Artist:Mark Stoffel Hometown: My birthplace and original hometown is Munich, Germany. My adopted hometown is Murphysboro, Illinois Song: “Shadowbands” Label: Mountain Home Music Company
In Their Words: “This tune came to me relatively quickly while warming up for a show in Auburn, Alabama, in 2017. It also happened to be in the year of the wondrous transcontinental total solar eclipse and my chosen home near Murphysboro, Illinois, lay smack in the middle of the path. It seemed just right to name the tune after an amazing phenomenon associated with a total eclipse: ‘Shadowbands.’ (Google it.) My hobby astronomy friends assure me that the tune actually captures the mystique of shadow bands!
“The musicians, which I am honored to call very close friends of mine, all live scattered around the world, so we produced this video in an extreme socially-distanced fashion: Ross Sermons shot his bass part near Hobart, Tasmania. Niall Murphy, fiddle, posed for his part in South Armagh, Northern Ireland; and Gina Furtado, banjo, picked her scenic spot near her hometown of Winchester, Virginia. Josh, the guitarist, and I captured our parts in Alto Pass, Illinois. It was a lot of fun to put together, both the recording and the video. I hope it shows. Cheers, everybody!” — Mark Stoffel
Lucky is how Edgar Meyer says he feels that he and his Goat Rodeo collaborators — Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, and Stuart Duncan — were able to get together for the ensemble’s second album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo. They weren’t so lucky, however, when it came to their tour, which was supposed to start in August. “That’s not going to happen right now,” he tells BGS, adding, “We were looking forward to cherry-pick from both records.”
Along with their 2011 debut, which won two Grammy Awards, the Goat Rodeo albums represent two of the many high points in Meyers’ illustrious career. Renowned for his artistry on the double bass as well as for his compositional skills, the award-winning musician has been honored with a MacArthur Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize — the only bassist to have won either. Meyer also might be the man most responsible for Goat Rodeo’s existence. Having collaborated with both Ma and Thile, he introduced them to each other; later he and Thile recommended Duncan to Ma as the one to round out their quartet.
This Artist of the Month interview is the second of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians of Not Our First Goat Rodeo.
BGS: Was there less preparation time for Not Our First Goat Rodeo than for the first album?
Meyer: I’d say in terms of learning how to play the parts, yes. But Stuart, Chris, and I spent 20 days together writing and that’s very similar to the first one. That’s probably more important than learning how to play it. We were not particularly well rehearsed or knew the music when we [all] got together, but the important part — which is the writing — had about the same amount of effort.
How was it building these pieces together?
It’s a joy. It is a unique endeavor and we were able to go somewhere we probably wouldn’t go with another set of people.
And did songs evolve a lot once you all got into the studio?
Not much in terms of the actual notes. Maybe the feeling of it — that would evolve some. Occasionally, there might be a kind of loosely mandolin/bass improvised area that became more consistent in what it is. But there’s not a lot of that. Actually [the] music did not change immensely while recording, except in terms of it gelling. And in terms of people really understanding everyone else’s and their own roles, and making it into a whole.
All four of you had more familiarity playing with each other this time. Did that make it easier for everyone to gel?
Overall, yes. It’s tricky in that we attempted to try to find things that were wholly different from the first one. I wouldn’t say that we entirely succeeded in that, but I don’t think we were disappointed either. We just felt obligated to try and find brand new places to go. At the end of the day, it still sounds exactly like that same set of people — and I don’t think we were able to deeply change it. I think it is nine years later and I think we are all a little bit different. It is a different record, but very recognizable from the first one.
Were there musical territories that you all were specifically interested for this album?
For each piece we do, there’s always something that we are trying to explore that is new in some way for one or all of us — that’s almost a baseline. An esoteric example would be… I relate to harmony most centrally as a three-voice thing. For me if there’s more than three voices usually, no matter what the type of counterpoint is, most of these things are not going to track all four at the same time. But it is possible with good three-part writing to have the listener track all three voices almost all the time. That’s just what I find. Obviously somebody with enough skills will try to turn that on its head.
