Tag: Doug Dillard

Bluegrass Memoirs: The Earl Scruggs Celebration (Part 3)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

(Editor’s note: Read part one of Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass Memoir on the Earl Scruggs Celebration of 1987 here. Read part two here.)

Boiling Springs, NC on Saturday, September 26, 1987: My workshop in the Gardner-Webb College Library with Snuffy Jenkins, Pappy Sherrill and the Hired Hands ended at 4:30 that afternoon when Dan X. Padgett presented Snuffy with a hat. From my diary:

Afterward I hung around and listened for a while to the Hired Hands’ young banjo picker Randy Lucas play the Bach “Bourrée,” “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and another classical piece expertly on the banjo.

Here’s a nice example, from Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor, of Randy’s recent work in this milieu:

Then, supper time came.

I went for some barbecue (big regional difference thing — this barbecue was red, vinegary; with shredded pork) with Tom [Hanchett] and Carol [Sawyer] and then was kind of enticed away by Dan X Padgett…

I’d met Padgett the afternoon prior, when I first arrived in Boiling Springs; a respected local banjo elder, he was the teacher of the young banjo player in Horace Scruggs’ band whom I’d met earlier today. Padgett had a long and interesting career, with deep connections to Earl Scruggs and Snuffy Jenkins, as well as memories of an earlier generation of banjo greats. He was interviewed for the Earl Scruggs Center by Craig Havighurst in 2010. 

I went with him…

…to his car (an old Cadillac) to look at various memorabilia like photos of him with various important country and bluegrass people. He also showed me a very worn copy of the very first F&S songbook and when I expressed a strong interest in copying it he loaned it to me. I also talked with him about the possibility of obtaining a banjo like one he played during the afternoon, a miniature Mastertone about the size of a mandolin with an actual tone ring, flange, and resonator. He said he’d see about it and we ended up standing at his trunk trying out various instruments. 

I was picking away on “St. Anne’s Reel” when I noticed there were some people standing around me, and when I finished and looked around there was Doug Dillard looking at me with that big smile. Quite an introduction!

In an edition of the Shelby Star a week or so earlier, Joe DePriest wrote of Dillard’s association with Earl Scruggs, telling how in 1953 the Salem, Missouri teen first heard “Earl’s Breakdown” on the car radio. It hit him so hard “he ran off the road into a ditch.” Dillard got his folks to take him to Scruggs’s Nashville home. “We knocked on the door, and he came, and we asked him to put some Scruggs tuners on my banjo. He invited us in.”

A newspaper clipping from a 1987 edition of the ‘Shelby Star’ of an article by Joe DePriest on Doug Dillard

Earl welcomed banjo pickers to his home, especially if they wanted Scruggs Pegs. In the “Suggestions for Banjo Beginners” on the first page of Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook from 1958, Earl invited those interested to contact him in Nashville, and many did:

The first page of the 1958 ‘Flatt & Scruggs Picture Album — Hymn and Songbook’

In 1962 Doug and his brother Rodney went with their band The Dillards to LA, where they were “discovered” at the Hollywood folk club The Ash Grove. With best-selling Elektra LPs, they toured extensively in the West and appeared on CBS’s The Andy Griffith Show as “the Darling Family.” 

In 1966 Doug left The Dillards and ventured into what would soon be called “country-rock,” touring with the Byrds and forming a band with former Byrd, Gene Clark. Dillard’s banjo playing had been strongly shaped by his close listening to Scruggs. In the ’60s when players like Bill Keith and Eric Weissberg were pushing banjo boundaries in bluegrass, Doug was pushing boundaries in a different way by finding a place for Scruggs-style banjo in rock. He fitted solid, straight-ahead rolls into pieces like Gene Clark’s “The Radio Song”: 

Dillard was heard often on popular Hollywood studio recordings and movie soundtracks during the ’70s. He even had on-screen roles in Robin Williams’ Popeye and Bette Midler’s The Rose.

DePriest’s article quoted Dillard: “During all this time, ‘I never said goodbye to bluegrass.'” He moved to Nashville in 1983 and started a band. 

The bluegrass music business was booming in Nashville. A bunch of young pickers were there, touring in bands and doing studio sessions. New Grass Revival featured newcomers Bela Fleck and Pat Flynn; John Hartford, Mark O’Connor, Jerry Douglas — all were in town. The Nashville Bluegrass Band started in 1984; that year Ricky Skaggs won a Grammy for his version of Monroe’s “Wheel Hoss.” Up in the Gulch district, between the Opry and Vanderbilt, the Station Inn was serving bluegrass seven nights a week.

