that I could kind of fudge to be a whole song, even though it wasn’t. I would just repeat the same verse. But what I found was a camaraderie and a friendship in musicians that was very dissimilar from the relationships I had in photography. It’s a family and I loved that. The more I played, the more I found that that’s where I wanted to spend my time off. In music. I never really wanted to make it a career, right? I like what I do. So I labeled it like, photography is my wife and music is my mistress.

When did you get interested in guitar?

I took piano lessons when I was a kid. And I continued to play piano all through junior high school and a little bit in high school. And I traded in my Vox mini organ for an Alvarez guitar, which is now signed by pretty much anybody I’ve ever worked with. It was really about learning guitar, fingerpicking, everything from Eagles songs to Cat Stevens. You know, the usual suspects of early guitar playing. I wasn’t a huge Americana fan when I started in that world, but my older brothers turned me on to different phases of Dylan. They turned me on to the Band. They turned me on to things that were heading that direction. But it wasn’t until I started to write songs that I found my voice. I’m not really a guitar player. I accompany myself on guitar in order to sing my songs. My instrument is really my voice, and that’s the thing that I’ve been working on over the years — to be able to learn how to sing properly and to develop a style to where it really feels like what I consider to be Rusty Truck.

 

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When I was listening to this record, I heard the fiddle and banjo on “Ain’t Over Me.” Do you like bluegrass? Do you have any bluegrass influences?

Oh yeah! I think the Blue Sky Boys and a lot of the Louvin Brothers and a lot of the earlier stuff. You know, I actually got to meet Charlie Louvin and photograph him. That was pretty rad. I got to meet Bill Monroe and work with him. You can’t deny the foundation of how bluegrass has influenced everything.

How did you encounter Bill Monroe? What was your assignment?

My assignment in the early to mid ‘90s was to do a country portfolio for Rolling Stone. My buddy who was the creative director, Fred Woodward, pushed Jann Wenner to doing a country portfolio. We pulled together some pretty fantastic people. It was Kitty Wells and Johnny Wright. It was Bill Monroe. Earl Scruggs. Waylon. Willie. George. Tammy. Johnny. Merle. Buck Owens. I almost got to photograph Hank Snow, but he was reluctant. When I tried to kind of push my way into that, he refused us.

But we did come to the Opry. That was my first entrée into the Opry. We went backstage and we set up a little background. Mr. Monroe came out and he had a traditional, kind of tilted hat, a short Stetson, and he was wearing a big Jesus button on his suit. And then he said, “How’re you doing? I’m Bill Monroe.” I shook his hand and he CRUSHED my hand. I literally saw bruises for days.

That was actually a good indicator because then I saw him with his mandolin with a little cord wrapped around his neck. That was his strap, like a piece of rope, which was pretty awesome. And I sat here and I listened to him play and that was the picture where his hands were on his mandolin.

As in journalism, I would imagine you’d spend a lot of time on researching your subject. Tell me a little bit about what your preparation is for a photo shoot.

You want to fall in love with them, right? Regardless of whether you really love whatever they do, you have to take in everything you can to understand why they do what they do. A lot of it is research on the front end where we write down everything about them. I start to plan ideas. It could be something very reductive. It could be something very conceptual. But it is a process of collecting as much information as possible.

And trying to make them comfortable?

Oh, yeah. You have to invite them into an environment where they’re comfortable and then you have to observe them. And the observation is really from more of a conversation like we’re doing, right? I’m sure you can probably write 10 things about me that I just did that you thought were quirky and weird. I think when you’re working with people, just through conversation, you start to understand a lot about who they are. And the more you’re familiar with them, the better conversation you can have. We’re all journalists in that sense. It’s just a visual journal rather than a written word. We’re telling their story through our idea.

Photo Credit (Top of Story): Robby Klein. Photo of Bill Monroe’s hands courtesy of Mark Seliger.

LISTEN: Arkansauce, “My Home in Arkansas”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Arkansauce
Hometown: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Song: “My Home in Arkansas”
Album: OK to Wonder
Release Date: April 21, 2023

In Their Words: “‘My Home in Arkansas’ is an up-tempo bluegrass number about the lives we live when we hit the road and the tolls we pay to live the traveling musician lifestyle. Maybe it’s because it’s the two things we’ve done the most for the last several years, but I see a lot of parallels between the traveling life and a good jam. Both of them are more fun when there is a sense of adventure and a feeling that you are entering into new terrain, and they both will inevitably contain a breakdown at some point.

“As we were developing this batch of new tunes, several of them became studies on new rhythms and complex instrumental melodies with harmonized lines; things that really stretch our technique. It also became evident that we didn’t have many songs that were delivered in a classic Monroe-inspired bluegrass form, so that was intentionally front and center as I wrote the tune. I knew I wanted an open section that would give us somewhere to take it in our live shows, so we put together our exit strategy from the jam and hit the studio before things coagulated.” — Tom Andersen, Arkansauce

arkansauce · My Home in Arkansas

Photo Credit: Phil Clarkin

Bluegrass Memoirs: Jackson, Kentucky Bluegrass

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

[Editor’s note: Photos by Carl Fleischhauer]

On Monday August 7, 1972, with fresh memories of Maritimes old-time and bluegrass, I drove from New Brunswick to New England to join my wife and kids, who were house-sitting for my in-laws in Norwich, Vermont. 

On Thursday the 10th I headed south. A fourteen-hour drive brought me to Morgantown, West Virginia, the home of my friend and partner in research, photographer and film-maker Carl Fleischhauer, then employed at West Virginia University. We’d known each other for twelve years. (Our stories are in Bluegrass Odyssey: A Documentary in Pictures and Words, 1966-86 [U of IL Press 2001]). We were about to embark on fieldwork.

During the preceding year, when I began planning for the book Bluegrass: A History, I asked Carl to help me think about photos. In addition to documenting bluegrass festivals and other venues he, with Sandy Rothman, had recently looked for traces of earlier days in a field trip to the old Monroe home in Rosine, Kentucky. Now, we made plans for our own field trip. Carl would take photos. I would make notes and do interviews. 

We spent that Friday in Morgantown looking at Carl’s photos and films and listening to LPs as we prepared for the research. At the end of the evening, my notes say,

Did some picking.

