Editor’s Note:
I’d like to welcome a new columnist, Sean Barry to our writing staff. I’m looking forward to hearing more from him. Take it away, Sean.
In October 1978 Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys appeared at the Coffee House at UC Davis, a show I was unable to attend because I had just departed Davis with my own band (California Zephyr) for a six-week stint in the Northwest. I was sorry to miss the show particularly because this was the first time I could have been in the same town at the same time with Bill Monroe—he did very few northern California shows in those days. My band played for a week each in Spokane (Washboard Willies) and Missoula (Top Hat) and then traveled to Pullman, Washington, where we were booked for a week at Washboard Willies south. Pullman clubs at the time were competing with an 18-year-old drinking age just eight miles away in Moscow, Idaho, so audiences on the Washington side tended to be sparse.
The second morning of our stint in Pullman we awoke in our motel to find Bill Monroe’s bus in the parking lot, and shortly thereafter the Man himself and some of the Bluegrass Boys returned from breakfast and climbed aboard. None of us was especially shy, and we knew a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity when it hit us between the eyes, so I grabbed my (first) homemade F-5 and two of us went down and knocked on the bus door. Kenny Baker, the greatest fiddler ever in Bluegrass music, greeted us, sat us down, and introduced us to “Mr. Monroe,” who welcomed us warmly and started the first of many conversations that day—Kenny was great too, and funny. At the time the Bluegrass Boys included Wayne Lewis (guitar and amazing vocals), Butch Robins (peerless banjo), Mark Hembree (super bass), Bill, and Kenny, who, as already noted, was the greatest fiddler ever in Bluegrass music—in my opinion this band was one of the greatest in the history of Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. Also on the bus was Miss Julia LaBella, wonderfully at ease in that male-dominated landscape. My entire six-piece band spent the day on the bus, mostly talking about life in the business with Bill Monroe, Miss LaBella, and all the Bluegrass Boys. Bill and the band had come to town to play at Washington State University, and they were headed north to Alberta afterward. I should interject that my band did bluegrass/cajun/rock-flavored original country, and we had a drummer and electric bass.About half of my job was to play the pedal steel guitar and the other half was divided among banjo, guitar, mandolin, and fiddle. We also had a 100% fiddler, and acoustic and electric guitars. By no stretch were we a bluegrass band, and Bill and company understood that at the outset.
Bill played my homemade F-5 and pronounced it nice—he could have called it the worst he’d ever played, and I’d have been happy that he touched it. Then he went to his bedroom on the bus and emerged with a beat-up oblong case that he casually mentioned held his mandolin (“manolin” in Monroe speak). The second greatest thrill of my musical life was to hold and play that legendary Gibson F-5. This was before the peghead was restored and long before it was vandalized, but even then, that instrument needed work—Bill allowed as how it was just getting broken in. Later, Bill brought out a second, mint condition Gibson Loar F-5 that he said was his spare. Kenny later told me that Bill never did that, so I realized that Bill must have liked us. Bill told me the stories about who did what damage to his mandolin, and they were rather different than what I had heard and still hear from time to time. We parted ways late that afternoon, and Bill said that maybe they’d drop by the club after their show that night. I thought that was a cool thing to say and it made me smile, but I understood that they had places to go and music to play.
About 1/3 of the way through our second show that night at Washboard Willies, I was stunned to see Bill Monroe and all the Bluegrass Boys walk into the club and sit down right in front of us. Recall that he had never heard of us, let alone heard our music before that day, so for him to take the time to see us perform was an incredible thrill, the first greatest of my musical life. And they smiled. Boy, did they smile. We played a very upbeat “Folsom Prison Blues” and I had the incredible pleasure to watch Bill hamboning in time, right there in front of me. I played a very fast, Middle Eastern flavored “Dusty Miller,” a mandolin tune I got from one of Bill’s albums from the 1960’s, and I must say that I was petrified, but Bill, Kenny, and Butch Robins later said they loved our arrangement of that time-honored tune. We also did several other tunes, ended the set, and ran to the table as fast as we could before they could escape. Bill and the Boys complimented us and our music with amazing energy and sincerity, and they said they hoped to see us and possibly work with us down the road.* Bill and the Boys left the club to go on to Alberta just before we went back on stage, and I’ve been smiling ever since when I remember that day and night.
If Bill had just said hello from his seat on that bus and that had been the end, I would have been thrilled just to have that memory. Instead, he and the others went out of their way to be hospitable, they talked to us like peers, they came to see our show instead of leaving town immediately, and they liked our brand of music for its own sake. I don’t know if bluegrass would be what it is if it were not for the humanity of that man, and I can’t imagine a greater thrill in music for me or any bluegrass player than what happened that cold day in Pullman, Washington in 1978. Bill Monroe and I did indeed end up in the same town at the same time, and the encounter that resulted will live forever in my soul.
*We did work together several times over the next few years—Owensboro, KY and Bedford, PA come to mind as particularly great experiences
