Tag: IBMA

IBMA’s Big Move

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BY THOMAS GOLDSMITH 
GUEST COLUMNIST

 

Please come to Raleigh in 2013.

That’s the message being sent out by the International Bluegrass Music Association and from my hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina.

After checking out a number of different locations, the IBMA announced this May that its annual World of Bluegrass event would land in Raleigh for the years 2013, 2014 and 2015. It will stay in Nashville again this year and previously was in Owensboro and Louisville, Ky.

But why Raleigh?

There are plenty of good reasons. (I promise I will get to a few drawbacks here in a minute…) One major plus consists of a new downtown convention center, an outdoor amphitheater across the street and a walking-distance complex of three performance halls.

Also, not only Raleigh but also the neighboring towns of Chapel Hill, Durham and Cary have thriving bluegrass, acoustic and old-timey music scenes. That means there will be ready-made audiences for the public parts of the event.

We don’t (yet) have an Allison Krauss or a Del McCoury living here, but the immediate area is home to folks such as picker-dealers Jim Mills and Tony Williamson; bands such as Russell Johnson and Grass Cats and Carolina Road; record company founders such as Barry Poss and Dave Evans; old-timey legends such as Alice Gerrard and the Red Clay Ramblers; and new standard-bearers such as the Steep Canyon Rangers. Thrown in the burgeoning jam-grass field symbolized by Charlotte’s Avett Brothers and you’ve a little world of bluegrass right around home.

Maybe just as significantly, the Triangle (consisting of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill) can also claim a rich history involving the dawning years of bluegrass. It was while appearing on local powerhouse radio station WPTF that brothers Bill and Charlie Monroe built a huge audience in the Carolinas and made their first recordings for Victor. Of course, they also broke up their partnership in Raleigh, but how else was Bill going to start the original Blue Grass Boys?

WPTF was also home to Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs in 1952, when the Foggy Mountain boys took up residence in Raleigh at least long enough for Earl’s son Randy to be born here. Generations of hillbilly music fans kept their radios locked in to 680 AM to hear the Stanley Brothers, Jim Eanes, Mac Wiseman, Clyde Moody, Kitty Wells, Johnny and Jack, Chet Atkins and countless others who did stints at WPTF.

“In terms of the history, I think North Carolina is every bit as much the birthplace of bluegrass as Kentucky,’ mandolinist Williamson told me during an interview for the local paper newspaper, The News & Observer.

Moving into the 1960s, the beginnings of the newgrass movement found an early welcome in the Triangle, with the homegrown New Deal String Band and frequent visitors New Grass Revival building a fan base for their rock-influenced sound and long-haired look among the area’s tens of thousands of college students. Through the decades bluegrass, has kept a strong hold on listeners in North Carolina, from small-scale picking sessions to major festivals such as North Wilkesboro’s Merlefest.

And those drawbacks? Raleigh often shows up on national best-of lists in categories such as business environment, percentage of college graduates, low crime and livability. It’s a great place to raise children in and … local voices tend to trail off before muttering the b-word: ‘Boring.’

At one point, true enough. Until quite recently, a big night in downtown Raleigh might consist of trying to get into one of the few restaurants that stayed open after business people headed home to the suburbs, then maybe locating one of the few clubs that featured live music. And there’s the city’s symbol of a giant acorn in a city park, eh? Not perhaps the most riveting trademark: ‘The City of Oaks, where you can watch trees grow.’
But in the last few years, a new public and private emphasis on downtown has brought thousands of new residents and plenty of good restaurants to the area that includes the convention center and walking distance thereof. There are also a number of of live-music spaces expected to feature live bluegrass during the IBMA event.

It should be noticeably less expensive to be in Raleigh than in Nashville for several days. And attendees will be surrounded by locals who are crazy about music of all kinds. 
While far from a traditional bluegrass show, folk-pop-rocker Natalie Merchant recently had to pop out from backstage after she had performed for about 90 minutes at the Meymandi Concert Hall, one of the top-level venues near the convention site. A packed house had been standing, cheering, pleading for an encore for close to 10 minutes when Merchant came back out and signaled for quiet.

‘We’re coming back!’ she said, ‘It’s just intermission.’
   