Early Saturday morning we piled in my new Toyota with our gear (cameras, tape recorder, axes, tent, sleeping bags) and headed southwest, crossing into Kentucky from Huntington, WV and snaking down through the mountains to Jackson, the seat of Breathitt County. Three hundred miles; we arrived around 2 o’clock.

There we headed just outside of town for Bill Monroe’s Second Annual Kentucky Blue Grass Festival. When I went to Canada in 1968, Bill Monroe had one festival a year at Bean Blossom in Indiana. Now he was running a bunch in other states, as were other artists. Festivals were the big news in bluegrass music in 1972. We sought to document the bluegrass festival experience.

Later others would write about this, like Bob Artis (“An Endless Festival” in Bluegrass [1975]) and Robert Owen Gardner (The Portable Community [2021]). Here’s how my notes from Jackson begin:

West of town on main hwy, down short steep road. Paid camping & Sat. fees, never did pay for Sunday. Parked & walked down to the stage area — tent set up, natural amphitheatre, uncovered stage, bad sound. Lots of cops around on Saturday.

Made contact with Pete & Marion Kuykendall, and agreed to move in next to them to camp. Set up tent, attempted to speak to Monroe but he was busy coping with the Goins Bros. problem of being hassled by the cops for drinking. Later Kuykendall said that cops had asked Monroe for $ (3 or 6 hundred) and he had refused to pay off so they were taking it out in fines. Lots of racing around on Sat. with flashing lights et al, but they stayed away on Sunday.

Listened then to IT’S A CRYING TIME, hot & exciting Japanese bluegrass band. Then back to Kuykendall’s bus/home whatall. Thunderstorm; discovery that cassette recorder didn’t work on batteries because plug distorts switch; got it running eventually. Oldest Kuykendall girl Sam/Ginger comes in with bass player of above-mentioned Japanese band, then leaves. Kuykendalls are a bit worried about this but Carl & I both notice later that a number of young girls (McLain girls, for example) are hanging around, with this group.

Dinner with Kuykendalls. Frank & Marty Godbey come in and are around for the rest of the evening. Mostly we sit & talk, though I went down to the amphitheatre to catch Jim & Jesse and the Japanese bands. Came back, then returned to catch Monroe. Afterwards listened to picking group in tent near us. Did mainly Emerson & Waldron, Newgrass Revival, Bluegrass Alliance, Gentlemen, etc. Chromatic banjo. Noisy night in Carl’s tent, as sessions went on late and busses started early. I got a spider bite.

Bill Monroe (center) and the Blue Grass Boys at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Bandmembers include Monroe Fields, bass; Jack Hicks, banjo; Joe Stuart, guitar (hidden); Monroe, mandolin; and Kenny Baker, fiddle.

I’d known the Kuykendalls since 1966. Pete, a 1996 inductee to the Bluegrass Hall of Fame, was a musician, record collector, producer, publisher, and, since 1970 owner-editor of the first and leading bluegrass monthly Bluegrass Unlimited.

Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday August 12, 1972.

Pete and I had already been corresponding about bluegrass history when we met on Labor Day weekend 1966 at the second Roanoke Bluegrass Festival. Subsequently, I visited the Kuykendalls in Virginia where Pete encouraged me to write for the then all-volunteer magazine he would later own. I began with a review of the festival, published the following January — the first of eight articles I did for BU in 1967.

Photo made by Pete Kuykendall’s son Billy with one of Carl Fleischhauer’s cameras. Carl is seated at left with two other cameras on the table. This photo was made at the time of Neil Rosenberg’s (top of head above stove) interview of Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, at left, is Pete’s wife and Bluegrass Unlimited co-manager Marion Kuykendall.

By 1970 Pete and Marion were running BU full-time; I’d done an article for them earlier in 1972 (eventually I would write a monthly column) so we had been in touch recently by mail and phone. Conversations with Pete were never brief! He loved to share the business scuttlebutt and he had plenty since they were selling the magazine at festivals every weekend and had just launched BU’s own annual festival. 

I think this may have been the first time I met the Godbeys. From Lexington, and before that, Columbus, Ohio, they had been following the bluegrass scene for a decade. Frank is a musician who is still performing these days. By 1972 he and Marty had begun writing and publishing photos in BU. For them, as for me, hanging out with the Kuykendalls was a good way to keep up on the bluegrass news. People were already talking about starting an industry association, though that — the IBMA — wouldn’t happen until 1986. Pete was one of its founders.

Neil Rosenberg (facing camera) interviewing Pete Kuykendall, editor of Bluegrass Unlimited, in his RV parked in the camping area at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. In the background, with an air rifle, is Pete’s son Billy Kuykendall.

With the growth of the festivals came clubs, newsletters, and magazines. Bluegrass enthusiasts (many of them musicians) followed their favorites to festivals and other venues. Paths crossed; networks grew. The politics of bands was a favorite discussion topic.

Over the course of the festival, I made note of gossip about the always changing bands. Ricky Skaggs had just left Ralph Stanley — there were rumors about where he was headed next. Was Bill working to get Ralph Stanley on the Opry? Some thought so. The II Generation was said to be splitting up. Stories were told of bluegrass festival camp followers. 

At this Jackson, Kentucky festival were a bunch of bands that had been appearing at Bill Monroe’s other 1972 festivals — Monroe, Jim & Jesse, Flatt, Reno & Harrell, the Goins, Ralph Stanley — mature musicians who’d been working with this music for a substantial period of time and who stuck close to the early models of which they were, often, the authors. Classic bluegrass, one could say. 

What the audience didn’t hear was the kind of stuff we’d heard from the jammers late Saturday night, like “One Tin Soldier,” The Bluegrass Alliance’s cover of a song popularized in the film Billy Jack. Their bluegrass version, with Sam Bush’s lead voice and Tony Rice’s harmonies and guitar work, was a hit, a big step on the road to newgrass.

The Japanese bands were new to the scene. Japanese bluegrass began in the early sixties. In 1971, Bluegrass 45 came from Kobe, Japan, with the sponsorship of their label, Rebel, to tour U.S. bluegrass festivals. They made a big hit at Monroe’s Bean Blossom festival with their showmanship and musical savvy. This year they were back, along with another Japanese outfit, It’s A Crying Time.

Visiting from Japan, the band It’s a Crying Time performs at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Band members include Eiichi “Ei’ Shimizu, banjo; Kazuyoshi “Kazu” Onishi, mandolin; Satoshi “Sato” Yamaguchi, guitar; Akira “May” Katsumi, bass.