Depending on which way you count, there are either 19 possible three-note chords or there are 12. The modern music guys like to say 12, but their way of counting says that the major chord is the same thing as a minor chord. So, I prefer to count 19 and make those redundancies separate chords.
So, for “Not for Lack of Trying,” we experimented; there’s a chorale that it’s kind of built around — a three-part chorale. It has a repeated phrase. I think we tried to get one of each kind of chord. And maybe it’s a 24-note chorale [because] the last five chords are the ones that were used in the beginning. But there’s at least one of each of the 19 kinds of three-note chords in that chorale. That’s not something we did on the first record.
But there’s always some kind of something that somebody or all of us are trying to explore. And it’s not going to usually be something like, “Oh, we wanted to see if we could mix some bluegrass with some Caribbean music.” It’s going to be much more melodies, rhythms, harmonies — very specific musical questions.
What was your reaction listening to how Not Our First Goat Rodeo came together as a completed album?
I think mainly good… it’s a little more even than the first one. Maybe it doesn’t have some of the crazy highs, but it is a little more consistent. It’s more like somebody’s doing it for the second time.
This time everyone was a little more consistent with what instruments they played. Was that a conscious choice?
It’s just how it went down. The truth is on that count we were trying to emulate the first record. I probably like the variety of the first one slightly more. What we knew before we started the project was that an instrumentation of mandolin, violin, cello, and bass is not a very good instrumentation, and we knew the three of us would have to switch instruments in order to make the textures really work. Then when we are all on our main instruments, you can hear the comfort. You can hear all of us doing what we do best, but if you had to listen to those four instruments for a whole recording it wouldn’t work as well.
Song titles on both Goat Rodeo albums are very fun, like “Waltz Whitman.” Does one person tend to come up with the titles or are they batted around and one title rises to the top?
Chris and I had a session on the phone for about a half an hour the day before we turned in the album. “Waltz Whitman” was Chris’s, and he didn’t like it when he said it. I liked it a lot and made him stay with it. And, of course, he likes it now.
A lot of projects that Chris and I’ve done, and that I have done in general probably, have a lot of titles with useless meanings that the listener will never know about. Because we don’t put a lot of stock in titles. And so we could slap almost anything on there. This one actually didn’t have anything that we wouldn’t be afraid to have on the front page of the paper. There’s no hidden stories behind these titles. That’s unusual. Maybe it’s a new trend for me.
What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?
It’s a tough one because I will start by rejecting the question. What has had bigger impressions on me are particular pieces of music, and not particular recordings of them. The set of my favorite Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart pieces have had a bigger influence on me than single recordings have. My primary method of browsing in my formative years was less recordings than sitting at the piano and going through those composers’ scores. Although my list of influences is broad, at the top of it is Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, and my primary way of knowing them is not through recordings.
So it’s their compositions overall?
Yes, that is exactly right. And the scores themselves. Because that is what we have from them. Whereas with Stevie Wonder, the way I know him is through a recording; so that’s how I’m influenced by him. But with these classical composers, it is not through the recordings. Like I’ve said that’s the most important. It probably depends primarily on the vintage. It’s a tough one, because some people who lived during the times of recordings are not well-documented. Anyway, that’s a true answer though. That’s how it works for me. The essence of what moves me is the writing.
