In early November, the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, Arizona unveiled a brand new exhibition, Acoustic America, which celebrates iconic instruments of many heroes of folk, blues, bluegrass, and more. The exhibit is presented in partnership with our Dawg in December Artist of the Month, David Grisman and his record label Acoustic Disc, and showcases a remarkable collection of instruments that the museum states, “Have redefined music not only in the United States, but around the world.” This includes more than thirty instruments on loan from the Dawg himself.
“MIM is honored for this opportunity to collaborate with David Grisman and feature so many prized instruments from his collection,” says MIM senior curator Rich Walter, via email. “And after many years of loving his music, it has been a joy on a personal level for me, too. His influence as a mandolinist, composer, and bandleader is huge, and he absolutely changed the course of acoustic music as we know it today.”
The Acoustic America Gallery at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, AZ.
Guests of the museum will be able to view storied and legendary instruments formerly owned and played by such luminaries as Earl Scruggs, Elizabeth Cotten, Mississippi John Hurt, John Hartford, Lloyd Loar, and many more. “Beyond the legacies of the individual artists and the beauty of these historic instruments,” Walter continues, “Seeing this collection together in one space is really striking because it reflects a broader American narrative. Exceptional individuals from diverse backgrounds crossed paths and connected their talents in ways that gave us distinctive new traditions that continue to inspire people around the world.”
To celebrate the new exhibition and Dawg in December, we’ve partnered with MIM to bring you these photos of select instruments from Acoustic America. Make plans to visit the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona now! Tickets are available at MIM.org.
(Editor’s Note: Instrument information provided from the Acoustic America catalog.)
1910 Gibson F-4 Mandolin: Owned and played by David Grisman. Loan courtesy of David Grisman.
The F-4 model was Gibson’s premier mandolin until late 1922, when the F-5 was introduced. In addition to the characteristic oval sound hole and carved scroll, this early example features a three-point body style (note the points protruding from the body), elaborate torch and wire peghead inlay pattern, and special Handel tuning buttons with colorful inlays. David Grisman featured this mandolin on the cover of his first solo album, The David Grisman Rounder Album, and has recorded with it on other projects, including Tone Poems with Tony Rice and Not for Kids Only with Jerry Garcia.
1954 Gibson F-5 Mandolin: Owned and played by Ralph Rinzler. Loan courtesy of David Grisman.
Manager, talented musician, and legendary folklorist Ralph Rinzler (1934–1994) was one of David Grisman’s earliest and most influential mentors. Sharing a hometown of Passaic, New Jersey, Rinzler introduced Grisman to important recordings of folk music and inspired him to play the mandolin. Rinzler played this F-5 mandolin with the Greenbriar Boys, who were the first non-Southern bluegrass band to win at the Union Grove Old Time Fiddler’s Convention in North Carolina. He also managed the careers of Doc Watson and Bill Monroe and was instrumental in creating the first dedicated bluegrass festival in Fincastle, Virginia, in 1965. Two years later, Rinzler founded the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to celebrate and support living cultural heritage from around the world.
1947 Martin 2-15 Mandolin: Owned and played by Ira Louvin. MIM Collection.
Few brother duet acts in country music were as influential as the Louvin Brothers. Ira and Charlie Louvin were born in Alabama in the 1920s, and their high harmony singing and Ira’s tasteful mandolin playing helped them define a sound popularized through radio broadcasts, commercial recordings, and appearances on the Grand Ole Opry – where they debuted in 1955. Ira customized this one-of-a-kind mandolin in the flashy style of professional country artists and played it extensively, including on the Grand Ole Opry stage. This special piece of mandolin history was also owned by David Grisman for many years.
This mandolin — serial number 75315; label dated February 18, 1924 — was the personal instrument of famed Gibson acoustic engineer Lloyd Loar. Loar was impressively inventive and patented designs for keyboard actions and electric instruments, among many others, but the F-5 Master Model mandolin is arguably his most iconic and enduring success. The interior of this mandolin is fitted with an original Virzi Tone Producer. F-5 mandolins with Loar’s signature on the label are the most valuable and sought-after in the world, and Loar F-5s from the batch signed on this date are known to be among the best-sounding. Perhaps it is not surprising that Loar kept this remarkable mandolin for himself!
1928 Martin 00-40H Guitar: Played by the New Lost City Ramblers. Loan courtesy of Darrell Scott.
This guitar was played extensively by the New Lost City Ramblers, who were pivotal to the national revival of Southern folk music in the 1950s and 1960s. Founding members John Cohen, Tom Paley, and Mike Seeger were dedicated to authentically reproducing folk traditions for new audiences. The group recorded several albums for Smithsonian Folkways and helped discover, document, and showcase talented artists such as Elizabeth Cotten, Dock Boggs, and Snuffy Jenkins. Prewar pearl-trimmed Martin guitars are among the most desirable acoustic instruments in the world.
1929 Dobro Model 125 Resophonic Guitar: Owned and played by LeRoy Mack. Loan courtesy of LeRoy McNees.
In 1961, the Kentucky Colonels, led by brothers Clarence and Roland White, performed on The Andy Griffith Show, under the alias “the Country Boys.” The Kentucky Colonels were one of the most exciting and influential bluegrass bands of their era, and their national television appearance would have been much of the United States’ first memorable exposure to bluegrass. Dobro player LeRoy McNees (AKA LeRoy Mack) played this Model 125 resophonic guitar during the show and for many years afterward. After the guitar was damaged at an airport, McNees restored and outfitted it with gold-plated metal hardware.
1975 Stelling Staghorn Banjo: Owned and played by Alison Brown. Loan courtesy of Alison Brown.
A young Alison Brown spent her entire savings on this then-new banjo built by Geoff Stelling, hoping to emulate the crisp, solid tone of Alan Munde, an influential older banjoist who played a similar Staghorn model. Brown played this banjo on her first album, 1981’s Pre-Sequel, and she later played it with Alison Krauss’s successful band Union Station. One of the most gifted banjoists in the world, Brown was the first woman voted Banjo Player of the Year by the International Bluegrass Music Association (in 1991). She has also won multiple Grammy awards, founded her own record label, Compass Records, and was inducted into the Banjo Hall of Fame in 2019.
1913 Knutsen harp guitar: Owned and played by Michael Hedges. Loan courtesy of Taproot, LLC.
Guitarist and composer Michael Hedges (1953–1997) used a range of innovative and unconventional playing techniques — such as alternate tunings and percussive tapping on the strings and soundboard — to expand the possibilities of what a solo artist could do. In rediscovering the sound of vintage harp guitars with dedicated sub-bass strings, Hedges reimagined the guitar as a full-spectrum compositional tool. His 1984 album Aerial Boundaries illustrated his astonishing talent and helped define the contemporary new age acoustic music of Windham Hill Records. Hedges nicknamed this favored harp guitar “Darth Vader,” and his use of harp guitars revived interest in these long-obscure instruments.
All photos courtesy of the Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix, Arizona.
Earlier this year, David “Dawg” Grisman was inducted into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame at IBMA’s annual awards show in Raleigh, North Carolina. Grisman was unable to attend, but gave remarks via a pre-recorded video; his acceptance speech was striking. Dawg poured forth unmetered gratitude, listing so many artists, bands, peers, and forebears who gave him a shot, hired him, got him started, stuck with him, and contributed to his success.