Monroe had booked the Japanese bands as a novelty, something you couldn’t see just anywhere in the bluegrass world. As I mentioned in my field notes, I found It’s A Crying Time’s music “hot & exciting,” and I was not the only one in the audience reacting this way. They came to the attention of Lester Flatt, who, after watching them rehearse, invited mandolinist Kazu Onishi to join him on stage at his final set. 

Backstage moment at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972. Akira Katsumi, Kazu Onishi,
Lester Flatt, and Akira Otsuka. Otsuka was Kazu’s friend from the Japanese scene, a member of the Bluegrass 45.

This video comes from the Bluegrass 45’s appearance at Carlton Haney’s Camp Springs festival:

They are announced at the beginning of the video by emcee, writer, and DJ Bill Vernon. Vernon was here at Jackson, as I learned Sunday morning when I went down to the early morning gospel show. Pete Kuykendall introduced me to Bill there, and we had a long chat about the politics of the bluegrass industry. I wrote in my notes:

A very loquacious and complex person.

At that morning’s gospel show, the music came to a stop as a fundamentalist preacher began his sermon. At that point, I noted:

Bill Vernon cut out from the morning sermon, he’d had enough…

During the preacher’s sermon at the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. Bill Monroe (wearing a black suit) is seated in the audience area at left.

I stayed and heard some good music, noting:

The gospel section’s high point was when the Goins Bros. did “Somebody Touched Me” and Eleanor Parker came on stage & started clapping hands and singing; Monroe caught on and came up to join in too.

During the gospel program at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. When the Goins Brothers band performed “Somebody Touched Me,” they were joined on stage by Eleanor and Rex Parker and Bill Monroe. Eleanor and Bill joined the Goins trio at the main microphone while Rex sang and played mandolin at the “stage right” microphone.

This kind of spontaneity, which gave festivals their appeal, was not there all the time. Jim & Jesse, I wrote, had:

A good show, with Jim Brock sounding especially good, but … a cut and dried quality to it all.

Describing Lester Flatt and his Nashville Grass, I concluded:

To me the whole band sounded tired, lackluster.

But Flatt’s final set was enlivened when It’s A Crying Time mandolinist and tenor Kazu Onishi came on stage to sing “Salty Dog Blues” with him. 

During my times around the stage area, I had a chance to talk with Monroe and with some of the musicians I’d gotten to know during my years as a backstage regular at Bean Blossom, like Birch Monroe, Joe Stuart, and Roland White.

I arranged with Birch, who was busy helping Bill run the festival, for an interview, to take place later in the week at his home in Martinsville, Indiana.

Joe Stuart offstage at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.

Joe told me about his experiences playing bluegrass in Canada with Charlie Bailey. He’d even appeared in Newfoundland.

Roland, whom I’d known since his days as a Blue Grass Boy, was now playing with Lester Flatt. He told me they were working solid, playing festivals every weekend.

Here’s what I wrote about the audience:

Audience — bluegrass die-hards from Ohio, Ky., D.C., Carolinas. Few freaks. Appear to be about 50% campers, 50% local people. Certainly no more than 1500-2000, on Saturday, though figure of 3000 was bandied about. Bill moved his Ky festival to Jackson from Ashland this year because the turnout at Ashland was dropping. Fact, bluegrass ain’t as popular in Kentucky as it is elsewhere — Ohio, D.C.

Audience on the hillside natural amphitheater at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Saturday, August 12, 1972.

The festival closed with a finale, orchestrated by Monroe. At the first festivals in the mid-60s, which were created to honor Monroe, such events were somewhat spontaneous, but by now, seven years after the first one, these events were highly ritualistic. By the time it happened, I noticed that the Kuykendalls had left. They were not the only ones.

The finale performance at the Second Annual Kentucky Bluegrass Festival, Jackson KY, Sunday, August 13, 1972. At the center, in white suits, are Bill Monroe and Lester Flatt. Here are a few of the other performers, left to right: Curly Ray Cline (on the ramp), Melvin Goins (guitar, facing camera), Kenny Baker (fiddle, white hat, wearing a suit), Joe Stuart (just behind Baker, partly hidden), Buck Ryan (fiddle, white belt), Jack Hicks (banjo, white hat, wearing suit), Paul Warren (fiddle, white hat, at microphone), Vic Jordan (banjo, facing forward), Ralph Stanley (banjo, dark suit, hidden behind McCormick), Haskell McCormick (banjo, in profile), Monroe and Flatt with Don Reno (wearing white) partly hidden behind them, Raymond W. McLain and sister Alice McLain (hidden behind Flatt), Jesse McReynolds (mandolin, wearing striped jacket), Ruth McLain (bass, behind McReynolds), Raymond K. McLain (guitar, no hat), Roland White (mandolin, white hat), Rex Parker (mandolin, striped shirt), and Monroe Fields (leaning on van).

We packed up soon after and headed west for Lexington. I was hoping to interview J.D. Crowe.

[To be continued]

Thanks to Akira Otsuka and Carl Fleischhauer

Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Neil V. Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg.

Edited by Justin Hiltner

Peter Rowan Shares a Timeless Lesson He Learned From Bill Monroe (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on by Editor

Born on July 4, 1942, it seems rather poignant that this musical ambassador of freedom and exploration came into this world on Independence Day. First emerging onto the national scene in the early 1960s as a member of Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys, Rowan was a young buck — a “green horn,” as he’d say — who found himself alongside the “Father of Bluegrass,” singing lead and playing rhythm guitar.

And though Rowan and Monroe were very different people from equally different backgrounds, there was a deep, mutual love and respect for the sacred art form that is music — either learned, recorded or performed live — where lessons and anecdotes spun by Monroe decades ago have remained written on the walls of Rowan’s memory and throughout his extensive melodic travels.

The second half of our conversation hovers about the road to the here and now, about nothing and everything, and anything in-between, which is just how Rowan has always carried himself, that signature glint of mischief in his eyes radiating hardscrabble sentiments of a life well-lived.

Editor’s Note: Read the first half of our interview with BGS Artist of the Month, Peter Rowan.

When you think about getting older, what are your reflections on your relationship with Bill Monroe — as a musician and as a mentor to you?

Rowan: I’m just taking what he was doing a little further — that’s all. He said, “Pete, don’t go too far out on the limb, there’s enough flowers out there already.” He saw me coming. And his mentorship is just something that’s part of me.