For more information about the International Bluegrass Music Association, or to register for this year’s World of Bluegrass conference, visit http://ibma.org/.  For a list of other events to visit while in North Carolina check out www.carolinamusicfests.com

MIXTAPE: Jon Weisberger

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If the name Jon Weisberger doesn’t immediately ring a bell, it soon will…. this Renaissance man of the bluegrass world is a well-respected bassist for Chris Jones and the Night Drivers, music writer for Nashville Scene and The Tennessean, and IBMA Vice Chair, amongst other various roles in the industry (another recent addition to his resume is winner of IBMA’s 2012 Songwriter of the Year Award).  And now he can add his role as the latest addition to The Bluegrass Situation team.  Starting this month, Jon will be dispensing his wealth of wisdom in a monthly editorial column, waxing poetic on any variety of topical subject and music history.

We’re thrilled to have Jon on board, and thought we would introduce him to Sitch readers by having him curate our latest MIXTAPE.  And as if we needed any more convincing, our suspicions were confirmed:  the man’s got damn good taste…

Track:   Roll Muddy River
Artist:  Osborne Brothers

‘My friend Amber Digby, a great honky tonk singer whose dad played with the Osborne Brothers back in the 70s, is working on putting together a tribute to Bobby and Sonny, so I’ve been listening to a lot of their stuff lately.  But honestly, I listen to a lot of their stuff pretty regularly.  Bobby makes the most bad-ass singing look effortless.’

 

Track:  The Game That I Can Win
Artist:  Lonesome River Band

‘One of the things I love about bluegrass is the longevity of careers.  You can go see folks who were making music professionally back before JFK was elected President, and a lot of them are still at the top of their games.  Tim Austin, a founding member and leader of the Lonesome River Band until he quit in the mid-90s, put up a bunch of videos of the early 90s edition of the band—Tim, Sammy Shelor, Ronnie Bowman and Dan Tyminski—a while ago; this is a great reminder of how killer—and how influential—these guys were a couple of decades ago and still are today.’

 

Track:  Pea Soup Reel
Artist:  Don Messer

‘I spent a couple of years playing with a fabulous Ottawa Valley fiddler, stepdancer and singer, April Verch, and came away from it a fan of Canadian fiddle styles—and I was already a fan of the glorious quirkiness of musicians from back in the days before people started making up rules.  Here’s a band with twin fiddles and drums, a piano, a 5-string banjo and a soprano sax, playing a good old fiddle tune made for dancing—and sure enough, the dancing is sensational.   I just found this recently and can’t stop watching.’

 

Track:  On My Mind
Artist:  Harley Allen/Mike Lilly Band

‘Harley Allen, who passed away about a year and a half ago, is pretty well known in the country world as a great songwriter, but a lot of bluegrass folks think that he was an even better singer, and I’m one of them.  Mike Lilly plays some powerful banjo on this—the chordal thumb stuff in his break is amazing—and sings some stout lead on the choruses, but Harley’s vocals make you forget about everything else.  He had a style of ornamentation and phrasing that was simultaneously unexpected and exactly right; it never sounded premeditated, and it never sounded wrong.’

 

Track:  He Ain’t Never Done Me Nothin’ But Good
Artist:  The Isaacs

Track:  More Than A Hammer And Nails
Artist:  The Staples Singers

‘Gospel music is one of the great meeting grounds of southern popular music.  I love that, as different as these two sensational performances are, they have just three chords between them—not to mention a feeling of joy that’s unmistakably real and more than a little contagious.’

 

 

You can check out Jon’s editorial column every month exclusively at The Sitch beginning next week.

ARTIST OF THE MONTH: The Gibson Brothers

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The fact that reigning IBMA “Entertainer of the Year” siblings THE GIBSON BROTHERS hail from the Adirondacks of upstate New York might surprise some, but dedicated bluegrass fans will be quite familiar with this highly-regarded band, fronted by Eric and Leigh Gibson. Since nabbing IBMA’s “Emerging Artist of the Year” honors in 1998, the group has built a reputation through their memorable live performances and impressive recordings.

Eric, the banjo-playing brother, shared his thoughts about his band, the IBMA victory and their new Compass Records release They Called It Music.

What went through your mind when you heard your band’s name announced as “Entertainer of the Year?”

Shock! We didn’t expect it at all. The competition was all friends of ours. We thought another band would win it because of this or that; I never thought about us. Maybe it was our turn – that we were just being rewarded for hanging in there and consistency. I’ve had a lot of people say to me: ‘Eric, you guys deserved it; you’ve earned it.’ I think we’ve made some music to be proud of.

Did winning the award influence how you recorded your new album?

I think we went in to the recording studio with more confidence, but not cockiness or overconfidence. This is about the music; not about hype. I didn’t see bringing in a ton of guest players just because we won an award. I love my band.

