All posts filed under: Acoustic Music

Few things are better than the sound of acoustic instruments

Clarence and Roland White featured in spring Fretboard Journal

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My favorite magazine showed up in the mail earlier this week, and I was delighted to see a cover story on flatpicking pioneer – and former Byrd – Clarence White.  The Fretboard Journal is coffee table quality but with writers who have musical smarts.  The Spring 2009 cover article on Clarence White and his mandolin-playing brother Roland is a terrific example.  There are great pictures of White’s Telecaster and superb writing about the unique syncopation that Clarence employed.  (You can hear it in the video below.)  White was one of the most influential guitarists of all time (#41 on the Rolling Stone list of 100 Greatest Guitarists) and The Fretboard Journal connects all the dots of his impact. Clarence White is that unique musician who had influence in multiple musical genres.  As a teenager he introduced the guitar as a lead instrument in bluegrass.  Then he moved to the Byrds where he played a key role in defining the sound of country-rock.  And much too soon – at age 29 – he was hit by a drunk …

Missy Raines Brings New Hip to IMT

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My colleague John and I were among a small but appreciative audience to hear Missy Raines and The New Hip at the weekly Monday night concert of the Institute of Musical Traditions.   The band features Raines’ energetic bass lines as the foundation for jazzgrass and acoustic music, capped with some terrific solo work by a group of young Nashville-based musicians. Instrumentals are the core of this band’s work, and they played most of the selections from Inside Out, their new CD on Alison Brown’s Compass Records.  The title track, Duke of Paducah, and a reworked Angeline the Baker entitled simply Angeline are among the highlights.   All the musicians were top notch, but Michael Witcher on dobro stood out throughout the evening.  Multi-instrumentalist Ethan Ballinger looks to be all of 16, but played beyond his years.  The band also broke in a new guitarist (on his second gig and so new he’s not listed on the web site) who carefully studied the chord charts but didn’t miss a beat.  At the end of a satisfying night …

Willie and the Wheel

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Fresh off their performance at the National Preservation Conference in Tulsa last fall, Western Swing band Asleep at the Wheel has joined with country music legend Willie Nelson for a new CD of Western Swing classics entitled Willie and the Wheel.  The Washington Post’s J. Freedom du Lac wrote a strong review of the album in which he said, For several years, the iconoclastic singer-songwriter Willie Nelson has been surrounding himself with unlikely musical collaborators, from pop ditz Jessica Simpson and jazzman Wynton Marsalis to the rapper Snoop Dogg, with whom Nelson shares an abiding love of lighting up — and seemingly little else. The pairings have produced more misses than hits as Nelson’s musical proffer has become wildly uneven. (Witness Nelson’s dreadful 2005 reggae experiment, “Countryman,” which should be filed in record bins under Jamaica Mistake.) But for Nelson’s new album, “Willie and the Wheel,” he found the perfect partners: Western swing preservationists Asleep at the Wheel, who helped the aging country outlaw get in touch with his inner Bob Wills, to marvelously vibrant effect. …

Watching the Grammy’s Part II

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After closing out last night’s More to Come… post on the Grammy’s, I caught the final award for album of the year, which went to Robert Plant and Alison Krauss for Rising Sand.  There is some justice when a rock icon who never won a Grammy with Led Zeppelin suddenly wins five when he teams up with – as the Washington Post’s J. Freedom du Lac termed her – “bluegrass goddess” Krauss. I loved it when Plant – that Led Zeppelin screamer – thanked old time musicians Mike Seeger and Norman Blake, along with bluegrass fiddler extraordinaire Stuart Duncan and the wonderful independent roots record company Rounder Records in his acceptance speech.  We haven’t heard names like that from the Grammy stage since O Brother swept the awards show.  Woo hoo! More to come… DJB

Watching the Grammy’s

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Andrew and I have been watching the Grammy Awards show together…a little father/son bonding.  He’s helping me understand the genius of Radiohead and I’m helping him understand why Paul McCartney was such a seminal bassist in pop/rock music.  Seems like a fair trade to me. Of course, the categories I care about never get face time in prime time.  Wouldn’t you have loved to see Dr. John sing from his Grammy award winning City That Care Forgot album?  I know that they had to bring out Lil Wayne for the masses as part of their New Orleans tribute, and it was good to see Allen Toussaint, so I’ll take what I can.  Thank God some people still care about New Orleans.  In the Bluegrass category, Ricky Skaggs won for the terrific Honoring the Fathers of Bluegrass, while banjo player Bela Fleck won best pop instrumental album.  (Isn’t this the category that would have included Walk Don’t Run and other pop instrumental classics?  That’ll teach all those folks who make banjo jokes!) In the folk category, …