Artist:Molly Tuttle Hometown: Palo Alto, California / Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Standing on the Moon” (Feat. Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes) Album:…but i’d rather be with you Release Date: August 28, 2020 Record Label: Compass Records
In Their Words: “I didn’t grow up listening to a lot of Grateful Dead music, but being raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Dead was part of the mythology of my family and the area I grew up in (kind of how I imagine people who grew up in Tennessee, where I live now, might feel about Dolly Parton). Our specific family lore was that Jerry Garcia had gone to my high school (Palo Alto High) and my mom’s older sister, my Aunt Titia, knew them and used to take guitar lessons from Bob Weir in Menlo Park. That’s a roundabout way of explaining that this song means so much to me, because it brings me back to my roots. Even though I love Nashville, sometimes I do feel like I’m standing on the moon wishing I were with my friends and family in San Francisco. The line, ‘A lovely view of heaven, but I’d rather be with you’ is my favorite and it’s why I named the album …but I’d rather be with you. Life is messy and imperfect but I’d rather be here in it with all of you!” — Molly Tuttle
“One of the greatest feats as a musician, in my opinion, is taking a Grateful Dead song and creating a version of it that goes beyond the stigmatized identity of a ‘Dead Cover.’ It’s hard to do and takes a lot of courage to make it happen. But Molly reached for that brass ring and then somehow even went beyond it. Her version has given the song new parameters, makes me feel new things, and surpasses any sort of referential quality and becomes Molly’s own song. I’m just happy I got to be one small part of bringing it to life.” — Taylor Goldsmith
Artist:Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Song: “Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss” Album:All the Good Times Release Date: July 10, 2020 Record Label: Acony Records
In Their Words: “TO OUR FRIENDS AND FANS, for reasons better discussed in the history books, in the Spring of 2020 Gillian and I dusted off an old tape machine and did some home recording. Sometimes we bumped the microphone, sometimes the tape ran out, but in the end we captured performances of some songs we love. Five are first takes and five took a little more doing, but they all helped pass the time and held our interest in playback enough that we wanted to share them with you. We sincerely hope that you enjoy All the Good Times.” — Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
Artist:Stephen Mougin Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “The Song That I Call Home” Album:Ordinary Soul Release Date: July 31, 2020 Label: Dark Shadow Recording
In Their Words: “I discovered years ago, like many of my peers, I only really feel like myself when I’m onstage, in the studio, writing songs, or somehow involved in the creation of music. The normal world seems wild, unfamiliar, and uncomfortable until I have the chance to get back inside a song. Erin McDermott and I shared that sentiment back when we wrote ‘The Song That I Call Home’ as an homage to our muse: ‘Lyrical directions for an ordinary soul/ Look past my imperfections while the music makes me whole.’ It’s always a blast to have Sam Bush and Ned Luberecki in the same place, both musically and comically! This was an extra treat, as it’s the first music video I’ve released as an artist AND it includes my wife, Jana. I’m proud of our DSR Video team for their hard work, especially since I had to be on the ‘wrong’ side of the camera for much of this shoot!” — Stephen Mougin
Artist:Carolina Blue Hometown: Brevard, North Carolina Latest album:Take Me Back (August 7, 2020)
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
I was in my senior year of high school. The bluegrass bug had bitten me a couple of years before and it was what I was listening to predominantly. The year was winding down and we didn’t have that much going on, class-wise, so a few of my classmates who played guitar were bringing their instruments to school almost daily and jamming whenever and wherever they could. I couldn’t play a lick at the time, but I loved it so much that I found myself wherever the music was being made. I decided then that I wanted a guitar and I wanted to learn to play it, so when graduation rolled around, I took all the monetary gifts I received and bought a Yamaha (with a neck like a 2×4!) and a chord book and the rest is history. — Bobby Powell
Which elements of nature do you spend the most time with and how do those impact your work?
When we aren’t on the road, I spend 90 percent of every day outside. Farming has always been my other passion. The past couple of years, I’ve had to drastically scale back my operation because of the amount of time we’ve been on the road. I have a cow and calf operation, I put up my own feed as well as contract fields out for other folks, I grow a very large garden to eat fresh and can our vegetables for the winter, I raise farm fresh eggs, pork and chicken, and I spend every spare minute on the back of a horse. I have a lot of time in the quiet and stillness of nature, as well as to myself with the farm and animals. It allows me to appreciate the hard work of my forefathers and to appreciate what the land gives us. I live just the way my granddaddies before me did. It also inspires me to write music about those things that I love the most. It’s evident in my songwriting that I’m passionate about the land, our heritage, and knowing that every blessing is from God. I am Southern Appalachia. — Timmy Jones
What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?
