All posts tagged: Bluegrass Music

From the Stage of the Ryman Auditorium…

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Even for a guy who gets to work with some amazing people and visit some of the country’s most wonderful historic places, yesterday was an extraordinary day.  (And not just because I passed 10,000 visitors to More to Come…the DJB Blog – thank you readers.) Nope, the picture says it all.  I was privileged to open the National Preservation Conference from the stage of the historic Ryman Auditorium. For a bluegrass loving preservationist to have a chance to speak from the place where Earl Scruggs came onstage some 60 years ago with Bill Monroe to play White House Blues and give birth to bluegrass music was an honor.  To be able to tell 2,000 conference attendees why this place matters was a thrill.  To be able to hear the bluegrass I’d chosen over the Ryman’s speakers for the 30 minutes before we kicked off the conference was just a rush.  I knew it was going to be a great evening when the Laurie Lewis tune Who Will Watch the Home Place? – with its haunting …

Sleep is Overrated When You’ve Got Music to Fuel the Soul

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At the end of a busy first day at the National Preservation Conference in Nashville, I took off to the Grand Ole Opry House with about 20 close friends for the taping of a PBS special celebrating 40 Years of Rounder Records.  (Look for the show on March 10, 2010.)  While it started late and ended even later, it was an amazing evening of music. Here’s just a few highlights: Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas playing that great accordion-driven dance music from Louisiana, where the “crawfish got soul and the alligators got the blues.”  My accordion-playing friend Jim Harrington would have loved it.  As my colleague and seatmate  Caroline Barker said, “If I could move my feet like Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas I’d be a dancer instead of a preservationist (perhaps).” Bela Fleck and Abigail Washburn singing and playing Keys to the Kingdom.  I heard them do the tune at Merlefest, but it was even better in the controlled setting of the Opry House.  Then Bela and Jerry Douglas played a duet …

Preservation Roots Music

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I’m headed to Nashville this week for the National Preservation Conference where we’re sure to hear great preservation stories and good music.  Putting the two together, I have collected some Americana and roots music for the conference staff to use prior to the Opening Plenary. I kick off the set with the Martha White Theme (just seemed appropriate given the setting).  However, finding preservation-based roots music can be tough.  Most country songs that mention “home” generally deal with the loss of mother and dad or a true love – but not too much about the loss of the actual building.  So most are instrumentals.  The set does include that preservation bluegrass classic The Old Home Place by J.D. Crowe and the New South.  However, my favorite is the Jim Lauderdale/Ralph Stanley Highway Through My Home. In honor of the Overton Park (Memphis) and 710 Freeway (California) battles…and so many more…click on the video below and enjoy. More to come… DJB

Good Roots Music On the Web

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Even on vacation I can’t spend all my time enjoying the beauty of the river.  So I went online this morning and came across one new roots music blog and was reminded of another old favorite.  I thought I’d share them with you. The new find is called Fiddlefreak Folk Music Blog, written by a musician and artist on the west coast named Stuart Mason.  I found his recent post on singer-songwriter Sarah Jarosz to be a great introduction to someone who seems worth checking out – just as his blog promised.  Visit the site and see if you find some new music that’s worth exploring. The old favorite is the website No Depression, which is the online version of the late and lamented magazine of the same name.  (The title is taken from the 1930s Carter Family tune, They’ll Be No Depression in Heaven, which could be just as appropriate in 2009.)   No Depression was a great magazine covering the broad area called Americana, alt-country, or roots music.  That tradition is bravely carried …

Mike Seeger Passes Away

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I was saddened to read in today’s Bluegrass Blog of the passing of roots musician extraordinaire Mike Seeger. Half-brother to the more famous Pete Seeger, Mike was one of those people who loved old-time music and the people who played it.  He was a great musical scholar who worked to expand the audience for American roots music.  I had the chance to hear him play live on a couple of occasions after he moved to Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, and he was just one of the giants in the field. I found this wonderful clip on You Tube of Seeger talking about – and then playing – Elizabeth Cotten’s classic Freight Train. Rest in peace. More to come… DJB P.S.  – An update:  Here’s the posting on Seeger from the always informative, The Music’s Over But the Songs Live On blog.

Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman

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Next week begins the summer Bluegrass Nights at the Ryman series at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.  Known as the Mother Church of Country Music and the home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 through 1974, the Ryman bills this series with the line, “Experience the best in bluegrass on the very stage where bluegrass was born over 60 years ago.”  That would be the evening where Earl Scruggs stepped on stage with Bill Monroe.  Here’s how Richard D. Smith describes that night in Can’t You Hear Me Callin’:  The Life of Bill Monroe: For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style – “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs stepped up to the microphone with apprehension, knowing that nothing like this had been heard to date on the Opry or even over WSM radio. Use to the banjo as a country comedian’s prop, or hearing it picked or strummed in …

Bluegrass Hair and Obscene Solos

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The bluegrass world’s answer to the satirical paper The Onion – the always off-kilter Bluegrass Intelligencer – is at it again with several not-to-be-believed posts from the world of roots music. In the wake of last weekend’s DelFest Bluegrass Festival and bad weather in the mid-Atlantic region, BI’s intrepid staff reports on how rain, hail, and gale-force winds could not dislodge the “bluegrass hair” of the host Del McCoury band. As reported by BI online: On Saturday, an unfortunate combination of gale force wind, torrential rain, powerful lightning, and crushing downfalls of hail rocked DelFest, the popular musical event hosted by the Del McCoury Band. Importantly, the relentless onslaught of life-threatening weather was not sufficient to disturb the hair of anyone in the McCoury family. Another BI post reported on the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that a solo by  guitarist extraordinarie Bryan Sutton was “pornographic and obscene.”   What, you didn’t hear about that one from Nina Totenberg?  Well, the NPR legal affairs reporter can’t be expected to catch everything.  That’s why we depend on the …

Matt Flinner’s Music du Jour Satisfies

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The Matt Flinner Trio’s Music du Jour is another in a string of strong new releases this year from Alison Brown’s Compass Records.    Flinner is one of the country’s top mandolin players, heard in recent years with David Grier and super bassist Todd Phillips as well as with Missy Raines and the New Hip. In 2006, Flinner’s trio (Finner on mandolin, Eric Thorin on bass, and Ross Martin on guitar) began to perform what they termed “Music du Jour” tours.  Each band member agreed to write new music to be performed that evening.  The only rule:  the music be started, completed, and performed all in one day.  I’ll let the website Jazz News pick it up from there: The players continued with their daily musical challenge, giving birth to the concept of the “Music du Jour” tours and later the Music du Jour album (out now on Compass Records). Between Flinner, Ross, and Thorin, over sixty new tunes were composed during three western U.S. tours, and in December 2008 the trio committed the twelve best to …

Different Views of Merlefest

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MerleFest is so big, with 14 active stages over four days, that perspectives on the festival can differ widely.  Two regular bluegrass bloggers have posted entertaining and informative stories about their MerleFest experiences in 2009 that I encourage you to check out. When I started More to Come…one of the first posts was about a show of the Lovell Sisters, and one of my first comments came from Dr. Tom Bibey.  Since then I’ve regularly checked out his Stories of the Bluegrass Road blog, and was pleased to see that he was posting from MerleFest.  This was the first year out of my four at MerleFest that I missed Mandomania, so I was glad to read Dr. Bibey’s update on this annual tradition:  the Creekside Stage filled with mandolin players all supported by one guitarist.  Check out Stories of the Bluegrass Road for a good read. The most extensive reporting on MerleFest I’ve come across is from the alliterative Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books, and Brainstorms blog.  As you’d expect from a retired English teacher, Lehmann’s blog …