I was introduced to the Doug Dillard Band this afternoon right there where Dan X Padgett and I had been jamming. His four-piece outfit drew from a pool of talented bluegrass musicians. 

Rhythm guitarist, vocalist and emcee Ginger Boatwright was a seasoned veteran. During the ’70s she’d toured and recorded with Red White and Blue(grass), and later formed The Bushwackers, an all-female group that began as the house band at Nashville’s Old Time Picking Parlor. Her story is told well in Murphy Hicks Henry’s book Pretty Good for a Girl: Women in Bluegrass. Henry calls her “The first ‘modern’ woman in bluegrass” alluding to her folk revival roots, her styles of humor and dress, and, most importantly, “a softer, smoother, more lyrical quality” of singing.

Having a second guitar as a regular lead instrument in a four-piece band was uncommon at this time. When I met Doug’s young lead guitarist I was surprised to discover he was the son of Lamar Grier, whom I’d hung out with twenty years earlier when he was a Blue Grass Boy. David Grier was 26. He’d studied the lead guitar work of Clarence White (there’s a photo of him with White in Bluegrass Odyssey), Tony Rice, and Doc Watson. He was already an experienced pro.

Playing the electric bass, which was unusual for the time, was Roger Rasnake, a singer-songwriter from Bristol on the Tennessee-Virginia border.

In 1986 Flying Fish released this band’s first album, What’s That? (FF 377). Here’s the title cut. The band is augmented to six pieces by Vassar Clements on violin and Bobby Clark on mandolin; both played on the album. What we see and hear first is Ginger’s dynamic emcee work. Doug’s composition shows a banjo picker who knew fiddle music — a melodic “A” section followed by a punching Scruggs-style “B” part. 

Rasnake made a point of telling me Roland White had sent his regards. 

Roland was an old California friend, whom I’d met in 1964 and gotten to know when he was playing with Monroe. He’d just joined the Nashville Bluegrass Band. It was a pleasant surprise to hear from him.

Roger wanted to buy a copy of my book, so I took him up to the library and he bought one which I autographed. I signed several others during the day, including several that people brought with them.

I rested a bit before heading over to Gardner-Webb’s Lutz-Yelton Convocation Center. 

That evening was the Doug Dillard concert in the gym. It was good, with Ginger Boatwright doing the MC work, Lamar Grier’s son David picking some nice lead guitar, and good singing by Roger, Doug, and Ginger. 

Rasnake did one of his own songs from their album, “Endless Highway.” 

It’s familiar today because Alison Krauss covered it in her 1990 album, I’ve Got That Old Feeling.

There was a grand finale at the end with picking by Horace and the boys, and also fiddler Pee Wee Davis, whom I heard briefly in the back room for a while. I bought a souvenir photo of the Dillards with Andy Griffith. Home and in bed by 11.

On Sunday morning:

Up and away by 7:30, carried my bags to Tom and Carol’s dorm. We hit the road and drove to Shelby where we went, on Joe’s advice, to the Pancake House, a local place on the strip which was sure to have livermush. We went in and sat at a table and when the menu came I eagerly perused it. Sure enough, at the top of the list on the right-hand side was “Livermush and Eggs.” And, in case I’d missed it, about halfway down the same list was “Eggs and Livermush.” So I ordered that and actually ate some. Very peppery, other than that not much taste and what there was didn’t really excite me. I mixed it with eggs, like one does with grits. Maybe it’ll help my banjo-picking, who knows.

In Chapel Hill I stayed the night with Tom and Carol and had a bit of time to visit friends and relations and buy a box of instant grits at a supermarket. Next day I was back home in Newfoundland, writing up my diary.

The weekend at the Earl Scruggs Celebration brought me face to face with a music culture in which bluegrass nestled. Seeing, hearing and talking with Snuffy, Pappy, Horace, and Dan put me in touch with generations older than mine, what Bartenstein has called “The Pioneers” and “The Builders” of this music. I feel fortunate to have seen, met and heard them all. Just as important for me was hearing new younger performers like Ginger Boatwright, David Grier, and Randy Lucas.

This was my first opportunity see my folk guitar hero, Etta Baker. It came near the start of her late-in-life performance career. In 1989 the North Carolina Arts Council gave her the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award; in 1991 she won an NEA National Heritage Fellowship. Wayne Martin produced her first CD, for Rounder, in 1991. Later she collaborated with Taj Mahal. Meanwhile Music Maker Relief Foundation, an organization “fighting to preserve American musical traditions,” gave her the support she needed to pursue her career as a musician up to her passing at the age of 93.