It was a laundry list of names, some enormous in his creative life – Jerry Garcia, Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, Mike Seeger, Roland and Clarence White, Ralph Rinzler – and others with much more granular and specific impacts. Though his speech was barely four minutes long, Grisman gave a remarkably holistic overview of his broad and varied career, pinpointing respective “dominos” in his musical life that each tipped over into the next, leading to the decades-long, groundbreaking musical output for which we all know, respect, and adore the Dawg.
He even remembered the very moment he heard bluegrass music for the first time, beginning his self-taped video mentioning the Mike Seeger-produced vinyl compilation, Mountain Music Bluegrass Style, and Earl Taylor & the Stoney Mountain Boys’ rendition of “White House Blues,” his first pivotal taste of the music that would define his life – and that he would re-define, time and time again, over the course of his career. He thanked Doc Watson, a frequent collaborator and recording partner, for being “the first professional musician to ever invite this mandolin picker on stage, when I was 17 years old.”
But Dawg’s musical pedigree – unassailable as it is – wasn’t the focal point of his Hall of Fame acceptance. Instead, Grisman positioned his lengthy and name-drop-heavy resumé not as proof of his own bona fides or validation of his music and impact, but as evidence of his own gratitude. Gratitude at the honor of being inducted into the Hall, yes, but more importantly, gratitude at having been given the opportunity to find, become, and be himself, unapologetically and with mandolin in hand.
Whether in duet with Tony Rice, Del McCoury, Jerry Garcia, Tommy Emmanuel, or Andy Statman, or in groups like Old & In the Way and the David Grisman Quintet (or Trio or Sextet), Dawg has routinely and effortlessly pushed every musical envelope he’s inhabited. He, his friends, bandmates, and collaborators invented new genres and sub-genres, brought bluegrass to hundreds of thousands of new fans, and folded in virtuosos (often unknown to bluegrass) from across the roots music landscape and around the globe. No matter how “out there” or fringe Dawg’s music became, it was and continues to be indelibly rooted in a reverence and love for the traditional, vernacular roots of bluegrass and old-time – as genres, yes, but as communities and folkways, primarily.
It’s why his catalog includes music made for and with folks like Stephane Grappelli, Frank Vignola, Jerry Garcia, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, and James Taylor, but in his acceptance speech he went out of his way to thank and spotlight bluegrassers like Frank Wakefield, Curly Seckler, Jesse McReynolds, Bobby Osborne, and Herschel Sizemore instead. It’s also why, despite building a career and identity out of coloring outside the bluegrass lines, Dawg is still proudly claimed by the bluegrass hard liners and “that ain’t bluegrass” sorts – as well as the wooks, hippies, jamgrassers, and chambergrass acolytes.
From the highest-selling bluegrass album of its time, Old & In The Way, to The Pizza Tapes; from “E.M.D.” to the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty; from Tone Poems to “Dawggy Mountain Breakdown” playing at the beginning of each and every episode and rerun of NPR’s quintessential hit, “Car Talk;” David Grisman’s legacy is resplendent, exhaustive, and one-of-a-kind. But it’s not just a resumé to Dawg – or just a history, benign and objective. To David Grisman, the most important thing about making music is people – the ones who make it, the ones who hear it, and the ones who love it.
All month long we’ll be celebrating Dawg in December. Enjoy Artist of the Month content like our Essentials Playlist (below), plus we’ll be chatting with friends of Dawg about what it’s really like to know him and make music with him, we’ll dip back into the BGS Archives for our favorite Grisman content, we’ll feature his son’s new band, the Sam Grisman Project, and much more. So join us as we celebrate Dawg’s induction into the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and his entire groundbreaking career for Dawg in December.
Bob Warford remembers a lot about the vibrant Southern California bluegrass and old-timey scene of the 1960s. But he doesn’t remember exactly how he came to be a member of what proved to be the final lineup of the Kentucky Colonels, the near-mythic group anchored by brothers Roland White on mandolin, Eric White Jr. on bass and, at times, guitar magician Clarence White.
“My life was getting complicated at that time,” Warford, a banjo player, recalls. “I knew Clarence slightly. Roland slightly. I knew Eric. Maybe it was Eric who suggested me for it.”
He had grown up in the college town of Claremont, about half an hour east of Los Angeles, where he fell into bands — the Reorganized Dry City Players and the Mad Mountain Ramblers among them — with such future notables as David Lindley and Chris Darrow. After starting college further east at the University of California Riverside, he was in a band that played festivals and on the popular “Cal’s Corral” TV show (hosted by flashy Western-fashioned car dealer, Cal Worthington), appearing on the latter alongside the Gosdin Brothers, the Hillmen (featuring future Byrds star Chris Hillman) and others.
In any case, at the end of ’66 or beginning of ’67, in the home stretch of his undergraduate work and with plans for grad school on his way to becoming an attorney, Warford was asked to join the Colonels for a series of gigs at the famed Ash Grove club in Hollywood over the course of a few months. And in that February, in the midst of the Ash Grove run, the band was recruited to go in the studio for sessions to be featured on the pilot of a radio show titled “American Music Time,” hosted by and featuring married couple Dave and Lu Spencer and with crowd sounds added to give the impression that it was done in front of an audience.
It seems to have aired that March, though Warford can’t confirm that. It was, however, released on an album in the late 1970s — without the Spencers’ parts or the crowd noise — with the title 1966. On June 30 of this year it was reissued by label Sundazed and doubled in length with previously unreleased recordings of the Country Boys, the pre-Colonels band the White brothers had in the late ’50s and early ’60s.
“These were not done with any high-tech situation,” Warford recalls of the two (or maybe three) sessions held for the radio show. “Everything was played live. We didn’t do a large number of songs.”
There are some bluegrass regulars (“Soldier’s Joy,” in short versions bookending the original release, Earl Scruggs’ “Earl’s Breakdown,” two Osborne Brothers tunes), some adaptations from country (Merle Haggard’s “The Fugitive”) and such. The performances are strong and lively, especially so considering that this was a reconstituted lineup of the band which had not played together a lot. In fact, before this run of gigs, the last official gig had been in October, 1965. Three of the five members were now new. Roland White was still there, and Eric was back, too, after having split from the ensemble some years before. Founding dobro player Leroy (Mack) McNees and banjoist Billy Ray Latham had moved on, as was ace fiddler Scotty Stoneman, who had played with the band in ’65.
“One thing this shows is that with or without Clarence, the Colonels was a good bluegrass band,” says folk music journalist and historian Jon Hartley Fox, who wrote the liner notes for the new 1966 release. “It’s sort of looked back on now maybe as the vehicle for Clarence. But they were a really good band in their own right. I think Roland White has historically been undervalued. Roland was a really good band leader. When it’s just Roland and Eric from the original band it’s still got the spirit and the same feel. The band was way more than Clarence and four other guys.”
As for Clarence, he’d begun his shift to a focus on electric guitar, picking up some major session work, which would lead to him playing on the Byrds’ country landmark Sweetheart of the Rodeo album and then later joining the band. But at that point, he was around some of the time, too. The band Warford joined now was filled out by fellow newcomers Dennis Morris on guitar and Bobby Crane on fiddle — though Morris’ last name might have been Morse and Crane’s first name may have been Jimmy. There’s a lot of uncertainty around this time, not least the status of the band itself, which was fine by Warford.