My favorite memory from the stage had to be PreddyFest 2016, in Franklinton, North Carolina. We were singing one of our original songs, “Detroit City,” written by Tim. I’m looking out in the audience and could see people singing along. What a feeling, knowing that you’re teaching folks with your music. Knowing that they’re listening enough to know it by heart gives you such a feeling of accomplishment. It was incredible! — Bobby Powell
Which artist has influenced you the most… and how?
Anyone who has listened to my style for about five seconds can tell that I’m heavily influenced by Bill Monroe. Bill was the first real bluegrass that I ever heard. His high tenor voice and unique technique… I was completely enamored. Still am. I strive every time that I take my mandolin out of the case to honor what he started, but to include some of my own style in order to keep it fresh. It goes hand in hand that I would also be influenced by Mike Compton. Mike is a prodigy of Monroe. I was never fortunate enough to meet Bill in person, but I feel like Mike is without a doubt the next closest thing to Bill himself. He has been so kind to encourage my playing and to teach me on great levels! I feel like it would be a great injustice to not also mention Ronnie McCoury here. I appreciate these three mightily. — Timmy Jones
What’s the toughest time you ever had writing a song?
The toughest song I’ve ever written has got to be “Number 73987,” a co-write with Tim that’s on our forthcoming Billy Blue Records album. There have been tons of songs written and recorded about Bill Monroe (our hero) since his death in 1996. We wanted to honor him with this song and we wanted a totally different approach, something that had never been done before. I brought the idea to Tim about writing a song about Mr. Monroe’s famous mandolin, telling the story from the perspective of the instrument. Man, it was tough to write! We wrestled with it for a while, really wanting to do the song (and mandolin) justice, and finally got it finished. The recorded result is better than I could have ever hoped for. Tim really sang the fire out of it! I can’t wait for everyone to hear it! — Bobby Powell
Stuart Duncan, speaking by phone from his home outside of Nashville, is at a loss over how to describe the beautiful dissonance of the just-released collaborative album, Not Our First Goat Rodeo.
“I think all of us have — even if it is nebulous — some sort of idea in the back of our mind of how we’ll sound performing any given piece of music,” he tells BGS. “As soon as a little bit of rehearsal happens, the glue starts to come together within a very short period of time – 10 minutes, whatever – of rehearsing and talking. ‘Here’s where the emphasis is.’ ‘Make your note a little shorter, Stuart.’ Those things come together really quickly. Then it is just capturing the best performance of those ideas and moving on.”
A multi-instrumentalist who’s perhaps best known for his sublime fiddle playing, Duncan has racked up awards and accolades for his work in the Nashville Bluegrass Band and as a highly sought-after sideman for acts ranging from Garth Brooks and Robert Plant to Diana Krall and Panic at the Disco. The final piece to the Goat Rodeo quartet — which also encompasses Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, and Edgar Meyer — Duncan’s virtuosity contributes crucially to the group’s category-defying sound.
This Artist of the Month interview is the first of four installments as BGS salutes the incredible and iconic musicians of Not Our First Goat Rodeo.
BGS: Your first album together (The Goat Rodeo Sessions from 2011) was described as being partly composed and partly improvised. Was that the same approach this time?
Duncan: I would say even more composed, [although] all the material has some improvisation in it. Certainly for me. But there are things that I have to do the way they are written or else it won’t arrive at the proper conclusion — which is what the whole “goat rodeo” name means. Everything has to go just right or catastrophe happens.
This album’s studio session was only ten days for the ten songs, so there wasn’t a lot of time to fool around.