It was also my first time to see Doug Dillard. If Snuffy and Pappy personified the era when bluegrass emerged from old-time, Dillard’s new band blended the contemporary sounds of an era when classic, progressive, and newgrass elements were shaping and blending the sounds heard as bluegrass thrived in a festival-dominated scene. 

Instead of an alpha male lead singer/emcee/rhythm guitarist, he had an alpha female. Replacing the mandolin or fiddle one expected in a band with a banjo was an acoustic lead guitar. Instead of an old “doghouse” upright the bass player had an electric. The lead vocals were shared between male and female. Repertoire ranged from bluegrass classics through old pop and rock favorites to band member compositions. The group was touring widely. State of the art bluegrass, 1987.

So how did all this fit together for me? I recalled the start of my visit when Joe DePriest took Tom, Carol, and me to visit the Shelby graveyard. 

He showed us three graves: first that of Thomas Dixon, the local writer whose The Clansmen was turned by D.W. Griffith into The Birth of a Nation. Not far away was the grave of W.J. Cash, author of the immensely influential The Mind of the South. Joe and Tom pondered how the two men would have felt about being buried so close to each other; the image that sticks with me is one of Cash glaring at Dixon.

Joe gave us copies of the Greater Shelby Chamber of Commerce’s glossy full-color brochure, Shelby…it’s home. In it Thomas Dixon is identified as the author “whose novel Birth of a Nation became the first million-dollar movie” thus avoiding the fact that book and movie inspired the racist revival of the KKK. It describes Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist W.J. Cash simply as “author,” not mentioning his progressive stances in print against the Klan and Nazism.

Tom wondered, what if the paths of Cash (who lived in Boiling Springs) and the young Scruggs had crossed at the time? He told us:

Cash … thought that the South had no “Culture” to speak of — what would he have had to say about Scruggs’s contribution?

Joe took us to a third gravesite, that of a local Confederate colonel killed in a Civil War battle; after detailing that part of his life its headstone:

… describes him as a lover of the arts who twice rode by horseback all the way to a far-off northern city (Baltimore? New York?) in order to hear Jenny Lind sing. This tells you where Cash’s mind was when he spoke of Culture.

The Shelby brochure ended its historical section saying “Cleveland County has also produced two North Carolina governors and an ambassador, but our most famous son is country singer Earl Scruggs.”

So much for official culture in 1987! 

Gardner-Webb’s decision to honor Earl Scruggs reflected a shifting intellectual landscape. A local musician of humble origins — a mill worker — had taken on new meaning and significance because of his national and international recognition and popular culture success. He deserved honor and celebration in his home. I was glad to help.

I don’t know if there were any further Earl Scruggs Celebrations at Gardner-Webb, but today there’s an Earl Scruggs Center in Shelby, which is planning to hold its inaugural Earl Scruggs Music Festival in September 2022. 

(Editor’s note: Read part one of Neil V. Rosenberg’s Bluegrass Memoir on the Earl Scruggs Celebration of 1987 here. Read part two here.)

Neil V. 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: Terri Thomson Rosenberg

The Station Inn Earns an Exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

Posted on by Editor

The humble appearance of the Station Inn could never give away the enormity of its legacy and importance to bluegrass music. Nestled between skyscrapers in an ever-growing city, a single story cinder-block building with its windows painted shut sticks out as a relic from the past — when the Urban Outfitters across the street used to be an empty field of waist-high grass.

For nearly 50 years “the World Famous” Station Inn has played a pivotal role in bluegrass as both a venue and community hub, drawing people to Nashville and making connections that had a major impact on the music. Through the rest of 2021, The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will honor and present the history and legacy of the venue in their exhibit The Station Inn: Bluegrass Beacon.

“The main reason that we wanted to do this exhibit is because the Station is such a vital and important part of not just Nashville music history, but of American music history,” says Peter Cooper, one of the curators of the new exhibit. The Station Inn has a larger-than-life reputation in the bluegrass community, but this new exhibit endeavors to highlight both the importance of the venue’s history and its welcoming atmosphere.