I was thinking about it the other day. We made an album with five guys who have probably played together 300 shows together or more. There’s a comfort level there. Making good music is about being comfortable and having musical conversations with the guys you’re making music with. You can put the hottest musicians together and it’s not glued together like a band that has traveled and worked on the road together. I think you develop a sound that way.

The album has a rather wide range of covers (from Loretta Lynn to Pee Wee King to Mark Knopfler). How do you pick a song to record?

Leigh and I talked a lot about this in getting ready for this record. We wanted to vary our tempos and themes – to have each song have a different feel from every other song on the album. We are always on the lookout for a good song. We love Mark Knopfler. That song (“Daddy’s Gone To Knoxville”) has been in the back of our minds for a few years, and we never cut a Delmore Brothers song before. It felt great to play tribute to them, plus it’s a great gospel song (“Home On A River”). We thought our harmonies sounded as tight as they ever have on that song.

How do you work out singing harmonies with your brother Leigh?

Leigh and I have been singing together since our teens, so maybe it comes easier than somebody who hasn’t been doing it that long, but we still work at it. All those vocals were done live on one mic facing each other. It sounds like we do live on a good night. We’ve been doing that on the last several records. It works a lot better for us than having one guy going in and singing his lead and then the other guy going in and trying to harmonize with that.

There aren’t a lot of brother duets in the business right now. It’s kind of our calling card. I think that is the biggest factor in us choosing material. We thought about doing a brothers’ tribute record, which is something we will do at some point, but we got writing a bunch of songs and the ones we ended up using were ones that lent themselves to harmony.

How do you write the songs with your brother?

It all depends. My brother loves to swoop in on a song that is 90% done and make a suggestion that I can’t ignore. My natural inclination is that it is good the way it is and then I think “dang it, he’s right.’

This time around I had more stuff; Leigh didn’t contribute as many original songs as he normally does. Maybe next time he’ll have more stuff ready. I am proud of the originals on this record. I think it is some of the strongest writing we’ve done.

Are there ones that you are particularly proud of?

I really like the title track. That one kind of wrote itself. I was given the idea by Joe Newberry; he’s written a lot of songs for us for the last few albums. He told me a story about asking an old man who played the banjo what they called his music when you were a young man. Did they call it country or bluegrass or old time folk? ‘Son, they called it music.’ We just had a good laugh about that. Then it occurred to me weeks later that it’s a song and I have to write that. I called Joe up and said ‘Joe, we wrote a song.’ I would never have written that song if it wasn’t for him.

I also thought about how important music has always been to people – the music that was never recorded and the music that was made not to make a buck. I remember my grandfather singing me a song that he had learned in the lumber camps and thinking ‘how cool is that?’

The one we wrote with Shawn Camp (“Something Comin’ To Me”) is another favorite. We wrote that less than a month after our dad died. Shawn is one of our heroes and we’d been wanting to write with him forever, and we finally got the chance but nothing was happening.  It wasn’t him; it was us. We just had this cloud over us but we didn’t realize it. He was very nice and said ‘boys, some days I just don’t have it’.”

He got up and left the room, and we looked at each other like we blew our chance to write with Shawn. He came back in and I was noddling around on the guitar. He asked, ‘What do you have there?’ and I said, ‘Nothing, it’s just something coming to me’.” And we wrote a song called, ‘Something Comin’ to Me’.” What a master that guy is. We can’t help but improve as writers being around guys like him.

How do you view the current state of the bluegrass scene?

I think bluegrass could benefit from the popularity that having the most popular band in the land (Mumford & Sons) has a banjo. We shouldn’t be close-minded if young people come to acoustic music through that way. I hope I’m not shooting myself in the foot and making anyone mad here. I’m just saying I think we have to mix it up. We want the young folks hopefully to come to bluegrass, to come to Bill Monroe. And you’re hearing this from a guy whose favorite bluegrass is hardcore bluegrass. I still love the old stuff the best. If I want to listen to bluegrass, I crank Jimmy Martin, but I think we have to be more inclusive as a genre for this to grow.

What should fans expect from the Gibson Brothers this year on tour?

We’ll definitely lean on this album pretty hard. We made a record that is really fun to play, but we will also be mixing favorites and, of course, we always try to honor as many requests as possible.

We don’t even know what we are going to play ‘til we are heading on the stage. We’ve always prided ourselves on doing a different show every night. One woman last year went to 17 shows and I want her to see 17 different shows. We play songs on stage that we never record. I want to keep it fresh for us and the audience. We’ve always tried to make it about the music. We have never been the best people in the world about marketing us. I’m proud of my band and what we have done.