The writing and the sheet music had to be together before we even arrived at the studio or any kind of first rehearsal. The first album involved at least a day or two of rehearsals, and more time for writing. We had like nine months to get that together. This one was more like nine weeks. It came together fast.
We were staying at a nice home in the Berkshires. We had all of our sheet music laid out. Edgar was taking notes. He was the primary copyist — doing the notations for Yo-Yo’s parts, because he was more familiar that sort of bowing. Last-minute tweaks were happening up until the night, even the day, of the first session.
Were there particular musical pieces you brought to the table?
I arrived with little stabs of things for both projects. The most obvious one this time was the pizzicato hammering on thing in “Your Coffee Is a Disaster.” That’s something I had been working on for a long time. It is something that I sort of arrived on while holding my violin in a recording studio waiting for something to get finished in another room. Just noodling around. Holding the instrument like a mandolin and playing it that way on my lap rather than a bow. It took Edgar hearing that and realizing it was the same tempo — or could be played at the same tempo — as one of his other intros. Playing those together kind of started Edgar thinking: “Hey, what if we sandwiched these two ideas?”
So there was a good deal of puzzle piecing the arrangements?
When Edgar’s bowing his bass, and Yo-Yo’s bowing and I’m bowing, we’ve got a lot of bowing. Lots of sustained possibilities. We like to use this to our maximum potential. Like having the violin go down and the cello go up at the same time — and they cross each other in a moment of dissonance. The bass comes in and provides a counterpoint underneath that strengthens that dissonance and comes to a resolution, we hope, at some point.
The middle part of “Your Coffee Is a Disaster” has some of that — counterpoint of violin and cello not arriving at the same note at the same time but a half a beat staggered from each other.
It sounds like an especially stimulating creative environment.
With the minds of Edgar and Chris on compositions thrown in with what I have to offer, as far as improv, it’s a thick soup — it’s a chowder.
Were there instances of too many ingredients in the chowder?
Oh sure, it’s way easy to go too far. Some folks, even some folks close to me, have said that we should have thrown out a few more things than we did. Other people, you know, are perfectly happy. It is an individual thing. I just want to get comfortable enough with what we did in the studio to perform it again live at some point.
Despite the limited time you four have had together, you all seem to have a great camaraderie.
We had to stop each from telling jokes so we could get some work done, or it would be Story City where we could sit there all day and tell stories. It kept people focused on the job at hand. We were so glad to be together again. It was really great, and we hope for more.
And has some communication shorthand developed too?
There were times when little nuances of translations had to occur between something that Yo-Yo would say to Edgar because Yo-Yo would know Edgar knew what he meant, but maybe wasn’t so sure he knew that Chris would know. Some deep Latin term from the classical world. So, Edgar would then translate the question to Chris, although Chris would probably know a lot about classical music. There were a couple times when Edgar had to reframe the question to ring Chris’s bell, then Chris would have to translate it to me. It would have to go around in a circle before I would understand what was being talking about.
There were some bowing things that happened where I was equally as frustrated at getting it right as Yo-Yo. I remember one time Yo-Yo said, “Why is the bowing so different for this [song]?” It was a piece that I had started writing on the mandolin. And Chris said, “It wouldn’t seem weird to you if you ever wielded a flat pick.”
Is everyone’s very broad musical interests a key factor to Goat Rodeo being such a unique collaboration?
Completely, definitely. Not just because we all have wide interests musically, but also you are dealing with two monster composers who can weave all of that information into something believable, however unlikely the premise might be.
I’ve also heard Yo-Yo say in interviews that he’s listening to everyone else at the same time he is concentrating on playing. His ears are open; he’s not just using his eyes and his musical abilities. That’s a huge important thing for all of us. Because of what other people do, it influences what we do.
We are completely used to that in the bluegrass, jazz, swing worlds where we are trading licks. Someone plays a lick and you echo what they play. Then make it your own and it goes back around. But when you’re dealing with a written piece of music, that is played the same way each time, there are other things you can listen for with each other. Where the note lands. Where someone else is feeling a flourish or a cascade of notes.