“I was still in college and was going to start grad school,” he says from his home in Riverside, where he settled into a successful law career. “For me, I wasn’t looking at anything long-term. I was thinking, ‘This is fun and these guys are really good players and we can do this while we do it.’ I didn’t have a view that it was about to end or that it could continue.”
As it turned out, it was about to end. The radio sessions would prove to be the last official recordings by the band. It also, in some ways, captures the last glimmer of that vibrant Southern California roots-music scene.
“If people think it’s tough to make a living playing bluegrass now, which it is, in 1967, especially in California, it was impossible,” says Fox. “If you look around the rest of the country, it was lean times for bluegrass.” Still, the Colonels had earned status.
“Even without Clarence in the band, they would’ve been the leading bluegrass band in California,” Fox says, crediting Roland White for keeping the Colonels alive as a band. “And in the national consciousness they were still one of the biggest things going. They really showed a kind of drive and ambition that a lot of people admired.”
But as time went on, that meant less and less — big fish, shrinking pond. Even at its peak a few years earlier, the scene in the area was not a way for musicians to get big paydays. But once the Beatles arrived and Dylan had gone electric, it was a different world. Locally, nothing captured the change more than Chris Hillman turning in his mandolin for an electric bass and co-founding the Byrds. Bluegrass just didn’t have much of a draw.
In 1961, the band, still known as the Country Boys, had what could have been a big break when it was hired to appear twice on The Andy Griffith Show. Unfortunately, it turned out to be an opportunity that fizzled. The producers wanted to have them back, “But the family moved and they couldn’t find them,” Fox says. “So they put an ad in the paper.”
And answering the ad was, yes, the Dillards, who auditioned and were hired, playing members of the mountain family the Darlings, ultimately performing 13 songs over the course of six episodes from 1963 to 1966 and gaining a national profile.
“In retrospect, I think the Dillards were much better suited to that show,” Fox says, citing again the Dillards’ bigger flair for showmanship. “The Colonels never had a show really,” he says. “They got up and played music.”
“The Dillards were such a mowing-down machine,” says Grammy Award-nominated reissue producer and annotator Mary Katherine Aldin, who worked at the Ash Grove starting in 1960. Through that latter role, she worked closely with the Colonels and later won the 1991 NAIRD Indie Award for producing and annotating the collection The Kentucky Colonels, Long Journey Home and wrote the liner notes for The New Kentucky Colonels Live in Holland 1973. Getting festival bookings became increasingly difficult, she says.
“It was, ‘We already have a bluegrass band, don’t need more,’” she says of the frustrations, and of course the one they already had was the Dillards, more often than not.
An exception was the Newport Folk Festival, and the Colonels did play there in 1964. But any momentum from that appearance was hard to sustain. By the time Warford joined, options had become fewer and fewer, not just on the festival level but on the local circuit that had been at least a steady, if unglamorous, platform.
“Now that I think about it, other than the Ash Grove, which was always a venue for folk and blues and old-timey stuff, there used to be pizza parlors and stuff with bluegrass bands on the weekends,” Warford says. “I don’t recall any still around then.”
The Ash Grove did remain the prime location for the music, regardless, with such future stars as Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, and Taj Mahal citing it as a place where they could meet and learn from their heroes. The Colonels’ and the club’s legacies were very much entwined, right from the start. The White brothers, with their family having moved from Maine to Burbank on the Eastern part of L.A.’s San Fernando Valley, started playing the Ash Grove shortly after it opened on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood in 1958 with folk and blues fanatic Ed Pearl at the helm.
A year before that, the band was known as the Three Little Country Boys, with Roland on mandolin, Eric on banjo, Clarence — barely in his teens — on guitar, and sister Joanne sometimes on bass. Soon they won a radio station competition and changed the name simply to the Country Boys, with Eric taking over the bass and banjoist Billy Ray Latham and dobro player Leroy “Mack” McNees added to fill out the lineup, though that would change, too, when Eric left and Roger Bush was recruited.
“It was 1959 when I joined them,” Bush says now. “Got a phone call one day from Leroy Mack, said he was playing with Billy Ray and Roland, and the brother Eric played bass fiddle. That is it. The whole little band. They were working, played a radio show and TV show with the car salesman who had live music. Playing at the Ash Grove, had a deal with the owner, if he could call us when somebody didn’t show up and we could come fill some time, we would have the full run of the building during the day to rehearse with the full sound system. Then [we played] every Saturday morning.”
The family dynamic had its tensions, it seems, and the breaking point that led to Bush’s entry was sartorial.
“Roland tried to put everyone in white bucks,” Bush says. “They got up one morning at home, the White family, there was a note hung on the bass fiddle from Eric that said, ‘I quit.’ They opened the back door and there was his white bucks that had been on fire. Leroy called me up, I said, ‘You know, I’ve never played the bass fiddle, but wouldn’t mind giving it a whirl. We did a show, a school or college. That was my first show. I hadn’t gotten together with them but one time. We did the first song, nobody stepped to the microphone. They looked at me and said, ‘Go talk to them.’ That was the beginning of me being the talker in the band. They didn’t call me Flutter-Lip for nothing. I was always the talker.”
This is the time period represented in the album’s expanded tracks. The recordings, raw but lively, show an exuberant, youthful ensemble with vibrant performances of mostly traditional material (“Head Over Heels In Love With You,” “Shady Grove,” “I’ll Go Steppin’ Too,” “Flint Hill Special”) and a modicum of hokum to boot (“Polka on the Banjo,” “Shuckin’ the Corn,” “Mad Banjo”). Fox stresses that these early recordings were before Clarence broke out as a star attraction.
“He wasn’t playing lead yet,” he says. “He didn’t really start playing any lead until Roland went into the army in 1962.”
For the older brother, that produced something of a crossroads-level shock on return. “Roland talked about how surprised he was coming home from Germany, and here was Clarence playing fiddle tunes [on guitar],” Fox says. “But his rhythm playing on the old stuff is great.”
It was around this time that they recorded an album and, at the urging of mentor Joe Maphis, took on the name the Kentucky Colonels, regardless of the geographical disconnect. The album, The New Sound of Bluegrass America, came out in 1963. Clarence’s flat-picking shined, making him, for many, the band’s star attraction – even more so with the instrumental album, Appalachian Swing!, with fiddler Bobby Slone added to the lineup, released by prominent LA jazz, world, and folk label World Pacific Records.
Katherine Aldin witnessed this transformation and Clarence’s emerging stardom up close at the Ash Grove: “One thing about them – Clarence, even in those days, overshadowed everyone in the band,” she says. “So you’d get a whole flock of people who would come in and sit at the foot of the stage. There was a long metal bar with single seats in a V shape around the stage. The Clarence fanatics would get there early and sit there and glue their eyes on Clarence’s hands for 45 minutes and when they were done, just go away. He would suck the air out of the room. The other guys were really good too and wonderful human beings. But Clarence was head and shoulders above the rest of the world.”
His presence went beyond his skills. “Clarence would sit in the front room — there was a concert room and front room,” Aldin explains. “And he would sit in the front room between sets and any kid who came up to him, he would show them anything. And there were a lot of kids. He would show them a lick, or let them play his guitar, or if they brought a guitar he would play with them.”
But momentum was hard to sustain. Mack left the group in ’64 (he’s only on a few of the Swing! tracks) to work in his dad’s construction business, then Slone left and fiddle star Stoneman came in and for all intents by the end of ’65 the band was inactive until that short, final ’67 stretch.
