Deep In The Bluegrass Again
A mid-journey appreciation.
I got a bit anxious last week when a beloved recording went AWOL.
I was researching an interview with the cosmic bluegrass star Peter Rowan, and while my visit to the LP and CD shelves turned up a lot of exceptional albums from Rowan’s expansive career, one favorite CD had gone missing. The band was a short-lived but powerful 1973 collaboration called Muleskinner, in which Rowan joined his guitar and voice with mandolinist David Grisman, fiddler Richard Greene, banjo player Bill Keith and the late Clarence White, who is to bluegrass lead guitar what Django Reinhardt is to jazz. It’s not on Spotify or iTunes or Tidal. The original LP is quite hard to find, and even my 2003 reissue CD is a rarity, with used copies circulating, mostly in Europe, for as much as forty or fifty bucks. I was not prepared to lose it. It wasn’t on the shelf under M as I’d expect, nor was it under Peter Rowan or Clarence White or David Grisman, and at that point I grew concerned. I love this album; it was an anchor to my past and to a body of work I’ve been studying, on and off, for 30 years. It is in some ways a companion to the more famous Old And In The Way album that teamed Rowan with Jerry Garcia (pictured) just months later, an album that inspired countless Garcia fans to become more involved in bluegrass over the years, including myself. So this collection of music really matters to me.
I found Muleskinner a day or two later in a stack of CDs that had been set aside some time ago for I’m not sure what. Quite the relief that was. And the interview with Rowan went well, a major treat for me. But I share this anecdote of the lost and found CD because it’s symbolic of my recent ransacking of my album collection and the internet for great bluegrass. I’m on fire for this music again in much the same way I was in my 20s and 30s, when it dominated my consciousness and helped inspire me to move to Nashville. Bluegrass has never been far from my attention over the last decade and a half, but it’s felt more like a part of a larger world of roots/Americana I’ve been covering. As of this March though, I found myself programming a bluegrass show, our new weekly The Old Fashioned on WMOT, which I host with fiddle player and old-time advocate Amy Alvey. I’m deep in the bluegrass again, and I’m reminded of why it’s had a 30-year hold on me.
I got engaged with bluegrass from two directions. The Dead were enjoying a resurgence when I was in college in the latter 1980s, and their acoustic album Reckoning was, I thought, one of the coolest things I’d ever heard. While it didn’t have banjo, fiddle or dobro, it still had mysterious songs on it that I’d learn were connected to the bluegrass and acoustic roots tradition - “Dark Hollow,” “Oh Babe It Ain’t No Lie,” “Rosalie McFall” and “Deep Elem Blues” among others. Around the same time, a friend gave me a cassette copy of a pure bluegrass album, a sampler compilation from Rounder Records that included what I would later understand were some top-shelf, deep-catalog artists - Don Stover, Joe Val, Hazel & Alice, The Bailey Brothers and a young Del McCoury when he still performed with the Dixie Pals. Some of it was a bit abrasive for new ears, but I caught on pretty quick. And there were obvious masterpieces like Boone Creek, with Ricky Skaggs, singing “Dark Is The Night” and David Grisman performing “I Ain’t Broke (But I’m Badly Bent).” This tape became my Rosetta Stone, inspiring years of dot-connecting from those artists to others. That cassette also included on the other side the first (and very famous) duo album of guitarists Tony Rice and Normal Blake, and I ate that up, because I was new to the guitar and learning what could be done with it. I dove deep into bluegrass guitar as a picker and fan, starting with that album.
What did and what do I love about it? Why did bluegrass hook me so hard? Certainly I grasped the musicianship from the beginning. Raised on classical music to respect refinement and virtuosity, I heard it in bluegrass, where players excel as individuals and as ensemble players, synched up with each other in profound ways. And then there was the improvising, which I respected from years studying and loving jazz. I was surprised I think that there was a country/blue collar genre where spontaneous expression was taken so seriously. The vocal harmonies worked on me too, so close and dense, so mournfully real or so joyful in praise in the bluegrass gospel tradition. As soon as I started attending bluegrass festivals, I was struck by the range of people in attendance. Yes, they were almost entirely white, but they were rural and urban, young and old, conservative and liberal. The fact that bluegrass had a vast rural and small-town fan base who supported and played the music as a hobby helped me find a bond between southern country people and myself, an academic-class young liberal who’d grown up next to a golf course. And I came to understand and appreciate the push and pull between the classic “traditional” sound and the more eclectic and progressive branches of the family tree. Bluegrass revealed itself to be something incredibly rare - a genre with a core and a heart that nonetheless invited deep and infinite individual expression, and for me that proved fodder for a lifetime of attention and analysis. I listened widely, sought out live performance wherever I could find it, and eventually chased the genre to Nashville where the Station Inn became my first hang and my first place to meet musical friends.
All this time, I’ve see bluegrass operate as its own musical ecosystem insulated in important ways from the mainstream music business. It gathers its flock in smaller groups, sells them recordings more hand-to-hand and throws communal events where newcomers can easily mingle with experienced fans and catch the fever. I found this ecosystem to be incredibly nurturing of young people, and I’ve watched a whole generation grow from tiny novices and young prodigies to world-class adult artists. I’ve made friends with quite a few of them and find the bluegrass scene to be caring, engaged, smart and a lot of fun. With time, I’ve even seen the industry, inherently conservative in many ways, take stock of its blind spots and make a real effort to open doors for people of color and the LGBTQ community. The ongoing dialogue and spirit of forward motion is a remarkable thing and one of the few bright spots in this polarized, toxic modern society.
Now, I’m programming an hour of bluegrass and old-time each week for The Old Fashioned, and it’s a thrill. I’m scanning the bluegrass waterfront more closely than I have in years. I’m checking the radio charts and downloading new singles. I’m learning a ton through my partner Amy about old-time, which is adjacent to bluegrass but quite different and remarkable in its own right. I’m building on the knowledge I took from reading histories like Neil Rosenberg’s classic Bluegrass. And on my beat at WMOT I’m finding more and more reasons to interview bluegrass artists and cover the scene because there’s just a lot going on in the field. The stars of old-time are in their 20s and 30s, and in bluegrass Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle are giving new life to the acoustic guitar and showing what true triple-threat players, singers and songwriters can do. The Po’ Ramblin’ Boys are one of several young bands reframing old-school bluegrass in their own voice. I just wrote about them and others in a new feature for NPR about the Nashville scene.
Musically speaking, I’ve got a mind to ramble, but I’m always coming home.
You nailed it when you classified bluegrass as its own musical ecosystem. It doesn’t get any better than that.