Which you’ve parlayed into mentoring other people.

Yeah, I’m at that point. I remember what Josh White and John Lee said to me as I nervously presented my playing to them — “take your time, take your time.” The bluegrass guys, [fiddlers] like Tex Logan and Kenny Baker, were the touchstone of bluegrass at the time. Any jam session was led by the fiddlers, and then you’d throw a few songs in. But it was the fiddlers — Buddy Spicher, Richard Greene, Kenny Baker, Tex Logan, Vassar Clements. It could be five fiddlers and they’d all play that tune. That’s what the jam was, it was playing fiddle tunes. It wasn’t like, “Okay, you take a chorus and just play.” You stayed within the structure.

By the way, this whole idea of jamming, there’s always that element in the jam where you go to sort of an unknown place. There’s a real artless art to that. And I’m not sure the bluegrass folks are going there, because most of their instruments are short duration notes. It’s not like a saxophone where you take a breath and just blow for eight bars. But, I have to say the fiddle player for the Steep Canyon Rangers, [Nicky Sanders], he’s taken it up [a notch] — he’s paid attention to Vassar.

When you look at all of the musicians you came up with in the 1960s, there’s not a lot of them left right now.

It’s me and Del [McCoury].

That’s about it. And maybe Bobby Osborne.

Bobby is still alive, and I’m so glad I got to record with him a few years ago for Compass [Records]. And there’s David Grisman.

In terms of touring, you and Del are the ones that are always out there, onstage and on the road.

Yeah. Well, I think it’s part of the gift of being able to indulge in the thing that gives you the power to sing. You can have a lot of afflictions. But if you can sing, you can overcome. The weight of age. For instance, I saw Del last summer. We played out in Colorado, and there’s this picture of us — we look like we’re 10 years old. Just laughing and smiling, well, because it is a joy.

Both of you have never lost that childlike wonder of creation and discovery. You’ve always retained it.

Yeah. But people who want to say Del is upholding the tradition? Yes — stylistically, musically — he is. But he’s doing Richard Thompson songs. Del’s not close-minded.

You’ve always had this core of tradition, but you’re never shied away from jumping the fence into other genres.

And I’ve been criticized for it. Going to Jamaica and recording reggae with bluegrass songs. Going to Texas and recording with the great Flaco Jimenez. Come on, these are masters of our world — how could anybody in their right mind not do what I did? Bluegrass Unlimited once referred to me as a “schizophrenic musician,” like it’s a mental thing, where “he’s gone off the deep end.” [Laughs]

The criticism you faced is like what Billy Strings is facing today, and what Sam Bush faced in the 1970s. It seems every 20 years or so, the critics always say the sky is falling in the world of bluegrass. But it never does. It remains.

I think that goes back to Bill Monroe. He said this [to me], “If you can play my music, you can play any music.” That goes for Billy [Strings], too. And [Bill] saw it, where maybe I didn’t see myself as that. [Growing up], I had my little rockabilly band The Cupids, and I learned some Lead Belly tunes, trying to learn Lightnin’ [Hopkins] tunes. And here’s Bill Monroe, and it’s perfect. There’s harmony. It’s hard-driving. There’s acoustic guitars. It’s got everything I wanted.

You’ve had this incredible life — traveling the world, meeting people, collaborating onstage and off with all these musicians — what has the culmination of all of those experiences thus far taught you about what it means to be a human being?

Well, you know, all of these players were always the ones that didn’t have any prejudices. You sit down with Lightnin’ Hopkins and he doesn’t care. He’s not like, “Oh, white boy wants to steal my music.” These guys were musicians, and they weren’t just your average person.

I lived in the South long enough to have tremendous respect for the amount of heart that the Black people down in the South had. People who lived through the hard times and were glad to be driving a cab to get you to the airport, [where] you shake hands with that man — his hand is warm, just warm love and compassion in that hand. During those years — the 1960s — when it was still segregated in the South, it was weird, this thing of love and theft.

I was with the Bluegrass Boys and I remember one night we played the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Mance Lipscomb was on the bill. He came back and we’re all sitting around the dressing room. I asked Bill and Mance if they would play together. You might see [something like] that at Newport [Folk Festival], maybe. But mostly it was segregated into different musical styles [at that time] — Cajun, blues, bluegrass. I said, “Would you guys play?” And they didn’t know what to play. Bill goes, “What do you want us to play?” Bill didn’t know what to play. He didn’t know the starter blues. And Bill just started playing, and Mance played along, too. But it wasn’t this moment that I had imagined, like this intergalactic grandeur, you know what I mean?

[Bill and Mance] were really specialized in their own world. Mance Lipscomb, his music was complete, his version of the blues. Bill Monroe’s music was complete, his version. But [Bill] would talk about his “other music.” He’d say, “It wouldn’t have a dobro, but it might have a slide guitar.” I’d say, “And a mandolin?” He’d say, “Maybe not a mandolin, but maybe one of them little guitars.” [I’d say], “Like a what? A ukulele?” I think his “other music” was the mellifluous laidback music of a Hawaiian feel. Slow. Because bluegrass was all about keeping it up, playing for farmers who were exhausted, folks that had been up since 4:30 in the morning, go to a little schoolhouse and see Bill Monroe. He said he wanted to give them something that would raise their spirits.

And the world changed while Bill was alive. Typically, he would steer away from anything that compromised him. He began to understand that his position was not that of a star so much as [he was] a progenitor of musical tradition. He took from many different things — blues, gospel, Celtic. And he alone had figured out a way to put it all out there, soon to be copied by many, many others. And the talent of those others were helping him develop his style — Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Don Reno, all those folks.

(Rowan pauses for several seconds, seemingly lost in thought at the initial question posed.) What are you thinking right now?

Well, I’m not really thinking very much. [Laughs]. But I want to make sure that we’ve covered some of the things that you’re asking.

Well, you’ve lived the life of an artist. What is that life of an artist, and why is it that was the path you ultimately chose?

Okay, this is the connection now. When I was four years old [in 1946], my Uncle Jimmy came back from the Navy. He’d been in the South Pacific [during World War II] and he brought back grass skirts and coconut bras, all this tourist stuff because he’d been stationed in Honolulu, Hawai’i. I remember the first musical experience I had was Uncle Jimmy dancing around our living room [in Massachusetts] in his skivvies with his sailor hat on playing the ukulele and singing “My Little Grass Shack in Kealakekua, Hawai’i.”