Shuffling Off to…the Swim Meet

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Today I took some time off to serve as a timer at the swim meet for Andrew’s school.  I do this every now and then to make sure I connect with that part of Andrew’s life during the school year, and because every parent needs to volunteer to make these meets work.  It was great fun and Andrew dropped time in all his races.  I even got to time him in the 500, when he beat his personal best.  What fun. But this post isn’t about swim meets and getting your pants wet (which I did .  Those high school boys come in hard for the touch at the end.)  Nope, this post is about why I love the Shuffle feature on the iPod. I have about 3,500 songs or so on my iPod.  About 2,400 of them are in one playlist that I call “Americana.”  That’s where I dump in all my albums and iTunes purchases that have anything to do with bluegrass, acoustic music, country rock, Americana, blues, you name it.  I can go …

Live at McCabe’s

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I am in Santa Monica, California, for a set of meetings.  For most people, when they think of Santa Monica they think of the beautiful beach and the restored Santa Monica Pier, with its historic carousel and the great Ferris wheel that lights up the night sky.  Those things are all pretty wonderful, but when flatpickers come to Santa Monica they think of Live at McCabe’s. Back in the 1970s, Norman Blake was making his first west coast appearance and he recorded an album at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, which is located on Pico Boulevard here in Santa Monica.  It is a wonderful album for several reasons, but most of all because it showcases Blake’s incredible guitar flatpicking skills.  For those who’ve only heard Blake on O Brother Where Art Thou or on his later albums, there’s always a wonder – as others have noted – at how Blake came to be mentioned among the first guitar greats in the same breath with Doc Watson, Dan Crary, and Clarence White.  When you listen to Live at …

Peter Ostroushko Plus at IMT

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It wasn’t the concert the Institute of Musical Traditions originally envisioned, but thanks to the professionalism and love for music the performers brought to the evening, it was more than advertised. Andrew and I took in the regular Monday night IMT concert this evening, which featured Peter Ostroushko and Danny Gotham.  However, they were delayed by a major pile up on I-70 that  Peter later told us included a fiery semi that was completely incinerated.  Thanks to quick thinking by the IMT folks, however, they called in friends Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer and in a delightful half-hour opening set they kept the evening moving and proved they’re much more than just children’s artists.  Marxer’s musicianship was in special evidence on her cello banjo and in some sweet swing guitar solos.  Ostroushko and Gotham then took the stage and began with a mandolin duet of tunes learned from Norman Blake.  The second tune in the medley, a Blake original entitled Jeff Davis, got Ostroushko in the mood for some political humor.  He told of a time …

Random Moments from a Holiday Weekend

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Random moments of grace from the first half of a special holiday weekend here in Washington… Having the time to read the New York Times slowly.  Many Saturdays I’m so busy with errands I zip through the Times and the Washington Post.  I’m glad I didn’t yesterday.  Gail Collins has a sense of humor that I love, and the start to her Saturday column had me laughing out loud. Right now you may be asking yourself: How am I going to celebrate Barack Obama’s inauguration? You may, of course, have something else on your mind entirely. Like what the chances are that the next time you get on a plane, geese could fly into both engines. Or what the heck geese are doing in New York in the middle of winter when their relatives who worked hard and played by the rules had all gone south months ago. Or you may just be wondering how that rescue in the Hudson River would have gone if it had been led off by the Department of Homeland …

O’Connor, Fleck to Play Inauguration Event

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Thanks to the Bluegrass Blog for passing along the news that Mark O’Connor and Bela Fleck will be playing next Monday at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower’s Theatre as part of the Let Freedom Swing concert.  The evening’s program of jazz music is in honor of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and in anticipation of the inauguration the next day of President-elect Barack Obama.  While O’Connor and Fleck made their name in bluegrass, they routinely cross musical genres and have the musical chops to join host Wynton Marsalis. While tickets are by invitation only, the event is to be televised, so be on the lookout for this mix of terrific musicians. More to come… DJB