“I think the band just kinda ran out of work to do,” Bush says.
The members went on to other jobs, in and out of music. Clarence famously became an in-demand session player with his switch to electric guitar and supported by James Burton, one of the top guitarists on the scene and a veteran of Ricky Nelson’s band (and later the leader of Elvis Presley’s TCB ensemble).
“James Burton had heard Clarence and started offering him session work — ‘I’ve got more work than I can do.’” says Diane Bouska, who married Roland White in the 1980s and performed with him until his death in April 2022 at age 83. “So Clarence started doing electric guitar session work.”
Clarence found himself working on Nelson sessions, as well as the Monkees and as lead guitarist on the album Gene Clark with the Gosdin Brothers, the first project for Clark after leaving the Byrds. Then Chris Hillman, still in the Byrds, brought him in to play on a couple of songs for the band’s Younger Than Yesterday album, which led to more work with the group (including on Sweetheart of the Rodeo) and ultimately full membership in the last version of the band.
As such, Clarence wasn’t around much for the 1967 Ash Grove shows or the radio sessions captured for this reissued album, though Fox says that he seems to be on at least one of the songs. Shortly after that, Roland was hired by Bill Monroe and moved to Nashville. He and Bush did reconnect in the early ‘70s in the proto-newgrass band Country Gazette, which also featured fiddler Byron Berline, an LA mainstay who had played a handful of dates with the Colonels.
Clarence made his place with the Byrds, showcasing his dazzling skills on a B-bender — a Fender Telecaster modified by him and Gene Parsons, the band’s then-drummer, with a lever attached to the strap allowing him to bend the namesake string to simulate the sound of a pedal steel. He also continued doing sessions for Joe Cocker, Randy Newman, the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, and Rita Coolidge, among others, as well as returning to his acoustic roots in Muleskinner, a progressive bluegrass-swing group with mandolinist David Grisman, fiddler Peter Greene, banjoist Bill Keith, and guitarist Peter Rowan, a precursor of the groundbreaking David Grisman Quintet.
Then in 1973, Clarence, Roland, and Eric came back together as the White Brothers (sometimes billed as the New Kentucky Colonels) for shows in the U.S. and Europe. Following a show in Palmdale in the Southern California, Clarence was hit and killed by a drunk driver as he and Roland were loading equipment into their car. He was just 29.
It is hard to extricate the Colonels’ legacy from that of Clarence.
“The main thing was Clarence White’s guitar playing,” says country star Marty Stuart in an email. Stuart is arguably the leading authority on all things Clarence White, not to mention the owner of the original B-bender, which he played alongside Byrds founders Hillman and Roger McGuinn on the 2018 tour marking the 50th anniversary of the Sweethearts album.
“To me they are still influential because of the level of musicianship and they remain as the beloved founding fathers of the Southern California bluegrass scene. I had dinner with Gene Autry one time and he said, ‘I didn’t say I was the best singing cowboy, but I was about the first and the rest don’t matter.’ I would place the Colonels as field correspondents, national ambassadors for the world of bluegrass music in Southern California when barely anyone else was there to help out. They also introduced bluegrass music to an entirely new generation of listeners that old timers might not have gotten to.”
But there’s more to it than just Clarence. McNees, who wrote several of the few original songs the band did in the early days, found that out when he learned that modern country-rock band Blackberry Smoke had done a version of one of them, “Memphis Special,” on the 2003 album Bad Luck Ain’t No Crime.
“I didn’t know anything about it,” he says from his home in Thousand Oaks, north of Los Angeles. “I got a phone call [a while later] from an accounting firm to make sure I was the writer. Lo and behold, a couple weeks later I got a real nice check for royalties not being paid and after that another. After that I became an acquaintance of the singer [Charlie Starr]. Then they were coming to Los Angeles to play the House of Blues. I couldn’t go so my son went for me. I said, ‘Ask where they got the song.’ He came back and told me, ‘Well, he said that when he was nine years old he was watching The Andy Griffith Show and saw these guys playing bluegrass and asked his father to buy our album for him. Glad he did.”
And glad it wasn’t one of the Dillards’ episodes.
Is it any surprise that there is still enough interest in the Kentucky Colonels to merit this new release? Marty Stuart has one crisp, pointed word to answer that question.
“No.”
Album cover illustration by Olaf Jens, courtesy of Sundazed.
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 etal, 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.
It’s a national holiday. Patron saint, Willie Nelson. And perhaps his heir would be Kacey Musgraves? Or Billy Strings. Or Margo Price. Or Snoop Dogg. We’ve got options.
Bluegrass and country may be upheld as the pinnacles of wholesome, “American values” music, but in reality artists have been putting the GRASS into bluegrass since as long as that term has been in popular usage. (And damn, does it look good on a sweatshirt, too.)
We hope you ascend to new heights this 4/20, and while we’re at it we hope you enjoy these 16 high lonesome roots songs perfect for the occasion.
Roland White – “Why You Been Gone So Long”
Roland White, his late brother Clarence, and the Kentucky Colonels are known for “Why You Been Gone So Long,” and in 2018 Roland re-recorded the number on his IBMA Award-nominated album, A Tribute to the Kentucky Colonels, with a star-studded cast of friends.
Also known for his monthly shows at the World Famous Station Inn in Nashville (pre-COVID), every time Roland sings the line, “Nothing left to do, lord, so I guess I’ll go get stoned,” the crowd erupts with laughter. To this writer, though, that line feels less like a hilarious non-sequitur from a septuagenarian bluegrasser and more like sage wisdom. I guess I will go get stoned!
Selwyn Birchwood – “I Got Drunk, Laid & Stoned”
As modern bluesman Selwyn Birchwood put it in our premiere of this track, “This song proves that you can party to blues music.” That may seem like an obvious fact to a blues fan, but the uninitiated deserve to know the blues isn’t just about what you’ve lost, it’s about what you gain – through the music and otherwise. As Birchwood concludes, “‘I Got Drunk, Laid and Stoned’ is the epitome of what I feel is missing in a lot of blues music right now. You’ll find all of the rawness, edginess, and boundary pushing that I love…” That is the blues.
Ashley Monroe – “Weed Instead of Roses”
No matter the occasion, when you’re reaching for flower… buds – reach for weed. Ashley Monroe makes a compelling case that men are certainly not the only ones in country who can live up to the outlaw moniker. Guthrie Trapp chicken pickin’ along is the cherry on top of this cannabis bop.
John Hartford – “Granny Wontcha Smoke Some Marijuana”
For all those who’ve ever imagined hotboxing a steam-powered aereo plane, here’s a lazy, loping sing-along that kicks into barn-burning — or, grass burning? — country meets honky-tonk meets bluegrass. You’ll be calling it “mary-joo-wanna” now too.
David Grisman & Tommy Emmanuel – “Cinderella’s Fella”
If you’re here, you must be celebrating 4/20, so you might know about Cinderella – a potent, hazy strain that Dawg attributes to his late friend Jerome Schwartz in Petaluma, California. If Cinderella were a princess instead of a strain of cannabis, Grisman would certainly arrive at her door with glass slipper in hand. Instead, we assume he fits her with a glass bowl instead? This performance by Grisman and Tommy Emmanuel is sweet, tender, and jaw-dropping. Classic “Dawg music.”