I guess that just seemed like such a happy thing, you know? That was so different from what was the norm. After World War II, they were all celebrating. But Uncle Jimmy was saying, “Hubba, hubba, ding, ding,” all these strange things. Well, [later in life], I went to Hawai’i and traced Uncle Jimmy’s footsteps. I found out he [used to hangout] at this hula bar called Hubba Hubba. He had absorbed what he could — during the middle of World War II — some of that inspiration from the Hawaiian aloha spirit.

And that’s in you. I know that’s in you, too.

Yeah. So, when Bill Monroe was talking about his “other music,” I think he was talking about Hawaiian music. Because his song, “Kentucky Waltz”? The melody of that song was recorded in 1915 in Honolulu by John Kameaaloha Almeida, this Portuguese-Hawaiian orphan, who was adopted and raised by a Hawaiian family. He had a really strong band. A lot of the younger singers of the 20th century went through his band as featured singers, and he had three girls singing harmony. So, when Bill Monroe had a hit with “Kentucky Waltz,” he was singing a melody that came from Hawai’i, probably a classically derived melody. There’s this strange sort of admixture of technique and heart, you know? And that’s always been my path.

I feel like, maybe subconsciously, that memory you have of your uncle is what you’ve been chasing after your whole life.

I think I’ve been wanting that coconut bra and grass skirt again, man. [Laughs].

Photo Credit: Amanda Rowan

For Bluegrass Fans, Kentucky Offers a Commonwealth of Tourist Attractions

Posted on by Editor

Kentucky music is currently having a moment, but it’s far from the first time. Before artists like Tyler Childers, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton made it big, folks like Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Keith Whitley, Crystal Gayle, Tom T. Hall, Patty Loveless, Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam, and countless others helped build up the Bluegrass State’s rich musical foundation spanning bluegrass, country music, and more.

With so much talent having originated from Kentucky, there’s no shortage of destinations around the Commonwealth to consume this musical history. From the Mountain Arts Center in Prestonsburg in the southeast to the Muhlenberg Music & History Museum in the west, Lexington’s Red Barn Radio and beyond, every nook, cranny and holler throughout the state is full of destinations beckoning to be explored by music fans. We’ve compiled more than a dozen of these attractions below in an epic road trip that could be called the Kentucky Music Trail.

Central Kentucky

Opened in 2002, the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Mount Vernon features exhibits showcasing talent from throughout the state ranging from country and bluegrass trail blazers like Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn and Keith Whitley along with Black Stone Cherry, The Kentucky Headhunters and Exile, among others. The museum is open from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily with an admission of $10.

 

 

Also sitting on the same 55-acre property is the Renfro Valley Entertainment Center. First opened in 1939, the massive barn features two unique performance halls that host country, gospel and bluegrass music annually from April through December. Additionally, the venue has been the home of Renfro Valley Gatherin’, a syndicated radio program airing on Sunday nights at 9:30 p.m. EST, since 1943. The show is the third oldest continually broadcast radio program in America and the second longest continuously running such program featuring country music, behind only the Grand Ole Opry.

Back inside the Hall of Fame & Museum, one of the most prominent exhibits is one showcasing Woodsongs Old-Time Radio Hour, an internationally syndicated radio program hosted by folk musician Michael Johnathon in front of a live studio audience at the historic Lyric Theatre in Lexington on most Monday nights at 7 p.m. Launched in 1998, the entirely volunteer-run production spotlights musicians across all genres performing their songs and sharing the stories behind them. Now over 1,000 episodes in (and counting), the program has featured artists like Sam Bush, J.D. Crowe, The Black Opry, Riders in the Sky and Billy Strings. Each show also features a “Woodsongs Kid,” helping to encourage and grow the next generation of Kentucky songwriters.

Another radio program based in Lexington and featuring talent from around Kentucky, Appalachia and the southeast with a similar mix of conversation and performance is Red Barn Radio. Founded in the early 2000s at Renfro Valley’s little red barn (from which the show draws its name), co-founder Ed Commons helped lead the show’s move to its current home inside LexArt’s headquarters in downtown Lexington in 2005. The show has taken off since moving there, hosting everyone from Sam Bush to J.D. Crowe, Tom T. Hall, John R. Miller, Arlo McKinley, Sierra Ferrell, Sunday Valley (led by a young Sturgill Simpson) and Tyler Childers. In the case of Childers, his performance on the show became so revered that he ended up releasing it as a live album, Live on Red Barn Radio I & II, in 2016.

Eastern Kentucky

Out east on the campus of Morehead State University you’ll find the Kentucky Center for Traditional Music (KCTM), a school teaching the next generation of bluegrass and old-time musicians the nuances, history and business side of the music. Founded in 2000, the center offers the only Bachelor of Arts in Traditional Music in Kentucky along with a minor in traditional music. It also features an extensive digital archive of Kentucky and Appalachian traditional music, a recording studio, sound-proofed classrooms and rehearsal spaces. Alumni from the school include Linda Jean Stokley and Montana Hobbs of The Local Honeys, current professor and pedal steel player for Nicholas Jamerson, Thomas Albert; Lauren and Leanna Price of The Price Sisters, and current Assistant Director, Archivist, Instructor and member of Tyler Childers’ band, Jesse Wells.

 

 

Just over an hour southeast of the KCTM you’ll find the U.S. 23 Country Music Highway Museum. Located just off of U.S. 23 in Staffordsville just north of Paintsville, the museum features memorabilia from Tyler Childers, Chris Stapleton, Loretta Lynn, The Judds, Patty Loveless, Dwight Yoakam, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tom T. Hall and other artists hailing from the counties that the highway passes through in Eastern Kentucky. The area known as the “Country Music Highway” is distinguished as having the highest number of charting country musicians calling the area home per capita than anywhere else in the world. Admission to the museum is $4.

After another half-hour drive through the area’s Appalachian mountain back roads and hollers you’ll come across Loretta Lynn’s birthplace at Butcher Hollow in the old coal mining community of Van Lear. The humble mountainside cabin features four rooms to explore—one bedroom for Loretta, younger sister Crystal Gayle and her five other siblings; a bedroom for her parents, a tiny kitchen and a cozy dining room—all covered wall to wall in pictures and other collectibles from the Coal Miner’ Daughter’s childhood and life as a musician. Tours are $5 and are typically guided by members of Lynn’s family who still call the holler home.