During the mid-1980s, adventurous singer-songwriter and musician Peter Rowan assembled all-star groups he dubbed “Crucial Country” for a series of shows that created a buzz amongst progressive roots music fans and players. In this photo, Rowan (right) is joined by Mark O’Connor on guitar and Sam Bush on mandolin. Photo: Charmaine Latham

It was founded in 1974 by a group of bluegrass musicians and singers — Bob and Ingrid Fowler, Marty and Charmaine Lanham, Jim Bornstein, and Red and Bird Lee Smith — who wanted to provide their fellow musicians and fans with a venue where they could play and hear bluegrass music. At that time the Station was more of a clubhouse where the owners functioned as the house band and guests would come up to jam. They moved to the current location in 1978; three years later, the club was bought by J.T. Gray, who at the time was driving Jimmy Martin’s tour bus.

Gray, who would go on to be inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame in 2020 and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance, began booking national touring acts to perform. It would be easy and accurate to show why the Inn is significant by pointing to the artists who have played there, including Bill Monroe, the Stanley Brothers, Vince Gill, Alison Krauss, and essentially any other important name in bluegrass. But the clubhouse atmosphere always remained. Countless (as in absolutely too many to count) threads of bluegrass history, both well-known and overlooked, can all be traced back to chance meetings at the Station Inn. J.T. Gray fostered a welcoming atmosphere that led to many locals and visitors from out of town to meet there, including mandolinist Mike Compton.

The venue’s sound-mixing console described by Gray as “the first piece of modern sound equipment we ever bought”

“I rode up [to Nashville] with Raymond Huffmaster, a bluegrass guy from Meridian, Mississippi, where I’m from, because I’d been hanging around him trying to learn how to play,” Compton says. They visited the bluegrass spots in town including the Station Inn, and Compton recalls after heading home, “Pat Enright got in touch with me and said they were starting a band and asked if I wanted to join. So I moved [to Nashville] in 1977 and moved in with J.T. Gray.”

Mike and Pat would continue playing together and later go on to form the legendary Nashville Bluegrass Band, which became a staple act at the Station Inn. A predecessor to that award-winning band was performing at the Station the first time future bluegrass star, Kathy Chiavola, came to town in 1979.

“When that door opened, the room was packed and I saw a vision of heaven,” she says, recalling that first night. “I heard these two voices, Alan [O’Bryant] and Pat [Enright], in their prime. And I lost it. I said, ‘OK. I’m moving here.’ There was a notice on the Station Inn bulletin board that a band of women playing bluegrass were looking for a roommate.” That band turned out to be the Bushwhackers, which featured bluegrass pioneers Susie Monick and Ginger Boatwright. Chiavola eventually joined the Bushwhackers playing bass and singing lead and harmony until Doug Dillard moved to Nashville. As the banjo player from the Dillards (who were famous for playing the Darlings on The Andy Griffith Show), Dillard put a band together and asked Ginger Boatwright to join, and about a year later asked Chiavola, too. Both the Bushwhackers and the Doug Dillard Band would frequently perform at the Station.

Vocalist, bones player, and madcap entertainer Ed Dye (far right) was a colorful presence at the Station Inn during the 1980s and early 90s. He assembled the Nashville Jug Band with a cast of stellar Nashville musicians from rock, jazz, and bluegrass backgrounds, and hosted wildly unpredictable shows. In this photo, he takes the stage with (from left): Sam Bush, Mark Schatz, Tim O’Brien, Alan O’Bryant, David Grier, and Jerry Douglas. Photo: Charmaine Lanham

Chiavola eventually moved into a duplex next to bluegrass bassist Mark Schatz. Together, they would often play the Station Inn with Charlie Cushman, Stuart Duncan, and Bobby Clark as part of a band called The Satellites. Other times, Chiavola would perform at the Inn with an ensemble called the Lucky Dogs which featured Jerry Douglas, Béla Fleck, Edgar Meyer (who had just moved to town), and sometimes Sam Bush or Mark O’Connor.

“It was beyond belief,” she says. “Sometimes I remember being on stage at the Station and listening to those guys play. I thought it was the most heavenly sound — I can’t even describe it to you. It was perfect music with so much feeling. You could hear a pin drop. It was so beautiful.”

Schatz, on the other hand, often performed at the Station with Mike Compton as part of John Hartford’s band. Hartford had moved back to Nashville to form a string band after a successful songwriting career in L.A. That California connection later landed him the contract to help with the music for the Coen Brothers’ massively successful O Brother, Where Art Thou? Compton’s 1927 Gibson A-Jr. model mandolin, which he played with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, in John Hartford’s string band, and on the O Brother soundtrack, is included in the new exhibit.