Courtney Marie Andrews – “Table For One”
Everyone self medicates, whether they’re aware of it or not, it’s just that touring musicians — by the very nature of their jobs — face their self medications, “crutches,” and vices everywhere they go. Courtney Marie Andrews, a lifelong Americana nomad, captures the depression and melancholy of touring perfectly in this haunting song, which reminds the listener that you don’t really want the life of the person on stage, no matter how glamorous it might seem. If the sometimes foggy dissociation of weed smoking were bottled and infused into a song, it would be this track.
New Lost City Ramblers – “Wildwood Weed”
Have you ever asked yourself the question, “What if Mother Maybelle smoked pot?” With this song — a Jim Stafford hit — The New Lost City Ramblers kinda did!
New life side quest unlocked: smoke weed from a corncob pipe.
Kacey Musgraves – “Follow Your Arrow”
It’s April 20th and your arrow is pointing directly at your bong. F*CK, water pipe. Follow that arrow, babies! Do you! Light up a joint. (Or don’t.)
Nah, do.
Charlie Worsham feat. Old Crow Medicine Show – “I Hope I’m Stoned (When Jesus Takes Me Home)”
We’ve loved Charlie Worsham and the bluegrass bona fides underpinning his brand of modern country for quite a while, but it’s extra perfect when he sits in and otherwise collaborates with the fellas in Old Crow Medicine Show. Heaven’s golden streets? Overrated. What about its fields of pot?! I mean… it will have amber waves of cannabis, will it not? It’s called “heaven.”
Margo Price – “WAP”
She’s partnered with Willie’s Reserve to release her own branded strain of weed, “All American Made,” and she’s infamous for smokin’ and tokin’. But in this Daily Show withTrevor Noah spot featuring comedian Dulce Sloan, Price is called upon to prove the point that if “WAP” were a country song, the universe would still be as upset at its radical centering of female pleasure and agency. (She’s right, of course.) Thank GOD for Sloan and Noah making this point, because it’s given us this country-rendition of Price singin’ “Need a hard hitter, a deep stroker/ a Henny drinker, need a weed smoker.” Perfection.
Chris Stapleton – “Might As Well Get Stoned”
Look, you can’t mess with the hits. This list wouldn’t/shouldn’t exist without this song on it. Chris Stapleton, perhaps the biggest crossover artist — crossing over from bluegrass to mainstream, of course — in roots music since Alison Krauss proves his allegiance to whiskey and weed in this jam from his smash major label debut, Traveller.
It’s like he took Roland’s advice! Might as well…
Peter Rowan – “Panama Red”
Peter Rowan’s career has been well-peppered with southwestern and Latin folk-flavored bluegrass, but did you know he wrote “Panama Red”? This live recording is suitably trippy for 4/20, with a slight atonal warble as if the record were slightly warped on the turntable and the pickers holding on for dear life to Peter’s delightfully languid phrasing — that somehow drives as much as it lays down for a weed-induced siesta. Everybody’s acting lazy…
Billy Strings – “Dust In A Baggie”
He means kief, right? Right??
Guy Clark – “Worry B Gone”
How every “worried man” in Americana, country, and the blues still has a job when “worry B gone” exists is perplexing, isn’t it? Granted he was not a medical professional, but Guy Clark’s endorsement surely must stand for something. Don’t give me no guff, give me a puff!
Willie Nelson – “Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die”
Did you know that funerary and embalming processes are actually incredibly harmful to the environment and often non-sustainable? But this style of cremation must be ideal. Do it for the earth. Think green. HaHA!
John Prine – “Illegal Smile”
Love that plant peeking from behind John Prine like a shoulder angel. Let’s all do Prine proud and don illegal smiles today, how about it?
With that in mind, let’s not celebrate today without also striving towards decriminalization, decarceration, and the expungement of criminal records for anyone currently imprisoned on marijuana charges. Illegal smiles no more!
Pictured: Limited edition BGS herb grinder. Want one? Let us know in the comments and we might add them to the BGS Mercantile!
In our plaintive annual quest to unearth some semblance of a holiday-themed canon from the bluegrass songbook writ large, a few concessions must immediately be made. As argued in a past wintry edition of Tunesday Tuesday, titles of otherwise wordless and themeless songs are more than enough to justify a tune’s place in holiday and Christmas party playlists — or at least, this writer vehemently believes that they should be.
That particular context might just be unnecessary, though, because anyone ought to welcome absolutely any excuse or justification to marvel at the sheer magic (holiday and/or otherwise) of Bobby Hick’s fiddling. Yes, this is no more than a contrived set up to allow some unbridled gushing about “Snowflake Breakdown.” The hoedown-style fiddle tune was a cut on Hicks’ 1978 album, Texas Crapshooter, which boasted an A side of all Texas and western swing tunes, featuring Buddy Emmons on pedal steel and Buck White on piano among others, and a B side of his signature bluegrass fiddling style, staffed by Sam Bush, Roy Huskey Jr., Alan Munde, and fellow Bluegrass Hall of Famer Roland White. The “wow, these pickers on this tune are each so unique and genius in their own rights, they’re like snowflakes” metaphor is just a little too irresistible here, so just go with it.
For us fans of a bluegrass fiddler who plays with a heavy dose of North Carolina by way of Texas and a dash of the best parts of fiddle contests, has an unparalleled pedigree as a Blue Grass Boy with Bill Monroe, and a reputation as one of the most confounding double-stop talents in the universe, all we want for Christmas is (really, truly, honestly) more Bobby Hicks.
Loose and lovable Jim Lauderdale and Del McCoury will host the 30th annual IBMA Awards in Raleigh, North Carolina, coming up on September 26. McCoury is a nine-time winner of IBMA Entertainer of the Year — the most of any artist — while Lauderdale has won two Grammy Awards for his exceptional bluegrass work. These fan favorites don’t just bring a wealth of bluegrass experience to the stage; they’re seasoned masters of ceremonies as well. We got together at Nashville’s City Winery for a public conversation about the show.
BGS: As a 30th anniversary edition, I’m sure there will be quite a focus on the history of the music and of the awards over these 30 years. Del, what do you remember about the first IBMA Awards?
DM: It was so exciting, ’cause it was the first time that bluegrass music was really recognized. And there were still quite a few of the senior people there, you know, who started in the music years ago. We were fortunate that they were still there. Bill Monroe was even there, you know? But we’ve lost a lot of the great pioneers since that first one, and that’s probably the biggest difference, I would think.
BGS: When was your first one, Jim?
JL: I believe it was 1998, and I got to do a song with Ralph Stanley during the awards. Then I started going back and doing showcases. And I saw the move to Nashville and then the move to Raleigh, which I think has been really, really a great thing.
BGS: Do you guys ever surprise the jammers playing on some floor and stride in and go, “Hey, fellas, can I play a song?” And they go “Holy cow, that’s Jim Lauderdale and Del McCoury!”?
JL: Not quite like that! I go, “Hey everybody!” I like to be inclusive. But I do like to pop in if it calls for it.
DM: For me, I’m a little too old for that these days. But I remember the time when the festivals started when I would stay up all night and jam with people and go do a gospel show in the morning. And of course, I had a voice that would take that kind of punishment then, but I don’t have that voice anymore. So I do have to get my rest. But it’s a temptation, if you hear a jam session, to at least go listen to it.
JL: That’s the thing about bluegrass. Of course in any musical genre you can jam but you’ve got your acoustic instrument and you come across a group of folks that maybe you’ve never even met, but [you have] the bluegrass vocabulary or common language with these songs. It’s something that everybody can pick up.