Also, you have someone like Edgar, who can write something into a piece of music that sounds like improv. He know to leave a space as if someone was thinking of the next thing to play rather it being right there. He’ll leave a few rests in there as if someone is playing off the top of their head. Leaving space for the listener.
What is one recording that ranks as a G.O.A.T. (greatest of all time) for you?
Apart from all of bluegrass, old-time, jazz, swing, and blues that I grew up playing, loving and still worship, one of my favorite recordings is the Bach: Complete Sonatas & Partitas for Solo Violin by Arthur Grumiaux from the early ‘60s.
You can spend decades appreciating different kinds of music and then you think you don’t like classical music that much or it doesn’t hold your interest. Then somebody hands you something like that and says, “Check this out,” and it blew me away. I’ve been a fan of that recording ever since.
My sensibilities of how to perform a piece of music with Yo-Yo Ma were changed by hearing that recording. I became more sensitive to what was required from a violin to play that kind of music. The more aware, the more you can immerse yourself in what your instrument is capable of doing.
Artist:Mike Barnett Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee Song: “Righteous Bell” (featuring Sarah Jarosz) Album:+ 1 Release Date: September 11, 2020 Label: Compass Records
In Their Words: “I wrote this just before the 2016 presidential election. Looking back, there is much work to be done before any ‘righteous bell’ is rung. The juxtaposition of the propelling, changing instrumental and the grounding, unchanging vocal melody creates a sort of galvanizing tension that hopefully inspires the listener to take action — voting, conversing, learning, protesting, etc. Just like in an old-time jam, the vocal melody and lyric fuels the fiddles and banjos, and everyone feeds off each other’s energy. Sarah Jarosz’s powerful singing and driving clawhammer banjo brought this song to life.” — Mike Barnett
Molly Tuttle and Old Crow Medicine Show have combined their voices to bring attention to a terrible byproduct of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together the BGS favorites cover Neil Young’s “Helpless,” spreading awareness and raising funds for WhyHunger, which works to eradicate hunger through community solutions rooted in social, environmental, racial and economic justice.
The accompanying music video for “Helpless” shares eye-opening statistics detailing what the coronavirus has meant to families and individuals facing food insecurity in the U.S. and around the world. WhyHunger aims to establish an understanding of food as a basic human right and to address structural inequities that cause varying degrees of access to food. Tuttle and Old Crow are further supporting WhyHunger by donating all proceeds collected from this track to the organization.
Watch “Helpless” right here, and consider giving to WhyHunger to support this critical work.
Editor’s Note: For the first time, the complete Bluegrass Country Soul is available to stream worldwide through the film’s website in partnership with Kinema, Inc Read more about the milestone project below.
Bluegrass Country Soul captures one of Carlton Haney’s legendary festivals in Camp Springs, North Carolina, on Labor Day weekend of 1971. It is credited as the first bluegrass documentary, and is essential viewing for both lifelong bluegrass fans and those new to the genre.
This classic film features bluegrass music’s pioneers, as well as those who would take the music into the future. Earl Scruggs, The Osborne Brothers, Ralph Stanley, Chubby Wise, Mac Wiseman, J.D. Crowe, and Jimmy Martin were featured alongside The Country Gentlemen, Del McCoury, Sam Bush, Tony Rice, Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, Alan Munde, and more. The film documents Rice’s last show with The Bluegrass Alliance and his first show with J.D. Crowe & the Kentucky Mountain Boys. Many of the festival’s legendary moments are preserved in color for posterity.
A larger than life figure who is credited as starting the first multi-day bluegrass festival, Carlton Haney organized the weekend’s festival, and serves as the de facto host of the film, sharing thoughts about bluegrass music, bluegrass festivals, bluegrass fans, and the bluegrass “stow-ry.” His passion for the music is evident, and makes for a great depiction of one of bluegrass’s most significant and one-of-a-kind personalities.