A cigar box used for many years to collect admission fees at the club entrance

Also on display is a small wooden box that was used to collect admission for years, along with some history about former Station Inn employee and local folk icon, Ann Soyars. “Ann embodied what the Station is about,” Cooper says. Soyars worked the door and was “small but fierce.” She was known to throw out rowdy college football players for being too loud, but also welcome regulars and newcomers alike. “Ann’s inclusion in the exhibit is indicative of what we’re trying to do, which is to help people understand not just the facts of the matter, but the spirit of the matter. The Station Inn is an example of musical community building in the most positive way. It’s like Cheers for ‘grassers.”

In addition, the exhibit features other artifacts from both the building and the musicians who have performed there including a fiddle played extensively by Tammy Rogers with the SteelDrivers, Mike Bub’s Kay M-1 double bass, which he played with many groups at The Station Inn — including Weary Hearts (Chris Jones, Butch Baldassari, Ron Block), the Del McCoury Band, and the Sidemen (Terry Eldridge, Jimmy Campbell, Ronnie McCoury, Gene Wooten, Ed Dye, Kristin Scott Benson, and Larry Perkins). Seats from a tour bus used by Lester Flatt, which serve as seating in the venue, are on view as well.

The Station Inn’s cash register

Generations of performers’ children have grown up in the Station’s green room and backstage and have gone on to perform on stage as adults. Newspaper has been put down on the bar to admire someone’s new puppies. Great care has been taken to lovingly craft the perfectly reheated pizza. Beers are shared by locals and honored guests after the doors are closed to the public. (And I have hidden fancy decaf coffee and a pour-over in the back that I take out when I visit.) To this day the Station Inn is a community gathering place where friendships, bands, and lifelong loves of bluegrass are formed. It embodies not only the authenticity of the music but of the community. And often, everyone knows your name.

Editor’s Notes: The Station Inn has endeavored to safely present live music throughout the pandemic. They have reopened to live audiences at a limited capacity and live stream performances through their web portal stationinntv.com.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum will present The Station Inn: Bluegrass Beacon until January 2, 2022. The museum is currently open to the public at a limited capacity.

Photo of Station Inn and artifacts: Emma Delevante for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Other photos: Charmaine Lanham

Frank Solivan Finds Room for All Kinds of Bluegrass

Posted on by Editor

Frank Solivan has steadily built a foundation in bluegrass, from going to festivals as a kid, touring in acoustic bands while living in Alaska, and playing fiddle in the US Navy Band’s bluegrass ensemble. For nearly 10 years he’s fronted Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen, an IBMA award-winning group that embraces its eclectic influences. A few days before releasing the new album, If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Solivan traced his journey with the Bluegrass Situation.

BGS: Let’s start with “Crave.” I feel like it captures everything that you’re about – the melody, the picking, and the big singing voice. Did you think it sets the tone for this new album?

Solivan: Yeah, a little bit. Right from the beginning, I had an idea for long, sustaining notes, and this chordal thing, and the words started coming together. Becky Buller and I started writing that song… gosh, it’s been a while now. We took some artistic arrangement liberties in the studio and came up with what’s there. I almost feel like I painted myself in a corner because it is a tough song to sing, and it takes a lot of vocal energy, that’s for sure.

You do build up to a big note. While you’re singing that song, do you think, “Oh no, here it comes…”

You know, if I’m in good voice, I’m not terribly worried about it. There’s a lot of arrangement stuff that goes on in there too, keeping it together. Singing well while you’re playing an arrangement like that – I’m really the only person I have to worry about. Everybody else is great. It’s fun, though, and it’s a challenge.

I was having some trouble with my hands over the last decade or so, my left hand especially, and it was getting progressively worse up until we were recording this record. I never considered myself a great singer or whatever, but I really wanted to focus on the singing on this record, because I thought maybe I won’t be able to play as well as I want to later.

Then I had carpal tunnel release surgery on my hand and it turned out great. I went to a top-class surgeon and my hand is fine now. But, you know, as a musician you worry about that, thinking maybe I should just focus on singing well on this record and keep my playing within my limitations, and not reach out too far. I was able to focus and find a singing voice. I’m constantly trying to become a better singer and I think maybe this record helped with that a little bit, too.

On your albums, you often go for honest, confessional lyrics, and I don’t hear that a lot in bluegrass. Do you think you have that more “sensitive songwriter” side to your music?