BGS: Del, because of your 80th birthday and your longtime involvement in IBMA, I understand that they’ve just told you that on Saturday at the Wide Open Bluegrass festival, there will be a big “Del-ebration” for you. What do you know yet about this?
DM: I’m embarrassed! I had an inkling they were going to do something, you know? But I didn’t know who was going to be on that Saturday night show until me and Jim came here today. We’re going to have different folks from other genres of music come in, and me and Jim will do duets and sing all kinds of stuff.
JL: When we get together, you never know what’s going to happen. But I’ll tell you, in all seriousness, for as long as I’ve known Del, I’ve loved to make him laugh. …For several years I used to love to do this, when Del and the band was backstage somewhere. I’d walk up and say, “Hey you guys, what are y’all doing here?” And then I’d say to whoever is standing next to me, “It’s like these guys go to almost all of my shows! They’re from Canada, right? Anyway, good to see you guys!”
BGS: You guys have an interesting thing in common that people might not know, because you’re both guitar-playing frontmen. But you both started playing the banjo early on, right?
DM: Yeah, we did, didn’t we?
BGS: Del, in your case, the fellow who coaxed you away from the banjo into the lead guitar and the lead vocal was Mr. Bill Monroe, right? You hoped to play banjo, but he needed a guitar player. Is that the story?
DM: Yeah, myself and Bill Keith, you know, we auditioned together and he took Bill on banjo and wanted me to start playing guitar. I had played some guitar before that, but after I heard Bill Keith, I thought, yeah, that’s what Bill needs that guy. He needs that guy right now, cause it was a different thing. You know Bill called him Brad. He didn’t want to have two Bills in the band, so he called him Brad. He said what is your full name? And Keith said, William Bradford Keith. He said we’ll call you Brad. And he did from that time on.
BGS: And you never looked back. You were a singing guitar player from that point forward?
DM: Yeah, begrudgingly I was. Because I liked banjo. I’d heard Earl Scruggs when I was about 11, and Don Reno. They were our idols, those guys, so I learned to play. I did a date with Bill Monroe up in New York City. He took me up there, and he offered me a job, and I didn’t take him up on it. So maybe a month later, I did decide to come down here and when I did, Bill Keith was here, at the same hotel. He told us both to come to the Clarkston Hotel, which was on Seventh Avenue. You’d get a room about two dollars and 62 cents a night, from what I remember. Bathroom down the hall. No air conditioning. That’s the things I remember about it.
The next morning I walked into the lobby with my banjo and another guy walked in from somewhere else. About that time, Bill Monroe walked in and he said, “Come on, boys. Follow me.” We went next door to the Clarkston Hotel’s restaurant, I think. We sat down and he said, “Now go ahead and order something. I’m paying for it.” So we sit there, and Bill was not a man of many words. I didn’t know who this other guy was, and he didn’t know who I was, and Bill didn’t introduce us either.
So we got done eating, and he paid and we walk next door to the National Life building. That’s where they had the Friday Night Opry [and WSM’s studios.] We went into this room and I saw an old Gibson guitar case over in the corner. When we got in there, Bill said, “Del, you could take guitar there.” I thought, “What kind of deal’s this? I wasn’t lookin’ to play no guitar.”
So we tried out that way and Bill Keith told me later, only about 10 years ago, “You know, he tried me on the guitar, too.” [Monroe] tried us both ways and he wanted to see what’s gonna work best. And Keith said, “I was no guitar player.” And I said, “Well, when I heard you play banjo, I figured I was no banjo player either!” [Bill Keith] was really good. And so [Monroe] hooked us up that way and then I thought, “Well, I guess I was up for the challenge, I’ll try this job.” But I had to learn all the words his songs. That was the hardest part.
BGS: Jim, how did you make the journey from banjo to a guitar-playing songwriter?
JL: I was a pretty good banjo player, but I got to a certain point in my late teens where it’s like I’m just not as good as Earl, Ralph Stanley, Don Stover, or Bill Keith. Those were my go-to guys at that time. I was getting a little discouraged. But I did get a dobro. I was such a big Mike Auldridge fan and I was playing that a little on the side. I thought, I’ve reached my peak. I’m not going to get any better. So I start playing rhythm guitar and writing songs. When I did come to Nashville and did that record with Roland White, I thought, “OK, this is it.” You know, finally after 22 years this is my big break.
So I moved up to New York City because I wasn’t able to really make a living here in Nashville. New York City’s the most next logical choice! But I had some friends from college up there. And I got a country gig before I moved up there. But anyway, I sent this record with Roland out to the bluegrass labels that I knew of — sent a cassette — and every one of them wrote back and said we like the record, but you’re an unknown and you’re not on the circuit. But stay in touch. Keep us posted. And that discouraged me so much. I just thought the writing is on the wall. So I started doing more country stuff. But in New York I was in a couple of bluegrass bands too.
BGS: You’ve seen this music keep renewing itself and raising up younger artists and seeing them join the flow, and you’ve watched the audiences change and evolve over the years. What are your observations about this music? How healthy is it? Where do you think it may be going, and what do you hope for?
JL: It seems really healthy, and you’re absolutely right about that with the younger audiences and the younger players. It’s so cool to see these kids sometimes playing that are eight, nine, seven. I know at IBMA, they’ve got a program for youth. And at different festivals — Pete Wernick has a thing at Merlefest. There is a big outreach, and parents I think are so supportive of that to see their kids playing bluegrass, and kids love it. I’ve had this theory for a long time that if you start out playing bluegrass, you can play anything if you want to, because the ear training is just incredible.
Inset photo credit: Amy Beth Hale, IBMA (L-R) Craig Havighurst, Jim Lauderdale, Del McCoury
He’s asked about his phenomenal cross-picking guitar techniques, which put him among the greatest bluegrass/folk players of the last several decades, talked about in the same breath with Doc Watson, Clarence White, and Tony Rice.
He’s asked about his dad, Lamar, who played banjo with Bill Monroe. Yeah, that Bill Monroe, the Father of Bluegrass.
He’s asked about Clarence White’s brother Roland, the Kentucky Colonels mandolinist who was an early teacher of his. And of course he’s also asked Clarence, Grier’s big influence, who brought bluegrass guitar into the rock age with the Colonels and then, on electric guitar, powered early country-rock with the Byrds.
He’s asked, maybe too much, about his beard, a prodigious gray broadsword of whiskers stretching from chin to navel, an abstraction of which is the signature feature of his silhouette, featured on his T-shirts and other merch.
But one thing the D.C.-raised, Nashville-based musician is never really asked about: His singing. And for good reason. He’s never done it.
“It’s always been, ‘Why don’t you sing? You play guitar!’” he says, an irrepressible joviality marking his droll drawl.
Somehow, he sighs, people often seem to think that simply because he plays guitar he ought to sing too.
“I know I play guitar,” he says, more amused than exasperated. “I never donated any time toward [singing]. I tried once or twice through the years. Just like anything else, I gave it five or ten times and stopped.”
Until now.
His new album, Ways of the World, features five songs with him on lead vocals. That’s a first. In his career going back to the early ‘80s and covering ten solo albums now, several side projects (Psychograss, Helen Highwater Stringband), and hundreds of guest spots and sessions, he’s never stepped out as a vocalist before.