Albert Ihde, the film’s director (pictured below), spoke with BGS about the film and its legacy to commemorate the 50th Anniversary boxed set of the film, released this summer. The special edition set includes the original film, recently remastered and restored; CDs of performances not featured in the film; bonus footage including exclusive interviews with Ricky Skaggs, Bill Emerson, Missy Raines, and more; and a full-color coffee table book about the film.
BGS: How did the opportunity to film Bluegrass Country Soul present itself 50 years ago?
Albert Ihde: It was almost by accident, in a sense. A couple of buddies of mine and I were preparing a screenplay for a company in Washington, D.C. that had hired me to write a film, and then I would direct. The only thing that they insisted on was that it had to be about a Country & Western singer. Now this is 1971, and back then they called it Country & Western. I said, “Okay. Fine. Let me do some research on that.
A buddy of mine, Bob Leonard, and I were out scouting locations in Berryville, Virginia when we saw posters for Carlton Haney’s 4th of July Festival, and Earl Scruggs was going to be playing. We thought, “Well, that looks interesting.” To make a long story short, I got in touch with John Miller, who was the partner of Carlton’s there at Berryville, and John took us on a tour of the sites because I wanted to see what it looked like. It was right on the Shenandoah. Gorgeous location. He gave us passes to the Fourth of July Festival. We had no idea what bluegrass was, compared to country music, and we thought, “This looks like it’ll be fun. We’ll go to see this.”
Director, Albert Ihde
A bunch of us got a VW wagon, and my wife hooked up a camper on the back of our car. We went out, and we parked and saw it, and I have to tell you, as soon as I heard that music coming from the stage, we were all hooked. We talked to Carlton. Quite a deal! Talked to Fred Bartenstein (a local disc jockey who helped with the annual festival) and they told us more about what they were doing. I wanted to put Carlton in a film right then and there as soon as I met him.
We got back to D.C. and the company that hired me to write this screenplay, it turned out that they couldn’t raise the money to make the movie. So we took the film and decided we would try and find the money ourselves. Fortunately the first guy that I sent it to called us into his office. He was a major D.C. investor, philanthropist, and owned lots of real estate in D.C. He said that the thing that interested him most about the screenplay was this bluegrass festival out in Berryville. He said, “Why don’t you do a film about that?”
My partner and I looked at him and said it’s gonna be hard to raise money for a documentary, and he said, “How much do you need?” We get our calculator out, we start going through it, and we throw a figure out to him. It’s not gonna be as expensive as the film that’s going to have all the actors that would be taking us six to eight weeks to shoot. This, we could shoot in one weekend. He said, “Listen if you get Carlton Haney to agree to allow you to come and shoot the film at his festival, I’ll go out and find the money.” And we said, “Okay.”
The next day, Bob Leonard and I were on a plane to North Carolina and met with Carlton and Fred, pitched the whole idea to him, and Carlton was on board right at the beginning. He said, “Absolutely. No problem.” I said, “Well, are you gonna get all of these musicians to agree to this?” And he said, “Yes, I can do that.”
We had all of twelve days, two weeks, or something like that, to get the whole thing together to get down to Camp Springs on Labor Day weekend. And we lucked out. We happened to have this incredible festival with all of the pioneers of bluegrass, along with all of the up and coming newgrass guys who were changing the music as we watched. It was a great mix of both the old and the new, and as Carlton called it, “the mixture of the short hairs and the long hairs.”
That was it! You’ve got the hippies sitting right next to the guys right off the farm in coveralls. A guy in a Confederate hat sitting right next to hippie girls. It was a great mix. And everybody got along. And it was at a time in America when the country split. Nixon and the protests trying to bring our troops home from Vietnam. It was a strange time. But the thing that happened at the festival… everybody was getting along all right! Also of course, most of the audience were bluegrass musicians of their own or were learning or wanting to be. So that’s how we got into it.