 

 

About a mile up the road from Lynn’s home you’ll find Webb’s Grocery, a general store constructed by the Consolidated Coal Company in 1918 when Van Lear’s coal output was near its peak. In addition to stocking ice cold Coca Cola, Mallo Cups and other quick bites the shop also is stuffed with tons of pictures of Loretta Lynn and her family including a massive banner reading “Welcome Loretta Lynn.” A journey to Butcher Hollow offers not only an incredible look back on the upbringing of one of country music’s most iconic voices, but also a look back on the mountain towns ravaged by the boom and bust of the coal industry that back in the day helped to power our entire country.

Another 30 minutes south of Van Lear is the Mountain Arts Center (MAC) in Prestonsburg. Opened in 1996, the building features a 1,000-seat concert hall, a state-of-the-art recording studio, loads of rehearsal space and will soon be the home to the TV and radio headquarters of CMH23, an organization dedicated to educating people on the history of artists from the Country Music Highway and giving a platform to up-and-coming musicians from the region. According to Executive Director Joe Campbell, the MAC and CMH23 are also partnering with The Country Network on Live From CMH23, a show that will focus on rising artists from around the state.

 

 

The MAC is also the home of a family variety show called Billie Jean Osborne’s Kentucky Opry, as well as the Kentucky Opry Jr. Pros. (an educational program for aspiring entertainers ages 6 to 18) and the Appalachian Arts & Entertainment Awards. Kentucky Opry alumni include Chris Stapleton’s longtime bassist J.T. Cure, Jesse Wells, Tyler Childers’ piano/keys player Chase Lewis, Brit Taylor, Marleena Vanhoose and Rebecca Lynn Howard.

Western Kentucky

Just under two and a half hours west of Lexington via the Western Kentucky Parkway is Rosine, a small town in Ohio County with its claim to fame being the birthplace of the Father of Bluegrass, Bill Monroe. In the heart of Rosine, you’ll find several landmarks commemorating the artist starting with the Bill Monroe Museum, which houses countless instruments, outfits, fan letters, photos, personal furniture and even Monroe’s personal Cadillac DeVille in a constantly growing and evolving collection. The museum is open Monday-Saturday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Admission is $3-5.

 

 

Less than a mile up the road from the museum is the Rosine Barn Jamboree, which hosts free bluegrass jams every Friday night from mid-March through mid-November. A stone’s throw away from the barn sits the Rosine Cemetery, where you can’t miss the grave of Monroe. Featuring an obelisk-style monument and adorned in flowers, Monroe’s grave stands tall over the quaint hillside cemetery as, even in death, he watches over the town that helped to define him. The cemetery also includes several of Monroe’s family members including Birch and Charlie Monroe and Pendleton (Uncle Pen) Vandiver.

Also nearby is Jerusalem Ridge, Bill Monroe’s homeplace. On the compound you can see Monroe and other family member’s childhood homes. Restored in 2001, Bill’s home features guided tours Monday-Saturday from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sundays from 1-4 p.m. The site also features several stages and plays host to the Jerusalem Ridge Bluegrass Celebration, a festival taking place annually in September with some of the region and country’s best traditional bluegrass bands.

Less than an hour west of Rosine in Central City you can learn about icons like John Prine, The Everly Brothers, Merle Travis, Ike Everly, Mose Rager and Kennedy Jones at the Muhlenberg Music & History Museum. In addition to the traditional museum the building features a 1950s era jukebox serving up hits from the aforementioned artists that call Muhlenberg County home along with a towering Everly Brothers monument just outside. It also houses the Kentucky Motorsports Museum.

 

 

Just under an hour north of Central City is the last stop of our Kentucky Music Trail tour at the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum along the banks of the Ohio River in Owensboro. The latest jewel of Owensboro’s transformed downtown, the $15.3 million building opened in October 2018 not only houses the museum and hall of fame, but also the 447 seat Woodward Theatre, a gift shop and several private event spaces along with a 1,500-seat outdoor amphitheater to boot.

When it comes to the museum, the biggest of bluegrass fans could easily spend a day diving into everything the facility has to offer. A self-guided audio tour will inform you on the ins and outs of each exhibit, the roots and impact of artists to bluegrass music, the nuances of the music and more, helping to fully immerse and indulge visitors in the music. On display are items from the likes of Rhonda Vincent, Bill Monroe, Billy Strings, Sam Bush, The SteelDrivers’ fiddler Tammy Rogers, Flatt & Scruggs, The Steep Canyon Rangers, J.D. Crowe, Hee Haw, bluegrass’ cinematic coronation O Brother, Where Art Thou? and more.

 

 

Other facilities in the museum include a pickin’ parlor where guests can play on pre-tuned guitars, mandolins, banjos, upright bass and more along with a transcribed and searchable interview database provided in partnership with the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, a massive display honoring banjo maker Jimmy Cox and the Hall of Fame itself. The prestigious space contains 68 plaques honoring those instrumental to bluegrass from its roots to its golden age and everywhere in between. Much like the museum, it offers a tremendous look back at the genre’s roots, where it is now and how it got there.

The same could be said for all of these destinations. I was already in love with my home state prior to visiting all of these places, but after having done so I’ve grown an even greater appreciation for the state, its musical roots and trailblazing artists. I’m confident that you will too upon making the trip for yourself.

Bluegrass Memoirs: The First Canadian Bluegrass Festival (Part 1)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

The first Canadian festival, a modest affair billed as a “Bluegrass Jamboree,” took place in August 1972. I was involved in its organization and presentation. Subsequently, the Jamboree grew into an annual festival that’s still running. 

The Nova Scotia-based Downeast Bluegrass & Oldtime Music Society’s website reads: 

The annual family friendly Nova Scotia Bluegrass and Oldtime Music festival is Canada’s oldest, and North America’s second oldest continuously running Bluegrass Festival, and is presented and hosted by the Downeast Bluegrass and Oldtime Music Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Bluegrass and Oldtime music in Eastern Canada. 

Here’s how it happened. 

By the summer of 1972 I had been living in Canada for four years, working as a professor of folklore and archivist in St. John’s, Newfoundland, at Memorial, the big provincial university.

Deeply immersed in bluegrass, I now stayed in touch with the music I’d left behind via bluegrass friends in the states, I read Bluegrass Unlimited every month, and I got County Sales‘ newsletters and bought new LPs from them by mail.