And in a rather bold move, he puts his lead vocals alongside some noted vocal talents: Maura O’Connell, Tim O’Brien, Shad Cobb, Andrea Zonn, and Mike Compton. What’s more, he’s feels pretty good about it.
“I do,” he says. “I know later I won’t, because every time I think something’s perfect, I listen to it later and go, ‘Gee, why didn’t I hear that before?’”
So the next question comes naturally: “Why now?”
“It was the Helen Highwater Stringband,” he says. “Three or four years ago they said they needed another singer for a vocal trio. They looked at me. I said, ‘I don’t sing!’ They said, ‘You do now!’ I went, ‘Wow.’ They were encouraging. It was helpful. All that went into account and then I did it on stage. People weren’t running for the exits, so this is good. And it just kept going.”
If he was going to sing, he needed words, and he dove right into that as well. Songwriting was another new challenge.
“I’d written the first two lines: ‘I’m afloat on the great big waves of the ocean, I drift on the ways of the world,’” he says of the title song, with Zonn singing with him, which opens the album. “I thought, ‘Hell! That’s going to be a song!’”
But he thought he’d need help and, while heading out for a five-and-a-half-week tour in South Africa, he went to a friend to have him finish it. That didn’t happen. So with two off-days he set to it himself.
“I finished it in an Airbnb on the beach in South Africa,” he says.
It was a whatever-it-takes approach to songwriting. “Dust Bowl Dream,” with harmonies by O’Brien, came from a bar bet for a round of drinks with some Nashville buddies as to who could write the best song in a week.
“I wasn’t even going to write a song,” he says. “Thought I’d just buy drinks for the buddies. But I had this melody that was lonesome and I thought, ‘Well, dust bowl is lonesome.’ Wrote the words in an airport, wrote the verse, chorus, second verse. I thought it was great. Got to the hotel later that day and started playing. First verse was great, second was great, last verse was horrible! I wrote another and that was worse. I went back to the first version I wrote and thought, ‘If I don’t sing it, that’s great.’ So I talk through it, like Bill Anderson would. It’s a recitation, and I think it really helped the tune. You feel it more.”
Now, all you who savor every splendiferous Grier guitar lick, dread not. The five songs featuring vocals are accompanied by eight sparkling instrumentals, and the ones with singing also feature, of course, his spectacular picking.
The heartfelt vocal numbers are surrounded by a selection of wryly titled original picking showcases (“Waiting on Daddy’s Money,” “The Curmudgeon’s Gait,” and so on) and sparkling interpretations of, or variations on, old fiddle tunes (“Billy in the Lowground”). And playing with Grier is a stellar cast of associates: a core of Casey Campbell on mandolin, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, Dennis Crouch on bass, with John Gardner on drums for some songs, and banjo from Justin Moses and Cory Walker. What’s more, there’s electric guitar by Bryan Sutton on one song (“Dustbowl Dream”) and on “Farewell to Redboots,” there’s trumpet by Rod McGaha — something perhaps even more surprising than Grier’s singing.
“For me having a trumpet on a song is brand new,” he says. “I just heard it in my head that way and imagined it that way. But having it happen was amazing.”
The whole experience, it seems, was liberating in a way that led Grier to try some different approaches to his picking, as if the pressure was off to make the album completely about that. The result is a rich, engaging tone throughout.
“I think on this record there’s less flash, just for flash’s sake,” he says. “Less, ‘Watch what I can do! Watch! This is hot!’ This is more reined in for a bit. Some of the solos are simplistic, and in my mind harken back to the beginnings of bluegrass music.”
He cites the intro to one song, “Dead Flowers,” an original, not the Rolling Stones song.
“That’s as basic as you can be,” he says, noting that it happened that way in the moment when he was caught off guard. “I got in the studio and thought someone else would kick it off. ‘Who’s gonna kick it off?’ Crickets. ‘You start it.’”
On the other hand, he also found himself spontaneously taking some other unexpected directions in “Red Boots.”
“There are three solos in that,” he says. “First one of me, then the horn, then me again. The first one’s just the melody, nothing fancy. The melody is cool. But the last solo is completely different, a little bit of Wes Montgomery, some string-bending in there. Just popped out! I’d never played that before. Every time I’d played that song it was just the melody, ‘cause I’m generally sitting here playing by myself. In the studio it was, ‘Well, I’ve done that. I want to do something different.’ I like that. Fresh and exciting. Note by note. Not the boring same old thing.”
And that’s the thread of the whole album.
“A lot of improvisation on this record,” he says. “From my viewpoint, it’s playful. All in the vibe. Not some hot lick thrown in just to show I can play a hot lick.”
Not that he isn’t proud of his playing here.
“There’s things in there people might want to learn when they hear it,” he says.
And speaking of learning, one more question: Has he ever tried fingerpicking?
Grier sighs.
“That’s another thing maybe I gave five minutes.”
Well… given what he said about singing, stay tuned for the next album.
If roots music has such a thing as a Renaissance man, there’s surely no stronger contender for the title than Jim Lauderdale. Some artists find a furrow and plow it deep, but Lauderdale has spent the better part of a lifetime ranging with abandon through enough fields to leave most of us out of breath just thinking about it. He’s a legit hit country songwriter; the recipient of an Americana Music Association award for lifetime achievement; a creditable actor who portrayed George Jones in a country music play; the regular host for Music City Roots, a long-running musical variety show; and an artist who’s written and recorded a long list of works ranging from Beatles-esque pop to rhythm & blues to old-school country, and appeared with an equally long list of masterful practitioners of them all.
But Jim Lauderdale is also a bluegrass guy—and not only because he’s recorded bluegrass albums with Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, as well as a half-dozen or so on his own. The North Carolina native discovered the music while still in his teens, then immersed himself (starting with learning to play banjo) deeply enough that he can still speak with facility about a surprising number of the obscure records and regional acts that lurked behind the obvious attraction of marquee names like Stanley’s.
As he did so, he became acquainted with the music of our Artist of the Month, Roland White—and, as he related in this recent conversation, that led to making a 1979 album that just this summer finally saw the light of day. The appearance of Jim Lauderdale & Roland White (Yep Roc) is like a nifty little message from the past, reminding us of, among other things, the way that a kind heart and a welcoming attitude can shape not only our own lives, but those of others. Roland White was a hero to Jim Lauderdale in his youth, and he’s still a hero to Jim today. Let him tell you all about it….
You’ve told me that when you moved to Nashville in 1979, you had some goals in mind.
My two goals were to hang out with George Jones and Roland White—out of anybody in the world, those two guys.
Why was Roland on your radar?
Because of the Kentucky Colonels—well, the Kentucky Colonels, and then shortly thereafter, Rounder Records put out that album of the White Brothers in Sweden. And then there was a Kentucky Colonels live record that came out, too. It was one of those things—I was playing banjo, and just a little bit of guitar, and I knew I’d never be able to play like Clarence White, but there was just something about Roland. He had so much soul to him, but he was still very understated. And then he put out that solo album, I Wasn’t Born To Rock’n’Roll.
So when I came here, I went to the Station Inn and saw him, and introduced myself and started up a conversation. He was just so nice and let me sit in. I started doing that more and more—going to the Station Inn any time he’d play—and he was just such a warm guy and really made me feel at ease. I was kind of nervous because he was kind of an iconic figure to me.