What were some things about Carlton’s personality that made him such a compelling figure to follow for a film?
A number of people have said he was like the “P.T. Barnum of Bluegrass.” So it was kinda like, just put a camera on him and let him go, because you never know what he’s gonna say! Of course, the great thing about filming is, you can always edit it, and we edited out a lot of Carlton.
At one point, it was towards the end of the weekend, we were filming Carlton out on the lot, and I say “Carlton, we need something to kind of summarize the whole thing, and put a tag on the end of the film.” He said, “Oh, that’s okay. I know exactly what to say. Do you want me to make you laugh or do you want me to make you cry?” And I looked at my cameraman, and Bob was ten years older than me, and he had a lot of experience doing this, and I looked at Bob and I said, “What do you think? Make us cry?” And Bob nodded his head “Yeah, make us cry, Carlton.” And Carlton said, “Okay, start the camera rolling.”
So we started the camera rolling, and Carlton is saying goodbye to the kid who is packing up his gear at the end, and then he turns to the camera and he says, “You know, when people leave, it makes me sad, because all my friends are leaving. But I know that they had a good time, and that they’ll be back again next year.” And tears are coming to his eyes! And he says, “And that’s bluegrass and that’s a bluegrass festival.” And I said “Cut!” Bob and I just burst out laughing, and I said “Carlton, you’re going to get an Academy Award for that!”
To this day, Fred tells me, he runs into people and he says they will quote to him the lines that Carlton had in the film. “The shorthairs and the longhairs,” [and,] “You look down upon the stage and you can hear the soul of man — Ralph Stanley.” They just came out of his mouth!
The other thing was, he could not look at the lens, no matter how hard I tried. [Carlton] had this real shyness problem, and yet you put him on the stage and hand him a mic in front of ten thousand people, he was fine. But put a camera in front of him, he was looking away. Kind of shy and withdrawn. I think he was very concerned about his looks. He had terrible teeth. As somebody once said, that’s part of the times back then when nobody had health insurance or dental insurance… that was the last thing that people spent money on. So I think Carlton was a little shy about the way he looked. But he was an interesting guy.
Pictured: Ralph Stanley
You mentioned that one thing that was so compelling about the film, and at bluegrass festivals in general, was seeing people from different walks of life united by this music and finding common ground, even if it was for a weekend. What do you think that message has for us today where we are as divided now as we were fifty years ago?
I hope it has the same result. Every time I have shown the film — and I have shown it to heads of studios in Hollywood, I showed it to corporations up in New York City — no matter where I’ve shown it, people leave the theatre with big smiles on their faces. It’s not necessarily because they’re bluegrass fans, but because they enjoy it. They had fun. They were delighted. Something about that music, about the people playing it, about the commitment that these people have to it. There’s more to it than just country music. I think that’s what Carlton was trying to say about the soul. It’s a commitment to the music that is thorough.
I don’t know whether Carlton told me this or not, but at some point I learned early on: bluegrass music is not commercial country. Meaning, you’re gonna lose your shirts on it, but you’re doing it because you love it. That really says it all, and I think that comes through with music and with Carlton and with all of the people that are on stage in the film and all the people playing out in the field… You see the commitment to the music.
Ellen [Pasternack, the project’s Executive Director and Ihde’s wife] and I have a background in professional theatre, regional theatre around the country, and what you’re always looking for working in theatre are actors who can really commit to doing a performance. It’s that commitment to the art — whether that’s music, theatre, dance, or painting — that’s where you find the joy in the art. And I think that comes through in the film, even if you don’t know anything about bluegrass. I hope that comes through still to this day, and maybe gets people thinking “past the politics” for a moment or two just to look at the music and listen to the music. And to see, “If this was going on back then, why can’t it happen again?”
Photos and trailer courtesy of Bluegrass Country Soul.
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