 

June 22, 1968. Banjo workshop at Bean Blossom, IN: Vic Jordan, Bobby Thompson, Dave Garrett, Neil Rosenberg, Ralph Stanley.
(Photo by Frank Godbey)

When I arrived in Newfoundland in September 1968, I’d just published my first academic article — on bluegrass — in the Journal of American Folklore. I’d been writing regularly for Bluegrass Unlimited. That past June, Bill Monroe had included me in a banjo workshop at his Blue Grass Festival in Bean Blossom, Indiana; and a few weeks before coming to St. John’s, I’d been at the Richland Hills fiddle contest near Dallas, Texas, jamming with Alan Munde, Sam Bush, and Byron Berline and the Stone Mountain Boys.

 

August 18, 1968. Richland Hills, TX fiddle contest: Neil Rosenberg
(b), Sam Bush (m), Byron Berline (f).
(Photo by David Stark)

During the late ’60s and early ’70s, bluegrass festivals were proliferating (I wrote about this in Bluegrass: A History, 305-339) and bluegrass was having success in the popular music business (I wrote about that too, 305-339).

By 1972 I was hearing at a distance about the adventures of my friends from the U.S. bluegrass festival scene. Alan and Sam had made a popular instrumental LP. Now Alan was picking banjo with Jimmy Martin and Sam was singing and playing mandolin with the Bluegrass Alliance. And Byron, working as a studio musician in Los Angeles, had recently recorded with The Rolling Stones. 

As I continued to study and write about bluegrass, I maintained my musical calling, moonlighting in the local contemporary folk and pop music scene. It was several years before I met anyone in St. John’s who played or knew much about bluegrass. 

In 1969, RCA Victor invited me to edit an album in their Vintage series titled Early Bluegrass. Aside from some Monroe LPs, this was the first historical bluegrass anthology. I signed its detailed historical liner notes with “Memorial University of Newfoundland” under my name. It got a good reception in the bluegrass world and introduced me to Canadian bluegrass record buyers. 

In 1971 I signed a contract with the University of Illinois Press to write a volume on bluegrass history in their new Music in American Life series. It was a book that would take years to write, for I had catching up to do. Not only was I out of touch with the bluegrass scene I’d been in before immigrating, I also knew little about the bluegrass scenes in my new home.

 

June 22, 1968. Banjo workshop at Bean Blossom, IN: Vic Jordan, Bobby Thompson, Neil Rosenberg, Dave Garrett, Ralph Stanley, Larry Sparks. (Photo by Doc Hamilton)

Learning About Canadian Bluegrass 

Even before immigrating to Canada, I knew it had bluegrass, thanks to Toronto’s Doug Benson, who put me on the mailing list of his magazine The Bluegrass Breakdown. The first issue had reached me in spring 1968 while I was still in Indiana. It told of bluegrass scenes in Ontario and Quebec.

En route to Newfoundland in September 1968, we entered eastern Canada via the Maritimes — the provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. Picking up our landed immigrant passes from Canadian Customs at the Maine border, we drove through New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where, in Cape Breton, we caught the night ferry to Newfoundland.

During this trip I got my first taste of Canadian bluegrass in an Antigonish, Nova Scotia motel where we watched Don Messer’s Jubilee, a Halifax-produced CBC weekly TV show starring a fiddler who’d been recording and broadcasting nationally on radio since the 1930s and television later. Messer’s prime-time Jubilee was Canada’s second most-watched show, exceeded only by Hockey Night In Canada.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that Messer’s band included a five-string banjo played bluegrass style! To this immigrant’s eyes and ears, Messer was blending bluegrass into his country and old-time sound. Here’s his performance, taken from Jubilee footage, of “St. Anne’s Reel,” a popular Canadian fiddle tune:

The smiling banjo picker behind Messer was Vic Mullen, the youngest member of his band. Born in 1933 and raised in rural southwestern Nova Scotia, he had been working as a musician since his teens, playing with country bands in the Maritimes and Ontario.

In 1969, Mullen left Messer and began appearing with his own country band, The Hickorys, on another Halifax CBC weekly prime-time show, Country Time. There wasn’t much bluegrass on that show beyond Mullen’s occasional southern-style fiddle pieces.

Getting Acquainted 

My first meeting with a Newfoundlander who shared my enthusiasm for bluegrass came early in April 1971 when I had a letter from record collector Michael Cohen of Grand Falls-Windsor. 

By the time we met, Michael’s family owned six furniture stores in central Newfoundland. He’d grown up listening to country music on the radio and began collecting records. After attending university in Ottawa, where he’d heard lots of local and touring American and Canadian country music, he returned to Windsor to work in the family business, continue his collecting (he has all of Hank Snow’s recordings) and play in a country band.

He wrote me because he’d been told about me by a friend. “Early bluegrass and string bands … are my main interest,” he said, introducing himself and welcoming me to make tape copies of his rare records.

I wrote back inviting him to visit us on his next trip to St. John’s. This was the beginning of an enduring friendship. Through him I met others interested in bluegrass and Canadian country. The first was Fred Isenor of Lantz, Nova Scotia, a small community north of Halifax, who got my address from Michael and wrote me a few weeks later.

 

August 18, 1968. Alan Munde, Neil Rosenberg, unidentified fiddler.
(Photo by David Stark)

Fred, Vic Mullen’s contemporary and friend, worked at the local brick factory, and had a music store in Lantz. He was a record collector, a Bluegrass Unlimited subscriber, and a musician. He played mandolin and bass in The Nova Scotia Playboys, which he described to me as an “authentic (non-electric) country” band. They had represented Nova Scotia at the 1967 Expo in Montreal.

Fred had purchased his mandolin, a 1920s Gibson F5, for $100 at a Halifax pawn shop in 1960. Only later did he learn that its label, signed by Lloyd Loar, meant that he now owned an instrument like that of Bill Monroe, who’d just been elected to Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame. 

Our correspondence began with shared unsuccessful attempts to put together a Bill Monroe tour. I’d planned to speak with Monroe at a New England festival that summer. But the festival was cancelled; that plan fell through. In March 1972, Fred wrote of other plans:

There is a possibility of a one day bluegrass jamboree in Nova Scotia this summer. Not really a festival but if we can put it over it will be a start. Perhaps Michael has mentioned this to you. As you played with Bill Monroe and helped run Bean Blossom [I’d told Michael about this when we first met] I thought possibly you could offer some helpful suggestions, in other words some do’s and don’ts. 