Oh, I’m just a big teddy bear. [Laughs] My songwriting comes from inspiration in life, for sure. But I didn’t write every song on this record. I wrote “Crave” with Becky, then there’s a song that closes the record called “Be Sure” that was based on an experience of mine, and some other experiences of others around me at the time, when I was 19 or 20 years old. And it’s finally seeing the light of day and got recorded.

But the formula is having songs that I can relate to – either songs that I’ve written or written with somebody, or from a family member or a band member. My cousin Megan McCormick wrote two songs on there – “My Own Way” and “Shiver.” Our banjo player Mike Munford composed the banjo tune on there. Also, friends write songs, like Sarah Siskind. She wrote the song “Set in Stone” with Ari Hest. That’s the formula for us — keeping it kind of close.

How did you wind up living in Washington DC?

Back when I was 18, I graduated from high school and moved from Central Valley, California, to Alaska. I drove my pickup truck up there. I was with my mom, and also I was invited to play music up there with Ginger Boatwright. She was doing a tour that first summer with Doug Dillard – she was the singer and guitar player for the Doug Dillard Band. I thought, “OK, I’m going to hang out and play it by ear.” We had a little bit of family up there, so we stayed with them. My mom got a job and then I went off and moved all around Alaska.

Long story short is, I loved it and stayed. I worked all kinds of jobs, from explosives, to a perforating service, to driving trucks and delivery vehicles, to driving a school bus and being a substitute school teacher, to construction… whatever I could do that would allow me to go hunting and fishing and play music. I played with a lot of bands and went to the University of Alaska in Anchorage and studied violin performance. And then heard of an audition for the US Navy Band in Washington DC, for the country band and bluegrass band, and when they had an opening, they offered me the job.

The next thing you know I’m going to boot camp, doing about a million push-ups. Anyway, Leah — who is my wife now but was my girlfriend at the time — and I moved to the DC area in 2003 and I reported for duty. We got locked in here and I did six years with the Navy Band. I decided at the five-year mark that I needed to get out and I gave them my notice. I needed to get out and make music. It was a good job and I was proud to serve, but for me, I needed to be an artist. I needed to make music, not just play music.

Growing up, who were some of the people who encouraged you?

Well, we’d have these huge family gatherings and we’d end up doing big meals, and the next thing you know, everybody’s pulling out instruments and everybody’s encouraging other. I had a cousin Ty that passed away last year — Charles Tyson Smith – and I’ve recorded a number of songs that either he’s written or that we wrote together. He was somebody I looked up to in my family as a musician, writer, and singer.

And of course my parents would take me to concerts and music festivals. I remember when I was pretty young, going to see Ray Charles, Tower of Power, Stevie Wonder, The Judds, Merle Haggard, whoever it might be. I had all these opportunities to see these greats and we’d go to music festivals as well – bluegrass festivals and old-time fiddle contests and jam sessions. That’s what I grew up doing. Now of course I realize what a gift it was.

When I was in high school, I heard about this band who was looking for a fiddle player. My mom took me to the audition and I got the job. She took me to a number of these gigs and helped me buy the gear I needed for it. I played with a number of bands in high school, but they weren’t high school bands. They were regional bands that would open up for big names and big concerts, and play big clubs and dancehalls. Luckily I carried myself a little older than I was, which was great, because if they knew I was 16, 17, or 18 years old, I probably wouldn’t have been allowed to go into these places!

Being exposed to so many different kinds of music, do you think that shaped the way you hear songs or seek out songs?

Yeah, I think it’s a more open-minded approach for sure. People are always trying to categorize — “So, what kind of music do you play?” A graphic artist friend of mine and I came up with a shirt design, and we sold out of ‘em pretty quick, but it was basically an umbrella, and on the umbrella, it said, “ALLGRASS, Frank Solivan & Dirty Kitchen.” Then underneath it, like raining coming down inside the umbrella, it had words like Appalachian, mashgrass, newgrass, bluegrass, country, acoustic, and all these different titles people think you need to categorize somebody. But the idea was, we try to pull from all of those things and beyond. But also to say, all of those styles are, shall we say, bluegrass.

I think people are really scared these days about losing traditional bluegrass music. But it’s kind of like everything – if it’s really good, which it is, and authentic and organic and beautiful and done well, then it’s not going anywhere. It will stand the test of time. And the beauty about all those traditional bluegrass people like Bill Monroe, or moving on into the Osborne Brothers and Jim & Jesse, all those guys were innovating. They were trying to get it to a larger audience, and to me, that’s the tradition of bluegrass – to constantly have it evolve for people right now.

Photo credit: Courtney Jarrell Middleton