And then he said, “Come by the house sometime.” So I went by and we just jammed. One time—and I’ll never forget this, it might have been the first time I went to his house—I knocked on the door and hollered and he said, “Come on in, I’m back here in the music room.” So I went in, and there was this piano player playing on a record, and I said, “Who’s that?” He said, “That’s Thelonious Monk.” And I thought, well, I’ve heard of this guy, but I’ve never heard him.
And Roland, I’m sure his musical tastes and palate go way beyond what you can even imagine, yet in his style, he keeps things close to the vest. But also his singing, too, it’s got a real soulfulness about it. It’s just right, just like his playing. I think his playing is very unique and very adventurous, but always very tasteful.
That makes perfect sense, because Monk’s music has a lot of spaces in it, and Roland does that, too. So how’d you guys hatch this scheme of making this record?
Well, to begin with, I said to Roland that I’d like to do a demo of this new song I wrote called “Lazy Boy.” And I said I’d like to do a version of “I’m Gonna Sleep With One Eye Open” and “Ocean Of Diamonds.” So we went in with and cut those three songs.
I had worked one summer—I think it was after my freshman year in college—at Busch Gardens. I was in a bluegrass band that they kind of put together, and there was another band, too, called the Wahoo Revue. Stan Brown was the banjo player in that band, and then Gene Wooten was the Dobro player, and there was another guy who played bass named Gary Bailey. And when I came to Nashville for those five months, Gary and Gene were both playing with Wilma Lee Cooper, and I was roommates with them. So we cut those three songs with Stan and Gene, and Terry Smith playing bass, and Blaine Sprouse playing fiddle.
I couldn’t get anything going here publishing-wise at the time, and I didn’t know what to do, really, as far as trying to get a record deal went. To me, country music was Hank Williams, George Jones, Merle Haggard—those big Mt. Rushmore guys—Emmylou Harris, Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn—and in my mind, bluegrass goes right in there. They went hand in hand, like a brother and sister kind of thing. But even at that time, in 1979, there was a poppish element to the country charts that I wasn’t familiar with. So I just didn’t fit in and I couldn’t get anything going. And so the highlight for me, the huge highlight of my time in Nashville, was hanging out with Roland.
And I think it was Roland who suggested, “Well hey, why don’t we go in the studio and do a whole thing?” We already had those guys, but I guess Blaine wasn’t around, or maybe Roland just decided to get Johnny Warren to play fiddle. So we did it at what was then Scruggs Studio, in Earl’s basement. His son Steve engineered and Roland produced. And Earl would come down every day with a silver tray, and china, and coffee, and he was wearing an apron—it was just surreal. He was the nicest guy in the world, too, but I was still very tongue-tied.
And I remember the first day I went there, too, Red Allen was sitting there in the room, and that also made me nervous. But he just hung out for a little while. It was pretty low-key; we got a lot done pretty quick. And then there were some things that weren’t going to have banjo on them, and Roland said, “How would you feel about Marty Stuart coming and playing lead?” And I thought, great, because I’d seen Marty with Lester and Roland when I was 15. I thought he was the coolest guy, and he was real nice, too.
It’s an interesting set of songs, with a couple of originals. By that point, how long had you been writing?
I had been writing about four years, but I didn’t have too many bluegrass songs under my belt. “Forgive and Forget,” I wrote that fall before we went in, and the same with the other original, “Regrets and Mistakes.”
They were written with the record in mind?
Oh, yeah. And then Roland suggested some of the covers I did. Two that I wanted to do were Kentucky Colonels songs: “I Might Take You Back Again” and “(That’s What You Get) For Loving Me,” which was a cover they used to do. And I brought in the song “Gold and Silver,” which was a George Jones song. But Roland had the more interesting covers, like Donovan’s “Catch the Wind,” and “February Snow” that Lester Flatt had recorded.
As soon as I heard “Forgive and Forget,” I thought, that’s one of Jim’s. So even at that early point, you were developing something distinctive as a writer. Were you writing a lot at the time?
I was. I guess I was writing more country stuff, and more stuff of what we would now call Americana, but kind of a mixture. And even back then, if I did a solo gig, I’d bring my banjo and do some bluegrass; I played dobro a little bit, too, and I’d do some stuff on that, and some guitar stuff, and even some blues harmonica stuff. It was kind of eclectic.
So what happened then?
Well, we did the record, and then I left Nashville about a week later, and oddly enough, of all places to go, I chose New York City. But when I left, I had some cassettes of the record, and I sent them to the major bluegrass labels, with a very sloppily-written cover letter introducing myself, saying I’d like to be on your label. And every label wrote back and said, “Thanks, we like the record, but you’re an unknown, you’re not on the bluegrass circuit. Stay in touch and let us know what you’re doing over the years.” So that really bummed me out. I thought, this was it—this fantasy to record with Roland White and those guys had happened, and people don’t want it. So I kind of shelved it.
Eventually, I ended up in Los Angeles, and I finally got a country record deal. And the first one to come out was in 1991. So I contacted Roland and I said hey, I think now somebody’s going to want to put this thing out that we did. And he said, “Well, that’s great—you’ve got the master, right?” And I said, “I thought you had it.” So it was lost until he was at the Station Inn last year, and as he was leaving the stage, he said, “Oh, by the way, my wife found a tape at the bottom of a box that has our name on it.”
So Diane [Bouska] finds this tape, and they get it in some kind of listenable form…When was the last time before that that you had listened to the record?
It had probably been since 1980. I’d listened to it and I remember playing it for my grandmother in Lexington, Virginia. But I was so heartbroken that we couldn’t get a deal that it was hard to listen to, because I knew nothing was happening with it at that time. And then I misplaced the cassette I had. So it had been close to 39 years.
What did you think?
I was pleasantly surprised. It brought back so many memories, and just how much I loved the record when we made it—and how much I love it now.
Our artist of the month, Roland White — living legend, mandolinist, and Bluegrass Hall of Famer — has spent a good portion of his storied career with the addendum “brother of Clarence White” permanently affixed in close proximity to his name. In just describing the phenomenon, it is perpetuated still.
Roland’s career, whether sampled when he played guitar and sang with Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys, or witnessed during his time with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, or as member of Lester Flatt’s Nashville Grass, or even as he’s fronted the Roland White Band, has never necessitated the association with his brother to validate its far-reaching impact and influence. By the same token, the legacies of the brothers White are so closely intermeshed, so inextricably cross-pollinated, that it would almost be a disservice to attempt to unwind the two.
Roland’s brand new record, A Tribute to the Kentucky Colonels, once again points the spotlight on the brothers collectively. Despite the fact that it includes many beautiful instrumentals from the Colonels’ catalog, this Tunesday will reach further back in Roland’s discography to celebrate the pair. As Roland tells the story, he was riding in the car with the Clarence and the rest of the Colonels, playing his mandolin and picking out the tune to “Powder Creek” as they drove, fashioning the melody note by note. Worried that they would forget the song before they had a chance to get it on tape — yes, physical, reel-to-reel tape — they stopped at a rest area along the route, set up in the bathroom with a portable recorder, and ensured the tune would live on forever.
This recording is from Roland’s seminal 1976 release, I Wasn’t Born to Rock’n Roll. Although it lacks any White brothers beyond Roland himself, the track showcases his truly singular, archetypical phrasing, his thoughtful picking, and his incredible musical friendship with banjo great Alan Munde.
Editor’s Note: Justin Hiltner plays in Roland White’s band and on the new album, A Tribute to the Kentucky Colonels.
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