He explained that with a limited budget the event would have to utilize local talent. 

Please do not mention this to anyone as definite … so far Vic Mullen and I just talked briefly about this and will be discussing it further on Monday night. 

He asked if I’d be able to visit him and take part in the program. 

I responded enthusiastically, calling the jamboree a festival, offering my suggestions, and saying I’d be driving through Nova Scotia in August and hoped to visit him then.

Meeting Vic Mullen 

In June 1972, Country Time came to St. John’s to tape some shows. I asked Vic if he’d do an interview, explaining to him that I was working on a book about bluegrass. He agreed. 

Still in his thirties, Vic had been playing country music professionally for a quarter century. He’d mastered instruments — mandolin, fiddle, guitar, five-string banjo — as needed, working on the road with a series of increasingly high-profile bands. Bluegrass chops were just one aspect of his professional tools — a flashy banjo piece, or southern-style hoedown fiddle as part of the show, that kind of thing. He’d worked with some bluegrass bands in Ontario, done TV, etc.

In the late fifties he started his own band, The Birch Mountain Boys. Working at first in southwestern Nova Scotia, he teamed up with Brent Williams and Harry Cromwell, young African Canadians from his home county, Digby. They played bluegrass in the Maritimes for several years before Brent and Harry started playing country and Vic joined Messer. 

Now Mullen was fronting his own national CBC TV country music show. He liked bluegrass and enjoyed playing it, but as a bandleader he chose it rarely. Most people in his audiences didn’t know the word “bluegrass” when they heard it and even if they liked it, it was just nice country music to them. Bluegrass was a niche genre. It had enthusiastic fans and great performers, but they were in a minority.

Vic was supportive of his old friend Fred; he understood Fred’s enthusiasm. He knew about BU and the bluegrass festivals that were happening in the States, but he didn’t think the festivals were going to catch on in Canada. Of Canadian bluegrass fans, he said that: 

Altogether in a group, there’d be a lot of people. But they’re spread out from coast to coast and particularly between here and Ontario … there wouldn’t be enough people for an audience in any one area, it’d be just too far for them to get there. 

Still, he was planning to be at Fred’s Jamboree. In our interview, Vic had given me an insider’s introduction to the world of Canadian country music. From him I heard for the first time many names and facts that would become familiar to me later. I was encouraged that a musician of his caliber, experience, and reputation would be there.

A week after the interview, I wrote Fred and told him I’d be catching the ferry to Nova Scotia on August 1, driving to Lantz the next day and staying to get acquainted. I explained that this was just the start of a crowded trip for “some hurried field research on bluegrass music … in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana.” I closed by mentioning that I’d had a pleasant experience interviewing Vic. 

Fred’s reply came a few days later. He was looking forward to my visit, he said, and then, referring to my earlier letter, told me the event would be a jamboree — “outdoors, just one evening.” Referring to a nearby farmer who held dances in his barn, Fred explained: 

John Moxom is building an outdoor stage as soon as his hay is made and it appears now that we will be holding it either Friday, August 4th or August 11th. All the local bluegrass musicians are willing to help and take a chance on it being a flop. We hope to find out if there is enough interest to try something bigger and better next year. I know you have a busy schedule but if August 4th turns out to be the date we would sure like to have you present. 

By the end of July 1972, I was headed first to visit Fred in rural Nova Scotia. Then I’d drive to New England, stopping near the border at Woodstock, New Brunswick, to see Don Messer’s Jubilee perform at a county fair, and then going to Vermont where my family was vacationing. After a short rest I’d be heading for West Virginia to join my photographer friend Carl Fleischhauer on the trip we described in Bluegrass Odyssey.

On August 1, I headed for the Canadian National ferry terminal in Argentia, Newfoundland, ready to sail west for some bluegrass. 

Rosenberg is an author, scholar, historian, banjo player, Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame inductee, and co-chair of the IBMA Foundation’s Arnold Shultz Fund.

Photo of Neil V. Rosenberg by Terri Thomson Rosenberg, all other photos by Neil V. Rosenberg. 

Edited by Justin Hiltner

BGS 5+5: Teddy and the Rough Riders

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Teddy and the Rough Riders
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Latest Album: Teddy and the Rough Riders
Personal nicknames: TRR, Teddy

Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?

Well, since there are way too many artists who have had singular, exceptional influences on us, I’ll have to just pick one amongst many! But someone special that comes to mind for me is Bill Monroe. For me he took the song formula to the moon, maybe from speeding up Jimmie Rodgers and other traditionals to breakneck speeds, and singing as high as humanly possible. To me he breaks through bluegrass. As a creator he made these simple, beautiful melodies that can be felt beyond genre, as he certainly was in his day.

What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?

Growing up in Nashville there was a plethora of rock house shows and gatherings. One in particular I was around 15 years old when I saw this band Jeff the Brotherhood, and they just had this stripped-down, two-piece, driving minimalist rock sound. The scene around them was exploding and I truly felt like I got to be a part of it right then and there. That made me believe I could actually play music. It took our buddy Carter setting up a honky-tonk night every Sunday 7-9 at Santa’s Pub in 2011 to be fully convinced to play real country music, though!

What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?

Jack and I love to rehearse singing together before a big show. I play mandolin and sing the high harmony, and Jack plays guitar and sings lower. But we do a huge Louvin Brothers routine, kind of doing the high lonesome, blood harmony thing. It’s just great practice and lets us all warm up solidly and relieve stress before a show.

Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?

Nashville is surrounded by great hikes. We go to Sewanee, Tennessee, where a good many friends have family cabins out there. That will put a song in your mind, it’s a pretty special place. We all go out to Percy Priest Lake together and listen to music and sit in the sun and swim. We have access to canoes and a lot of our friends are good at efficiently camping. I definitely write songs about those experiences all the time.

Since food and music go so well together, what is your dream pairing of a meal and a musician?

In Nashville there’s an exceptional Southern-style meat-and-three called Arnold’s Country Kitchen. Well, naturally we go there a good bit, but before his death, and for longer than I know probably, John Prine would go there every Thursday before a writing session and get the meatloaf. We’d go and see him ride in his huge black Escalade and go to town. So to me, John Prine and a big ole meatloaf and three sides from Arnold’s is the stuff of legend!

Photo Credit: Monica Murray