How Green Was Grass Valley? Memories Of Father’s Days Festivals Past– Volume One

Aug 29, 2015 | Welcome Column

Harrison Hamill, our young friend and fledgling banjo player, brought his friend into our camp at Grass Valley one day during the Father’s Day Festival in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. Harrison and his brother Finnegan received free admission to The Freight and Salvage, where I booked the acts back then, in exchange for their helping their mother tend the flower boxes in front of the place. Harrison took banjo lessons from our friend Avram Siegel, with whom Chris, my girlfriend then, wife now, played music in The Fog City Ramblers.  They may have been playing at the festival that year; I can’t remember.

     Harrison’s friend was a little burr headed fellow who dragged a mandolin along behind him.  After introductions were made all around, the tyke said, in his high pitched voice, “Do you guys know ‘Big Bug,’ by John Reischman?  Oh, probably not; it’s an original mandolin tune.”   The little fellow then took a seat and proceeded to play the fire out of that particular number. The young man’s name, it turned out, was Chris Thile, he was, my wife Chris remembers someone saying, eight years old; he was as good then as most adult mandolin players I’d ever heard. I distinctly remember Chris Lewis muttering dark thoughts about destroying “the damn thing” on the trip home from the festival that year after hearing the little genius play. She was, and is, a mandolin player.

      Chris Thile, like Harrison, was homeschooled, and on the basis of that and their mutual interest in bluegrass, they had become pen pals. Turns out he’d lived his short life up ‘til then in southern California, where he fell in love with the mandolin and bluegrass music when he was first exposed to it, began taking lessons from John Moore, the fine mandolinist in the southern California band called California (an expanded version of Berline, Crary, and Hickman). A vivid image and memory I retain of that time, either that weekend or at another festival shortly thereafter, perhaps Midsummer, also at Grass Valley, is of Chris and Byron Berline playing tunes together and Byron saying, “Want to switch, Chris?”, Chris saying “Sure, Byron,”, exchanging instruments with Berline, and cutting down on the fiddle with the same energy and virtuosity as he played the mandolin. In short order, Chris formed a band with Sean and Sarah Watkins called Nickel Creek. Their first album, “Little Cowpoke,” was released in 1994. And the rest, as they say, is history.

I became fairly friendly in those years with Scott Thile, Chris’ dad, who played bass with Nickel Creek early on.  “As soon as one of these kids gets a driver’s license, I’m outta here,” I remember him saying wryly one time.  When Nickel Creek was booked as one of the showcase bands at a regional IBMA Conference in northern California, along with Kenny Baker & Josh Graves and The All Girl Boys (the first, and far as I know, last event  of it’s kind), Scott called me about an appearance at The Freight on the same trip; I was only too willing to oblige.  Nickel Creek played a Sunday afternoon kid’s concert before heading back south and home. There were in fact only about 50 people in attendance that afternoon, no matter how many people tell you they were there, but it was an amazing show nonetheless.  The next time I remember seeing Chris was as a member of Richard Greene’s band at the IBMA Conference in Owensboro, playing along with Richard and, among others, David Grier, on a unique arrangement of Ornette Coleman’s ”Ramblin’.” I also well remember Chris’ IBMA appearance in 1993 as a member of Pete Wernick’s first Bluegrass Youth All Stars, along with Michael Cleveland, Josh Williams, Cody Kilby, and Brady Stogdill.THAT was quite a band…and you can watch a performance of “Wheel Hoss” by this group on Youtube, to this day.  Chris’ career has proceeded apace ever since, first with Nickel Creek, which grew into an international sensation, later with other projects, including his phenomenally successful  group The Punch Brothers.  In 2012, Chris became the first recipient of a MacArthur  “Genius” grant that I ever met at the age of eight…and now we learn that Chris is scheduled to replace the old philosopher himself, Garrison Keillor, in 2016, as host of the venerable and much beloved Prairie Home Companion. And he’s what, 34? My, my, my.

     Not too long ago, I was moved to remember all this and more when I attended a show featuring my friend and mandolin virtuoso David Harvey, who lives in Nashville, as I do these days.  He told a story about the young Thile meeting Mr. Monroe himself, playing with him, and learning one of Bill’s tunes directly from The Master. Chris by then had moved back to western Kentucky, where his folks were originally from, and young as he was, it was obvious that he would soon be a force to be reckoned with in the world of bluegrass, and Mr. Monroe no doubt knew that.  At one point, Chris asked, “How does that B part go?”
“Uh, like I jest played it,” replied Big Mon.

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